#anyways back to my two-way analysis of variance

[aestherians]

Taking a break from my studies to scroll through a couple otherkin blogs and seeing all the radqueer discussions

[gwydionae]

So I have been trying to read the paper on the destruction of Asgard for days now, and I was hoping to get some input/theories on it. I first wanted to read it because I was curious if Loki actually knew the Hulk was involved in Ragnarok in some way after using him in his salad example (or if he just simply was thinking about getting back at Hulk for what happened in Avengers lol). But the whole thing ended up being more interesting than I thought it would be, and I wanted to share my thoughts and hear from anyone else who would like to share their own.

After much zooming and squinting, here is what it says (anything in [brackets] is my best guess based on font, word length, and sentence structure):

EVENT INQUIRY DESTRUCTION OF ASGARD EVENT DETAILS

Event Analysis: Ragnarok (Class Seven Apocalypse): Total planetary body deletion of (1) Asgard (file: IPB-ASG-001)

Casualties: 9,719 (Entire Civilization Annihilation) (file: IPB-ASG-010)

Time Status: Displaced by 000:000:002:162

Cause of Displacement: Codename: Revengers (IPB-SAK-324) (see case file: IPB-ASG-012) see case files: IPB-ASG-004, IPB-ASG-005, IPB-ASG-157, IPB-ASG-892

Event Summary: Full event analysis may be requested. Please see IPB-[TVA-452?]. IPB-ASG-001 fell 000:000:002:162 off [schedule in?] an attack by IPB-ASG-012. IPB-ASG-012 was one of four (4) [possibilities?] for the event [IPB-ASG-893?]. These alternatives can be found on Page 7 of the IPB-ASG-895. Cause of displacement of the event was due to IPB-SAK-324 (see: Revengers), but with the completion of the event, the time variance displacement has been [deemed?] inconsequential by IPB-TVA-001. IPB-ASG-012 of IPB-NIL-001's destruction of IPB-ASG-001 has been deemed in totality. IPB-ASG-895 will be the final file of the IPB-ASG sequence. All other files regarding the further events of the people of IPB-ASG-001 can be found in IPB-ARK-001 and onwards.

RELATIVE CASE FILES Planetary Body: IPB-ASG-001, IPB-NIL-001 Event Causes: IPB-ASG-004, IPB-ASG-005, IPB-ASG-010 Displacement Causes: IPB-ASG-004, IPB-ASG-005, IPB-ASG-157, IPB-ASG-892, IPB-SAK-324

(Further case files can be found in IPB-ASG-895)

(This gets very long... I’m sorry. XD)

First thing I want to touch on is all the dang CODES in this freaking thing, lol. Here is a (possible) full list of all of them:

IPB-ARK-001 IPB-ASG-001 IPB-ASG-004 IPB-ASG-005 IPB-ASG-010 IPB-ASG-012 IPB-ASG-157 IPB-ASG-892 [IPB-ASG-893?] IPB-ASG-895 IPB-NIL-001 IPB-SAK-324 IPB-TVA-001 [IPB-TVA-452?]

There are two we know for certain what they stand for:

IPB-ASG-001 = Asgard IPB-SAK-324 = Revengers

These are explicitly stated in the document. Knowing this, ASG seems to stand for “Asgard” and SAK would be “Sakaar”, which is where the Revengers were first formed. The other code letters used are ARK, NIL, and TVA. The last one is pretty obvious, and one could guess from context that ARK is likely referring to the Statesmen ship the Asgardians escaped on as it would be likened to an ark taking them to a new home and the fact that the letters have nothing to do with Tønsberg, Norway or New Asgard:

All other files regarding the further events of the people of IPB-ASG-001 can be found in IPB-ARK-001 and onwards.

Another possibility is it standing for “after Ragnarok”, but as ASG was referring to a physical place and not a time, it seems unlikely.

That would leave NIL. Let’s look at the context:

IPB-ASG-012 of IPB-NIL-001's destruction of IPB-ASG-001 has been deemed in totality.

IPB-NIL-001 seems to be another planet, one that IPB-ASG-012 is coming from. But this struck me as strange. The above sentence is talking about who is responsible for destroying Asgard, but the being in question has an ASG designation. Surtur is from Muspelheim, which not only doesn’t match the ASG code but doesn’t match NIL either. You could argue that Loki - who summoned Surtur - would fit ASG, but NIL doesn’t work for Jotunheim either.

Hela - who had long been banished to Niflheim - would, however, be a match on both counts. And to further bolster this theory, look at this line:

Cause of Displacement: Codename: Revengers (IPB-SAK-324) (see case file: IPB-ASG-012) 

The Revengers formed because Thor and Valkyrie wanted revenge against Hela, so it would make sense that to get further backstory on the Revengers, you should go look up Hela’s case file. So by this logic, this document is listing Hela as the one who destroyed Asgard, not Surtur or Loki.

I find this very interesting. I was under the assumption that Thor, Loki, etc got all of the remaining survivors out, but the death total of 9,719 made me wonder if that wasn’t the case. However if these are deaths caused by Hela, it could be that she killed over 9,000 people before Loki summoned Surtur to destroy the planet, so my initial assumption could still be true.

As for other unknown codes, IPB-ASG-010 could be referring to either the population of Asgard as a whole or the prophecy of Ragnarok based on these lines:

Casualties: 9,719 (Entire Civilization Annihilation) (file: IPB-ASG-010)

Event Causes: IPB-ASG-004, IPB-ASG-005, IPB-ASG-010

The first use seems to lean towards the population but the second leans more towards the prophecy.

IPB-ASG-895 seems to point to Ragnarok in general as it’s own file as it is the last of the Asgardian files:

IPB-ASG-895 will be the final file of the IPB-ASG sequence.

And on top of that, the file we can read - pertaining specifically to the Hela side of the destruction - says to look through IPB-ASG-895 for further details:

(Further case files can be found in IPB-ASG-895)

And IPB-TVA-001 is pretty obviously either the Timekeepers or the TVA in general. So knowing/guessing all we do of the codes, let’s insert them into the file:

EVENT INQUIRY DESTRUCTION OF ASGARD EVENT DETAILS

Event Analysis: Ragnarok (Class Seven Apocalypse): Total planetary body deletion of (1) Asgard (file: Asgard, planet)

Casualties: 9,719 (Entire Civilization Annihilation) (file: Asgard, prophecy)

Time Status: Displaced by 000:000:002:162

Cause of Displacement: Codename: Revengers (see case file: Hela) see case files: IPB-ASG-004, IPB-ASG-005, IPB-ASG-157, IPB-ASG-892

Event Summary: Full event analysis may be requested. Please see IPB-[TVA-452?]. Asgard fell 000:000:002:162 off [schedule in?] an attack by Hela. Hela was one of four (4) [possibilities?] for the event [IPB-ASG-893?]. These alternatives can be found on Page 7 of the Ragnarok file. Cause of displacement of the event was due to the Revengers, but with the completion of the event, the time variance displacement has been [deemed?] inconsequential by the TVA. Hela of Niflheim's destruction of Asgard has been deemed in totality. Ragnarok will be the final file of the Asgard sequence. All other files regarding the further events of the people of Asgard can be found in the Statesmen files and onwards.

RELATIVE CASE FILES Planetary Body: Asgard, Niflheim  Event Causes: IPB-ASG-004, IPB-ASG-005, Asgard, prophecy Displacement Causes: IPB-ASG-004, IPB-ASG-005, IPB-ASG-157, IPB-ASG-892, the Revengers

(Further case files can be found in the Ragnarok file)

---------------

There are still a few file codes we don’t know. I had initially wondered if these codes:

Cause of Displacement: Codename: Revengers (see case file: Hela) see case files: IPB-ASG-004, IPB-ASG-005, IPB-ASG-157, IPB-ASG-892

were meant to be for the members of the Revengers themselves (Thor, Valkyrie, Hulk, and Loki?), but Hulk isn’t Asgardian and therefore shouldn’t have an ASG designation, and Hela is #012, but she was born before Thor and Loki (who might actually have a Jotunheim code rather than an Asgardian code, come to think of it), so it’d be weird if they had lower numbers then she did. I suppose the #004 and #005 could be Odin and Frigga, but other than being Hela’s parents, I don’t see why their files would be listed under the cause of the event and displacement.

Which leads me to what the file is actually saying, which personally I find fascinating! But first off we have to address the elephant in the room:

The “Zero Variance Energy Detected” that is so prominent in close ups is not actually in the document. Obviously this was simply an oversight, and they didn’t want to redo the entire page, so for ease’s sake, we’ll just pretend it’s in there.

So, based on that, it’s easy to see how Loki came to his conclusions about the variant being able to hide in apocalypses as this file directly states that there WAS some amount of time displacement caused by the Revengers during Hela’s attack but that no energy variance was detected. But even more interesting is this line:

Hela was one of four (4) [possibilities?] for the event [IPB-ASG-893?]. These alternatives can be found on Page 7 of the Ragnarok file. Cause of displacement of the event was due to the Revengers, but with the completion of the event, the time variance displacement has been [deemed?] inconsequential by the TVA.

