The funny thing about the song Brandy is that when we went to see this in theaters, my mom actually whispered to me that she kinda hates the song since it's about a dipshit sailor who leaves his girlfriend to be on a boat, so it it was pretty vindicating for her when it was revealed a half hour later that Ego is a total scumbag and the movie's main villain.
Reminds me of when I watched Hot Fuzz in theaters with a friend and after the guy gets impaled through the bottom of the jaw I leaned over to him and said “you know that wouldn’t actually kill him” and then like a minute or two later he’s revealed to be a live and conscious but in a lot of pain.
It reminds me how there are those out there who claim to be empaths, but in reality are manipulating others into feeling what they feel and assuming that out of them.
There are repeated lines across all of the episodes that argue two opposing views: that he is either hopelessly set in his destiny to be a villain or stating that he has the ability to choose a different, more heroic path. So yeah, I think the better question isn’t is he a narcissist, but does he have the ability to choose to be better than that narcissistic box the timeline is determined to put him in.
Lindsay is extremely intelligent. I do believe true NPD should be communicated to the audience in some way, by some character who is knowledgeable. I do believe depicting genuine types of people as seen irl is important, such as transgender characters. However I just wish she would not deconstruct narratives in such a way that she believes *every* decent character has to be aware of the nuances or real life definitions of disorders, genders, etc or be the extreme opposite and be completely intolerant and unlikable (the educated good guys vs uneducated antagonists). She points out how Mobius is wrong about Loki, how Sylvie misunderstands hi, as if they should be more aware by default despite context communicating otherwise (Mobius knows other lokis are narcissists, Sylvie only has herself to compare to). The story has to believable at the end of the day, has to keep your immersion and suspense of disbelief. Most people are somewhere in the middle: decent but not exactly in the know completely.
Narcissism can also be treated, in a way. Through therapy mostly. Like borderline, it is a disorder that you can develop due to your circumstances. And like borderline, it can be treated. Mobius talk with Loki in the first episode, seeing him for who he is without judgement, is basically the right type of therapy. That's what he needed. Same with classic/old man Loki. He needed to hear he could be different, that he could change.
Me too, except this actually happened more in my 20's because I could not escape them and still can not and I learned to have a voice only to see them avoid seeing the core of the problems they made for me.
As a psychologist, I'm just here to add a grain of nuance on the subject of NPD: Saying it's not "curable" might make it seem as something unchangeable, which it is not. Personality disorders are, in nature, chronic, and tend to stay quite stable across the life span, that is correct. However, with therapy (sometime without) and a lot of work, people with personality disorders, including NPD, can reach a place of functionning where they will still show traits, behavioral and cognitive patterns associated with their disorder, but will no longer meet the clinical criterias and, therefore, won't be considered to have a personality disorder per se anymore. It takes a lot of work, and granted, even with that, people who exhibits personality disorders traits will exhibit these traits for all of their life. This is why we call them "personality" disorders, because they are very stable. However, while it might not be "curable", in the sense that it won't completly disappear, it's very much treatable :)
"Curable" with the same colloquialism people say they're "cured" of cancer. Also, have you ever treated someone with NPD? I'm curious to what therapeutic models and/or school of thought you ascribe to? 🙂
Loki is the fantasy people in a relationship with narcissists have: if they can just be forced to face the truth they will see the errors of their ways, repent, and be loving empathic people. Hulk just smashing is the alternate revenge fantasy. The real stories of treated narcissists aren’t as satisfying. They are hard and gradual, require constant struggle, and difficult acceptance that some things won’t be different. A good service.
Character like Loki and Vegeta are a atandard bad boy power fantasy trope that kept being put into their place when the protagonist kicked their ass when they went too far.
Ah so much of this. Even in some romcoms ill see people who are effectivelly showing behaviors and patters of personality disorders (not just narcissists) and then a love interest confronts them and suddenly they magically change. And im always sitting there like and wheres the years of therapy? A lot of mental health issues cant be cured in the sense of you do XYZ and it will be like it never happened after. Most are managed and require years of work and acceptance, you can absolutely have a fulfilling happy life while managing but it still doesnt just magically go away. And especially for narcissists, which is just such a bastard of a disorder, cause it makes you so much less likely to seek help in the first place.
"Why do we hate the IRL narcissists while loving the fictional ones?" You gave a good explanation, but so too did TH-camr Quinn Curio, I think, when she did a video about Slytherin house, and talked about Severus Snape and Harry's decision to name his child after him: (I'll paraphrase her here) "I can sit here and say 'ah yes, I so enjoyed the time I spent reading the engaging story arc of this fascinating character Severus Snape'--but most people don't tend to think of real people in the same way. In real life, we tend not to honor those who bullied us."
Snape is a tricky one, because Harry does get to see the cycle of bullying being perpetuated there. James bullied Snape causing Snape to bully Harry. And by the end Harry learns that despite his faults, Snape was a true hero who in serving the cause of good cost him his life. So it does make sense for Harry to break the cycle and forgive Snape in some way.
thank you for bringing that up. i finished the whole video, but in truth i felt uncomfortable with a good portion of the essay that try to explore that question: "why do we hate irl narcissists but not the fictional ones?" well, because they're _fiction._ there is a safe distance between the character itself and me as a person. and i can use that fiction as a tool to understand irl narcissists and navigate my own narcissistic tendencies to avoid continuing the cycle of abuse, but once i interact with the narcissist i know irl, that safe distance no longer exist. all i can think of is how much hurt and trauma that person created, instead of, "wow, what a fascinating and intriguing character."
same way people love Dark Vader but hate Anakin, despite both being irredeemable cunts: Vader's evil was theatric and felt inpersonal and not real (how many people IRL order the destruction of an entire planet to spite someone, or serve an evil empire for 20 years?) Anakin's evil (murdering kids, agreeign with a fascist stranglign his wife when she disagree with him) were more personal and much real-er.
@@arthenosthefirst8176 Except Vader is redeemed (sort of), the Emperor / Palpatine is a better example. Though I do agree the cartoonish over the top bad guy is much more "fun" to root against especially IMO when they are shown to fail over and over. Had Darth Vader really beaten Obi Wan and ruthlessly killed him rather than Obi Wan allowing himself to be killed to "become more powerful" Vader would have been much less likeable, similarly if Leia hadn't stood upto Vader when she was captured - not likeable.
@@DaCarnival I remember it being brought up in the MCU that every advanced civilization (more advanced than earth) has their people wearing universal translators. And that's the only reason so many races can understand each other, even in GotG where people come from all different planets. Would that imply Thor and similar characters are never actually speaking English, it's just being translated to other characters and the audience that way?
@@Fantallana In the comics, the deities communicate through Allspeak but in the MCU, they only brought up that Thor and the other Asgardians learns alien languages from childhood. In Infinity War, he shows he can speak Groot(an actual language for, well, Groots)
@@Fantallana Not necessarily. For instance Loki easily one of the smartest people Asgard ever produced has absolutely no capability to speak Mongolian.
Introspection is how you find a healthier way to be whether you have a neurodivergence or not. The capacity to look within yourself and evaluate your own being is the difference between a good and a bad person. Not many people are beyond hope and it's never a bad time to start trying to be better
I think Mantis's trauma being played for laughs is another thematic choice, if poorly handled. Because a lot of people with traumas will cope with laughter.
That's way too generous for the marvel company. They played it for laughs because they don't want to have to deal with anything too negative or heavy. They want it to be light and fun and appeal to as many wallets as possible. (I still loved the movie, but this is a chronic weakness of theirs)
And it is a recurring choice for James Gunn. I think he uses humour to focus on it and accentuate some of the tragic elements of it, and the cultural tendency to do so without the respect he tries to show it. Kinda the same way he handles violence: overdoing it to the point that excess is bleedingly obvious and thereby mocking that same fetishisation. Only with violence he has the Fortune to then go "still cool though"
I disagree. Gunn uses humor like a twelve year old. Its funny when it happens to someone else. It’s not a way of putting sugar over an uncomfortable situation: it’s avoiding it completely and belittling it. It’s like a bully who insist that “it’s just a joke” Thanos wasn’t a narcissist, he was an obsessed character who was capable of learning, capable of love and capable of sacrificing what he loved the most to obtain his goal. Which is why when you compare the younger Thanos in Endgame, who’s impatient with the experienced, patience older Thanos of Infinity War, you’ll see a huge difference. Thanos had to gain the gems himself, at great personal costs…just as The Avengers had to do so in Endgame.
As someone who has survived narcissistic abuse from multiple from multiple family members, I cannot stress enough how mundane and unspecial narcissists can be. It is not always fantastical and often feels more like death by a thousand paper cuts more than a spectacular drama.
It's that constant depression felt when everything you do is critiqued, and every step or glance outside your predefined role as an NPC in this person's story is punished, until you truly do start to feel like an NPC. It's constant pain.
Yeah ! thats how i would describe it, my family has suffered from narcissistic abuse from my dad and it was so tiring and tedious living with him, it felt like a chore being around him
okay one thing, I don’t think sylvie’s actions at the end are about Loki, they’re about sylvie. Her whole life has been dedicated to taking down the TVA, one person being nice to her for a few days isn’t doing to undo all her trauma. Itd honestly be out of character for her to not kill whats-his-face.
I completely agree. She's spent years thinking about what she would do when she made it face to face with the people responsible for the TVA, and I seriously don't think her level of trust for Loki could have possibly made her change something she'd already made up her mind about years ago.
Agreed, while her being so deeply suspicious of Loki might not be so justified (at least from what we see on screen), her rejecting his path and sticking to getting her revenge is 100% in character for her.
There's another thing Ego does in _GOTG: Vol 2_ that didn't hit me until recently. When we first meet him, he introduces himself to Peter as his _dad_ rather than his _father_ . The film goes to great lengths to distinguish 'father' from 'dad', so why did Ego do this? Because he does not once consider that there may have been another male parental figure in Peter's life; one that actually stuck around and raised him.
It also adds to the fact that narcissists have bad boundaries, so ego just goes and uses the more familiar, intimate term than the more appropriate, distant term father that better relates to him
@@LucasDarkGiygas 'Daddy' is a more familiar term. Ego calls _himself_ that because he assumes unwarranted closeness with Peter. Yondu makes a distinction between the word and 'father', which just describes your male parent without any emotional slant. They agree about the terms as the audience would use them, but not whom they apply to.
Hi. Diagnosed narcissist here. This seems like an excellent opportunity to tell others with NPD that there quite a few things out there to help us. You don't have to live with anxiety off the charts. It took years for me to admit I had my diagnosis but you can do better. Look into dialectical behavioral therapy. It is offer at many VA hospitals and is a great place to start a journey towards relative peace. Good luck and thank you Lindsey for opening up a platform for NPD.
Thanks for sharing. DBT helped me immensely, too! What Lindsay got wrong is saying "NPD can't be cured". I guess it depends on your definition of "cured", but many health professionals now agree pwNPD can be treated. We're learning more and more every day about how to manage and help those with personality disorders. Just a few decades ago, professionals believed that BPD was untreatable, until Marsha Linehan developed DBT out of frustration. She had BPD as well, and was sick of people telling her she could not be helped. She only came out as having BPD recently, after the high success of DBT. BPD is so stigmatized, she was worried she would lose her job. So thankful to her, DBT has saved so many lives!
The point about Falcon and the Winter Solider being one of the only ones that directly deals with things like going to therapy was ironic to me since, as someone who has been not only in therapy basically their entire life but surrounded by the mental health community and infrastructure, when I watched especially the beginning of Falcon and the Winter Solider I thought "whoever wrote this has clearly never been to therapy in their life"
Yeah. I guess they were trying to present it as "military guys and military therapists" but legit that has never been the kind of therapeutic experience I've had. And the end of the show where he's just. Done. With therapy bc he dealt with a book. Like no man that is absolutely not how PTSD in the complexity level Bucky has it would work
I feel like maybe they were trying to show that the therapy Bucky is getting is obviously not there to actually help him but only because the government is worried about him committing actions against them (like how rule #1 is "don't break the law" while "don't hurt people" is only relegated to rule #2) but they really biffed it in the end because they imply that the therapy Bucky was getting ended up working
And as a Tumblr user pointed out (not long after the show aired, so I don't remember who it was), the show deals with Bucky's trauma entirely in terms of his taking responsibility for what he was *made* to do by other people. It acts like Bucky's actual trauma of being brainwashed, losing his autonomy, probably experimented on, etc., doesn't even exist.
I read into Sylvie’s inability to trust Loki as more of a character flaw in her instead of Loki. She has been in opposition to every person she has interacted with since the TVA took her from her timeline. Loki feels fully sincere to me in the finale and it’s more about her fears than his flaws
Exactly. Over the course of the show, Loki has become both a trustworthy and a trusting person. That’s why he wants to spare He Who Remains. But Sylvie, whose distrust in the TVA goes down to her core, isn’t there yet. She isn’t able to believe that she’s fully good and therefore can’t see that in Loki either.
That's how I understood it too. I don't know how Lindsay saw it otherwise, maybe she focused on Loki himself too much and ignored Sylvie's very real character arc. Sylvie and Loki had different results in their respective arcs because his life gave him the tools to grow. Hers didn't.
I'm frustrated a bit too with Lindsey, as feel like the Loki miniseries wasn't about narcissistim, but the dangers of implicate bias and the dehumanization of people when people focus on a label attached to a person. In this case the condition of being an instance of a Loki and the idea of being an untrustworthy narcissistic monster are seen as synonymous. This Loki happens to buck that trend and may indicate that the narcissistic tendencies of Lokis are more poor coping mechanisms than true clinical narcissism. Sylvie has seen no evidence that she can trust any other Loki as they are all capable of long-game manipulation and spontaneous backstabbing in the name of self-preservation. Instead of treating our protag Loki as an individual, she falls to assumptions and bias based on his appearance and persona, seeing him as only a "Loki". This feels like an extreme version of the way society often treats criminals as a unified "bad guy". Thanks to this label real complex good people are denied work, housing, and just basic trust. Heck, this brings to mind how Loki the mythological god had frequently been synchronized with a Christian interpretation of Lucifer. In what scraps we still have of his stories, Loki was just as much a hero as many of the aesir. Being a diety who includes mischief and cleverness in his perview does not make him simply evil. His trickery is often used to teach his nephew and frequent partner Thor important lessons or used to get Thor out of troubles that Thor's direct approach would not work. Loki is even directly responsible for getting Mjolnir for Thor. Unfortunately many of the Christian and Roman historians focused on Loki's triggering of Ragnarok, which is quite complicated as the Aesir largely earned Loki's wrath thanks to constantly marginalizing him, all thanks to a prophesy that was self-fulfilling... that and thanks to the Aesir giving Loki crap for frequently spending time with humanity in physical female form, giving birth to many regular people (Loki loved functioning beyond the boundaries of gender, making the genderfluid label rather fitting for the MCU version)
@@BeastGuardian I thought the show used both Loki finding how is life will turn out because of his choices and the Lady Sif loop to show case that Loki had to take a real hard look at himself and how his narcissism affects himself and others and that he was stuck in the TVA a insane amount of time and he still has narcissistic moments but he is trying to do and be better, the train scene where he gets drunk shows he still struggles with his narcissism. I think it hints that being with Mobius and the TVA is suppose to be Loki's therapy (working on himself and such) they just didn't do the best job of showing that Loki is not the same because he has spenr an ungodly amount of time having to see how his narcissism affects others and being forced to reconcile with it.
Yes, agree here! Sylvie was more of the narcissist than Loki was. The concept of the show seemed to be, all Lokis are narcissistic, but their choices determine how much so. Sylvie's trauma made her more narcissistic than this version of Loki. But the OG Loki was more narcissistic because of what happened in his life. This one could avoid a lot of that, very It's a Wonderful Life of seeing what "could have been" and he gets to avoid making all those bad choices to become a better person
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I had the same reading to Loki's personality in the show but I actually think that's a feature more than a mistake. See, in the show Loki isn't a narcissist... but people think he is, and even he has learned to play that role so well he has convince himself he is one. Notice how every time he calls himself a narcissist is to escape from someone trying to punish him (Mobius, Sif, Sylvie), to take the blame by playing into the character everyone is accusing him to be. So, with this in mind, the show is not really about "solving narcissism" and more about "learning to have some self esteem". Loki doesn't need to grow out of his narcissistic personality, he needs to learn that he can be more than what people think of him, and gain enough self confidence to be what he wants to be. And this is what makes the final episode so tragic. Sylvie, like everyone else, wrongly believes that Loki (and herself to some extent) is selfish and narcissistic, and when she turns on him for that we, the audience, feel the tragedy because we know that Loki isn't a narcissist, but she can't see it.
Oh damn that's a good take! I'm happy to have that in mind, and will think on it when I finally get to see the series. Just knowing the character and judging by what clips I've seen it fits the narrative beautifully too. Bravo!
I always found the show to be more of dive into what make Loki as a character tic, than as study into a narcissist (I’m just some guy so I wouldn’t really know). Cuz this is a Loki plucked from the ending of the first Avengers, speed runs through his timeline, and learns just how small he is when he sees a bunch of infinity stones in someone’s desk after getting bullied by the time police. This is a very different character on display then what was seen in the films, to me at least.
Really interesting that Lindsay chose to compare Loki from Ragnarok vs the show because if you go back to the first Thor movie: Narcism was really not part of the equation. Rather Loki was a scared little boy, afraid of being abandoned by his adoptive father. Narcism was not really added to his personality till the first Avengers. So looking at the arc from the first Thor movie to the show, he was acting narcissist as in acting tough, in order to do the thing he thinks he needed to. And the show brought him back to that scared little boy, with the baggage of his fake narcism, where no one really trusts even when he tries to prove to them that he can be trusted. And only really ever wanted to be accepted in the first place.
I agree. I think he's just really hurt, lonely and desperate for love and attention, which he was severely deprived of his whole life. The only one who showed it openly and unconditionally was his mother. It's also been acknowledged that his behavior in The Avengers was that his anger, hurt, resentment and other issues were magnified by the Infinity Stones and once he got Hulk smashed he calmed down quite a bit. Besides he comes from a culture where it is considered normal to boast about yourself and your deeds so it's no surprise he would adopt that attitude as normal even if it's not a part of his natural personality. All of the boasting he does is just to hide his hurt.
I've always felt Loki has narcissistic tendencies used as a defense mechanism. He grew up in a militaristic society that, had he not been designated the villain, would have been cheered on in killing another race, by both Thor and Odin.
@@briannawaldorf8485 oh, that's interesting! Are we talking borderline personality disorder? The main female character of a show called Crazy Ex-girlfriend gets diagnosed with that and I could definitely see similarities between their personalities.
@Kevin Brown Sorry, but he spent a few days away from home with a girl he's just met-and who we never once see discussing have a real discussion about the racism he's so suddenly cured of. I just can't buy at least 1000 years of deep-rooted racism erased so easily. Yes, he came back 'changed' but it's too contrived. The movie could have done a better job convincing me.
@Kevin Brown thor was about to be crowned despite odin knowing he was war hungry, and it's only because Loki interfered and had Thor do something against Odin's wishes (like he just wasnt allowed to yet) that he was banished. If he had been crowned, I feel like he would've just been Odin 2.0 in how he took over places because hed have the power of a king and no one to stop him. I only dont see the people being especially happy about the wars because they currently lived in peace, but besides that, and as an empire, they'd probably see ruling more realms as a right to them.
As a long time Loki fan, I have to admit that It's very difficult to analyze Loki because his writing honestly changes so much from movie to movie. Loki in Thor 1 was definitely not a narcissist (if anything, Thor was the one more prone to it), then the Avengers changed him into a "full diva" cackling villain; the Dark World tried to retcon these two personalities and made Odin the narcissistic parent (he already had shades of this, but The Dark World exaggerates them), and finally Thor Ragnarok went full "Narcissistic Emo kid" and ALSO retconned his past with Thor by making him the bully and a constant betrayer. It's really not surprising that the series had so many troubles reconciling all these Lokis and just decided to go meta about it, showing some Lokis are incurable narcissists, some aren't, and we are luckily following the ones who are not.
Honetly, with ragnarok i can buy loki could come down and get a bit high on power while gtting time to think. That change is the least offensive, and 2 extragated just movie 1 odin. I was more bothered by thor not being the asgardian prince with the dignity, and became that wise cracking , grr ewhy did he had to get wisecracking.
@@marocat4749 because dignified perfect thor from the first and second movie are kinda meh because of how dry thor's personality is which doesn't really connect with audience. After that, they tried changing things up for ragnarok but i definitely felt they made thor too wisecracking, which just isn't thor no matter how charming and funny chris hemsworth is. Infinity war thor is best depiction on film imo. There's still levity but it's to cover up the darkness and anger inside him from the death of his brother and other fellow asgardians. Endgame thor is just so much of a departure from his original character that i dont even think it's the same character. Sure, it's funny and he still has his cool moments fighting thanos, but was it worth completely changing his character? I'd say no.
Honestly, Avengers 1 is a really uneven movie (even though it's well-remembered). No one's motivations, especially Loki's, seem authentic. But I guess maybe he was doing it all to get in good with Thanos? I dunno.
It's kinda crazy that, though his characterization is distinct from his classic comic version, this character from the biggest cinematic events of each year is still being written like a character from a serial pulp property
My mom is a narcissist. Like decided that therapy is a scam after 3 different therapists, all of whom were quacks apparently, diagnosed her with narcissism. And I gotta tell you, it's always irritating how people just throw that word around like it means nothing. But, this analysis actually handles it pretty well. Thank you, Lindsey, for not being flippant about a serious problem.
I finally got a narcissist to go to therapy for depression for like 5 whole sessions. They'd been sampling around and rejecting ones for various reasons for years. They got better on some points briefly but just the other week they were sharing thier distortions of the truth and using their therapists agreement with their victimization as ammo for emotional chastisement and manipulation of others so... YMMV even if they had stayed. I am honestly hoping the therapist treats the depression and low self esteem without offering a diagnosis because they will totally drop the therapy if given such a diagnosis.
Until this video I didn’t know narcissism was a personality disorder and not just a casual insulting word like “idiot” that carries no diagnosable criteria. I’m guessing most people are in the same boat.
Same but then my mom found a therapist that fed into her narcissism and boy did that make things worse for a while. Thankfully that was after I was already moved away and I could easily avoid her by just not answering the phone.
Man, Guardians 2 and Thor Ragnarok were the two best movies to come out of this whole thing, and BIG NAME CROSSOVER EVENT really screws with both of them, hard. The whole ending of Ragnarok is about how home is where our people are, not the land that they owned, but the very next moment after that movie is half those people being murdered along with Loki. And I'm dreading a Guardians 3 without Gamora. If they just go one pretending that nothing has changed I'm going to have some serious Transporter Problem dissonance. If Peter reacts like nothing has changed and tries to just fit Other Gamora into the previous one's slot in his life, well, I guess he's a true narcissist to the end. It's James Gunn, though, so considering the emotional sincerity of the last film maybe he'll really dig deep into just how distressing and dark the implications of Infinity War/Endgame really are.
It’s clear that Taika Waititi has a lot more appreciation for Thor, while The Russos had a lot more interest in Captain America. They’ve been pouring a ton of effort into Cap for a while, whereas the first time they’re put in charge of Thor they try to undo pretty much every permanent change that his last movie did for him. Lost his eye in an homage towards Odin and referencing his increased wisdom? Give him a prosthetic and pretend it never happened. Cut off his hair as a symbolic gesture of how much of a different character he’s going to be after this movie? He grows it all back after getting depressed because he lost. Lost his hammer but came to realize he didn’t need it because the power was within him all along? He needs to go make a better one. Also get him his old hammer back too. And then of course there’s the fact that the vast majority of Endgame had his self destructive drinking, weight gain, and depression treated as a joke rather than a serious issue. I don’t think there was anything necessarily malicious there, like they weren’t trying to intentionally hurt the character or undo any of the changes he made as a character, I think they just were primarily focused on trying to make him grow in a specific direction, while Ragnarok kind of threw a wrench in those plans because he came out of that such a different person than he was before.
"The whole ending of Ragnarok is about how home is where our people are, not the land that they owned..." Actually, I thought that was one of the more dubious conclusions about Ragnarok. In the context of actually looking at what displacement does to a culture (i.e., being expelled or taken from a homeland) and the lasting trauma that ensues across generations, Ragnarok's treatment of the subject seems rather shallow to me. Ragnarok treats the flight of the Asgardians as some kind of liberating solution, not the prelude to a new epoch of misery for the people who lost their land.
@@SamyTheBookWorm the original Gamora, the one we came to know from the movies, is indeed dead and they can’t bring her back. There’s a different Gamora, from a time previous to GotG. But she hasn’t been through everything our Gamora has. She’s a different person. It’s like the two Nebulas. Our Nebula grew, the other Nebula was still all about pleasing daddy. That’s actually why I was worried about Loki the series. Because it isn’t really our Loki, the one that was slowly growing to be a better person. Slowly. He sacrificed himself to try to save Thor and the other Asgardians. This new Loki has only two movies worth of the same timeline as our old Loki. He was still at villain stage. So that would be why they sped up his character arc, and changed him from being a narcissist. Though I found the series interesting- it’s the Lokis who grow past their narcissistic aspects that are the heroes. Old Loki also grew to become a good person, as did our (new) Loki. And Sylvie never really had the chance to become a narcissist.
