#he also didn't tell loki what his own race was and lied about it??? in a racist society?? i don't even know what kind of abuse that is

[worstloki]

To get you ranting again, explain how loki was abused by Odin please

bold of you to expect a rant

[valkyrieandstrangeridingaragorn]

I'm kind of a casual mcu fan and i always had this question, isn't much of Loki's tragic backstory mostly a fanon? We know Odin didn't tell him that he was adopted which was wrong and probably had a bad impact on him and i think it was implied that Odin favored Thor over Loki so that was unpleasant and invalidating for him as well, not to mention Asgardians (or just the royals?) considering his real race people to be monstrous. But other than that i don't think he had been really that oppressed

Oh boy, where do I start. (This going to get long, fair warning)

It's important to keep in mind that abuse and mistreatment can be physical but also psychological and emotional, all 3 are awful and have lasting effects on people. Just because a person isn't being beaten it doesn't mean they're not being abused.

The real tragedy of Loki is that everything he went through was psychological and emotional, and it affected him greatly. His self-image, his self-esteem, the way he understands love and life, his beliefs about other beings (and ultimately himself) are all a consequence of his upbringing and Odin's indoctrination. When you say he wasn't that oppressed the thing is he shouldn't have been discriminated against at all. There are no acceptable grades of discrimination or oppression.

But let's go one by one:

Odin never told him he had been adopted.

For starters, adoption is too nice a word to describe what happened there. Loki had been left in the temple, Odin showed up and took him. We only know what Odin said in the first movie so we have to go by his word (which is not ideal because even though I love that man he was a pathological liar). Why did he take him? Was it because he took pity in that baby, because he didn't want him to die? No, he took him for a purpose: he wanted to raise him as his own, under Asgardian values, so that one day he would send him back to Jotunheim to rule. I do believe he ended up loving Loki eventually but as I always say it's not enough to love someone, it's how you love them that matters, and he loved him the wrong way.

Odin knew what Loki was and he knew he would go back someday, so why get in his head that the Jotuns were monsters? That takes me to your next point.

Odin favoured Thor over Loki

I think he lied to him and treated him as lesser than to incite what most narcissistic parents do to their children: triangulation. I know you're probably thinking this all is fanon but you see, in the first movie it is shown so clearly. Not told, it is shown. But most people choose to reject it because we don't have a literal quote when it is said "Loki, we're mistreating you and abusing you".

From Thor's "Know your place, brother", to Heimdall speaking over him, to the servant laughing at his expense, to Odin shushing him, to Volstagg mocking him, to the guard ignoring his order to warn Odin of their departure to Jotunheim. Movies tell many stories simultaneously and they don't always have the time to tell us everything so they have to show tiny bits of narrative in small doses, gestures where Loki looks hurt but stays silent, when he looks down and takes a step back, when his voice is low as he's speaking to his family or the many occasions where he's in the same room as Thor and Odin but he never says a word.

The Asgardians considering the Jotuns as monsters

Again, this is Odin's doing. But most importantly: when you say the Asgardians saw them that way you better include Loki in there too because he also considered them monsters. And if you add to that the way he had been mistreated his whole life, his brother favoured over him despite both of them being princes, his feelings of inadequacy and his desire to belong... link that to him finding out he's one of those monsters he had been told to fear as a child. At that point he has absolutely nothing to hold on to, not his people (if they knew the truth they'd fear him, reject him, hate him), not his brother (cast out), not his mother (she had been lying to him), not his father (at the time currently sleeping).

He's completely and utterly alone, with no one to turn to, with the added pressure of the throne and at the brink of war. Unsure of who or what he is, with an uncertain future ahead (what will happen when Odin awakes? Will he be cast out as well? Taken to the dungeons or sent to Jotunheim? He knew Odin loved Thor and he banished him, what won't Odin do with him, the kid he didn't love all that much?). So he does what he thinks is best but that's still not enough: Sif and the Warriors 3 don't accept his status as King (even though the line of succession fell to him legitimately) and Heimdall betrays him. And in the end Odin still tells him "no". No, you're not enough. No, you're not one of us.

So when you say "Odin didn't love him as much as Thor" it sounds a little too simplistic a take because there's so much more to it than that. Actions don't come in a vacuum and Loki's upbringing affected absolutely everything in his adulthood: he still thinks he's not enough, he still thinks he has nothing good in him, he still believes love is conditional as to how useful he can be to those around him, he still feels inclined to engage in toxic relationships (as shown in the series, except the show paints this as a good thing when it's not).

