#also umm mcu in general?

[tyrannuspitch]

oh also while we're comparing and contrasting. as i've said before. you could argue otherwise, but personally, i really don't think mcu thor hits loki.* whereas your generic comics thor. definitely does. in mcu canon, the circumstances surrounding the mistreatment are subtler, but the mistreatment itself is also subtler.

and again, things being (arguably) "less severe" doesn't necessarily make the writing better. but. it does make thor more sympathetic, and it does make everything feel more deliberate? like, someone has thought through what is and isn't going on, rather than just being like. toxic sibling relationship? okay let's have everything possible go wrong! and this also means that like... toxicity/abuse which a lot of people would see as "lesser" is treated with significantly more gravity. like, overall, i just get the impression that a lot more effort and care is being put into it.

(*i was going to say "i don't think mcu thor is physically violent to loki." but uhhh. yes he is. but i don't think he hits him, or does anything where the primary intent is to cause pain, so that's like... a line he doesn't cross. he has principles, even if they're not very good ones. also, further specifications: not "mcu thor", but "pre-reboot mcu thor, pre-nemesishood or outside of wartime". idk what reboot thor is up to these days, but he is a torturer, so i'm not defending that guy. :/)

[angeltownn]

explaining every song on my loki playlist to myself for myself

i should be studying for my bio exam in <24 hours* but i don't want to do that i want to think about my stoat. Who is also sometimes a human i dont know it's complicated well anyway i'm just gonna go in order

(*i've taken so long to finish writing and post this that I took TWO of my bio exams and passed the class. well anyway)

For the most part the only Lokis I care about are Thor 1 Loki and, for comics, Seige through Agent of Asgard Loki, not because I don't like the other Lokis but because I either haven't read the rest of his comics or just straight up forget anything other than Thor 1 Loki exists. I can't manifest a single feeling about TVA Loki so I don't mention him a single time in here sorryyy... He's like a Loki-in-law to me... But point is I'll mostly be focusing on Thor 1 Loki and AoA/Kid Loki in this playlist!!! (I also kinda tend to forget Young Avengers Loki exists but um)

My name was Pluto As a planet I was known What did I do To anger the unified IAU?

Okay first of all I'm unreasonably like sickeningly obsessed with sun and moon dynamics, symbolism, etc, which like sort of vaguely transitions into general planetary/space symbolism which MEANS any time I hear a song that's even remotely related to solar objects I'm like "hoooowww can i make this about my favorite fictional characters", two of which happen to right now be the odinsons which sucks a lot because I hate them . I don't i'm sorry i lied. Point is I'm severely unwell about "My planetary dreams have fallen through ... Betrayer of your own kind, Eris". Ofc Loki is Pluto/the singer here and Thor is vaguely Eris because SOLAR OBJECTS !!!!! It kind of doesn't work because it would make more sense for Thor to be a planet and Loki to not be but I like this lyric a lot so I make it about them anyway.

BUT also I can make this about loki's identity issues which kind of counts more for comics loki but I can make it fit MCU loki if I try hard enough I thinks. Wanting to be a planet ??? Having this status taken away by forces outside his control ???

Enough of my chagrin Designated dwarf as if I've been An errant asteroid I'll just see myself out to the void

I really like the sort of ummm... What's a good word.. umm.. haughtiness? In "as if I've been an errant asteroid" very loki I thinks. Also "see myself out to the void" he does this in the movie did you know. He literally does that!!! HE DOES THAT! It's so silly.

Am I real or someone else's dream? Flying eccentric circles 'til I scream I've only gotten here Icy coats tell me to disappear

I think this bit is more about comics loki to me except for the last line which i can make about MCU loki and his whole ummm... frost giant thing. GET IT? "Icy coats tell me to disappear" THAT HAPPENS IN THE MOVIE. HE TURNS BLUE IT'S LIKE A WHOLE THING. But the rest of this bit is very comics loki post-JiM/mid-AoA to me, with the whole... Identity issues... Who even is he at this point?? His whole identity stripped away... And he's only just been born!!! Kind of . I don't know. It's confusing. He's like already been alive twice but he's like the meat of his life sandwich. Does this make sense. Okay next song.

Okay so there's a little bit of a trend in this playlist which means the first three songs are all back to back Cojum Dip songs from the Same Album BECAUSE OF THE SPACE THING OKAY . It's ONLY THREE SONGS THOUGH there's variety I promise (not really). Anyway whenever I listen to this song it becomes 1:1 Thor 1 to me. Also it has to specifically be this version (instead of the piano one) because it sounds a lot angrier which is good for Thor 1 Loki I think.

I get a lot of feelings of like hopelessness, resignation, acceptance, and whatnot from this song, which are all things I like to force the version of Loki that exists in my brain to experience because I hate him and want him dead real bad. "And as you're gasping for the last of air / You’ll tra-la-la-la-la", "Why'd it take so long? / Inching out of orbit dividing / Where did I go wrong?", lines like these make me want to tear my hair out and slam my head against a wall? You know? Like the little contrasts in the repeated "I'll see you on the moon" and "we're throwing a party" with all the darker, longing lines are sooo Thor 1 Loki to me. ALSO THE MOON THE MOON THE MOON THE MOON THE MOON anyway

The image we see of you has been Just a little late

I think this can be about Loki's growing-but-unseen resentment but also about his literal appearance, with the whole second skin thing. Like everyone's seeing a Loki shifted slightly to the left, instead of the guy himself? So he kills people about it. You know how it is

A wise woman said I'm alive Nobody's ever told her she's wrong A paella of space-talking jive I'm as alive as her beard is long

This is about Frigga to me... And Loki's general attitude of like... He still has these things and people he cares about but once everything starts going to hell he treats it all with more distance? If that makes sense? The tone of apathy and sarcasm in the last line is sooo gooodddd this song is just really good in general even IF I can't apply my blorbos to it BUT I'm always going to apply my blorbos to it because what is the point of enjoying music if I can't make it all about my favorite fictional characters. Just kidding I promise...

No es la locura (It is not madness) En realidad es el amor (It’s really love)

You know that deleted scene where Loki is supposed to say like "never doubt my love for you" to Thor and they GOT RID OF IT well it makes a little part of my soul chip off every time I think about it. Anyway this lyric is actually less about that to me and more about the end scene and battle, all I ever wanted was to be your equal or something I don't know. And ODIN. ODIN!!!! I think as much as i imagine Loki as just kind of naturally a selfish person a lot of his downfall was also just how much he cared? And not like in a soft silly way but in an "imagined slights" way, with the "imagined" part being more or less accurate at different times. Caring so MUCH about what people do, what they say, about his father's approval, about his identity, about being Asgardian, all of that, being just a naturally passionate person about Life... Investing everything in everything!!! ANYWAY point is this lyric is about all of that to me, his behavior in Thor 1 not being just an uncharacteristic outburst as SOME PEOPLE might (want to) think (hi thor) but being that buildup of everything that honestly just exists in my head since like we don't get to see MCU odinsons' childhood LOL. I don't caaare I don't CAAARE that boy got bullied for sure so he committed genocide about it and ... and... next lyric

Now that you've heard it all There is the door

"No, Loki" to me . ok that's all. next song.

this is the last cojum dip song on this playlist i prommy. So when I think about Loki and Thor I mostly like to focus on Loki's feelings of like, all of his turmoil and conflict and HE'S WILLING TO KILL HIS OWN BROTHER WHO HE GREW UP WITH FOR ONE THOUSAND YEARS I'M ALLOWED TO BE UNWELL ABOUT IT. And then he stops trying to kill him later so it's okay I think. Anyway this song is very regret heavy and about communication and relationships soooo that's basically Loki LOL.

I was the king of it And one word ruined all

Like when he becomes king?? In thor 1??? One word to me is committing genocide but you know. Umm. Symbolism. Or something. It doesn't need to be 1:1.

Absolve then you and I Would have won Which is why

Maybe if they talked about their feelings they wouldn't be fighting each other on a bridge to the death (ambiguous). Okay? Maybe you should do that . Maybe when you feel like killing your brother because you feel inferior you should like talk about it. Okay? Okay.

I will take out a bullshit policy Still, I am lost How could you forget me? ... Why can’t we just be friends?

I like that first line because it's Loki to me . With the lies and everything and bullshit like YEAH ! He does that !!! Anyway there's more of that regret and longing and stuff. "Why can't we just be friends" says guy who festered his anger for centuries before having a nervous breakdown about it and killing a bunch of people.

also there's this recurring Sound cojum dip makes throughout the song that kinda sounds like bird caws? which is very Loki to me :3

Honestly most of the lyrics in this one I don't associate with anything specific, they're just very Loki to me, ESPECIALLY the fact the song kind of ends with an insult ("Avant-garde you are not") IMMEDIATELY followed by "why won't you just follow me?". HE'S SOOO ANNOYIINGGG. HE DOES THIS. The whole push and pull. Being antagonistic, being upset at the response, being antagonistic about the response, that little feedback loop. There's probably a psychology term for that behavior or something but I'm CLEARLY not in the mindspace to use big words right now. I'm just gesturing vaguely at Loki and back to the Lyrics and being really excited about it okay. BEHOLD MY BLORBO. next song.

I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMOOOOORE. I could NOT tell you how some of these songs get on this playlist PLEASE just bear with me I promise they all make sense. Maybe just to me though. Anyway it's a complete genre shift which makes listening to this playlist on shuffle an Experience but all of it is Loki Genre to me so it gets a pass. Hoookay anyway. This one is Also about... RELATIONSHIPS ! So much of Loki to me is about the people around him which is also like mostly his family which is mostly his brother so my point is anything about dysfunctional relationships is Loki to me. There would probably be more songs on here if so many songs like that weren't explicitly about romantic relationships. But this one is pretty nonspecific so I WIN! I make it about Thor and Loki okay. The brodinsons

There is very little left of me and it's never coming back

MCU and comics loki to me. This song is MOSTLY MCU loki to me but I can make some of it about his comicsness too I thinks. Anyway he is identity issues supreme burger to me so I like anything that alludes to that sort of stuff. This lyric is BEAUTIFUL! He's a changed man... life used to be so simple... and now he's like... evil or something. No one knows. Actually he's dead. I forgot about that.

There are certain things you ask of me And there are certain things I'll lack The beginning, we were winning But now I'm just making up facts

IMPOSSIBLE STANDARDS! Loki vs his father's approval. Obtain father's approval challenge FAILED! Okay anyway. Basically all of that. He's just not good enough, or whatever. Also I like that last bit cuz he's a little lying liar all the time. We should kill him about it (they do this in the movies (also in the comics (repeatedly))).

What's it matter anymore? If you believe the lies I tell There's no meaning to the words But we still sing these songs well If we all left it alone I'm sure it'll work itself out fine We keep playing with the numbers We are running out of time

I CAN'T EVEN. PUT INTO WORDS. This song is Sooo Loki to me. Loki being a stupid little lying liar. Doing all of his schemes, not leaving anything alone, I'm pretty sure the lyric is supposed to be sarcastic but in this case it's literally true. Loki causes so many problems. This is mostly Thor 1 to me btw. I like the "running out of time" bit in this song too, it's like Loki's increasing agitation as Things Keep Happening, have to keep Thor out of Asgard, have to kill the Frost Giants, have to get father's approval, have to do all of these things before it all falls apart (even more)... and stuff like that.

But you're a killer and I'm your best friend Think it's unfair, your situation You say I'm changing Sorry I didn't know I had to stay the same Can we talk about this later? Your voice is driving me, driving me insane

I don't neeeed the speaker in this song to be Loki (usually I interpret first person songs in a weird, detached narrator way?) but if I want to I can make the first few lyrics fit him anyway. I think despite how much Thor is oblivious to Loki's motivations throughout Thor 1 Loki very obviously has some VERY DEEP hatred toward Thor, in that kind of complicated "is it the situation, is it you as a person, is it what I think you think, is it our circumstances" kind of way? But definitely enough that Loki is willing to label him as a killer in his mind, maybe not using those words but attributing the same kind of hatred you would to a "killer" to his brother. Like, if Thor comes back to Asgard, everything will fall apart, he NEEDS to keep him out even if it means killing him and that's something he's willing to do, so at this point Thor is less, like, Thor, and more a symbol of something Real Real Bad in Loki's mind? If that makes sense? I think I'm losing my mind. Point is as much as Loki is still Thor's best friend, Thor is something very very evil and, to Loki, as bad as a killer. Or I can make it about Loki's Frost Giantness and how he's CLEARLY seen Thor is Very Interested in the idea of #kill murdering all of the Frost Giants. So in that way he IS a killer to Loki! Even if Loki doesn't see the Frost Giants as people. He has that whole weird thing going on. I really like it. I think about it a lot . Sorry anyway.

The rest of that lyric. Yes. Umm. Just very Loki to me LOL. The sarcasm, YEAH! The whole... I haven't changed, I've always been like this, you just didn't see it happening? Kind of thing he has going on. With the anger and all. SERIOUSLY. It HAD to have been there for a VERY long time to get this bad to the point of Thor 1. And then of course the last two lines being sooo non-communicative, it's beautiful... The anger, the refusal to just... open up... communicate... yeah!

I try to write you poems, but the words they don't make sense The hand tries to grip the pencil, but the fingers are too tense I try to show emotion, but my eyes won't seem to wet I'd love to tell you stories, but I can't remember how they went

This makes me sooo sad. I'm soooooo sad. AHHHHHH. I don't know. Loki's repressed emotions and stuff. Again with his resentment impacting his behavior. And communication... This song is just really good in general I like it. Very umm... very themes ... and stuff...

You're a werewolf and I'm a full moon And all your very worst enemies will be gone soon I think you're changing Don't worry, you don't gotta stay the same

this line? this line right here? RUINED my life. Sorry. Exaggeration. It really did though. It's also just soooo... LIKE. I like to think Loki feels veryyy... Not......... Good ? HHHAHAH. I just mean like, he would feel like he brings out the worst in people more than he brings out the best, right?? Especially with Thor, having (albeit indirectly) gotten him literally banished and stripped of his powers?? (And his mother's death in TDW... and then his father's... and then Hela's......) And sure in the end Thor learns humility and all that but that's not really thanks to Loki. Actually by the time Thor comes back to Asgard he's literally fighting Loki and destryoing the BIFROST. Which is unimaginable to even Loki. He really does bring out the worst in Thor!! At least from what he'd see. Also he #kills himself at the end so that's line 2 for me. The last bit can also be about Thor's change over the course of Thor 1 and Loki being sooooo bitter about it. Stupid idiot grew as a person and developed characteristics over the course of like a week that undoes everything I've had to put up with for centuries?? I'd be petty and also maybe kill people about it too. No I wouldn't. I promise.. But that bitterness over the unfairness of it all, the timing, everything, I really like thinking about it in my mind. So having it be reflected in those last two lines is really fun :3

This song is so MCU Thor 1 Loki to me that I made an edit about it. which I can't find right now so i can't link it or anything sorry. A lot of this song is honestly just kind of Vibes to me BUT there are a few lyrics that I can very specifically make about My Blorbo which is a JOY!

I won't go making mountains Out of molehills Any more

The whole "I won't... Anymore" is Ending of Thor 1 Loki to me. NO MORE! I'm going into the Void goodbye. the resignation on his face... i will never be over it. Okay sorry anyway. I think this bit would be a little cheeky coming from him, AGAIN with the whole "imagined slights" thing. OBVIOUSLY they are not molehills to him, they literally ARE mountains. HE CARES SO MUCH ABOUT SO MUCH! TWO WORDS. It took TWO WORDS! To convince him to let go. So instead of playing this line straight I take it more sarcastically. Loki doesn't ever really get a chance to try and explain his Feelings in the MCU aside from yelling a lil about them to Thor while they're literally fighting each other. Even when Thor makes his comments about Loki's behavior being dramatic and such, it just becomes like part of their dynamic? Basically this is just Loki accepting how he's perceived by Thor/others rather than actually admitting or conceding that anything he got upset about was a "molehill". do you understand.

I won't go chasing windmills Round in circles Any more

More of this... like... Pointlessness. He doesn't succeed in doing a SINGLE THING he wants to in Thor 1 aside from killing laufey I'm pretty sure? In fact he kind of makes things worse for himself by, you know, killing his brother... attempting genocide... What he wants gets blown way out of proportion as the movie goes on, sort of evolving from just "delay the coronation" to "KILL ALL THE FROST GIANTS, KILL THOR, BE KING, PROVE YOURSELF" and it doesn't even really change the status quo, aside from Thor not being King anymore, but even that's kind of just a delay. Loki still isn't gonna get what he wants (respect, approval, acknowledgement) and it's more out of reach than ever before so he might as well give up. Right. See.

I won't go preaching sermons To the choir what's it for? I won't go through the motions anymore

in my edit these lyrics line up with Loki letting go at the end of Thor 1 so that should get the idea across LOL. "Preaching sermons to the choir" is such a Good Line and i can interpret it in SOOO many ways. I think specifically about Loki speaking to the Warriors Three, and also a bit of when he interacts with Heimdall, the way he's sort of treated in the movie, he doesn't ever really talk about what's going on in his head, right? To him it makes sense for someone of his status (royalty, a frost giant, the younger sibling) to lash out the way he does, there's no point to try and tell people why he feels resentment and anger and has all of these walls up and antagonism, it's just natural for someone in his position to do (from his perspective)!!! So why bother trying to justify it to the people you're lashing out at? But not only that, even if he wanted to try explaining his Feelings he wouldn't let himself. Because of that word!!! FEELINGS ! ouuh scary. He's king now, he finally has the chance of being something more than secondary in arm's reach, opening up and asking for guidance or sympathy or anything would just be setting himself up for some horrible terrible unspecified fate. Like maybe they'll respect him even less than they do now, maybe he'll never have a chance at being seen as equal if they see him as a jealous, throne-chasing second son... He could weave whatever words he wants and preach whatever sermons he wants but ultimately the people around him will only hear what they want to hear because Loki is Loki and that's not a fact he can change easily. In this case the phrase isn't exaactly accurate to how I'm interpreting it; it's not that he would be saying things the "choir" already agrees with, but rather a more general interpretation of his words falling on deaf ears, being shaped to fit the world view the choir aligns with instead. If they only ever see villainy in you, there's no point in saying otherwise, because that in and of itself will be villainous.

