#AND NOT THOR. THIS ISN'T A THORKI FIC THEY'RE JUST TWO BROTHERS WHO CARE ABOUT EACH OTHER BROTHERINGLY.

[nostalgia-tblr]

when i finish the Sylki Adultery AU thing THEN i shall allow myself actually make a start on the Loki-rules-Jotunheim AU, where my goal is to top 10k words in a fic that doesn't have even a single baby in it.

[illwynd]

oh hey I was the "what made u start shipping thorki" anon. Sorry it was totally in good faith. Totally get you being wary tho. I ship thorki too (and I love your fic) and I just wondered how u got into the fandom. (also re antis honestly they are so annoying. how come they're more mad at a random fan community than at HBO for airing GoT? oh wait. it's bc they don't actually care about the issue. they just care about harassing ppl and HBO isn't accessible).

Aww ❤️❤️❤️ you have restored my faith in nonnies! Thank you for the kind words and for understanding my wariness!!

So in that case the serious answer for how I got into the fandom and into the ship specifically... well, I mean, it wasn’t much of a surprise, given that I've been a brocest shipper from way back. (In LotR fandom my ship was Boromir/Faramir. I ship all of the Karamazov brothers. If there are a pair of brothers in a work, I will at least consider shipping them, guaranteed.) But no other ship has ever so perfectly embodied exactly what I'm interested in with brocest ships as thorki.

I’ve seen a lot of people answer the question of why they’re into thorki and do a lot of minimizing of the fact that they’re brothers, and I mean, to each their own, maybe for some folks that really isn’t a relevant thing. But for me it definitely is. 

What got me into the ship was the picture the first movie paints of that sibling relationship. The picture we get is of an extremely close relationship, but also with undercurrents of incredible emotional complexity. They love each other deeply--Loki isn’t lying when he says he loves Thor more dearly than any of his other friends do--but there’s also resentment, old hurts, anger, envy, rivalry, misunderstandings, silences. They fit together and complement each other’s skills and personalities perfectly, and they have such thorough knowledge of each other that they can hurt each other terribly. They’ve played together and fought together, for hundreds of years of childhood and adolescence and young adulthood together, so it’s all dialed up to 11. And, like, to me that’s already some really compelling stuff. That depth and richness of the sibling relationship has already got my attention.  

But then there’s how it goes when the relationship shatters. There’s the intense, obsessive focus on each other in that conflict, and like yeah that aspect is standard hero/villain ship stuff but it takes on a whole new tone when it’s layered on that existing relationship, on those hundreds of years of tangled emotions toward each other. That combination, along with the particular acting decisions that were made in that movie and the two that followed--Loki rage-crying when he realizes it was “that woman” who changed Thor the way Loki had not been able to do in years of trying, and Thor’s heartbroken confusion to find that his beloved brother has snapped and suddenly hates him and he has no idea why, and the intimacy of the neck-grab thing, and so many other little details like that--just invites a reading that looks for long-hidden feelings, things that couldn’t have been openly expressed but would make things between them just that intense, that explosive, that important to them both. That reading makes Loki’s jealousy and possessiveness make sense, it fits with the sort of self-protective wall he has up earlier on, it works with Thor’s blind spots (things he doesn’t look too closely at because it’s just easier that way), it fits with a picture where Loki has been accidentally feeding Thor’s ego for years with his own almost worshipful adoration that he didn’t want to acknowledge was not “normal” sibling stuff. It fits so well I’m almost not sure how else to interpret it. And that picture, that magnified, amplified image of a sibling relationship but with these details and nuances that are on the verge of what we’d expect for a different sort of relationship entirely… I mean… wow. How could I not ship it?

And maybe this is a tangent but that’s a thing that I think is so amazing about the ship and about the capabilities of fiction in these sorts of areas. Because yeah that sort of intensity doesn’t have to be sexual/romantic in nature. Certainly not. But in fiction we can take the sibling relationship archetype, all the things that such a relationship means to us, and also make it erotic/romantic and see what happens and how it works and how it feels. And to me, their relationship, with all its conflict and its depth, lends itself to that exploration perfectly. (And that’s the thing that… I just deeply, deeply don’t understand what antis even think fiction is? Like. To me it’s how we experience and feel and comprehend far more stuff than we could otherwise cram into one lifetime? And stuff that we can’t physically experience or can’t safely attempt or any number of other reasons why not? So complaints that fiction is depicting “dangerous, harmful things” is like… yes? It’s functioning as intended? What’s the problem? But like you said, they’re not going after GoT or like horror writers or anything so it’s clear they don’t really believe their own bullshit but do enjoy the sense of power they get by harassing people on the internet. Oh well.)

So lol idk if that was anything even approaching the sort of answer you were expecting but that’s where my brain went with it this time. I guess I could have also said I identify with Loki a lot and Thor is 100% exactly my type so that’s pretty convenient as far as finding it hot lol.

[nostalgia-tblr]

The dark world thought. Loki keeps calling thor brother (mostly to annoy him) in the movie. idk why but i was hoping at least once thor would scream at him and say "STOP CALLING ME THAT"

Note to self: watch Thor 2: The Dark World. See, I think it's the other way round, and my answer involves thoughts I had about the thorki fic I inisist I will never write so fair warning for that BUT of the two it's Loki who's far more likely to insist they're not really brothers and shouldn't call each other that. A thought I had from the first film and then failed to post (I don't post ALL my thoughts on tumblr! Just most of them!) was that the 'worthy' aspect of Mjolnir is very vague and Loki would spend hours and hours trying to pin down 'what does worthy mean,' and utterly convinced that even if he isn't going to fit the criteria there must be a loophole somewhere in the wording that he can use. Whereas Thor probably hasn't spent much time worrying about that - either you're worthy or you're not and the magic hammer just knows which it is. Somehow.

Similarly I don't think Thor cares much about whether he and Loki were technically born to the same parents or even if they're the same species, because they are brothers, they've always been brothers, how can they not be brothers? Meanwhile Loki's upended life largely revolves around the fact that pedantically, legally, whateverly, they aren't really brothers and they never were. Which is why he's open to things getting incestuous now while Thor is still repulsed by his own unbrotherly yearnings. Don't be daft, Thor, we're obviously not brothers, stop calling me that it's not true you're just repeating someone else's lie! But what else would Thor call his brother? It may have been a lie to begin with, and it still might be a lie to other people, but having spent centuries thinking they were brothers and acting like they were then how is that relationship not them being brothers? Had Loki actually been his brother by blood it wouldn't have made a difference so in practical terms how are they suddenly not brothers just because Loki turned out to be a Frost Giant?

Thor wants Loki to stop causing problems and to stop being a dick, but he doesn't want him to stop being his brother (were such a thing even possible in his mind). Whereas Loki's life of crime or even just life on the run would be a lot easier if he didn't have a brother to worry about and who insists on worrying about him.

tl;dr: I got lost about halfway through my answer, sorry. I have more thoughts on this matter than my usually flippant comments might suggest D: D: