Saw the Thor: Ragnarok clip that the “is it tho?” meme image comes from last night and still not over how much of an ASSHOLE Thor comes off as. Yes, tell the guy who has just spent years trapped in his own body which was killing innocent people that what he’s most proud of is worthless. What a wonderful friend the new improved Thor is!

It does make me double down on my AU version of the Sakaar adventure having Thor be super respectful of Bruce Banner and flat out saying he doesn’t have to help and if he wants to go back to Earth right away Thor will do everything he can to make that happen when asking for Bruce’s help. And Bruce does decide to stay and help Thor, because being open and honest and supportive works! (It’s also fundamentally the same method he uses to get Loki and Valkyrie’s support, and surprisingly, it works on them, too! Really the most manipulative he gets is when he tells Loki that he knows Loki will help because Thor’s not leaving without overthrowing the Grandmaster and freeing the slaves and Loki won’t leave Thor behind or let him get killed, which means Loki will have to help.)

I wonder if Jane!Thor fans would like my idea for MCU Jane wielding Mjolnir, since it wouldn’t be a cancer storyline (or her dying at all; Thor would be dying tho) and she’d only be called Thor by other people, mostly as part of a confusing ploy by Loki and later by some of the other Avengers who think she should have a superhero name to go with the hammer and being Thor’s replacement on the team.

Behold, the epicness that is Thor and Loki confronting Hel in her lair!

Okay but I’m suddenly really attached to the idea of Thor buying a “World’s Best Brother” or “World’s Best Loki” mug for Loki while on Earth. And Loki just rolls his eyes at it and mocks Thor for liking something that even mortals consider a cheesy joke, but he’s secretly touched and keeps it safe. And Thor knows that Loki loves it and when Loki makes an illusion of smashing it to show he really doesn’t care Thor isn’t fooled for a second.

Loki and Thor meta

I don’t know if many people ask “If Loki was seriously worried about Thor being an unstable brat, why didn’t he try to fix Thor himself instead of coming up with the plan to expose his recklessness?” but I have my own answer.

Basically, I think he did try to encourage Thor to be more thoughtful and careful, and when that didn’t work he brought his concerns to Odin, but Odin brushed them off as “it’s just a phase, he’ll settle down when it’s time”. So Loki gave up on trying to change Thor and just waited for the chance to expose Thor’s faults in a way that couldn’t be brushed off.

And because of that, I think it really stung him when Thor came back from his brief exile such a changed man. Like Loki was thinking “how was it so easy for Midgard and one woman to change him, when I, his own brother, could not?” And the hit to his pride made him angrier and more determined to prove that Thor hadn’t really changed, thus making him push Thor into fighting him.

As for why Thor changed so quickly? I don’t think it was falling in love, and I definitely don’t think it was some genius plan by Odin. I think it was the shock of having everything taken away from him combined with finding new friends who not only didn’t care that he wasn’t the god he claimed to be, but appreciated him for the little he could do, that had the biggest effect. Also seeing Jane, who is physically weak even by human standards, doing everything she could to keep SHIELD from stealing everything she cared about, and then being so overjoyed that he could help her recover just a bit and more determined than ever to rebuild, was an epiphany. I also think that after that night he was looking forward to finding a new life on Midgard where he wasn’t weighed down by the expectations and responsibilities he had as Prince Thor Odinson of Asgard, Defender of the Nine Realms.

And finally, I think that Loki, if given a chance to think about it neutrally, would realize that it was being on Midgard and being free that really did most of the work, and it would help him come to peace with his own failure to reform Thor.

There’s no real evidence for it in canon and (shudder) Ragnarok pretty much contradicts it, but I like to imagine Loki usurping Odin as a Loki-smoothing-things-over plan that went awry. Specifically, Odin once again fell into the Odinsleep at the worst time, right after Loki-who-barely-survived-and-disguised-himself-as-a-guard gave him the news about his own death. Loki had been planning on simply establishing that he was dead and heading off, but then Odin failed AGAIN. This time Loki didn’t call for the guards, he took matters into his own hands and hid Odin, taking his place to prevent a panic (and also get Thor and his friends pardoned while he was at it, as a parting gift). He expected Thor to take the throne when it was offered, and so when Thor turned it down, he was stymied. Odin showed no signs of recovery, so Loki decided to hide him on Earth, in a hospital as a comatose patient, and continue impersonating Odin and hope for the best.