Hela was only one out of four different possibilities to destroy Asgard, so when Mobius says that “it’s more complicated than that” in response to Loki saying that a nexus event is caused by “someone doing something they’re not supposed to do”, he wasn’t kidding! I wonder what the four different possibilities were. Was Surtur considered one? Who else could possibly be in that position to not only cause the destruction of the planet but also have killed all those people? Just how much wiggle room is there in this Sacred Timeline?

And this wasn’t even the 100% “correct” version of events! Remember, the Revengers did something that either brought the event on quicker or caused it to happen later than the Timekeepers planned through their Sacred Timeline. Thor did say that Loki was ���late” in showing up, so maybe this is a nod to that line from the film.

Anyway, it is getting quite late, and I have written a lot. I’m not entirely sure it all makes sense anymore, but I have been thinking about this a lot and wanted to put it out there in case anyone else had any differing ideas that made more sense, lol. If you made it this far, have a virtual high five! XD

(I’m just really loving this show so far, ok? lol)

[9worldstales]

MCU Loki Ep 1 “Glorious Purpose” intensive analysis

So, I’ve seen the first “Loki” episode and, of course, I couldn’t stop myself from talking about it.

Beware about spoilers!

We start in New York 2012 and that part is merely “Avengers: Endgame” albeit they changed a bit the visual so there’s more focus on Loki. We’ve close up of Loki when he is ‘Captain America’, when he says by to the Hulk in the lift and so on.

It’s a good choice because he’s basically the only character the visual seems to focus on (the only other character who gets a close up is the Hulk yelling ‘No stairs!’), subtly telling us the story is about him.

On a sidenote though, in “Avengers: Endgame” you might see Loki walked vaguely near 2022 Tony Stark and we also have Scott Lang asking Tony if he wears Axe body spray, which he confirms. In “Loki” we don’t see these scenes but keep them in mind, they’ll be relevant later on.

Anyway as everyone knows Loki picks up the Tesseract and disappear.

We get the Marvel opening but without the usual ‘heroic’ music, this time it’s more ominous? Or maybe it’s just me. “Marvel studios” also gets written in green and gold on a black background.

It’s not the first time Marvel changed how it presented, in the first episode of “WandaVision” for example it was in black and white instead than in the usual red and silver but it’s still a nice touch.

So we resume… with the visual showing us an insect walking through the desert. Then the camera shows us the full view of the desert, informing us it’s the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.

Rather high in the sky a space portal opens for a moment and the next we know is that Loki is lying flat on his back on the ground among clouds of sand which, I guess, were raised due to him falling into the desert. Loki is without the chains holding his wrists (did the power of the Tesseract destroy them? The fall?) and easily pulls away the muzzle Thor put on him and from his confused expression as he sits up and see people coming close to him, I get the feeling he didn’t exactly plan to fall there and in such a way.

So I guess maybe this is his first attempt at using the Tesseract and he didn’t quite gave it a direction on WHERE he wanted it to take him? Because really falling from the sky flat on the ground in the middle of the Gobi desert among people who didn’t even talk his language doesn’t seem the sort of thing one would plan.

Anyway, despite being in an unfamiliar situation Loki finds a rock to stand over and introduces himself:

“I am Loki of Asgard. And I am burdened with glorious purpose.”

Which yes, it’s how he introduced himself to Fury in “The Avengers”.

The people there have no idea of what he’s saying and asks him who he is in their own language (Mongolian). It’s unclear if Loki gets what they’re saying.

In the comics all Asgardians, can speak every language thanks to the ‘Allspeak’ or ‘All-Tongue’, in which what they say is understood by every species in their own native language.

In “Thor” earlier script though there was this dialogue:

Darcy: So, how can you speak our language? Volstagg: Your language? Ha! Silly girl, you're speaking ours.

In an interview Ray Stevenson (Volstagg) and Joshua Dallas (Fandral) discussed that bit.

Part of this seems to be set in a world where you guys fit in perfectly and the rest is very much on Earth. Ray: Yes, but on Earth we started it all, you see. This is just one of the realms. This is where all the legends come from. All the ruins have gone into myths and Norse mythology. It’s all us, love. It was all us before that. They’ve forgot their place, really. They think, “Oh, you speak our language?” and it’s actually, “No, you’re speaking ours.” Joshua: We invented it. [Ray Stevenson (Volstagg) and Joshua Dallas (Fandral) On Set Interview THOR]

The implication seemed to be that there was no Allspeak, they just spoke the same language because Asgardians invented it and Midgardians learnt it.

We also have this bit from “Avengers: Infinity War”:

Rocket: You speak Groot? Thor: Yes, they taught it on Asgard. It was an elective.

This implies it’s not that Thor was magically granted the ability to understand Groot, he had to study his language.

So well, I would say that no, so far Asgardians didn’t have Allspeak in the MCU, hence, unless Loki studied Mongolian or his magic powers granted him Allspeak, he can’t get what whose people are saying to him. So really, I don’t think he wanted to end up in Mongolia, he should have thought he wanted the Tesseract to just bring him somewhere very far from New York City. That is unless it’ll turn out someone managed to interfere and have him fall there for some purpose.

But, back to Loki.

As I said he doesn’t really get to talk with those people because a door opens up out of nowhere and near to the Tesseract which is lying forgotten in the sand and people in an armoured suit and carrying weapons start to appear.

Loki is kind of confused but he recovers fast.

Putting up a tone of confidence he orders the guy not to touch the Tesseract, thinking they aim at getting it. Another door opens up out of nowhere and we get another person in armour. To save time I’ll say the woman is supposed to be Hunter B-15. I wonder if she’ll get a name beyond this or not.

The situation of the people at the TVA isn’t exactly great but I’m running ahead.

Now, I think Loki preferred to deal with the Mongolian people because although he can understand what Hunter B-15 says, it clearly makes no sense for him.

Honestly I’m not going to blame him.

“Appears to be a standard sequence violation. Branch is growing at a stable rate and slope. Variant identified.”

This isn’t the kind of sentence that makes sense in a conversation, if you aren’t familiar with the TVA.

Hunter B-15 doesn’t care what she says doesn’t make sense to him and wouldn’t make sense to any other normal person. She calls him ‘Variant’ and talks as if everyone should know and respect the Time Variance Authority as an authority to defer and obey to.

I love Loki’s reply here:

“It's been a very long day, and I think I've had my fill of idiots in armored suits telling me what to do, so, if you don't mind, this is actually your last chance. Now get out of my way.”

He had a very bad day, he’s probably still bruised and sore due to his ‘meeting’ with the Hulk and his fall from the sky, he might very well be exhausted and he’s clearly confused but he acts as if he’s in control and won’t let himself be intimidated. I love him.

As he moves close Hunter B-15 hits him and informs him although he’s moving at 1/16th speed he’s feeling all the pain in real time.

Now… from when “Loki” trailers had started going around there had been a debate if the TVA is the good guys or the bad guys.

I’ll jump a bit ahead and tell you they clearly believe they’re the good guys.

But just from this bit you can start to question the idea they’re good guys.

They aren’t just acting as Vigilantes but they’re claiming an authority that no one on planet Earth gave them and demanding submission, not hesitating to beat people when they do not complain.

I know, some of you are thinking that Loki is a bad guy so serves him right but that’s not really the point because they aren’t even beating him for what he did to New York but for a crime he didn’t know he was committing, acting with an authority no one on Earth gave them. They just took it. And they would have taken it if the one picking up the Tesseract and ending up in Mongolia were to be a random person that out of bad luck had picked up the Tesseract and had ended activating it by accident.

This is not about Loki, this is how the TVA operates and it’s scary.

I don’t know if “Loki” will want to dig into police brutality and I honestly don’t dare to hope in it but it would be an interesting turn.

Hunter B-15 seems to be enjoying her work. I won’t call her evil yet, it’s clear she thinks she has the authority to do so, that the TVA enabled her to think she’s doing a good thing but she doesn’t seem to have… hesitation in doing so. One can still do his duty and not enjoy beating up people and causing them pain, yet the dialogue gives me the impression she’s very cool with beating up resisting Variants who has no idea they’re Variant and causing them pain.

Maybe it’s just me, maybe she’ll prove she’s actually a gentle soul but, for now, she doesn’t look as such. We’ll see.

Anyway she straps a collar around Loki’s neck and then, finally, she let him fall at normal speed before two of the men with her grabs him and carry him away while she picks up the Tesseract and orders to ‘reset the timeline’, which, at first I thought would mean they use that sort of mechanism to send back the time, erasing Loki’s appearance from the timeline. I’m not sure now. It might as well erase everything there. Loki turns to see what this mechanism does and from the look on his face it doesn’t seem anything good.

I hope not but well, in a way, sending everything back of some minutes erases lives that could have possibly be lived differently so yeah, in a way they erased lives. It’s the dilemma of changing time after all.