I mean being an Empath doesn’t inherently make you a good or caring person. Empathy just means you’re able to understand how people feel, that doesn’t mean you can’t be sadistic or cruel as an Empath. In fact most skilled manipulators are Empaths, because they need to know how other people are feeling in order to mold their manipulation to be the most effective.
Turns out that the things which make a compelling fictional character often make for an insufferable and even dangerous person in real life. Fiction is the perfect way to process our innate curiosity and attraction towards dangerous people.
This is so perfectly put! I’ve been trying to wrap my head around why I feel so much affection for Loki despite having been in (pretty awful in retrospect) relationships with similarity narcissistic people. It’s almost like seeing the true to life controlling and insecure tendencies his character is driven by framed in a compassionate way gives me hope for the character, and let’s me as the audience member tag along with his journey without putting myself in danger of subjugation to his narcissism directly. So ultimately, I find the depiction really humanizing and emotionally resonant because it’s at a safe distance. Movie Loki would be a nightmare to be in a relationship while show Loki is the growth and introspection we can all hope that real narcissists in or lives can one day undertake.
Over the top things are great in fiction but extremely exhausting in real life. Probably because we engage with fiction for maybe a couple of hours a week, but in real life you would have to bear it 24/7.
@@don_5283 Lots of reasons. One classic example is the fantasy that even if they're monstrous to other people, there might be a hidden softness they show only to you. The "I can fix them" approach to romance. In fantasy, maybe you really can fix them. In real life, not so much.
I think we like narcissists in fiction more than real life for the same reason we like gun fights in movies and not in real life: distance. Watching something happen is way less exhausting and painful than doing it.
I personally detest narcissists in fiction most of the time, at least if they are supposed to be protagonists. However, I think I can understand why people do like those characters, like Iron Man, for example. When I see narcissistic protagonists I imagine dealing with them in real life and worry that viewers will copy their behavior. I do on the other hand get the appeal of watching someone who (at least on the outside) doesn’t worry about their actions, behavior or how others conceive them.
@@sandorenckell5259 I agree and I think it's because they and bad characters in general play out the behavior we wished we could do ourself in real life (to a point). But only if they have redeeming qualities. I noticed that in myself when I read a book once where one of the characters always did little "unacceptable" things all the time and didn't feel bad about it. Nothing serious, nothing illegal, just something that would make people angry or drive them up the wall. (It was satire and also deeper than that.) And quite often I found myself thinking: "They did NOT just do that!... but also I wish I could/would do that." I'm sure a lot of people have moments were they play out a what if scenario in their head of being arrogant or cocky or not giving a fuck or yelling at their boss or being witty and having the best come backs, to name very mild cases of "bad" behavior. I would also bet that more often than sometimes many people play out what if scenarios of hurting people who hurt them; kicking and punching the living shit out of them, ruining their lifes, just generally taking revenge in one form or another. Which is why we also love revenge books and movies where justice is served because quite often revenge doesn't happen in real life. It's the experience and joy of bad behavior, the carthasis even, when they figuratively flipped everyone off (or... killed the rapist idk) as a stand in for our desire to be bad. But I agree: it's a fine line between "this behavior looks cool but you shouldn't adapt that because it's actually problematic" and "this behavior looks cool; use it in daily life from now on".
@@sandorenckell5259 On the other hand, copying narcissistic behavior can also be a positive thing if a person has very low sense of self-worth and doesn't know how to set their boundaries. Personally I don't think that fictional narcissists are a problem per se, but some people do seem to view themselves as the protagonist (the others are NPCs). I think that's caused by a general lack of empathy which should be taught in real life.
Basically media portrayal of protagonist narcissists: “Like, I’m an evil queen, which makes me funny and entertaining, but in the end I’m empathetic and wholesome.”
@@RoryStarr I don't like really the "real love" concept, tbh... First, because love is a complex emotion with maaaaaany variations and telling someone he/she doesn't experience an emotion based on the fact that it does not fit our conception of said emotion is kind of violent. Second, because I feel like people have to take some distance with the fact that love is necessarily a "good" emotion. Love is about feeling attachment to something/someone, there CAN be too much of it, or it can be tainted with all sorts of sh!t. Some classic asian philosophies have a concept of what is a "greater" or a "lower" emotion. Now this of course can be debated, but I don't think it's by accident that they did not frame "love" as a superiore emotion and decided instead for "compassion".
Fun fact: The Parent/Child Narcissist blindness goes the other way, too. My brother ticks all 9 of the criteria and exhibits all of the traits and our mother was utterly blind to his issues right up until the day she died. As for Loki, Sylvie expects Loki to betray her because _she_ is a Narcissist and that is what she would do, so she expects that that is what _he_ would do. Also, the Loki from the series isn't the same Loki as from the movies because _that_ Loki got murdered.
I've been thinking a lot about Loki recently, and I thought that whilst yes, he does display some narcissistic traits i do not think that he is the true narcissist in the Thor movie series. Odin is. His children are extensions of himself, Thor is pushed into the role of the Golden Child. Thor's ego is appeased and inflated by Odin, who wants to control him and turn him into a "good king". Whereas Loki becomes the Scapegoat; he symbolises trickery and lying, and yet is a symbol of all of Odin's tricks and lies (being raised Aesir when he's Jotunn, not being told *why* he was raised that way without knowing the truth, being a political pawn in Odin's long game that never got used etc). Throughout the first Thor, Odin never explains himself or his actions, he assures everyone that he is in control, and when either of his children question him he tries to manipulate them or otherwise hurls abuse at them. I think it's rather interesting to compare Odin's treatment of Thor and Loki against Thanos' treatment of Gamora and Nebula. Odin is less malignant but the dynamic has some striking similarities. And of course, this is merely the opinion of some rando on the internet, but I think that it's interesting to look at Loki not as a narcissist himself, but as a victim of narcissistic abuse and emotional neglect. I think this reading makes his characterisation far more consistent between the movies and the tv series, it certainly makes me reevaluate the things that Loki does and how he reacts and tries to survive. When given the opportunity and space to reflect on himself he makes a change.
Loki's parents *do* tell him why they hid the truth, though: they were afraid of what exposing him to the stigma of being adopted and a Frost Giant would do to him, just as some parents of neurodivergent or otherwise disabled children are reluctant to seek a formal diagnosis because they're afraid of saddling their kids with the stigma of having a disorder. It's undeniably a _mistake_ , because being different means having a different set of needs and failing to address that causes long-term damage of its own, but mistakes and unintended consequences != being abusive.
@Roxanne Tilley But for what purpose did Odin take Loki from Jotunheim? When Loki asks Odin he never gets a clear answer from him. He shouts Loki down and then enters the Odinsleep, and Loki's questions were never answered. Are we to believe that Odin took the son of his enemy for purely innocent/merciful reasons? Especially when the plot of Ragnarok reveals later that he claimed all Asgard's power with bloody warfare. He told half truths, breadcrumbed Loki with the "you're both born to rule" line and then consistently reinforced Thor as his true heir.
His treatment of his daughter Hela is suspect, too, not least of which is how instead of learning from his mistakes with her (assuming that it's actually true that she went power-mad and he didn't actually just randomly imprison her for trying to disagree or assume her own autonomy as a person), he disappears her so entirely from his own people's history that his sons didn't even know she existed until she broke free.
"In case you haven't noticed, I'm a narcissist. I'm a nar-co. I don't care about other people, and I don't want to care about other people. Have you ever seen me without this stupid shock collar on? That's because of narcissism."
I really think not enough people talk about how narcissists can use victimhood as a form of power. In the real world most narcissists don't have the resources, or even charisma, to truly manipulate from a place of influence. The much more common actions that I've observed are attempts to pull people into their version of the world where the narcissist is the ultimate victim. Then the person pulled in ends up providing a constant stream of affection while the narcissist continues to find more ways to rationalise requiring more emotional engagement. Thanks for treating the topic with proper care Note: I just wanted to add that this is rarely on purpose, many people who do this believe they are a true victim. In my experience it becomes painfully difficult to know where the actual need for support ends and the want for more attention begins
This. I ended up in a fairly abusive friendship for a while because they were a narcissist that did this. They used their status as trans, latinx, someone with abandonment issues and bpd as leverage. Since I'm a cis white guy I felt obliged to give them sympathy. And whenever I put down boundaries they would act offended and just try to break. We never met in person purely cause i had no faith they wouldn't cross a line. I eventually dropped them when me wanting them out of my life more than my empathy for their problems.
An important point is that they actually believe that they are the victims, that they deserve the attention they are seeking, and that if they don't get it that makes them even more of a victim. They are dismissive of other people's problems because they do believe their own problems are worse. They also have the ability to turn other's problems to themselves, like if you are not smiling they'll say "Are you mad at me?? Why do you make me feel bad??" because they are incapable of not putting themselves in the center.
yeah, you can love a narcissist until it hurts, you can care for them in the exact way they ask to be cared for when they want to be cared for and they will pull away and start a fight because you're not going above an beyond what they asked for. i don't understand how someone can be loved so much and still just want to shake people's heads up like snowglobes because it's pretty to them for a second.
Thank you for this comment! While watching the video I was trying to think of narcissists I’ve met in real life. I could only think of one and knew that couldn’t be true, but your take just made me remember at least a half dozen others I’ve come into contact with over the years. All of them played the victim game very well.
Trust me I ranted about her a great deal during my time when I wanted to talk about Falcon and the Winter Soldier... She dealt with him dissociating by yelling at him. Like one of his captors would have. - still mad-
Isn't she the bad guy at the end? Or were they two different women? I mentally decided they were the same and that's why she was awful, but I also watched the finale at 4 AM so.
It is funny how these marvel shows still have the same issues the old comics had. I love the Silver Surfer and his stories we're mostly meditations on how violence does not solve anything. But because it was a comic book it still always ended with the Silver Surfer throwing energy beams at people.
Squirrel girl solved the problem often at least in the 2015 run of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. Sure there is always a bit of fighting but often the solution ends up being something clever or talking to understand the entire scope of the problem and finding a non violent solution.
It's similar to the Fantastic Four. A lot of its themes explore relationships and family, exploring and understanding the world around you and helping as a result. But because they're superheroes- easily some of the most influential of all time- often they need to default to the cool powers and epic fights and big teamups and plastering Spider-Man and Wolverine onto the covers.
"Obsessive self-loathing is a form of narcissism." Oh wow. I've watched my mother display all the traditional signs of narcissism my entire life, but I had a hard time believing she was actually a narcissist because of her extremely low self-esteem and perpetual tendency to victimize herself. Now that I know those traits can accompany narcissism...you've just blown this case wide open.
Kind of hard for me to believe, given my immense experience with these behaviors. But after thinking about one of the the three devils who abused me through narcissistic behaviors, I do think they had an irrational belief that they should have protected their mother or something. I can see that as a pretty clear motivator. But the other one who self-loathes seems a lot more prideful about how they did something at a young age that we could not by sustaining herself without parents around. Well, they did have a brother who died at a young age... which is kind of ironic. She never mentions that she had someone else around in her childhood. She talks about it in such a way that I barely remembered that person existing. Of course it is a traumatic experience, but she never said it was the source of trauma. So I guess it could be related to self-loathing that she keeps tightly guarded. As for the third of those, I did not hear too much about their past. Maybe in the most vague way, his father died in war, I think, and he rarely talks about his father either. I think it is possible that he fears his father dying as a hero while he dies as someone who could never be a hero. And that could explain why he is someone who is really social, or at least used to be, and had many friends and seems to seek validation very openly. He tried to become known as the life of the party, as well as, he wanted to be seen as a nice guy or great person. He even has skills like carpentry and plumbing, which makes him seem like someone who could do anything. He also seems quite prideful of his line of work, saying he dislikes people who sit at a desk all day as well as artists, but this could have been just to spite me as someone who did not want to work on a more manual job. Ironically, I do not undervalue work like that, I just want to do things in a new way and experiment and master that art. As for myself, I would say I am not a narcisstic personality. I have been stuck in an abusive environment for my whole life and never really spoke out against anything for a long time. I wanted to have a world of peace and love, but I began to realize I could not look outward and my own problems were too big to focus on the outside world. And yet, I also feel like the work world does not fit my sensitive mind well. I think sensitivity is actually one of the best traits someone can have and that it is hard to protect, but worth protecting or reviving. I also struggle to see how I fit into other people's lives because I was so socially isolated, but also because I do not want to get too passionate about someone who is not going to do well with me as a friend or lover. I am definitely co-dependent though, but I do not think it is super strong. I would love to live in a supportive environment where traits other than making money are valued. I feel like I can do almost anything but make money, if I have the time to practice or innovate. Sorry, I always end up writing comments that may be overly long, but I do believe strongly in providing a lot of information to clarify exactly what I mean. After all, a lot of conversation just ends up being clarification unless you are saying something that everyone assumes to understand. I hope that I can at the very least alter the expectations around social interactions because I feel that the way people talk and what they expect from others has caused me so many problems in life.
This is why I wanted so badly to see an Azula arc in the Avatar comics. Not because I wanted to see her become a "good person," but because I really wanted to see how someone could be motivated to manage narcissism and do better with the disorder.
And instead they made her a caricature of her show self and practically a cackling, mustache-twirling Saturday morning cartoon villain 😑 (I have lots of issues with the comics)
I hadn't thought about this, but yeah; Azula is a good example of a narcissist. Ozai probably is too, but he's also sociopathic. Azula wants to be liked by her father, friends, and even her brother; and breaks down when she isn't. They kinda ended the show with her being defeated (and according to a bio I read on nick.com some years ago, Zuko put her in the best mental facility he could find; he still loves her afterall) because, as Lindsay said, portraying a narcissist's redemption is difficult.
My dad once called a family meeting to excitedly tell us about some on npr talking about their narcissist dad. At the end, he was like, idk what the issue was. That guys dad sounds like me and I'm awesome. I think I'm a narcissist. But he said it with sincere admiration and excitement. When we all just nodded at him, not sharing that same excitement and admiration, he began to get upset. He wanted us to praise him for diagnosing himself. We wanted to just get out of there before he realized how much we didn't think it was funny.
@@zevbellringer6745 nothing changed. I think we told him it wasn't a good thing and that he needed therapy. I think my brother said it bc he's better at phrasing things as a joke. My dad just laughed and said he's perfect. Nothing changed other than he proudly tells ppl he's a narcissist now and ppl who don't know him think he's kidding.
@@zevbellringer6745 narcissists don't change, as a rule. They're INCREDIBLY insecure and therefore see any criticism or request to change as a hostile attack
@@christinahtian unfortunately I have no idea. I think he said it was a writer talking about his father? I remember the point was he related to the father figure. And it made him excited lol.
To me, the Loki show tried to make a statement on the true nature of Loki. He isn't a pathological narcissist, despite seeing himself as one. He also never was, in any of the movies. He clearly loves his mother unconditionally, even in earlier iterations of the character AND allowed himself to be vulnerable multiple times, even if he snapped back into old patterns. And it took a seismic event like seeing himself die and all his ambition become meaningless to change that, which I found so very impressive about the first episode. He just wanted validation and recognition. Sylvie showed what, even given the same basic template, nurture will accomplish. Sylvie was clearly validated by her parents and, knowing she was adopted, came to terms with herself quickly. So she never developed said need for validation. Instead she became fundamentally paranoid by, you know, being being chased around by "the omniscient fascists" for a couple hundred years. She doesn't need to know Loki's backstory to mistrust him, she already trusts NO ONE. Additionally, she encountered plenty of Lokis, most of which were, in fact, backstabbing scumbags. She also knows "our" Loki was a backstabbing scumbag by interacting with characters like Mobius and Renslayer who clearly stated him to be one. TL;DR: Loki is no narcissist, he is just neglected and insecure, Sylvie on the other hand is deeply paranoid.
Add in perspective. Against Thor(let's ignore how much killing he does), Odin, Avengers, and others in the previous films, it can come off as his being a narcissist. But Loki is the show done from his pov or it's not built against the traditional heroes.
You're so right, I agree with all of your points. I just wish the show was longer because Loki's shift in character was, to me, a bit rapid. Like you said, he has to face his own death in the very first episode. I also wished they'd developed Sylvia's paranoia more, maybe shown us a Loki variant she trusted in the past who betrayed her.
@@MaxOakland Loki fights side by side with Thor in every Thor movie, Loki chooses not to kill Thor and Odin of multiple occasions. Loki risks his safety to help Thor in Thor 2 and Ragnarok. Loki makes no excuses for his actions in the Avengers, and largely accepts his punishment for them. And by the end of Ragnarok Loki accepts Thor as the rightful King of Asgard. Doesn't sound like a Narcissist to me.
And let's not forget "I betrayed my father, my brother, my home. I know what I did. And I know why I did it." and even though he then said that he is not that person anymore, that's enaugh incriminatory to plant a seed of doubt beautifully sprout by Kang
"Now the impurities you've encouraged in them are gone! Now they are brilliant; now, they are perfect; now, they are *me!* ... I only want you to be yourself! If you can't do that, I'll do it *for you!* "
@@Carabas72 it wasn't ever adequately explained (which considering it was on cartoon network I fully understand). But the decision led to identity issues down the line, attempting to make the gems race seem like nonbinary when actuary non binary people didn't agree (not to mention the diamonds being pushed as trans stand ins i think?). But mostly the 'twist' that really wasn't executed well and kinda torpedoed pink/rose's character, and then led to the show trying to write her off as the least redeemable diamond when the others were actual nazi stand ins. The show has fun moments, and the voice actors were pretty great, but it's so badly handled the rest of the time
Among all the things BoJack Horseman is the best at doing, it presented one of the most consistent portrayals of a narcissist in its title character. It was never treated as a character act, it was just simply always there. And it's never treated as something he has to overcome. He becomes more empathetic, starts seeing people around him as more than extensions of his ego, but it's not like he becomes perfect at it. But he notices when it's brought up, and, I think, it's the best you can accept.
to me he was very strongly coded as having BPD, while his mother was more coded as having NPD. I say this as a person who has lived with BPD, he was incredibly relatable to me and watching the show multiple times has made me realized just how much I used to fetishize my own sadness and mental illness in the past in a similar way. I can see how he could come off as a narcissist ,especially with how similar the two disorders are in some ways, and I think both are valid interpretations. It's just how I see things.
I think the reason NPD is still so stigmatised is because it hurts other people more than it causes harm to the person with it. It's safer and healthier for me to go no contact with my parents rather than trying to help them though their condition which they refuse to acknowledge anyway.
It occurs to me that it must *never* be the job of anyone vulnerable to, or who has been vulnerable to, this kind of a person to help them. What we need I suspect is a society that recognizes this condition, and recognizes it as serious and harmful if untreated. If you have a panic attack, people know and recognize it, and with luck and privilege, they even know how to help anxiety sufferers get managed. That doesn't happen with NPD, and if it does, it's never going to be the job of someone victimized by the harm these people cause if untreated.
It is no one's responsibility to to help a person with any mental illness except the the mentally person themself. You have every right to tell them to get into therapy or fuck off.
It also doesn’t help that the traits of a narcissist are also often celebrated in our society, which only encourages their behaviour. Nearly every narcissist I know is successful, and it’s not by coincidence. They’re much more resistant to change when getting rewarded for their predatory behaviour.
@@thepinkestpigglet7529 That's cute but it's not how it works; you've got every right to tell your grandmother with Alzheimer's to go fuck herself but anyone who hears it is going to think YOU'RE the problem. Furthermore the assumption that someone who is mentally disordered is always capable of getting themselves help is unrealistic. It's still not your responsibility unless you're their legal guardian, but the assumption that someone mentally ill should just pick themselves up by the bootstraps and work out their own issues is ignorant of how mental illnesses work and is a common misconception in society--that they just don't care about getting better, that they're acting worse than they really feel for attention, that they should just try harder, that if they can't get better then they're beyond saving, or even that if they aren't actively getting better they're a danger to those around them. I'm pretty sure your statement was meant to be about abusive or toxic relationships, but it comes across as telling someone to get fucked if their disease inconveniences you.
@@cam4636 You read my comment about how children don't need to accept abuse to help their parents become better people and turned it into that. Also as someone who's been abused by a woman with dementia when she thought I was someone else id rather people hate me than suffer that again.
@@ryballs4569 probably because admitting/accepting you are one is the first and most difficult step to becoming a less toxic person to those around you, but it comes at accepting you have a problem - something a true narcissist cannot do. Its the line between simply being narcissistic and being a narcissist
I think Loki's narcisistic traits were more of a self-defense mechanism than a pathology. Ever since the first movie it is shown his bad traits are a result of his feelings of inferiority in relation to Thor and his group, to the point that it was a twist at the end of Thor 1 that he never intended to kill Odin and a legitimate surprise in Ragnarok when he heard his father saying he loves him. I also deal with feelings of extreme inferiority and Loki's toxic behaviour and attempts to establish dominance in order to prove his worth to himself and earn the love and respect of his people and family hit way too close to home for me. I don't know if this is an already categorized and existing mental disorder but if it is I would love to know
I have to agree with you and have been thinking about this. I feel Ellis is confusing narcissistic trait and narcissistic personality disorder. Like, you can be paranoid but not have paranoid personality disorder. Like, if you have PTSD, that is a good reasons to have issues with paranoia, but its not the same as the disorder. I don't know much about you, and I am sorry you have extreme inferiority. You seem like a smart and insightful person. And because of this, you might look in to CBT. I wish you well. The closest term would be superiority complex, but that term is kind of out dated and not in the DSM 4 or 5 as far as I know.
I think the issue is that pathological narcissism, as Lindsey pointed out, is considered incurable. It's a locked room, with no path to experiencing other people as anything but canvases for the narcissist to project on. Depicting a narcissist as someone who might "heal" from their narcissism creates false hope. I've known many, many people who've ended up in co-dependent relationships with narcissists, and hold out hope that, with enough love, patience and understanding, the narcissist will heal and become the person the co-dependent desperately wants them to be. But that can't happen, because the heart of a narcissist is a locked room. There's no way out, so there's no way in. In effect, the story of Loki's redemption serves to reinforce the toxic fantasy that fuels dysfunctional relationships with narcissists.
I'm a psych student and a victim of abuse, and I really really liked how you managed not to demonize narcissism and at the same time speak at length about narcissistic abuse in a way that recognizes victims. Speaking about narcissism is a mine field, it's hard not to falter, but you did it beautifully!
This video was excellent but honestly kind of hard to watch. I tried to set boundaries with my parents this summer after a lot of really cruel behavior on their part and ended up being disowned for "acting like a child." Thanks for talking so clearly about how "love" manifests in narcissistic parents.
So, I've been staring at this comment and thinking about how words can twist like serpents. "Acting like a child." You were, because children mature and move towards independence. Individuals can do a lot to define themselves and walk their path. To me, it sounds like you were doing exactly that. Yet they used the same phrase in a twisted way. Their accusation implies that it would be "mature" of you to fall back in line with their expectation of you. But that expectation is to resume your role of child in their drama. That is words being warped, twisted and inverted. It is deceptive and *disorienting* by intention. Be careful of that. Be clear in your thinking and true to yourself. I wasn't there, and I don't know, but my impression is that you didn't "try" to set boundaries, you *did* set boundaries. Only you have the right to set your boundaries, and you always have the right to adjust those boundaries. But if anyone is willing to go scorched earth to punish you or get you to surrender those boundaries, then they have fully demonstrated the need for them.
@@ArcaneWolf9 I really appreciate your comment. It's been difficult to process all that's happened, and I do find myself wondering sometimes if I was the one being unreasonable. It's validating to hear someone else say that not staying in the prescribed box your parents created for you and setting boundaries *is* the mature thing to do. Thank you so much for taking the time to say it.
8:08 This is a weirdly specific thing that I've noticed, lots of narcissists tend to think they're "empaths," and think they can tell what others are feeling/thinking. This, of course, is total bullshit, and they use what they _think_ people are feeling to justify being mean (ie. "They were judging me in their mind, I could tell"). I've learned to avoid people who claim to be "empaths" like it's some sort of special title or ability. Empathy is something all people should have. But, of course, narcissists claim it's some kind of super-power they have, because of course they do.
Oh. Oohhhhhhhh. . . . Welp. I do know someone who used to say that a lot. (Maybe still does, for all I know.) I was cripplingly anxious around people, and had terrible social skills, so for the longest time I just believed her -- even hero-worshipped her amazing abilities. Couldn't figure out why it was so hard for me to get through to her what I was feeling, though.
I could argue for hours with my dad about feeling one thing while he would claim it was something else because he 'knew better' It's not empathy when you project what you want to see onto someone and then take that for a fact even with hard evidence proving you wrong
I don’t even think “empaths” are real. Yes, there are many people with incredible empathy, and if they’re also insightful and good at listening, maybe they CAN tell what all your feelings are, but they can’t for everyone or even most people. Empathy isn’t a superpower, it’s a virtue or an interpersonal relationship skill, not a superpower like telepathy
@@shepherdaaron9683 Yeah. Maybe there are people who can empathize or sense emotions easier than others. I mean there's certainly people who _lack_ the ability. It's just funny that self-proclaimed "empaths" act like it's some sort of super power that only they have. It's like an athlete thinking that _running_ is a super power only they have because they can do it better than others.