Of all the Thor deleted scenes, I think I miss this one the most, at least for showing Thor’s character development. Grand sacrifices are great and all, but apologizing to a restaurant worker and replacing the mug you broke? That shows real humility, and that Thor doesn’t just care about making amends with and treating people he cares about with respect, he wants to right the small wrongs, too.

Also, I bet that if Loki hadn’t sent the Destroyer and Thor had stayed there for a while, he would’ve bought Jane a replacement, and probably one with a cheesy “World’s Best X” slogan on it.

I’ve been trying to think of a token Loki could get to represent Frigga. Thor’s so easy I have two ideas, a mini-Mjolnir and a replica of his helmet. But Frigga doesn’t have a signature weapon or outfit piece.

Then I had the idea, what if he got a portrait of the entire royal family? That would be a reminder of both Thor and Frigga at once, and also bring up Complex Feelings because ugh it has Odin and he’s right in the middle and that part’s getting vandalized as soon as it’s in Loki’s hands. And then he starts to remove himself, because it hurts to see Thor and Frigga flanking Odin/the blank space in the center with Loki off to the side even more, a constant reminder that he always was an outsider and never their equal.

RPing a Loki who’s on good terms with Thor is fun. I can’t fully articulate why, just that it’s nice to write out tags where he speaks fondly about his brother. Too bad that Thor is mostly a product of headcanon and has been overwritten by canon asshole bro!Thor...

Been thinking about my AU adventure that heavily cannibalizes the Sakaar plot of Thor: Ragnarok, specifically the retool of Valkyrie, and I’ve realized, she might actually be a better POV than the one I’ve been thinking about the story being in (mostly Loki’s with some of Thor’s). Especially from an audience perspective because yeah an audience will totally care about following something as if it were a coherent story when it’ll probably only exist as outline bullet points to explain my RP AU Loki. But it is fun to imagine how a hypothetical audience who watched Thor and Loki’s relationship get built back up to a better place than even the beginning of the first Thor movie suddenly presented with a Loki who proudly proclaims he tricked Thor into becoming a slave gladiator and continually undermines his every attempt at escape and a Thor who barely acknowledges Loki outside of general warnings/threats that Loki will regret this once the Grandmaster has fallen.

Another good reason to make her the POV would be that she’s probably the most dynamic character in the story. Thor and Loki would both pretty much end where they started, though I’d hope that their actions would show how they’ve grown since the MCU first introduced them. But Valkyrie would go from being a passive fallen hero who only staves off her self-loathing with drink to a hero who can live up to the ideals that being a Valkyrie meant to her when she first became one.

Seeing all the hate for Loki’s death early in Infinity War makes me feel a little bad that even in my AU version he’s one of Thanos’s early “on screen” casualties. But I hope it’d be a little more acceptable because:

Someone did it! Someone did it a month ago and I only just found it now! Sure it could use some polishing, but it could also use a lot more appreciation!

Thor as king headcanon if actual canon hadn’t thrown out everything from the first two movies as worthless: Darcy becomes instrumental in helping Thor be a better ruler than Odin. Not because of love, or because she’s a political science genius, but simply because as a political science major she’s floored by how badly Thor was taught and how badly Asgard is run. And rather than dismissing her observations as not relevant to a god-king like he’ll be, he learns from her.

But really why aren’t there any edits of Crossing the Line with Thor and Loki? Basically every line Cass says could’ve come from Loki!

MCU AU, continued

Part 2, outline of changes, mainly for TDW.

Possibly unpopular opinion

I think that, as of the start of TDW and definitely by the end of it, Loki has stopped hating Thor. I don’t think he likes Thor, but that he’s dropped the hostility, or rather redirected it towards Odin (who, let’s face it, is far more deserving of Loki’s hate).

New MCU/Thor franchise headcanon about how the King of Asgard became Ruler of the Nine Realms:

Way back, in Odin’s early reign or maybe even earlier, the realms were at war for dominance, and weaker ones like Earth were getting the worst of it. The King of Asgard decided to put a stop to it by conquering the aggressors and declaring themselves the benevolent overlords of the target realms. That became the new status quo, Asgard enforcing the peace by their superior military might and cutting down any other realms that started getting aggressive. So even though the original aggressors are long dead, their descendants still have to live under the heel of a conqueror and every bid for independence gets suppressed.