Whatever, Loki is dragged through the door that opens out of nowhere and appears at the TVA. The door disappears behind him and he has no idea where he is.

Now I guess it’s a good point to point out how people had been wondering which kind of Loki this one was, if he was based on the Loki on “Thor”, the one in “The Avengers”, the one in “Thor: The Dark World” or the one in “Thor: Ragnarok”.

In itself he can’t really be based on neither of them.

Loki’s characterization in “Thor” is split in two, there’s Loki prior to discovering the truth, and there’s Loki after discovering the truth, mad in shock and grief until he realizes his father would never accept him and let go of Gungnir.

This Loki can’t obviously be the Loki pre-truth but he can’t even be the one post it, as in that one the pain was still too new and raw and mixed with the desperation of denial and the attempt at ‘fixing things’.

So, can he be “The Avengers” Loki?

Marvel’s site confirmed that during “The Avengers” unknown to Loki, he was influenced by the sceptre as well. Very likely he wasn’t influenced in Clint Barton or Erik Selvig style, as the site says:

“Gifted with a Scepter that acted as a mind control device, Loki would be able to influence others. Unbeknownst to him, the Scepter was also influencing him, fuelling his hatred over his brother Thor and the inhabitants of Earth.”

Basically the sceptre on Loki works in a manner similar to how it worked on the Avengers when they started arguing in the Helicarrier. It warped his perception to the point he might have seen them as his most hated enemies, making difficult for him to see Thor was extending his hand to him or that the people were actually just scared but it didn’t make him a mindless, loyal servant. A different type of control on him but one that’s no less dangerous. Anyway I’ve talked at length about it while replying to a post so I’ll just link it here.

Loki is now very far from the sceptre so the mind stone shouldn’t be able to influence him any longer. As a result he’s probably more in control of his emotions.

So… “Thor: The Dark World” Loki?

Close enough but not quite, as that Loki had to go through Odin telling him some pretty awful things and spending a year forgotten by Odin and Thor in a jail.

Even more clearly he can’t be “Thor: Ragnarok” Loki as that one lived a huge chunk of things he hadn’t lived yet… never mentioning Waititi wanted “Thor: Ragnarok” to be his own thing, not a continuation of “The Avengers” and “Thor: The Dark World”…

“I was lucky enough they didn’t force me to acknowledge things- there were certain things in the film, like the play, which makes fun of the scene in The Dark World where Loki dies, but there’s a point to that play, sort of to recap what happened, but also to tell the audience, “This is not what you think it’s going to be, this film is not going to be a continuation of that. It’s its own thing, and what you think you expect from this film ends at this play.”” [Empire Podcast Spoiler Special: Thor: Ragnarok with Taika Waititi]

… while Loki is an alternate continuation of “The Avengers” so it has to be more “The Avengers” compliant than “Thor: Ragnarok”.

In short this Loki is his own Loki… or a Loki we hadn’t seen yet because we weren’t really shown much of Loki post sceptre influence, pre one year of solitary confinement.

Back to the story two things are interesting to point out.

One is that there’s a Variant Skrull as well in the TVA.

The other is that once there the Tesseract lost part of its shiny light as if it powered down.

Last but not least, instead than a futuristic look the TVA has the look of midcentury modern aesthetic as if, instead than going in the future ore remaining in the present, we’ve gone back in time.

Anyway, as another prisoner is dragged into the room, Loki tries to escape and discovers that Hunter B-15 can rewind his time so he’s back where he started. She then gives the Tesseract to a man at a desk, telling him to log it as evidence.

The guy, I’ll spoiler you and tell you his name is Casey, has no idea what it is and it’s Loki who has to explain him it’s the Tesseract and one should be very careful with it. Casey merely find it sounding dumb.

This is our first clue that to the TVA the Tesseract doesn’t matter at all. We’ve finished Phase 3 with the infinity stones raised at the level of immensely powerful artifact but, for the TVA, they’re nothing.

This is the first blow that the “Loki” series gives to the MCU as we previously knew it.

On a sidenote it’s nice Loki explained what it was to the unsuspecting desk man. If this weren’t the TVA he might have ended in the Gobi desert as well just by handling it carelessly.

Hunter B-15 drags Loki to a door and Loki tries to threaten her only to be showed inside that door.

Have you noticed how no one read Loki his own rights so far? That’s because he has none and the story is about to make it even more clear.

In the room there’s a robot of some sort (which I find slightly creepy despite its smile) which would like for Loki to undress. At Loki’s refusal accompanied with a comment that “This is fine Asgardian leather” the robot, without any warning, merely disintegrates his clothes.

Some assumed it was played for laugh but the music doesn’t suggest it, and Loki is clearly upset as he stutters when he speaks again. In real life, when you’re arrested, in many states your belonging are confiscated but they will be returned to you once you’re released or they’re returned to your family.

The TVA destroys them.

A trap door opens below Loki and he finds himself in another room, dressed up in TVA uniforms for Variants.

There’s something I think I need to mention which is I love how the show is characterizing TVA desk people.

The guy we’ve met before had his own character which we could guess despite the few lines and moments in which he appeared.

This new guy is also characterized.

He has a kitten in the room, which moves away slightly as Loki appears, probably scared and a mug with the image of a kitten. It’s tiny details but they made him a person instead of merely something that’s there.

He pushes in front of Loki a huge stack of papers telling him to sign to verify this is everything Loki said. Loki’s two following comments get printed and he’s demanded to sign them as well.

It’s another aspect of the TVA that’s actually unpleasant.

The amount of paper is huge and it would take a lot to read it all in order to check it but… the truth is the request is impossible. People isn’t made so that they can remember everything they’ve said, exactly as they’ve said it and it gets even more troublesome if there isn’t the other half of the conversation but just what we said.

So it’s not even a point to discuss if Loki really said just that stack of paper and nothing more or that stack of paper is too small, or if maybe there’s more paper he’ll have to sign or if that stack of paper only cover his time as a Variant and not the time in which he followed the Sacred Timeline.

The request doesn’t just make the TVA look like a bureaucratic place but shows it demands impossible tasks from its victims.

Oh, another interesting thing I noticed is that the camera is at a slightly lower point when it is on the TVA guy, so, despite the guy being seated, it gives him the impression of being higher than us viewers. On the over side when the camera is on Loki, it’s far from him, with the result of making him look small.

It’s a fine detail that gives us a certain subconscious impression.

The TVA guy stares at Loki as the latter gives up and start signing. It seems he only signed one paper, without even trying to read them all. I wish they had let us see how Loki signs. I wonder if he writes his name with runes, since the inscription on Thor’s hammer was in rune.

We’ll see, we’ll find out Loki knows how to write in English so he might use it to sign.

Anyway as soon as he finishes signing another trapdoor opens below him and he finds himself in another room.

So far the TVA is reminding me more and more of “The House that sends you mad” from “The Twelve Tasks of Asterix”. Well, of a very dark Variant of it to be exact, a Variant that reminds me of something way more unpleasant, but we’ll get there. In the next room Loki is asked:

“Please confirm to your knowledge that you are not a fully robotic being, were born an organic creature, and do in fact possess what many cultures would call a soul.”

Loki just asks if there are many people who don’t know if they’re robot and this is taken as a confirmation at which he’s urged to move through it. At Loki’s question he’s told if he actually were a robot and didn’t know it, the machine would melt him from the inside out.

Before thinking the situation is absurd let’s remember Vision exists in the Marvel universe and he’s a robot and he could have been programmed so that he wasn’t aware of this or might lose awareness of it due to a malfunctioning.

So if a Vision variant unaware to be a robot where to show up at the TVA they would just melt him from the inside out, no big deal.

The machine turns out to be a photographic machine, which doesn’t take Loki’s mug shoot but photograph his temporal area, which Loki has no idea what is and no one bothers to explain him.

Again, through the whole procedure there’s no request of consent nor explanations, Loki has no rights for the TVA, he’s merely supposed to comply.

Loki ends up in another room with another ‘convict’. They’re both demanded to take a ticket. The first convict refuses, Loki complain there’s just two of them so it’s useless but complies and put it in his pocket. Loki clearly has better manners or has figured out there’s no point discussing and is bidding his time to when arguing or rebelling might be worth something.

As Loki complains...

“This is a mistake. I shouldn't even be here.”

...we’re introduced with Miss Minute. Miss Minute is a cartoon watch which is supposed to FINALLY help people catch up before they stand to trial for their crimes. We’ll find out that Miss Minute is there not for the convicts’ benefit but for us viewers’ benefit as it explains us the origins of the TVA.

If we want to stretch things it might be there also for the TVA benefit as it might give them a sense of legitimacy.

Anyway Miss Minute’s speech feels like Odin’s speech at the beginning of “Thor”.

Is a self glorifying narration in which they paint themselves as the heroes and something that exist for other people’s benefit.