How much of that I think is actually accurate and not just Loki's horrible terrible no good mental constructs issssss....... like.... debatable?? I don't know... From what we see of Asgard, maybe his fears would come true and asking for help or asking for respect would just make him even less liked by everyone. Or maybe they wouldn't? They're pretty mean to him in the comics at least LOL. We'll never know for sure...

Anyway the rest of the lyrics don't really represent any specific Lokiness to me but the vibes are right so it works!!!! Onwards!!!!!!

This song is so funny to me like it's so scary to see on literally any character playlist. oh nooo you're not normal.. .scary. AHHa. Well anyway. I'm not even gonna lie I kind of don't know what this song is really about because my eyes glaze over every time I try to read the lyrics and discern any meaning from it (which is not a fault of the song it's a fault of my own) so it's mostly here for vibes and also because there's like two lines in here that are very brodinsons to me.

No sympathetic voices anywhere There's blood in my hair

very vibes to me. Idiot with NO FRIENDS! also i really like the imagery of "blood in my hair", like this sort of grimy messy "something's gone wrong" it evokes? If that makes sense. There shouldn't be blood in your hair, and if there is, it can kind of be anyone's? I like that it's so ambiguous, which I think also fits loki because of how ambiguous his emotions are, being all inconsistent and unidentified and contradictory and !!! All of it!!!! The blood he's spilled, the people he's hurt, but also how much he's been hurt, by his own hand and others', unwillingly or not, unknowingly or not, just a lot of Mess and Grime and Wrongness and Everything. I like it.

When I die I want you to die too Not trying to stay in this or any dimension without you Spit on this planet without you I envy you because you can believe in things like I never could

There's this bit in the song that repeats where it goes like "you're the only [thing] I don't want to strangle", "you're the only [thing] I believe in", which i LOVE, ESPECIALLY when it's accompanied by THIS lyric that's so... Unhealthy?? I guess?? You're the only thing I believe in but when I go down I want you to come with me??? But then the addition of like, i can't be alone without you??? Even in death????? Loki to me. About thor ofc. Sometimes I think about Ragnarok and how Loki eventually comes to accept Thor as a King. LETS HIM take the throne. to be fair he dies like immediately after this happened so we don't know if he was gonna stage a coup or something but I choose to believe this is after a good few years of Character Development and Loki's feelings have kind of started to stabilize, or at least be less........ angstyyy? Less "I need to kill my brother about this" y'know... YOUR WHOLE PLANET JUST GOT BLOWN UP you're GONNA have some different feelings about the whole... crown thing. Is a king of a planet the same as a king of a spaceship? God okay anyway, point is, I like this lyric, i think it's very Emotional and Charged and Contradictory and very Loki to me okay. And also that last bit. Just.......... the...... everything....... the everything. You know how it is. Thor trusting Loki time and time and time again (except for when he doesn't but that happens like two times ever).... Loki who at a certain point doesn't trust ANYBODY.... Yeah. Okay. Next song

WAIT NO I LIED. I FORGOT. addendum. the last line, "I envy you because you can believe in things like I never could"? it's so "Over all the millenia, only you ever loved me, Thor. Only you have ever looked at me with affection in place of condescension. Why then, am I killing you and not the others? Because you stopped." to me. do you see the vision. okay next song for real now

I think I literally didn't mean to put this song on this playlist cuz when I first had it come on I was like, did I accidentally click off my playlist?? But no it's on there so I listened to it and decided it can stay. I think it's very vibe to me. Very Loki. YEesss.. Okay.

I had enough, either give me what I want or put me on the streets I'm getting tired of living my life like nothing's happening

very Loki to me. He's a LITTLE extreme okay. A liiiittle. A bit dramatic... With very strong motivations!! But still!!! Dramatic!!! HE DID NOT NEED TO BE DOING ALL OF THAT. ok. But also very, if he can't get what he wants, to the point his wants are basically NEEDS, he's going to go on a total crashout. Which he does! And then he dies about it. Ambiguously. He comes back in avengers but i dont care point is he lets go and i will never be normal about it. Also I just like that second line since I feel it reflects his whole "Second son" thing. What's even the point of being a prince if you aren't gonna get the crown? What's even the point of being a prince if you don't have the King's approval??? What's even the point if you're always going to be second????

Talk is cheap but lies are even cheaper

lies mentioned

There's nothing left to talk about but there's plenty left to do And if it's all the same to me you know it'll be different to you

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH. Okay I like this first line a lot, very communication issues of it, BUT. THIS SECOND LINE. It's so good. It's just so... Sooo.... Loki.... Like he's living in a completely different world. A completely different perspective no one can see!!! His own reality!!! And he thinks he knows this, so he never TALKS about it!!! EVER!!! Oh my god. I just hate him. I hate everything he does. I hate him. Like he just accepts that nobody would understand, or not even that they wouldn't try but they just inherently can't, so he never bothers. Never tries to approach his issues with life in a way that DOESN'T involve scheming or indirect approaches or making-people-do-things-you-want-them-to-do-by-making-them-think-they-want-to-do-them style. You know??? LIKE JUST....... God. okay. anyway.

Pardon me I must apologize I've been this way for quite some time I tried to be just a long time ago

To be honest I don't know what the last line means exactly LOL but I like this bit anyway <3. He has had so many issues for like ever <3. He wouldn't apologize about it though. He'd be all petty about it. Oh sorry maybe you should've not kidnapped an infant and lied to it about its race for a thousand years . Or whatever. you know how he is.

ok this one is like a Special Treat for me. It gives me a lot of Dopamine or whatever the chemical is that you get when you look at funny instagram reels. It's SOOO JiM Loki and Thor to me. OH MYGOD!!!! NOOBODY UNDERSTANDS. sorry. I can't be normal about this. they're brothers. listen.

This presence of mind Perspective can (can) lend (lend)

your brother, who has almost consistently spent the majority of your lives being a total antagonistic bastard, has exploded and died and his LAST WORDS are "I'm sorry, Brother". if i was thor i'd..... i don't know i wouldn't be thor. but i'd do something for sure. something EVIL. and murderous. Thor doesn't do anything like that because he's silly and normal though. It was kind of some silly goofy manipulation from Loki but it worked!!! Poor thor can't ever have a genuine moment from Loki. At least not Classic Loki. Point is though he gets some "perspective" from this moment.

How's it gonna feel when You break, break, break This thin veneer The air of indifference you make?

kid loki makes me so sad. you don't understand. it maeks me SO sad. HE'S JUST A KID. He's literally a child. He tries so hard to make everything work out and in the end it DOESN'T. And he CARES SO MUCH !!! ABOUT !!!! EVERYTHING !!!! BECAUSE THATS HOW LOKI IS !!!! But he consistenly tries not to show it . He's very ummm... Goofy silly, don't take things too seriously kind of self preservation style. You get it? Anyway this lyric makes me lose my mind.

Tell me how Tell me when I'll ever tire of you here And I could comb this town For years and years And never find a gaze that's quite as clear Clear as you

thor literally hunts down his reincarnated kid brother because he Missed Him. Even though his brother literally did nothing but be annoying as hell LOL. I love these two i hate them i hate them i hate them i HAAATE them. I hate thor specifically. And loki too though. No one is safe. I HATE THOR. I can't believe him. He cares about his brother so much!!!!!!!

Anyway the rest of the lyrics aren't really specific to anything in my mind, it's just very brothers to me. Every time I think about kid loki and Thor my brain turns inside out. My neurons all light up at the same time it's killing me. I'm DYING!!!!!!!!! It's a sweet lil song about caring a lot about someone soooo I win forever . Yay. Next song

okay so you know how there were three cojum dip songs from the same album back to back . well i also have three AJJ songs from the same album back to back because ... BECAUSE. AJJ music makes me lose my mind but this album in particular is just sooo good at capturing A Feelings that I HAVE to assign it to my blorbos it's a law of the universe. okay anyway. Golden Eagle.

You had what you had until the horses took it

To me this song is very comics loki, post-JiM loki, mid-AoA loki. It can be MCU loki too but that's the beauty of loki he is simply so Issues and Identities. But anyway I like that in the comics Asgard is more classic style like straight up midieval kingdom style instead of more alien technology like in the movies? So that is the horses to me <3 Asgard!!

You knew what you were and you couldn't stand it You loved your country enough to support it

OKAY I can make this either about Frost Giant MCU Lokiness ORRRR I can make this about post-JiM Loki and his... everything?? ESPECIALLY AoA LOKI. Having that guilt over his shoulders all of the time, still sticking around Asgard and staying loyal to the allmothers through it all, trying to still identify with all this stuff despite not really having a place there anymore (and eventually finding out it never even worked out for him in the end)..... MAKES ME SIIIICK.

But nothing ever made you complete No, nothing ever made you complete Golden Eagle

yeah <3

You respected the sport and you could afford it A hundred hobbies you have outlived Your mother, she called bullshit and you ignored it

Taking these lyrics very literally and making them about the whole Killing Your Self (ambiguous) thing. Literally outliving himself over and over, being this weird amalgamation of his own lives he's traded to get to where he is now, whether he likes it or not?? Also Freyja being there. I have a lot of Feelings around post-evil Loki Reveal and how AoA Loki realizes that with how much Freyja does and doesn't know, from her perspective she was willing to let JiM Loki turn into Evil Loki?? At this point she doesn't even know AoA Loki is Classic Loki, so she WAS WILLING TO LET JiM "FRESH START" LOKI TURN EVILLLL FOR ASGARDDDD IM SIIICK. Anyway yeah they talk about it for like maybe two panels and then loki goes off and explodes or something I only sort of vaguely remember AoA.

You had what you had until the horses took it But on a second glance, no, no, no, no, you did it You killed a man And you wrote a book on birds, but still

LOKI AND HIS BEAUTIFUL GUILT <3 LOKI AND HIS BEAUTIFUL REGRET <3 Loki and his literally self destructive behavior <3 they could never make me hate you. Again there's all of his complex feelings of like, nature vs nurture!! Is he the only one hurting himself?? Was there never anyone else?? Was anything he felt ever justified?? Did Asgard ever do anything or did he just ruin his own life for the sake of it??? He doesn't know!!! Also he killed himself (ambiguous) and also he was a bird sometimes so that's the last two lines. LOL.

ahhhhhh. AHHHHHH. Okay. I really really love this album just by default but i'm not complaining if I get to think about it More by assigning my Blorbos to it. But point is i really like this song in general and it gives me The Feelings. Feelings which I can only process through the medium of a fictional character. Understand? Okay good. There will be a quiz at the end. Keep this in mind.

I was throttled to the ground I was locked inside a basement The guards went on vacation while I plotted my revolt

I think all of these AJJ songs on here are about comics loki mostly which I'm only realizing now HAHAH. He just has a very special kind of Issue that MCU loki doesn't capture. But with this song I think the perspective shifts around a lot to all of the JiM and AoA Lokis, with all the different perspectives and all. This one is more AoA Main Loki and Evil Old Loki to me, with both Classic Loki and AoA Loki having those feelings of being locked up, whether it be by their positions in life (being the Villain) or by their guilt and their duty to Asgard? And both of them having their different motives and secrets, though Evil Loki's are like. Blowing everything up. and AoA loki's are like..... not letting people know he killed himself to become himself LOL. You know how it is.

I was tired and confused Doesn't look like that is changin' I'm a hallucination of myself at 3 years old

These lines are soooo. AoA Loki to me. Especially the third one? HE'S JUST SOOOO. AHHH. The issues. WHO ARE YOU? Who even is he? THE LIFE SANDWICH. RIGHT? He's all of these different things to the point he can't even claim to be any one person?? I feel so bad for AoA Loki cuz he never even really gets good closure before he like... blows himself up and dies(?). I think he sort of confronts his identity issues in a very literal "i am talking to the ghosts of my past" kind of way but I can't remember if that's before he is #rebirthed after blowing himself up or not. EITHER WAY THAT'S NOT ENOUGH ANYWAY to undo ALL OF THAT so... His Issues. He needs to go to therapy... Anyway "myself at 3 years old" JiM Loki to me.

Goodbye, oh goodbye

i think about loki and how much he dies a lot and it makes me sick so i can't think about it. or else I'll have an aneurysm or something.

You were perched atop my shoulder You were pecking at my head

IIII LOOOOVE BIRDDD IMAGERYYY BECAUSE I CAN MAKE IT ABOUT. YOU KNOW IT. LOKI!!!!!!! He is literally bird. ESPECIALLY in JiM!!!! He's literally there he's a bird. He's a bird talking to himself. He has a bird who is himself. He is the bird and he's the head and shoulders. Understand??? Also the self destructive tendencies you know how it is

I was bleeding my last brains It's nothing like the nothingness that normally numbs one's pain

Loki's deaths are always so impermanent, like even DYING can't free him from his own cycles of harmful and reductive behavior?? THE ULTIMATE END ALL BE ALL. I know that's just kind of how comics are but COME ONNNN with Loki it's so INTENTIONAL!!!

7th grade was hard enough Someone thought that they knew me

Sometimes I mishear lyrics and it makes me sad cuz eventually I realize I'm insane and living in a reality nobody else is in. Anyway I misheard the "they knew me" as "they were me" for a while and that would've been much more Blorbo but you know what? the beauty of media is interpretability and boy do I know how to Interpret Things. Anyway this is about JiM Loki to me. He's literally bullied, almost murdered?? repeatedly by the Asgardians, like HE'S LITERALLY LIKE TWELVE YEARS OLD OR SOMETIHNG LEAVE THAT BOY ALONE!!!! Worse than middle school i thinks. JK nothing is worse than middle school. Anyway. "Someone" here is for sure Classic Loki. And his magpieness. The whole, degrees of separation, you aren't me and you think you know me but you don't because as much as we're the same person we are different people entirely? Thing? Get it? See????

If I stay in bed long enough They'll go to church without me

JiM Loki makes me so sad he is so lonely he needs so much support and everyone is like so mean to him his only friend is leah and thor. and also volstagg is nice to him like sometimes. Anyway I like this lyric a lot in general it's very Feelings <3.

If I move away enough They won't outrun me Goodbye, oh goodbye

JiM SPENDS SO MUCH TIME TRYING TO ESCAPE HIS PAST AND IN THE END IT DOESN'T WORK. HE TRIES SO HARD AND DOES EVERYTHING HE CAN AND HE STILL ENDS UP LOSING!! (in that weird sort of "i win" but he still died way). IT'S NOT EVEN HIS PAST, IT'S THE ACTIONS OF A PERSON WHO IS HIM BUT HE IS NOT??? To me this line is JiM Loki's hopes of moving away from Classic Loki and finally gaining the acceptance of the Asgardians as his own new person. Ultimately his plans fall apart and he gets assimilated into the Lokimalgamation.... I think about kid loki Every Day.

ok this is the Last AJJ song on here. It's ummm...... more....... nonspecific I think? There are a few bits that are very loki to me though. This one is also pretty JiM heavy, but also mostly just The Vibes, all this imagery of inner child and inner evils and this almost kind of dread that builds up throughout the song? Is soooo JiM Loki to meeee.

I found a small red boy inside my tummy With three dollars in change and a Milky Way Lite In my occasional pursuit to find something more meaningful Than yet another word that rhymes with "die"

I really like imagining the lokis meeting as "finding" each other. JiM Loki finding Classic Loki ... Old Loki finding AoA Loki ... It's such a weird idea, finding yourself?? Finding different versions of yourself?? But like, in the way that you're literally meeting a speaking, breathing, thinking version of yourself with their own lived experience and their own opinions and feelings and, you know, it's not even really you but just kind of an adjacent individual? Yeah all of that. The first two lines also kind of have that like, distant childhood memory feeling, like unearthing someone who's been buried for a real long time JUST LIKE KID LOKIII. All of the innocence and the... absence of all of the crimes he commits later in his life LOL. The last two lines are kind of self explanatory I hope ?? At this point in my ranting and raving ? Loki's literal pursuit for meaning and fresh starts and escaping death !!! I hate him

And then, he opened up those eyes that said: "I am, I am, I am, I am the truth"

This bit (the "I am, I am, I am, I am the truth") gets repeated throughout the song as it gets more and more intense and it's not only just SOOO GOOODDDD but also to me is SO VERY AoA Loki to me. THE SLOW EVOLUTION FROM Young Avengers' KID LOKI GHOST TO THE AoA MANIFESTATION OF HORROR AND GUILT AND UNFORGIVABLE CRIMES??? IT'S SO GOOD. And fits so well with this songgg!!! His guilt, and the way it manifests as Kid Loki, gets more and more irrepressible as YA and AoA go on, to the point it's literally screaming at him to be acknowledged ... The truth of what he's done, what he is, what he did it to, what he can and cannot undo ... makes me SIIICK.

