I’ve come to think of this piece as “The Sorrow of Loki” because it is a pretty heart-wrenching compilation. One evening recently, I got into a passionate discussion with a friend about why I felt that Odin should really take most of the blame for what happened not only in the Avengers, but in Thor, as well as TTDW. I attempted to explain the perfectly valid reasons for Loki’s rage and pain to my friend who just does NOT see past the, “He’s just an ungrateful emo brat,” thing. It might seem that way to someone who only sees the situation from one perspective and looks no deeper. I told my friend that, while I never said that Loki’s actions were justified, his rage and pain are. Loki is at his best when he is misdirecting people’s attentions. More often than not, anyone who runs into him takes him at face value, with the exception of Frigga. Loki’s mind is not like a bagful of cats so much as it’s a shark camouflaged by a bagful of cats. *edit: (that is to say that it never stops moving, because sharks can’t or they die, etc…anyway..)
My friend never even let me explain that all of Loki’s actions would inevitably lead him back to the path he took by the end of TTDW because Loki is always thinking ten steps ahead. Always. Even through torture and imprisonment a la Thanos, he planned and plotted. He seethes with rage. And that rage is justified. Only now he uses that pain and rage to fuel his ambitions and fill the gaping hole that Odin left by one minute telling him that he’s his son and the next reinforcing the idea that he’s a monster and he will never belong on Asgard. That he’ll never be one of them, and on that note, I have to pose a question:
Was Odin’s stealing the abandoned baby Loki an act of mercy, or cruelty? Odin must have known that it would be like spitting in Laufey’s face to steal his son, regardless of the fact that Loki had been left to die. While it may have on one hand seemed merciful to raise that child as an Asgardian without knowing his true heritage, it is made well known from the beginning of the first film that the Asgardian attitude toward just about anyone who wasn’t Asgardian is not a very healthy one. Thor and Loki were both raised viewing Jotuns as monsters, and indeed saw Jotuns as such. When Loki discovered that he was one of those monsters himself, it must have felt like the nine realms were collapsing under his feet. A man that he had loved, trusted, and revered as his father and had always tried to please, but had never been quite good enough tells him that he is only alive because he found him and stole him. Then Odin tells him that he was protecting him from the truth.
What truth? The truth that Odin hated what Loki was? The truth that regardless of Odin’s hatred of frost giants, he would use Loki as a chance to unite Jotunheim and Asgard, raise Loki with Asgardian beliefs, principles, and ideals so that child would become and Asgardian puppet in Jotunheim someday? The truth that Odin is not perfect and that he screwed up and did something he shouldn’t have? The truth that the All-Father is fallible? We know that Frigga loved Loki unconditionally, as if he was her own child, and she alone treated him that way, and Thor, while he loved his brother, still allowed his friends to tease Loki, and never really attempted to defend him either I imagine. Young Thor was too busy being impressed with himself to see that his little brother just wanted to be his equal. While Frigga may have treated both Thor and Loki equally, Odin certainly did not. However, all my friend can see is that Loki is just spoiled brat. Never mind the betrayal by his father and his mother (though in Frigga’s case, she genuinely did not want to hurt Loki and wanted to protect him from the truth that Odin was basically just keeping Loki around as a pawn.) I can see why Loki did what he did, i.e., killing Laufey, etc. He wanted acceptance. He wanted to have a little of the love that Thor got from Odin, but he was never going to get that, and you see that with two words from Odin at the end of the first film, “No, Loki.” Loki is a very lonely who belongs nowhere. I might say that in the end he just wants to belong somewhere, but he will always be an outsider looking in. My empathy for the character’s motivations, however, apparently made me “just a Loki fangirl” though, so what do I know?
Loki: “Am I cursed? What am I?”
Loki: “You took me for a purpose. What was it? TELL ME!”
Odin: “I thought we could unite our kingdoms one day—through you. Those plans no longer matter.”
Loki: “So I am no more than another stolen relic— locked up here until you might have use of me…”
Odin: “Why do you twist my words?”
Loki: “You could have told me what I was from the beginning. Why didn’t you?”
Odin: “I wanted to protect you from the truth.”
Loki: “What? Because I-I-I’m the monster who parents tell their children about at night?! You know it all makes sense now…Why you favored Thor all these years. Because no matter how much you claimto love me, you could never have a frost giant sitting on the throne of Asgard!”
Frigga: “Loki, don’t make it worse.”
Odin: “All this because Loki desires a throne.”
Loki: “It is my birthright.”
Odin: “You’re birthright was to die as a child cast out onto a frozen rock!”
Loki: “He is NOT my father!”
Frigga: “Then am I not your mother?”
Frigga: “Always so perceptive about everyone but yourself…”
Thor: “I will tell father what you’ve done here today.”
Loki: “I didn’t do it for him.”
Forget my essay and enjoy the music and feels, k? K.
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