But it only paints the TVA in an even darker light because when it explains how one becomes a Variant it says:

“But sometimes, people like you veer off the path the Time-Keepers created. We call those Variants. Maybe you started an uprising, or were just late for work. Whatever it was, stepping off your path created a nexus event, which, left unchecked, could branch off into madness, leading to another multiversal war. But, don't worry, to make sure that doesn't happen, the Time-Keepers created the TVA and all its incredible workers. The TVA has stepped in to fix your mistake and set time back on its predetermined path. Now that your actions have left you without a place on the timeline, you must stand trial for your offenses.”

A break here.

From this little bit we’re introduced to the idea there’s only 1 timeline because each time another timeline could be born, the TVA erases it. This begs the question of how we’re supposed to judge this bit in “Avengers: Infinity War”

Stephen Strange: [Panting] I went forward in time to view alternate futures. To see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict. Peter Quill: How many did you see? Stephen Strange:14,000,605. Tony Stark: How many did we win? [Dr.Strange stares intently at Tony for a moment.] Stephen Strange: [Pause] One.

If there’s only 1 timeline, it seems impossible there could be 14,000,605 futures… but actually the key might be that there could be 14,000,605 futures… but the TVA erases them. The time stone might show those futures who had the possibility to be born… and that the TVA squashes under their feet, all for the sake to make canon their favourite future, while all the others have to cease and desist. If this is true I do wonder if the actions of the TVA can be undone, so that we can have “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”.

Back to “Loki” and to what Miss Minute said, which is pretty worrisome and not at all uplifting.

I mean… we can speculate who starts an uprising might be someone bad (which is not necessarily the truth, what about the people involved in the French Revolution or the American Revolutionary War or the Resistance in WW2?) but a poor guy who’s just late for work?

They don’t really see the difference between him and a guy starting an uprising because for them the matter isn’t what they were trying to do or which kind of people they were, just that they created another timeline, a crime they clearly weren’t aware to commit as no one warned them about how this was forbidden by this self imposed authority.

Loki clearly finds all this idiotic but then he hears the previous guy arguing with some sort of guard who demands his ticket. Now the previous guy is clearly a dumb liar, as insists he asked for the ticket but wasn’t given one, when he was loud enough and alone enough everyone in the room could notice he was the one refusing to take a ticket.

Anyway at this point the guard vaporizes him. In short they just murdered him, without trial or anything for the terrible crime of ‘not taking a ticket’.

Loki is appropriately shocked and hurries to get his ticket.

Something that’s also worth mentioning is the whole TVA is clearly structured to make people feel powerless.

There’s no explanation, they’re forcefully dragged in an unknown place by people claiming authority from an unknown structure, they’re forced to comply, they’re stripped naked against their will, dressed all the same, handled like objects who’re not called by their name but ‘Variant’ with even assigned a number, threatened to be melted if they don’t know they’re robot (and what if they know? They don’t take their picture or they just melt them?) and subjected to an explanation in form of a cartoon that feels absurd and that merely has the point of legitimizing the TVA as heroes and them as criminals.

Anyway Loki finds his ticket and shows it in a scene that reminds me of “Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade”. Do you remember when Indy and his father board a Zeppelin to leave Germany and Indy tosses a Nazi out of the window and explains his actions by saying the guy was without ticket so everyone shows his ticket at him?

Anyway at this point we’re shown the title, “Loki" with a filter that makes it look like an old movie and the letters changing font.

Okay, I’m a bit late but I should probably mention that, form when Loki go to the TVA the colouring had a huge abundance of yellow and brown with basically no blue (except a little in the Miss Minute cartoon) which gives an idea of this being like an old movie. The music is kind of creepy and there’s a clock tickling as we see it.

Which is an interesting idea. Even though the TVA seems so modern, furniture and the structure of the place felt all but modern. Even the robot that stripped Loki felt as if it just came out from a very old and outdated idea of how a futuristic robot would look like.

We resume the story but this time we’re at Aix-En-Provence, in France in 1549.

We’re in a beautiful gothic church and one of the TVA agents, explains that the corpses on the ground belongs to some Minutemen (the name for the TVA agents who do field work apparently) who responded to a routine Nexus event. As soon as they arrived someone jumped on them.

Mobius is there as well, and he’s apparently playing the part of the detective as he’s studying the corpses.

Hunter U-92, another poor guy who apparently has no name but just a number clearly suspect of someone and tells so to Mobius who agrees as the stab wounds look consistent with the previous, the Minutemen were hit on surprise and the reset charge (remember? The stuff that erase the deviation from the timeline) is gone.

Oh we’re also told this is the 6th attack in the last week THAT THEY KNOW OF. I hope for them it’s Saturday, because this would mean ‘only 1’ attack each day. This would be rather terrible if they were just at Monday since the day hadn’t even ended yet.

Now… remember when I was comparing the hunters of the TVA to police and wonder if the show would dig into police brutality?

Well, we’ve this scene in which someone enters in the place and Hunter U-92 is immediately ready to attack him with the wand they used against Loki or some other similar TVA weapon.

Only the one who got in is, apparently, just a kid, not the dangerous variant they’re searching and it’s Mobius who has to stop Hunter U-92 from attacking a kid who, for all they know, is completely unrelated to the crime, a kid that’s far from them and weaponless.

I don’t want to know what would have happened in Mobius hadn’t told him ‘Wait, stand down! Stand down’ (note how he has to say ‘stand down’ twice) and had physically stopped him in his track with his arm.

Mobius approaches the kid, speaking gently in French, apologizing for Hunter U-92’s behaviour, saying he’s just an imbecile.

Hunter U-92, annoyed by his comment, reminds him that he too can speak every language on the timeline, and that in short he can understand what Mobius is saying. The sentence though is more for our benefit, telling us those men can use the TVA version of Allspeak or whatever the “Loki” series wants to call it.

There’s a lovely visual showing us the kid and Mobius met in front of a beautiful stained glass window which depicts Satan.

To get the boy to talk Mobius draws a stick figure on some sort of small tablet he has and then passes it to the boy, telling him to tap on it. The boy does and the figure becomes a walking holographic projection which causes the boy to smile instead than assuming it’s witchcraft and running away screaming.

Okay, we are in 1549 and not in middle age, but that would still feel like magic even at the end of Renaissance age. But whatever, boys sometimes can put aside their fear for something that amuses them and this one had no troubles dealing with the guy killing all those TVA agents.

Anyway Mobius asks the boy if he knows who did that and the boy conveniently does. He points to the figure in the glass stained window, a horned demon, likely Satan. We might think it’s symbolic, that for the boy whoever kills someone is a demon… but… wait a moment.

Anyway Mobius says the boy shouldn’t worry because that devil is afraid of them and that they will put the boy back to where he belongs.

The boy smiles and Mobius notices his teeth are blue. It turns out that the ‘devil’ has gifted the kid with some… candies? Bubblegums?

I’ve no idea if those ‘Kablooie’ are actually some kind of American food, sorry about it but it’s clear although the kid has pointed to a devil, he wasn’t so scared by him to turn down his gift or to not try it out. And a devil giving him a gift doesn’t really feel like someone who wanted to harm him, despite the boy seeing him.

I get this feeling this ‘devil’ is targeting specifically TVA hunters only instead than the timeline or people inside it. He leads them somewhere and then attacks and dispose them. If he’s doing so because the TVA hurt him or because he wants to control the timeline that’s up to speculation.

We’ll later be said this guy is another Loki variant, and in this scenes we were given clues to figure out ourselves, like how he stabbed the TVA agents and how the boy pointed to a demon or, more specifically, to a horned figure, and we knows Loki wears horns when in his full Asgardian attire.

Anyway Mobius takes the ‘candies?’ ‘bubblegums?’ away from the boy and orders Hunter U-92 to run the candies for sequence period and temporal aura… not that Hunter U-92 thinks they’ll find anything but he’s worried because the branch is nearing red line and they need to go. In my understanding if it reaches the red line it could risk creating a multiverse.

Mobius sends the boy to play outside while Hunter U-92 orders to set a reset charge.

Again we aren’t explained what a ‘reset charge’ works.

However we’ve seen the cartoon with Miss Minute and in that one there was a reset charge and when it activated it didn’t rewind the timeline… it erased it. So the creepy things is it could be this reset charge just… destroys everything, erases all the lives in that alternate timeline because, in a way, they’re all Variants, and the TVA disposes of Variants.

Well, I hope I’m wrong because otherwise it means each time the TVA resetted a timeline they basically killed each life living in that universe, which would make Thanos, who ‘only’ killed half the population once, a rather tame mass murderer.

Anyway before the timeline is resetted another TVA person joins Mobius and it shows him a file about the just apprehended Loki. Maybe nobody except me cares but they had previously shown an image of a Loki file and in it there were question marks on where the race was. Now they’ve written ‘Frost Giant’. Either the file shown was for another Loki Variant or they managed to remember Loki was a Frost Giant and fix the file.

