shegeekery

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Hmm, seems like this theory (albeit with a slightly different angle from a youtuber who generally doesn't pay much attention to Loki) that I posted ~16 months ago is starting to pick up steam.

Doctor Strange head-canon

My head-canon/theory regarding Doctor Strange's search through 14,000,605 futures is that there were many futures in which the Avengers were able to defeat Thanos, and they were able to stop the Snap before it happened in all but the one he chose. Unfortunately, all of the other futures resulted in the End of Everything, so he naturally went with the one that didn't. He wouldn't have been able to see why this was the case because he couldn't see beyond his own timeline.

Why was the solution he went with the only one that allowed the timeline to continue? Two reasons:

Under the pre-Loki TVA, any other choice would have resulted in the timeline being pruned. In Loki episode 1.1, Renslayer mentioned that the Avengers time-traveling back to get the stones was what was "supposed to happen" under the Sacred Timeline.

(Possibly) After Loki recreated the multiverse, that future was the only one that resulted in 2012 Loki escaping and winding up in the TVA, so it had to happen in one timeline. Admittedly, since the concept of "before and after" is murky when we're talking about the TVA and the multiverse, this may not be strictly true — the fact that it happened under the old TVA regime might have been enough.

It would be totally in character for Strange to keep this additional information to himself in order to avoid an argument and to avoid alarming and distracting the other Avengers from the immediate crisis.

If I'm right about this, then if and when God Loki shows up again and interacts with the Avengers, Strange could well be the first one to trust him, after quickly putting two-and-two together.

...I also envision a fun little bit where an angry Thor, convinced that it's a cruel trick, throws his hammer at Loki, only for Loki to catch it and lightly toss it back to him. "You're going to need this, Brother."

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Coming in 2027: Spaceballs: The Search for More Money!

(Okay, I don’t know if they’re actually calling it that, but they should!)

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PSA: I instablock anybody who messages me trying to play stupid middle-school mean-girls style drama games/trying to hurt other users. Do NOT try to draw me into that nonsense. I spent way too many years being targeted by people like that to ever be willing to engage in that kind of behavior.

(I took a screencap before blocking, as I believe there may be more than one account involved and I suspect that truth is not something these people really care about.)

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Major retailers: We’re locking up more merchandise to prevent shoplifting.

Also major retailers: We’re drastically cutting the number of employees on the floor to assist customers because it makes the shareholders happy.

The shareholders and executives: Why are our sales numbers dropping?

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Forgot the one that started it all. (The Three Doctors, 1972/73)

Some things don't change.

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Okay, artists of Tumblr, here’s an idea for you: Loki series (and/or other MCU) characters as Peanuts characters. Loki is obviously Charlie Brown. Aaand…GO! 😁

(I’m pretty sure someone’s going to tell me that that was a Tumblr fad years ago and I missed it.)

My Mobius Funko fell off the shelf and Loki gave up

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There's only one difference between Loki (Marvel) and Loki (Norse Mythos) that matters:

Marvel Loki is the type to do extensive research hunting down a specific brand of high-end scotch that he had once in the 1960s

Norse Loki is the type to scour Ebay at 2 in the morning looking for cans of the original Four Loko recipe that was discontinued for putting college kids in the ER

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*channeling my inner Loki*

Only because you kept getting caught.

Loki calls himself the god of mischief, but I have been charged with criminal mischief way more often than he has.

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The way I see it, one of the many things Odin and Loki have in common is that there’s never just one thing going on in their heads at any given moment. While Odin was thinking about a potential peace with Jotunheim when he found Loki, there was more to it. The look on his face when he picked Loki up says it all: tenderness and wonder. What I saw was simply a father (but yes, a crap father as it turns out) holding his child for the first time. (I also think that he was seeing a vision of what Loki could become.) Odin was alone at the time, so he wasn’t putting on a show either.

While, like many others, I am not fond of MCU!Oden and very much on the "he's a shit dad" train However, I will never really agree with the idea that he forcefully stole Loki from his home. I do believe that he took Loki to be used against Laufey, but I don't doubt that he didn't feel bad for seeing Loki alone, wherever he was left

But that's just how I feel :P

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I have a big problem with objections to the “misuse” of the word “gaslighting” that are solely based on intent, and ignore the fact that the harm being done is the same regardless of intention. These objections derail the conversation in order to protect the person doing the harm, while further invalidating the person being gaslit.

