everything-you-feel-is-real: loveroflokiforpoeticjustice: nikkoliferous: everything-you-feel-is-real
everything-you-feel-is-real: loveroflokiforpoeticjustice: nikkoliferous: everything-you-feel-is-real: lucianalight:valkyrieandstrangeridingaragorn: lucianalight: This scene breaks my heart every time. Thor is sincere and desperate for Loki to accept, to go back to being the brother Thor always knew. Thor wants him to come home and in his optimist mind everything would go back to normal.For a moment Loki wants to believe him. He looks confused, searching Thor’s face for a trace of lie. Thor doesn’t lie, but that doesn’t mean what he believes is true. Loki has lost his family, his home, his identity. Where were his family when he was lost in the void and the mercy of Thanos? He has no worth for Odin anymore. Odin would not forgive this rebellion and disobedience. Asgard would never accept him as a Jotun. His own family couldn’t, he himself didn’t, how could they? Nothing would ever be like past. He is all alone. He laughs. That bitter insincere laugh, his mask to hide his pain. He doesn’t have a home. Did he ever have it in the first place? Or was it all an illusion?… It’s because it is insincere. Not that Thor doesn’t love Loki, of course he does, but he wants his brother back, the version of the brother he wants so he can spend time with him, so they can go back to living the way they did in the past (Thor is being impossibly selfish here). But was Loki happy then? No. He just didn’t say it, he hid it, he didn’t lash out, he didn’t ask for attention, he was kind of… there. Waiting for his family to ask something of him, waiting to be of service, and they took and took from him and that’s how they wanted it to be.But Loki rebelled, he lashed out, and now everything is wrong. Not because he’s unhappy, not that they’re willing to listen to him and change their ways, no. Now he’s different. Now he’s changed. And they don’t want that so Thor asks him to return, to be the brother he used to be where the rest of the family was happy - and I don’t think Thor realizes that what he’s saying here can basically be summed up in two words “conditional love”: we will love you as long as you are what we want you to be, as long as you fill the role we’ve chosen for you. And if you curve away and stop following the road we paved for you we will blame you instead of looking at ourselves in the mirror and kicking ourselves for building the road in the first place.So of course Loki laughs, it’s confirmation Thor still doesn’t get it. Of course Thor doesn’t get it. He remembers a childhood, a life so different from what Loki experienced. And Thor has never seen or noticed what Loki went through in that life. He never even realized that he himself was unwittingly made life harder for Loki. In Thor’s opinion Loki’s grievances are nothing but imagined slights. And Odin is the wisest king and father. So the problem is Loki. It’s him who should accept his mistakes and come home asking for forgiveness. And Loki knows that and rejects the life in which no one ever understood and accepted him for who he was. I don’t even think Thor is being as sincere as you guys give him credit for. I think everything you point out is true about his feelings in general, but the moment Loki says “I don’t have it”, he raises Mjolnir at him. Not half a second’s pause. If he was really asking Loki to come home and not just saying whatever might make him reveal the location of the Tesseract, Thor would have taken a beat to adjust to the sudden change of topic. But he doesn’t. Because the Tesseract is the topic, even when he’s talking about mourning and home.Thor doesn’t get enough credit/flack for how manipulative he can be even pre-Ragnarok. Absolutely. I often see people frame TR!Thor as a wholly different person from pre-TR Thor, as if his narcissistic traits in that movie are a brand new invention. But the way I see it is more that Ragnarok stripped Thor of any redeeming qualities he previously had while amplifying/emphasizing his most negative traits. (But of course, said traits—his selfishness, his manipulative tendencies and his inclination to lash out at when defied/emotionally injured—are not *framed* as negative in the movie, quite the opposite).And now, in light of the Larry Loki Series, this becomes even more fascinating because the MCU seeks to actively demonize NPD in name while simultaneously glorifying it in practice by uplifting characters like Thor and Odin (who, unlike Loki, actually display narc tendencies). I have to agree with @nikkoliferous and @everything-you-feel-is-real .Thor never paid attention to Loki. What he wants is the the version of Loki he wants. The one that he can “be nice to” (completely ignore and drag along for the sake of ticking Loki off) when he wants and his punching bag. I watched Thor 1 and no one really knows Loki