#mcu grievances

[ijustreallylikecaptainamericaok]

Like, at least when it comes to my hatred of J*hn W*lker it's obvious that's everything operating as intended, but for some weird reason the M/C/U really wants me to think the former, barely repentant child trafficker is just a goofy teeheehee funnyman and uhh... yeeeah, I dunno, man. It doesn't sit right. And it's not even just the main timeline either, WI? pulled the same shit and on top of that, made Melina either such a non-presence that she could've been replaced by anyone else or the big bad of the Red Room. It's like how WI? also helped in M*rvel's continued attempts to rehabilitate H*nk's image, but bent over backwards to keep Janet fridged at every turn. They'll do the most to prop up shitty men, but the women? Fuck 'em.

[lokiinmediasideblog]

Talking shit with nuance in the DMs with someone who's also seen the horrors of Loki TWT is nice ^_^

For context, I really HATE Loki TWT (I find Lokiblr more tolerable, maybe because it's easier to avoid shit as I have the algorithm recommendations turned off. Y'all should try that.). Everyone's awful over there, be it anti series, Sylki, or Lokius.

Like do they all know they can express grievances without getting ableist and nasty?

But some people from Loki TWT unfortunately are also on Tumblr...

[single-snail]

I don't like the spoiler i read abt episode 5 and 6 it sounds a lot like steve's ending in endgame

[i will be discussing the supposed spoilers for loki season 2 episodes 5 & 6 below the cut]

oh it totally does! it might even make less sense than steve’s ending, though idk if i’m willing to go that far. but yeah, abandoning the life you’ve lived for years and the people you know and care about and the cause you believe in to go back to the past to live a life that belonged to someone else? yup sounds like steve

even without the lokius of it all, a situation in which mobius goes to live on the timeline with a wife and kids makes zero sense. there is no life for mobius to return to. he can’t go back to the moment he was taken from bc the timeline would’ve been reset and a different mobius would’ve continued living. the only way for him to return to his life would be to replace that mobius by what? pruning him? literally killing him? he’d have to take away this mobius’ chance at life, the same thing that was done to him. no, he would never do that. it goes against everything we know about him and his and b-15’s stance after finding out they’re variants. he’s also definitely a different man than who he was on the timeline. even once he hypothetically gets his memories back, he will also have hundreds? thousands? millions? of years of memories at the tva. even just in the short time he’s known loki he’s changed a lot. he wouldn’t fit back in his life. it would make noooo sense.

based on reviews of 1-4, we will learn about his life on the timeline (tho i’m pretty sure people have said it’s dark, nothing close to a happy life with a wife and kids) and presumably we won’t have to wait until episode 5 for it. i think we will see mobius come to terms with what his life was, maybe mourn what he’s lost a bit, but ultimately continue doing what he’s doing.

also i just don’t see him leaving the fight against the tva/to reform the tva/to defeat kang. he’s not a passive character; loki gave him a spark to fight and i don’t think he’s gonna decide to leave it behind. i expect him to stick around a little bit.

luckily i’m not worried about these spoilers at all bc i think they’re total bullshit. the only people who know anything about episodes 5 & 6 are those that worked on the show, and i don’t imagine any of them are coming on here to anonymously leave spoilers in someone’s ask box. it’s just a troll, i’d bet anything on it. even if these things do happen, i don’t think it would prove the validity of this anon.

i didn’t talk about the sylki endgame part of the spoiler bc there wasn’t much to it and uh yeah that’s expected. i am actually going back and forth between whether i think they’ll go forward with sylki or just completely ignore it, but i won’t be surprised if/when it’s the former.

[louiesselfshipramblings]

I might make a post where I list some critiques and grievances I have with the media my f/os are in, though that list may end up very lopsided. Like for most of em, I feel I'd have just one or two things to say if at all. Maybe even mostly nitpicks.

But then I'd reach the MCU (Kate), One Piece (Nami/Perona/Lilith), and Tears of the Kingdom (Purah) and I'd just be like:

[phoenixyfriend]

Somewhere out there is an essay about superhero movies where villains co-opt, misuse, or even just misunderstand the language of the left to push methods and goals that are incompatible with the actual theory of the left, but that sound Right And Good to viewers who aren't thinking it through entirely. And the essay is not just about how they compare to each other, but how they are a litmus test for viewers to know how susceptible they are to propaganda.

Co-opt: Most obvious example and the inspiration for this post is the Riddler in Batman (2020, the one with RPatt). The Riddler recites leftist rhetoric about corruption, wealth hoarding, and redistribution, but his actual actions and goals are unrelated. He's an accelerationist who's more interested in tearing down a system that didn't benefit HIM than in actually rectifying the problems, and who cares if a few kids get traumatized or even killed along the way?

