#i'm not great at discerning where things like this come from in a tv/movie context

[tyrannuspitch]

thinking about a sentiment i've seen expressed once or twice about loki's change of manner in the loki show - specifically, that you can make it in-character if you just read it as: he has "dropped the royal persona" and what we see now is "the real loki".

and like... i don't know. like sure valid reading whatever. but it honestly makes me kind of uncomfortable, and just, like... sad.

like... there wasn't anything wrong with his mannerisms before. like, sure, he was (and is.) paranoid and insecure, but i really don't think that being quiet and deliberate in how you express yourself in general is necessarily unhealthy, or that being louder and less careful is necessarily an improvement.

it kind of reminds me of like... when people call RP a "fake"/"artificial"/"made-up" accent? like, yes, social pressures mean a lot of people put it on, exaggerate it, cultivate it, et cetera... but at the end of the day it is still just another accent. it is still some people's mother tongue, and therefore, by most people's standards, those people's most authentic voice.

and like, similarly - just because loki has xyz trauma reasons to be quiet and formal doesn't mean that his ideal self is necessarily not quiet and formal. some people just are that way! some people prefer it! this is a real personality trait that exists! and honestly even if it IS unhealthy, after a certain point, things like that can go so deep into your personality that you can't really untangle them, and if you DO want to change them, you're not uncovering a hidden "real you" so much as inventing a new one.

also i feel like pre-ragnarok we were definitely meant to understand loki's mannerisms as being as much a product of culture as of his specific personality or home life, and the way almost everyone treats ragnarok asgardian mannerisms as "realer" because they're closer to (/basically are) modern anglo-american norms also makes me uncomfortable... but it might be somewhat unfair to put this on the loki show when they were already three movies deep in ragnarok canon. (but also. loki's outward manner is much *more* changed in the loki show than in ragnarok itself.)