I showered him with love and adulation One day, he was just as tall as me I showed him all the books that I was raised on Your Madeleine L'Engles and D'Aulaires Mythology And in a montage that could warm the heart of Hitler I raised him up, so proud and motherly I swore that I was glancing in a mirror When in the language that I taught him Oh God, he began to speak—he said: "I am, I am, I am, I am the truth I am, I am, I am, I am the truth"

okay this song is just. reallyyyy. good. it has so MUCH in it and it's so HEARTFELT so i really like this whole verse in general, but!! Again . MY BLORBO. everything is about my blorbo, to me. so. i think with all the themes of like, inner evils, this whole song is vaguely ... ominous ? Again it has that encroaching dread that builds and builds and it's SO GOOD but also I feel like both AoA and JiM have that same development in them, for different characters and different reasons. And I think they're both kind of represented in this verse and the next, with this bit being more JiM Loki. For JiM Loki, you start to notice when everything's getting more and more tangled and everything's getting more and more out of hand and you realize WITH him that Classic Loki of course wasn't just going to let him get away with turning him into a bird and keeping him as a pet— HE'S LOKI! BETRAYING HIMSELF! so I think this verse fits that, and especially that last bit lines up with Kid Loki's last little moments ... I just really like the idea too of raising your own inner child, who is also kind of your own evil (your planned crimes, a future murder) and turning on him right as he starts to become his own Person. His own Thing .

Okay. This song is just. so good. but. bear with me here. i NEED to include this entire verse it's just so good. it's a lil long but, come on!!! It's so PEAK!!!

And his eyes became a beacon, an LCD projector Broadcasting all my memories in a clear and vivid picture His tongue became a staircase, his uvula the knocker Of an ornate wooden door that led me straight into my future His throat became a hallway with a thousand baby pictures

This lines up so well with all the casual body horror in AoA, with AoA Loki's guilt manifesting as this horrific little distorted whisp of a boy. Especially the mouth imagery; the echo of a scream!!! RIGHT?? RIGHT ??? SEE ????? IT'S SO GOOD

And I became forgiveness; I transformed into the closure that I lost When I learned about the tragedy of all of us

This is also sort of just before the climax of the song, and fits really well with the buildup to AoA's climax too!! Starting to come to terms with Him, with his Future and Past and his everything, addressing his guilt and his role as a murder weapon, culminating in dying from it and being reborn to escape his own little death spiral cycle. man..

I walked through the hallway to a room of only mirrors Reflecting me in bondage, so I watched myself get freer I let my horns grow longer; I observed my skin get redder My soul became a hammer; I started to feel better My hatred turned to pity; my resentment blossomed flowers My bitter tasted candy; my misery was power The truth in me grew brighter—my nature and my nurture

In this bit the singer starts to become one with the inner evil, inner child, everything that the "small red boy" represents, all of that complex Life Stuff. I LOVE IT. This song is just... so good .... and it's so.... About Personhood, self identification... self acceptance and growth and being a multifaceted individual and youth and fear and EVERYTHING ! And i love it for all of that . And it goes on the loki playlist because loki is also all of that to me. He is a special little guy in my brain and i need him out so badly so i can enjoy things normally again without typing for hours about his stupid idiot songs and his stupid idiot musics and his STUPID little themes and murderingness and everything GOD anyway okay this verse is just so good it's so peak I can't even explain why it's good it's jsut SO GOOD!!! The acceptance !! The TRUTH!!! THE NATURE AND THE NURTURE !!! And it's just not the same when it's written, this whole verse is significantly Louder and Crunchier than everything that comes before it in the song, almost like a manic storm of emotion as all of these different clashing parts of the self come together and i reaaalllyyyy liiikeeeee itttt. this is less about loki right now and more about how much I like this song.

No more shame, no more fear, no more dread! I am, I am, I am, I am the truth

no more shame, no more fear, no more dread... I'd put the song of this same album of the same name on the playlist too but i'm unwell about AJJ and if I had to listen to four AJJ songs when trying to think about my blorbo, Loki, I would have some kind of never before seen medical episode I think . Anyway this lyric makes me want to blow up a house

IM SORRYYYYYYYYY IM SORRYYYYYYYYY IM SORRY IM SORRY I DIDN'T WANT TO PUT MITSKI ON THE LOKI PLAYLIST BUT I HAAAAD TO IT'S THE FEEELINGSSS. I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGSSSS I HAVE TO PUT MY FEELINGS MUSIC ON THE PLAYLIST FOR MY FEELINGS BLORBO. LISTEN!!!!! AHHHH. I'm sorryyy. I'm sorryyyy.... This song on its own has been the soundtrack to so many of my crying fits already, but I've also cried about loki just Existing so i promise that's not really saying much I cry a lot about a lot of things all of the time I'm a very emotional. person. but. gah. okay. listen.

Mom, I'm tired Can I sleep in your house tonight? Mom, is it alright If I stay for a year or two?

I justtttt. I justtstttttt. I wish Loki had more scenes with his MOMMM in the MCU and in the comics too because I feel like there's so much heavy lifting done by fandom in my head and not enough of actual canon content of Loki having like, a SINGLE person to fall back on when things go Insane, because even though his mother is thereee and they clearly have a unique relationship she's still kindaaaaa? Um. The Way She Is. I already mentioned her weird kid-loki-doomed-classic-loki-acceptance thing in the comics but also in the movies she visits loki like once while he's in #jail and i'm pretty sure they deleted a scene of her and loki getting to chat in thor 1 and she's mostly only there for like three exchanges with loki... IF i remember correctly IDK I might be forgetting I haven't actually rewatched the films since likeee a few months ago.. ANYWAY. All of that rambling and for WHAT. I can say so little with so few words. anyway.. MY POINT IS I WANT LOKI TO HAVE SOME COMFORT FROM SOMEBODYYY AND IF I HAVE TO MAKE IT A MADE UP VERSION OF HIS MOM IN MY HEAD I WILL!!!!!!!! HE HAS FAMILY ISSUES SUPREME BUT IT WORKS BECAUSE ATTACHMENT AND DEPENDENCE CAN BE JUST AS UNHEALTHY SO IT CAN COEXIST WITH ALL THE DESPAIR AND UNRELIABILITY IN HIS FAMILY. I think about the MCU deleted scene where (after chatting with his mom for a lil) loki is handed his father's scepter after his dad goes into sleepmode and he sort of looks back at his mom ... and he seems kind of unsure but kind of excited about the whole thing, but still, you know, completely wordless, guy who doesn't talk about ANYTHINGGG. even though she's Right There ... and she was kind of the only person on his side for Thor 1, with all the crazy chaos going on, finding out he's adopted, becoming king, you know, the only support he got was from her, but even then he commits to having all of his schemes and plans and everything instead of just CONFIDING in her or something...

Mom, would you wash my back? This once, and then we can forget And I'll leave what I'm chasing For the other girls to pursue

to me this whole song is just some kind of distant thought he might've had while growing up, that sort of thing where you entertain a scenario in your head knowing you'll never really do it? which in this case is opening up about his feelings and asking for some support from his mother LOL. and even then he has to add that little allowance at the end, like "don't worry it's just for now and then I'll be back to doing everything Right", right??

Mom, am I still young? Can I dream for a few months more?

i know Kid Loki in JiM is kind of his own person but it still makes me sick to think that Classic Loki was once like that too . And honestly MCU loki too, all of the ... you know... having these schemes, having this "in the shadows" behavior, when you're all about mischief, being in the spotlight, attention, getting up in peoples' faces, but repressing it all over time, having this resentment against the people you would hope you'd trust and love the most in the world... and they don't even know it? All of that CHANGE! And then taking it to the most literal extreme in JiM, finally recapturing that youth through MURDER AND THEFT... "Free" from all the "reasons" to be what he became, but still sort of being that person already, it's complicated, point is, I'm sad .

I listened to this song on loop while drawing kid stoatki and it made me want to SLAM MY HEAD INTO A WALL REPEATEDLY. And so it went on the playlist. To be honest this song is almost ENTIRELY vibes, the lyrics are soooo beautiful but i don't associate many of them with any specific Loki Thing. Just... All of the VIBES. THE SADNESS THE LONGING!!! THE IMPENDING DOOM. THE "IT'S SO OVER AND IT HASN'T EVEN STARTED". It's very JiM/AoA Loki to me.

What are we gonna do now What are we gonna do, baby Saw you sleeping outside with a red nose Saw you sleeping in bed with your day clothes on

More of the ambiguous narratorness that I like to interpret songs with, but I can definitely see some of these lines being about Loki from Loki, you know? Just ... The pet names, with the song contents kind of implying the pet names are soon-to-be-retired, and those last two lines evoking sort of a childish, tiredness...

What are we gonna do now What are we gonna do, sweetheart You still haven't cleaned the kitchen And we're still on hold with the nurses

AoA Loki to me. That boy is in active combat with the manifestation of guilt over his own murder do you think he can function living in an apartment alone??? Maybe projection a lil but I firmly believe he'd be struggling a lil too much to keep things nice and orderly all the time LOL.

When are we gonna wake up In some cubicle cell with our shirts tucked? I'll be the one I'll be the one to deliver the news

With this bit I think the song is more about like, when is the whimsy all gonna go away? When is reality gonna hit us? But for my Lokiness I'm taking it more as like, when is the lie gonna get stripped away? When is everything just gonna be laid bare, no fantasies, no absurdity, just the plain facts of the world, which happennnn to include his self-murder and stuff. Also he is LITERALLY the one to deliver the news of his own death, murder, whatever, i think about it ALL the time, this poor guy <3 ahghgh.

I know you're worn, you're exhausted This is love, this is lost on you

ALL OF THE LOVE AoA LOKI GETS IS FOR A PERSON HE ISN'T. IT'S FOR THE BOY THEY THINK HE IS, NOT THE AMALGAMATION HE BECAME. It's horrible. Makes me SO sick. All of the friends he makes, all of the interactions he has with the Asgardians, with Thor, with his mother, they all think he's the person he killed, the person with no blood on his hands, the better version of himself... It's SIIICK.

And I'm never cooking up what you're craving I'm never cooking up what you're craving

^^^ Same as above, just being... not the thing you're meant to be. Whether you like it or not?? The murder weapon...

This song is so good it makes me SO sick. I love it sooo much it's so pretty and SAD and AHHHHH. DEVASTATING!!! IT'S HORRIFIC !!! IT'S THE BEST THING EVER. I'm SICKKKKKk.

you know who this one's about. you already know. YES i'm making it about the brothers I HATE THAT THERE'S SO LITTLE ACTUAL CONTENT OF THEM INTERACTING THEY'RE THE ONLY THINGS I CARE ABOUT!!! sure I love Loki's silly wacky hijinks but so MUCH of him is characterized by Thor just.... EXISTING. there is no loki without thor. you know how it is. there's a whole comic about that okay I'm not just Saying it. anyway.. i just miss them okay .

How long do I have to wait 'Til my lonely days are over? My heart is on the train A bag without an owner

loki and his horrible isolation and his horrible zero support system and his everything. and I hate him. and . they should invent therapists on asgard. and invent talking about feelings and stuff. and maybe invent good parenting. and then maybe nothing bad would have happened ever. god. GOD!!!!!!!!! TALK TO YOUR BROTHER INSTEAD OF LYING TO HIM AND KILLING HIM AND AND AND. AND ... but then you see how thor ACTS in thor 1 and you kind of sort of understand loki's unwillingness to open up to .. That. Right?? And Thor ... he just ... doesn't know who loki Is. Most of the Time. And Loki I think knows this . so . it hurtsss. no easy fix...

I put myself to bed just halfway through the party I love all my friends but I hate when their eyes are on me

STOP ISOLATING YOURSELF STOP ACTIVELY MAKING THINGS WORSE BECAUSE YOU THINK THEY CAN'T POSSIBLY GET BETTER. STOP REFUSING TO MAKE AN EFFORT BECAUSE IT ALREADY ALL SEEMS SO HOPELESS AND POINTLESS. SOTP IT!! CUT IT OUT!!! JUST STAWP!!!! aauhh. See I say all of this but I don't really mean it, the beauty of loki to me is in the decisions he makes and the reasons why he makes them, if he wasn't the way he was I wouldn't care him enough to be writing this post HAHAH. which to be honest is already way too long. this isn't even close to the end though... ahhh. Also I think that second line is a bit more tongue-in-cheek than it is in the song itself, more along the lines of Loki's "not that I don't love our chats, but... I don't love them" from Thor 2. Like, oh yes, I love all of these people who only sort of tolerate my presence, I just also happen to hate when they look at me. Which makes me sad . because he is such an ... eccentric person? With all of his mischief and everything ... becoming so bitter and defensive is so.... AHHH . AND THEN I THINK ABOUT KID LOKI AND IT ALL JUST!!! It's so much. Moving on...

I miss being friends with you, but what can I do? What can I do but leave you alone?

I think Loki really does think his brother is hopeless in Thor 1, just... completely unreachable, unreasonable, to the point he is more talking to himself than he is Thor when they have any kind of exchange. Right?? And yet despite that, there's that deleted scene where he reminds Thor he loves him, and every time I think about it one of my organs turns inside-out. Because, yeah, maybe he DOES miss his brother, maybe he DOES still love him, but what can he do about that, he has no choice except to scheme and plot and try to get things to turn out the way he wants without ever directly just talking about it because it just won't work. And then everything falls apart because of course it does... To be clear I don't even think that Loki is necessarily wrong when he goes straight to plotting rather than communication, it's just Very Sad to me that he can get to a point in his life where this Is the case, and a choice he makes without hesitation. You know??? man I hope that makes sense. I HATE fictional characters.

Here's to you and me And the crumbling infrastructure no one else can see The end result of my own reckless impulsivity Could you spare a sec to talk to me?

DO I EVEN NEED TO EXPLAIN. I REALLY DON'T THINK I NEED TO AT THIS POINT. YOU HAVE TO SEE MY VISION. IT SPEAKS FOR ITSELF. the crumbling infrastructure no one else can see??? the end result of my own reckless impulsivity????? CAN YOU SPARE A SEC TO TALK TO ME????? I'm sick and I'm never going to get better.

Underneath the streetlight You are dark and sweet and golden I creep out of the night To rest my head on your shoulder And I can tell you really love me Can you tell I'm really sorry? Can you tell I'm really sorry? Let's just go home

this verse makes me just. ARGH. ARGHH. it's such a sad and bittersweet little part of the song and it's soooooo themmmm to me... I like the "dark ... and golden" contrast, creeping out of the dark into the light, all of that yummy symbolism and Opposites.... THE REPEATING OF THE APOLOGY??? IT'S ALL SO HORRIBLEEE. One of the things I hate the most about the brothers is how, you know, I don't think Thor ever meant or means to be malicious really ? He wasn't perfect and definitely an ass (in the movies) but normally those traits don't make you someone worth KILLING or even particularly a person who'd be considered overall "bad", right ... he was ignorant, arrogant, and those traits led him to say, do, and think cruel things but also he was young (by asgardian standards I think) and very spoiled and very powerful and surrounded by yes men and ... everything !!! nature and nurture and all that ?? and a lot of the way he treats loki , it's you know, similar to how everyone else does , kinda brush him off and not take him seriously and stuff, but i think from him in specific it's just so much Worse because it's not just PEOPLE treating you like you're secondary, it's THE PERSON YOU'RE SECONDARY TO treating you like you're secondary, and after so long of ONLY reinforcement of this behavior and no argument whatsoever thor does seriously start to see Loki as secondary, though it's "secondary" alongside literally everyone else in his life LOL since that's just how he Is at the beginning of Thor 1. and there's a lot i could get into about my FEELINGSSS about how, like, if you don't respect someone or see them as their own person, can you really call that love? but ultimately loki was thor's brother and i don't think thor ever really wanted to HURT him . and especially post thor 1 and into ragnarok he's .. Better About It (though i can point out at least four separate times where he's Barely Changed but im going to call that evil writing instead of actual representations of thorbehavior because those moments Can't Coexist with "thor is supposed to be a developed and humbled person now" so i think they're just Bad (also i'm DELUSIONAL and if the canon content outweighs my headcanon that means they're just WRONG. OKAY!!!)). mcu sucks though because they never let these two talk about their Feelings and get serious for real closure so i guess it'll just have to exist in my head . but all of that to say, i think as much as loki can apologize to thor for all the harm he causes while he's going off the deep end, thor also has a lot of apologies to make, and if they could have a Moment like this together maybe they'd be able to share them . both in the comics And MCU I thinks . but um . marvel hate me for real so that's why i have to draw them as silly animals hugging it out or something . have to do everything around here. ghhhh. okay. next song.

IM SORRY IM SORRY IM SORRY IM SORRY IM SORRY I NEEDED TO PUT THIS ON HERE I DON'T WANT TO PUT MOTHER MOTHER ON ANY MORE PLAYLISTS EVER BUT I HAAAVE TO I'M SORRYYYY. mother mother is simply so good their songs are so The Feelings. Gah. before even getting INTO the lyrics can i just gesture at the song title??? Hiii. HIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.