It could be the file for another variant though, as his height in it is given as 6’4” while in this file he’s 6’2” (1.88m) which is Tom Hiddleston’s true height (for who’s curious 6’4” is Jeff Goldblum’s height… not that I think the Grandmaster is walking around pretending to be Loki because well, this would be weird…)… or they messed up Loki’s height as well. We’ll see.

As I know some have wondered about it, Loki’s eyes are given as blue and not as green… which is correct as Tom Hiddleston said:

Loki is a sexy villain, but that’s not part of his ambition, is it? He doesn’t seem to be interested in love or sex but he has this sexuality about him, maybe it’s his lust for power. What do you think of Loki as a sexy beast? Tom Hiddleston: [Laughs] That’s the first time anyone has ever used that phrase about Loki. It’s fascinating isn’t it? I don’t know because it’s not a part of the conscious construction. I take relish in playing him. I think there’s a physical self-possession about him, a self-acceptance. Of course I’ve been very exacting about his physicality. You know, I was born with very blonde, curly hair, and a mixture of Scottish and English genes, and my complexion is very ruddy and healthy. In making him with this raven black hair and blanching my face of all color, it changes my features. Suddenly my blue eyes look a lot bluer, which lends a severity to my face. And even my own smile has a distorted menace to it. Whatever comes through me naturally is distorted. It’s almost like a filter on a light. ['Thor: The Dark World’: Tom Hiddleston on boom times for evildoers]

Which implies he never wore green contact lenses to play Loki.

Whatever, we’ll go on.

We’re back to the TVA and Loki’s trial starts.

He’s taken in front of the judge Ravonna Renslayer who addresses to him as Laufeyson. Except for a small comic later retconned in “Thor: The Dark World”, this is the first time in the MCU Loki is called Laufeyson… which is a little sad as he never identified as such (the closest he goes is to say he’s Loki of Jotunheim when he tries to trick Malekith) yet meaningful as well as the TVA evidently never recognized Odin’s ‘adoption’ as valid. For them he’s not Odinson, he’s Laufeyson because that’s what he’s born. ‘Loki Odinson’ in his file is labelled as an alias same as ‘God of Mischief’, nothing more.

But well, they aren’t really interested in his name, for them he’s ‘Variant L1130, AKA Loki Laufeyson’. Renslayer informs him he’s charged with sequence violation 7-20-89 which can mean everything and nothing at the same time as, to us, and to Loki, is just a collection of numbers, and asks him how does he plead.

Loki tries, as it’s his habit, to put up a polite yet confident front.

He claims a god doesn’t plead and has been a very enjoyable pantomime, but he'd like to go home… and boys, we know he would really like to do so. He’s putting up a front because we saw how uncomfortable and scared he was through his permanence at the TVA.

In an old interview that’s sadly no more available Tom Hiddleston said:

“The thing with Loki is that, if he’s afraid, he won’t show it. He’s been highly trained, through the experience of his slightly traumatic life, to shield his fears.”

Why didn’t we see him scared in “The Avengers” even though he took risks in it too while now we’re allowed to catch glimpses of his fear here and there?

“The Avengers” had to paint him as the big adversary, the great obstacle the heroes have to overcome.

Are we going to feel that bad for you in this movie, or are you gonna – ? Tom Hiddleston: Yeah. He does some pretty nasty things. On one level, it was like, I knew I had to up the ante because there’s seven superheroes that make up the Avengers, and, in order for the film to work, the film is the most redemptive, feel-good, kind of fist-pumping story. And, in order for the audience to be pumping their fists for Iron Man, and Hulk, and Thor, and Captain America, they need to overcome a really big obstacle. And, unfortunately, that big obstacle is me. [LAUGHS]. I hope I have retained a sense of his kind of emotional damage [like we saw in Thor]. There is a lovely scene with Chris Hemsworth where you see a glimmer of his — his vulnerability, but… he’s yielded to the dark side, you know? [Interview With Tom Hiddleston AKA Loki]

In this episode the Loki we met isn’t the adversary, he’s the main character, so we get glimpses of his true mind. He’s afraid or confuse, yet he reacts to all that by putting up a front, by presenting himself as confident and in control. It started from when he found himself in an unfamiliar situation, facing the Mongolic people and it continues and will continue and mind you, it’s a good and popular technique to hide your fear.

By presenting yourself as confident, your opponent might believe you might have some reason to be confident and be more careful and hesitate in attacking you, and sometimes this is all the advantage you need.

Renslayer remains unfazed, as she likely knows Loki has no advantage over her. She knows he’s powerless, in an unfamiliar environment he knows nothing about, forced to wear a collar that somehow controls his time, submitted to rules he knows nothing about and surrendered by enemies.

Loki isn’t the first who was carried in front of her and she knows he won’t be the last. The system is unjust and the trial a farce but she’s persuaded for it to be righteous and the right way to deal with ‘Variants’ as this leads to the greater good of avoiding wars into the Multiverse so justice and fairness are clearly not something she has to care about.

Anyway she pressures the issue and, understanding she won’t let go, Loki shifts the blame on the Avengers, pointing out how he came into possession of the Tesseract because THEY traveled through time, according to Loki in a ‘last-ditch effort to stave off his ascent to God King’.

So yes, even though he was soundly beaten by them and he’s in a bad spot Loki still tries to play highty and mighty and not cower up in fear. But how did he know about the Avengers travelling through time? We saw he noticed the whole thing with the case, but how did he knew the Avengers were involved and not some other guy?

Remember how I mentioned that “Avengers: Endgame” had Loki walking vaguely near 2022 Tony Stark and we Scott Lang asking Tony if he wears Axe body spray?

Well, Loki clearly has a fine nose because he recognized the Axe body spray coming off from 2022 Tony Stark and figured out he was a future version of 2012 Tony Stark.

It’s kind of a pity they hadn’t kept these bits in the series but whatever, I get why they might have cut them.

Loki, like most of the fandom, blames them as the Time Criminals and suggests if Rendlayer were to provide him a taskforce he could eliminate them for her.

As he spoke we see Mobius intruding in the trial and sitting down as it carries on.

Back to Renslayer, she isn’t interested in the Avengers, claiming they were supposed to go back in the past but Loki wasn’t supposed to grab the Tesseract and escape.

Loki laughs at the absurdity of the statement and demands to know who decided this.

The answer is the Time-Keepers who dictate the proper flow of time so that Renslayer can dictate the proper flow of time according to their dictation.

And you start to see the horror of this system.

The Time-Keepers arbitrarily decide which is the proper flow of time and impose it on everyone. They basically make the rules according to what they like the most… and, of course, they don’t inform anyone of which ones the rules should be.

When Loki picked up the Tesseract and escaped there was nowhere a big warning sign saying ‘if you do so you commit a crime’. He didn’t even know there were Time-Keepers and a sacred timeline and the TVA did nothing to fix this.

While in many countries you’re supposed to know the law and pledging ignorance is not an excuse, the TVA is a self imposed and not recognized Authority of whose existence nobody knows anything which dictate rules according to the Time-Keepers’ tastes.

There’s the risk of total annihilation due to a multiverse war?

Fair worry but then why they get to decide how the sacred timeline should be? Which are their criteria for it? Why the Avengers going back to time was okay?

Although they saved lives, the whole things was incredibly messy as discussed in “The Falcon And The Winter Soldier”… and that series only touched the tip of the iceberg.

But whatever. The Time-Keepers, which Loki defines gods because that’s basically how the TVA paints them, at the moment remind me of the gods of gods in the “Loki: Agent of Asgard” comic and with them the whole idea everything is a tale.

The Sacred timeline feels like nothing else but the tale the Time-Keeper enjoyed, their canon, as if they were Marvel. Everything else is a fictional Au written by fans that gets a ‘cease and desist letter’ and is erased from the net.

Anyway Loki is feed up. He decides to plea ‘guilty’ but not of the crime they’re trying to pin on him but of… using his magic against them. Only his magic doesn’t work.

Hunter B-15 is probably the first who realizes what’s going on and, chuckling, explains it to Renslayer who’s not catching up. As Loki gets angry for not managing to use them, Renslayer explains magic powers don’t work at the TVA, which might explain why she didn’t recognize what Loki was doing while Hunter B-15, used to fieldwork, did. Renslayer might have never seen people using magic powers but Hunter B-15 might have done so.

Only no, because in an interview Gugu Mbatha-raw said about her character:

“She had a history of a hunter and a more military role like Wunmi’s character” [Many Sides of Loki | Marvel Studios' Loki Cast & Creators]

So, no, I’ve no idea why she didn’t catch up. Was she playing dumb? Has she been so out of the field she didn’t recognize the signs? Or, despite being the judge at Loki’s trial she hadn’t read his file and didn’t know he could do magic? It can be, as I said the trial is a farce so she might not have cared to document herself beyond a certain point.

Hunter B-15 is still laughing. She’s enjoying this.

Anyway she decides Loki is guilty and sentenced to be ‘reset’… you know, like the timelines.

Note again how Loki had no rights in this. He had no lawyer, he wasn’t explained things, he was just asked how he pled but that one was more a pro-forma than anything else. They had already decided he wasn’t allowed to do what he did and therefore guilty.

