#thor KNOWS about BOR and ODIN and about how they had war and genocided but for some reason its only bad when LOKI does it???

[worstloki]

Loki’s been calling Asgard out for its hypocrisy and genocide and colonialism since 2011 but apparently it wasn't as important until Thor got around to realising that it was an issue and naturally that took him literal years to do, and even then it was because his life was literally crumbling around him and he saw a detailed colour-coded diagram 🙄🙄

[dictionarywrites]

Jumping off the other anon's point - fantasy racism in the Thor movies is so weirdly explored? As a Muslim American I felt a lot of parallels between the Jotunheim-Asgard situation and my own life post-Iraq War/post-9/11 what with the war during my childhood and lingering distrust (and Asgard leaving Jotunheim to rot afterwards definitely struck a chord) but at the same time, the movie so clearly didn't even know it was doing that. It felt like a race metaphor for the sake of a race metaphor 1/3

(2/3) Plus, it's handled SO CLUMSILY. The whole bit with Thor going 'I'll kill them all' right in front of the King made it clear this racism was a whole systemic issue was NEVER fixed in their society! The perception of Jotuns never changed by the end of the movie! We never even get to find out what happened to Jotunheim ever, because it never gets brought up again. Instead, we find out that Grandpa Bor committed genocide too and throughout the movie it's an entire non-issue?

(3/3) I think fantasy racism can work really well as a metaphor, IF the writer actually thought through every implication. I know as an American my perception of racism is way more heavily based on skin tone than most but the whole thing with Loki being able to look Asgardian read as 'white passing' to me and the implication of a white passing person trying to prove they're not like the rest of their race? That's so much to unpack, and the writers just threw out the whole suitcase.

Mmm, yeah, I totally feel you on all of this, Anon.

It’s interesting because like... So Ragnarok obviously has this anti-colonialist leaning, which is all about acknowledging the real horror of past events, and generally just accepting that there’s no Asgardian superiority. I don’t really think it was hard-hitting enough, and I appreciated there was something, but like...

It just felt weird to me for him to be like “colonialism is bad! what Odin did is wrong!” but also never acknowledge what happened to Loki. I appreciate that Taika Waititi isn’t much of a Loki fan (and certainly dislikes Loki’s fans), but it just seemed strange to take an anti-colonialist lilt without using this perfect example right in front of you.

What Odin and Frigga did to Loki (and I want to stress that it was Odin and Frigga, and that we shouldn’t excuse Frigga for her part in this) is what has happened to hundreds of thousands of native & indigenous children across the world. A child would be stolen from their real parents, forcibly “adopted”, bled of their culture, and would be systematically fed the evil ideology that the culture they came from is bad and wrong and uncivilized.

This has happened in Australia; this has happened in Canada - Hell, the last fucking “residential school” for First Nations kids in Canada only closed in ‘96! ‘96! 22 years ago, they were still fucking doing this. You know what that is? Literally, that is an act of genocide.

And like...

I think it’s just so fucked up that this keeps being boiled down to “he was adopted,” like, no... If they’d taken in this Jotunn kid, and he’d grown up knowing he was Jotunn but that he was still loved - that would be adopted. If they’d waited until he was like, an adolescent (say, the equivalent of 10/11) and told him he was a Jotunn but that he was still loved - that would be adopted.

But what Frigga and Odin did to him, raising him not only to not know what he was, but to despise where he came from...

That’s unspeakably and revoltingly cruel. There is literally no possible justification for it. 

People can tell me time and time again “but they didn’t want to shock him by telling him what he was” - he wouldn’t have been shocked, he wouldn’t have been as upset, if Asgard did not explicitly and regularly call for the genocide of the people he is revealed to belong to. If he had not been raised believing that these people - his people - are monsters, creatures, savages. 

“Loki overreacted,” like, no, man, he didn’t overreact, he fucking broke like shattered glass. “He didn’t have to try to kill an entire planet, though,” like bitch, why not? Thor did the same fucking thing like, a week ago. 