Try to change, I try to change I make a list of all the ways to change my ways But I stay the same, I stay the same, oh I will try and try to change, but I just stay the same ... In a decadent age, I try to change All my decadent ways, but I just can't help but Stay the same in a decadent age, oh ... I will try and try to change, but the list I made of change to make It blew away, flew away

Much like the song title, I'm just ... GESTURING !!!!!! I don't even... I don't even know if i have much to say about these lyrics individually?? I just HAD to put this song on the playlist because, like, it's all about, YOU KNOW, CHANGE? And making excuses for it, being unable to and wanting to but having all of these little variables... And I see so much of it in loki!!! It can be about MCU loki but I'm definitely thinking of AoA loki here, with all of his horrid... identities. Timelines . Meeting his future self and learning, maybe he didn't try hard enough?? Something must have tempted him back to villainy, back to self destruction, SOMETHING must have convinced him to give up on his new identity of good. So maybe he can't change, and he's left sort of uncertain about that for a bit. But also you look at Future Loki and it's like, he DIDN'T do anything wrong, he DIDN'T do anything to stray from his identity, but the lies and his history was just so baked into who he was seen as by other people and, being unable to fully escape that, all the hopelessness convinced him to just give up on it. There's all of this like... discussion of predetermined paths, what makes you who you are, like is it what you do, what people see you do, what they THINK you'll do, is it what you want to do, what you have done, what makes the rules? what decides if you've really changed or not, and what makes it worth it to YOU? What lines have to be crossed to have truly changed, by your definition or others'? and are they really achievable?

this might be the shortest section so far, I don't have much to say about the individual lyrics, the theming of the song is just so spot-on on its own ... it's beautifullll. ahhh. the tragedy of change!!!

so i kind of sort of have debated keeping this song on the playlist, i really loveee it but honestly only the first verse and chorus are Loki to me. The rest of it is really good but !!! Not as Loki to me . it's too um... Like, I like giving loki a lil sprinkle of depersonalization, ESPECIALLY in the comics (AoA loki you are depersonalization supreme to me) but i think ultimately he does still... feel? Like a person? Just that he feels detached from who that person is, if that makes sense? "I couldn't pass the Turing test if I had the answer sheet" and "I can't even give a fuck in my dreams / Oh what I wouldn't give to care enough to scream" are really yummy lines but they're a little too apathetic, like not having any feelings at all rather than just feeling separated from those feelings. Which works with the overall song's message !!! I just can't fit it into my specific interpretation which is molded around my favorite fictional character . So I'm just gonna focus on the bits that are loki to me . when this song comes on while im playing my playlist i zone out for the second half because i can't think about loki to it FDKLGDFJ/

Put your index finger in your mouth And scratch your cheek real slow Draw blood, taste water And drink it 'til there's no more

MENTAL ILLNESS SUPREME!!! I am sometimes a little stingy on headcanons for characters but i am giving AoA Loki Every Problem sorry. That boy is not right. Or soemthing. What's the point of having a blorbo if you can't project on them a little ??? Anyway, depersonalization beam GO. also some of that self destructive behavior again, pains that feel like they're happening to Someone Else... you know how it is. or maybe you don't. i seek understanding but not at the cost of the suffering of others'.

Throw a punch, watch it sail through the air Keep talking but there's nobody there Can't remember anything that you say

I think this can be a little MCU loki too, still very AoA/JiM heavy but MCU loki is self destruction supreme so he can be in this verse if he wants to be. Especially with those first two lines, like showing off the antagonistic behavior... getting his words ignored CONSTANTLY. like seriously, nobody talks to him like a normal human being in Thor 1, except for like, his mom?? Everyone else either talks at him (warriors 3) or straight up don't acknowledge him (heimdall) or LITERALLY PASS OUT (ODIN) while he's trying to get an idea across ... man ... i wouldn't commit genocide about it maybe but i'd be a little angry too i thinks. AoA loki fits these a little differently, he's less destructive but still goes through a lot of depersonalization and also like? gets personality swapped and (temporarily) drives away his ONLY FRIEND? literally watching a DIFFERENT PERSON ruin your life. in this case it's LITERALLY a DIFFERENT PERSON though so, like, not as depersonalization style.

Slit your throat and die and wake up the next day

MCU and Comics Loki. THAT MAN CANNOT STOP DYING. OR KILLING HIMSELF. AND THEN COMING BACK TO LIFE. BOYYY STOP IT STOP IT BOY STOOOP JUST BE ALIVE BOY PLEAAAASEEE

I wanna scream, I wanna run I'd die at twenty-two to feel alive at twenty-one

any time i see the word "scream" or "yell" I go HE DOES THAT! HE DOES THAT IN AoA AND YOUNG AVENGERS!! his weird manifestation of guilt , his echo of a scream!!! beloved <3 rewired my whole brain. Gah. Anyway. More of that self destructiveness, the subtle desperation, the willingness to let someone who-is-not-you-but-is-you die? the person you will be, the person you might become? hi loki

the last few lines of the first chorus aren't too specific to anything, but they hit the same themes ! so they get a pass. and then the rest of the song is kinda, eh, less Loki and more just, real life LOL. which isn't what i want to put on this playlist!!! but it's a really good song regardless and if I listen to it when I'm not loki playlisting then I appreciate it for how Real it is. Ily penelope scott

SO THERE'S A POST ON THIS WEBSITE ALREADY! ABOUT THIS SONG AND JiM, AND IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL. I CANNOT FIND IT. I'M SORRY I DON'T KNOW HOW TO NAVIGATE THIS SITE OR DO ANYTHING EVER. But I saw it shortly after I'd added this song to my playlist, and I was like !!! AHHHH. THEY SEE THE VISION HAHAHHA. EVERYONE UNDERSTANDSSS. it's SO perfectly JiM and AoA Loki it's almost sickening. THE BIRD! THE KILLING! THE SECRETS! THE FEAR! THE REGRET THE GUILT THE BEATING HEART UNDER THE FLOORBOARDS. AND THE IDENTITY SHIFT. IT'SS SOOOO PEAAAAAKKKK. this song has always kind of been in my peripheral ever since i first saw it in some animatic back in like, fifth grade or something, but it came on when i was shuffling songs on spotify and i suddenly was zapped with The Vision of The Character. The character being loki of course. anyway.

Well I didn't tell anyone, but a bird flew by

WE ARE ONE LINE IN AND I ALREADY HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY. Okay. There's this recurring, persistent problem that Loki has throughout pretty much every instance of him, including MCU loki, comics loki, and it's very much that he's just always surrounded by walls and DEVOUTLY refuses to let anyone get past all of them. Not even just in a self-preservation-instinct way, but he has this inherent belief that people can't be trusted and people won't trust him! And Kid Loki suffers from this a lot more, having the looming threat of his Past over him at all times, meaning anything he does will be seen through the lens of Classic Loki. He can't open up, be honest about his schemes, about what he's up to, what he's planning, what his goals are, since those plans usually hinge on people acting in a specific way, and if he tells someone he needs them to do this, chances are they just won't trust him. And even after he goes through with his plans and gets the outcome he wanted, they still don't trust him!! Kid Loki is stuck in this spiral of, like, always trying to get away from himself, but there are parts of him that make him him that he can't ever get away from, both in good and bad ways, and one of those parts literally ends up killing him. With no outlet, all of his everything directed inward, he's his own worst enemy. Anyway, naturally, with all of that going on, he never really gets to talk to someone trustworthy about his Past and the ominous Classic Loki Presence stalking him. and we all know how that ends??? By the time it's too late, his agency is taken away from him, and since he never told anyone about Classic Loki's presence he'll never get to tell anyone.

I don't think Ikol was exactly a secret, but I'm pretty sure he never tells anyone what Ikol really is? Or at least definitely not to the extent of, "I spoke to my weird evil past self who is sort of kind of still alive a little bit, and I turned him into a bird who I talk to regularly in order to remind me of what not to do, but he's definitely still sentient and autonomous to an extent and may or may not be offering me guidance which i may or may not be following", right? Anyway. A bird flew by. Loki didn't tell anyone. That's... That's the lyric. GOD.

Saw what I'd done, he set up a nest outside And he sang about what I'd become

Okay, note here, I think the second line is implying "what I had become" in reference to some unspecified past regrets, mistakes, guilt, etc, which is consistent with the tell-tale heart theming. BUT, BUT, BUT, in this playlist, we can also totally interpret it as a "what I would become", right?? "He sang about what I had become" and "He sang about what I would become" both fit here so well for Kid Loki, since he's fighting his past and his uncertain future!!! Racing against a version of himself who can dictate his choices-to-come, trying to leave him in the dust? I miss Kid Loki.

He sang so loud, sang so clear I was afraid all the neighbours would hear, So I invited him in, just to reason with him I promised I wouldn't do it again

The sort of like, flippant attitude implied here works sooo well with JiM Loki. In the song it's implied the singer did something irreversible, identity-changing, and all the singer can do is try to keep their secrets and say they won't do it again. I also really like the first line, how oppressive Loki's past is over his kid self; his past is very, very recent, and nearly every single person who knows his name won't let him forget it. It's so!!! Brutal!!! Trying to bargain with yourself, trying to outwit yourself, trying to keep yourself quiet. Or at least the part of yourself who's willing to do all of this bad stuff to all of these good people.

But he sang louder and louder inside the house, And no I couldn't get him out So I trapped him under a cardboard box Stood on it to make him stop I picked up the bird and above the din I said That's the last song you'll ever sing Held him down, broke his neck, Taught him a lesson he wouldn't forget

THIS IS JUST. THE WHOLE VERSE. LIKE. I'M GESTURING AT IT SO WILDLY?!?!?!? IT'S SO JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY!!!?!!? AHGHHHHH. The first two lines, right, Kid Loki eventually loses to his past; Classic Loki, whatever remained of him, had way too much power, enough to completely overwrite Kid Loki. He literally couldn't escape his past!!! AND THEN THE VIOLENCEEE. THE PERMANENCE. The panel of Kid Loki, teary-eyed, bloody-mouthed, holding Ikol's corpse in his hands... IT IS THIS! IT'S THIS VERSE! THAT'S WHAT THIS VERSE IS! IT'S THAT PANEL! GAAAAH. and then the transition from Kid Loki to Agent of Asgard Loki... A lesson he really couldn't forget!!! THE CRIME THAT WILL NOT BE FORGIVEN.

But in my dreams began to creep That old familiar tweet tweet tweet

THE HEARTBEAT UNDER THE FLOORBOARD. I LOOOVE OMINOUS ONOMATOPOEIA. This whole buildup here, it's soooo goooddddd, and also fits sooo welllll with the slow buildup over the course of Agent of Asgard, all of the guilt slowly starting to distort, eventually culminating in the SCREAM! Or, the echo of a scream. THE CRIME!!! But, you know, before that point, the climax, the guilt is just as bad as Past Loki was for Kid Loki. Ever-present, lingering, unforgettable. Defining Loki almost as much as he defined it. The guilt, the crime ... becoming part of him. A haunting!

I opened my mouth to scream and shout, I waved my arms and flapped about But I couldn't scream and I couldn't shout ... ... The song was coming from my mouth

ahhhhhhggggg. you know how it is. GOD. This to me fits a few things, one with the last line being the moment Loki confesses to Thor and Verity that he killed his kid self. In the song it feels like the realization of the singer's that they are the one singing comes suddenly and unexpectedly, and this works soooo well with Loki's confession literally being forced out of him, but with a kind of quiet resignation as well. Sort of like, all that time spent running around, trying to escape his guilt, find some sense of identity, and it just comes tumbling out of him like That!! Suddenly he's not fighting his guilt; he's the one giving it witness. Weaving the story, spilling all the details ... confessing!!! But also, this line can be more about the transition from JiM Loki to AoA Loki. More of that struggle, that fight, only to lose in the end... Both JiM and AoA Loki suffer from the same thing, battling some part of themself and losing to it. At least, to an extent!! JiM Loki dies having lived a genuine life, and AoA Loki manages to weave a new path for himself that isn't just "die forever" or "become evil". I also just... really like the transition from "scream and shout" to "song" ... Like after all of JiM Loki's fluttering around scheming and AoA Loki's doing tasks for Asgard, both of them fighting their inner demons, the moments where their fates are finally decided for them are so definite and poetic !!! Real "there's no coming back from this" moments for both of them. AoA Loki kind of sort of continues to live on after he blows himself up post-confession??? But I think it's pretty left vague and I like to believe this rebirth-number-whatever Loki is also a separate consciousness. Oh how I love my guy who is secretly like six different guys <3. I realize a lot of this post probably doesn't make any sense if you haven't at least read Siege, JiM, and AoA. And honestly no one is reading this far so I won't bother explaining HHAHAHAH. next song!!!

THIS SONG IS LIKE... DEEFINITELY ABOUT TWO SEPARATE PEOPLE? BUT LIKE I JUST SAID, MY GUY IS SECRETLY LIKE SIX DIFFERENT GUYS. SO I CAN MAKE THIS WORK. To be honest, I'm not sure how much I want to keep this on here??? I LOOVE the music video and the vibes of this song, and I think they CAN fit comics Loki , I juuust.... I don't know .... I have to interpret the lyrics/theming pretty abstractly if I want to Loki-ify it. Which I'm not opposed to clearly !!! Just... this one is a littleee bit of a stretch. But, anyway, about the music video especially, I really like the depiction of like, turning on the people close to you and dooming yourself and others in panic. REMIND YOU OF ANYONE??? MAYBE A CERTAIN FROST GIANT PRINCE???? Gahhh. Okay. Bear with me here.

We were playing in the sand And you found a little band You told me you fell in love with it Hadn't gone as I'd planned When you had to bid adieu (Ooh, ooh, ooh) Said you'd never love anew (Ooh, ooh, ooh) I wondered if I could hold it And fall in love with it too

It's kinda hard to point at specific lyrics here so I'm gonna gesture vaguely at this entire chunk of lines for a little bit. I think the "you" and "I" here are VERY abstract, and what perspective Loki is speaking from isn't gonna be consistent even within the same line. What Loki "falls in love" with is his own innocence, the identity Kid Loki manages to cultivate for himself. Gaining some semblance of trust, even if in very, very few people, having some kind of identity, some kind of past that isn't stained with blood. He's honed in on his plan to steal his own reputation from himself. Again, as I mentioned in Small Red Boy, I think it's so!!! Good!!! To describe Loki's meetings with his selves as "finding" his selves. GODD IT'S SO HARD TO TALK ABOUT THE TEN DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF HIM WHILE MAINTAINING COHERENCY. BUT ANYWAY, point is, there's more of that here!!! Kid Loki finds Classic Loki or Ikol in the dot of a question mark; Classic Loki finds Kid Loki, his pet project, the culmination of his ultimate scheme, his proof of concept, in the same place. And even though it all does technically go to plan, Loki clearly never anticipated feeling guilt over what he does to himself. It's an unwanted, unappreciated sensation. It's so foreign to him that it manifests as a whisp in the periphery of his awareness. IT'S THE ECHO OF A SCREAM! And when it really starts to sink in that the Kid version of himself has died and he was the one who did it? He can't help but wonder if he's ever going to find a way to be free of that guilt, or if it'll haunt him no matter if he plays good guy forever out or not.

You told me to buy a pony But all I wanted was you

So when he meets his future self and learns that he not only fails to overcome his obsession with his own past but also that he fails to succeed in changing his known identity entirely... When he's told by his future self that he will never be fulfilled so he may as well give in to the easy route, become the loki "they" want... He can't accept it. Refuses to let his wants, needs, choices be defined by a past he didn't own and a future that hadn't yet come to be!!! All he wanted was to be himself, not a version of himself, his own person, some kind of Loki that wasn't a Loki-that-had-been or a Loki-that-will-be. And okay yeah this is really seriously a huge stretch but.... Anything can be abstract poetry if I try hard enough. So, this song is abstract poetry to me . About Loki . even though it's definitely neither of those things and the song itself is actually very much about a pretty clear theme . but um. death of the authorrr...? i think? i don't know. that's all I have for this one. ONWARD!

THIS PLAYLIST TRULY JUST HAS... EVERYTHING IN IT. mitski, AJJ, The Front Bottoms, Mother Mother, Tally Hall... and SURPRISE! Radiohead too. I'M SORRYYYYY. It's a good song. I've loved it for a VERY long time and never had a Blorbo to make it about soooo.... when I had the chance I TOOK IT okay. AND, REALLY, CAN YOU BLAME ME? THIS SONG IS SELF-DESTRUCTION-SELF-SABOTAGE INCARNATE. you do it to yourself? HELLOOOOOO. This song leans more toward comics Loki for me, but it fits MCU loki just fine as well. My blorbo he has problems in every universe !

Can't get the stink off He's been hanging 'round for days Comes like a comet Suckered you but not your friends

The imagery of this like, unwanted, damaging, stressful presence haunting the singer, butting into their life and targeting them alone? THIS IS IKOL TO ME. Specifically magpie Ikol, and his weird hallucinatory nature. He's not exactly an UNWANTED presence (at least not always) to kid loki, but like?? He's definitely not HELPFUL, and, you know , imminent doom and all that ... Comes like a comet ! Bright and erratic and harmless up until he's not. And by then it's too late. AHHHHHHHHHH

One day he'll get to you And teach you how to be a holy cow

The first line is like.. again ... imminent Doom ... Ikol's long term goals eventually coming to fruition ! Also I like the second line because it reminds me of that one bit in the bible(?) where everyone starts worshipping the false idol golden calf thingy . and I just like the little bit of extra Angst I can squeeze out of associating Kid Loki with any kind of falseness, not in that he himself is a false deity but that his purpose is to be some kind of placeholder without realizing it, just another stepping stone in Loki's ultimate goals...

