On Loki, though... IIRC there’s some post that points out a scene where Loki maybe Fourth Wall Breaking.
If he IS, that paints his fight with Abel/Kazuya in a different light, because it’s on the worst ending route, when Naoya took on the most dangerous part of the plan to let you escape so Loki could be ticked about that, and the Dickensian interpretation of Loki’s dialogue there is that the game developers are going ‘you don’t like this worst ending? Here’s what you need to do to unlock other endings.’ So like, if Loki has the power of Fourth Wall Breach, rather than that fight being an attempt to massively trigger Naoya’s issues to give him more entertainment bc Abel was disappointing, he COULD be going like ‘hey Abel maybe like talk to your brother and side with him next time??’
Because like, Loki got massively demonized by the Christianized rewrite of Norse mythology, which took out things like ‘the guy who killed Baldur wanted him dead bc Baldur was a rapist, Loki revealing the mistletoe was therefore pretty deserved.’
So in that context, Loki and Naoya could be friends as like, people who did bad things and will quite happily brand themselves as evil, but were also really loyal to the people they loved and didn’t deserve the shit that they were put through.
Having a genuine friend he could bitch with would be really great for Naoya... which is actually why I don’t think he and Loki have that dynamic as cute as it would be to imagine them Statler and Waldorfing like, the influence of Christianity on the world and resultant atrocities and history fails.
So maybe it’s that Loki wants to have that relationship but Naoya just hates all gods that aren’t his brother. Or Loki wants a BFF to replace Odin and Naoya is ‘I got shit to do fuck off.’ BC being isolated except for his brother and an angel who thinks ‘on his side’ means convincing him he’s evil is Naoya’s special hell, and having an actual friend would have helped him heal a bit. If he had that he’d be more stable than he is in game, probably.
But like, that doesn’t rule out an AU where they became genuine friends via Loki bitching about Odin and Thor siding with the angels, fuck angels man. And have spent the last millennium throwing shade together, discussing younger brother/kids and generally making things less awful for each other.