The problem is the MCU has actively refused to allow him to express himself so he can say all this so we're left with analyzing gestures and certain words and actions in order to read him. This is one of the many complaints I have about the show (and the movies in general): everyone around him defines him and describes him but he's never allowed to define and describe himself.

[i-am-loki-and-now-i-speak-up]

About my Blood: Loki Laufeyson

I was waiting for you.

That was what you wanted, wasn't it?

Loki Laufeyson. This is the name by which you learned to know me. From the infamous day in the Voult, when I first uttered it, with a broken voice, ... incredulous gaze.

A violent and painful emotion.

My ears were ringing, I stared at the emptiness for explanations that would never come.

Laufey's son.

Before starting I want to say immediately what I may have never dared to admit aloud ...

I started calling myself Laufeyson for revenge against Odin.

Just to spite him.

To reiterate that, if for him I had never been worthy to bear his name, I too didn't want to have anything to do with his people, arrogant and self-centered.

Calling myself Loki Laufeyson made me feel free from the yoke of Odin, from the power he had on me.

It was like laughing at his coldness.

"I am not like you, nor like that boisterous idiot of your son ..." said that name "I am other, something different from all of you, fucking hypocrites, that you go around like all of you were all shining and immaculate souls! "

It was like being able to shake off his reproach, his frowning expression of eternal discontent.

I was no longer Loki Odinson, sad, silent and obedient; that new identity, that reappropriation of my true roots had injected me strength, courage, will.

My Father silently disdained me for what I really was? Did all of them point out to me like the jealous, conspirator, liar and deceiver?

Very well, I would have satisfied them all by dressing gloriously of my new name.

I was a Frost Giant, son of an evil race, murderous and treacherous, .. he who had begotten me was their King, Laufey by the grin of predator, the look of blood, the hands dripping of the annihilated lives of his enemies and who knows who's others.

If this was what they thought of me, I would have given it to them.

Loki Laufeyson would have been what others wanted, or thought, I was.

And so Loki Laufeyson has betrayed Asgard, betrayed his brother, rejected his mother, tried to take what had always been denied. A place.

He brought chaos and destruction to Midgard, sparking a strange war that hiding something else behind it.

Loki Laufeyson was the most evil I could be.

And once again I find myself wondering if it was really what I wanted. The hatred toward my Father and the desire for revenge for what he had done devoured my soul, so that nothing at that time seemed to me enough to punish him.

To punish all of them, damned Asgardians, ... them and that look of superiority with which they all gazed at the others.

Loki Laufeyson had taken the little Loki with sad eyes by the hand, and with persuasive and poisonous words had put him in a corner, in silence, ... once again silenced and left to watch destroy his world and the people who, somehow, he still loved.

Whispering with his voice of treacherous velvet: "Look, child, ... look how easy it is to lie and deceive, taste the sweet taste of revenge, I do it for you, child. Is what you've always wanted, isn't? Be good, now, and let the pain of others drive your own pain away... "

Loki Laufeyson hasn't looked at anyone in order to have his revenge: not his brother, not his mother, ...for not to mention that infamous, arrogant liar of his father.

Yet I still believe that "he" was also a victim of Odin.

I know what you are thinking.

"How the hell do you talk today? Loki Laufeyson are you ... what are these little words tricks?"

Ah, sweet Midgardians children, you know how much the words plays on my lips, and how much I enjoy myself in this. Nevertheless there are events, in my unfortunate life, which by their nature can not be analyzed rationally.

By their nature, yes...

Do you have any idea, the furthest idea of what it meant to me, a boy, to have discovered the gigantic lie that had been my life up to that moment? See with horror my skin become blue, the sneer of the demon that held me tight so as not to lose even a moment of my loss, my paiful disbelief.

Understanding in a moment that nothing would ever be like before.

If ever there had been, a "before" ...

The nightmare had begun to end no more. I had become Loki Laufeyson. I had always been Loki Laufeyson.

A misfortune. The enemy. The blue demon. The monster.

I understood in a moment my father's lies, and the reason for his detachment. The most cynical part of me could even understand it.

How can you love someone you've never really wanted? The son of your worst enemy ...

How can you love a child who, you already know, will never be like you, or like the perfect child you already have ...?

You can not. And if you try to do it, at most you can offer that kind indifference, cold as the winter sun. And that will hurt him, slowly, silently, day by day, without remedy ....