The trial was a farce to give the TVA a semblance of justice but it’s all a show.

Back to Loki, he has no idea what they mean with ‘reset’ and they didn’t even have the courtesy to explain it to him. Angrily he says:

“You ridiculous bureaucrats will not dictate how my story ends!”

To which Renlayer replies:

“It's not your story, Mr. Laufeyson. It never was.”

So yeah, now they’ve started with the references to stories which are another subtle jab at the “Loki: Agent of Asgard” plotline.

By the way, keep in mind Renslayer’s reply.

As Loki complains they have no idea what he’s capable of and tries resisting being taken away Mobius speaks up.

Fundamentally Mobius wants Renslayer to pass Loki to him as he has a plan.

There’s clearly a story behind the relation between Renslayer and Mobius, they aren’t just professional to each other, they’re closer than that.

Renslayer agrees although she says he’ll get the blame for whatever goes wrong.

Mobius looks at Loki, Loki stops struggling and asks him who he is and Mobius smiles in a satisfied manner and doesn’t reply.

The scene shifts to them walking through the place, Loki threatening to burn the place to the ground. Mobius clearly doesn’t take him seriously, saying he can start from his desk.

The fact is… Loki is powerless and Mobius knows. We know too, we’ve seen how the trial went. However there might be more at play. Mobius knows the whole of Loki’s life which as far as we know, included only episodes of violence post discovering who he was and during his permanence on Earth.

To him Loki’s statement might feel more an expression of frustration than a sincere threat.

As they walk Loki happens to see the world outside the place he’s in from what looks like a window. He’s surprised and Mobius encourages him to have a look.

Loki points out he though there was no magic there. I’m not sure if he’s saying so because he sees car flying and assume it’s magic.

In “Thor” and “Thor: The Dark World” magic was compared to science so maybe that’s what he’s saying, that the world he sees seems to advanced.

Mobius insists there isn’t magic there so Loki says that’s not real.

They exchange some more lines in which Mobius continues to play on Loki’s declaration he’ll burn the place down.

I’m curious.

We know Mobius is actually chasing another Loki Variant, one who killed many TVA agents (we’ll see some of them got burned down too).

He’ll later claim this Loki is not dangerous, but what’s the difference between this Loki and the other? What makes the other dangerous? And can’t this Loki get dangerous too?

Is Mobius doing the same that Loki does?

Acting confident and joking about Loki burning down the place because he actually fears he might have the potential to just do so if not handled correctly?

We’ll see.

Once they’re on a lift Mobius decides to introduce himself as ‘Agent Mobius’ and offers him his hand to shake… and I’m reminded of this scene from “The Avengers”.

Natasha: But you figured I'd come. Loki: After. After whatever tortures Fury can concoct, you would appear as a friend, as a balm. And I would cooperate.

The TVA doesn’t see what they’ve done as torture or even as ‘wrong’… but many states wouldn’t approve of some sort of vigilante capture a person for something THEY labelled a crime, force him to undress, destabilize him to the point he’s not even sure if he’s a human or a robot, put him through a mock trial and then threaten him to be ‘reset’.

It’s in dystopic universes you find authorities who can just arrest you for breaking laws they made up without your knowledge and then decide of your life.

Mobius might not be looking like Natasha but, after all this, someone acting like a friend would make him automatically more cooperative and, in a way, it does.

Hunter B-15 had to drag him where Loki just follows Mobius more or less quietly.

Anyway, back to the story.

Mobius decided to introduce himself in a friendly manner and I would want to remark Loki asked him who he was when they were at the trial so this is a rather late introduction which he might be doing right now because we just hear Loki sighing as he’s clearly unnerved.

Mobius is playing the role of the good cop in a way, trying to gain his trust.

Loki doesn’t handshake, he’s not going to make friend so easily, but asks him if he’s taking him somewhere to kill him.

Mobius says no, that’s where he just was which, if it’s not a lie, means that resetting Loki would have meant to actually kill him. So again… what about the timelines that get resetted? All the people in them get killed? The place gets razed to the ground? Disintegrated? What?

Mobius’ reply might be truthful but it’s also clever because he’s setting himself up as Loki’s ‘saviour’. Others wanted to kill Loki but he? He just saved him which begs the question of ‘shouldn’t Loki be a good boy and comply with Mobius’ requests and trust him and all the stuff?’

Now… I know that people feel like Mobius is a good guy because he saved Loki but the story will make clear he didn’t do it out of the goodness of his heart… but merely because he needs him.

We’ve seen Mobius with the boy before, he made him comfortable so that the boy complied and gave him info, which is one of the many interrogating techniques.

That’s what Mobius is doing here.

Anyway we proceed with the best known scene of “Loki” as it was in the very first trailer.

I remember people discussing Mobius’ words about Loki liking to talk, as in the first movie he was often silent and quiet.

Well, to be honest if the movie had been left in his original cut Loki would have surely talked more, but what stuck with me watching “Thor” wasn’t so much that Loki was often quiet, but that many times he attempts to speak but he’s silenced.

On the Rainbow Bridge Volstagg asks him:

Volstagg: What happened? Your silver tongue turn to lead?

…which means Loki normally was skilful at persuading people to believe what they say or to do what they want them to do, which doesn’t necessarily makes him a chatter, but surely someone who knows how to talk. And we see that in “The Avengers” when nobody is there to interrupt him he allows himself to monologue. It’s an interpretation, of course, with whom people can disagree.

Anyway Loki decides to talk with Mobius. It’s not a stupid decision. Mobius is clearly not seeing him as a threat but he’s not being overly hostile either. Loki is completely a fish out of the water so it’s in his own interest to play along with Mobius, talk with him and find out more information about the place. In fact the first thing he asks is how long Mobius had been there, because this is tied in how much knowledge he could have.

In fact, the more he’d been there, the more he might know.

Mobius though remarks since time passes differently at the TVA he has no idea… which is a convenient reply as it only confuses Loki and explains nothing. In fact he could have said not the exact time he’d been there but give an approximation like ‘a lot’ or ‘very little’, instead, by giving out a vague reply he gives Loki an info he could do nothing with (time passes differently) and no real info about himself. At the same time, by giving out an answer, he again seems amicable, like how, when Loki asks what his answer means, he says Loki will catch up, as if he’s not withholding information, it’s just ‘complicate’.

Loki resorts to check the information Miss Minute gave him in her cartoon, which Mobius confirms because he has nothing to lose.

Loki laughs and tries to spark a response by being rude in defining the TVA system.

“The idea that your little club decides the fate of trillions of people across all of existence at the behest of three space lizards, yes, it's funny. It's absurd.”

Note, ‘little club’, ‘three space lizards’, ‘funny’, ‘absurd’.

He’s mocking the system, likely in order to get a response, but also in order to gain some measure of control.

It’s something he has done during the trial and is something he did in “Thor: The Dark World” facing Odin… or in “The Avengers” when he was held captive. But in “The Avengers” and “Thor: The Dark World” he had some understanding of what to expect. Here he’s blind flying, trying to test Mobius to see what he can get out of him while still trying to hold a façade of control.

On another note Loki says rather often how all this is absurd. To him this is a world of nonsense, like the one Alice found when she ended up in Wonderland (and it’s ironic how “Alice in the Wonderland” also contain a mock trial about the stealing of tarts in which rules are made on the spot as well as Alice here and there questioning her own identity or discussions about paths…) but I think having him repeat ‘it’s absurd’ so often it’s also for us viewers, to drive home we’re in a dystopic universe.

The TVA isn’t good, it’s absurd, with its rules that don’t make sense, a huge bureaucratic world and we might laugh at it if it wasn’t that’s also an organization that kidnap people from their timelines and subject them to their rules, rules they follow without questioning, like religious fanatics.

Who says what the Time-Keepers chose it has to happen is better than something else? They don’t know but, what’s more, they don’t care.

But let’s go on.

Mobius don’t fall for Loki’s provocation, he just retorts

“I thought you didn't like to talk.”

Which is a convenient way to answer Loki without giving Loki any answer.

They enter in a room which, Loki comments, looks very much ‘like a killing-me kind of a room’.

Mobius turns the situation by shifting the blame on Loki. It’s not that the room looks like a killing-him kind of room, it’s just that Loki is not big on trust. Because Mobius is totally deserving Loki’s trust because he saved him and was nice to him and acted like the perfect good cop so Loki really, should trust him. If he’s not doing it then it’s because he’s lacking in the trusting department.

But Loki had had his fill with trusting people and then discovering he wasn’t his parents’ son nor an Asgardian. His answer his moved by all the pain that discovery caused him.

“Trust is for children and dogs. There's only one person you can trust.”

Mobius’ reply again doesn’t take Loki’s words seriously, as if they were just something to slap on a shirt. He’s being passive aggressive in order to force Loki to question himself and keep control of him. The more Loki is unsure and question himself, the easy for Mobius is to manipulate him.

A break here.