I think one reason why there's such resistance to destigmatizing narcissitic personality disorder is because there's a very real fear that it might lead to people lowering their guard towards them and getting hurt in the process. It's similar with other disorders that make those who have it cause harm to others, and it's particularly difficult in this case because narcissistic behavior can also include things like manipulation, specifically exploiting people who lower their guards, and even twisting and exploiting the good intentions of others. Thus, any course of action will always have to walk a fine line between helpful destigmatization and unhelpful enabling. That makes it far more difficult to think and talk about these issues than in case of e. g. depression.
It also doesn't help that it requires thinking with nuance rather than just writing someone off as having evil intentions, or worse, just being evil as a character trait. (It's kind of part of cancel culture, to mark someone's mistakes or missteps as just the "real" person behind the mask coming out, and that person is irredeemably evil.)
I disagree with this reason for destigmatizing. (Not with your suggestion that it's one of the big reasons why there's still alot of stigma - I have to think more on that.) Because of stigma, narcissists hide and they are often good at it. People with less life experience will not recognize them and won't know how to deal with them to avoid getting hurt. If there's less stigma, it will be more obvious that someone is a narcissist and ppl will be better warned. Also, less stigma obviously means more treatment which means (better life for the narcissist, but also) the responsibility and emotional labor is shifted more on the narcissist themselves and on a mental health professional. Which translates to other ppl part of the narcissist's life being less affected/hurt.
As other people have said here already, but I would like to point it out anyway: the stigma around narcissism blows it out of proportion and exacerbates it in a theatrical way, so like not necessarily inaccurate but they harp on the same things over and over again to the point where someone's idea of a narcissist (based on the media) isn't enough to catch the subtle cues nor the nuances of the disorder. That, and with how people are throwing around the term, it only muddies the water. People can have narcissistic traits/tendencies and not be narcissists. Like, anybody can play the victim and/or manipulate without being a narcissist. I get your point because that's the mindset of people who are ignorant to what the disorder actually is. It is a very real fear, when you actually meet those who are terrible anyway, but one not many can actually point out because it's so heavily stigmatized.
Part of the problem is that it’s hard for people to separate narcissism from morality and moral judgement. It’s not necessarily that people think narcissists are evil, but that they could do evil things if the narcissist was shielded from judgement. I have no answer for this. I know little on the subject.
The line when Peter tells Yondu "Not to me!" Hits really close to home there's so many times as a child I was afraid of things that to my parents seemed pretty funny.
My parents used to joke about having to pay people to be friends with their kids--I kind of just shrugged it off, although it's definitely not something I appreciated, but it was a really painful thing for one of my brothers to hear, particularly when they started joking about paying his girlfriend to date him.
Mine used to pretend they were different people if I left their presence while going to a store. Like long enough to return a cart or pee or something. It was "Hey what is this kid doing in our car? Guess we will kidnap him." and a good half hour of solid kayfabe from my parents and sister. I guess it seems silly but it honestly used to freak me out, I'd have nightmares about a family who looked exactly like mine abducting me and replacing me with my mirror twin.
As the child of someone with NPD, thank you for covering this topic with such nuance! If I'd understood narcissism better from earlier on in my life I would have suffered less. I hope this video helps others.
mantis needs her own movie man, she's so underappreciated - quill and gamora (whilst lovable great characters) totally overshadow mantis to the point i didn't appreciate her being traumatised to such an extent
Mt homegirl Mantis is fucking wonderful, and I am looking forward so much to her getting more screen time. As much as I felt meh on "Infinity War" - her bouncing gleefully in the background of that planet is legitimately my favourite part, and as much as I enjoyed "Endgame", her one line about using knives was fucking magic. Pom Klementieff is amazing, and I want more of this character. I am so happy she is getting love in this breakdown.
I think one of the things the show was arguing was that Loki was in fact not a narcissist but playing into the only aspect that ever brought him success in life. Look at how at the end of Thor 1 his motivation was to move into a different persona and fill the one of his Brother's, or in Thor 2 how he plays into the role by trying to hide his grief for the death of his Mother. Hiddleston is a producer on the show and if you watch the behind the scenes how he is depicted in the show appears to be in line with Hiddleston's own take on the character.
Yep i refuse to agnowledge weird not loki like loki, in avengers, else he has either pretty good emotional motivation, even the "trust my anger" for his mom shows how much he cared and in part one he just lasheds out how he was gaslit and lied to all his life. Bad thing but reasonable messed up build up. In he is, not that great written honestly. Tony is better example of a narsicist i think, thats why he was good as guy causing avengers 2 crisis and civil war.
Yeah the fact that Lindsey uses that he loves his mother in Loki as a sign he's not narcissistic but he's always loved his mother from day 1. It's not inconsistent writing, it's a core motivation of his but ofc if there was any, it would make sense bc different writers and directors
Yeah I agree. What I got out of the show is that his seemingly ‘narcissistic side’ is just a persona, and act/illusion he puts on, but it’s not what he actually believes inside. Unlike an actual narcissist, Loki is very self aware.
@@marocat4749 Apart from the Avengers being written to be thematically simple, Loki IS under the influence of the mindstone throughout it, and we saw what a few minutes with it in the same room did to the avengers.
This is only a very small part of the video, but I appreciate that subtle dig at D&D saying "But Daenerys stood up to her abusive brother, therefore it's totally in character that she's a sociopath who will burn down a city!"
*Six minutes in:* "Oh, I think I might be a narcissist this is confronting." *Ten minutes in:* "Ok I might be, but my mother definitely is without question."
Hey I have narcisstic parents too! They seem genuinely too far down the rabbit hole to ever change for the better. I recently realized I picked up a lot more of their bad behavior than I thought I did. I think a lot of us kids of narcs have a learned narcissism because we had to played their games all the time, and also we learned how to be people from them. But I don't think we're the same as them, we just have some bad habits to unlearn. So yeah, you may be narcisstic out of habit but you are not a narcissist. 🙂 Keep trying to be better! If you don't, then when your brains stops wanting to learn new things you'll be more or less stuck with these habits like our narc parents.
my boyfriend and i are both children of narcissists and I think what we kids of narcissists have to do is recognise the traits (self-pity, lack of responsibility, etc.) we've picked up and work through them. The biggest thing that defines a narcissist is the inability to self-reflect and as long as you keep an eye on yourself and work on the habits you've picked up we should be fine. I personally find accepting responsibility very empowering. Responding to someone telling you you've hurt them with "sorry" instead of offence. Life is just so much easier when you're not trying to fight everyone
@@borednerd5767 I suffered extreme narcissistic abuse and I do not feel like I inherited from them. In fact, I always felt like I was not their child. I hated them deeply by the time I left because everything they did was wrong while they prevented me from succeeding and made everything my fault. But I have improved myself to be one of the best people in the world (I know how narcissistic it sounds, and that is why I keep saying it, it is not bad to value yourself highly when you deserve it), and I had examined them for such a long time and I depended on them from a fundamental level and still need to depend on others for a while. The fact that I had been able to see so many things that they should have learned over their lifetime and the fact that they never acknowledged any progress I made as a person, it was unbearable. But that hatred is entirely restrained to those who have ruined my life for so many years. I see nothing wrong with other people and I wish to learn them and I think the only thing I learned from the narcissistic devils is that no matter how great of a person you are, it will be hard to have people see your true value and showing yourself efficiently and accepting the rejection that comes with that is an important skill. For all of my life, people did not even get involved deep enough with me for me to make mistakes or show how much I could support them. They probably thought I was either too hard to relate with or too much of a stain on their image based on superficial qualities and rumors. Additionally, I was called smart, attractive and stuff by the Devils, but I never bought into that. And when I actually started getting smarter and having a body I could personally appreciate, they never supported me in those areas and tried to offer their solutions. In fact, it is such a devilish lie to tell someone they are smart only to not give their thoughts any weight.
"Someone with NPD will never have that 'Come to Jesus' moment" If you've ever had a relationship with a narcissist, that's what hit the hardest with Loki, episode 1. You know that confronting the narcissist with their misdeeds over the course of their life, resulting in a "Come to Jesus" moment will never happen. But holy shit, you'll never know how many times I've fantasized about that happening. To me, it's a wish fulfillment.
Yes, so much this. You hope for so long that if you can just get through to them, if they can just understand that they've caused you real pain, you can begin to move forward and improve things. Sadly, you can't establish healthy boundaries for yourself until you accept that it's not possible.
I agree that's pretty much true but loki is trying to say that even if the person whom you may know in real life is the most self interested person in the world if giant tentacle monsters popped up out of nowhere and destroyed most of the earth that person might just think "you know maybe I'm not the most important person I think I am" and not just for a little while. Basically the mcu writers assume that even the largest egotist would have their narcissism collapse in the face of cosmic terror or existential dread
@@PHOENIXGUNDAM that's a good point. But it kind of seems like saying someone with depression might be cured if world peace were achieved, they got a supportive community, and they won the lottery. Not impossible, but it does seem like it is discounting the biological component.
I really appreciated the Loki series as a reflection of how labels can be used to ignore the complexity of the person they are applied to. In this case this variant of Loki is not actually a clinical narcissist, but thanks to the label and implicate bias against those of the Loki category, people focus on his narcissistic behaviors but ignore his altruism and othe aspects of the person behind the persona. It reminds me of the way people grapple with labels like criminal and thug, often denying the humanity of the individual that label is applied to and justifying abuse against those people.
@@infinitum8558 a while ago Lindsay sold pins, one themed around her brand and one themed around Natalie. The “feud” was about which pin would have more sales to see which creator had more fans (both pins sold out). It’s just a joke; I think they are good friends.
@@infinitum8558 it started when Natalie took like half of Lindsay's talking points for a video about transphobia in cinema (or it was the other way around idr) and then Lindsay sold Lindsay and Natalie pins to see who wins the feud.
I interpreted Sylvie’s assumption in the end that Loki was going to betray her as her fear overtaking her - the fear of intimacy/love/etc. So she retreated back to what she knew, isolation, and her mind just came up with the excuse “oh he was going to betray me anyway”
Yeah. I mean she lived in apocalypses all of her life. So like 1000 years of watching every person she's ever met die in cataclysmic event after cataclysmic event. She's gonna have some issues relating to other people.
Loki's frustration and hurt at Sylvie's insistence on hissing and spitting and clawing at him like a feral cat when he really does just want to be friends had me going "Now you know how Thor feels whenever he tries to talk to you".
@@Rhowena13 I'd argue Loki did a better job for Sylvie than Thor ever did for him. He doesn't call her past "imagined slights" or leave her on the ground of Sakaar with a device that boils the veins...
if we know anything about the internet, it’s that it’s a font of reason and well-thought-out discourse, especially when it comes to (1) superhero fandom and (2) Lindsay Ellis content
"Well it's clear this video about people with an personality disorder that distorts their self-importance isn't about MEEEEE!! That quiz I took on Facebook earlier today which asked me for my profile info said so!"
I figure the issue with narcissism as opposed to something like depression is that it seems like it hurts others more than it hurts the person who has it. It's easier to feel bad for someone who can't stop hurting themselves than it is to feel bad for someone who's been manipulating you, and who apparently by definition cannot show remorse for their actions. But yeah I thought the Loki series felt 100% like fanfiction, a much more streamlined 'dreamy' character who wears tight shirts and loves the new girl character. Not necessarily 'wrong', but not the most consistent portrayal of the character.
It does hurt them though, I've never met a person who seemed to have NPD who seemed happy. It cannot feel good to constantly chase validation and to do it by manipulating and hurting people around you. You surround yourself with miserable people who are miserable because of your own actions. They don't even have the luxury of being sociopaths, they can tell when they've made people hate them, and it can break their hearts to see it happen, especially if it means they can no longer get validation from a desired source. It's gotta suck, a lot.
You may be onto something there. Cos I have a mental illness that's similarly still very stigmatised (schizophrenia) cos people believe this dumb myth that people with schizophrenia are violent, a danger to others. When in fact people with all mental illness, including schizophrenia, commit fewer crimes (including violent crimes) on average per person than mentally healthy people do. But people don't really know that fact. Also people with mental illness are way more likely to be _VICTIMS_ of crime than mentally healthy people are. (I'll post sources for all this stuff at the bottom if people are interested) But yeah despite the truth, anyone with schizophrenia gets labelled a psycho killer (qu'est-ce que c'est). People with schizophrenia are only really a threat to themselves, through self harm, suicide, drug addiction etc. Literally 90% of people with schizophrenia smoke, it's nuts, and it's part of why the average life expectancy of someone who has it is 20 years lower than the average. But yeah I just tell people anyway, and people who ghost me after that weren't true friends in the first place clearly. And I'm an extreme introvert cos of the illness, so it suits me to not need to text 50 different people every day and be forced to go see them in person all the time. But yeah. Depression and anxiety and Bipolar disorder to an extent have been destigmatised, which is great. Just gotta keep that going. Do it for all of the mental illnesses. They're way more common than people think. Like schizophrenia is as common as being gay is, so think about how many gay people you know, and you probably know a similar amount with schizophrenia, and have absolutely no idea. Cos it's really really easy to hide the symptoms of it unlike what the movies might depict. And because of the stigma, people don't wanna go round telling everyone. So you almost certainly have co-workers or friends or even possibly family members who have it. And that's just one mental illness. Lindsay said it in the video, people with narcissistic personality disorder don't seek help for it because of the stigma of being labelled a narcissist. If they actually get treatment and meds for it, they can manage their symptoms, and it'll be fine. And then the stigma will be lowered because of that. So it's a catch 22 really. We've got to destigmatise it to get to the point where we can destigmatise it. Labelling everyone with it as a bad person is not gonna help anybody Sources - www.time-to-change.org.uk/media-centre/responsible-reporting/violence-mental-health-problems www.mentalhealth.gov/basics/mental-health-myths-facts jech.bmj.com/content/70/3/223
Same with Sociopathy, really. It is a mental illness, and I can't imagine not only not having basic emotions and empathy but also being unable to understand that you don't have them. People with OCD, BPD, depression, PTSD, even to a lesser extent schizoprenics can seek help and in a current envoronment will get it, but narcissists and sociopaths won't, so it's that much harder to sympathize with them AND help them. As far as mental disorders go, these two are the ones that are the scariest to most people.
@@mellowsign I don't think OP was implying narcissists aren't hurt by their own disorder. They were implying that, from the outside looking in, it seems like it hurts others more than it hurts them, which is why destigmatising the disorder is so much more difficult than other disorders. I still think this reply's important to clarify just how it must hurt narcissists too, but I think both comments are valid in their analysis.
@@mellowsign it should suck. No one gets off of hurting others scott-free and they shouldn’t. You either work to change the behavior or you suffer the consequences.
"Obsessive self loathing is a form of narcissism" I've got to remember that. Eep. Also thanks for reminding us that while the Office is billed as a comedy, David Brent is fundamentally a tragic character
@@ariatrent6263 Is it because it’s “obsessive”, so it’s self loathing that is only concerned with how you feel and not how you and your actions affect others? (I genuinely don’t know, just guessing here. Sorry if this reply is unwelcome.)
@@ariatrent6263 Narcissism is often misrepresented as being pathologically arrogant, so they just think they're the best at everything. In actual fact it's more like you view other people as extensions of yourself. Self-obsession, not necessarily self-love. A self-loathing narcissist might also be a misanthrope for this reason - they see the traits they hate about themselves in other people.
Loki isn't a Narcissist. He's a smart guy who has bought into the false narrative he's been told all his life: he's been always TOLD he's a narcissist, so every positive feeling he has towards himself gets wrapped up in that story.
He also gleefully commits murder as a performance and seeks validation through conquest and domination. That sounds pretty narcissist if incredibly exaggerated for superhero nonsense.
That's my take on him too. He isn't one, but he has internalised it because people kept saying that he is selfish, will betray them and that he is a liar. And then on top of that there is the internalised racism of being taught that Frost Giants are violent monsters and should be killed/defeated. So being narcissistic and murderous is most likely not something he wants to be, but something he thinks he should be.
@@SuperPal-tr3go Thor 1 Loki and Avengers Loki feel like completely different characters. Also its been more or less confirmed that the mind stone was messing with him throughout the Avengers movie.
Loki is the child of narcisists that's projected onto all his life that might have absorbed some of the bad behaviors and habits but is hardly the real deal
I have seen someone else observe that Loki isn't a Narcissist, but he THINKS he is. And the same about Sylvie. They discussed the odd paradox of someone who believes that they will ultimately hurt the people they care about because they believe they are incapable of genuinely caring about other people.
My father would routinely forget or abandon me and force me, even as young as 6 years old, to find my own way home. My mother was emotionally and physically abusive, and she murdered my dog out of spite. And yet both narcissistic parents think that they were not only very good parents, but don't understand why I refuse to talk to them. So yes. Lindsey is right on the money with that one.
It could just be me projecting, but I see Loki's narcissism as stemming more from C-PTSD, rather than NPD on its own. It's more congruent with his childhood history of abandonment and neglect, and also can explain in-narrative why his empathy was buried (as a defence mechanism) and emerged once he was exposed to a healthy relationship 🤷
Tbh looking at Norse mythology one of the beauties of these God is that they're all narcissistic.. because theyre God's. Asgaurdians. Everyone else is lesser than. And that narcissistic nature is what makes them so human in their stories. Their faults have them make mistakes and the shame is really nice to see from mythology. Like Loki is mischievous and tricky in nature and the asgaurds treat him worse because he's part giant.. and he constantly causes problems around asguard. It's interesting how loki is more narssastic in the mcu when Thor and Odin were just about as bad in the mythos. Loki does fall in love with a jormund And births fenrir which causes ragnarok to begin. Fenrir is suppose to kill Odin too. And they hated loki because it is unchangeable prophecy he's destined to invoke. His love for his son caused the end of asguard. (Odins fear caused fenrirs anger and power grow) Narssastic, but also understandable.
@@phataldestroyer Odin is pretty bad in the MCU too and I'd definitively peg him as a narcissist. I mean between the convenient "oh, look at how much you hurt me" Odinsleep and the way he nopes out of life in front of Loki and Thor. Not to mention the treatment of Hella
@@vanyadolly I always thought the Hella approach was weird As it's Odins fault ragnarok really comes into place. I guess throwing his mistakes onto his children is a pretty Odin thing to do. Typical narcissistic patent lol
As somebody who just ended a longterm relationship with a narcissist, I hope I see the signs sooner if I have to deal with that again. There's no accountability, no understanding, no respect. You barely exist to a narcissist when you aren't directly validating and gratifying that person. Your feelings and thoughts don't matter unless they're positive toward the narcissist. Any criticism, concern, or disagreement is treated as extreme hostility. There's no integrity. It's exhausting, but I didn't really recognize how severe the problem was for years.
@@RoseCentaur1916 I appreciate this greatly, although I have my own issues with therapy. Gosh, I mostly use youtube comment sections to make stupid jokes, but this topic hit home and I'm glad I shared. Maybe somebody will read this and think more about their relationships and learn from it. I was gullible, and I hate that word, it's a nasty word, but that's what I was.
@Gabriel Victor that's true. I had one vaguely serious relationship before that. I was with the narcissist for 4 years. I paid for almost everything too. I was like a low income sugar daddy. Always given many excuses about why she wasn't getting a job or able to pay for things herself. Never charged her nay rent. Looking back, I made a lot of mistakes that way, just giving and giving all the time.
Not super relevant, but my biggest issue with Loki is that at no point in the whole first season do we see the protagonist use his established skillset to successfully solve a problem. It made me feel faked out. Like I came here at least in part to watch Loki scheme and illusion and shenanigan his way out of tight spots, and there is just ZERO.
20:19 FOR REAL THO. Dave Bautista is an incredible actor. His performance in the opening scene of Blade Runner 2049 is riveting. He's in that movie for all of five minutes and it makes such an impression.
I kinda thought the whole thing with the ending of Loki was that Sylvie was just not really able to trust someone, especially because it seems like she's kinda sworn off getting close to anyone in the pursuit of her goal of ending the TVA? I didn't get the sense that it was much to do with Loki personally unless she's just familiar with how manipulative Loki variants usually are lol
I appreciate the effort that went into this video, but I do want to chime in with the others on here saying that NPD is not a monolith. Some people with NPD struggle more with empathy, some are skewed more heavily toward the self-aggrandizement traits. You only need to have five of the nine qualities you listed at the beginning of this video to be diagnosed with NPD. A lot of the blanket statements made in this video about internal states and the ability of people with NPD to care about other human beings are true for some, but not for all. I love that this has more nuance than the average discussion about NPD, which is the first step toward the level of societal acceptance that you mention we've mostly achieved for things like depression, but it was difficult to hear it still being discussed in such absolute terms.
I have a background in psychology (I'll be finishing my master's next fall). My area is more child and developmental psychology, but I have studied many other areas including personality disorders. I'm not an expert at all, but I still would like to weigh in. I don't know if I would consider Loki to be a narcissist, but he does exhibit the traits quite strongly. The times that he does show empathy and regret for his actions do not mean that he definitely does not have NPD. Saying something like "a TRUE narcissist would never..." is a mistake many people make when discussing any personality disorder. There is no such thing as a "true" narcissist. Personality disorders are tricky, and the traits are not absolute or exhibited 100% of the time in all situations for all people. Like most mental disorders, personality disorders exist on a spectrum. People with NPD can have that "come to Jesus" moment but it doesn't happen often (don't hold your breath waiting for it). When it does, it's usually because they end up hurting someone they genuinely care about. A narcissist will always be a narcissist but that does not mean they are absolutely incapable of empathy or love. They can learn to recognize their negative behavior and self-correct. However, you are right that you can't character arc yourself to being cured. Personality disorders can't be cured, but those that have them can grow, it's just is a long painful process and is not often successful. We always say that you can't change the way you feel, but you CAN change the way you behave. As you said, the big hurdle to overcome is finding the motivation to do the work when they don't think there is anything wrong with them, but it is possible and it does happen. i will say that I love all of your videos and it's refreshing to see a real discussion about NPD that isn't just "all narcissists are evil and bad".
Glad to get some validation on this. I've been in so many arguments with people who fundamentally don't understand that absolutes aren't required and that people with NPD can love others and do feel shame and hurt (I feel like the aversion to that and deeply hidden low self esteem is often the root of the narcissistic behaviors at least in the one I know best). In my experience, it is hard for them not to treat the people they actually love as pawns or extensions of themselves at some point or even regularly. It can really fluctuate. Though someone might argue what I was observing was a tactic to keep people around by pretending to exhibit the behaviors we would associate with loving someone as an individual. So I really can't know.
This was a great analysis, but I can't agree that Borderline Personality Disorder is less stigmatized. The way I have seen people talk about those with BPD online is on par or even worse than the way they talk about narcissists.
Agreed. They also tend to face more irl stigma even from medical professionals, possibly because unlike people with NPD, people with BPD usually seek help and get diagnosed and the diagnosis itself is highly stigmatized and misunderstood even in the medical and mental health community, to the point where professionals used to (and may still) refer to it as a "wastebasket diagnosis," meaning one they gave to people (typically women and AFAB people) who they saw as "difficult patients" (because they didn't respond well to treatment that was actually inappropriate for their condition) and wanted to literally throw away because they didn't understand them or how to treat them. The stigma around BPD is intense and has been for decades and the diagnosis itself can be a barrier to accessing treatment when professionals stigmatize patients with it, which happens far too often. Edited to note that research says a lot of people diagnosed with BPD (especially women and AFAB people) are actually neurodivergent and were originally misdiagnosed with BPD, but that's a whole other can of worms, though still important to mention in the conversation around BPD and stigma.
The thing with Loki is that hes a kind of "false "narcissistic, but he is actually a pleaser, framed by his own father, Odin (a true narcissistic BTW). He acts as a narcissistic because maybe is the way he looks at Odin and Thor, the extension of Odin himself. He is Jealous and craves for attention and he is tired of being a pleaser to never be recognize, so he acts as his vision of his father in order to get personal revenge, to make everybody suffer what he has passed. And maybe this is not so obvious because Odin acts as a wise and loving father, but we can confirm Odin as narcissistic when we finally get to know Hela and how she talks about him and the fact that Loki was always closer to his mother rather than his father. The main thing with Loki and the main theme in the series, is that hes such an internalized pleaser that he acts and admits the things the world say that he is supposed to be and he never question that, until he met Sylvie, a reflection of his own neglected personality. Loki series is about revealing Loki himself as a pleaser, a very weird kind of pleaser, and not the narcissistic everybody thinks he is.