Pay no attention to what has been shown to you. I didn't accepted that very uncomfortable truth in a week: things don't go so fast, and the souls torn to pieces, sometimes, need time to go crazy little by little.

I lived with that heartbreaking truth, in silence, for a long time, ... yes, a lot, if I speak in Midgardians terms.

My father had filled my brother and me, and our little children's minds, with myriads of grim and bloody stories about how monstrous the Jotunn demons were. Thor has become a man with the glorious mission to exterminate them one by one.

Can you understand my hell?

My pure terror? After a youth spent hating and fearing that breed of brutal murderers, suddenly the monster is me. I'm one of them.

One of them...

Can you understand? The sense of emptiness, the nausea, the disgust ... the feeling to be disgusting and dirty, guilty only for the fact of existing, living and breathing there, among the radiant Aesir. How many times I washed myself, in my rooms, and rubbed my skin, rubbed, rubbed ... with my nails, even, ... until I bleed, as if that blue could disappear, that horrible lizard color that disgusted me up to the point to throw up all night, desperate and on the verge of insanity.

And then the sharp thought of never being enough for anyone took over.

Not for my father, the biological one, ... the monster, he is, yes, ... who had chosen death for his son, whose only fault was to be small in a race of giants. Not for the man, ... The God who had wanted to save me for a strange mixture of emotions and strategies.

Odin, Allfather, who had found this adopted son under his roof, ... and who, only after many years, he realized he could never love him. I had not been enough for anyone.

Not enough for Laufey. Not enough for Odin.

If I had died there, on the frozen rock, it would have been better for everyone. Me for first.

I tell this myself again, sometimes, when anguish tortures me and sadness devours my broken soul.

Loki Laufeyson.

The son of the enemy. The Lost Prince. But also the rightful King of that inhospitable place, dark, cold, with the pungent air of ice.

Jotunheim.

When we were young, this word was enough for Thor and I to be overwhelmed by shivering with fear. And many, countless times, I stayed awake until late under the covers, terrified of finding one of those blue monsters, drooling next to my bed to devour me.

If only I had imagined ...

I am still struggling to accept passively my true heritage, ... to accept "the other", the blue demon I see in the mirror every time I allow my magic to loosen.

It's not easy for me, it's not at all.

Do you want to see?

Will you bear the sight of what I really am? Do you think you are ready, you who cry out to love my Jotunn nature, and accept my true appearance, no matter what?

....

Here, do you see it? Do you see the demon?

My skin ...is not ... it's not pale. It's blue ... my mother used to say that it looked beautiful, beautiful like the snow at dusk when it turns blue, .. but she could find some good anywhere ...

Do you see it? It is cold, cold as ice, adorned with intricate lines, lighter blue. They point out at my Prince Jotunn's blood, in truth. I already knew that, ever since I was a boy, I was studying and reading about the many peoples who live in Yggdrasill like so many swarming insects. The lines on my forehead are the three qualities that a King Jotunn must have: ruthlessness, brutality, and the last one, the one divided in two in a specular manner, is explained by a sentence in an ancient manuscript about my race ... "If you have to die, bring your enemy with you "

What kind of creature am I, with death written on my face?

Look me in the eyes, come on  ...

Are they still the captivating, deep green eyes you're in love with?

They are eyes like a beast, a ferret, demon eyes that pierce the darkness and that see you everywhere. Killer eyes.

Do you still like me? Am I still the wonderful God of Mischief ?

What do you see of me now?

Is it equally fascinating, Loki Laufeyson, in his purest form?

.....

You know, ... in the time when I started fighting my furious inner battle against "him", I also started to accept the fact of being this, and try to change it at the same time. To prove to the eyes of all those pompous bastards that does not count the color of the skin, but what you have inside ... that moves you, this is what matters.

I wanted to prove that I was different. I wanted to prove everyone that they was wrong.

So once I saved a girl, prey of dangerous winter fevers.

The healers no longer knew what to do, while she was extinguished like a little candle, day after day, thinning like a ghost, her eyes rimmed with dark circles, her lips dry and cracked. She stood still in his little bed, barely breathing, moaning from time to time, in his heavy and painful sleep.

I knew her. She was the daughter of a soldier, ... a shy girl who gave flowers to Thor and weaved silky bracelets to me. An adorable, innocent girl.