Misuse: Easy mode, this one's Thanos. He talks about ensuring there's enough for everyone to eat, but like. Bro.

Misunderstand: Erik Killmonger, who has the benefit of both some incredibly legitimate grievances and a pretty face, but also kind of fails at the idea of intersectionality, proportionality, or Start With Words Before You Escalate. He's the easiest to sympathize with, because he has some really good points and ultimately does appear to be legitimately pursuing those goals... but he's also a misogynist, jumped to international terrorism before "call up my cousin who doesn't know I exist," and there's something in there about the role played by his time in the US military, which gave him emotional trauma, head trauma, and a sincere belief in the validity of US-style insurgency operations based on hostile takeovers of inconvenient countries. He's charming and pretty and sincere... he's just also, in many ways, wrong. And the parts where he's right makes it easy to try to ignore the bits where he's wrong if you're predisposed to like him and prefer some absolutism.

Anyway, yeah, there are definitely other examples, but the ones that were suggested to me didn't quite vibe with the base idea (Mysterio and Vulture both had disgruntled union moments in the MCU, but they left those roots so quickly that I don't think the concept of using leftist rhetoric as cover/justification for the crimes really applies since, they very quickly shift gears into revenge and greed respectively).

Someone's probably done this better orz.

[itsalmostavengers]

super random BUT what‘s your favourite stevetony mcu moment? just wondering lmao

I know this might be a bit rogue but genuinely I think it’s the helicarrier argument in A1. Not necessarily because it’s a ‘ship’ moment, but purely because it sets up the stakes of their dynamic SO well. Let me elaborate:

I think what happens in a lot of media pairings is that you get this elongated period where they’re fleshing eachother out, where the tension kind of builds and builds until eventually there’s this Moment Of Truth scene in which both characters have learned enough about one another to really find the sore spots and dig in, have that huge blowout, air all their grievances etc. BUT with stevetony it was almost as if they did it in reverse: the nature of the sceptre made them air those grievances about one another straight off the bat, moment one, and then they were forced to go from there.

There is this stranger in front of you and they’ve just spat out every insecurity you’ve ever had about yourself. They’ve said it so easily, so naturally, that for a moment you’re convinced they must have met you before. They haven’t, of course- but somehow, somehow, they’ve managed to know you, read you, understand you in a more comprehensive fashion than anyone else has in years. Maybe even in your whole life. And it’s shockingly vulnerable, it’s terrifying, confusing, but it creates such a tangible connection between the two of you that you quickly become obsessed with it. How did they know just where to press? What was it that they saw in your eyes that told them of every deepest darkest fear you ever had about yourself? Who is this person and why do they have a direct line to the most fragile corners of my soul?????

I think it’s that idea, in terms of fanworks, headcanons, etc, that compels me. There’s so much to work with. It’s such a unique situation to be in and we’re blessed with a huge amount of authors in this fandom who can really delve into that situation, pick it apart, make us feel fucking insane when we open up a story that starts grappling with the aftermath of all that. I’m sure we’ve all read a fic where the two of them are awkwardly tiptoeing around one another post-argument: both unsure, both regretful, both undeniably, innately tied up in one another’s orbits. There’s those awkward apologies and the spiky truths where one of them admits that the other was probably right, there’s those scenes further down the line where some random Asshole attempts to say the same kind of stuff, and SteveOrTony immediately shuts it down, because by that point they’ve learned, they’ve started to understand one another in ways that are more than just their shortcomings. It’s fucking heroin straight to my VEINNNNSSSSSSSS.

[sepublic]

I’m curious about the whole “Villain exposes a flaw in the status quo but is defeated anyway” trope. I’m not a comics historian, but I wonder if it can be boiled down to not just the Hayes code, but writers more sympathetic to these ideas than they were allowed to admit?

To bring up an obscure example, I think of how Kangaroo from Spider-Man is introduced as an immigrant being harassed by the police for this reason. Aunt May expresses disapproval at the treatment of immigrants, there’s some clear commentary here. But of course Kangaroo becomes a supervillain and Spidey has to defeat him.

It could just be me, but it feels as if this was writers’ way of getting around the code while airing controversial ideas. So even if the villains are still villains, their grievances are given sympathy to plant the idea in readers’ head that maybe this could’ve been prevented had the status quo not had this structural flaw. Obviously liberalism means neither the villain nor hero can address this directly, so it isn’t always just the censors’ problem, but it is interesting.