It’s not that everyone has only one person they can trust… actually sometimes you can’t even trust yourself, while some other times you’ve plenty of people you can trust.

The idea you CAN’T trust in anyone is as damaging as the idea you should blindly trust in people but, in Loki’s situation yes, he should definitely only trust in himself, everyone in that situation should do it, trauma of being lied through your whole life or not, because Mobius isn’t doing all his out of good will but out of his need to use Loki.

So he’s not to be blindly trusted, he’s to be assessed so that one can see up until which point Mobius can be of some aid, so as to turn the exchange one of reciprocal benefit. If Loki were to hand himself in his hands, instead, only Mobius would get a gain for it, while Loki would risk to be used and then disposed once he has ended his purpose.

As Mobius is fiddling with a round thing that apparently control a projector, Loki questions him again, but with those words he has raised the bar a little.

If Mobius wants him to trust him, he has to start giving more clear answers.

“If the TVA truly oversees all of time, how have I never heard of you until now?”

Mobius is still good at diverting the attention as his reply irritates Loki and causes him to lose track of the conversation.

Mobius: 'Cause you've never needed to. You've always lived within your set path. Loki: I live within whatever path I choose. Mobius: Sure you do.

There are two things from the exchange.

One is that Mobius ends up confirming that the TVA is sort of a secret organization that decides for others, that’s ABOVE OTHERS. They don’t let you know which rules you’ve to follow, they decide which rule you’ve to follow and then let you blind fly until you stumble into a rule you didn’t know exist and break it. And then they come to punish you. And that’s when you learn they existed.

The second is that again Mobius, while not openly disagree with him, is dismissive of Loki. He has made him defensive by pushing him to say ‘I live within whatever path I choose’ then he hadn’t outright said ‘no, you don’t’ but by the way he replied he hugely implied it in a manner that sounds more like he had said ‘oh, you naïve child, and your delusions, of course you don’t chose your path’.

As Mobius invites him to sit down Loki tries to attack him since Mobius gave him his back but Mobius uses what we’ll learn is a Time Twister to loops him and send him standing back where he was. Then Mobius very calmly insists for Loki to have a seat, again driving home the point that Loki has no choices and is powerless.

Loki complies and sit down.

We can argue if he should have or not but the truth is there was no real point in resisting beyond making things difficult for himself because if there’s something true here is that he’s powerless and he should just bid his time and search for a weakness, instead than resisting.

Of course this is all well and good for Mobius, as things are proceeding in the way he wants.

Loki crosses his arms, which, in body language, hints that he’s feeling anxious, resistant, tense, insecure, afraid, or responding to distress. Arms crossed indicate also defensiveness, unyielding attitudes, and perseverance working as an act of self-comfort.

Long story short, Loki is not comfortable or willing to cooperate and he’s physically putting a barrier between himself and Mobius… and letting Mobius know of this.

Mobius is unfazed.

“If looks could kill.”

It’s a simple sentence that let Loki know that yes, he gets the message Loki isn’t going to go down to this willingly, but also reminds him of Loki’s powerlessness and of how Mobius is unafraid and in a position of power. ‘If looks could kill… you would kill me, but looks can’t kill so you’ll have to sit there and do as I say. Your resistance is futile. Amusing even.’

Loki doesn’t play along, making clear he doesn’t plan to cooperate. At least not easily. Mobius doesn’t believe him.

“Really? Even when you're wooing someone powerful you intend to betray? Come on.”

It’s an interesting sentence for Mobius to say, because he’s lampshading Loki isn’t using with him the same technique he used with Thanos and the Grandmaster. Since the story knows Loki should act more cooperative and obedient according to his previous records, I wonder which point they’re trying to make. Is the idea that Loki started to act as such after his one year imprisonment in Asgard, understanding opening defiling Odin got him nowhere and that he should have instead played along, therefore this Loki hadn’t gotten to that point yet?

Or is the idea Loki is deliberately choosing to act like this because he has already figured playing along with Mobius wouldn’t work?

We’ll see.

The answer could as well be a Doylist one, the audience expects him to act a certain way, the author is aware Loki normally acted in a certain way but they wanted him to act differently for… reasons.

We’ll see.

Mobius continues to make a show of his power. He is specialized in the pursuit of dangerous Variants but not like Loki, Loki is just a pussycat… only it’s EXACTLY like Loki… as it’s Loki he’s pursuing. Another version of him. He’s not telling him that though, exactly because the whole point of the discussion is making Loki feel small so that he can control him.

Credits when it’s due, Mobius is playing a dangerous game because the Loki he’s pursuit and this one might be two different Variants but they’re always Loki and this one has all the potential to become the same as the other, if he’s not already and just keeping it buried inside himself.

Anyway, the fact that Loki is so contrary, forces Mobius to act as if he were willing to make Loki some concessions for his cooperation. A reward for good behaviour if so we can call it.

“You answer them honestly, and then maybe I can give you something you want. You wanna get out of here, right?”

The truth is I genuinely doubt Mobius can grant him that, or, at least, not that in the way Loki might intend it. The TVA erased the timeline he came from. He has no more a place outside of the TVA. The most ‘getting out of there’ could mean is what will later happen, make him a worker for the TVA. He won’t be allowed to go back home, he’ll just have to serve them in exchange for having them not delete him.

Mobius though shifts cards and pretends it means he can go back to where he was, asking him what he would do, should he return.

I particularly enjoy this dialogue.

Mobius: You wanna be king? Loki: I don't want to be, I was born to be. Mobius: I know, but king of what exactly? Loki: ( Scoffs ) You wouldn't understand. Mobius: Try me. Loki: Midgard.

The ‘I don’t want to be’ echoes what Loki said to Thor in “Thor”…

“I never wanted the throne! I only ever wanted to be your equal.”

…and ties in with what Odin told him as a child…

“Only one of you can ascend to the throne. But both of you were born to be kings.”

Which is something Loki hints at in “Thor: The Dark World” as well.

Frigga: You know full well it was your actions that brought you here. Loki: My actions. I was merely giving truth to the lie that I had been fed my entire life, that I was born to be a king.

“The Avengers” suffers of a huge plot problem in this regard, which is the jump between Loki in “Thor” and Loki in “The Avengers”. In the year that went between the two Loki is deeply changed but “The Avengers” refused to explain why, it just shows us a different Loki.

To search for an explanation we’ve to read interviews:

“And in the time between the end of Thor and the beginning of the Avengers, Loki has explored the shadowy highways and byways of the universe – and he’s met some terrible, terrible people and probably had some awful experiences, which he has survived and overcome. So by the time he arrives in The Avengers, he knows the extent of his power – and he’s unafraid to use it. And more importantly, he’s unafraid to enjoy it.” In Marvel’s The Avengers, Loki sets out to remake Earth as his personal kingdom. “That’s his motivation. Thor has his own kingdom in Asgard. Why shouldn’t Loki have his own? As Loki sees it, planet Earth is a world at war with itself. All of these races and tribes are fighting each other. And if they were united in the reverence of one king, there would be peace. It’s not that he plans to attack Earth. It’s that he plans to ‘restructure’ it as a new kingdom of which he will be the head. Loki feels that it’s his birthright. He feels that he was born to rule. And he sees the human race as an incredibly weak people who actually were made to be ruled. And, in his mind and in his opinion, the human race functions better under rule.” [The art of The Avengers]

“I think he went, like with everything else, to—Joss Whedon and I discussed it—to a sort of… it was just, like, the worst place imaginable. I think he went to, sort of, all of the darkest recesses of the universe. I’m sure he had a brush with—several brushes with death. I think he ran into the shadiest characters you can find in the Nine Realms. I think he had to rely on his wits to protect himself. It was really, really, really unpleasant, I think. I don’t have any frame of reference for that, except for imagining what it might be like to be kidnapped by a terrorist or something and have to survive a very, very frightening and precarious existence. But whatever it was, it was important when Loki came back for The Avengers, that whatever compassion he had left was absolutely shriveled to a minimum because of the experience that he had. Harrowing, I think, and scarring for life—in a way that Thor and Odin and Frigga find very, very difficult to understand.” [Tom Hiddleston - live on stage Q&A: Popcorn Taxi - part 2]

And in the end we stumble into this:

“Well, I can’t tell you exactly what went on because it’s this dark, dark secret that I didn’t make up yet. But, the other day, I had trouble with that because he had this very passionate Shakespearean tragedy thing going on in Thor and then I needed a villain who’s not only capable, but ready and willing and anxious to take on all these heroes. For me, he just basically went on some horrible walkabout… That was pretty much as far as I got.” [Joss Whedon told Comic-Con the question he doesn’t want us to ask ever again ]

So fundamentally “The Avengers” didn’t know what happened to Loki that changed him, they just went with the idea something bad happened, which of course should have happened since Loki met up with Thanos, who’s famous for torturing his daughters. They also tossed in that while on Midgard he was under the influence of the Mind stone.