I don’t think what he did was right or justifiable, and certainly, it was not a rational decision made by a rational guy, but... Guys, Thor did the exact same thing. Can you imagine having this wild, psychotic break, sobbing your eyes out and knowing that not only did your family never love you as much as your brother, as they claimed, but that they were right not to, and desperately trying to prove to yourself that it can’t be true by murdering the people you supposedly come from--

And then your brother coming at you with this hypocrisy? Actual proof, shoved right in his face, that Thor can do x, but if Loki does x, he is the actual, most evil monster in the world?

The only person that even TRIES to work on the perception of the Jotnar is Loki himself, and that’s in exploring his feelings in this play he wrote as Odin, with nine or ten layers of distance between his identities at the time.

It’s just so fucked up. It’s so wrong. 

And I just don’t understand how they could shove all these facets into Thor (2011), and never unpack them in literally 5 fucking movies. You had so many opportunities, and you just... Ignored ‘em all. 

[elenatria]

Loki love vs Odin hate

I’m starting to realize that people hating on Odin have come to such extremes as to believe he lied to Loki about how he found him. They believe that Odin, since he’s such a big fat liar, lies about everything and even lied about that too. That in reality he stole the baby from his mother’s arms then slaughtered her, or from his wet nurse who was hiding in the palace. Or something.

Big bad Odin, the perfect villain in Loki’s life, isn’t he? Are we projecting our daddy issues here?

I do not doubt that Odin went full-on genocide on the frost giants and he saved Loki for selfish reasons.

In the film Odin finds the baby in the temple, “left to die”. That’s MCU Odin and he’s nicer, we have to give him that.

In the comics  it says that “Surveying the spoils of war, the Asgardians discovered a small Asgardian god-sized baby hidden at the giants' main fortress. The infant was Loki, whom Laufey had kept hidden due to his shame over his son's diminutive size. Odin remembered his father Bor’s dying words to adopt the son of a father killed by his hands; Odin adopted Loki into his own family, raising Loki like a son along with his biological son.”

That tells us two things: that Odin did kill the father and took the son as part of his spoils of war (in the comics Loki wasn’t abandoned, he was hidden in the main fortress – probably Laufey’s own palace.) At the same time, and unlike Ned Stark in Game of Thrones, who kept Theon Greyjoy as his adoptive son BUT never stopped reminding him of his place (a captive, a hostage to keep his rebelious father on a leash), Odin didn’t just throw the baby to be raised as a servant or a slave. He didn’t even tell him WHY he was there. He raised him as a prince, as his own son. In the comics Laufey is dead, and I don’t know if anyone in the palace knew of Loki’s heritage so as to downtalk him, rub it in his face and make him feel bad about it. Loki probably sensed he was different, and his resentment towards Thor stemmed from the fact that Thor seemed to be the favoured son and Asgardians praised physical strength, not wit or studiousness.

As long as the MCU or the Marvel comics do NOT show any kind of proof of  Loki NOT being rescued by Odin (to appease his father, out of sympathy but also to show his strength over the fallen enemy by taking his son) you will permit me to not accept a collective headcanon as canon. 

If  Marvel doesn’t prove Odin didn’t rescue an abandoned baby, I won’t accept that as yet another argument against Odin. 

Also, since I do not hijack Odin-hating posts, I would totally appreciate it if people didn’t hijack my Odin-tolerant ones. Just because I’m tolerant towards Odin doesn’t mean I’m hating on Loki. Some opinions I don’t have to agree with and if people don’t like my content they are free to stay away from it. 

 I don’t promote hate and intolerance, so I would appreciate it if people didn’t do that through my posts. There is indeed content I don’t like to see and I don’t want to be part of the hating of characters I like. I don’t want to resort to blocking in order to avoid those who like to use my posts to promote Odin hating. 

Not yet.