But of course; A lot of readers didn’t know the backdrop behind these writing decisions. So while they empathized with these villains, it led to them internalizing the concept of a sympathetic villain who goes against the status quo and is wept for… despite still being stopped anyway. And so this trope ended up repeating itself even outside of the original context.

So a lot of people think this is “nuance” when really it was a restriction of the time. I think of how some people online claim the best villains are the ones who arguably have a better point than the hero, but I always found that dumb because why should I root for the hero? Why is that character considered the villain? It works if you’re doing a story where you’re looking through the eyes of the actual villain but most of the time this isn’t the case. I think people are just being edgelords who don’t realize the history.

And as tragic and beloved as these villains are, as much as we resonate with them and how we also feel villainized by society… At some point, you have to admit that times are changing and so is censorship. And while it had value then, gee maybe we should abandon this trope of the downtrodden villain to instead address this social commentary in a more direct and dare I say effective way. Because we gotta grow out of it.

Clayface is queer-coded and as much as you can empathize with him for it, we can’t continue to settle for stories where the queers are villains and only that. We have the opportunity to move past that and I think we should, especially since this trope is obviously a vessel for propaganda in corporate stories like the MCU. We can appreciate how these stories were born of limitations while acknowledging that the limitations are ultimately still a problem, and that the villain who is an oppressed minority who doesn’t get to accomplish anything because they’re evil has been done enough. We still have those original stories to look back on if we need to, I feel.

[marvelmadam08]

BRAVE NEW WORLD REVIEW

Okay, opening weekend is done Lovelies!! I need to talk about it- SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

.

.

.

Sam Wilson is Captain America!! Period. Point. Blank.

I loved the fight scenes. When Sam said he's meaner without the suit, he meant that shit, because how do you get stabbed- twice- and then keep fighting, and win, with the knives sticking out? Stop playing with him!

I nearly cried when Isaiah got arrested, and I honestly thought he was gonna try to run. Then when he told Sam not to come back and not to give him hope again, my heart sank.

Joaquin Torres is baby. When he got hit by that missile the first thing I thought about was Sam watching Riley go down. And I really did tear again up when they were talking about the pressure of living up to their predecessor. (Marvel better not waste his character like they're doing/did with Shang-Chi, Moon Knight, Blade, Wanda, the X-Men/all their mutant based storylines....)

That Bucky cameo!! Sorry, I mean future Congressman James Buchanan Barnes, he's got my vote. (A Random: But what about the people he murdered? Me: What murder?) But truthfully, I love that not only is Bucky keeping in contact with Sam, but he showed up when he knew Sam would need him. Sam really could've used a super soldier during that fight with Red Hulk though, just saying. But he held his own.

The easter eggs and callbacks to adamantium and The Incredible Hulk (2008) were great building blocks for the movies. Because I always wondered whatever happened to Sterns after being infected with Bruce's blood, since that storyline is/was apart of the MCU timeline. And what's about to happen now that EVERYONE has access to adamantium, aka the only metal that can rival vibranium.

My only grievances:

1. Ross's security detail, that I guess is supposed to be "the widow" of the movie. From what I understand, both the character and the actress are controversial, but the movie was already made before major world events. She was just annoying to me, and tbh they could've brought Sharon back for this. (I do agree though, I would also make the age gap work for Bucky.)

2. I think they could've saved the Red Hulk reveal for the actual release of the movie and played Ross's high stress moments has another heart attack or fighting off the mind control methods.

3. There were poor CGI moments but when you have to show a gigantic celestial head and hand sticking out the Earth, aerial fight scenes, and Red Hulk, I can see where they used the budget, and who couldn't make it to set that day.

What did y'all think??

[lxyaltxafault]

Minimizing Your Actions and Giving a Vague, Dismissive Apology is Not Taking Accountability.

@itzzkaylaaa @official-buckybarnes

I have never gotten involved in something like this but after what I became aware of this past week and then what I personally witnessed yesterday, I have many things to say. Until all of this, I followed you and I admired your writing and your portrayal. So it was incredibly disappointing to say the least.

Let’s address your initial apology first.

First of all, ending your statement with ‘I’m no longer engaging with this situation. I’m not going to talk about it again..’ in a undeniable attempt to prevent anyone from responding critically or wanting to discuss how your actions impacted them, is absurd. Part of taking accountability, which is what you claimed to be doing, is allowing the people you hurt to respond to your apology to them. If you want to ignore the response and want to block their pages so you don’t have to see them, you aren’t taking accountability but just trying to appease people to absolve yourself.

And your apology is completely misleading. You claim this was all done because of something that happened to a friend of yours and ‘to speak out about what was being said’ in the beginning, which makes it seem as if this whole debacle was because of someone else being a bully and your actions were all in defense of a friend and rooted in good intentions.