I might be wrong, but i'm pretty sure children of narcissistic parents can actually develop narcissistic traits without being one, that's always what i considered loki being since he grew up with Odin. Everything he does in my opinion is almost just trauma related but not because he's a narcissist. * He trust no one but himself - He seemed to always have been the family's black sheep, the scapegoat of Odin, always on his own or following Thor's friends, i want to insist on that cause Loki in Asgard has NO FRIENDS of his own. * He ruined his brother ceremony for "a little fun" and don't seem sorry for it - He's always been in his shadow, he was not sorry because he thought Thor's deserved it. * Basically his want for power in general - seeing how Odin treats him, and seeing how Loki himself said it, it's the only way he found to get his father attention and praises. When he realize destroying Jotunheim wasn't enough for that he let go and fell into the SPACE. (then there's avenger 1, but we know he was more or less manipulated, pressured by thanos) * His agression or mockeries, basically everytime he make witty comment to hurt people - Another way to defend himself and hide his vulnerabilities, usually he spit them out after someone poked a soft spot of him. I agree with you Loki grew as a people pleaser, probably because of his family. People pleaser also have this thing of shaping themselves around the person they interact with because the main point of people pleasing is to ... please them. His "inflated" ego with all his "i am a god your dull creature" for me are hopeless attempt to prove his worth and convince others *and himself* that he is worth it. There's so much i could say about Loki's behavior to be honest, even though i have no qualifications in psychology, growing up with a narcissistic parent helps me a tad in that ... :x
Just adding that yes loki is selfish but i would bet my 2 hands that it is linked to the fact that he can trust no one, why would he help someone if he can't even trust them and there's nothing in it for him ? Sylvie and Loki are not that different from each other for that, they do things for themselves because they can't trust and be trusted I remember telling to a friend "Loki's not a narcissistic, but you know who can behave like one without being one ? victims of narcissistic, especially the one who grow up with one" that's why Loki take accountability in the show, that's why he get away from those behaviors when he heals, because he's not one
yes, this. i'm a child of two narcissist parents who grew up an emotional chameleon and a pleaser, and Loki's story always hit me wayyy too close to home. uncomfortably so, despite that Loki and i have very little in common in how our pleaser tendencies actually manifest. (he's bombastic, i'm used to making myself so small i almost disappear.) and like, i'm not even convinced the writers of the movies did it consciously, it almost strikes me as a thoughtless coincidence that he was written that way. am i the only one who walked away from Loki's MCU entries with the impression that half the people working on them didn't pick up on his character's emotional baggage? sometimes i feel like i'm reading way too much into things, sometimes i feel convinced the ball was dropped on bringing some closure to Loki's family situation, and it genuinely fucks with me that they didn't bother. i was hoping that the Loki series would pick up the slack, and sure it kinda does in ways, but it also felt like they were dancing around the topic, touching on points here and there without being able to properly put their finger on the core of it... or maybe i just need to watch it again. either way, i'm allowing myself to be cautiously optimistic for the second season, at least.
"NPD is not a disorder you can "character arc" your way out of." THIS. Pretty much sums up the frustrations I have with the "villains as the heroes" trend in media (i.e. Loki, Cruella, The Joker, etc). We're so in love with redemption arcs that we produce things that further gaslight those entangled with people who have NPD and are trying to figure out how to make sense of reality and stop getting hurt.
Did people actually walk away from The Joker thinking he was a hero and that was a redemption arc? Maybe making him sympathetic and showing his own framing of the world but, I thought the movie was more of a "the world exacerbates problems and that inevitably leads to people being awful and villainous. So stop being so awful world or we will get more Jokers which we DON'T want." Which has grains of truth but is problematic in its own way.
I've noticed something about a lot of 'redemption' arcs, and it's that they're not actually redemption arcs at all. What they are is a retroactive rationalization of how nothing that a villainous character did was actually their fault. Usually this comes in the form of a tragic backstory that all a characters villainous actions are explained as being a result of, not a result of their own choices. Which is not a redemption, it's just a denial of responsibility, and of the character's own free will. And I think in part because of this, I've noticed people refusing to accept a redemption arc where the story acknowledges that anything bad the character did was their own fault. They can't actually forgive a character unless said character's actions can be framed as not their fault, no matter how much the character seems to be changing their behavior. Which is to say, really, that a lot of the 'forgiveness' narratives aren't actually about forgiveness, they're about shifting blame.
@@zoro115-s6b yep. Redemption can’t happen where there is no responsibility, and forgiveness that denies reality is ugly, not magical and beautiful. Villains CAN change. But it’s not by us suddenly realizing they really meant well and there were just factors we didn’t know about. That puts the onus on us, as if our rationalizing changes reality. Understanding the full picture, while important, doesn’t erase what actually occurred; “villains” have to actually change in ways other people experience and that happens in the present and future, not the past.
@@LC-sc3en Short answer? Yes, people thought Joker was about making him the hero. The issue is that the movie bends over backwards to make you the viewer want him to succeed, nevermind at what. He is, unarguably, the protagonist of the film, which means that we're invested in him by default. There's plenty of media out there where the protagonist is undeniably a horrible person, and a lot of it does a way better job communicating that you shouldn't *like* them to the viewer than Joker did. It's not a movie about a man making decisions that throw him deeper and deeper into the path of a bad person, no, the world just happens to him and 'forces' him to be bad every now and then. The final shot of the movie (minus the out-of-nowhere framing device) is a horde of rioters basically bowing down to him as he stands on a flaming cop car. It's kind of impossible to argue that the movie's about anything other than painting him as someone to look up to. Then you also have to look at the fact that despite any other intentions that may or may not exist, it's still a movie about a comic book villain who's had almost 80 years of people seeing him as their favorite part of Batman. Those people, for sure, want him to succeed, because it means their favorite Batman villain gets to hang around some more. Not to mention the downright dangerous 'stopping your meds frees you' message that it pushed, holy shit. Him shooting the talk show host was framed as the first action taken by his 'true self,' unclouded by societal expectations and medication. It's a bad message.
@@saeyyy The archetypal "complex villain with a tragic backstory" narrative is really fundamentally broken. Not only does it put the onus on victims to figure out why the perpetrator of harmful and evil acts isn't really a bad person rather than on the perpetrator to not do bad things in the first place, it also strikes me as really insulting to anyone who's experienced trauma. The typical "sympathetic villain" can be summed up as: "It's not his fault he does evil things! It's all because of his traumatic past." That kind of thinking frames itself as compassionate to trauma survivors, but it treats them as though they have no free will. Experiences, good or bad, can influence choices, but they don't dictate them. Treating someone as though they have no say in their own actions isn't kindness, it's condescending, demeaning, and insulting. Or, for someone truly malicious, an easy excuse for them to do whatever they want and not acknowledge responsibility.
looking into resources on npd vs basically anything else for writing always left me feeling frustrated because they would always have these very long very judgemental sounding screeds then end with "most narcissists don't seek treatment because they want to be perceived as good people and as such cant recognize these behaviors in themselves, but if any of this sounds like you contact a therapist" like if the point of the symptoms list is to get people with npd to look into treatment maybe present it in a neutral tone and not "narcissistic people are crybaby losers who hurt everyone they meet" ???????
I have always loved Mantis in a way I can't really explain to others. Like, why would I pick this odd character with almost no screen time as my favorite out of the entire huge cast of MCU-characters. This video made it click for me. Seeing her cover next to Ego, she displays the body language of someone surviving narcissistic abuse. Someone who survived by making her self smaller, more appeasing. It hurts to say I relate to that on a deep level.
I think one thing with Sylvie is that she knows that he's a "Loki" and "all Lokis" could at any minute flip flop. She doesn't need to have seen the MCU like we have, she's seen MORE than we have, knows there are Loki variants from fighting with the TVA all this time, so she knows that Loki could turn against her (despite evidence to the contrary).
It also says more about Sylvie than Loki anyway since Sylvie's problem is that she can not trust anyone, especially someone who's basically a pathological liar and she's been on this mission for millennia. Why would she give her entire mission which she has been striving for millennia for someone she's met for a few weeks or days who is known to flip flop and lie all the time?. It doesn't matter that this Loki has never betrayed her because Loki's are known to make you think you can trust him to then backstab them later and I think Sylvie would rather see that Loki so she can finish her mission than to actually believe in Loki and give up.
At that point honestly either choice was plausible. Maybe she considered if she were in his position she'd double-cross, or maybe it was panic. It's the decision they went with to get to their eventual point b and it's reasonable enough for me to accept that Sylvie just made a critically bad choice in the end.
@@DanzelGlovington I don't even know if it was a bad choice. The choice seemed to be participate in the intentional genocide that you were a victim of, 2. Allow intentional genocide to continue when you could stop it. 3. Stop the intentional genocide, reestablish free will, and get some sweet revenge and risk multiversal war which has the potential to be worse. Also the only proof you have that a multiversal war is inevitable is the word of the genocidal authoritarian who would like the genocide to continue. Granted he and the math of the concept of the multiverse is pretty convincing. Also I am not even sure if killing HWR kicked off the multiverse, that should have happened or would have happened as soon as Mobius and B13 got the TVA to stop pruning timelines altogether. Also HWR was saying all the things to get Sylvie to kill him. My theory is he was tired, bored, and nihilistic.
I feel like there is a distinction made between someone being a narcissist and having NPD. Similar to how a person can be obsessive compulsive without having OCD or being depressed due to something like the death of a loved one but not having depression. In regards to people liking narcissists in fiction but not reality, it just makes logical sense. Grandiose acting characters are entertaining, and far removed from the interpersonal harm that the real thing can cause due to being fictional. A lot of things are explicitly enjoyed in fiction but hated in real life for exact same reason. Most people aren't going to want to be in an irl fight scene for example.
I'm right there with you on Infinity War. Killing Gamora SHOULDN'T HAVE WORKED, but apparently Disney is fine communicating to its audience that abuse IS love after all. I was waiting for Endgame to reveal that Gamora was some kind of time bomb to undo the snap, but instead they just photoshopped Black Widow into her death scene with added dialogue to make infertile people feel shitty about themselves. Also, I will forever be mad about how Falcon and the Winter Soldier treats PTSD. People with PTSD often feel guilty for things that aren't their fault, like abuse they endured or violence they survived. Bucky Barnes literally had no control over his actions as the Winter Soldier, but he blames himself and seeks atonement. And his therapist reinforces that belief! And Sam Wilson (a former VA counselor who previously led a PTSD support group) agrees that it's his fault and he should atone! Fuck that noise. For an industry full of people in therapy, Hollywood in general and Disney in particular sure doesn't seem to know how mental illness works.
not a hot take but i feel like if they were going to go down the whole "clone love as expression of narcissism" route, they should've gone all the way and given us tom hiddleston making out with blue, slightly wider tom hiddleston
As someone who has experienced the knock-on effects of narcissism coming from people they love who have NPD, I think the most important thing with narcissism as a trope is to push that it is something people can be aware of in themselves, and take steps to address. The idea that chronically narcissistic behaviour is a choice led the people who manipulated and used me to believe they were doing it because they wanted to, and it was who they were, despite feeling bad and having some part of them regret their actions/wanting to stop. Ultimately, I had to cut them out of my life for my own wellbeing, but the idea that you can and should seek help for narcissistic tendencies is extremely important. Admitting to yourself you have a narcissism problem is brave and painful. At the same time, narcissism is often romanticised as an ideal. We seem to be extremely confused about whether narcissists are desirable or evil. From personal experience, I can say they're easy to love, easy to hate, and extremely hard to let go. There is no condition more tragic to me.
That’s why I love Bojack Horseman. Ends with self reflection and realization, but his loved ones separate and go their own ways while still loving from afar!
Easy to love, easy to hate, extremely hard to let go--this spoke to me. I have a number of narcissists in my life, some who have gentled a bit with age and self-awareness, some who most certainly have not. Even the ones who have scarred me the most, I can't quite let go of. The hardest thing for me is the way they deflect responsibility for their actions on to other people until you find yourself questioning your own motivations, as in, "Did I cause this?" and only hard evidence reminds you that you actually didn't. Thanks for the insights!
This resonated with me very strongly. One of the people I love most in my family I had to stop talking to because I realised I was just throwing myself against a brick wall trying to get him to understand why his behaviour hurt him so badly. That said I still love him very much and don't believe he is a bad person, he has issues he refused to acknowledge or work on and for that reason I had to cut him out of my life.
The non-narcissistic qualities you're talking about in Loki were established long before the TV show, IMO. Thor: The Dark World established that he loved his mother in an unselfish way, and if we assume his sacrifice at the end was intended as genuine and he simply took advantage of his unexpected survival (rather than the whole thing having been faked), he's already shown he'll sacrifice himself for someone he loves. In Thor: Ragnarok, as I recall, his motives are also more complex than just always doing what's best for him, because IIRC when he joins in to help save Asgard, it's considered an almost hopeless last-ditch effort. Sure, he'll get adulation if he succeeds, but it's more likely he'll simply die, so a true narcissist's best option would've been to try and escape, and go find easier forms of validation elsewhere. We also see numerous hints that he actually does love Thor, certainly in a dysfunctional way, but not as an extension of himself, and in Infinity War he's even willing to give up the Tesseract to save him. So I don't think the Loki TV show (which, cards on the table, I haven't seen yet) is retconning anything about Loki's personality. We've already seen that he's capable of genuine love, empathy, and selflessness. We've also seen that he can be colossally self-absorbed and arrogant, so calling him narcissistic isn't wrong. Whether he actually fits the criteria for NPD is another matter, and "diagnosing" characters is always tricky. There are some theories that say there are less severe forms of NPD where the persion capable of more empathy, and potentially recognizing the problems in their behavior, so potentially Loki could fall in that category. On the other hand, he could simply be a person who's narcissistic but doesn't have a disorder, which seems to be this video's view.
I would argue that assuming he didn't fake his death in Dark World is a big assumption. As entertaining as the idea is, it would also be assuming that when confronted with a giant monster he stabbed still being alive and turning towards him, this thousand year old illusionist warrior chose to stand there like a deer in the headlights and get grabbed. Yet also was quick enough on his feet and have wherewithal when painfully impaled to plant a grenade. Loki's choice at the end of Ragnorok to me was more about who he was seeking validation and approval from and how easy it would be to establish. He is definitely racist like most Asgardians. Ruling the earth would have been alright but seemed to be half about proving himself to Thor and Odin. If Asgard is gone, and he has no favor with the elder of the Universe who is left to impress? Plus Thor made it very clear that validation and praise was something Loki could actually get from him. The idea that he had it but never noticed (possibly because it wasn't expressed) means that it shouldn't be too hard to get back. Plus he brought a ship. I bet his brilliant planing skills never got past "sneak ship to people while Thor is making a scene and bolt safely away". But like you said, that's just my own two cents as an unqualified rando on the internet.
@@LC-sc3en Loki might have been suicidal during the Dark World. He was clearly depressed while imprisoned, creating illusions in his cell and living in them. He was devastated after he heard of his mother's death. He was told by Thor he would still live his life in a cell. Getting stabbed could have been conscious or subconscious decision. Caused both by grief for his mother's death, and despair of being brought back to live rest of his life alone in a cell.
@@Sienisota sure but that's a LOT to read into it. And there wasn't a scene with him living in illusions in the final movie. Maybe a deleted scene you are referencing?? It seems just more likely to me that given the bad bargain Thor offered him, he took the opportunity to stage a death and escape. Rather than a convoluted plan of "stab this guy oh he isn't dead. Well I suppose Joe's a good enough time as any to let him kill me and plant a grenade"
A Narcissist's Prayer That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did... You deserved it.
I know you aren't around anymore, but I came back to rewatch this essay and just want to say how much I loved it. I was trying to reconcile what you said about him being magically cured of narcissism by mentioning it and seemingly magically cured of it in the TVA Loki. And think a bit of attention has to be given to the fact that Loki experiences an interdimensional, traumatic, next level brain breaking existential break down. You can't go back to your life. Ever. Your life doesn't even matter and was scripted. The way he goes limp as he paws at the Infinity Stones that he gave up everything for that are just sitting in a drawer in piles, being used as paper weights. He watches his mom die. he watches his own death. "End of File." End of Life. I think at that point even the most powerful narcissist may be jarred out of whatever pattern of thought that is. If you imagine the real psychological trauma of being abducted by aliens, then try to apply than having all the secrets of the universe revealed to you while you are kept prisoner and were about to be put to death. He struggles a bit here and there and still displays SOME qualities, but I Think there's a real reason that he progresses so quickly. How could you ever be the same after that? He gets directly fully proven to him that not only was his life not special, but that he is not even the only him. This all powerful universe control is God like and they are practically bored of him. Like they've already heard him say the same shit hundreds of times and it's old hat. I adore all your commentary on Ego too and the benefits of *some* narcissistic traits. That was really eye opening for me. And I do think that we should make a better attempt in stories to make a narcissist not instantly be a bad word. I get that you can't cure it, but if people were allowed to explore that and then begin steps to improve after they'd acknowledged it, that'd be the most healthy for everyone.
IMO, the problem comes from the fact that he often gets pigeon-holed by his peers and so often concludes to just play up into it for the attention. And when you've got a person who's predisposed to act/lie for attention (and supposed power/glory) it's hard to trust them even when they do change. Sylvie hasn't known him long. like, in the grand scheme of things a couple of days or weeks is nothing compared to the literal centuries these beings live. If anything, I think it's more of a fault to Sylvie's inability to trust others than it is of Loki becoming a more empathic person. He's always been empathetic, he's a caring person, but he often hides that part of himself--like in Thor 2. Sylvie's lived a harder life than Loki, she didn't get to live in the castle as he did. idk. the tragedy comes from Sylvie not being able to overlook past her faults and look at the big picture.
Yeah, I started to really love Loki when I saw how he really felt during Thor 2. It was the only good part of the movie. And it was very, very good. Made the entire movie worth it. So I think Loki was never really a narcissist. That was just the role he was assigned, and he decided to play it as best he could. But we do see the occasional cracks in the façade, even before IW and Loki the Series.
Great comment. For me Loki always represented envy, the only sin in which every participant is suffering. The reason why I like Loki as a character is because I pity him and I want him to be able to change for the better. This is a battle he can only fight with himself. I wouldn't call him a literal narcissist, his is a much deeper character trope than that. Calling him a straight up narcissist is a shallow interpretation of his character and the characters similar to him. Reading mythology made me love him more, because he is entertaining and out of the norm. The show was weird, but I already have a weird relationship with the MCU. But it is a nice touch that we were led to believe that the story revolved around Loki. He changed a lot, Sylvie is at Thor movie one now characterwise. Still don't like the romantic implications tho.
That is literally the story arc of 616 Loki in the comics, back in 2014. If you read a comic now, Loki’s firmly a chaotic neutral/good character, after he literally refuses to listen to other people’s preconceptions of himself as a villain, including his previous evil 616 incarnation, and evolved into the God of Stories (then sorta backslid into the God of Outcasts, but still a good guy now). He quite literally is confronted with his old evil-616 self who berated him, saying that he should embraces nostalgia and the security of being the villain everyone wants him to be.
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The funny thing about the song Brandy is that when we went to see this in theaters, my mom actually whispered to me that she kinda hates the song since it's about a dipshit sailor who leaves his girlfriend to be on a boat, so it it was pretty vindicating for her when it was revealed a half hour later that Ego is a total scumbag and the movie's main villain.
Yer mum's a smart lady.
It goes to show how well they thought out the music choices for these movies.
I put this song on my breakup mix in 1997.
very perceptive your mum is
Reminds me of when I watched Hot Fuzz in theaters with a friend and after the guy gets impaled through the bottom of the jaw I leaned over to him and said “you know that wouldn’t actually kill him” and then like a minute or two later he’s revealed to be a live and conscious but in a lot of pain.
I literally snorted at the Shane Dawson clips. That was fabulously edited.
Absolutely. If Gabbie Hanna was used, that would have pushed me over the edge.
Hes such a perfect example of this bullshit haha
I know!
The clip of Shane saying "I'm an empath" makes me cringe every time
It reminds me how there are those out there who claim to be empaths, but in reality are manipulating others into feeling what they feel and assuming that out of them.
I saw someone saying that Loki just THINKS he's a narcissist, and that his arc is about him figuring out that he's actually broken in a different way.
Exactly! He's always been told he was, painted into that role, but he isn't and needs to learn that to grow beyond the damage he does have.
That's amazing!
There are repeated lines across all of the episodes that argue two opposing views: that he is either hopelessly set in his destiny to be a villain or stating that he has the ability to choose a different, more heroic path. So yeah, I think the better question isn’t is he a narcissist, but does he have the ability to choose to be better than that narcissistic box the timeline is determined to put him in.
Lindsay is extremely intelligent. I do believe true NPD should be communicated to the audience in some way, by some character who is knowledgeable. I do believe depicting genuine types of people as seen irl is important, such as transgender characters. However I just wish she would not deconstruct narratives in such a way that she believes *every* decent character has to be aware of the nuances or real life definitions of disorders, genders, etc or be the extreme opposite and be completely intolerant and unlikable (the educated good guys vs uneducated antagonists). She points out how Mobius is wrong about Loki, how Sylvie misunderstands hi, as if they should be more aware by default despite context communicating otherwise (Mobius knows other lokis are narcissists, Sylvie only has herself to compare to). The story has to believable at the end of the day, has to keep your immersion and suspense of disbelief. Most people are somewhere in the middle: decent but not exactly in the know completely.
Narcissism can also be treated, in a way. Through therapy mostly. Like borderline, it is a disorder that you can develop due to your circumstances. And like borderline, it can be treated. Mobius talk with Loki in the first episode, seeing him for who he is without judgement, is basically the right type of therapy. That's what he needed. Same with classic/old man Loki. He needed to hear he could be different, that he could change.
"after everything I have done for you" "that I didn't ask for", the almost perfectly sums up the way my wife describes her childhood.
Me too, except this actually happened more in my 20's because I could not escape them and still can not and I learned to have a voice only to see them avoid seeing the core of the problems they made for me.
@@sigurdthebluethat sounds really painful. It's been 2 years, so I hope you're doing a bit better, now 🫂
I should not have laughed as hard as I did at "You'll Be In My Heart" playing when Gamora gets tossed off the cliff but here I am.
I did too. I did not expect that song, so I cackled really hard.
*Didn't that song beat The South Park Movie's musical song for an Emmy?*
Evvvv...ryyy....timeee....😆😅😆😅👻
@@toriagalaxy1566 It kept happening! lmao. The new "I'm losing to a bird!"
same reaction i had to the song playing and the caption "TOM HOOPER IS BAD AT MUSICALS" during Javert's curtain call.
As a psychologist, I'm just here to add a grain of nuance on the subject of NPD: Saying it's not "curable" might make it seem as something unchangeable, which it is not. Personality disorders are, in nature, chronic, and tend to stay quite stable across the life span, that is correct. However, with therapy (sometime without) and a lot of work, people with personality disorders, including NPD, can reach a place of functionning where they will still show traits, behavioral and cognitive patterns associated with their disorder, but will no longer meet the clinical criterias and, therefore, won't be considered to have a personality disorder per se anymore.
It takes a lot of work, and granted, even with that, people who exhibits personality disorders traits will exhibit these traits for all of their life. This is why we call them "personality" disorders, because they are very stable. However, while it might not be "curable", in the sense that it won't completly disappear, it's very much treatable :)
"Curable" with the same colloquialism people say they're "cured" of cancer. Also, have you ever treated someone with NPD? I'm curious to what therapeutic models and/or school of thought you ascribe to? 🙂
That's fucking sad
Came here to say the same. Well said
Thank you for the explanation
THIS 🙌🙌🙌
Loki is the fantasy people in a relationship with narcissists have: if they can just be forced to face the truth they will see the errors of their ways, repent, and be loving empathic people. Hulk just smashing is the alternate revenge fantasy. The real stories of treated narcissists aren’t as satisfying. They are hard and gradual, require constant struggle, and difficult acceptance that some things won’t be different. A good service.
Character like Loki and Vegeta are a atandard bad boy power fantasy trope that kept being put into their place when the protagonist kicked their ass when they went too far.
Ah so much of this. Even in some romcoms ill see people who are effectivelly showing behaviors and patters of personality disorders (not just narcissists) and then a love interest confronts them and suddenly they magically change. And im always sitting there like and wheres the years of therapy?
A lot of mental health issues cant be cured in the sense of you do XYZ and it will be like it never happened after. Most are managed and require years of work and acceptance, you can absolutely have a fulfilling happy life while managing but it still doesnt just magically go away. And especially for narcissists, which is just such a bastard of a disorder, cause it makes you so much less likely to seek help in the first place.
Show's at least very realistic in that any time you confront a narc they have an infinite number of alternate realities waiting in the wings
Force doesn't work.
God you describe my fantasy of fixing my relationship with my parents so well and the hard truths I've had to learn
"Why do we hate the IRL narcissists while loving the fictional ones?" You gave a good explanation, but so too did TH-camr Quinn Curio, I think, when she did a video about Slytherin house, and talked about Severus Snape and Harry's decision to name his child after him: (I'll paraphrase her here) "I can sit here and say 'ah yes, I so enjoyed the time I spent reading the engaging story arc of this fascinating character Severus Snape'--but most people don't tend to think of real people in the same way. In real life, we tend not to honor those who bullied us."