Yes, the word does get misused sometimes. Someone simply disagreeing about something is not gaslighting. However, when the effect of words and actions is to wrongly invalidate someone’s lived experience AND convince them to question their own sanity, perceptions, and memories, that is gaslighting. Intention has nothing to do with it. In fact, unintentional gaslighting can sometimes cause even more harm because it often comes from someone the victim is supposed to be able to trust (a therapist, for example).

The reasons I’m so adamant about not using intent as part of the definition are 1) as I mentioned, it further invalidates the victim, and 2) victims of unintentional gaslighting should be heard and treated exactly the same as victims of intentional gaslighting.

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The thing that surprised me most after I joined Tumblr was the delayed reaction. On every other social media site I've been on (except maybe LiveJournal back in the day, before the Russians bought it), the vast majority of interactions happen within minutes of posting. On Tumblr, there may not be any interaction for hours, then I come back a day later to find my notifications have exploded. (Or not.)

I like it.

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Why is a complete stranger calling me out like this? 😲🤣

Come back, I have to tell you the plot of a fic I’ll never write and get you excited about it so we can all be disappointed with me later

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I love em dash — I use it every chance I get!

"If you use em dash in your works, it makes them look AI generated. No real human uses em dash."

Imaging thinking actual human writers are Not Real because they use... professional writing in their works.

Imagine thinking millions of people who have been using em dash way before AI becomes a thing are all robots.

REBLOG IF YOU'RE A HUMAN AND YOU USE EM DASH

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Doctor Who Lucky Day

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As both a Norse Pagan and an MCU fan, I agree with all of the above.

The only thing I'd add is that, sometimes, fiction about Pagan gods can actually help lead someone to a path that works for them. I've seen this happen many times, and experienced it to some extent myself. A person is intrigued (or hit upside the head with a cosmic 2x4) enough that they start researching and learning more about the actual gods the fiction was based on, and so on. I wouldn't make the mistake of assuming that someone doesn't know what they're doing simply because they came to their path via a work of fiction.

That said, this is much less likely to happen if a god is simply (and wrongly) portrayed as evil. This is why Christians in the middle ages started portraying Satan as physically resembling the horned Pagan nature gods who were still commonly worshipped in some areas. It was propaganda, equating ancient pagan beliefs and practices with "devil worship".

What Non-Pagans Need to Know About Fiction Featuring Pagan Gods

In light of Marvel's Loki show dropping a second season and a new Percy Jackson series on the horizon, I want to say some things about how fandom spaces can be respectful of real-life pagan religion.

Let's get one thing out of the way: literally no one is saying you can't enjoy fiction that uses pagan gods and heroes as characters. No one is saying, "Stop writing stories about our gods." In fact, many ancient cultures wrote fiction about their gods -- look at Greek theater or the Norse Eddas. The act of writing fiction about the gods is not offensive in itself.

But please remember that this is someone's religion.

The gods are not "just archetypes." Their myths are not "just stories." Their personalities are not a matter of artistic interpretation. For many pagans, the gods are very much real in a literal sense. I don't think Thor is a metaphor or a symbol -- for me, Thor is a real, autonomous spiritual being who exists outside of human perceptions of him, and who I have chosen to build a relationship with. Even if you are a hardcore atheist, I would hope you could at least be respectful of the fact that, to many modern pagans, the gods are both very real and very important.

When authors are not respectful of this fact, they reduce the gods, these very real objects of worship, to fictional characters. And here's the thing about fictional characters: they are fundamentally tools for authors to use to draw a desired emotional response from an audience.

Dracula's personality and behavior is wildly different depending on who is writing him, because different authors use Dracula to create different reactions in their audiences. In the 1931 film starring Bela Lugosi, he's equal parts alluring and disturbing, a symbol of America's mixed desire and disdain for foreigners. In Nosferatu, he's more strictly frightening and disgusting. In Francis Ford Coppola's movie, he's a tragic, romantic figure clinging to the last scraps of his humanity. In Netflix's Castlevania, he's an incredibly powerful being who has grown bitter and apathetic in his immortality. All of this is Dracula, and all of it is fine, because Dracula is not and never has been a central figure in anyone's religion.

Let's take a look at what happens when authors give this same treatment to real gods:

In Hellenic polytheism, Apollo is one of the most beloved gods, both historically and today. Apollo loves humanity, and humanity loves him back. He is the god of sunlight and of medicine, but also of poetry and song. He is one of humanity's most consistent defenders when one of the other gods gets wrathful. And while he does have dangerous or wrathful aspects of his own (he's also the god of disease, after all), he's also kind and soft with humanity in a way other gods often aren't, at least in some historic sources.

