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Do I love myself?
Wow... what a loaded question.
The short answer is no. I don’t think I’ve ever really loved myself... I’ve been infatuated with myself, in an overly defensive narcissistic kind of way, a little bit obsessed maybe. But at the end of the day, that's not love: it’s hate with a different hat on.
The long answer is a bit more complicated.
Self love, self worth, was never something I thought I would ever have to battle with. I am (was) a prince, a king, a warrior, a sorcerer... Then a Frost Giant grabbed me on Jotunheim.
I killed him.
I didn’t burn.
I was on top of the world for so long that when it all came crashing down it brought my whole reality with it. One second I was an Asgardian prince, the next, I became a cuckoo bird, a changeling pretender. Family was no longer safe. Enemies became blood relatives , those I thought I knew became strangers. Up was down, good was bad, bad became worse. Nothing was the same.
My whole life was a lie.
Everything was shit.
I’ll admit my reaction was a bit extreme, but whatever.
It was a shit situation and I had a shit plan.
When it inevitably failed I did the only thing my crumbling sense of self worth would allow. I jumped off a bridge.
Obviously that didn’t work out.
Anyway...
Then...
Then, there was Thanos.
He gave me a new purpose, a glorious purpose. He raised me out of the pit I had been wallowing in, gave me a conveniently violent outlet, and set me on a new path. Find the Tesseract, he said, it is your duty to me as your savior, he said. He put the Scepter in my hands, not knowing what lay within, not knowing one of the six was already in his grasp. I didn’t say anything. I went to Midgard, to Earth, and wholeheartedly embraced my new role of conqueror and God-King.
Slowly my mind filled with hate.
I hated him.
I hated this new plan.
I had no room for anything except hate.
Hate.
Anger.
Jealousy.
Desperation.
Rage.
And buried underneath all of it, a deep chasm of self loathing.
Yikes, when did that start?
I found a baby.
Small for a giant's offspring. Abandoned, suffering left to die... Laufey’s son...
Laufeyson?
Yes.
Did it start with that word? Laufeyson?
You conniving, craven, pathetic worm! You did this!
Oh Sif, you look marvelou—OW!!! GOOD NORNS WOMAN!!!
I hope you know you deserve to be alone and you always will be!!!
It was just a bit of fun!
Was it even earlier?
Thor! Thor! Look what I can do!
An illusion? What is that, some trick?
It’s magic!
Magic is a woman’s craft Loki... why would you want to do that?
...I don’t know...
In his defense Thor did eventually come around to the whole magical-brother thing. As soon as he realized my tricks could steal cookies and unlock doors, that is...
The situation with Sif... I cut off her hair because I thought it'd be funny. In hindsight there was nothing funny about it. It was cruel of me. She was young and different and I saw a target...
Oooo but that word: Laufeyson.
That was the final straw, the crack that sent the castle tumbling down. That one word somehow made everything everyone had ever said real. It was all at once the climax of a thousand years of fear and the beginning of my vicious descent into complete madness. It was the hook on which I pinned all my grievances. Everything I had ever felt I had been denied could be blamed on that word. It was the reason for my isolation, the reason for my loneliness. I was so wrapped up in myself that I could not even begin to comprehend that there might be other reasons for my troubles.
Odin loved Thor more because I wasn’t his son. NOT TRUE. He loves me.
Frigga only taught me because she pitied me. NOT TRUE. She loves me.
Thor was going to hunt down the monsters and slay them all.
I thought that meant me.
After all, I am the monster parents tell their children about at night.
So yeah...
Do I love myself?
The short answer is no.
The long answer?... probably still no, but with a more complicated twist.
But then...
Then there was HER.
There I am, an escape from the Avengers lands perfectly at my feet, I take it, I land in the desert, I’m about to restart my ascent to God-King, Ruler of Midgard, Supreme Lord of All, when the TVA shows up.
My first thought? Who the hell are these guys?
My second thought? WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?!
A few, epic(embarrassing) chase scenes later and whoop-de-doo I have somehow managed to fall further down the ladder of the universe straight into a steaming pile of bilgesnipe shit.
The man they have interrogating me, Mobius, wants me to answer questions I don’t think I want to answer.
Do you like hurting people?
Look at that smile. You are enjoying that!
Do you enjoy killing?
No. No! NO!
I don’t! I don’t enjoy hurting people.
I do it because I have to... because, I’ve had to...
Why?
Because it’s part of the illusion.
It’s the cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear.
He keeps going, showing me glimpses of what my life was supposed to be. It’s absurd. My choices are my own, I do what I want, no one can take that away from me...
After, I get roped into a ridiculous plot to catch some evil alternate version of myself.
A Variant .
Some lesser Loki...
I am not having fun.
That is until I actually meet the alternate version of myself.
HER.
Sylvie.
Me, but not me, but also definitely me, but most certainly not, all at the same time.
She is everything I am not.
And yet... We are the same.
I really am a narcissist.
If this exercise in soul searching has told me anything it is that I am the most textbook narcissist out there. I have an excessive need for admiration, a complete disregard for others' feelings, an inability to handle any criticism whatsoever, and a sense of arrogant entitlement so large I could probably eclipse a moon behind it..
I suppose, at the end of the day, it's because I'm scared of being alone.
I am infatuated with myself because then at least someone is.
But it’s not real.
I love the idea of me .
A better me.
A stronger me.
I love the idea of her.
I love the idea of a version of myself who grew up bold and confident, wild and untamed.