Snape is a tricky one, because Harry does get to see the cycle of bullying being perpetuated there. James bullied Snape causing Snape to bully Harry. And by the end Harry learns that despite his faults, Snape was a true hero who in serving the cause of good cost him his life. So it does make sense for Harry to break the cycle and forgive Snape in some way.
thank you for bringing that up. i finished the whole video, but in truth i felt uncomfortable with a good portion of the essay that try to explore that question: "why do we hate irl narcissists but not the fictional ones?"
well, because they're _fiction._ there is a safe distance between the character itself and me as a person. and i can use that fiction as a tool to understand irl narcissists and navigate my own narcissistic tendencies to avoid continuing the cycle of abuse, but once i interact with the narcissist i know irl, that safe distance no longer exist. all i can think of is how much hurt and trauma that person created, instead of, "wow, what a fascinating and intriguing character."
You have good youtube taste
same way people love Dark Vader but hate Anakin, despite both being irredeemable cunts:
Vader's evil was theatric and felt inpersonal and not real (how many people IRL order the destruction of an entire planet to spite someone, or serve an evil empire for 20 years?)
Anakin's evil (murdering kids, agreeign with a fascist stranglign his wife when she disagree with him) were more personal and much real-er.
@@arthenosthefirst8176 Except Vader is redeemed (sort of), the Emperor / Palpatine is a better example. Though I do agree the cartoonish over the top bad guy is much more "fun" to root against especially IMO when they are shown to fail over and over. Had Darth Vader really beaten Obi Wan and ruthlessly killed him rather than Obi Wan allowing himself to be killed to "become more powerful" Vader would have been much less likeable, similarly if Leia hadn't stood upto Vader when she was captured - not likeable.
I also love that Loki using the term “narcissist” implies that they taught Greek mythology on Asgard
Well, considering how the Aesir and the Olympians have related to each other in the comics…
Well, they are speaking modern english amongst themselves in Asgard. What does that imply?
@@DaCarnival I remember it being brought up in the MCU that every advanced civilization (more advanced than earth) has their people wearing universal translators. And that's the only reason so many races can understand each other, even in GotG where people come from all different planets. Would that imply Thor and similar characters are never actually speaking English, it's just being translated to other characters and the audience that way?
@@Fantallana In the comics, the deities communicate through Allspeak but in the MCU, they only brought up that Thor and the other Asgardians learns alien languages from childhood. In Infinity War, he shows he can speak Groot(an actual language for, well, Groots)
@@Fantallana Not necessarily. For instance Loki easily one of the smartest people Asgard ever produced has absolutely no capability to speak Mongolian.
“There is what is called healthy narcissism”
Huge sigh of relief, followed by confused serious introspection.
Seriously, I was starting to get a bit worried there for a sec…
Introspection is how you find a healthier way to be whether you have a neurodivergence or not. The capacity to look within yourself and evaluate your own being is the difference between a good and a bad person. Not many people are beyond hope and it's never a bad time to start trying to be better
I feel ya
More commonly referred to as "healthy self esteem, confidence, and resiliency".
I think Mantis's trauma being played for laughs is another thematic choice, if poorly handled. Because a lot of people with traumas will cope with laughter.
That's way too generous for the marvel company. They played it for laughs because they don't want to have to deal with anything too negative or heavy. They want it to be light and fun and appeal to as many wallets as possible. (I still loved the movie, but this is a chronic weakness of theirs)
And it is a recurring choice for James Gunn.
I think he uses humour to focus on it and accentuate some of the tragic elements of it, and the cultural tendency to do so without the respect he tries to show it.
Kinda the same way he handles violence: overdoing it to the point that excess is bleedingly obvious and thereby mocking that same fetishisation.
Only with violence he has the Fortune to then go "still cool though"
@@suzygirl1843 To be fair, the character was white in the comics and Noland said the same thing.
@@suzygirl1843 Yea but they're regarded as pets by the villains. Because it's a villainous thing to do.
I disagree. Gunn uses humor like a twelve year old. Its funny when it happens to someone else. It’s not a way of putting sugar over an uncomfortable situation: it’s avoiding it completely and belittling it.
It’s like a bully who insist that “it’s just a joke”
Thanos wasn’t a narcissist, he was an obsessed character who was capable of learning, capable of love and capable of sacrificing what he loved the most to obtain his goal.
Which is why when you compare the younger Thanos in Endgame, who’s impatient with the experienced, patience older Thanos of Infinity War, you’ll see a huge difference.
Thanos had to gain the gems himself, at great personal costs…just as The Avengers had to do so in Endgame.
As someone who has survived narcissistic abuse from multiple from multiple family members, I cannot stress enough how mundane and unspecial narcissists can be. It is not always fantastical and often feels more like death by a thousand paper cuts more than a spectacular drama.
It's that constant depression felt when everything you do is critiqued, and every step or glance outside your predefined role as an NPC in this person's story is punished, until you truly do start to feel like an NPC. It's constant pain.
Dismissal, assumptions, unchanging and insistent..
What you do well is their success, and your failings are your own but also how you have failed them. It’s a constant headache.
Yeah ! thats how i would describe it, my family has suffered from narcissistic abuse from my dad and it was so tiring and tedious living with him, it felt like a chore being around him
@@SomeTH-camTraveler I'm so sorry. I hope you have a better life situation now.
okay one thing, I don’t think sylvie’s actions at the end are about Loki, they’re about sylvie. Her whole life has been dedicated to taking down the TVA, one person being nice to her for a few days isn’t doing to undo all her trauma. Itd honestly be out of character for her to not kill whats-his-face.
I completely agree. She's spent years thinking about what she would do when she made it face to face with the people responsible for the TVA, and I seriously don't think her level of trust for Loki could have possibly made her change something she'd already made up her mind about years ago.
Pretty sure she has been on the run from the TVA for centuries if not millennia
Agreed, while her being so deeply suspicious of Loki might not be so justified (at least from what we see on screen), her rejecting his path and sticking to getting her revenge is 100% in character for her.
lindsay is talking about the themes of the show, you're talking about the literal events taking place. there's a difference there
Agreed. And to add to that, she may have interacted with other Lokis in the past who actively added to her trauma?
God, the cut between Tangled and Crazy Ex-girlfriend is somehow so iconic
that shit really did hit just right. so very satisfying.
Can confirm, I no longer feel so broken inside
Did I miss this? Where is it?
@@Tokkemon between 08:30 and 09:00
PaulAAAAAAAA knows best!
There's another thing Ego does in _GOTG: Vol 2_ that didn't hit me until recently. When we first meet him, he introduces himself to Peter as his _dad_ rather than his _father_ . The film goes to great lengths to distinguish 'father' from 'dad', so why did Ego do this? Because he does not once consider that there may have been another male parental figure in Peter's life; one that actually stuck around and raised him.
It also adds to the fact that narcissists have bad boundaries, so ego just goes and uses the more familiar, intimate term than the more appropriate, distant term father that better relates to him
I don't know about that. Yondu says "he may have been your father, boy, but he wasn't your daddy".
@@anamorph8521 so it's kind of part of love bombing, do you think?
@@LucasDarkGiygas 'Daddy' is a more familiar term. Ego calls _himself_ that because he assumes unwarranted closeness with Peter. Yondu makes a distinction between the word and 'father', which just describes your male parent without any emotional slant. They agree about the terms as the audience would use them, but not whom they apply to.
God, I love Gunn's writing.
Hi. Diagnosed narcissist here. This seems like an excellent opportunity to tell others with NPD that there quite a few things out there to help us. You don't have to live with anxiety off the charts. It took years for me to admit I had my diagnosis but you can do better. Look into dialectical behavioral therapy. It is offer at many VA hospitals and is a great place to start a journey towards relative peace. Good luck and thank you Lindsey for opening up a platform for NPD.
Thanks for sharing. DBT helped me immensely, too! What Lindsay got wrong is saying "NPD can't be cured". I guess it depends on your definition of "cured", but many health professionals now agree pwNPD can be treated. We're learning more and more every day about how to manage and help those with personality disorders.
Just a few decades ago, professionals believed that BPD was untreatable, until Marsha Linehan developed DBT out of frustration. She had BPD as well, and was sick of people telling her she could not be helped. She only came out as having BPD recently, after the high success of DBT. BPD is so stigmatized, she was worried she would lose her job. So thankful to her, DBT has saved so many lives!
What a breath of fresh air.
The point about Falcon and the Winter Solider being one of the only ones that directly deals with things like going to therapy was ironic to me since, as someone who has been not only in therapy basically their entire life but surrounded by the mental health community and infrastructure, when I watched especially the beginning of Falcon and the Winter Solider I thought "whoever wrote this has clearly never been to therapy in their life"
Yeah. I guess they were trying to present it as "military guys and military therapists" but legit that has never been the kind of therapeutic experience I've had. And the end of the show where he's just. Done. With therapy bc he dealt with a book.
Like no man that is absolutely not how PTSD in the complexity level Bucky has it would work
Yeah... berating your patient for not socializing enough feels like the polar opposite of therapy.
I feel like maybe they were trying to show that the therapy Bucky is getting is obviously not there to actually help him but only because the government is worried about him committing actions against them (like how rule #1 is "don't break the law" while "don't hurt people" is only relegated to rule #2) but they really biffed it in the end because they imply that the therapy Bucky was getting ended up working
Yes! I saw that show and thought "I have never gone to therapy and even I know this is bullshit"
And as a Tumblr user pointed out (not long after the show aired, so I don't remember who it was), the show deals with Bucky's trauma entirely in terms of his taking responsibility for what he was *made* to do by other people. It acts like Bucky's actual trauma of being brainwashed, losing his autonomy, probably experimented on, etc., doesn't even exist.
I read into Sylvie’s inability to trust Loki as more of a character flaw in her instead of Loki. She has been in opposition to every person she has interacted with since the TVA took her from her timeline. Loki feels fully sincere to me in the finale and it’s more about her fears than his flaws
Exactly. Over the course of the show, Loki has become both a trustworthy and a trusting person. That’s why he wants to spare He Who Remains. But Sylvie, whose distrust in the TVA goes down to her core, isn’t there yet. She isn’t able to believe that she’s fully good and therefore can’t see that in Loki either.
That's how I understood it too. I don't know how Lindsay saw it otherwise, maybe she focused on Loki himself too much and ignored Sylvie's very real character arc. Sylvie and Loki had different results in their respective arcs because his life gave him the tools to grow. Hers didn't.
I'm frustrated a bit too with Lindsey, as feel like the Loki miniseries wasn't about narcissistim, but the dangers of implicate bias and the dehumanization of people when people focus on a label attached to a person. In this case the condition of being an instance of a Loki and the idea of being an untrustworthy narcissistic monster are seen as synonymous. This Loki happens to buck that trend and may indicate that the narcissistic tendencies of Lokis are more poor coping mechanisms than true clinical narcissism. Sylvie has seen no evidence that she can trust any other Loki as they are all capable of long-game manipulation and spontaneous backstabbing in the name of self-preservation. Instead of treating our protag Loki as an individual, she falls to assumptions and bias based on his appearance and persona, seeing him as only a "Loki".
This feels like an extreme version of the way society often treats criminals as a unified "bad guy". Thanks to this label real complex good people are denied work, housing, and just basic trust.
Heck, this brings to mind how Loki the mythological god had frequently been synchronized with a Christian interpretation of Lucifer. In what scraps we still have of his stories, Loki was just as much a hero as many of the aesir. Being a diety who includes mischief and cleverness in his perview does not make him simply evil. His trickery is often used to teach his nephew and frequent partner Thor important lessons or used to get Thor out of troubles that Thor's direct approach would not work. Loki is even directly responsible for getting Mjolnir for Thor. Unfortunately many of the Christian and Roman historians focused on Loki's triggering of Ragnarok, which is quite complicated as the Aesir largely earned Loki's wrath thanks to constantly marginalizing him, all thanks to a prophesy that was self-fulfilling... that and thanks to the Aesir giving Loki crap for frequently spending time with humanity in physical female form, giving birth to many regular people (Loki loved functioning beyond the boundaries of gender, making the genderfluid label rather fitting for the MCU version)
@@BeastGuardian I thought the show used both Loki finding how is life will turn out because of his choices and the Lady Sif loop to show case that Loki had to take a real hard look at himself and how his narcissism affects himself and others and that he was stuck in the TVA a insane amount of time and he still has narcissistic moments but he is trying to do and be better, the train scene where he gets drunk shows he still struggles with his narcissism. I think it hints that being with Mobius and the TVA is suppose to be Loki's therapy (working on himself and such) they just didn't do the best job of showing that Loki is not the same because he has spenr an ungodly amount of time having to see how his narcissism affects others and being forced to reconcile with it.
Yes, agree here! Sylvie was more of the narcissist than Loki was. The concept of the show seemed to be, all Lokis are narcissistic, but their choices determine how much so. Sylvie's trauma made her more narcissistic than this version of Loki. But the OG Loki was more narcissistic because of what happened in his life. This one could avoid a lot of that, very It's a Wonderful Life of seeing what "could have been" and he gets to avoid making all those bad choices to become a better person
I had the same reading to Loki's personality in the show but I actually think that's a feature more than a mistake. See, in the show Loki isn't a narcissist... but people think he is, and even he has learned to play that role so well he has convince himself he is one. Notice how every time he calls himself a narcissist is to escape from someone trying to punish him (Mobius, Sif, Sylvie), to take the blame by playing into the character everyone is accusing him to be.
So, with this in mind, the show is not really about "solving narcissism" and more about "learning to have some self esteem". Loki doesn't need to grow out of his narcissistic personality, he needs to learn that he can be more than what people think of him, and gain enough self confidence to be what he wants to be.
And this is what makes the final episode so tragic. Sylvie, like everyone else, wrongly believes that Loki (and herself to some extent) is selfish and narcissistic, and when she turns on him for that we, the audience, feel the tragedy because we know that Loki isn't a narcissist, but she can't see it.
Oh damn that's a good take! I'm happy to have that in mind, and will think on it when I finally get to see the series. Just knowing the character and judging by what clips I've seen it fits the narrative beautifully too.
Bravo!
This is a good reading of it!
Great take!
I always found the show to be more of dive into what make Loki as a character tic, than as study into a narcissist (I’m just some guy so I wouldn’t really know). Cuz this is a Loki plucked from the ending of the first Avengers, speed runs through his timeline, and learns just how small he is when he sees a bunch of infinity stones in someone’s desk after getting bullied by the time police. This is a very different character on display then what was seen in the films, to me at least.
I like it, I like it a lot!
Really interesting that Lindsay chose to compare Loki from Ragnarok vs the show because if you go back to the first Thor movie: Narcism was really not part of the equation.
Rather Loki was a scared little boy, afraid of being abandoned by his adoptive father. Narcism was not really added to his personality till the first Avengers. So looking at the arc from the first Thor movie to the show, he was acting narcissist as in acting tough, in order to do the thing he thinks he needed to.
And the show brought him back to that scared little boy, with the baggage of his fake narcism, where no one really trusts even when he tries to prove to them that he can be trusted. And only really ever wanted to be accepted in the first place.
I agree. I think he's just really hurt, lonely and desperate for love and attention, which he was severely deprived of his whole life. The only one who showed it openly and unconditionally was his mother. It's also been acknowledged that his behavior in The Avengers was that his anger, hurt, resentment and other issues were magnified by the Infinity Stones and once he got Hulk smashed he calmed down quite a bit. Besides he comes from a culture where it is considered normal to boast about yourself and your deeds so it's no surprise he would adopt that attitude as normal even if it's not a part of his natural personality. All of the boasting he does is just to hide his hurt.
@Low Bro Yes. It was a statement on how the character has been written over time.
Looking at him from this angle, Loki has one of the most interesting arcs in the entire MCU.
I've always felt Loki has narcissistic tendencies used as a defense mechanism. He grew up in a militaristic society that, had he not been designated the villain, would have been cheered on in killing another race, by both Thor and Odin.
Have we considered instead of naraccistic he is another cluster b disorder like BPD or histrionic personality disorder?
@@briannawaldorf8485 oh, that's interesting! Are we talking borderline personality disorder? The main female character of a show called Crazy Ex-girlfriend gets diagnosed with that and I could definitely see similarities between their personalities.
Lol. I forgot there's a Crazy Ex-girlfriend clip in the video.
@Kevin Brown Sorry, but he spent a few days away from home with a girl he's just met-and who we never once see discussing have a real discussion about the racism he's so suddenly cured of. I just can't buy at least 1000 years of deep-rooted racism erased so easily. Yes, he came back 'changed' but it's too contrived. The movie could have done a better job convincing me.
@Kevin Brown thor was about to be crowned despite odin knowing he was war hungry, and it's only because Loki interfered and had Thor do something against Odin's wishes (like he just wasnt allowed to yet) that he was banished. If he had been crowned, I feel like he would've just been Odin 2.0 in how he took over places because hed have the power of a king and no one to stop him.
I only dont see the people being especially happy about the wars because they currently lived in peace, but besides that, and as an empire, they'd probably see ruling more realms as a right to them.
As a long time Loki fan, I have to admit that It's very difficult to analyze Loki because his writing honestly changes so much from movie to movie. Loki in Thor 1 was definitely not a narcissist (if anything, Thor was the one more prone to it), then the Avengers changed him into a "full diva" cackling villain; the Dark World tried to retcon these two personalities and made Odin the narcissistic parent (he already had shades of this, but The Dark World exaggerates them), and finally Thor Ragnarok went full "Narcissistic Emo kid" and ALSO retconned his past with Thor by making him the bully and a constant betrayer.
It's really not surprising that the series had so many troubles reconciling all these Lokis and just decided to go meta about it, showing some Lokis are incurable narcissists, some aren't, and we are luckily following the ones who are not.
Honetly, with ragnarok i can buy loki could come down and get a bit high on power while gtting time to think. That change is the least offensive, and 2 extragated just movie 1 odin. I was more bothered by thor not being the asgardian prince with the dignity, and became that wise cracking , grr ewhy did he had to get wisecracking.
@@marocat4749 because dignified perfect thor from the first and second movie are kinda meh because of how dry thor's personality is which doesn't really connect with audience. After that, they tried changing things up for ragnarok but i definitely felt they made thor too wisecracking, which just isn't thor no matter how charming and funny chris hemsworth is. Infinity war thor is best depiction on film imo. There's still levity but it's to cover up the darkness and anger inside him from the death of his brother and other fellow asgardians. Endgame thor is just so much of a departure from his original character that i dont even think it's the same character. Sure, it's funny and he still has his cool moments fighting thanos, but was it worth completely changing his character? I'd say no.
Honestly, Avengers 1 is a really uneven movie (even though it's well-remembered). No one's motivations, especially Loki's, seem authentic. But I guess maybe he was doing it all to get in good with Thanos? I dunno.
that's actually called character development
It's kinda crazy that, though his characterization is distinct from his classic comic version, this character from the biggest cinematic events of each year is still being written like a character from a serial pulp property
My mom is a narcissist. Like decided that therapy is a scam after 3 different therapists, all of whom were quacks apparently, diagnosed her with narcissism. And I gotta tell you, it's always irritating how people just throw that word around like it means nothing. But, this analysis actually handles it pretty well. Thank you, Lindsey, for not being flippant about a serious problem.
That sucks, hope ure doing well tho and have found other people who're better for you.
I finally got a narcissist to go to therapy for depression for like 5 whole sessions. They'd been sampling around and rejecting ones for various reasons for years. They got better on some points briefly but just the other week they were sharing thier distortions of the truth and using their therapists agreement with their victimization as ammo for emotional chastisement and manipulation of others so... YMMV even if they had stayed. I am honestly hoping the therapist treats the depression and low self esteem without offering a diagnosis because they will totally drop the therapy if given such a diagnosis.
Until this video I didn’t know narcissism was a personality disorder and not just a casual insulting word like “idiot” that carries no diagnosable criteria. I’m guessing most people are in the same boat.
AnD iF sHe WaS FlippAnT wE wOuLD CanCeL hEr!!!!!
Same but then my mom found a therapist that fed into her narcissism and boy did that make things worse for a while. Thankfully that was after I was already moved away and I could easily avoid her by just not answering the phone.
I get unreasonably happy when people reference Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Such an underappreciated show.
same! I was so surprised she used Paula and not Rebecca's mother, though- she seems a textbook narcissistic parent
Yes! And now I desperately need Lindsay to make a video on CXG
sameee i love the show so much
is gamora being tossed to “you’ll be in my heart” the new “i’m losing to a bird?”
see how I glitter
Absolutely
I ate the whole plate.
I was crying with laughter at that part
Hal...it’s about cats.
Man, Guardians 2 and Thor Ragnarok were the two best movies to come out of this whole thing, and BIG NAME CROSSOVER EVENT really screws with both of them, hard. The whole ending of Ragnarok is about how home is where our people are, not the land that they owned, but the very next moment after that movie is half those people being murdered along with Loki. And I'm dreading a Guardians 3 without Gamora. If they just go one pretending that nothing has changed I'm going to have some serious Transporter Problem dissonance. If Peter reacts like nothing has changed and tries to just fit Other Gamora into the previous one's slot in his life, well, I guess he's a true narcissist to the end. It's James Gunn, though, so considering the emotional sincerity of the last film maybe he'll really dig deep into just how distressing and dark the implications of Infinity War/Endgame really are.
It’s clear that Taika Waititi has a lot more appreciation for Thor, while The Russos had a lot more interest in Captain America. They’ve been pouring a ton of effort into Cap for a while, whereas the first time they’re put in charge of Thor they try to undo pretty much every permanent change that his last movie did for him.
Lost his eye in an homage towards Odin and referencing his increased wisdom? Give him a prosthetic and pretend it never happened.
Cut off his hair as a symbolic gesture of how much of a different character he’s going to be after this movie? He grows it all back after getting depressed because he lost.
Lost his hammer but came to realize he didn’t need it because the power was within him all along? He needs to go make a better one. Also get him his old hammer back too.
And then of course there’s the fact that the vast majority of Endgame had his self destructive drinking, weight gain, and depression treated as a joke rather than a serious issue.
I don’t think there was anything necessarily malicious there, like they weren’t trying to intentionally hurt the character or undo any of the changes he made as a character, I think they just were primarily focused on trying to make him grow in a specific direction, while Ragnarok kind of threw a wrench in those plans because he came out of that such a different person than he was before.
Did nobody watch Endgame? Because Gamora isn’t dead.
"The whole ending of Ragnarok is about how home is where our people are, not the land that they owned..."
Actually, I thought that was one of the more dubious conclusions about Ragnarok. In the context of actually looking at what displacement does to a culture (i.e., being expelled or taken from a homeland) and the lasting trauma that ensues across generations, Ragnarok's treatment of the subject seems rather shallow to me. Ragnarok treats the flight of the Asgardians as some kind of liberating solution, not the prelude to a new epoch of misery for the people who lost their land.
Big crossover events messing up stories is the status quo for superhero comic books
@@SamyTheBookWorm the original Gamora, the one we came to know from the movies, is indeed dead and they can’t bring her back. There’s a different Gamora, from a time previous to GotG. But she hasn’t been through everything our Gamora has. She’s a different person. It’s like the two Nebulas. Our Nebula grew, the other Nebula was still all about pleasing daddy.
That’s actually why I was worried about Loki the series. Because it isn’t really our Loki, the one that was slowly growing to be a better person. Slowly. He sacrificed himself to try to save Thor and the other Asgardians. This new Loki has only two movies worth of the same timeline as our old Loki. He was still at villain stage. So that would be why they sped up his character arc, and changed him from being a narcissist.
Though I found the series interesting- it’s the Lokis who grow past their narcissistic aspects that are the heroes. Old Loki also grew to become a good person, as did our (new) Loki. And Sylvie never really had the chance to become a narcissist.
Shane Dawson: I'm an empath.
Lindsay: No Shane, a real one.
Mantis: Empaths feel feelings.
Me: OH OUCH! SICK EDIT BURN!
lmaoooo
Hahahahaha, it works on soo many levels 😂
(Ok, the joke really only works in two or three levels, but still, two or three is a lot)
I just love how she used the clips of Shane in the same manner he used clips of people to demonize sociopaths.
I mean being an Empath doesn’t inherently make you a good or caring person. Empathy just means you’re able to understand how people feel, that doesn’t mean you can’t be sadistic or cruel as an Empath. In fact most skilled manipulators are Empaths, because they need to know how other people are feeling in order to mold their manipulation to be the most effective.
@@InquisitorThomas fair point!
I just liked the diss at Shane Dawson.
"Interpersonal boundaries, to a narcissist, are a form of abuse."
Mind. Blown!
on gawd
Turns out that the things which make a compelling fictional character often make for an insufferable and even dangerous person in real life. Fiction is the perfect way to process our innate curiosity and attraction towards dangerous people.
This is so perfectly put! I’ve been trying to wrap my head around why I feel so much affection for Loki despite having been in (pretty awful in retrospect) relationships with similarity narcissistic people. It’s almost like seeing the true to life controlling and insecure tendencies his character is driven by framed in a compassionate way gives me hope for the character, and let’s me as the audience member tag along with his journey without putting myself in danger of subjugation to his narcissism directly. So ultimately, I find the depiction really humanizing and emotionally resonant because it’s at a safe distance. Movie Loki would be a nightmare to be in a relationship while show Loki is the growth and introspection we can all hope that real narcissists in or lives can one day undertake.