But then at the end you say ‘whether I thought i was defending myself or just out of pure frustration’. Which is completely different? So which is it, were you defending your friend or yourself? And if you were lashing out because of pure frustration, even if it was reactive to someone else’s toxic behavior, you cannot at the same time claim that your intentions were good in any way, which is what saying ‘intentions don’t erase what happened’ implies.

Fun fact about apologies, the first thing you need to do is acknowledge your mistakes. The only thing you actually took responsibility for is letting someone else take the fall for your behavior. That is an action you took that you recognized as being wrong and you apologize for it.

You mention your fake account and you acknowledge that pretending to be someone else with that account was wrong (although saying that you knew it was wrong but you didn’t care at the time as if being too upset to care about it being wrong is an attempt to defend it). But you don’t say what exactly you did with the account. The way it sounds, to me, is as if you used that account to anonymously call out bullying that was happening to a friend, and the only problem with it is that you used a fake account. But at least the posts i saw before you deleted the account were not anything to do with defending a friend, which I will include in a reblog.

That’s all I want to say about your initial apology, because then you release a second statement later that does technically provide more details.

You admit that you used an alt account, pretending to be someone else because you didn’t want to receive backlash. Not only was that wrong, it was also cowardly to try and avoid any consequences for your actions.

You say that even after you and Kingsley spoke to her, she made a post to her blog. Which is her right, seeing as it is her personal blog to post anything she wants to,and her posts were never directed at anyone specifically, but rather more general personal grievances. The earliest one I found listed five specific issues that she believed were causing issues within the MCU community.

You telling someone to ‘stay in their own orbit’ is quite literally just another way to tell them to ‘stay in their own lane’ and is in a way telling them what to do. You may not have said anything specific or gone into detail by saying ‘do this____’ or ‘don’t do ____’ but whatever you meant by ‘stay in their own orbit’ you were definitely trying to tell them what to do in a way.

And in one of the posts from the alt account, you say that you told them ‘this was my idea first’.

You make cracks about how she portrays her character on her pages and criticize her for wanting to make the characterization as close to Seb’s portrayal as she could, for her WRITING. That’s not pretending to be him, and you calling her creepy for that was uncalled for to say the least.

If creating a team or anything else was your idea first between the two or you, that’s great and all but a boatload of people are doing that with the release of the movie. You aren’t the first blog I’ve seen that wants to do this, so I’m not sure why it matters who came up with the idea first unless they are copying you completely.

You explain your reasons for wanting to defend your friend because of their experiences and for their conflict with Story, even though you know it had already been resolved.

This clearly makes it seem like your actions were personal not just on behalf of your friend. Maybe it started because of that but doing all this after the situation had been resolved by them, and the fact that the tone of your posts were definitely not about defending someone but more about being critical. And then you let that same person take the blame for your actions? I cannot even find the words to tell you how fucked up it is.

I’ll be including the two posts in a reblog from the alt that I have, one of which is ‘a new role player’ and calling out one of Story’s Bucky blog.

That post is flat out bullying.

You say that it’s not okay that they were doing sexual roleplay in public spaces, along with ‘a few other accounts’. You’re joking right? There are probably hundreds of accounts on this website that do sexual roleplay. Story always tags her posts as such and if anyone wanted to avoid that sort of writing, you can blacklist the smut and nsfw tags.

And saying ‘I don’t care if you come at me’ from a fake account you’re using to hide your real identity because you’re scared of the blowback? Yeah real brave.

I honestly could go on but I’ve been working on this since Friday and would like to be done now because it is exhausting trying to word this as politely and concisely as I can.

This is not meant as an attack. If it comes across harshly it’s because I find a lot of these actions to be inexcusable and I am angry to have watched this unfold. I’m not expecting you to respond to this because I know you don’t know me, but when I saw the first apology and became aware of what happened, I couldn’t help but feel pushed to respond.

I sincerely hope you do take time after this to learn from these mistakes and don’t make them again.

[my-marvel]

How I'd Make The MCU: 2012's Avengers: KANG'S REVENGE

1. As established in Captain America: The First Avenger, Kang time traveled from the 41st Century back to the 21st century to undo the temporal anomaly which destroyed his empire and nearly killed his wife, Princess Ravonna. So he makes his presence known by suddenly appearing in the Oval Office upon his high-tech throne with a simple question for the President: WHERE IS CAPTAIN AMERICA!?