You do it to yourself, you do And that's what really hurts Is that you do it to yourself, just you You and no one else

IM GESTURING SO WILDLY AND UNCONTROLLABLY AT THESE LINES. you HAVE To see it, right ???? LIKE SERIOUSLY. DO I EVEN NEED TO SAY ANYTHING. LOOK AT THIS!!! HE QUITE LITERALLY CAUSES SO MANY OF HIS OWN PROBLEMS. His GUILT and REGRET and GRIEF over the Loki that HE KILLED ! And, well, I don't even need to make this about JUST comics loki, I think MCU Loki can struggle with this just as much as comics loki does, but maybe not so on the nose to the point of literally killing himself and taking over his own life. But there's still that whole like, well, everyone's always saying it to him, is his crashout really justified when he never (ambiguous) opened up about his grievances with Asgard, Thor, etc ? The sequence of events in Thor 1 where Loki just keeps escalating, doubling down, playing so offensively, if he hadn't done any of that, if he just sat back and let Thor come back to Asgard or something, if he just swallowed down all of his emotions and fear and betrayal, maybe he wouldn't've been fighting with his brother for three straight movies afterward. A lot of maybes there though!!! And it's not even that I agree with the sentiment, but I think we see him sort of agonizing over that all in TDW, right? If he just wasn't, you know, HIM, maybe things'd be all okay, right? If he didn't meddle and didn't scheme and didn't CARE as much as he did... But he does. And can he help it? It's hard to say when you're the one doing it!!! So I think he definitely spares the time to wonder if, you know, maybe he DOES "do it to himself", but definitely not to the extent that he considers this line of thought in the comics. MCU Loki is a pretty different situation so being driven by accumulated anger and resentment isn't gonna spark as many "maybe I'm the problem" feelings as literally having an identity crisis over being your (?) own (?) murderer, y'know? But well anyway if you've read literally anything else from this post you know I love me some loki-being-horrified-at-his-own-actions . Smiles.

(It may be a little fandom-brain-driven but I think I can take MCU loki's interpretation with this verse a little further, going to the extent of like, if only he wasn't mischievous, if only he wasn't a magic user, if only he was more of a traditional warrior, and so on, right? if only he behaved the way people wanted him to, maybe he'd be liked, maybe his father would like him, maybe if he was just BETTER. but he can't help but practice magic, can't help but use illusions, can't help but play pranks and tricks and be The Way He Is and then take everything personally and so on and so on. maybe everything comes down to it all being in his nature, maybe he's always been the second option because he was born to die, maybe he's always been destined to fail from the moment he was conceived as a frost giant. maybe he "does it to himself" not through any particular actions but just in PERSONALITY, in CHARACTER, in NATURE. or maybe I'm just severely ill and I'm amplifying his self-disgust way too much. That boy certainly values his preferences and decisions; just, you know, maybe sometimes he wishes he'd been born with a brain that preferred what everybody else does?)

Don't get my sympathy Hanging out the fifteenth floor

Hello Ending of Thor 1. Hiii. AUhg.

"No, Loki." AUUUGH

You've changed the locks three times He still come reeling through the door

Ok I'm back on my comics loki train . I'm gesturing at this line so much !!! "You've changed the locks three times" lines up with each iteration of Loki post-seige, from Kid Loki to AoA Loki to God of Stories Loki, and yet despite all of this CHANGE you have Old Loki (and in Kid Loki's case, Classic Loki) who still manages to get them all caught up in this insistence to double down, hurt more!! Hurt everyone more, hurt yourself MORE, because there's nothing BUT hurt!!! GAAH. Ghhh.

One day I'll get to you And teach you how to get to purest hell

Very Old Loki to me, very ummm... well, just, you know, trying to be the worst version of yourself because you think that is the "purest" version of yourself, stripped of all silly hopes and dreams and desires... completely hopeless, completely convinced change is impossible and your beautiful golden future will never be within reach... ahhhh. My horrible terrible Fictional Character. I must... I must move on..... no more radiohead. goodbye radiohead.

okay.

god. okay. next song. i............. ok, BEAR WITH ME. BEAR WITH ME!!!

LISTEN. LISTEN. LISTENNNNN. I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I CAN'T STOP PUTTING MITSKI ON THE LOKI PLAYLIST IT'S SO BAD. I GENUINELY DIDN'T WANT TO PUT YET ANOTHER MULTIPLE SONGS FROM ONE ARTIST ON HIS PLAYLIST BUT I JUST... YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND.

This is probably the most explicit I'm gonna get about Loki and Suicide so like um... Maybe ignore this part if you're not feeling that !!! I don't feel it sometimes . I understand. When I think too hard about this song I get nauseous. But anyway, um. Loki and his one million deaths. and all of that. I'm gonna be so very truly real and admit that this is probably the biggest part of Loki that I project on so FORGIVE ME for my woobification or whatever they say when you make a guy stupid and pathetic, LOKI KILLS HIMSELF ALL THE TIME YOU CAN'T EXPECT ME TO EVER FORGET THAT. It takes TWO WORDS! TWO WORDS AND HE god okay you get the point. This song isn't even about MCU Loki it's about AoA Loki HAHHAHAHA I have no idea why I'm bringing up Thor 1 here. Whatever!!! I'm also making this song, which is sort of supposed to be about multiple people, into a song about my one guy who is multiple people, because I love to do that apparently.

All of this turbulence wasn't forecasted Apologies from the intercom And I am relieved that I'd left my room tidy They'll think of me kindly when they come for my things

I actually don't really think Loki resonates with this first verse too much, mostly because it sort of implies the elements of premeditated suicide and I think that through the lifespan of AoA Loki he actually pretty determinedly tries to cling to life? i mean he does have his Momentsss but also he genuinely thinks there's a goal to strive for, he's clearly upset and personally hurt by Old Loki's existence and the thought that he ultimately turns evil in the end anyway. There's a mention on the TV Tropes page that says AoA Loki contemplates suicide but I can't remember where this would've happened other than when he, y'know, actually does kill himself, but even if he does I don't think it dominated a huge portion of his life as he goes around doing Agent stuffs. Point is he didn't have any particular goals to kill himself, since he kind of wanted to do the opposite, make his own new life and identity and all. But but!! Turbulence was there for sure!! All of the... You know... Events... The accumulation of guilt... The rising threat of Old Loki impeding his efforts and progress... Confessing his sins to Thor and Verity and all that. So Much Turbulence. And then, those last two lines, I think they can be played a little more... like... sarcastic? Tongue-in-cheek? Like, well, no, before AoA Loki kills himself he essentially loses all chance of anyone being on his side for the forseeable future (which is a long time when you're part of a race of immortals). Leaving your room tidy, sort of like, tying up your loose ends; when he confesses his guilt he's like, cleaning out his subconscious and all, and when he eventually Implodes himself, he's going out on his own terms. No one's gonna think of him kindly though, LOL.

They'll never know how I'd stared at the dark in that room With no thoughts like a blood-sniffing shark

This line always makes me imagine those like, obsessive, dull feelings of dread you get late at night when you KNOW something is horribly, terribly wrong (whether you're right or not, I Love Mental Illness) but there's not really anything to consciously pinpoint. And I mean, AoA Loki and his little green specter of regret... Haunted not by thoughts but by the full, untethered weight of an entire life on his hands.... Circled by it, spiralling with no outlet... We don't really SEE this much but, like, COME ON, HE WAS SO NOT OKAY LOL.

And while my dreams made music in the night Carefully, I was going to live

"Dreams" "making music" is, to me, again, the spirit of Kid Loki and his constant quips and reminders of what AoA Loki is, what he's done. And AoA Loki was going to live anyway! He was going to live because a boy was there to haunt his dreams instead of take the spotlight in his stolen life!!! In the music itself when Mitski sings the second line, the sentence "I was going to live" weakly decrescendos and it just sounds sooo, like, resigned? Simple? Instead of this proud or hopeful declaration, it's like, oh, okay. And AoA Loki is very... That! To me! He's not... Proud of his stolen life, right? He still wants to be a better person, wants to have this new identity, get his sins erased, he's still SELFISH, he still wants to make use of this life he's been given, no matter how much it may not have really belonged to him, but he isn't... like... celebratory of this life. Like he HAS it, damn it, he's gonna use it, but will it ever not be defined by the actions of his past selves? Will he ever be free of it all? And then the shoe drops, and everyone finds out, and, well, yeah, from there it's like, well, it's all gone crazy, guess it's time to let go and see where time takes you.

You wouldn't leave 'til we loved in the morning You'd learned from movies how love ought to be And you'd say you love me and look in my eyes

I don't really know if I can make this one about Loki, chat... It doesn't call out to me in any specific way, but I still sort of like it because it has that vibe of like, learning how to be human. Learning how to be something. Learning about core elements of life through warped lenses. God of Stories Loki seems to think turning your closest friend into a spirit without asking first is a good expression of love... Did AoA Loki have a chance to learn grief and hope and passion naturally, or was it all baked in to him as some half-completed plan from a past self? I dunno. I dunno. Man.

But I know through mine, you were looking in yours

Could be literally ANY of the Comic Loki Instances. Through Classic to GoS Loki... They are always themself talking to themself. You know? Gah. Matryoshka doll of self immolation and discovery. Being broken down and built up by past, present, and future versions of themself... Oh how i love your weird identity issues Loki. No one does it quite like you do...

And did you know the Liberty Bell is a replica

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Silently housed in its original walls

AHHAHHHHHHH!!! AHGGHHHH!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

And while its dreams played music in the night Quietly, it was told to believe

GGGHH. GAAAH. HGHGHH. The Liberty Bell, making its music, cracking and being discarded, replaced by a mimicry attempting to brandish its injury... oh lord. I'm unwell about this verse. Obviously, AoA Loki is the Liberty Bell, the Replica, some strange sort of contradictory symbol, meant to celebrate the music but not truly the one creating it. Do you see?? Do you understand??? Ahh. Oh my god. I'm so unwell.

I always wanted to die clean and pretty But I'd be too busy on working days

I don't... SUPER feel these lines for AoA Loki. But I do think it works to interpret it as like, he wants to die on his own terms at least, right? He doesn't want to just... Be another part of another Loki's grand schemes. He doesn't want his OWN death to be part of his OWN grand schemes. He wants to die, at least, authentically, on his own terms, as his self, and in his day to day life, there wasn't a reason (or a chance, really) for him to do so. Especially not while everyone thinks he's still Kid Loki, so no one sees him for who he really is, which is... the crime!! I also think this verse really highlights like, the looming presence of apathetic, passive suicidal ideation. Considering it, acknowledging it, never really making plans to do it, having excuses why not to, having reasons why you won't but it's still there, you're still defining parts of life in terms of why you won't... Haunting you, perchance!?!? Auhrhurhguh.

So I am relieved that the turbulence wasn't forecasted I couldn't have changed anyways

GAHHHH. Yet another mention of Change, beautiful change, i love you change. Loki and his Change. Loki and his EVERYTHING! God!!!! I can't believe this guy exists. Well anyway. I think this ties in pretty well with his, like, again, spontaneously exploding, maybe he doesn't have all the answers, maybe he doesn't know all the right things to do, but by God if he can do one thing it's not letting Old Loki win, and if that takes death, something he's already so familiar with but never had a good enough reason to dip his toes in with... Well, there it is, right!!! Maybe ultimately his self immolation is only as freeing as it is, opening up these new paths for these new Lokis outside and within the narrative, because he couldn't have planned for it, predicted it, schemed like he always does in his self-destructive, self-sabatoging ways. Because he's his own worst enemy, y'know, even now, killing himself messes with his future self's plans at least briefly, but at least this time he's not failing a good future, he's failing the future he desperately wants to avoid. The future that wastes what little was left of Kid Loki, his personal desire to Be Good, Do Better, Change.... All of that. Being faced with his future, being told, if you live, this is what you become, a creature that just couldn't change... Then it's a relief, right, to have death finally be the "right answer"?

ummm. I'm so unwell. AHHH. I must move on. To the next song. Which is a complete and total tonal shift, I'm sorry... IT'S THE BEAUTY OF CHARACTER PLAYLISTS, WHAT THE HELL IS A THEME ALL I KNOW IS FEELS AND VIBES!!!

I kind of debated putting this song on here but I have to be so real right now I just ... I just like this song. And it's about siblings. What do you expect me to do!??! NOT put the sibling song on the playlist of a guy whose issues mostly stem from being a sibling!?!?! Of course it's on here.

This song is already kind of... abstract? In its lyrics? Which I like!! It gives me creativity... and the ability to completely misinterpret things so that I can make them about my special little guy. HOORAY! Point is though that this song is mostly on here for the vibes. I feel like this song can be the calm before the storm, the beginnings of that resentment before it really started defining everything in Loki's life. Maybe like, you know, the first few conscious realizations of, huh, everyone prefers THOR. And that means no one prefers YOU. And... Thor is Thor, he's got his little band of friends, he's out there on his own with his hammer and his cape and then there's Loki, with no Mjolnir, no Warriors Three... And he's only just starting to feel the weight of all that, without the childhood itch of brotherhood still softening all the blows. But at the end of the day that's still his older brother, and, screw what the world thinks, right? But also screw what Thor thinks 'cuz he's an ass. But he's your brother...

Go wrong, you go home alone It's not too bad

Like everything I said above, this is the like, bubbles of resentment, bitter rejection, awareness of how much you AREN'T something instead of just being YOU, free-floating. But Loki still has the salve of like, well, it's still the brother he loves, it could be worse. But, y'know, Thor being his brother eventually becomes the thing that makes it all WORSE. Of all people, his own brother contributing so much to his self-worth, and discarding that power carelessly.... UEEH.

Don't follow on I'd deny (Don't follow on)

I think of this song as a mix of MCU and Comics Loki, maybe more MCU Loki for the brother feels but also a healthy amount of JiM Loki because, well, you know... Those two editions of Loki are probably the ones who have the most interesting relationships with Thor, to me? MCU Loki with his EVERYTHING, and JiM Loki with the way he looks up to and genuinely loves Thor for probably the most heartfelt way any Loki has for centuries (or however long, IDK the timeline for comics Asgard, LOL). This lyric to me is like Loki saying, don't look too closely at his feelings, he'll deny it, whether it be his genuine love or his hatred. He's so closed off from Thor, and even JiM Loki keeps his secrets and has his schemes, although it sometimes pains him to have them. AND I JUST... I just........... I hate him. I hate them all. I hate them both. I can't STAND them. ANYWAY.

Handbags too short Arms length They have a discord You want to be like your big sis

THIS ... THIS VERSEEE.... UGHH. It hits so hard every time I hear it... It's just so sweeetttt??? And so.... Bitter? Vaguely? It's so bittersweet, I guess, it feels so, almost condescending, right? But also, it's so genuine. It hurts so much to be called out on your flaws when it's all in an effort to capture the same perfection your favorite person does. Even worse if it's BY your favorite person, which, in the context of the song, I think it kind of is? I think the singer's meant to be said big sis, so... ough. Ouchie. But anyway, yeah, this is JiM Loki AND MCU Loki to me, though the MCU edition is a little blurrier 'cuz like, we don't see him as a child. But it's not hard to imagine their childhood, right?? Like, with the brief scene with Odin, they don't seem to have any major negative feelings harbored over the mention of kingship. And there's that one Marvel Rivals painting that deals psychic damage to me every time I think about it... They were happy once... Ahhhhh. Point is, I think Loki's all about that, like, accumulating grudges, feeling out of place, always knowing, inherently, deeply, that something about you would never be good enough, right enough, would never click, and never knowing why. But not only did he not know why, he had someone who embodied everything he couldn't be, and that person was his own brother. And so as much as he hates him he loves him, right? He admires him, he adores him, he wants his approval, wants to be by Thor's side, respected by him, acknowledged by him. And maybe he is for a while, but as Thor becomes more arrogant, blinded by his yes-men and privilege, Loki loses that down-to-Earth connection and ends up just being the butt of a joke to Thor. Acknowledged sometimes, just enough to feel like maybe Thor does still see him as everything he is, but in the end Thor would never understand how Loki ticks. And alongside losing that bond to age, Loki watches as his Father, who, really, he needed the approval of even more than he needed Thor's, starts to also treat Loki as secondary. So I think this verse is sort of about ... all of that ... before it all gets irreversibly bad. Like, there's a chaos there, in your very nature, something in the way you carry yourself just isn't right. But you have your brother, and maybe in time you'll be just like him, loved like him, he'll love you like you love him... But, y'know. AHGHHH.. Agh. Okay. Next song!!!!

[GESTURES WILDLY] Whatever's wrong with me in my brain is worse than drugs because every time I think too hard about this song and my association of it with Loki my heart rate speeds up and I have to like, try really hard not to start slamming my head into a wall about it. Anyway when I first listened to this song I KNEW , IN MY HEART , IT HAD TO BE ABOUT LOKI SOMEHOW. I HAD TO MAKE IT ABOUT LOKI SOMEHOW. but i could not figure out how to. He doesn’t really have any good romantic interests …. Especially since I’m kind of completely ignoring TVA loki…. and the subject was just so charged with … affection? And i struggled to figure out how to fit him in … AND THEN ON ONE LISTEN IT JUST … HIT ME. At this point I’d already gone insane and somehow made “hidden in the sand” justifiable, so when it occurred to me i could do the same thing here …. I became unstoppable . And Loki got another song on his playlist where the first person and second person become the same person <3. My guy who is secretly like five different guys HE KEEPS WINNING! I spoil him.

There's nothing for me here at home Everything I'll need is with you out here I can't wait any longer ... No one seems to understand How I long to be in the palm of your hand I can't wait any longer

To be honest a lot of these lines are just vibes, but I think this like, theme of longing and desire, so strong to the point of abandoning everything you had beforehand and laying your life down to be molded by whatever it is you're dedicating yourself to... HIIII. That's very Loki to me. His tendency to like, fixate on one overarching idea, the thought that if he just does this thing it'll FIX him, fix EVERYTHING... there isn't really a "you", as in a person, more just... the ideas he idolizes. Being reborn innocent, killing the enemies so he can have his father's approval... If he could just do these things, then it'd all settle.