Over the top things are great in fiction but extremely exhausting in real life. Probably because we engage with fiction for maybe a couple of hours a week, but in real life you would have to bear it 24/7.
Yeah, fiction acts a barrier in that respect. A way to be outside of the box looking in, observing, instead of trapped inside with what hurt you.
I'm more than a little perplexed about what anyone finds attractive about dangerous people.
@@don_5283 Lots of reasons. One classic example is the fantasy that even if they're monstrous to other people, there might be a hidden softness they show only to you. The "I can fix them" approach to romance. In fantasy, maybe you really can fix them. In real life, not so much.
I think we like narcissists in fiction more than real life for the same reason we like gun fights in movies and not in real life: distance. Watching something happen is way less exhausting and painful than doing it.
I personally detest narcissists in fiction most of the time, at least if they are supposed to be protagonists. However, I think I can understand why people do like those characters, like Iron Man, for example. When I see narcissistic protagonists I imagine dealing with them in real life and worry that viewers will copy their behavior. I do on the other hand get the appeal of watching someone who (at least on the outside) doesn’t worry about their actions, behavior or how others conceive them.
@@sandorenckell5259 I agree and I think it's because they and bad characters in general play out the behavior we wished we could do ourself in real life (to a point). But only if they have redeeming qualities.
I noticed that in myself when I read a book once where one of the characters always did little "unacceptable" things all the time and didn't feel bad about it. Nothing serious, nothing illegal, just something that would make people angry or drive them up the wall. (It was satire and also deeper than that.) And quite often I found myself thinking: "They did NOT just do that!... but also I wish I could/would do that."
I'm sure a lot of people have moments were they play out a what if scenario in their head of being arrogant or cocky or not giving a fuck or yelling at their boss or being witty and having the best come backs, to name very mild cases of "bad" behavior. I would also bet that more often than sometimes many people play out what if scenarios of hurting people who hurt them; kicking and punching the living shit out of them, ruining their lifes, just generally taking revenge in one form or another. Which is why we also love revenge books and movies where justice is served because quite often revenge doesn't happen in real life.
It's the experience and joy of bad behavior, the carthasis even, when they figuratively flipped everyone off (or... killed the rapist idk) as a stand in for our desire to be bad.
But I agree: it's a fine line between "this behavior looks cool but you shouldn't adapt that because it's actually problematic" and "this behavior looks cool; use it in daily life from now on".
@@sandorenckell5259 On the other hand, copying narcissistic behavior can also be a positive thing if a person has very low sense of self-worth and doesn't know how to set their boundaries. Personally I don't think that fictional narcissists are a problem per se, but some people do seem to view themselves as the protagonist (the others are NPCs). I think that's caused by a general lack of empathy which should be taught in real life.
The narcissist in the TV can't get supply from you.
Basically media portrayal of protagonist narcissists: “Like, I’m an evil queen, which makes me funny and entertaining, but in the end I’m empathetic and wholesome.”
Maybe a lot of media depicting narcissists is made by narcissists?
@@SuperPal-tr3go I think it's more like it's made by hopeful children of narcissists that have a fantasy there is real love there.
@@RoryStarr I don't like really the "real love" concept, tbh... First, because love is a complex emotion with maaaaaany variations and telling someone he/she doesn't experience an emotion based on the fact that it does not fit our conception of said emotion is kind of violent. Second, because I feel like people have to take some distance with the fact that love is necessarily a "good" emotion. Love is about feeling attachment to something/someone, there CAN be too much of it, or it can be tainted with all sorts of sh!t.
Some classic asian philosophies have a concept of what is a "greater" or a "lower" emotion. Now this of course can be debated, but I don't think it's by accident that they did not frame "love" as a superiore emotion and decided instead for "compassion".
0ì77
@@Kyrielsh1 well children of narcissists don't describe their experience as one of love. That's enough for me to not invalidate their experience.
Fun fact: The Parent/Child Narcissist blindness goes the other way, too. My brother ticks all 9 of the criteria and exhibits all of the traits and our mother was utterly blind to his issues right up until the day she died.
As for Loki, Sylvie expects Loki to betray her because _she_ is a Narcissist and that is what she would do, so she expects that that is what _he_ would do. Also, the Loki from the series isn't the same Loki as from the movies because _that_ Loki got murdered.
I've been thinking a lot about Loki recently, and I thought that whilst yes, he does display some narcissistic traits i do not think that he is the true narcissist in the Thor movie series.
Odin is.
His children are extensions of himself, Thor is pushed into the role of the Golden Child. Thor's ego is appeased and inflated by Odin, who wants to control him and turn him into a "good king". Whereas Loki becomes the Scapegoat; he symbolises trickery and lying, and yet is a symbol of all of Odin's tricks and lies (being raised Aesir when he's Jotunn, not being told *why* he was raised that way without knowing the truth, being a political pawn in Odin's long game that never got used etc).
Throughout the first Thor, Odin never explains himself or his actions, he assures everyone that he is in control, and when either of his children question him he tries to manipulate them or otherwise hurls abuse at them.
I think it's rather interesting to compare Odin's treatment of Thor and Loki against Thanos' treatment of Gamora and Nebula. Odin is less malignant but the dynamic has some striking similarities.
And of course, this is merely the opinion of some rando on the internet, but I think that it's interesting to look at Loki not as a narcissist himself, but as a victim of narcissistic abuse and emotional neglect. I think this reading makes his characterisation far more consistent between the movies and the tv series, it certainly makes me reevaluate the things that Loki does and how he reacts and tries to survive. When given the opportunity and space to reflect on himself he makes a change.
That's a really interesting take on the character, thank you for that read.
I, too, have noticed the similarities between Odin and Thanos, especially when it comes to parenting👍
Loki's parents *do* tell him why they hid the truth, though: they were afraid of what exposing him to the stigma of being adopted and a Frost Giant would do to him, just as some parents of neurodivergent or otherwise disabled children are reluctant to seek a formal diagnosis because they're afraid of saddling their kids with the stigma of having a disorder. It's undeniably a _mistake_ , because being different means having a different set of needs and failing to address that causes long-term damage of its own, but mistakes and unintended consequences != being abusive.
@Roxanne Tilley But for what purpose did Odin take Loki from Jotunheim? When Loki asks Odin he never gets a clear answer from him. He shouts Loki down and then enters the Odinsleep, and Loki's questions were never answered. Are we to believe that Odin took the son of his enemy for purely innocent/merciful reasons? Especially when the plot of Ragnarok reveals later that he claimed all Asgard's power with bloody warfare.
He told half truths, breadcrumbed Loki with the "you're both born to rule" line and then consistently reinforced Thor as his true heir.
His treatment of his daughter Hela is suspect, too, not least of which is how instead of learning from his mistakes with her (assuming that it's actually true that she went power-mad and he didn't actually just randomly imprison her for trying to disagree or assume her own autonomy as a person), he disappears her so entirely from his own people's history that his sons didn't even know she existed until she broke free.
"In case you haven't noticed, I'm a narcissist. I'm a nar-co. I don't care about other people, and I don't want to care about other people. Have you ever seen me without this stupid shock collar on? That's because of narcissism."
Underrated comment.
actually losing my shit over this comment
I really think not enough people talk about how narcissists can use victimhood as a form of power. In the real world most narcissists don't have the resources, or even charisma, to truly manipulate from a place of influence. The much more common actions that I've observed are attempts to pull people into their version of the world where the narcissist is the ultimate victim. Then the person pulled in ends up providing a constant stream of affection while the narcissist continues to find more ways to rationalise requiring more emotional engagement. Thanks for treating the topic with proper care
Note: I just wanted to add that this is rarely on purpose, many people who do this believe they are a true victim. In my experience it becomes painfully difficult to know where the actual need for support ends and the want for more attention begins
This. I ended up in a fairly abusive friendship for a while because they were a narcissist that did this. They used their status as trans, latinx, someone with abandonment issues and bpd as leverage. Since I'm a cis white guy I felt obliged to give them sympathy. And whenever I put down boundaries they would act offended and just try to break. We never met in person purely cause i had no faith they wouldn't cross a line. I eventually dropped them when me wanting them out of my life more than my empathy for their problems.
An important point is that they actually believe that they are the victims, that they deserve the attention they are seeking, and that if they don't get it that makes them even more of a victim. They are dismissive of other people's problems because they do believe their own problems are worse. They also have the ability to turn other's problems to themselves, like if you are not smiling they'll say "Are you mad at me?? Why do you make me feel bad??" because they are incapable of not putting themselves in the center.
It’s crazy that none of the comments have mentioned Trump yet. His love of playing the victim is so crazy.
yeah, you can love a narcissist until it hurts, you can care for them in the exact way they ask to be cared for when they want to be cared for and they will pull away and start a fight because you're not going above an beyond what they asked for. i don't understand how someone can be loved so much and still just want to shake people's heads up like snowglobes because it's pretty to them for a second.
Thank you for this comment! While watching the video I was trying to think of narcissists I’ve met in real life. I could only think of one and knew that couldn’t be true, but your take just made me remember at least a half dozen others I’ve come into contact with over the years. All of them played the victim game very well.
It might just be me, but the therapist in Falcon and Winter Soldier is not really that great of a therapist.
"ur shit at life."
"Yea, that's why I'm here."
Oh it's not just you
Trust me I ranted about her a great deal during my time when I wanted to talk about Falcon and the Winter Soldier... She dealt with him dissociating by yelling at him. Like one of his captors would have. - still mad-
Isn't she the bad guy at the end? Or were they two different women? I mentally decided they were the same and that's why she was awful, but I also watched the finale at 4 AM so.
@@morley364 I think the "bad guy" at the end was Sharon Carter, not the therapist. The therapist was just generally not good at her job.
It is funny how these marvel shows still have the same issues the old comics had. I love the Silver Surfer and his stories we're mostly meditations on how violence does not solve anything. But because it was a comic book it still always ended with the Silver Surfer throwing energy beams at people.
Squirrel girl solved the problem often at least in the 2015 run of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. Sure there is always a bit of fighting but often the solution ends up being something clever or talking to understand the entire scope of the problem and finding a non violent solution.
@@LC-sc3en I mean in all fairness Silver Surfer usually solves the issues by diplomatic means too.
It's similar to the Fantastic Four. A lot of its themes explore relationships and family, exploring and understanding the world around you and helping as a result. But because they're superheroes- easily some of the most influential of all time- often they need to default to the cool powers and epic fights and big teamups and plastering Spider-Man and Wolverine onto the covers.
@@tinamoul Yeah. Isn't that his thing too? To solve problems diplomatically?
"Obsessive self-loathing is a form of narcissism."
Oh wow. I've watched my mother display all the traditional signs of narcissism my entire life, but I had a hard time believing she was actually a narcissist because of her extremely low self-esteem and perpetual tendency to victimize herself. Now that I know those traits can accompany narcissism...you've just blown this case wide open.
I thought psychologists had reached a consensus that self loathing was the Reason why people become narcissistic
Kind of hard for me to believe, given my immense experience with these behaviors. But after thinking about one of the the three devils who abused me through narcissistic behaviors, I do think they had an irrational belief that they should have protected their mother or something. I can see that as a pretty clear motivator. But the other one who self-loathes seems a lot more prideful about how they did something at a young age that we could not by sustaining herself without parents around. Well, they did have a brother who died at a young age... which is kind of ironic. She never mentions that she had someone else around in her childhood. She talks about it in such a way that I barely remembered that person existing. Of course it is a traumatic experience, but she never said it was the source of trauma. So I guess it could be related to self-loathing that she keeps tightly guarded.
As for the third of those, I did not hear too much about their past. Maybe in the most vague way, his father died in war, I think, and he rarely talks about his father either. I think it is possible that he fears his father dying as a hero while he dies as someone who could never be a hero. And that could explain why he is someone who is really social, or at least used to be, and had many friends and seems to seek validation very openly. He tried to become known as the life of the party, as well as, he wanted to be seen as a nice guy or great person. He even has skills like carpentry and plumbing, which makes him seem like someone who could do anything. He also seems quite prideful of his line of work, saying he dislikes people who sit at a desk all day as well as artists, but this could have been just to spite me as someone who did not want to work on a more manual job. Ironically, I do not undervalue work like that, I just want to do things in a new way and experiment and master that art.
As for myself, I would say I am not a narcisstic personality. I have been stuck in an abusive environment for my whole life and never really spoke out against anything for a long time. I wanted to have a world of peace and love, but I began to realize I could not look outward and my own problems were too big to focus on the outside world. And yet, I also feel like the work world does not fit my sensitive mind well. I think sensitivity is actually one of the best traits someone can have and that it is hard to protect, but worth protecting or reviving. I also struggle to see how I fit into other people's lives because I was so socially isolated, but also because I do not want to get too passionate about someone who is not going to do well with me as a friend or lover. I am definitely co-dependent though, but I do not think it is super strong. I would love to live in a supportive environment where traits other than making money are valued. I feel like I can do almost anything but make money, if I have the time to practice or innovate.
Sorry, I always end up writing comments that may be overly long, but I do believe strongly in providing a lot of information to clarify exactly what I mean. After all, a lot of conversation just ends up being clarification unless you are saying something that everyone assumes to understand. I hope that I can at the very least alter the expectations around social interactions because I feel that the way people talk and what they expect from others has caused me so many problems in life.
sorry to hear that about your mother. Seems to be common.
I try my best to be level headed. I hope you're also doing the same.
This is why I wanted so badly to see an Azula arc in the Avatar comics. Not because I wanted to see her become a "good person," but because I really wanted to see how someone could be motivated to manage narcissism and do better with the disorder.
And instead they made her a caricature of her show self and practically a cackling, mustache-twirling Saturday morning cartoon villain 😑 (I have lots of issues with the comics)
@@starscream319 but they arent done
I hadn't thought about this, but yeah; Azula is a good example of a narcissist. Ozai probably is too, but he's also sociopathic. Azula wants to be liked by her father, friends, and even her brother; and breaks down when she isn't. They kinda ended the show with her being defeated (and according to a bio I read on nick.com some years ago, Zuko put her in the best mental facility he could find; he still loves her afterall) because, as Lindsay said, portraying a narcissist's redemption is difficult.
I feel like when Sylvie claims loki wants the throne, she’s projecting her own flaws, and what she’s been taught, onto Loki
My dad once called a family meeting to excitedly tell us about some on npr talking about their narcissist dad. At the end, he was like, idk what the issue was. That guys dad sounds like me and I'm awesome. I think I'm a narcissist. But he said it with sincere admiration and excitement. When we all just nodded at him, not sharing that same excitement and admiration, he began to get upset. He wanted us to praise him for diagnosing himself. We wanted to just get out of there before he realized how much we didn't think it was funny.
Wow. But how did you all go on from there? I guess nothing changed?
@@zevbellringer6745 nothing changed. I think we told him it wasn't a good thing and that he needed therapy. I think my brother said it bc he's better at phrasing things as a joke. My dad just laughed and said he's perfect. Nothing changed other than he proudly tells ppl he's a narcissist now and ppl who don't know him think he's kidding.
@@zevbellringer6745 narcissists don't change, as a rule. They're INCREDIBLY insecure and therefore see any criticism or request to change as a hostile attack
@@sennnia Which NPR narcissist ep was it called? They did a couple, but I would love to give the one you're talking about a listen
@@christinahtian unfortunately I have no idea. I think he said it was a writer talking about his father? I remember the point was he related to the father figure. And it made him excited lol.
To me, the Loki show tried to make a statement on the true nature of Loki. He isn't a pathological narcissist, despite seeing himself as one. He also never was, in any of the movies. He clearly loves his mother unconditionally, even in earlier iterations of the character AND allowed himself to be vulnerable multiple times, even if he snapped back into old patterns. And it took a seismic event like seeing himself die and all his ambition become meaningless to change that, which I found so very impressive about the first episode. He just wanted validation and recognition. Sylvie showed what, even given the same basic template, nurture will accomplish. Sylvie was clearly validated by her parents and, knowing she was adopted, came to terms with herself quickly. So she never developed said need for validation. Instead she became fundamentally paranoid by, you know, being being chased around by "the omniscient fascists" for a couple hundred years. She doesn't need to know Loki's backstory to mistrust him, she already trusts NO ONE. Additionally, she encountered plenty of Lokis, most of which were, in fact, backstabbing scumbags. She also knows "our" Loki was a backstabbing scumbag by interacting with characters like Mobius and Renslayer who clearly stated him to be one.
TL;DR: Loki is no narcissist, he is just neglected and insecure, Sylvie on the other hand is deeply paranoid.
Add in perspective. Against Thor(let's ignore how much killing he does), Odin, Avengers, and others in the previous films, it can come off as his being a narcissist. But Loki is the show done from his pov or it's not built against the traditional heroes.
All narcissists are neglected and insecure. That doesn't change if someone is a narcissist or not. The *behavior* is what defines a narcissist
You're so right, I agree with all of your points. I just wish the show was longer because Loki's shift in character was, to me, a bit rapid. Like you said, he has to face his own death in the very first episode.
I also wished they'd developed Sylvia's paranoia more, maybe shown us a Loki variant she trusted in the past who betrayed her.
@@MaxOakland Loki fights side by side with Thor in every Thor movie, Loki chooses not to kill Thor and Odin of multiple occasions. Loki risks his safety to help Thor in Thor 2 and Ragnarok. Loki makes no excuses for his actions in the Avengers, and largely accepts his punishment for them. And by the end of Ragnarok Loki accepts Thor as the rightful King of Asgard.
Doesn't sound like a Narcissist to me.
And let's not forget "I betrayed my father, my brother, my home. I know what I did. And I know why I did it." and even though he then said that he is not that person anymore, that's enaugh incriminatory to plant a seed of doubt beautifully sprout by Kang
"The see their children as an extension of themself"
Steven Universe took this VERY LITERALLY
Just one of many flaws
"Now the impurities you've encouraged in them are gone! Now they are brilliant; now, they are perfect; now, they are *me!* ... I only want you to be yourself! If you can't do that, I'll do it *for you!* "
@@juliantapia1407
How is it a flaw of the show?
@@Carabas72 it wasn't ever adequately explained (which considering it was on cartoon network I fully understand).
But the decision led to identity issues down the line, attempting to make the gems race seem like nonbinary when actuary non binary people didn't agree (not to mention the diamonds being pushed as trans stand ins i think?).
But mostly the 'twist' that really wasn't executed well and kinda torpedoed pink/rose's character, and then led to the show trying to write her off as the least redeemable diamond when the others were actual nazi stand ins.
The show has fun moments, and the voice actors were pretty great, but it's so badly handled the rest of the time
@@juliantapia1407
You do realise the whole thing is a big metaphor, right? It was never about an evil space empire.
Among all the things BoJack Horseman is the best at doing, it presented one of the most consistent portrayals of a narcissist in its title character. It was never treated as a character act, it was just simply always there. And it's never treated as something he has to overcome. He becomes more empathetic, starts seeing people around him as more than extensions of his ego, but it's not like he becomes perfect at it. But he notices when it's brought up, and, I think, it's the best you can accept.
to me he was very strongly coded as having BPD, while his mother was more coded as having NPD. I say this as a person who has lived with BPD, he was incredibly relatable to me and watching the show multiple times has made me realized just how much I used to fetishize my own sadness and mental illness in the past in a similar way. I can see how he could come off as a narcissist ,especially with how similar the two disorders are in some ways, and I think both are valid interpretations. It's just how I see things.
I think the reason NPD is still so stigmatised is because it hurts other people more than it causes harm to the person with it. It's safer and healthier for me to go no contact with my parents rather than trying to help them though their condition which they refuse to acknowledge anyway.
It occurs to me that it must *never* be the job of anyone vulnerable to, or who has been vulnerable to, this kind of a person to help them.
What we need I suspect is a society that recognizes this condition, and recognizes it as serious and harmful if untreated.
If you have a panic attack, people know and recognize it, and with luck and privilege, they even know how to help anxiety sufferers get managed.
That doesn't happen with NPD, and if it does, it's never going to be the job of someone victimized by the harm these people cause if untreated.
It is no one's responsibility to to help a person with any mental illness except the the mentally person themself.
You have every right to tell them to get into therapy or fuck off.
It also doesn’t help that the traits of a narcissist are also often celebrated in our society, which only encourages their behaviour. Nearly every narcissist I know is successful, and it’s not by coincidence. They’re much more resistant to change when getting rewarded for their predatory behaviour.
@@thepinkestpigglet7529 That's cute but it's not how it works; you've got every right to tell your grandmother with Alzheimer's to go fuck herself but anyone who hears it is going to think YOU'RE the problem. Furthermore the assumption that someone who is mentally disordered is always capable of getting themselves help is unrealistic. It's still not your responsibility unless you're their legal guardian, but the assumption that someone mentally ill should just pick themselves up by the bootstraps and work out their own issues is ignorant of how mental illnesses work and is a common misconception in society--that they just don't care about getting better, that they're acting worse than they really feel for attention, that they should just try harder, that if they can't get better then they're beyond saving, or even that if they aren't actively getting better they're a danger to those around them.
I'm pretty sure your statement was meant to be about abusive or toxic relationships, but it comes across as telling someone to get fucked if their disease inconveniences you.
@@cam4636 You read my comment about how children don't need to accept abuse to help their parents become better people and turned it into that.
Also as someone who's been abused by a woman with dementia when she thought I was someone else id rather people hate me than suffer that again.
We didn't deserve Jessica Walter. Such an impressive and iconic actress, she'll be sorely missed!
Wait how did I never notice she's also Mallory Archer??
@@Yvaelle _"Sterling!!"_ haha, She was so perfect for that role, I loved Archer and her on it.
In fairness to the writers you could interpret Loki saying he’s a narcissist not as him self diagnosing NPD but using the term in a more general sense
Yeah, I feel like these fictional narracists are more about a personality type than the mental condition with a specific, extreme version of it.
You like Dr. Grande too?
Millions of people have narcissism yet practically nobody has heard a person admit that they are one.. That gives you an idea of how unlikely it is.
@@ryballs4569 probably because admitting/accepting you are one is the first and most difficult step to becoming a less toxic person to those around you, but it comes at accepting you have a problem - something a true narcissist cannot do. Its the line between simply being narcissistic and being a narcissist
I think Loki's narcisistic traits were more of a self-defense mechanism than a pathology. Ever since the first movie it is shown his bad traits are a result of his feelings of inferiority in relation to Thor and his group, to the point that it was a twist at the end of Thor 1 that he never intended to kill Odin and a legitimate surprise in Ragnarok when he heard his father saying he loves him. I also deal with feelings of extreme inferiority and Loki's toxic behaviour and attempts to establish dominance in order to prove his worth to himself and earn the love and respect of his people and family hit way too close to home for me. I don't know if this is an already categorized and existing mental disorder but if it is I would love to know
Narcissism IS when a coping mechanism becomes pathologic.
I have to agree with you and have been thinking about this. I feel Ellis is confusing narcissistic trait and narcissistic personality disorder. Like, you can be paranoid but not have paranoid personality disorder. Like, if you have PTSD, that is a good reasons to have issues with paranoia, but its not the same as the disorder.
I don't know much about you, and I am sorry you have extreme inferiority. You seem like a smart and insightful person. And because of this, you might look in to CBT. I wish you well.
The closest term would be superiority complex, but that term is kind of out dated and not in the DSM 4 or 5 as far as I know.
All narcissistic traits are a self-defense mechanism.
I think the issue is that pathological narcissism, as Lindsey pointed out, is considered incurable. It's a locked room, with no path to experiencing other people as anything but canvases for the narcissist to project on. Depicting a narcissist as someone who might "heal" from their narcissism creates false hope. I've known many, many people who've ended up in co-dependent relationships with narcissists, and hold out hope that, with enough love, patience and understanding, the narcissist will heal and become the person the co-dependent desperately wants them to be. But that can't happen, because the heart of a narcissist is a locked room. There's no way out, so there's no way in. In effect, the story of Loki's redemption serves to reinforce the toxic fantasy that fuels dysfunctional relationships with narcissists.
@@rottensquid I 100% agree Ted
I'm a psych student and a victim of abuse, and I really really liked how you managed not to demonize narcissism and at the same time speak at length about narcissistic abuse in a way that recognizes victims. Speaking about narcissism is a mine field, it's hard not to falter, but you did it beautifully!
As a fellow psych student and abuse survivor I wholeheartedly agree. A lot of videos covering narcissism tend to miss the mark I think.
"See how I glitter" makes a stunning comeback less than 3 minutes in, we love to see it
This video was excellent but honestly kind of hard to watch. I tried to set boundaries with my parents this summer after a lot of really cruel behavior on their part and ended up being disowned for "acting like a child." Thanks for talking so clearly about how "love" manifests in narcissistic parents.
So, I've been staring at this comment and thinking about how words can twist like serpents. "Acting like a child." You were, because children mature and move towards independence. Individuals can do a lot to define themselves and walk their path. To me, it sounds like you were doing exactly that. Yet they used the same phrase in a twisted way. Their accusation implies that it would be "mature" of you to fall back in line with their expectation of you. But that expectation is to resume your role of child in their drama. That is words being warped, twisted and inverted. It is deceptive and *disorienting* by intention. Be careful of that. Be clear in your thinking and true to yourself. I wasn't there, and I don't know, but my impression is that you didn't "try" to set boundaries, you *did* set boundaries. Only you have the right to set your boundaries, and you always have the right to adjust those boundaries. But if anyone is willing to go scorched earth to punish you or get you to surrender those boundaries, then they have fully demonstrated the need for them.