One day I went into the Healing Chambers and got everyone out. His mother, ... the maids, the old doctors with that heavy look of eternal gravediggers ...everybody get out, leave me alone with her ...

I sat at the side of the bed and watched her breathing hard.

"Thor's flowers have dried up, child, and you promised me a green silk bracelet with a new weave, do you remember?" I whispered, stroking her hot temples "Come back to us, come back to those who love you, little bird, ... Hel's bleating dogs are not worthy of your lovely face ..."

I gently took her hand, rested my lips on her forehead and loosened the magic that held the Jotunn shape.

I had to be very careful not to use too much power not to hurt her, ... just let the frost of my skin sooth the fever fire, slowly.

"Come back, little one... come on, come back to us, to those who love you ..."

And she did it. The fever lowered and I saw her sleep in peace, without jolts and moans, ... just pink cheeks, regular breathing. She was just very cold and red where I had touched it.

She healed, and she never knew it, though I suspect her mother understood it and told it to her, as she later thanked me stammering with tear-stained eyes. Little Elìn ... I hope life smiled at her later.

Last time I saved my brother.

Yes, you read that right, you don't need to reread.

I saved the precious God of Thunder's ass.

When my father allowed him to return from his exile (again, ... forget the stories of images you saw, ... the time is a ribbon much more intricate than simple visual tales...) there was another battle. Little thing, in truth, ... a skirmish. I could say that we had fought worst ones, yet on this occasion Thor was badly wounded. Very badly. Like a boy.

To a thigh, in a wretched spot, and the blood oozed out.

We had dragged between dry heather and boulders, far from the fight now exhausted, and both battered we looked at each other to see if we were still alive.

In reality, I was on the verge of losing my mind, and I was fighting another battle in silence, so as not to get rid of the demons' bites. So I pretended.  My father had taught me that. Or rather, imposed, since I was a child, and I had become good.

In a few days I would have come down to the Vault looking for answers, ... but I was telling another thing.

About Thor who, under my eyes, was bleeding like a rookie. Livid as if he were already dead, he looked at me trembling, his pants torn and soaked with blood: he also tried to disguise, with his smile like a braggart, ... but it was like seeing the depths of Hel come to take one piece at a time .

"Why...why you look at me like that, Loki, ... stop, ... you ... you're making me nervous ..."

My coat that had stopped the bleeding for a while, now no longer held ... I saw it darken, full of blood.

"You're dying, you silly, brainless oaf, how should I look at you?" I muttered.

He, with his last strength, grabbed me brutally by the shoulder and shook me: he still possessed a tremendous force, even with the claws of death planted in the neck .

"Do not you dare to talk to me like this anymore, little brother!

I pushed him away.

"Or what?" I cried, "Will you kill me like the Giants you hate so much? Just a little longer and you won't have a brother anymore!"

I said it because I wanted to poke into his arrogant, empty head that was really dying. To hear it now, it sounds sadly truthful, I realize ...

I pushed him against a rock to remain seated, then tore off the hood, uncovering the bloody gash.

"All right, I've had enough!" Now shut up, for once! "

I put my hand on it, he jumped violently: the blood leaked through my fingers, running in tiny red revolts. I had no more time to think ...

"Loki, what ... what are you doing ...?"

"I'm saving your life, you stupid, and now you close your mouth ... and don't say anything, before I change my mind ..."

In truth he no longer had the strength, and remained motionless, half-fixed, staring at me.

"We have to close this damn wound, ... and in the absence of fire, the ice will do the same service ..."

"Wha-what...?" became even paler.

Once again I loosed the magic and my skin went blue, the blue marks on my face, the demon's red eyes, ... I shuddered with terror: I was in front of Thor the Almighty in my full Jotunn form. Even at the point of death, he could raise Mjiollnir and crush me instantly, like a harassing insect. But the moments passed and I was still alive ...

"The fire and the ice both burn, isn't it? Only the ice is colder ..." I said it with tears in my eyes, chuckling.

Thor stared at me, wide-eyed, motionless, as if he were already dead and looking at me from the Otherworld. But then he whispered:

"Loki ... Loki, of all your idiocies ... what ... what the hell is that ...?"

"This is the most idiotic of all, I know, ..." I whispered almost speaking to myself  "Now close that damn mouth and don't let me say it again!"