You've got your bullfighter jacket on, nothing beneath I had to take my mask off to kiss you in the street Summer turn to fall, my head's upon your wall

I'M GESTURING AT THIS LINE SO SO VERY MUCH. Just, okay. Bear with me here. The Bullfighter Jacket imagery, it's sort of like, your tough outer persona, right? And in the song it's sort of about pulling off that persona to show trust, intimacy, dedication to whoever, whatever you're committed to, utterly and wholly. And, like, well. just.

do you understand? Do you understand. Do I have to say anything. THE PERSONA? THE MASK? THE KISS? I'M SIICK. I'M SICK!!! I'M SICK!!!! IT'S SO HIM.

Now nothing seems to stay the same I'm terrified to lose you, but more afraid to change (Oh!)

I LOVE CHANGE. I LOVE WHEN A SONG MENTIONS CHANGE. YES!!! I mean, he really does want to change, right?? Especially AoA Loki here. But it's scary trying to navigate his new identities and grapple with everything in his history, particularly the blood on his hands. There are so few constants in his life, and he doesn't want to lose his goal of finally redeeming himself truly, but how possible is that really? And, with Old Loki entering the equation, you know... How can he do this all the right way, while being comfortable in his own skin? Making choices for himself that aren't dictated by his crime or the one that used him to commit it? It's stressful !! It's scary !!! And, y'know, there was no right answer!! He just... Had to take the leap? augh.

Summer's here You've taken off your clothes Taken my skin To add to your collection

More of the like, clothes being a metaphor for your outer emotional layers, but then there's like, even the skin being taken? The deepest, truest parts of yourself, becoming one piece in a much larger set ... Very Comics Loki to me I think. Each time he dies he strips himself of the pretenses, the plans... He's dead, gone for good!! Except for, y'know, Classic Loki, but AoA Loki isn't really him either, right? So even in his efforts to make this big scheme, Classic Loki gives up his villainous outer layer but also gives up his own possibility for a life. He leaves behind not his own consciousness but a copy of it. Just another skin to add to Loki's growing list of past selves..... UEEEH. UEEEH. I don't even know if this makes much sense, but this song is just so FEELINGSSS!!! I love when songs that have such affectionate lyrics have an almost ominous melody/tone to them?? IT'S SO GOOD, IT INSPIRES ME SO MUCH... It's so Loki!!!

WE MADE IT TO THE LAST SONG ON THE PLAYLIST. if you're reading this then hiii. if you just skipped to the end then um... also hi i guess.. please read the other songs this one is certainly not the Most Loki song on here. Actually I can make it about Thor a little bit if I tried I think? But I don't really Want To, I want to make it about LOKI!!! So it's on the Loki playlist. Anyway I'm so glad to finally be free of this post I've had it sitting in my drafts 3/4ths of the way finished for like, three months now or something idk.

This song is a little confusing I think? I just wanna clarify MY interpretation of the lyrics even if it's inacurrate . Basically with all of the comparisons in the lyrics, I think it's about the idea of like... In life we all have these things that are so important as representations of ideas, right? And they serve as symbols of positive attributes like strength, drive, power... But those symbols may only stand out because of an innocuous trait the symbol has. If that makes sense. YOU'LL UNDERSTAND WHEN I GET TO THE LYRICS. Basically, they're only so important because there's something to MAKE them important, but the things that make them important aren't very notable on their own. Do you see the parallels here...? I hope so ... Anyway let me get to the actual lyrics .

Do you find I always come back with the same old lines? I'm tryin' to be as individual as you, as you

THE "YOU" HERE IS VERY THOR TO ME. It can also be like, Asgardian culture as a whole, or maybe even Odin himself, just... Things that Loki doesn't really mesh into well. Particularly I think this song is very MCU Loki. He stands out so much when it comes to Asgard and the people in it, even in his own family... He doesn't WANT to have an identity defined by his brother, by Asgard, but in a way he's mostly acknowledged BECAUSE of the way he stands out. He's characterized by the fact he doesn't fit in. Which has nothing to do with him, and all to do with the world he's surrounded by, so ultimately nobody is really acknowledging him as an individual, just a weird byproduct of the society they live in.

You have raised The bar so high that I can't reach it I'm now aware of incompleteness That's fine, it's all fine

Shout Out to Odin Allfather, Most Goodest Dad Award Winner of the Past Millenia !!!! Do I even need to explain further. Loki is so Issues. "I could have done it! For you! For all of us!" SHUT UP

If you are the flower, then I am the pavement If you are the water, then I want to taste it If you are a lion, I am the hunger If you are a human, then I am desire

GOD OKAY. This is going to veer off a little into just, my general appreciation for this song, I LOVE IT. But, like, to give Loki that highlight, it's sort of about the way Thor seems to shine brighter against a brother so dark, right? Being "good" is one thing, being "better" is another. Being MORE THAN SOMETHING ELSE accents your worth in a way that just being good on your own can't. So like, a flower in the pavement? It's a symbol of perseverence, of life where life struggles to thrive. But it can only be that because of the pavement, because of the constraint, because a flower in a field just isn't the same symbol of struggle and strength that a flower in pavement is. And water is only as valuable as it is because it is an essential part of life; with no life to be dependent on it, water is as meaningless as every other liquid. Like a King with no subjects, y'know? And Lions as symbols of power and strength and, like, "King of the Jungle" attitudes, right? This line is especially a Thor line to me, with Thor being the lion and Loki being the hunger. The drive. What makes a lion so ferocious and fearsome? The endless need to fill its stomach, to feast, to catch prey to eat... Something to overcome, something to sate, to put down until it rears its head again... Loki??? And then, also that last line, humanity and desire, that's our drive, y'know? Our reasons to do literally anything. Desire is what makes us special because it's desire that makes us get up, do more... Desire for companionship, for knowledge, for fulfillment, for artistry...

But constraints, thirst, hunger, and desire... They're all sort of supposed to be seen as bad things on their own, right? No one wants to be constrained, no one wants to be hungry, and desire is usually seen as an enemy, something tempting, something destructive. So for as valuable as these things are in strengthening the perception of the things around them... They're discarded and disliked when on their own. Which, like, HELLOOOO. Loki. So Loki to me. Maybe not even very accurate to the real world, but maybe that's how he'd try to think of himself. Rejected, despised, insulted... but little do they know he's valuable in his own way. Right?

If you are the music, then I am a craving If you are a surgeon, well, I'll keep you waiting If you are a liar, I saw the cover If you are a family, then I am your lover

I'm not gonna go and explain each of these lines since that's more about the song itself than its Lokiness, but I do like the mention of lies (are liars only notable because of the truth they try to hide?) and also the last line being about family... A lover as in the lover who brings the family together, or the lover that can threaten to bring the family apart? Is Loki the force that will bring the world around him together despite the world's dislike for him, or will he eventually grow so strong he stifles that which he once amplified? Or maybe I'm just... Maybe I'm just..... losing my mind... I'm losing steam. I don't know how to end this post. It's finally over...

Well that's it. That's all of the songs. This is like, what, just barely 20k words? NO ONE is reading all of this. I love anyone who even tried though. Curse of fixation upon ye. I'M not even gonna reread all of this . Peace and love . Loki Forever ... i'm submitting this to The Internet with full knowledge of possibility of being perceived but if you (hypothetical reader) disagree with me on any of these songs don't tell me i'll cry so hard i'll die

[fanfic-scribbles]

Dinner Date Chapter 36

Masterlist

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Overall Story Facts:

Fandom: MCU Captain America/Avengers

Story Summary: Steve Rogers has a girlfriend. A prickly, generally asocial girlfriend, but they make it work. They have more in common than some people might think.

Quick Facts: Romance – Steve Rogers/Reader – Female Reader

Story Warnings: Reader-insert that verges on OFC, written in 1st person past tense

Chapter 36: Wake-Up Call

Chapter Summary: Steve needs to go for a walk, and vent. Sometimes, love means waking up at five am– because anything less would have to wait until at least seven.

Chapter Word Count: 3328

A/N: Happy December; hope you all are well as can be <3 I’m realizing my next chapter isn’t going to work so well so I’ll be scrambling to finish something else for January, but I will see you all…next year! =P

~

The 4am wake-up call came both earlier and later than I expected. Earlier, in that it was only Saturday when Steve showed up at 4:37 in the morning, and later because...well, it was at least closer to five when an unexpectedly large body sitting on my bed propelled me into a heart attack.

“Fucking fuck,” I said, gripping my chest after recognizing the body was a familiar one.

“Sorry– sorry,” Steve said– was he trying not to laugh? I smacked at his arm, but I was still half-asleep and my fingers just kind of flopped across his skin.

He snorted hard and clamped a hand over his mouth. “Oh fuck you,” I grumbled and rubbed my face. I inhaled and let my heart return to a more reasonable pace. “Shit; is it time for walkies?”

He chuckled, and squeezed my hand. “It doesn’t have to be,” he said. “I am sorry; I know you said– whenever, and I wasn’t able to sleep at all, so I waited for a better hour, but I guess I got too restless and–”

I put a finger to his lips. And waited for a single brain cell to start working. After a few half-hearted attempts, something finally sparked. “It’s fine,” I said, starting to ease into full-brain consciousness. Steve definitely seemed keyed up; so much so for such an early hour– “Wait, did you not sleep at all?”

“I can do it later.” His expression turned stormy. “I’ll have time today.”

That did not bode well for all the SHIELD meetings he had been in to discuss the ‘Winter Soldier issue.’ I swallowed a sigh, and instead took a deep, steady breath. “Okay,” I said, setting all that aside for when I was more awake. My eyes continued to stay open, at least. “Let me get dressed, you find us a coffee shop to stop at, and then we can…mosey.”

“Just mosey?” He leaned his head against mine. “How about amble? Stroll? Saunter? Trai–”

“We can do all of those to a library so I can beat you with a thesaurus.” I scooted away, to the other edge of the bed. “Gimme ten, and we can meander all you want.”

~

We did. Mosey, amble, etc; me with a coffee in one hand and slightly leaning into him on my other side. It was early enough no one was around the park to care, and if they were, they were passing for a reason and not stopping to note the random man hunching in on himself and somehow also partly shading me. He was going to get a crick in his neck if he kept that up, but I didn’t really want to be too negative at him when he was already so dour. We were less ‘moseying’ than we were trudging and lumbering, and I was still too out of it to be of any help at all.

“You know, science says five minutes of sleep is better than zero minutes of sleep.” I blinked a few times, and then squinted to make sure my eyes stayed open. “Far be it from me to doubt science, but…”

“…But you doubt science?” Steve asked with a wry smile. I made a ‘tiny bit’ pinching motion with my fingers, and he smiled slightly and shook his head. “Why were you up so late?”

“Umm…” I sipped my coffee slowly.

He leaned in closer. “Couldn’t sleep?” he said, his voice dipping into concern.

I pulled the cup from my mouth and sighed. “No,” I said. A little sullenly, because I didn’t want to admit to the why– it seemed so stupid in the scope of things.

However, my attitude was just enough for him to suss out the truth of the matter, because after a few seconds, Steve let out a little snort of recognition and then asked, “Were you playing a game?”

“Shut up,” I said, much more sullenly, and drank some more as he chuckled. He would have laughed, normally, but I took what he could give.

“I don’t feel quite so bad now,” he said.

I hip-checked him. Or tried to; I moved more like a bumper car losing power, but the feeling got across, I thought. “Don’t feel bad at all. I told you I’m here whenever and I meant it.”

He put his arm around me. “I’m just a little worried about your coordination.”

“What, you don’t like my 5 a.m. coordination?” I asked, but I stood upright and took a sip as I slipped away from him. Steve made a pathetic noise and got close again, but I just took a step to the side (and tried not to trip over my own two feet). “Nope; s’what you get for making fun of me.”

“I think your 5 a.m. coordination is adorable,” he said. “Be careful of that lip coming up though unless you want to lose your drink.”

I way overexaggerated stepping over the little ridge of sidewalk as it came up (even though it was a good call and I probably would have tripped on it, given my current amount of attention paid to our surroundings). “That’s why SHIELD pays you the big hero bucks,” I said. However, Steve was conspicuously silent at that, and when I looked at him, his mouth was on a downturn and he was focused on the ground. My stomach did a little flip. “Steve?”

He sighed, but when he looked at me, he did a little double-take. “Hey, no, it’s not that dire; I’m just…annoyed.” He tried for a smile but the bitterness was still there. “Fury is too. I’m on ‘temporary enforced leave,’ which sounds bad I guess, but it just means I can’t come in for a few days while Fury gets over himself.”

“Is that even possible?” I asked. I had nothing against Fury normally, but right now Steve was mad at him, and I was nothing if not loyal. And there was no better bonding experience than shit-talking a loved one’s boss.

But Steve, goody-two shoes he sometimes was, just shook his head. “It is. He will. And so will I,” he said. “It’s just…”

He went quiet for long enough that I briefly leaned against him again. He leaned into me too.

“The coffee must be good,” he commented lightly. “No complaints yet.”

“The complaints will come when the drink is gone. But they will be small complaints.” I sipped slowly, trying to let him settle. He didn’t. “Hey.” I bumped my head against his shoulder. “I won’t make you talk about it. But you can talk about whatever.”

He let out a gust of air. “There’s nothing to say. I mean that almost literally– we’re at a stalemate,” he said, and leaned his head closer to me. “SHIELD won’t budge on how they see B- the Wi- Bucky.” I looked and saw his jaw muscles tensing as he continued to speak. “I understand the…logic. At least part of it. He caused a lot of suffering.” Steve blinked rapidly a few times, and swallowed. “But he suffered too. He didn’t have a choice; he wasn’t even allowed a sense of self. He’s different now.”

I re-capped my nearly-empty cup, snuck a look around, then slipped my free hand into his. He squeezed, and let out a sigh. I squeezed back. “I’d offer to yell at SHIELD for you, but I’m honestly not all that good at it,” I admitted, with a little bit of shame. “I’m sorry I can’t help.”

“Being here is enough. And honestly, there are enough people yelling at SHIELD.” Steve actually cracked a small smile. “Clint and Natasha show up to every meeting looking like disappointed parents– Clint’s idea. Jane called Thor down and he started yelling at Fury before anyone even told him why he should. Bruce made a really, really long presentation on neuroscience that he got some doctor friends to help him out with. Even Tony has been helping, in his own way.”

The level of wonder at that last one caught my attention. “Is it that surprising?” I asked and threw back my cup for the last little bite, and caught only a few drops. “He seems like he’d enjoy yelling at SHIELD.”

Steve looked askance. “It’s…complicated.”

I took that to mean they were fighting again, and let it drop. “But they all have your back, even if SHIELD are being jerks.”

“Yeah.” His face relaxed again, and he seemed closer to a smile than a frown, at least. “Yeah. They have my back.” He looked around, then slipped an arm around me for a brief squeeze. “And I’ve got yours. More coffee?”

“Yeah,” I said, looking around for a trashcan. “But how about breakfast? There’s a–”

“I know just the place.”

The seductive female purr right into my ear was so unexpected that my feet almost left the ground entirely, and my cup flew out of my hand and landed several feet away– right near a trashcan.

You can’t murder Black Widow, you literally physically CAN’T, I told myself, clutching my chest for the second time today, as Steve and Clint laughed themselves sick, and I came down from a mix of terror and…well, it probably was on purpose that she used a sexy voice, but I was not going to mention it. “What the fucking fuck, Natasha. You are so lucky that cup was empty.”

She gave me only wide-eyed innocence. “Am I?”

“Yes,” I said firmly. “Because I will go down, but I will go down swinging, and then you will have to deal with Steve moping at you for the rest of his life.”

Natasha actually made a face at that, and I nodded with satisfaction that the message was properly received. Steve, though, scoffed. “I think I’d do more than mope at her,” he said, a bit sulkily. Before I could tell him not to battle his friends to the death, he added, “I would do my PSA voice and say, “how could you, I am so disappointed in–’”

Both Natasha and I made noises of disgust as he actually did his stupid Captain America PSA voice. Clint, by contrast, coming back from throwing my cup out properly, made an admiring noise and said, “Wow, you’re really good at pulling that out on cue.”

“It’s very annoying,” Steve said, as though appreciating Clint’s comment. “But we were just about to go for breakfast. Do you two want–?”

“Breakfast, yes,” Natasha said and went to manhandle Steve into facing another direction. It was a little funny, actually; it was like watching an otter wrestle a whale. And win. “We know just the place.”

~

The diner looked closed, but Natasha and Clint strode fearlessly forward, so Steve shrugged and gestured me to go ahead. Despite the heavy blinds in place to block everything outside, the lights were all on full, sounds and smells came from the kitchen, and there were several tables shoved together in the middle of an otherwise empty dining room, around which sat a bunch of people. Those being: Sam, Jane, Thor, Bruce, Tony, and Pepper. It brought Steve up short– more than just taking in who was there, which he surely did faster than me.

“Finally!” Tony said, drawing everyone away from a conversation that had Thor looking mildly annoyed. But he sloughed it off for his usual poise, and his eyes brightened when he looked at Steve. Sam relaxed in his chair, Jane sleepily waved a coffee cup, and even Bruce turned to smile.

Despite the abundance of people I wasn’t prepared for, I relaxed more than when I’d thought we were just going to a random diner full of strangers. They really did have Steve’s back.

Clint and Natasha herded Steve and me over to a couple of chairs at the table, Steve sitting next to Sam, with Jane at the end and Thor and Bruce circling that side, while I sat next to Pepper, with Tony at the end on her side, and Clint and Natasha filling in the last seats across. As soon as I was seated, I flipped over the empty cup in front of me– and snagged the carafe Tony had just been going for. Honestly, it was an accident that happened because I grabbed it before I even saw him, but when he narrowed his eyes at me, I tried for the sweetest smile I could while I filled a cup for me, and a cup for Steve.

“Oh, thanks sweetheart,” Steve said absently, slipping the cup in hand as he paid more attention to whatever Sam was saying.