@@ArcaneWolf9 I really appreciate your comment. It's been difficult to process all that's happened, and I do find myself wondering sometimes if I was the one being unreasonable. It's validating to hear someone else say that not staying in the prescribed box your parents created for you and setting boundaries *is* the mature thing to do. Thank you so much for taking the time to say it.
8:08 This is a weirdly specific thing that I've noticed, lots of narcissists tend to think they're "empaths," and think they can tell what others are feeling/thinking. This, of course, is total bullshit, and they use what they _think_ people are feeling to justify being mean (ie. "They were judging me in their mind, I could tell"). I've learned to avoid people who claim to be "empaths" like it's some sort of special title or ability. Empathy is something all people should have. But, of course, narcissists claim it's some kind of super-power they have, because of course they do.
Oh.
Oohhhhhhhh. . . .
Welp. I do know someone who used to say that a lot. (Maybe still does, for all I know.) I was cripplingly anxious around people, and had terrible social skills, so for the longest time I just believed her -- even hero-worshipped her amazing abilities. Couldn't figure out why it was so hard for me to get through to her what I was feeling, though.
I could argue for hours with my dad about feeling one thing while he would claim it was something else because he 'knew better'
It's not empathy when you project what you want to see onto someone and then take that for a fact even with hard evidence proving you wrong
Spot. On. (lol)
I don’t even think “empaths” are real. Yes, there are many people with incredible empathy, and if they’re also insightful and good at listening, maybe they CAN tell what all your feelings are, but they can’t for everyone or even most people. Empathy isn’t a superpower, it’s a virtue or an interpersonal relationship skill, not a superpower like telepathy
@@shepherdaaron9683 Yeah. Maybe there are people who can empathize or sense emotions easier than others. I mean there's certainly people who _lack_ the ability.
It's just funny that self-proclaimed "empaths" act like it's some sort of super power that only they have. It's like an athlete thinking that _running_ is a super power only they have because they can do it better than others.
I think one reason why there's such resistance to destigmatizing narcissitic personality disorder is because there's a very real fear that it might lead to people lowering their guard towards them and getting hurt in the process. It's similar with other disorders that make those who have it cause harm to others, and it's particularly difficult in this case because narcissistic behavior can also include things like manipulation, specifically exploiting people who lower their guards, and even twisting and exploiting the good intentions of others. Thus, any course of action will always have to walk a fine line between helpful destigmatization and unhelpful enabling. That makes it far more difficult to think and talk about these issues than in case of e. g. depression.
It also doesn't help that it requires thinking with nuance rather than just writing someone off as having evil intentions, or worse, just being evil as a character trait. (It's kind of part of cancel culture, to mark someone's mistakes or missteps as just the "real" person behind the mask coming out, and that person is irredeemably evil.)
I disagree with this reason for destigmatizing. (Not with your suggestion that it's one of the big reasons why there's still alot of stigma - I have to think more on that.) Because of stigma, narcissists hide and they are often good at it. People with less life experience will not recognize them and won't know how to deal with them to avoid getting hurt. If there's less stigma, it will be more obvious that someone is a narcissist and ppl will be better warned. Also, less stigma obviously means more treatment which means (better life for the narcissist, but also) the responsibility and emotional labor is shifted more on the narcissist themselves and on a mental health professional. Which translates to other ppl part of the narcissist's life being less affected/hurt.
@@indigothecat Oof, that last point sure is topical for this channel.
As other people have said here already, but I would like to point it out anyway: the stigma around narcissism blows it out of proportion and exacerbates it in a theatrical way, so like not necessarily inaccurate but they harp on the same things over and over again to the point where someone's idea of a narcissist (based on the media) isn't enough to catch the subtle cues nor the nuances of the disorder. That, and with how people are throwing around the term, it only muddies the water. People can have narcissistic traits/tendencies and not be narcissists. Like, anybody can play the victim and/or manipulate without being a narcissist.
I get your point because that's the mindset of people who are ignorant to what the disorder actually is. It is a very real fear, when you actually meet those who are terrible anyway, but one not many can actually point out because it's so heavily stigmatized.
Part of the problem is that it’s hard for people to separate narcissism from morality and moral judgement. It’s not necessarily that people think narcissists are evil, but that they could do evil things if the narcissist was shielded from judgement.
I have no answer for this. I know little on the subject.
It's been a hot minute since the last time "see how I glitter" was used.
It got taken by Contrapoints, it’s no longer Lindsey’s alone.
The line when Peter tells Yondu "Not to me!" Hits really close to home there's so many times as a child I was afraid of things that to my parents seemed pretty funny.
My parents used to joke about having to pay people to be friends with their kids--I kind of just shrugged it off, although it's definitely not something I appreciated, but it was a really painful thing for one of my brothers to hear, particularly when they started joking about paying his girlfriend to date him.
Mine used to pretend they were different people if I left their presence while going to a store. Like long enough to return a cart or pee or something. It was "Hey what is this kid doing in our car? Guess we will kidnap him." and a good half hour of solid kayfabe from my parents and sister. I guess it seems silly but it honestly used to freak me out, I'd have nightmares about a family who looked exactly like mine abducting me and replacing me with my mirror twin.
As the child of someone with NPD, thank you for covering this topic with such nuance! If I'd understood narcissism better from earlier on in my life I would have suffered less. I hope this video helps others.
mantis needs her own movie man, she's so underappreciated - quill and gamora (whilst lovable great characters) totally overshadow mantis to the point i didn't appreciate her being traumatised to such an extent
Mt homegirl Mantis is fucking wonderful, and I am looking forward so much to her getting more screen time.
As much as I felt meh on "Infinity War" - her bouncing gleefully in the background of that planet is legitimately my favourite part, and as much as I enjoyed "Endgame", her one line about using knives was fucking magic.
Pom Klementieff is amazing, and I want more of this character. I am so happy she is getting love in this breakdown.
I’d dig a Mantis series in the vein of Violet Evergarden
It's kinda hard for her to get that kinda spotlight when we've got a crew of hot messes (and Groot) and she's the new girl.
Maybe a comic or something
@@lolforlife2487 i'd love a comic or animated spin-off
I think one of the things the show was arguing was that Loki was in fact not a narcissist but playing into the only aspect that ever brought him success in life. Look at how at the end of Thor 1 his motivation was to move into a different persona and fill the one of his Brother's, or in Thor 2 how he plays into the role by trying to hide his grief for the death of his Mother. Hiddleston is a producer on the show and if you watch the behind the scenes how he is depicted in the show appears to be in line with Hiddleston's own take on the character.
Yep i refuse to agnowledge weird not loki like loki, in avengers, else he has either pretty good emotional motivation, even the "trust my anger" for his mom shows how much he cared and in part one he just lasheds out how he was gaslit and lied to all his life. Bad thing but reasonable messed up build up. In he is, not that great written honestly.
Tony is better example of a narsicist i think, thats why he was good as guy causing avengers 2 crisis and civil war.
Yeah the fact that Lindsey uses that he loves his mother in Loki as a sign he's not narcissistic but he's always loved his mother from day 1. It's not inconsistent writing, it's a core motivation of his but ofc if there was any, it would make sense bc different writers and directors
Yeah I agree. What I got out of the show is that his seemingly ‘narcissistic side’ is just a persona, and act/illusion he puts on, but it’s not what he actually believes inside. Unlike an actual narcissist, Loki is very self aware.
@@marocat4749 Apart from the Avengers being written to be thematically simple, Loki IS under the influence of the mindstone throughout it, and we saw what a few minutes with it in the same room did to the avengers.
@@wewoor ok i can take that
This is only a very small part of the video, but I appreciate that subtle dig at D&D saying "But Daenerys stood up to her abusive brother, therefore it's totally in character that she's a sociopath who will burn down a city!"
*Six minutes in:* "Oh, I think I might be a narcissist this is confronting."
*Ten minutes in:* "Ok I might be, but my mother definitely is without question."
Hey I have narcisstic parents too! They seem genuinely too far down the rabbit hole to ever change for the better. I recently realized I picked up a lot more of their bad behavior than I thought I did.
I think a lot of us kids of narcs have a learned narcissism because we had to played their games all the time, and also we learned how to be people from them.
But I don't think we're the same as them, we just have some bad habits to unlearn. So yeah, you may be narcisstic out of habit but you are not a narcissist.
🙂 Keep trying to be better! If you don't, then when your brains stops wanting to learn new things you'll be more or less stuck with these habits like our narc parents.
my boyfriend and i are both children of narcissists and I think what we kids of narcissists have to do is recognise the traits (self-pity, lack of responsibility, etc.) we've picked up and work through them. The biggest thing that defines a narcissist is the inability to self-reflect and as long as you keep an eye on yourself and work on the habits you've picked up we should be fine.
I personally find accepting responsibility very empowering. Responding to someone telling you you've hurt them with "sorry" instead of offence. Life is just so much easier when you're not trying to fight everyone
@@borednerd5767 I suffered extreme narcissistic abuse and I do not feel like I inherited from them. In fact, I always felt like I was not their child. I hated them deeply by the time I left because everything they did was wrong while they prevented me from succeeding and made everything my fault. But I have improved myself to be one of the best people in the world (I know how narcissistic it sounds, and that is why I keep saying it, it is not bad to value yourself highly when you deserve it), and I had examined them for such a long time and I depended on them from a fundamental level and still need to depend on others for a while. The fact that I had been able to see so many things that they should have learned over their lifetime and the fact that they never acknowledged any progress I made as a person, it was unbearable. But that hatred is entirely restrained to those who have ruined my life for so many years. I see nothing wrong with other people and I wish to learn them and I think the only thing I learned from the narcissistic devils is that no matter how great of a person you are, it will be hard to have people see your true value and showing yourself efficiently and accepting the rejection that comes with that is an important skill. For all of my life, people did not even get involved deep enough with me for me to make mistakes or show how much I could support them. They probably thought I was either too hard to relate with or too much of a stain on their image based on superficial qualities and rumors. Additionally, I was called smart, attractive and stuff by the Devils, but I never bought into that. And when I actually started getting smarter and having a body I could personally appreciate, they never supported me in those areas and tried to offer their solutions. In fact, it is such a devilish lie to tell someone they are smart only to not give their thoughts any weight.
"Someone with NPD will never have that 'Come to Jesus' moment"
If you've ever had a relationship with a narcissist, that's what hit the hardest with Loki, episode 1. You know that confronting the narcissist with their misdeeds over the course of their life, resulting in a "Come to Jesus" moment will never happen. But holy shit, you'll never know how many times I've fantasized about that happening. To me, it's a wish fulfillment.
Yes, so much this. You hope for so long that if you can just get through to them, if they can just understand that they've caused you real pain, you can begin to move forward and improve things. Sadly, you can't establish healthy boundaries for yourself until you accept that it's not possible.
Yo let it be.
They'll sometimes pretend to for a brief time and then when you try get back to it they'll deny everything.
I agree that's pretty much true but loki is trying to say that even if the person whom you may know in real life is the most self interested person in the world if giant tentacle monsters popped up out of nowhere and destroyed most of the earth that person might just think "you know maybe I'm not the most important person I think I am" and not just for a little while.
Basically the mcu writers assume that even the largest egotist would have their narcissism collapse in the face of cosmic terror or existential dread
@@PHOENIXGUNDAM that's a good point. But it kind of seems like saying someone with depression might be cured if world peace were achieved, they got a supportive community, and they won the lottery. Not impossible, but it does seem like it is discounting the biological component.
I really appreciated the Loki series as a reflection of how labels can be used to ignore the complexity of the person they are applied to. In this case this variant of Loki is not actually a clinical narcissist, but thanks to the label and implicate bias against those of the Loki category, people focus on his narcissistic behaviors but ignore his altruism and othe aspects of the person behind the persona. It reminds me of the way people grapple with labels like criminal and thug, often denying the humanity of the individual that label is applied to and justifying abuse against those people.
I like how ever since their “feud” Lindsay and Natalie have been dedicating at least 1 second of their video to hate each other
Yes! I love how much they like each other that they can comfortably insult eachother
what "feud"?
@@infinitum8558 a while ago Lindsay sold pins, one themed around her brand and one themed around Natalie. The “feud” was about which pin would have more sales to see which creator had more fans (both pins sold out). It’s just a joke; I think they are good friends.
Yeah it's great, I got a good laugh at both of them referencing Amadeus in their latest respective videos.
@@infinitum8558 it started when Natalie took like half of Lindsay's talking points for a video about transphobia in cinema (or it was the other way around idr) and then Lindsay sold Lindsay and Natalie pins to see who wins the feud.
One of the greatest lines I ever heard was actually from WandaVision. “What is grief but love persevering”
I interpreted Sylvie’s assumption in the end that Loki was going to betray her as her fear overtaking her - the fear of intimacy/love/etc. So she retreated back to what she knew, isolation, and her mind just came up with the excuse “oh he was going to betray me anyway”
This was my interpretation too, it was self sabotage more than a logical deduction based on observed behavior.
Yeah. I mean she lived in apocalypses all of her life. So like 1000 years of watching every person she's ever met die in cataclysmic event after cataclysmic event. She's gonna have some issues relating to other people.
Loki's frustration and hurt at Sylvie's insistence on hissing and spitting and clawing at him like a feral cat when he really does just want to be friends had me going "Now you know how Thor feels whenever he tries to talk to you".
@@Rhowena13 YEP
@@Rhowena13 I'd argue Loki did a better job for Sylvie than Thor ever did for him. He doesn't call her past "imagined slights" or leave her on the ground of Sakaar with a device that boils the veins...
I'm sure the comments section will be filled with reasonable people just sharing opinions and respecting each other
if we know anything about the internet, it’s that it’s a font of reason and well-thought-out discourse, especially when it comes to (1) superhero fandom and (2) Lindsay Ellis content
How dare you call me “reasonable”!?!!!!!?
Omg calling people reasonable literally makes you worse than Satan, wtf
I sincerely doubt it.
"Well it's clear this video about people with an personality disorder that distorts their self-importance isn't about MEEEEE!! That quiz I took on Facebook earlier today which asked me for my profile info said so!"
I figure the issue with narcissism as opposed to something like depression is that it seems like it hurts others more than it hurts the person who has it. It's easier to feel bad for someone who can't stop hurting themselves than it is to feel bad for someone who's been manipulating you, and who apparently by definition cannot show remorse for their actions. But yeah I thought the Loki series felt 100% like fanfiction, a much more streamlined 'dreamy' character who wears tight shirts and loves the new girl character. Not necessarily 'wrong', but not the most consistent portrayal of the character.
It does hurt them though, I've never met a person who seemed to have NPD who seemed happy. It cannot feel good to constantly chase validation and to do it by manipulating and hurting people around you. You surround yourself with miserable people who are miserable because of your own actions.
They don't even have the luxury of being sociopaths, they can tell when they've made people hate them, and it can break their hearts to see it happen, especially if it means they can no longer get validation from a desired source.
It's gotta suck, a lot.
You may be onto something there. Cos I have a mental illness that's similarly still very stigmatised (schizophrenia) cos people believe this dumb myth that people with schizophrenia are violent, a danger to others. When in fact people with all mental illness, including schizophrenia, commit fewer crimes (including violent crimes) on average per person than mentally healthy people do. But people don't really know that fact. Also people with mental illness are way more likely to be _VICTIMS_ of crime than mentally healthy people are. (I'll post sources for all this stuff at the bottom if people are interested)
But yeah despite the truth, anyone with schizophrenia gets labelled a psycho killer (qu'est-ce que c'est). People with schizophrenia are only really a threat to themselves, through self harm, suicide, drug addiction etc. Literally 90% of people with schizophrenia smoke, it's nuts, and it's part of why the average life expectancy of someone who has it is 20 years lower than the average.
But yeah I just tell people anyway, and people who ghost me after that weren't true friends in the first place clearly. And I'm an extreme introvert cos of the illness, so it suits me to not need to text 50 different people every day and be forced to go see them in person all the time.
But yeah. Depression and anxiety and Bipolar disorder to an extent have been destigmatised, which is great. Just gotta keep that going. Do it for all of the mental illnesses. They're way more common than people think. Like schizophrenia is as common as being gay is, so think about how many gay people you know, and you probably know a similar amount with schizophrenia, and have absolutely no idea. Cos it's really really easy to hide the symptoms of it unlike what the movies might depict. And because of the stigma, people don't wanna go round telling everyone. So you almost certainly have co-workers or friends or even possibly family members who have it.
And that's just one mental illness. Lindsay said it in the video, people with narcissistic personality disorder don't seek help for it because of the stigma of being labelled a narcissist. If they actually get treatment and meds for it, they can manage their symptoms, and it'll be fine. And then the stigma will be lowered because of that. So it's a catch 22 really. We've got to destigmatise it to get to the point where we can destigmatise it. Labelling everyone with it as a bad person is not gonna help anybody
Sources -
www.time-to-change.org.uk/media-centre/responsible-reporting/violence-mental-health-problems
www.mentalhealth.gov/basics/mental-health-myths-facts
jech.bmj.com/content/70/3/223
Same with Sociopathy, really. It is a mental illness, and I can't imagine not only not having basic emotions and empathy but also being unable to understand that you don't have them. People with OCD, BPD, depression, PTSD, even to a lesser extent schizoprenics can seek help and in a current envoronment will get it, but narcissists and sociopaths won't, so it's that much harder to sympathize with them AND help them. As far as mental disorders go, these two are the ones that are the scariest to most people.
@@mellowsign I don't think OP was implying narcissists aren't hurt by their own disorder. They were implying that, from the outside looking in, it seems like it hurts others more than it hurts them, which is why destigmatising the disorder is so much more difficult than other disorders. I still think this reply's important to clarify just how it must hurt narcissists too, but I think both comments are valid in their analysis.
@@mellowsign it should suck. No one gets off of hurting others scott-free and they shouldn’t. You either work to change the behavior or you suffer the consequences.
"Obsessive self loathing is a form of narcissism"
I've got to remember that. Eep.
Also thanks for reminding us that while the Office is billed as a comedy, David Brent is fundamentally a tragic character
can be, would be unfair to call every case that. at the end we get to blame self harming people again which is no help
But that makes no sense they’re literally the opposite
@@ariatrent6263 Is it because it’s “obsessive”, so it’s self loathing that is only concerned with how you feel and not how you and your actions affect others? (I genuinely don’t know, just guessing here. Sorry if this reply is unwelcome.)
@@chelnahtheegghead That’s interesting. Will have to think about it.
@@ariatrent6263 Narcissism is often misrepresented as being pathologically arrogant, so they just think they're the best at everything. In actual fact it's more like you view other people as extensions of yourself. Self-obsession, not necessarily self-love. A self-loathing narcissist might also be a misanthrope for this reason - they see the traits they hate about themselves in other people.
Loki isn't a Narcissist. He's a smart guy who has bought into the false narrative he's been told all his life: he's been always TOLD he's a narcissist, so every positive feeling he has towards himself gets wrapped up in that story.
He also gleefully commits murder as a performance and seeks validation through conquest and domination. That sounds pretty narcissist if incredibly exaggerated for superhero nonsense.
That's my take on him too. He isn't one, but he has internalised it because people kept saying that he is selfish, will betray them and that he is a liar. And then on top of that there is the internalised racism of being taught that Frost Giants are violent monsters and should be killed/defeated. So being narcissistic and murderous is most likely not something he wants to be, but something he thinks he should be.
@@SuperPal-tr3go Thor 1 Loki and Avengers Loki feel like completely different characters. Also its been more or less confirmed that the mind stone was messing with him throughout the Avengers movie.
Loki is the child of narcisists that's projected onto all his life that might have absorbed some of the bad behaviors and habits but is hardly the real deal
I have seen someone else observe that Loki isn't a Narcissist, but he THINKS he is. And the same about Sylvie.
They discussed the odd paradox of someone who believes that they will ultimately hurt the people they care about because they believe they are incapable of genuinely caring about other people.
Of course the most narcissitic character is the one literally named Ego
My father would routinely forget or abandon me and force me, even as young as 6 years old, to find my own way home.
My mother was emotionally and physically abusive, and she murdered my dog out of spite.
And yet both narcissistic parents think that they were not only very good parents, but don't understand why I refuse to talk to them. So yes. Lindsey is right on the money with that one.
It could just be me projecting, but I see Loki's narcissism as stemming more from C-PTSD, rather than NPD on its own. It's more congruent with his childhood history of abandonment and neglect, and also can explain in-narrative why his empathy was buried (as a defence mechanism) and emerged once he was exposed to a healthy relationship 🤷
Tbh looking at Norse mythology one of the beauties of these God is that they're all narcissistic.. because theyre God's. Asgaurdians.
Everyone else is lesser than.
And that narcissistic nature is what makes them so human in their stories. Their faults have them make mistakes and the shame is really nice to see from mythology.
Like Loki is mischievous and tricky in nature and the asgaurds treat him worse because he's part giant.. and he constantly causes problems around asguard.
It's interesting how loki is more narssastic in the mcu when Thor and Odin were just about as bad in the mythos.
Loki does fall in love with a jormund
And births fenrir which causes ragnarok to begin. Fenrir is suppose to kill Odin too. And they hated loki because it is unchangeable prophecy he's destined to invoke.
His love for his son caused the end of asguard. (Odins fear caused fenrirs anger and power grow)
Narssastic, but also understandable.
@@phataldestroyer Odin is pretty bad in the MCU too and I'd definitively peg him as a narcissist. I mean between the convenient "oh, look at how much you hurt me" Odinsleep and the way he nopes out of life in front of Loki and Thor. Not to mention the treatment of Hella
@@vanyadolly I always thought the Hella approach was weird
As it's Odins fault ragnarok really comes into place.
I guess throwing his mistakes onto his children is a pretty Odin thing to do.
Typical narcissistic patent lol
Bros just described Narcissism
As somebody who just ended a longterm relationship with a narcissist, I hope I see the signs sooner if I have to deal with that again. There's no accountability, no understanding, no respect. You barely exist to a narcissist when you aren't directly validating and gratifying that person. Your feelings and thoughts don't matter unless they're positive toward the narcissist. Any criticism, concern, or disagreement is treated as extreme hostility. There's no integrity. It's exhausting, but I didn't really recognize how severe the problem was for years.
If Harley Quinn can grow to see the red flags in a relationship so can you
@@RoseCentaur1916 I appreciate this greatly, although I have my own issues with therapy. Gosh, I mostly use youtube comment sections to make stupid jokes, but this topic hit home and I'm glad I shared. Maybe somebody will read this and think more about their relationships and learn from it. I was gullible, and I hate that word, it's a nasty word, but that's what I was.
@Gabriel Victor that's true. I had one vaguely serious relationship before that. I was with the narcissist for 4 years.
I paid for almost everything too. I was like a low income sugar daddy. Always given many excuses about why she wasn't getting a job or able to pay for things herself. Never charged her nay rent. Looking back, I made a lot of mistakes that way, just giving and giving all the time.
Not super relevant, but my biggest issue with Loki is that at no point in the whole first season do we see the protagonist use his established skillset to successfully solve a problem. It made me feel faked out. Like I came here at least in part to watch Loki scheme and illusion and shenanigan his way out of tight spots, and there is just ZERO.
I worry the line: "I don't care for Nebula" may cause some trouble with Lindsay's video sponsors...
I'm really going to miss you. Thank you, Lindsay
20:19 FOR REAL THO. Dave Bautista is an incredible actor. His performance in the opening scene of Blade Runner 2049 is riveting. He's in that movie for all of five minutes and it makes such an impression.
He was in blade runner????
@@beckyginger3432 He's K's first (shown) target.
Should also check out his short that leads to that opening scene.
th-cam.com/video/aZ9Os8cP_gg/w-d-xo.html
I don't love narcissists, I just love myself.
This needs to be put on a mirror.
Hold up….
Clever girl ...
I don't love myself, I just love this incredibly handsome fellow I see in this pond. Huh, weird, what's that flower doing?
I kinda thought the whole thing with the ending of Loki was that Sylvie was just not really able to trust someone, especially because it seems like she's kinda sworn off getting close to anyone in the pursuit of her goal of ending the TVA? I didn't get the sense that it was much to do with Loki personally unless she's just familiar with how manipulative Loki variants usually are lol
I appreciate the effort that went into this video, but I do want to chime in with the others on here saying that NPD is not a monolith. Some people with NPD struggle more with empathy, some are skewed more heavily toward the self-aggrandizement traits. You only need to have five of the nine qualities you listed at the beginning of this video to be diagnosed with NPD. A lot of the blanket statements made in this video about internal states and the ability of people with NPD to care about other human beings are true for some, but not for all.
I love that this has more nuance than the average discussion about NPD, which is the first step toward the level of societal acceptance that you mention we've mostly achieved for things like depression, but it was difficult to hear it still being discussed in such absolute terms.