I gave him no more way to reply, not even to look at me again with those haunted and upset eyes; I pulled the edges of the wound and squeezed, letting the power of nature Jotunn flow. I heard him scream, he clung to me with such violence that he almost broke my shoulder. I found myself staring at her blue eyes, full of resentment and surprise, planted in mine, red like the berries of winter.

They were furious and fierce eyes, which almost physically attacked me. He would have killed me. If only he had had a little more strength I am sure he would have killed me instantly, before realizing that it was me, prey to hatred of my race. Hatred that our father had instilled in him since childhood, poisonous drops that had corrupted his heart.

But it did not happen.

After those terrible moments, Thor gasped, closed his eyes and then collapsed heavily against me, unconscious.

I looked at him in shock, without having the courage to breathe, or dare to touch him: slowly, the magic that concealed my true aspect resumed control, and my skin became discoloring to become the pale one of Aesir. Although battered and covered with dried blood.

I was still. Hands up. The disheveled blond head of my brother abandoned on my chest.

What ... what did I just do? As I had thought of ...

But it was the only way not to have a new God of Thunder in my life.

Merciful Gods of Asgard ... I had just shown myself to Thor, in my Jotunn form and saved him from bleeding. It sounded damn surreal and senseless ...

And now what would have happened?

I remember checking the wound. It smoked. A dense, icy and whitish smoke. The skin was purple, almost blackish, so cold that it burned, if it makes sense ... the edges were juxtaposed, covered with a thin layer of ice and frost crystals. There was dried blood encrusted everywhere. Frost and dried blood on his pants, on my trembling hands, on Thor's blonde hair. A mess...

The wound was closed, burned by frost. Thor was safe. In a few days, I would have found myself dangling in the void beyond Bifrost, pushed down by my father's firm and cruel "no". Odin, who left his son to choose death with that refusal to resonate in the air, while the emptiness already cradled him.

That day, though, I had saved Thor's precious life and nobody ever knew it. Not even him, who was convinced that he survived because he had the brilliant idea of ??pressing fresh snow on the wound, ... that stupid naive child !!

This was and is still Loki Laufeyson. Contradictions and twisted thoughts.

Loki Laufeyson is an ice-skinned demon, torn between good and evil, left there to scream all his anger. Torn by the desperate need of approval and the cynical desire not to belong to anyone else who is not himself.

My legacy is dark, my lineage, brutal and cruel, ... while Asgard was my stepmother, at first benevolent, then, with resentment and cruelty, she abandoned me when I needed her more.

Is it any wonder, then, if I find this painful and inextricable tangle of demons that devour my soul, sometimes in silence, sometimes, ... as now, ... screaming all their anguish?

It cost me a lot to write all this. A lot of effort, a lot of time, a lot of tears, sleepless nights and new sadness.

And yet I'm not satisfied with it, because I feel there's still so much to boil in my bloody Jotunn blood. Something indefinite, nameless that presses and cries to be heard, to be seen, to have space

I have not even figured out who the hell I am yet.

The green-eyed sad child who was praying for a sincere caress of his father? The young Prince that no one has ever loved? The miserable wreck that caused the death of his mother? The glorious, shining God of Mischief, with his captivating smile and sharp tongue? The Frost demon that saved Thor's life?

Who is Loki Laufeyson?

All of this?

Something else, so terrible that others see and I have not dared to recognize?

From time to time I loosen the magic that hides my appearance, and I look at myself, as you did a while ago.

Do not think it's so natural for me, or that I like it. I spent years to remain impassive in front of the mirror, to look at my face furrowed by blue lines, crazy eyes ... my body, the blue skin, cold as ice on the water.

....

Here it is. I scrutinize. I look at myself.

I try to find splinters of what I have always known about myself in that blue-haired unkempt that looks back at me, beyond the mirror.

Loki Laufeyson.

This is what my father feared. That's why he kept me away. I wonder if he thought the same things when he picked me up, ... a Jotun baby. I wonder if he hated me since then.

A newborn baby who cried in despair, believing he had to die ... what threat could I represent?

But I had Laufey's blood, murderer and traitor. However, I was condemned.

It was my blood that scared him, that alarmed him.

Jotunn blood. The blood of a King.

I will never give up what the others think I should be. I will not bend to their judgments.

I am free of all their hypocrisy, and I have chosen to live respecting myself, ... at least for a while, as far as I can. For the time when my demons leave me alone.

Little Loki Odinson came out of his corner, tired of being put aside by everyone, and now speaks for himself.

I smile. I grin.

And the image in the mirror smiles me back.