to be honest (not even Frigga). He was so fake for so long people don’t really know what to expect or think of him. Especially since their descriptions of him are completely wrong. If Thor really knew Loki he, for one, would not have given up basically, after that line and threatened to hit him. We all know that Thor handles his emotions through violence (especially when he doesn’t get what he wants) and this scene is no exception. That right there eliminates the sincerity if you ask me. I mean dang. The had a mental breakdown, told you what he honestly wanted all a long, AND tried to kill himself in front of you and this is your response. You didn’t maybe stop to think for a second to a least try and figure out what was wrong? May I add the fact that this “sincere talk” was like two minutes and that it takes place after Thor slams him into a mountain without asking after him? And that yes, the main reason for Thor even coming to Earth was because of the Tesseract and NOT Loki. No hate just agreeing to disagree. #do i think thor wants loki to come home and for everything to go back to the way it was before?#yes i do#but his *primary* objective is still to retrieve the tesseract—not his wayward brother(nikkoliferous’ tags)Having mulled this over some more, I agree with everyone (if that’s possible), and I think Thor is saying “come home” in all three ways at once:First meaning: He plays on Loki’s probably long-lost hope of coming safely back to Valhalla where he’s been missed and they’ll reconcile. You can hear it in Thor’s comforting tone of voice that that’s the implication he’s trying to convey to Loki to make him want to surrender - even though I don’t think there’s any reality behind it. That’s the manipulative ‘come home’, and you can tell by Loki’s expression - “I can come home??” - that it revives the hope for a moment, before he calls the bluff. This first meaning of “come home” is the one Thor is essentially using as a tool in the conversation, but with the two other meanings somewhere in there behind his strategy. (Which is very Odin of him. Odin in his actions and words is always first and foremost focused on gaining control and power in the situation, and uses any traces of sincerity in his own heart to lie more convincingly.)Second meaning: He just wants everything to go back to the way it was before, no apologies, no hashing anything out, just putting Loki back in the exact situation that drove him to a suicide attempt and pretending everything is fine. Come home and shut up and try not to have any feelings or needs this time. Stop being ‘crazy’ and be old Loki again.The third meaning is what he ultimately does: Brings Loki home as a prisoner, like loot, hands him over to Odin, and then ignores him. As in 'come home so I can tick off the 'got Loki for Odin’ box and never deal with all these unpleasant feelings from our falling out ever again’.It’s such an interesting layered mix of manipulation and sincerity, that line. Says more about Thor than I realized before reading all this great meta.“I watched Thor 1 and no one really knows Loki to be honest (not even Frigga). He was so fake for so long people don’t really know what to expect or think of him.”So well put. This makes me realize something I’ve been wondering since I saw Thor 1: Loki is known to his 'friends’ and 'family’ as manipulative, deceptive, mischievous, unpredictable. That never made sense together with the character we were presented with, who seemed to have the role of the most adult person in the family/friend group, the one who shoulders the most responsibility out of all of them and whose main job as Thor’s right hand man is to calm him down, give him good advice, and clean up his mistakes. (The deleted scene between Frigga and Odin made this role for Loki very explicit.) That kind of personality type is the opposite of a guy who can’t be trusted. But it makes sense from this vantage point: Nobody has bothered to get to know Loki, and he tends to be punished for speaking up or being sincere, so he seems unpredictable and mysterious. Because you can’t spot patterns in someone you actively avoid paying attention to, and you can’t know what to expect from someone you’re constantly pressuring into lying to please you. I imagine a lifetime of him saying things over and over and then, when he finally shouts it, seeming to his oblivious friends to get angry out of nowhere. I imagine him having to find all kinds of indirect methods of getting his way, because simply asking for it like everyone else doesn’t work. And now I can see how we can combine this overly responsible guy with their mistrust of him. He’s a stranger in their midst, because they made him one.Which ties back into @lucianalight’s post that started this thread:“He doesn’t have a home. Did he ever have it in the first place? Or was it all an illusion?…” -- source link