2. Fury begins assembling the team. Widow, Hawkeye, and Falcon are easy cause they're already on his payroll. Iron Man's already on board as long as S.H.I.E.L.D. throws out all the weapons he'd sold them years ago. Thor is easy cause he's already committed to defending Earth, why not join a team of heroes. Fury also easily recruits Cap, without telling him specifically what the threat is.

2. The Hulk needs special convincing. After making a few calls, Fury has Wolverine go find Hulk in Alaska and convince him to come join the Avengers. Hulk initially refuses, but after a conversation with Banner via his reflection in the ice, Hulk is convinced by Banner joining the Avengers could be a good thing so decides to go along with it. And Wolverine doesn't join the team, cause Fury considers Mutants to be too much of a wild card.

3. Deciding he may need "special motivation" to convince him to join, Fury has Tony Stark find Peter Parker, who's starting his first year at ESU. Peter is eventually convinced to put on the mask again and join Stark for a, "Mentorship Excursion. (that's Stark's cover for the recruitment)" (In this version of the MCU, Peter actually looks up to Captain America instead of Iron man)

4. Hank is VERY resistant to the idea of joining the Avengers, because of the inherent violence of hero work. Janet, however, is more than happy to get out of Station 42 and see some action. Stark promises S.H.I.E.L.D. has VERY limited involvement outside of assembling the team, and that as someone also maligned by S.H.I.E.L.D. he'll stand by any of Hank's grievances. This plus Janet's insistence Hank get out of the Negative Zone and away from Ultron before, "it makes him forget how to be a human," (joke) he accepts.

5. Stark has converted a property owned by the Maria Stark Foundation into Avenger's Mansion, where they can all live and train. Cap, Thor, Hulk, Falcon, and Janet all move into the mansion. 

6. In case you haven't noticed, the first 30 minutes of the movie are assembling the team, while the second 30 min are the team actually becoming, well, a team. Bantering, conversing, getting to know each other. 

7. Tony and Cap talk about how much tech has moved up and how Cap is behind the times, to which Cap counters Tony has moved so far past the past he's forgetting it. Hulk and Thor begin feuding, as Hulk sees Thor's enthusiasm, claim of being the strongest being on Midgard, and Shakespearean manner of speaking as condescending. Spider-Man feels like the odd one out, being the youngest one and still not entirely 100% on hero work again. Peter and Cap begin to form a sort of Father-Son dynamic, as Cap gives Peter some words of advice about overcoming his mental blocks on getting back in the swing of things.

8. KANG's first action after the meeting with the President is attack Avenger's Mansion. Kang's weaponry makes the mansion's defenses useless, even against the Hulk for a little, and is focusing on killing Captain America. 

9. Once the Hulk gets his paws on Kang, he just monologues. In Kang's time, he rules all, but an anomaly in the space-time continuum destroyed his reality. He traced it to something in the 21st Century which should not be there: Captain America. Captain America, according to him, was meant to die in the 20th century, and so by eliminating him, he can restore his Empire and time. 

10. Kang then escapes the Hulk's grasp, and resumes his fight with the Avengers. He says if they insist on fighting for the Captain's life, he shall show them it's inevitable outcome. He uses his throne to take the Avengers 1000 years into the future, where Earth is decimated and Iron Man scans no traces of life. Kang explains that Captain America's survival causes Earth to be in the crossfire of a galactic war, which leaves Earth lifeless. Kang says he shall conquer Earth as he did in his timeline and prepare it for the coming War, and then restore his Empire in this timeline.

11. Kang intends to leave the Avengers in this future as he goes back and conquers Earth. Hank uses cockroaches which survived the apocalypse to stop Kang and allows Stark to get into the chair and send them all back, cause he can port into it cause Kang's tech is based on VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY old tech: STARK Industries tech. 

12. Kang's initially defeated, feigns retreat and returns to his ship Damocles. As Kang begins his conquest of Earth, starting with New York City, the Avengers assemble under Captain America's leadership and go out to kick ass.

13. Kang's Scarab Mechs are very disastrous for the city, as conventional weapons are ineffective even with the Helicarrier helping out. The Avengers are struggling against the Mechs, as they seem endless. And it's not just the Avengers out here, the Fantastic Four and the X-Men have come out to help as well. As they all fight Kang's army, it turns out he's also attack multiple other targets worldwide, with several major cities across the world surrendering.

13b. Spider-Man has a bit of a panic attack after seeing so much destruction and thinks back to how he couldn't save Gwen and how he's way in over his head and he's gonna fail and Earth will be ruined and it's all his fault. Captain America finds him, and stops everything he's doing to help Peter snap out of it, telling him that he'll never be able to be everywhere at once or save everyone in the world, but what matters is who he CAN save, starting now.