“You’re welcome, Honey-buns,” Tony said in a ridiculous falsetto, and tried to swipe the coffee back.

I pulled it just out of reach and looked around at the empty cups not in front of Tony. “Pepper,” I said sweetly to the woman giving Tony a hairy eyeball. “You look a little low. Would you like a top-off?”

“Please,” Pepper said and moved her cup closer. Tony channeled his Most Annoying personality and tapped his fingers as loud as possible while occasionally giving a heavy sigh at his oh-so-interminable wait, but as I was the one annoying him, it was like music to my ears. Once Pepper’s cup was nice and full, I didn’t even get to pretend to offer any to Clint or Natasha before Tony found his chance and stole the pot from my hand.

“Tony!” Pepper scolded, but I used my newly free hand to pick up my coffee and sip it slowly while he waved around his prize and made stupid faces at me. Eventually he did go to pour– and he got about a tablespoon out of the nearly empty pot. How he couldn’t tell how light it was when he grabbed it, I didn’t know, but the way his face scrunched in displeasure made the entire early morning worth every single second.

“Mmmmmmm,” I said and added a noisy slurp as he glared at me. The waitress came around with a new pot of coffee and I momentarily wondered if I could get away with grabbing it before he noticed, but after she filled Clint’s cup and set it out, Tony snatched it, fast as a starving snake, and, still glaring at me, poured himself a full cup, with only a minor correction from Pepper tilting the spout into a better spot.

At a laugh from Thor, I looked at that end of the table to see Steve, still with his entirely full cup, just in his other hand, completely wrapped in conversation with Sam and Thor, with Jane piping up and Bruce just watching. Though Bruce did glance at Tony, then flashed me a wry smile and a wink.

I was saved from having to figure out how to respond by the very sudden appearance of food– something that also surprised Steve, from how he jerked slightly but sharply, and his hand immediately went to my leg under the table. The waitress and waiter didn’t seem to notice, didn’t even have time to, considering the frighteningly quick efficiency they used in setting the food down and getting the heck out of dodge. I wondered if Tony was paying them extra to give us as much privacy as possible. That was…oddly sweet.

It almost gave me hives, so I put that thought in the back of my head and moved on with looking at my plate. It was stacked full of food and looked and smelled amazing, and I lifted my head to see Natasha watching me as she poured extra syrup across her pile of pancakes already doused in in the stuff, with piles of decadent whipped cream. She gave me a knowing smile, but then pouted and said, “You didn’t offer me any coffee.”

I almost rolled my eyes– she wasn’t even using her mug and instead had a fancy-looking drink with ice and a straw and everything– but since I felt Very Annoying and no longer had anyone to turn it on, I made a heart motion with my hands right in front of my face.

I then immediately got a tiny straw-paper ball to the nose. I sputtered and jerked back. “You–!” But I immediately laughed and admitted, “That was really good.” I put the little paper trash ball into position, lined up my flicking finger, and took aim.

“Are you seriously going to attack Natasha back?” Clint asked in amazement.

“Yup!” I said, and fired. Natasha, knowing it wasn’t going to hit her, just stared at me flatly– until the little Paper Ball That Could landed right on the whipped cream of her pancakes, which was honestly even better than I was hoping for– I had been aiming for the syrup. Her eyes narrowed, and I decided to spend some of my last minutes on earth indulging in a fistpump. Steve continued to be oblivious, talking to Sam and Jane, and perhaps that was for the best.

“I’ve always wondered if you could kill somebody with a tiny paper ball,” Clint said as Natasha stole another two straw wrappings and started forming them together into a tightly packed projectile.

“Hm. I mean, if anybody could survive it…” I glanced at Steve. Still oblivious. I grinned. “Hey Nat,” I said and made the heart shape in front of Steve’s face– a good frame, but just far enough away that he wouldn’t notice. Natasha smirked, Clint leaned in eagerly as she took aim, and Tony choked on a sip of his coffee.

“–and I wa- uh, sweetheart, what are you–?”

Natasha fired.

I thought I heard it plink off his face, and he slammed himself back so hard he almost fell over, and Tony and Clint and Thor and Sam all burst out laughing. Thor was so loud I almost couldn’t hear Steve right next to me. “Fuck Nat did you have to get me right in the eye?!”

“Your offering was acceptable,” she said, smiling so hard the apples of her cheeks were almost fully pushed out.

I turned, and– after one quick glance around– gave Steve the quickest peck on the cheek ever. “Thanks for taking one for the team,” I said and smiled sweetly at his scowl.

“What team,” he muttered sullenly and rubbed his face like he was a four-year-old who had just endured enthusiastic greetings from Aunt Gretchen.

“The team of you and me! And also your team in general, who would have had to deal with you when Natasha sent me to an early grave,” I said. I made another little heart– and a paper ball pinged off Steve’s mug and went right into my shirt. “Fuck!” I said and scrambled to get it out without flashing the table.

“Gooooaaaaaaaaaaaal!” Clint proclaimed with his arms up and out. Things devolved into a bit of chaos after that, with several of us trying to get pieces of napkins into coffee cups, off foreheads, and into food. When Tony started trying to figure out a makeshift catapult, Pepper put her foot down, and we all got back to eating and pretending to be grown-ups.

A little over halfway through, I leaned against Steve and let my stomach settle. He was quiet, resting his chin in his hand, but he patted my thigh in acknowledgment. I knew Bucky wasn’t ever far from his mind– if he wasn’t far from mine, then I doubted Steve could get away from the elephant whose shadow still cast in his physical absence– but he seemed a little lighter, even if he also seemed a little more thoughtful. “You’ve got a good team,” I said softly, keeping it just between us.

His mouth lifted to one side, but he briefly leaned in to press his head to mine. “I really do,” he said, and slipped his hand into mine under the table, and kept hold for the rest of the meal.

~

<<Previous Chapter Next Chapter>>

[hot-on-my-watch]

Silly Notes on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness  by a Marvel Novice

Well the visuals are just bloody amazing aren't they.

Rachel McAdams also looking great in bright red lipstick.

People are acting like it's normal for space monsters to just randomly appear on the streets of New York - presumably in the MCU it is?

Ok the jumping off the balcony thing was VERY cool.

Does Wanda look like a young Maggie Gyllenhall?

Don't tell me that IS Maggie Gyllenhall with surgery?!?!

Of course. Elizabeth Olsen. I knew that. I established when watching Avengers Endgame. And also remembered that Elizabeth is neither Mary-Kate nor Ashley Olsen. Excellent pop-culture knowledge, self.

The Scarlet Witch reminds me of evil Willow Rosenberg. But perhaps Scarlet Witch was first and comic book nerd Whedon ripped it off a bit rather than the other way around. Bet he did.

I should really watch Wandavision.

Will I watch it before the rest of this film, even?

No, I don't think so.

I'll see if there's another Wanda film though in case I've missed anything since Endgame. 

* confusion when Wanda suggests bringing America "here" because I don't know where "here" is and have forgotten that America is the name of the girl.*

Oh she knew too much, that's why Strange looked confused as well.

Is the Scarlet Witch using her mask to have a cheekbone off with Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange? Because frankly that's not going to go well for her.

Maybe she was wearing that mask in Endgame too and I forgot? No. Or was she? Hmm.

Cumberbatch has got his usual comic book style hair as Strange here but his eyebrows don't entirely match I feel like so someone needed to do something with them.

Oh no on second thought they appeared to be the same colour as his hair and beard generally. But I wonder if something more could have done with gel or an eyebrow pencil though even though he would have looked a bit mental I suppose.

The beard is very sharp-lined in some scenes but seems less so in others.

That was a really harsh way to treat that food seller actually! All he was trying to do is not get robbed!

Stephen Strange was always a bit of a bitch though.

I really like the special effects, especially when they go through all the different universes. 

There's no real need for Doctor Strange to be wearing the superhero outfit at this point but he's committed to the bit. I approve.

I still don't know what the differences are between MCU New York and real New York apart from the obvious it does look nicer.

Maybe I should have watched all of this films in order.

Book of Ashanti? Hahahaha ASHANTI! What song even was that?

Ok book of Vishanti, that's better.

100% knew that was a trap. I have seen pieces of media before. Knew it.

Don't remember Mordo being this hot. Umm.

Cumberbatch's straight sideswept fringe seems to be on the opposite side to Sherlock's curly one, which is a mirror of my own.

I enjoy the alternative versions of the super heroes.

IS THAT PROFESSOR X?

Omg it IS! Long time no see old friend!

Oh god they're dropping like flies.

Of course he's not better than 383 Stephen. Come on! Why would he be?

My attention span REALLY cannot cope with action scenes right now. Sorry Marvel.

This would have been amazing to see at the cinema though.

Has he become injured DIRECTLY ON THE CHEEKBONE?!

Omg America has as well. To a lesser extent.

I mean I suppose that would happen, but still.

Is that a blue patch on the cloak or are we seeing his clothes through it. I want to be seeing his clothes through it for some reason.

Still spectacular visuals of course.

Have YOU not seen films before, Stephen Strange? Stop trusting people that are obviously going to turn against you!

I'm sorry I still can't get over the hand gestures.

Ok I enjoy the "third eye" concept but it looks kinda silly.

I'm still not sure I fully get the thing about being held back by your own fear AND arrogance. I may survey people on this.

He's not actually going to kill her is he?

Oh I see what's going to happen here.

"No one will ever be tempted by the darkhold again." OF COURSE NOT THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN.

Nice that the villain turned back in the end though. Like Dark Willow. She learned her lesson.

Could they be together though? Or is it another House and Cuddy situation?

Yay the watch is fixed! And by his own hand, not by magic! Did we learn something about this in the first film? Is it to do with what he's willing to do with magic and not? What he can still do with his hands?

Is he going to see Christine? Is he moving on now?

Nooo a third eye! No they look so weird! Even on Benedict Cumberbatch!

Who's this woman with the purple? It's a look! Oh ok apparently 3-eyed Dr Strange is basically fine. Ok.

So... does this nullify the previous cliffhanger? What now?

Excellent film though, did enjoy it.

[generalluxun]

I think I remember having seen Batman-miraculous posts a little while ago. Now Ironman Chloe. Umm… what have I missed? 😅 Is the fandom playing some crossover game?

Well comics are rife with crossovers in general. People love the characters in ML above all else. The plot... Not so much. Shoving them into new situations to explore comes naturally, and the new universe provides a ready made cast. I don't crossover myself (though I will AU) but I know both of these you are talking about.

Ironman AU is by @andanoire and honestly, it really works. Tony is a jerkass who finds morality in extremis and spend most of the rest of his MCU arc trying clean up after himself or wrestle with his demons.

She also has a straight up re-write like canon but mire coherent for Chloé&Zoé @officialprimadonna worth looking at

The other one is 'To Bee a Bat' by @princess-of-the-corner which us more about canon Chloé ending up getting adopted by the Batfam somewhere in the middle of canon. Batfam is a great crack trope, the ultimate found family. Corner's freeform worldbuilding is always fun to watch/partake in.

[nauti-ca]

tagged by @to-shards-you-say

people i want to get to know better <3

umm ill tag @smeegamae @sadibadimadi @jlukasph i already know u guys but if u wanna do a fun little thing here’s ur chance :-)

last song: spotify says its born for loving you by big thief, which is an all time favorite and also one of my go to karaoke songs. but if you wanna get technical my alarm song which woke me up 10 minutes ago is we are going to be friends covered by jack johnson

favorite color: my favorite colors are lilac, baby pink, and several shades of green

currently watching: im most consistently watching good mythical morning but on a realistic level id say my current show is bones .. she’s so real and so autistic

last movie: it was deadpool and wolverine. i pretty distinctly dislike the avengers and the mcu in general but i love xmen too much. and it was really funny and i liked it

sweet/spicy/savory: i have to have a perfect balance of sweet and savory (de-anglicizes ur question btw) and spicy comes as a third party. i like and need spicy in certain foods but i don’t seek it out bc im very weak to it

current obsessions: honestly besides working all ive been doing is playing overwatch 2 and reading oathbringer… and watch youtube and eat cottage cheese

last thing i googled: “soul patch beard” was doing a bit and needed a good picture

[vernard]

♧

HIII. HI ARCHIE (ask game)

You’re my: ANOTHER ONE OF MY BESTEST FRIENDS . also my beloved dear o[REDACTED]

How I met you: UMM.. we met thru having the same mutuals didnt we ... i remember one of the first times we talked was actually thru this ask game when i rbed it a few years ago

Why I follow you: because i liek studying you . And you my friend

Your blog is: Ourple ... have i ever told you how mcu h ilike your theme because i like it a lot

Your URL is: The oingo to my boingo... 🫶 or well. the oingo to @/boingo i suppose

Your icon is: GABUMON MY FRIEND GABUMON. did i tell u there was liike. a ~30 dollar figure of gabumon at the con i went to... if i didnt get that gabumon sticker i probably wouldve gotten that

A random fact I know about you: Youre lactose intolerant . Freak 🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛

General opinion: I LOVE YOU LOTS YOU MEAN A LOT TO ME 💋💋

A random thought I have: we need to watch more shitty zack ward movies together.... Also we need to finishwatching the bachelor

[dead-freight]

Top 3 movies? Favorite food? Last song you listened to?

YAAAY okay

favorite movies kind of shuffle and rotate but here are a few:

interstellar - i will mention this movie whenever given the chance but i don't think i really have anything intelligent to say about it. umm i love this movie forever and ever the flow of it is really interesting to me like. not only is it really long but the sound design makes it so that it feels like everything is constantly under pressure. which makes sense i mean they're trying to save their species and everything they do has to be calculated out to the minor details cause they're in space and they have limited resources y'know so it feels tense Constantly and i love when everything in the movie can reflect that. i also love the completely unscientific basis of it. that love is a connecting thread and tangible force in the universe even when you are at unfathomable distances. and i just love spaCE I LOVE SPACE. and the robots are so cool and weird.

the nice guys - please watch the nice guys. i'm so so sad this movie flopped i would commit atrocities to see march and healy fumbling their way through a case at least one more time.

sonic the hedgehog 3 - i can't believe every sonic movie has been genuinely better than the last. sonic 3 was so fun and felt really faithful to the characters which is so surprising because shadow has been famously misinterpreted over the years (even though i feel like his character is one of the most consistent in the series!!) and even though they changed some details in a pretty major way they kept the important things in tact and generally made the story their own. which i vastly prefer over them trying to do sonic adventure 2 and getting it wrong (although i think the game has a better/more interesting plot overall. despite it's obvious flaws. i am deeply biased though). i'm really nervous about the sonic cinematic universe falling into an mcu slopfest (evident by the knuckles show which was just Not good at all imo) but so far the movies have been really fun. and i'm looking forward to potential sonic cd interpretation in the next one. would be VERY curious to see elements from sa1 in future films but it seems like maybe the time for that has passed.

favorite food: sorry if this answer is a downer but it's kind of a struggle for me to think of things to make/eat when i'm hungry in the first place so i'm not sure i have one LOL. i kind of just eat because i have to most days. however. i fantasize about jersey mike's subs and five guys often.

currently listening to starlight by ELO (followed by pale machine by bo en as i am typing this)!

[vveakfish]

re: tags on lrb

thinking abt the journey and a half my DC hyperfixation has been.

I was a DCAU only girlie for so long. (BTAS, Batman Beyond, Teen Titans, YJtv, GLtv). I enjoyed the DCEU too, but i was WAY too wrapped up in MCU brain-rot to dive too deeply into those. But that was it. Zero interest in comics themselves as a lil squirt.

Eventually I stopped caring abt the DCEU entirely. (around WW’84, tho it had nothing to do with that movie, i just never saw it — and didnt see any of the movies that came after). And got WAY into Marvel™. And i kinda just rode that wave.

When Marvel started branching out into shows i was HYPED — esp since they started that shit off with WandVision. I’d always loved Wanda, and the fact that they brought Billy and Tommy in was all i needed to push me into reading comics

i tore through the young avengers (UGH i miss them <;/3), and other titles associated with them, and was having a blast. At some point around the season finale of Loki (good show, this was just also how the cookie crumbled) I just fell off Marvel in general. A lot of this probably had to do with school ramping up around this time — but i stopped reading comics & watching their shows and movies almost entirely.

Around this time tho, bc i Missed reading comics — i started reading webcomics. And as much as i enjoyed reading Marvel comics for that short period of time, webcomics were what made me fall in love with Comics™ as a medium.

6th semester ended, i was elbows deep in world building for my own webcomic project, and started watching anime while working on it. Again, anime was always one of those things i enjoyed (Digimon, Sailor Moon, and Pokémon were some of the most influential pieces of media in my entire childhood), but my love for it as an art form was really solidified during this time

[side note: can you Tell i was dealing with art school shit during all of this? couldn’t turn the critique brain off literally Ever, so anything i enjoyed got put under the art student lens]

But my interest in anime stayed entirely on the animated side of things for a Long Ass Time. It wasn’t until Jujutsu Kaisen that i got shoved headlong into manga. God that stupid fucking anime changed my life, ANYWAY.

I finished the anime (umm maybe like. 5 times), and then HAD to know what happened next. So i devoured the manga. Every spare moment i had was spent reading it, until i was Done. then i was like orz. what do u do now ??

The answer was do the exact same thing with Demon Slayer. which was ALSO a life changing experience. read 鬼滅の刃 pls pls pls

Now. When i finished KNY, i was also like *head in hands* how do i even keep on living?? But this was also while working on my thesis project, and still doing a lot of work on the side as far as my own comic was concerned. (like… 60k words worth of world building & drafting scripts + designing characters), so its not like i had all that much free time.

anyway — i finished up my 8th semester, and barely gave myself a chance to breathe before i threw myself into working on my comic practically full time.