She never learned to fear herself the way I did and maybe that’s what drew me in.
After a rocky start, (apparently I’m annoying) we bonded.
After so many failures, so many chains, I just wanted a win. She had a goal, a way to make it happen, and I was willing to follow her to the ends of the world and back again to see it achieved.
I wasn’t alone anymore.
I...
We...
We weren't alone anymore.
On Lamentis I felt something.
I felt hope.
For the first time in a long time I felt okay.
In that moment I felt unlimited.
I didn’t care about what would happen next, if we died at least it would be in good company. Who knows, maybe our magic would have protected us, maybe we could have survived.
We never got to find out.
The TVA swooped back in.
Scooped us up.
And ripped that feeling, that hope, away from me.
Right back where I started.
Only now I had a mission. I had a reason to fight. Sylvie needed to get to the timekeepers, so I gave her cover as she decapitated them.
But they weren’t real.
THEY WEREN’T REAL.
I could see the despair washing over her in waves. Her whole life, destroyed by the TVA and they’re led by no more than mindless robots.
How disappointing.
I knew there had to be another answer, she knew there had to be another answer.
But before we found it I needed her to understand.
I needed her to understand the hope I had felt on Lamentis...
Problem was, open communication was never really my family's strong suit.
This was new for me; letting people in on my thoughts.
And then I got pruned.
WHAT?!
I got sent to a wasteland of garbage and spare parts.
Was this Hel?
Was I dead?
Not yet apparently.
I met the other versions of myself.
A child.
A boaster.
An old man.
They saved me and took me to their hideout where I then proceeded to try and ask several thousand questions starting with;
WHAT THE HELL?!
HOW THE HELL?!
AND WHAT'S WITH THE ALLIGATOR?!
Honestly the alligator wasn’t ever the weirdest thing that I had seen that day.
Then along came the other OTHER versions of myself.
They were...
I have no words...
Am I really like that?
From an outside perspective, is that what i'm really like to be around?
It was so embarrassing.
All the backstabbing.
The compensating.
The posturing.
Oh Norns the posturing.
Me, the child, the old man, and the alligator of all people managed to escape.
For a second I thought I had a pretty good plan. Turns out, Slyvie, who had managed to get herself pruned too, had found Mobius and had a better plan.
We sat together.
Loki and Loki.
I conjured a blanket for two frost giants who don’t get cold.
She moved closer.
Maybe we were both chasing the companionship from Lamentis.
Maybe I didn’t need to explain my feelings to her.
Our plan to enchant Alioth was rough at best but we somehow made it work
Losing the old man in the process was hard.
If ever a Loki were to have been glorious it would have been then.
The power he had.
Laughing in the face of certain death.
Glorious purpose indeed.
The castle at the end of time was quieter than I expected.
Covered in a thick layer of dust the whole thing had a distinctly ominous ‘you’re not supposed to be here’ feeling to it.
I let Sylvie lead the way.
This was her mission. I was just a flea on the back of a dragon
Step for step we mirrored each other.
I had never felt more in sync with someone.
He Who Remains changed everything.
I looked into his eyes and I saw a man holding back the tide. I saw him braced against a door that contained a true monster. If the multiverse was behind that door, I did not want to open it.
Sylvie looked into his eyes and saw the enemy. She looked at him and could only see the agents ripping her from her home. All she could see was the monster, and she wanted it gone.
Everything changed so fast.
Why aren’t we seeing this the same way?!
Because you can't trust... and I can't be trusted.
The fight was brutal. We were too well matched to ever get the upper hand on the other. My strike was parried every single time. I teleported out of range on every slash. She kicked out my knee. I dragged her back by the collar.
I threw down my weapons.
Her sword at my throat didn’t even matter.
I just needed her to LISTEN!
THINK!
He Who Remains, the TVA, they were bad, they were controlling, but they might be the only thing preventing something much much worse.
Already something had happened. Something we couldn’t have stopped.
A threshold had been crossed.
Someone had opened the door and Sylvie was about to rip off the lock.
I needed her to believe me, to trust me, just one more time.
I've been where she is.
I've felt what she feels.
Don't ask me how.
Don’t ask me why, but I know.
Her eyes stared into mine and all I could see was sorrow.
We were both chasing the companionship from Lamentis, but she had given up the hope.
Maybe I did need to explain my feelings to her.
Shit.
I tried to tell her.
I don't want to hurt you.
I don't want a throne.
I just... I just want you to be okay.
What I really meant was: I want myself to be ok.
I think she saw that.
I...
She...
We...
The kiss.
I wasn’t expecting it.
I thought I had found a friend, a companion, but then again, I had never really had one. I thought maybe I didn’t have to be alone anymore, I thought that we understood each other. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I had misunderstood everything. Maybe this was the only love available to me. Maybe this was the only expression of love we-I was capable of. A twisted mockery of romance. Was it sick? Was it wrong?
Would it really be so bad?
If that’s what she needed. I didn’t care anymore.
I wanted her to be ok.
I wanted myself to be ok.
But I'm not you.
Those four words.
All the hope was gone.
She pushed me away and the multiverse ripped open.
She pushed me away and I didn’t know where I was anymore.
There were no more Time Keepers.
No more TVA.
No more order.
He was coming...
It was all descending into Madness.
And I was well and truly alone.
Again...
So...
Do I love myself?
The short answer...?
Insert long overdrawn sigh here...
The long answer?
I don't know... but I think I want to try.