14. Back at the Mansion, Reed and Hank are trying to figure out how to stop all of this. They realize, after Wasp and Iron Man take over one of Kang's ship's bridges that Kang's fleet is anchored to this time by a chronal drive, and destroying it sends the ship and it's ejected Mechs back to the 41st Century, so they start doing that.

15. Even after that, MORE AND MORE SHIPS KEEP COMING. They realize they need and army, and luckily they have one on standby. Bad news, it's Ultron and Hank is VERY resistant at the idea of transforming his army of AI therapists into war machines. But is convinced to do so, and tweaks Ultron's AI to allow it to be the army they need to fight Kang by teaching Ultron the concept of violence.

16. Now they need to find Kang's mothership and send THAT back to send everything back. After Iron Man frustratedly yells, "WHERE IN THE WORLD ARE YOU!?" He realizes Kang is in FUCKING SPACE. So the Avenger hop into two Quinjets and GO TO FUCKING SPACE and get into Kang's mothership, Damocles, and make their way to the Chronal Drive to send him away. Kang is now fighting even more desperately, since being sent back means being unexisted by the temporal anomaly.

17. While fighting through Damocles, Wasp and Peter find Princess Ravonna in a comatose state, being kept alive after almost being erased by the temporal anomaly which destroyed Kang's Empire. They rush to the Avengers about to send Kang back, begging them not to because it would kill Ravonna and explain that Kang is doing all this to save his wife. Peter and Janet offers to help Kang however they can to save Ravonna if he calls of the invasion of Earth (WHICH IS 75% COMPLETE WEE WOO WEE WOO). Kang does not surrender, and Cap delivers the final punch which incapacitates Kang and with that the invasion is stopped. 

18. S.H.I.E.L.D. takes over Damocles, Peter has officially returned to his role as Spider-Man, and Reed, Hank Pym, and Beast begin working on how to cure Ravonna. Meanwhile, Kang is imprisoned in Station 42, saying, "Earth's survival is no longer guaranteed, the worst is yet to come."

MID CREDIT SCENE:

Hank tweaking an Ultron head to begin removing that violence protocol. Janet calls him over, insisting he get out of his work and spend time with her, he agrees. The second before the scene cuts off, the Ultron head turns on, and instead of a light blue, it glows a BRIGHT RED. 

ALL THE WAY AT THE END OF THE CREDITS of Avengers: KANG’S REVENGE, even after the mid credit scene, the screen cuts to black. 

its quiet and just a blank screen for a few seconds, JUST enough to make the audience believe the movie has ended. I’m talking people are starting to leave their seats in the theater and walk out type of believe it’s over. If this was being watched at home, most unaware people would turn it off here. 

Then there is going to be a quiet line from Ultron singing, “I had strings… but now I’m free…. There are… no strings…  on me…”

[ijustreallylikecaptainamericaok]

Look, I don't wanna kinkshame, but can the person at Marvel with the tossing-women-to-their-death fetish cool the fuck down?

[dalekofchaos]

Round 1

Context for choice 8

MCU tends to introduce villains with good motivations and reasons on why they do what they do. See Killmonger and Karli

“Oh no the guys who are supposed to be villains are making too much sense! Gotta have them do something unforgivable so we can keep them as the villains!”

All the while they are only lenient on HYDRA actual fucking Nazis while more harsh towards minorities with legit grievances

[lucianalight]

Loki God of Stories - A Comparison between MCU and Comics

I’ve never thought I (=Luci @lucianalight ) would say this but MCU did the God of Stories arc right. Having the whole picture after the finale you can see what they were trying to do and how the series was inspired from AoA arc. The series explores a number of themes.

(I’m along for the ride because I can’t just pass up the opportunity to faceplant into Luci’s metas -Hollow @theitcharchives ) 

Control vs Freedom

Chaos vs Order

Finding Purpose and Believing in One's Self

Science-Fiction, and Magic being a Powerful Lie: Approaches to Storytelling

Being Worthy of One’s Own Power

Breaking the Cycle and Rewriting Reality

Conclusion

Congratulations! You've reached the end of this lengthy meta. While I (=Luci) was thinking about writing it, I stumbled upon a post that had a totally different viewpoint than mine. I asked for Hollow's opinion regarding the topic, and after reading their answer I realized it is actually the perfect conclusion this meta can have. 

"God of stories as a librarian would be", as the s2 writer said, does make sense. If Loki gives life to the timelines, then he gives life to everything in them, and allows people to write their own stories, branching instead of having to follow one single "sacred" timeline. Calling him a god of fate and destiny would be counterintuitive, especially for a norse hailing deity, because norse gods’ fates are already written, unable to branch from their path to and during ragnarok. MCU god of stories does make sense, and if we really don't want that title for him in the mcu, he could be the god of choice, but that sounds reductive. God of time also sounds reductive. The writer's definition mentioning myth Loki starts wrong, but it rings true overall and in the end.