I have a background in psychology (I'll be finishing my master's next fall). My area is more child and developmental psychology, but I have studied many other areas including personality disorders. I'm not an expert at all, but I still would like to weigh in. I don't know if I would consider Loki to be a narcissist, but he does exhibit the traits quite strongly. The times that he does show empathy and regret for his actions do not mean that he definitely does not have NPD. Saying something like "a TRUE narcissist would never..." is a mistake many people make when discussing any personality disorder. There is no such thing as a "true" narcissist. Personality disorders are tricky, and the traits are not absolute or exhibited 100% of the time in all situations for all people. Like most mental disorders, personality disorders exist on a spectrum. People with NPD can have that "come to Jesus" moment but it doesn't happen often (don't hold your breath waiting for it). When it does, it's usually because they end up hurting someone they genuinely care about. A narcissist will always be a narcissist but that does not mean they are absolutely incapable of empathy or love. They can learn to recognize their negative behavior and self-correct. However, you are right that you can't character arc yourself to being cured. Personality disorders can't be cured, but those that have them can grow, it's just is a long painful process and is not often successful. We always say that you can't change the way you feel, but you CAN change the way you behave. As you said, the big hurdle to overcome is finding the motivation to do the work when they don't think there is anything wrong with them, but it is possible and it does happen.
i will say that I love all of your videos and it's refreshing to see a real discussion about NPD that isn't just "all narcissists are evil and bad".
Glad to get some validation on this. I've been in so many arguments with people who fundamentally don't understand that absolutes aren't required and that people with NPD can love others and do feel shame and hurt (I feel like the aversion to that and deeply hidden low self esteem is often the root of the narcissistic behaviors at least in the one I know best). In my experience, it is hard for them not to treat the people they actually love as pawns or extensions of themselves at some point or even regularly. It can really fluctuate. Though someone might argue what I was observing was a tactic to keep people around by pretending to exhibit the behaviors we would associate with loving someone as an individual. So I really can't know.
Thank you for your nuance and clear explanation and I hope the rest of your master's goes well :)
As a Lindsay supporter, a Marvel fan, and an adult child of narcissists I feel like this video was literally made for me
This was a great analysis, but I can't agree that Borderline Personality Disorder is less stigmatized. The way I have seen people talk about those with BPD online is on par or even worse than the way they talk about narcissists.
Thank you, was hoping to see someone else think this
Agreed. They also tend to face more irl stigma even from medical professionals, possibly because unlike people with NPD, people with BPD usually seek help and get diagnosed and the diagnosis itself is highly stigmatized and misunderstood even in the medical and mental health community, to the point where professionals used to (and may still) refer to it as a "wastebasket diagnosis," meaning one they gave to people (typically women and AFAB people) who they saw as "difficult patients" (because they didn't respond well to treatment that was actually inappropriate for their condition) and wanted to literally throw away because they didn't understand them or how to treat them. The stigma around BPD is intense and has been for decades and the diagnosis itself can be a barrier to accessing treatment when professionals stigmatize patients with it, which happens far too often.
Edited to note that research says a lot of people diagnosed with BPD (especially women and AFAB people) are actually neurodivergent and were originally misdiagnosed with BPD, but that's a whole other can of worms, though still important to mention in the conversation around BPD and stigma.
"Children of narcissistic parents frequently learn to shapeshift as a survival mechanism"
I am in this sentence and I hate it, thanks
Same. I'm pretty good at it too.
Also same.
Hang on there.
Saaaaammmme!!!
Oh, Christ. THAT explains how I stayed in a toxic friendship with a borderline personality for a half decade.
The thing with Loki is that hes a kind of "false "narcissistic, but he is actually a pleaser, framed by his own father, Odin (a true narcissistic BTW). He acts as a narcissistic because maybe is the way he looks at Odin and Thor, the extension of Odin himself. He is Jealous and craves for attention and he is tired of being a pleaser to never be recognize, so he acts as his vision of his father in order to get personal revenge, to make everybody suffer what he has passed. And maybe this is not so obvious because Odin acts as a wise and loving father, but we can confirm Odin as narcissistic when we finally get to know Hela and how she talks about him and the fact that Loki was always closer to his mother rather than his father. The main thing with Loki and the main theme in the series, is that hes such an internalized pleaser that he acts and admits the things the world say that he is supposed to be and he never question that, until he met Sylvie, a reflection of his own neglected personality. Loki series is about revealing Loki himself as a pleaser, a very weird kind of pleaser, and not the narcissistic everybody thinks he is.
You get cookies. 🍪 🍪 🍪
Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
One more thing. There's no gaslighting.
@@Cel3ere5 I like cookies /o/
I might be wrong, but i'm pretty sure children of narcissistic parents can actually develop narcissistic traits without being one, that's always what i considered loki being since he grew up with Odin.
Everything he does in my opinion is almost just trauma related but not because he's a narcissist.
* He trust no one but himself - He seemed to always have been the family's black sheep, the scapegoat of Odin, always on his own or following Thor's friends, i want to insist on that cause Loki in Asgard has NO FRIENDS of his own.
* He ruined his brother ceremony for "a little fun" and don't seem sorry for it - He's always been in his shadow, he was not sorry because he thought Thor's deserved it.
* Basically his want for power in general - seeing how Odin treats him, and seeing how Loki himself said it, it's the only way he found to get his father attention and praises. When he realize destroying Jotunheim wasn't enough for that he let go and fell into the SPACE. (then there's avenger 1, but we know he was more or less manipulated, pressured by thanos)
* His agression or mockeries, basically everytime he make witty comment to hurt people - Another way to defend himself and hide his vulnerabilities, usually he spit them out after someone poked a soft spot of him.
I agree with you Loki grew as a people pleaser, probably because of his family. People pleaser also have this thing of shaping themselves around the person they interact with because the main point of people pleasing is to ... please them.
His "inflated" ego with all his "i am a god your dull creature" for me are hopeless attempt to prove his worth and convince others *and himself* that he is worth it.
There's so much i could say about Loki's behavior to be honest, even though i have no qualifications in psychology, growing up with a narcissistic parent helps me a tad in that ... :x
Just adding that yes loki is selfish but i would bet my 2 hands that it is linked to the fact that he can trust no one, why would he help someone if he can't even trust them and there's nothing in it for him ? Sylvie and Loki are not that different from each other for that, they do things for themselves because they can't trust and be trusted
I remember telling to a friend "Loki's not a narcissistic, but you know who can behave like one without being one ? victims of narcissistic, especially the one who grow up with one" that's why Loki take accountability in the show, that's why he get away from those behaviors when he heals, because he's not one
yes, this. i'm a child of two narcissist parents who grew up an emotional chameleon and a pleaser, and Loki's story always hit me wayyy too close to home. uncomfortably so, despite that Loki and i have very little in common in how our pleaser tendencies actually manifest. (he's bombastic, i'm used to making myself so small i almost disappear.) and like, i'm not even convinced the writers of the movies did it consciously, it almost strikes me as a thoughtless coincidence that he was written that way. am i the only one who walked away from Loki's MCU entries with the impression that half the people working on them didn't pick up on his character's emotional baggage? sometimes i feel like i'm reading way too much into things, sometimes i feel convinced the ball was dropped on bringing some closure to Loki's family situation, and it genuinely fucks with me that they didn't bother.
i was hoping that the Loki series would pick up the slack, and sure it kinda does in ways, but it also felt like they were dancing around the topic, touching on points here and there without being able to properly put their finger on the core of it... or maybe i just need to watch it again. either way, i'm allowing myself to be cautiously optimistic for the second season, at least.
"NPD is not a disorder you can "character arc" your way out of." THIS. Pretty much sums up the frustrations I have with the "villains as the heroes" trend in media (i.e. Loki, Cruella, The Joker, etc). We're so in love with redemption arcs that we produce things that further gaslight those entangled with people who have NPD and are trying to figure out how to make sense of reality and stop getting hurt.
Did people actually walk away from The Joker thinking he was a hero and that was a redemption arc? Maybe making him sympathetic and showing his own framing of the world but, I thought the movie was more of a "the world exacerbates problems and that inevitably leads to people being awful and villainous. So stop being so awful world or we will get more Jokers which we DON'T want." Which has grains of truth but is problematic in its own way.
I've noticed something about a lot of 'redemption' arcs, and it's that they're not actually redemption arcs at all. What they are is a retroactive rationalization of how nothing that a villainous character did was actually their fault. Usually this comes in the form of a tragic backstory that all a characters villainous actions are explained as being a result of, not a result of their own choices. Which is not a redemption, it's just a denial of responsibility, and of the character's own free will.
And I think in part because of this, I've noticed people refusing to accept a redemption arc where the story acknowledges that anything bad the character did was their own fault. They can't actually forgive a character unless said character's actions can be framed as not their fault, no matter how much the character seems to be changing their behavior. Which is to say, really, that a lot of the 'forgiveness' narratives aren't actually about forgiveness, they're about shifting blame.
@@zoro115-s6b yep.
Redemption can’t happen where there is no responsibility, and forgiveness that denies reality is ugly, not magical and beautiful. Villains CAN change. But it’s not by us suddenly realizing they really meant well and there were just factors we didn’t know about. That puts the onus on us, as if our rationalizing changes reality. Understanding the full picture, while important, doesn’t erase what actually occurred; “villains” have to actually change in ways other people experience and that happens in the present and future, not the past.
@@LC-sc3en Short answer? Yes, people thought Joker was about making him the hero. The issue is that the movie bends over backwards to make you the viewer want him to succeed, nevermind at what. He is, unarguably, the protagonist of the film, which means that we're invested in him by default. There's plenty of media out there where the protagonist is undeniably a horrible person, and a lot of it does a way better job communicating that you shouldn't *like* them to the viewer than Joker did. It's not a movie about a man making decisions that throw him deeper and deeper into the path of a bad person, no, the world just happens to him and 'forces' him to be bad every now and then. The final shot of the movie (minus the out-of-nowhere framing device) is a horde of rioters basically bowing down to him as he stands on a flaming cop car. It's kind of impossible to argue that the movie's about anything other than painting him as someone to look up to.
Then you also have to look at the fact that despite any other intentions that may or may not exist, it's still a movie about a comic book villain who's had almost 80 years of people seeing him as their favorite part of Batman. Those people, for sure, want him to succeed, because it means their favorite Batman villain gets to hang around some more.
Not to mention the downright dangerous 'stopping your meds frees you' message that it pushed, holy shit. Him shooting the talk show host was framed as the first action taken by his 'true self,' unclouded by societal expectations and medication. It's a bad message.
@@saeyyy The archetypal "complex villain with a tragic backstory" narrative is really fundamentally broken. Not only does it put the onus on victims to figure out why the perpetrator of harmful and evil acts isn't really a bad person rather than on the perpetrator to not do bad things in the first place, it also strikes me as really insulting to anyone who's experienced trauma.
The typical "sympathetic villain" can be summed up as: "It's not his fault he does evil things! It's all because of his traumatic past."
That kind of thinking frames itself as compassionate to trauma survivors, but it treats them as though they have no free will. Experiences, good or bad, can influence choices, but they don't dictate them. Treating someone as though they have no say in their own actions isn't kindness, it's condescending, demeaning, and insulting. Or, for someone truly malicious, an easy excuse for them to do whatever they want and not acknowledge responsibility.
looking into resources on npd vs basically anything else for writing always left me feeling frustrated because they would always have these very long very judgemental sounding screeds then end with "most narcissists don't seek treatment because they want to be perceived as good people and as such cant recognize these behaviors in themselves, but if any of this sounds like you contact a therapist" like if the point of the symptoms list is to get people with npd to look into treatment maybe present it in a neutral tone and not "narcissistic people are crybaby losers who hurt everyone they meet" ???????
I have always loved Mantis in a way I can't really explain to others. Like, why would I pick this odd character with almost no screen time as my favorite out of the entire huge cast of MCU-characters.
This video made it click for me. Seeing her cover next to Ego, she displays the body language of someone surviving narcissistic abuse. Someone who survived by making her self smaller, more appeasing. It hurts to say I relate to that on a deep level.
I think one thing with Sylvie is that she knows that he's a "Loki" and "all Lokis" could at any minute flip flop. She doesn't need to have seen the MCU like we have, she's seen MORE than we have, knows there are Loki variants from fighting with the TVA all this time, so she knows that Loki could turn against her (despite evidence to the contrary).
It also says more about Sylvie than Loki anyway since Sylvie's problem is that she can not trust anyone, especially someone who's basically a pathological liar and she's been on this mission for millennia. Why would she give her entire mission which she has been striving for millennia for someone she's met for a few weeks or days who is known to flip flop and lie all the time?. It doesn't matter that this Loki has never betrayed her because Loki's are known to make you think you can trust him to then backstab them later and I think Sylvie would rather see that Loki so she can finish her mission than to actually believe in Loki and give up.
Yeah it's more projecting and life-experienced based on her end.
At that point honestly either choice was plausible. Maybe she considered if she were in his position she'd double-cross, or maybe it was panic. It's the decision they went with to get to their eventual point b and it's reasonable enough for me to accept that Sylvie just made a critically bad choice in the end.
@@DanzelGlovington I don't even know if it was a bad choice. The choice seemed to be participate in the intentional genocide that you were a victim of,
2. Allow intentional genocide to continue when you could stop it.
3. Stop the intentional genocide, reestablish free will, and get some sweet revenge and risk multiversal war which has the potential to be worse. Also the only proof you have that a multiversal war is inevitable is the word of the genocidal authoritarian who would like the genocide to continue. Granted he and the math of the concept of the multiverse is pretty convincing.
Also I am not even sure if killing HWR kicked off the multiverse, that should have happened or would have happened as soon as Mobius and B13 got the TVA to stop pruning timelines altogether. Also HWR was saying all the things to get Sylvie to kill him. My theory is he was tired, bored, and nihilistic.
bojack horseman, from what you said about the traits of narcissism, seems to be a good option for a “definitive portrayal of a healing narcissist”
I feel like there is a distinction made between someone being a narcissist and having NPD. Similar to how a person can be obsessive compulsive without having OCD or being depressed due to something like the death of a loved one but not having depression.
In regards to people liking narcissists in fiction but not reality, it just makes logical sense. Grandiose acting characters are entertaining, and far removed from the interpersonal harm that the real thing can cause due to being fictional. A lot of things are explicitly enjoyed in fiction but hated in real life for exact same reason. Most people aren't going to want to be in an irl fight scene for example.
I'm right there with you on Infinity War. Killing Gamora SHOULDN'T HAVE WORKED, but apparently Disney is fine communicating to its audience that abuse IS love after all. I was waiting for Endgame to reveal that Gamora was some kind of time bomb to undo the snap, but instead they just photoshopped Black Widow into her death scene with added dialogue to make infertile people feel shitty about themselves.
Also, I will forever be mad about how Falcon and the Winter Soldier treats PTSD. People with PTSD often feel guilty for things that aren't their fault, like abuse they endured or violence they survived. Bucky Barnes literally had no control over his actions as the Winter Soldier, but he blames himself and seeks atonement. And his therapist reinforces that belief! And Sam Wilson (a former VA counselor who previously led a PTSD support group) agrees that it's his fault and he should atone! Fuck that noise.
For an industry full of people in therapy, Hollywood in general and Disney in particular sure doesn't seem to know how mental illness works.
marvel is really bad at handling these topics unfortunately and I too was really disappointed. Luckily there's always fanfiction
not a hot take but i feel like if they were going to go down the whole "clone love as expression of narcissism" route, they should've gone all the way and given us tom hiddleston making out with blue, slightly wider tom hiddleston
Is this a reference to the Will Smith meme
As someone who has experienced the knock-on effects of narcissism coming from people they love who have NPD, I think the most important thing with narcissism as a trope is to push that it is something people can be aware of in themselves, and take steps to address. The idea that chronically narcissistic behaviour is a choice led the people who manipulated and used me to believe they were doing it because they wanted to, and it was who they were, despite feeling bad and having some part of them regret their actions/wanting to stop. Ultimately, I had to cut them out of my life for my own wellbeing, but the idea that you can and should seek help for narcissistic tendencies is extremely important. Admitting to yourself you have a narcissism problem is brave and painful. At the same time, narcissism is often romanticised as an ideal. We seem to be extremely confused about whether narcissists are desirable or evil. From personal experience, I can say they're easy to love, easy to hate, and extremely hard to let go. There is no condition more tragic to me.
That’s why I love Bojack Horseman. Ends with self reflection and realization, but his loved ones separate and go their own ways while still loving from afar!
Easy to love, easy to hate, extremely hard to let go--this spoke to me. I have a number of narcissists in my life, some who have gentled a bit with age and self-awareness, some who most certainly have not. Even the ones who have scarred me the most, I can't quite let go of. The hardest thing for me is the way they deflect responsibility for their actions on to other people until you find yourself questioning your own motivations, as in, "Did I cause this?" and only hard evidence reminds you that you actually didn't. Thanks for the insights!
This resonated with me very strongly. One of the people I love most in my family I had to stop talking to because I realised I was just throwing myself against a brick wall trying to get him to understand why his behaviour hurt him so badly. That said I still love him very much and don't believe he is a bad person, he has issues he refused to acknowledge or work on and for that reason I had to cut him out of my life.
"I have NPD"
*doubt*
"Admitting to myself I had a narcissistic personality was brave of me"
*I believe you now*
@@kylefrank638 Excuse me, is this a joke or did you misread the comment? Genuinely asking
I always saw the ending of Loki as more about Silvie's mistrust, not Loki's actual untrustworthiness. That's why to me it was fine.
Ooh yay! Another Lindsay Ellis video! What a good pairing for my coffee this morning! Thank you for the hard work!
Enjoying The finner things at life
Idk why but i read this in a sarcastic tone 😭🤣😂
Whut, im having dinner right now. Time zones are crazy.
@@Luke-fu5co No sarcasm, I promise 😊👍
The non-narcissistic qualities you're talking about in Loki were established long before the TV show, IMO. Thor: The Dark World established that he loved his mother in an unselfish way, and if we assume his sacrifice at the end was intended as genuine and he simply took advantage of his unexpected survival (rather than the whole thing having been faked), he's already shown he'll sacrifice himself for someone he loves. In Thor: Ragnarok, as I recall, his motives are also more complex than just always doing what's best for him, because IIRC when he joins in to help save Asgard, it's considered an almost hopeless last-ditch effort. Sure, he'll get adulation if he succeeds, but it's more likely he'll simply die, so a true narcissist's best option would've been to try and escape, and go find easier forms of validation elsewhere. We also see numerous hints that he actually does love Thor, certainly in a dysfunctional way, but not as an extension of himself, and in Infinity War he's even willing to give up the Tesseract to save him.
So I don't think the Loki TV show (which, cards on the table, I haven't seen yet) is retconning anything about Loki's personality. We've already seen that he's capable of genuine love, empathy, and selflessness. We've also seen that he can be colossally self-absorbed and arrogant, so calling him narcissistic isn't wrong. Whether he actually fits the criteria for NPD is another matter, and "diagnosing" characters is always tricky. There are some theories that say there are less severe forms of NPD where the persion capable of more empathy, and potentially recognizing the problems in their behavior, so potentially Loki could fall in that category. On the other hand, he could simply be a person who's narcissistic but doesn't have a disorder, which seems to be this video's view.
Yeah, Lindsey’s very informative and a lot of fun to watch but I don’t always agree with her conclusions or points.
I would argue that assuming he didn't fake his death in Dark World is a big assumption. As entertaining as the idea is, it would also be assuming that when confronted with a giant monster he stabbed still being alive and turning towards him, this thousand year old illusionist warrior chose to stand there like a deer in the headlights and get grabbed. Yet also was quick enough on his feet and have wherewithal when painfully impaled to plant a grenade.
Loki's choice at the end of Ragnorok to me was more about who he was seeking validation and approval from and how easy it would be to establish. He is definitely racist like most Asgardians. Ruling the earth would have been alright but seemed to be half about proving himself to Thor and Odin. If Asgard is gone, and he has no favor with the elder of the Universe who is left to impress? Plus Thor made it very clear that validation and praise was something Loki could actually get from him. The idea that he had it but never noticed (possibly because it wasn't expressed) means that it shouldn't be too hard to get back. Plus he brought a ship. I bet his brilliant planing skills never got past "sneak ship to people while Thor is making a scene and bolt safely away".
But like you said, that's just my own two cents as an unqualified rando on the internet.
@@LC-sc3en Loki might have been suicidal during the Dark World. He was clearly depressed while imprisoned, creating illusions in his cell and living in them. He was devastated after he heard of his mother's death. He was told by Thor he would still live his life in a cell.
Getting stabbed could have been conscious or subconscious decision. Caused both by grief for his mother's death, and despair of being brought back to live rest of his life alone in a cell.
@@Sienisota sure but that's a LOT to read into it. And there wasn't a scene with him living in illusions in the final movie. Maybe a deleted scene you are referencing?? It seems just more likely to me that given the bad bargain Thor offered him, he took the opportunity to stage a death and escape. Rather than a convoluted plan of "stab this guy oh he isn't dead. Well I suppose Joe's a good enough time as any to let him kill me and plant a grenade"
the line that got me was "they'll frequently rewrite history to suit their own narrative"
I spent my adolescence being gaslit like that so many times.
@Wanderlust Introvert I am!! thank you for caring
A Narcissist's Prayer
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did...
You deserved it.
@@jaendhoe3962 ...anyone else having a hard time to find a meaningful distinction between narcissist n sociopath?
I know you aren't around anymore, but I came back to rewatch this essay and just want to say how much I loved it.
I was trying to reconcile what you said about him being magically cured of narcissism by mentioning it and seemingly magically cured of it in the TVA Loki. And think a bit of attention has to be given to the fact that Loki experiences an interdimensional, traumatic, next level brain breaking existential break down. You can't go back to your life. Ever. Your life doesn't even matter and was scripted. The way he goes limp as he paws at the Infinity Stones that he gave up everything for that are just sitting in a drawer in piles, being used as paper weights. He watches his mom die. he watches his own death. "End of File." End of Life.
I think at that point even the most powerful narcissist may be jarred out of whatever pattern of thought that is. If you imagine the real psychological trauma of being abducted by aliens, then try to apply than having all the secrets of the universe revealed to you while you are kept prisoner and were about to be put to death. He struggles a bit here and there and still displays SOME qualities, but I Think there's a real reason that he progresses so quickly. How could you ever be the same after that?
He gets directly fully proven to him that not only was his life not special, but that he is not even the only him. This all powerful universe control is God like and they are practically bored of him. Like they've already heard him say the same shit hundreds of times and it's old hat.
I adore all your commentary on Ego too and the benefits of *some* narcissistic traits. That was really eye opening for me. And I do think that we should make a better attempt in stories to make a narcissist not instantly be a bad word. I get that you can't cure it, but if people were allowed to explore that and then begin steps to improve after they'd acknowledged it, that'd be the most healthy for everyone.
IMO, the problem comes from the fact that he often gets pigeon-holed by his peers and so often concludes to just play up into it for the attention. And when you've got a person who's predisposed to act/lie for attention (and supposed power/glory) it's hard to trust them even when they do change.
Sylvie hasn't known him long. like, in the grand scheme of things a couple of days or weeks is nothing compared to the literal centuries these beings live. If anything, I think it's more of a fault to Sylvie's inability to trust others than it is of Loki becoming a more empathic person. He's always been empathetic, he's a caring person, but he often hides that part of himself--like in Thor 2. Sylvie's lived a harder life than Loki, she didn't get to live in the castle as he did. idk. the tragedy comes from Sylvie not being able to overlook past her faults and look at the big picture.
Oh yeah, that ending was 100% about Sylvie's issues and 0% about Loki (if you'll pardon the exaggeration).
Yeah, I started to really love Loki when I saw how he really felt during Thor 2. It was the only good part of the movie. And it was very, very good. Made the entire movie worth it.
So I think Loki was never really a narcissist. That was just the role he was assigned, and he decided to play it as best he could. But we do see the occasional cracks in the façade, even before IW and Loki the Series.
Spot on, the show even states "You cant trust anyone" about Sylvie moments before that scene. It isn't because she watched the MCU lmao.
Great comment. For me Loki always represented envy, the only sin in which every participant is suffering. The reason why I like Loki as a character is because I pity him and I want him to be able to change for the better. This is a battle he can only fight with himself. I wouldn't call him a literal narcissist, his is a much deeper character trope than that. Calling him a straight up narcissist is a shallow interpretation of his character and the characters similar to him. Reading mythology made me love him more, because he is entertaining and out of the norm.
The show was weird, but I already have a weird relationship with the MCU. But it is a nice touch that we were led to believe that the story revolved around Loki. He changed a lot, Sylvie is at Thor movie one now characterwise. Still don't like the romantic implications tho.
That is literally the story arc of 616 Loki in the comics, back in 2014. If you read a comic now, Loki’s firmly a chaotic neutral/good character, after he literally refuses to listen to other people’s preconceptions of himself as a villain, including his previous evil 616 incarnation, and evolved into the God of Stories (then sorta backslid into the God of Outcasts, but still a good guy now). He quite literally is confronted with his old evil-616 self who berated him, saying that he should embraces nostalgia and the security of being the villain everyone wants him to be.