I was working on a one shot to submit to a contest for Webtoon, and they were asking for a pretty substantial amount of content (60+ panel Action comic one shot. and I, as always, love to make things harder on myself, so i think in one of the later drafts it ended up having over 100 panels).

needless to say, i Did Not finish the oneshot in time (its still not done to this day T~T i’ll come back for you forge, dont worry). But, toward the end of that… 3 month span of feverishly working on this project, i found myself falling in love with DC all over again.

I mentioned YJtv before, but that show was Also something that changed my life as a 10 year old.

(its really funny to think about that show now & how it’s release date lines up with the beginning of the N52 continuity, and how both the show & that particular reboot are so strongly disliked by a vast majority of DC’s fanbase — but thats a post for another day)

I’ve rewatched the show at least once a year since my roommate let me start using their HBOMax login. I know seasons 1 and 2 like the back of my hand bc of how much i watched them growing up, and i like season three well enough. But the thing was that on this unsuspecting summer night, i was about to discover that there were New Episodes.

Dude i was hyped, i was losing my shit. I had resigned myself to the knowledge that this show was never coming back. I was okay with it too. But here it was, alive and kicking after what felt like forever.

Heres the thing tho. They killed off Kon.

okay not really, but at the Time boy boy was Dead, and i was devastated. Thats My Boy. He had been my favorite character from the jump, and i did not know how to process him being gone. So i took a break from the show, and turned to ao3 instead.

At this point i was Not an avid fic reader. I wasn’t an avid reader period – outside of manga – but i had read a few really good fics recommended to my by some of my JJK pals. So i looked at the Kon-El | Conner Kent character tag on ao3 and just scrolled until i found something interesting.

In this case: a Timkon fic (this one in particular).

I knew who Tim was before this (He shows up in YJtv. He's there in BTAS), but I had never thought about him and Kon as... anything really. In the versions of them i was familiar with, they don't interact all that much. They're from different generations of heroes, but i was like, hey, what the hell this sounds cute. And man oh man, it was all down hill from there.

I read more TimKon fic, and just fell in love with them. But i was also... confused. Like... why do these two guys have such a robust fanbase... wheres the link.

THAT is what pushed me to start reading Detective Comics Comics for the first time. I wanted to get to know these guys For Real, and the only way to do that was by digging into the source material.

This post is So long oh shit. I have thoughts about How I got to know the kiddos & how the comics i read (as well as the order i read them in) have influenced my understandings of these little guys. But i think thats a post for another day. I have other things to do than write out a post about my media consumption habits

o7 signing off.

[samasmith23]

Kamala Khan's death in Amazing Spider-Man (2022) #26 leaked NOT once... but TWICE in a row!!!

It looks like someone at Marvel RRREEEAAALLLYYY wants this whole publicity stunt of killing off Ms. Marvel (aka, Kamala Khan) to FAIL super hard considering that the pages for tomorrow’s Amazing Spider-Man (2022) #26 have been leaked not once, but twice now! And now we sadly know exactly just how Kamala dies…

Umm… last time I checked, Kamala has a healing factor. Sure it’s nowhere as powerful as Wolverine’s (and it does require Kamala to eat a lot in order to replenish her energy reserves), but unless that sword is powered by some kind of magic bullcrap which completely shuts off her healing factor, this makes zero sense! Kamala literally healed from a bullet wound to the stomach in her opening arc, and even survived having an entire building collapse right on top of her (just barely, but still)!

Also, it feels so random and arbitrary to have Kamala randomly use her shape-shifting powers to pose as a body-double Mary Jane, especially since she’s not utilized them a lot due her opening arc centering around Kamala becoming comfortable in her own skin after previously trying and failing to resemble her idol Carol Danvers (therefore overcoming her personal insecurities and internalized Islamophobia).

Plus, last time I checked Kamala's only since then shape-shifted into a couch, James Rhodes, and a scary cartoon face.

While it does feel somewhat in character for Kamala to risk her life to save someone she barely knows as part of her characterization as a superhero, the actual execution of it feels incredibly at odds with her past character development (whether it be struggling with her fears of death and mortality in Magnificent Ms. Marvel, or already receiving validation from her family, friends, and dozens of other superheroes, including Peter Parker, so why does she need it from him again when she dies?!).

Based on these leaked pages, I get the general impression that Zeb Wells originally fully intended to kill off Mary Jane here since all throughout his Spider-Man run he’s heavily hinted at it and foreshadowed it with that Paul guy (seriously... WHO THE HECK IS PAUL?!) and their two kids (who are apparently actual mystical constructs or something…), and that mystical supervillain wanting “the Scarlet Woman’s blood” (I know the phrase "Scarlet Woman" is specifically meant to refer to MJ’s red hair, but it is also unfortunately a derogatory slang term for a sex-worker). But maybe Marvel editorial told him to rewrite his planned death of Mary Jane at the last minute as a desperate effort to promote the upcoming The Marvels movie (which Wells shares a co-writing credit for the screenplay of), or Wells wanted to subvert reader expectations but did so in a distasteful manner?

I honestly don’t know... but if I had to guess I’d probably say it’s the former option since Marvel previously killed off Doctor Strange and the Scarlet Witch before resurrecting them a few months later to hype up their upcoming MCU films, plus the Spider-Man offices in particular are notorious for their editorial mandates and interfering with writer’s plans at the last minute (just look at how they recently forced Nick Spencer to settle on retconning Sins Past out of existence instead of One More Day like he was originally building-up towards). And do I think that Zeb Wells himself is an Islamophobic misogynist because of this? Probably not... especially considering I don’t know the guy’s personal politics (maybe he's a swell person IRL) and editorial mandates are likely at play here. I do think that killing off Kamala in such a random and distasteful manner is still a bad look and does give off those unfortunate implications. However, based on what I know I feel that this is more a case of judging the actions as bigoted (whether they were intentional or not) instead of labeling the person themselves as a bigot.

But regardless of whether or not the decision to fridge Kamala Khan is the fault of Zeb Wells, or Nick Lowe or someone else over at Marvel Editorial, I do want to make one thing perfectly clear... DO NOT... I repeat... DO NOT SEND ANY OF THEM DEATH THREATS! Like, I've already lost count of how many people I've encountered on both Twitter and Tumblr who are seriously outright calling for both Wells and Lowe's blood in response to these leaks.

And since the issue is being released tommorow, I feel the need to reiterate that harassing creators and sending them death threats is NEVER acceptable under any circumstances, and that doing so makes you no better than the kinds of supervillains that Kamala regularly fights against! We can criticize a bad story WITHOUT becoming supervillains ourselves! Follow the advice of @atopfourthwall here for heavens sake people:

Now this is hopefully going to be the last time I discuss Amazing Spider-Man (2022) #26 here on Tumblr as I have zero plans on giving any actual money to the issue myself. I may consider reading the Fallen Friend: The Death of Ms. Marvel one-shot, if only because it's being written by several of Kamala's past creators G. Willow Wilson, Saladin Ahmed, and Mark Waid, so I trust them to be able to salvage something decent out of this whole fiasco. But that's it. I do plan on releasing a future post which provides an in-depth analysis about the ways in which Ms. Marvel comics have discussed themes of death in a much more nuanced and respectful manner, but I have no idea when it will be released.

Until then folks... vote with your wallets. Please do not cave into the outrage machine and feed into the publicity stunt that this whole mess so obviously is. Don’t give tomorrow's issue of Amazing Spider-Man any more attention than it's already received. Instead go support all of Kamala's past adventures to show your love and appreciation for the character if you do not own the graphic novel collections already. And most importantly... for the love of all that is holy, DO NOT attack the creators involved with this terrible decision and especially DO NOT send them death threats!

[i-dont-know-how-this-site-works]

"WhO hAs tiMe to MakE an eNtirE goOgle dOc-" bish go tell that to the Tonky fans who 1. made an essay on why he represents Jesus Christ, and 2. the Tonky fan who made an essay on how Tonky is the most female coded character in the MCU and the Siberia fight scene was actually a metaphor for gang-r#pe. How about you go tell them to tone it down first? There are even more of these shitty Tonky essays out there about comparing things to r#pe and assault, but these two are generally the most known

Don't listen to Tonky fans, they like to tell you you're "obsessed" but here they are saying Tonky is more female than Natasha and Steve has r#ped him (by defending himself??)

Also let's not forget the multiple 100k fics on AO3 of Tony & Co. abusing Team Cap

Umm...do you have the link to the Jesus Christ essay? I need it for research and comedic purposes lol 

You know, to be completely honest, it’s not that I absolutely hate the character of T0ny Stork. Yeah, he is coarse and rough and irritating and he gets everywhere and I am not a fan of him like I used to be in my early teens. But! Not every character is supposed to be without flaws and T0ny has a buttload of those. 

I am anti T0ny however because it seems like the entire fandom and even the creators themselves are up in his ass all the time. It’s the stans that completely ruined the character for me because of the stuff you mentioned- AO3 is filled to the brim with “not team cap friendly” works where they twist the characters so much you can’t even recognize them- even T0ny! They make him more likable than he is in canon. They, as you said, code him as female or POC or autistic or LGBT+ for woke/pity points (making him to be anything than a white male rich hetero American is such bullshit, I can’t with the stans).

If they can spend so much time on kissing T0ny’s ass to fill entire 45 pages on ao3 with “not team Cap friendly” (the tag itself has 55 variations), then I can spend some time writing my essay. No one can stop me. aside from my urge to procrastinate, but shush

In fact, thank you for your message. You encouraged me to write the thing and I am going to start it today. Thanks <3

[psychologicalwhorefare]

okay the imagine dragons post. so the first point is that imagine dragons had some good songs! i stand by radioactive and demons as pretty solid pop rock that deserved to get big. more generally though... it’s pretty rough folks. they’ve gotten progressively worse, and their most recent hits are literally unlistenable. now to clarify, i literally do not care if you like imagine dragons. do what you please, i hope you find joy. but something about “umm some people like to listen to brainless noise” is. well it’s true. but it also kind of feels like something a mcu fan would say, y’know? just like. a little embarrassing imo

[musette22]

To offer another perspective on Peggy, and why they're pushing Captain Carter so hard: One of the things Endgame did was to make people not only back and watch The First Avenger and The Winter Solider and come away finding the romance wanting, but it also made us look at what Peggy would have done in her career role as a co founder of and ( according to the mcu wiki) First Director of an intelligence agency. (Something which fandom refused to do in 2014) Any intelligence agency during the 1/?

Cold War, Any Director would have that includes the Director of SHIELD at the time. Coupled with the fact that Zola tells us that SHIELD "recruited" him, people are starting go "umm wait Peggy was pretty dark actually, why didn't Steve call her out" and this discourse has only been increasing on twitter ( especially given Sharon's arc in TFaTWS,) it feel like they introduced this new version of Peggy ( who didn't hire/stand by as they hired Nazis) as a distraction. Problem is I don't think 2/?

They've thought about the optics of the Union Flag during that time period. I maybe overtly cynical, but given the way they seemingly backtracked on Sharon being the next big bad ( I think there was an article saying she would be a villain in the next Cap film and then they switched her out for Red Skulls daughter) and given the way the discourse around Peggy's during her career ( especially given the Isaiah Bradley storyline) I think this might be it 3/3

Okay so I'm afraid I'm not knowledgeable enough on canon and meta to really comment on the specifics here, and I haven't watched TFATWS so I don't really know what happened with Sharon, but this does sound very interesting, and plausible on paper, definitely. I just wonder if they really care about "fandom" opinions when developing their new content. Are those voices questioning Peggy's morality really loud/noticeable enough in the grand scheme of things to influence their programming? I kind of doubt it, to be honest.

As far as I'm aware, they've never really cared much about what fans were saying, apart from when said fans got so loud that even general audiences and mainstream media picked up on it, as was the case for Stucky. Overall, I feel like they have very little regard for their fans and fan theories/discourse, and they prefer to focus on general audiences which, in the end, is the group that is going to make them the most money. I don't know - what you're saying is definitely a possibility, but I can't help but think they're pushing Peggy because she's a nice, strong female character (Captain America's wife, no less! - barf) who general audiences are overall neutral towards or fond of, so they can use her to fulfill their obligation of including strong female, fleshed-out characters in their upcoming projects. I could be wrong, though! Your theory certainly has its merit.

[redwolfqueen19]

Day 18:

Umm again I’m pretty new on here so don’t have many ppl to tag but here we go.

Here’s some mentions of cool ppl who’s work or posts have made me happy in my short time on tumblr:

- @lena-luthor your series of supergirl season 6 gifs was the first thing I reblogged and it made me smile 😁 (can’t wait for it to come out in the uk I’m desperately trying to avoid spoilers 😅)

- @eimaginesworld wrote an awesome swanqueen one shot and ppl should definetly check them out

- @buckyshairography for blessing my page with funny af MCU memes that made me giggle

- @massivedrickhead for the amazing “home is a person” bechloe fanfic (please go read it it’s so good!) and is just a nice person too

- @commanderlexagriffin has a cool Spider-Man bechloe au fic that I can’t wait for the next chapter like I’m srsly hooked, and was so lovely to message 😁

- @pocketdragon “make some room” bechloe fanfic is great 😊

- @astraldemise for that cool sea slug video that made me smile and I alway watch when I’m having a bad day 😁 showed it to my family and they thought it was cool

- @blue-dragon-has-a-pen for kickass dragon designs like that shit is cool

- @writing-prompt-s for giving me countless prompt ideas that ill save and keep pretending to myself that ill actually get off my ass and write something for the prompts XD (also the prompts are super fun to read i always imagine scenes to them and then like never end up writing them)

And just generally all the other awesome ppl on this all that I just haven’t had the chance to discover yet 😊 yall are great

Happy pride ppl, Be Gay and all that lovely stuff and remember your loved ❤️

[iamanartichoke]

thor, guardians of the galaxy, avengers: age of ultron, avengers: endgame,

thor - do you ever write by hand? when and why?

Not generally, no. My brain moves faster than my hand can write, and also after an embarrassingly short time my hand will start to hurt, so it’s just a frustrating process all around. 

That said, I’ll write by hand if I have no other choice - like if I need to scrawl an idea down on a napkin or scrap paper or whatever. I will also occasionally write a scene out by hand if I am having trouble with it; something about handwriting it seems to give my brain a little jolt and then I can usually fix whatever it was I was having trouble with. 

guardians of the galaxy - be honest. would you want someone from marvel to read your fics?

My initial reaction was no but, actually, I suppose it would depend on who from Marvel it was. If it’s someone who wants to offer me a job? By all means, have at it. If it’s someone like Tom? Absolutely not. 

avengers: age of ultron - what do you do when you get negative feedback?

I honestly rarely - if ever - get negative feedback. I mean, occasionally I’ll get a “hmm I think I would have preferred if Loki did xyz” which doesn’t really bother me (I tend to think okay, cool, that’s you; thanks for the comment tho) but that’s about all I can remember. I did get a kinda rude “umm we’re waiting for an update” on StFB awhile ago, lmao, which is just - girl, same. 

If I were to ever get some seriously negative feedback - either a hate comment, or a bunch of concrit, or whatever - I want to say I wouldn’t let it get to me. I went to grad school for writing, which I only mention bc it means I’ve sat through more workshops consisting of my classmates tearing my shit apart than I can count. (I say “tearing apart” but it was always respectful constructive criticism, not hate or anything.) I learned years ago not to take concrit personally, and also to take it with a grain of salt - like, if I get some concrit that’s way off the mark or whatnot, I’m pretty good at ignoring it. 

That said, fanfic isn’t a writing workshop and I’m not submitting my work for concrit purposes, so any I got would be unsolicited and that would annoy me a lot. Depending on what the criticism was, it might sting; I’m more fragile now than I was in grad school (it’s just been a long time since I’ve been workshopped). If it were outright hate, then it would definitely hurt my feelings - less bc they didn’t like the fic and more bc they went out of their way to make me feel bad bc they didn’t like it. If that makes sense. 

avengers: endgame - here is your opportunity to rant about how AWFUL endgame’s ending was. (or, if you liked it, explain why!)

I mean ... 

#charlotte bitches about endgame 

My Endgame hate has its own tag, lmfao. Not just the ending, either; the entire movie was a giant fucking mess. I don’t even know how to summarize how bad it was - all I can think of is that gif where it’s like “amazing, every single thing you said was wrong” except it’s “every single thing you came up with was shit.” 

The time travel didn’t make sense. The directors and writers couldn’t even agree on how it worked. Steve’s ending was a travesty. The treatment of Thor’s depression/mental health was wrong on so many levels. How exactly did Steve get the infinity stones back to their original places (especially the Aether)? Nonsensical. I don’t know wtf was going on with Clint’s murder plot or why everyone was cool with it. Natasha. The end battle literally only happening bc an alternate universe Thanos showed up - like, it wasn’t even the original Thanos who did the Snap in the first place! Etc, etc. 

 ... Yeah. That movie sucked, lmao. 

Thank you for the ask! 

mcu fanfiction ask game.

[god-of-identity]

sweetie, do you know any good movies or series to watch? i need to be distracted, and you seem like a fitting one to ask

hmmm, well if you like star wars i’ve been watching clone wars recently and really like it! there’s also wandavision that just finished the first season if you like mcu stuff. uhhhh. tangled the series (set after the disney movie tangled) is good for a more lighthearted show with some sinister undertones but mostly just fluffy fun. if you have disney+ (or can pirate it) all these are on there. umm my sister’s watching boruto (naruto next generation) rn. lemme know if you need more suggestions, i’m sure there’s something in the ol’ brain archives!