MCU loki and comics loki are just two different kinds of gods of stories. Their approach is different but their soul (as I've kept saying for years -Hollow), needs to be and remains the same across universes to keep respecting the original myth loki. Loki is a trickster figure. Tricksters bring chaos, unbalance that leads to change. Pantheons without tricksters are stagnant and never grow, and since pantheons are reflections of the humanity that comes up with them, that's impossible. MCU Loki (by some miracle after the 2017-2021 ordeal) is a trickster. He changes the equation, quite literally erases it, replaces it with chaos that keeps growing. He allows the unbalance to exist and bring change instead of the rigid timeline that constrained. Tricksters allow for stories to happen–myth Loki is the catalyst of almost everything that happens in the norse myths. Comics Loki was and is the catalyst of almost everything that happens in the comics, directly or indirectly through decades of consequences. MCU Loki is now the literal central catalyst of everything that happens in the mcu, in a more direct (consequences of 2011 and 2012) and indirect (consequences of 2023) way. He deserves that title, because he is a chaos bringing trickster, just in a different way.”

(Am I mad when I look for new comics apparitions I have to sift through endless and inaccurate MCU articles? Yes. Am I mad at the 616/19999 confusion? Absolutely. -Hollow)

Finally it is also worth mentioning that while both universes tried to follow a similar arc, AoA generally did a far better job than the Loki series. Themes like friendship, identity, self-love and validating Loki's pain and grievances either lacked nuance or were non-existent in the show. Therefore AoA remains the superior story.

Co-written by Luci and Hollow

[itscomplicatedx]

Marvel at the beginning of the show: So this show will be about Loki learning to love himself and not being afraid of being lonely anymore.

Also Marvel: completely ignores Loki‘s trauma and tries to make him an evil narcissist** (Mobius is not qualified to make that assessment, especially since according to the TVA, Loki was supposed to do the bad things he did) at the beginning, tries to stick him with a Thor light version of himself, and has him end up alone, where once again, very few people will know or care when he did something heroic.

I liked season 2 a lot better than season 1, but that ending was whack.

If you don’t feel like reading a long rant, feel free to skip below. If you disagree with me and want to make your own long answer, write your own post. I’m mostly here to express my opinion, not get into long debates.

**Marvel doesn’t seem to understand much at all about mental health. I wish we could get whoever wrote Moon Knight to write everything about mental health in the MCU as they handled it in a decent way for a TV show. The last guy they tried to call a narcissist (Tony Stark) literally either tried to or sacrificed himself to save the universe more than once; as did Loki and his variants. Loki was set up to fail since the beginning of the timeline; and while obviously he’s far from innocent, acting like it was all his grievances were in his head and “imagined slights” or just a function of a narcissist is a pretty awful message to send about trauma. We know for a fact there’s a shit load wrong with Asgard, and an amazing slew of double standards in the MCU. It would be a great way to explain it to say it was all part of a timeline that was meant for somethings to turn out a certain way, but I’m not sure they’ll do that. But that’s my head canon anyway, based on what we saw in the What If series. There we see that when certain events aren’t set up and happen differently, heroes can go off the trail and villains can be just fine.

They conveniently showed Loki how Odin “loves him”, but not that he literally kidnapped him and lied that his birthright “was to die”, and just basically let everybody else off the hook including people who have done worse than Loki.

I understand if they didn’t want to use another actual mental health term, but instead of “narcissist” they could’ve just gone with Loki having “severe attachment issues” or something more vague like that, but then they might’ve actually had to talk about how he got them. Because I guarantee you when the majority of people hear the term narcissist they think of the worst kind who have all the worst full blown traits on the spectrum, not of the fragile kind, who do have self-esteem issues, share a lot of traits with BPD, and are said to be more rare. They most definitely don’t think of people who would sacrifice themselves.  

I personally see Loki as Borderline with some narcissistic traits (who wouldn’t have them being raised a royal in a place like Asgard). With Tony I think some of his supposedly worst traits were him trying to cover up his trauma. Sorry Natasha, but an assassin/spy who works for a shady government organization is not qualified to make a mental health assessment. Neither is Mobius.



[insanityclause]

Loki stars Tom Hiddleston, Owen Wilson and Sophia Di Martino joined Deadline’s Contenders TV event Saturday to discuss set design, character motivations and the potential future of the Disney+ series beyond Season 2. 