In the Lore Olympus comic series, Apollo is a villain. He's characterized as an abuser, a manipulator, and a violent man child. LO!Apollo is downright hateful, because the author wants us to hate him. Lore Olympus is a retelling of a myth about an abduction and forced marriage. Lore Olympus is also a romance. In order to get the audience to sympathize with Hades and root for his relationship with Persephone, Rachel Smythe needed to make someone else the villain. Apollo is the most obvious and extreme character assassination in Smythe's work, but several other gods (notably Demeter) also get the asshole makeover to tell the story Smythe wants to tell.

Here's where this becomes a problem: Hellenic polytheism is a fairly small religious community, while Lore Olympus is a massively popular webtoon with 1.3 billion views as of August 2023, print books available from major retailers, a TV adaptation in the works, and a very active online fandom. Rachel Smythe currently has a MUCH bigger platform than any Hellenic polytheism practitioner. Smythe and other authors are shaping how modern culture views the Hellenic gods, and that has a very real impact on their worshipers.

This means "Apollo is an abusive asshole" is becoming a popular take online, and is even creeping into pagan communities. I've personally seen people be harassed for worshiping Apollo because of it. I've seen new pagans and pagan-curious folks who totally misunderstand the roles Apollo, Hades, and Persephone play in the Hellenic pantheon because of Lore Olympus and other modern works of fiction.

There are tons of other examples of this in modern pop culture, but I'll just rattle off a few of the ones that annoy me most: Rick Riordan depicting Ares/Mars as a brutish asshole hyped up on toxic masculinity; Rick Riordan depicting Athena as a mother goddess; Marvel depicting Thor as a dumb jock; Marvel depicting Odin as a cold, uncaring father; DC depicting Ares as purely evil; whatever the fuck the Vikings TV show was trying to do with seidr; the list goes on.

All of these are examples of religious appropriation. Religious appropriation is when sacred symbols are taken out of their original religious context by outsiders, so that the original meaning is lost or changed. It requires a power imbalance -- the person taking the symbols is usually part of a dominant religious culture. In many cases, the person doing the appropriation has a much bigger platform than anyone who has the knowledge to correct them.

When Rick Rioridan or Rachel Smythe totally mischaracterizes a Greek god to tell a story, and then actual Hellenic pagans get harassed for worshiping that god, that's religious appropriation.

Religious appropriation is a real issue. This isn't just pagans being sensitive. To use an extreme example: Richard Wagner and other German Romantic authors in the 19th century used the Norse gods and other Germanic deities as symbols in their work, which was a major influence on Nazi philosophy. Without Wagner, the Nazis would not have latched onto the Norse gods as symbols of their white supremacist agenda. To this day, there are white supremacist groups who claim to worship our gods or who use our religious imagery in their hate movement. We are still reckoning with the misinterpretation of our gods popularized by Wagner and other German Romantics almost 200 years ago.

Again, no one is saying you can't enjoy fiction based on pagan mythology. But there are a few things you can do to help prevent religious appropriation in fandom spaces:

Above all else, be mindful that while this may just be a story to you, it is someone's religion.

Recognize that enjoying fiction based on our gods does not mean you know our gods. You know fictional characters with the same names as our gods, who may or may not be accurate to real-life worship.

Do not argue with or try to correct pagans when we talk about our experience of our gods.

Don't invalidate or belittle pagan worship. Again, this mostly comes down to recognizing that our religion is totally separate from your fandom. We aren't LARPing or playing pretend. Our sacred traditions are real and valid.

If you see other people in your fandom engaging in religious appropriation, point out what they are doing and why it isn't okay.

Please tag your fandom content appropriately on social media. Always tag the show, movie, book, etc. that a post is about in addition to other relevant tags. This allows pagans to block these fandom tags if we don't want to see them and prevents fandom content showing up in religious tags.

For example, if I'm posting about Athena from the Percy Jackson books, I would tag the post #athena #athenapjo #percyjackson #pjo. You get the idea.

And if fiction sparks your interest and you want to learn more about the actual worship of the gods, you can always ask! Most pagans love talking about our gods and trading book recs.

If you are writing fiction based on real mythology, talk to people who worship those gods. Ask them what a respectful portrayal would look like. If possible, include a note in your finished work reminding audiences that it is a work of fiction and not meant to accurately portray these gods.

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The very first fanfic I ever wrote (this was many years ago now) got exactly one comment. It said something like “this story didn’t do anything for me”, without elaboration. It was years before I got up the courage to write again. Looking back, I think the reader was probably just disappointed that it wasn’t about romance or sex. I don’t really write those things, so people like that are never going to like what I write.