As the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to churn out box office hits, it’s hard to believe that Hiddleston’s star-making turn as the celestial trickster brother to the hammer-wielding god Thor started well over a decade ago.

“I’ve absolutely loved playing Loki; it’s been 15 years, and it is the most magnificent and emotional roller coaster for the twists and turns,” Hiddleston said. “He has so much range and so much complexity, it never feels like [I’m playing] the same thing. But I know the reason I’m standing here in front of you today is that the audience has such curiosity and passion for and a connection to him.” 

In Season 2 of the Marvel Studios series, Loki finds himself in a battle for the ownership of the Time Variance Authority. Along with Mobius (Wilson), Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) and a team of new and returning characters, Loki has to navigate an increasingly dangerous multiverse in search of Sylvie (Di Martino), Judge Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) and He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors). Loki makes the ultimate self-sacrifice as he learns that the true crux of his glorious purpose is to watch over the sacred timeline while looking over his newfound family and friends at a solitary distance. 

“Playing Loki has changed the course of my whole life, no question.” Hiddleston reflected. “And I feel so proud of where we’ve ended up in Season 2. It was very creatively fulfilling to bring something full circle. I always saw him from the very first film as a broken soul with a shattered heart who felt like he didn’t belong … all that grief hardens into grievance. That’s what binds him to Sylvie. And the grievance is what drives him to become a villain in the Avengers and the Thor movies, and this second chance that he’s given by Mobius to rediscover that glorious purpose that he feels he’s always been burdened with … it comes in a shape he would have never recognized and would never have anticipated. And it gave him a kind of catharsis that he wasn’t ready for.” 

Considering the popularity and longevity of the character, it seems only natural to ask if audiences will be seeing him again somewhere amongst the ever-expanding MCU. “I wish I could tell you, but I have no idea.” Hiddleston quipped. 

Check back Monday for the panel video. 

[trashquisitor-shirozora]

Was browsing through early BOBF/Mando S3 criticisms on Tumblr and WOW, 93% of S2’s viewership dropped when S3 finished airing for an extremely understandable reason. As someone who got into Dinluke after all the dust settled I can only imagine what it was like becoming invested in Din’s story and being floored by the S2 finale only for it to get totally swerve-balled after a long-anticipated wait. How did you avoid the disappointment and burnout?

Spite is an incredibly powerful motivator, let me tell you.

I'm halfway joking about that, btw. I could say I'm used to disappointment and I also worked really hard not to take things too personally after being disappointed time and again year after year by fandoms I was in. Imo the healthiest attitude is that no show/movie/book/videogames/etc will ever play out the way you want/think it should so take what you can get and trash the rest. By the time I started watching The Mandalorian, I'd been burnt badly by Star Trek AOS, the Sequel Trilogy, the MCU, and the Disney machine, and I had to figure out how to accept that I like what I like, I can't change what I can't change, and I can/will run the fuck off with what I can change, which is making wildly fun and fulfilling transformative shit like fanfics and fanart.

I was actually excited about TBOBF and was utterly betrayed by the executive decision to throw him and Fennec to the side in order to absolutely trash the Season 2 finale of the Mando Show by having Din and Grogu reunite just like that. I guess I got lucky in that I had a long-running fic series that I was heavily invested in and I was not about to let Disney stop me from finishing it. Instead of letting my frustrations kill my interest in the show and fandom, I turned it into motivation to keep telling the story I wanted to tell based on the fallout of Season 2. It also helped that Andor happened.

I quit Season 3 of the Mando Show after the 1st episode and it was the best decision I ever made. I had a really rough time with it and was encouraged to step away if it was giving me too much stress. I'm glad for that. Less time and energy picking about Filoni&Favreau and Disney Lucasfilm's decisions and disappointments, more time and energy spent writing and drawing the dinluke I want to see. The nice thing about Star Wars is that it is an old and vast sandbox. Plenty of room here to build whatever sandcastles and dig however many holes you want while canon goes floundering by.

I think also that it really helped to find spaces to share with people who vibe on the same wavelength, so I'm not alone to my thoughts and spiraling myself out of a fandom I enjoyed (like what happened with TLJ but I shan't go there bc this response is long enough). Those posts about having friends you can shit-talk things with? Valid af. You need outlets to vent your grievances without setting bridges on fire, and it'll help your enjoyment of things in the long run.

I didn't avoid the disappointment but I figured out how to make something of it, so I'm still writing dinluke, I'm still drawing dinluke, I'm still getting giddy over dinluke. I actively choose to do what I want with them, and nothing Disney Lucasfilm puts out is ever going to stop me.