“Gifted with a Scepter that acted as a mind control device, Loki would be able to influence others. Unbeknownst to him, the Scepter was also influencing him, fuelling his hatred over his brother Thor and the inhabitants of Earth.” [www.marvel.com/characters/loki/on-screen]

Ultimately though, what happened is never stated nor explained.

When Loki wants Asgard’s throne it’s clear he’s doing so because he associates it with his father’s love. Who gets the throne is the son Odin’s love.

“To prove to Father that I am the worthy son. When he wakes, I will have saved his life. I will have destroyed that race of monsters. And I will be true heir to the throne!”

But Midgard? Midgard is chosen by Thanos, because he needs the Tesseract, which is there. Did Loki wanted it too? Or was it Thanos who chose for him? Hard to say but “The Avengers” still ties Loki’s wish for a kingdom to his father.

THE OTHER: You question us? You question him? He who put the scepter in your hand, who gave you ancient knowledge and new purpose when you were cast out, defeated? LOKI: I was a king! The rightful kind of Asgard! Betrayed! THE OTHER: Your ambition is little, born of childish need. We look beyond the Earth to greater worlds the Tesseract will unveil.

It makes sense. When Loki is told his whole life is a lie, his first action is try to erase the truth by erasing Jotunheim. That was as much personal as practical (they were at war with Jotunheim). Becoming a king might have been another attempt at still erasing the truth. He doesn’t attempt to become king of Jotunheim, as it would be his birthright, but of something else, Midgard. He’s imitating Odin.

Loki: I went down to Midgard to rule the people of Earth as a benevolent god. Just like you.

All this to say that Loki’s reply ‘I don't want to be, I was born to be’ is actually a lot more layered that it sounds is actually a lot more layered that it sounds and that’s why he doesn’t think Mobius would understand it and gives him a simple answer, something he thinks he could understand. A location over which he could rule.

At the same time the irony of the situation isn’t lost on me. A moment ago Loki said he ‘live within whatever path he chooses’ yet he claims he was born to do something. This wasn’t a choice, this was predetermination. Or letting Odin dictate his path.

Anyway Loki claims he would then move to conquer Asgard and the Nine Realms and agree when Mobius suggests him to go for the space… and honestly I think here Loki is just playing a part. He’s giving Mobius the answers he thinks Mobius wants, an evil Loki. “Loki” clearly is not going to retcon “Thor: Ragnarok” and we’ve seen that in that movie once Loki had the throne of Asgard he didn’t start a conquering rampage but just contented himself with it.

So, no, Loki doesn’t want to rule the universe, he just wants to prove himself something he was told was true.

Mobius don’t take him seriously, either because he knows Loki doesn’t aim to universe domination or because this is convenient for him. He says something interesting though, albeit misleading.

Loki: Mock me if you dare. Mobius: No, I'm not. Honestly, I'm actually a fan. Yeah. And I guess I'm wondering why does someone with so much range just wanna rule?

With ‘I’m actually a fan’ I don’t think he means he supports Loki, I think he’s subtly hinting he’s very interested in Loki. The other Loki, the Variant he’s trying to catch and that holds them all in a stalemate. Kind of like Sherlock Holmes might have appreciated Professor Moriarty’s intellect. This Loki and his other Variant might have a shared past… which makes this Loki interesting as well.

Then Mobius lead Loki in a loop in Loki’s reasoning. Loki is big on how he decides what he does. He values his own freedom. A huge part of why he reject the TVA system is because they want to dictate what he can and can’t do.

Yet in “The Avengers” he said:

Loki: I come with glad tidings, of a world made free. Fury: Free from what? Loki: Freedom. Freedom is life's great lie. Once you accept that, in your heart...[Like a gunslinger, Loki turns to face Selvig who's standing behind him and places his spear against Selvig's heart. Selvig's eyes glow black.] Loki: You will know peace.

and

Loki: Kneel before me. [The crowd ignores him. Three more Loki's appear, surrounding and blocking the crowd from escaping.] I said KNEEL! [While the crowd quietly kneels, Loki embraces out his arms with a wide smile] Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.

It’s unclear how Loki came up with those ideas, albeit the fact he came from Asgard, which is a place where Odin rules as a supreme ruler and humans are viewed as inferior…

Odin: She does not belong here in Asgard anymore than a goat belongs at a banquet table.

…this might be another result of Odin’s awesome parenting, and not necessarily the result of Thanos’ manipulation… though the two might have superimposed so that it’s hard to say where one stop and the other begins.

Loki confirms this view here as well.

Loki: I would've made it easy for them. Mobius: People like easy. Loki: The first and most oppressive lie ever uttered was the song of freedom. Mobius: How's that one go? Loki: For nearly every living thing, choice breeds shame and uncertainty and regret. There's a fork in every road, yet the wrong path always taken.

On a personal note I think Loki wants to see himself above of this, but it’s clear that he too had to deal with choices that breed shame, uncertainty and regret, never mentioning he believes he was seen as inferior by Odin and deprived of his path.

Loki: So I am no more than another stolen relic, locked up here until you might have use of me.

The fact he thinks Odin would have never put on the throne of Asgard a Frost Giant (a monster and therefore even more inferior in the Asgardians’ opinion than humans) no matter what and that he thinks this got confirmed when Odin told him he couldn’t do it, which pushed him to let go of Gungnir.

Loki wants to be above… he wants to be the master of his fate after instead he was forced to dance on other people’s strings (Odin, Thanos) but deep down he’s drawing from his own experience the downsides of freedom. He just wants to overcome them.

Mobius then says he’ll show Loki a sampling of Loki’s greatest hits… which are basically the end of the battle of New York.

It’s fundamentally a close up of how he was beaten and how he asked for a drink, which Mobius mocks further offering him a drink, which Loki refuses pointing out he remembers that scene.

We kind of stumble in a problem the series has. Mobius says:

“It's funny, for someone born to rule, you sure do lose a lot. You might even say it's in your nature.”

The problem here is that the sentence is misleading. Loki at the moment has two big failures on his shoulders, the one in “Thor” and the one in “The Avengers”. It doesn’t make a lot and note that in “The Avengers” he also had minor successes. He walked away from SHIELD’s facility with the Tesseract, he managed to have Clint Barton steal the Iridium, he let the Avengers capture him so that he could let the Hulk lose, which worked and he could recover the scepter and escape, he managed to open the portal and let the Chitauri in. Basically, since he let himself be captured and even Steve knows, Loki won all the battles except the one who decided the war. Which yes, was a big loss because it was the one that mattered the most but still it shows Loki’s losing record isn’t as big as Mobius makes it look like.

Loki ends up bringing up Coulson. To prove his point that Loki isn’t really good at winning Mobius could bring up the fact that Coulson was resurrected in “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” but no, he prefers to say the Avengers came together to literally avenge him by defeating him.

Now yes, Coulson’s death played a big part in all that, they felt guilty and sorry for him, as they all were tied to him one way or the other and this made what Loki did personal enough they could easily put away their differences… but I’m not overly fond of this theory because it implies if Coulson hadn’t died the Avengers would have never came together, would have never overcome their difficulties and would have lost.

Which, I guess, might be a possibility “Loki” might want to explore, we saw in a trailer an image of New York completely destroyed… but it’s something I don’t particularly like because it paints the Avengers in a pretty dark light.

If they didn’t have a common grief, they would have never cooperate for the common good.

Of course it’s not that Mobius care, this explanation is convenient for him, an Augustinian view of evil in which evil collapse its evil’s own doing. Because Loki killed Coulson, Loki set up his own defeat. Evil loses because it’s a snake that bites its own tail… which is an interesting view, really, but, in this case, it put a huge shadow on the Avengers.

Whatever, let’s go on, Mobius’ point is to make Loki feel small, not to explain him why he lost.

But still… he would manage to make a better point if the series weren’t forced to use only the footage from the movies. But well, I guess they had no other choice.

I enjoy the next bit of discussion. Mobius asks Loki:

“Do you enjoy hurting people? Making them feel small? Making them feel afraid?”

Which is exactly what he’s doing to him. There’s a huge irony in the whole discussion. They both think they’re in the right doing what they’re doing/what they did and that this excuses their actions.

They set up a moral motive, Loki sees himself as a liberator, Mobius sees himself as the saviour of the sacred timeline so they are above others, they came make them feel small and afraid and don’t have to feel guilty for it.

They get to a stalemate, although Loki isn’t looking at the screen, which is our clue he isn’t enjoying what he’s seeing, the people suffering. He didn’t like to look at them in “The Avengers” either, not looking when he ‘freed that eyeball’ as Mobius put in. Even when Thor forces him to look at the attacked city he shows he’s distressed. Loki however enjoyed being at the centre of the attention, it’s that what got him to smile, not hurting that man.

But whatever, to try to compensate, the series shows us some unseen material from Loki’s past, namely when he played the role of D.B. Cooper.

On a sidenote this hugely confirms my theory Loki used to hang out on Earth since he could play that part. Among the other things which the series didn’t show Cooper appeared familiar with the local terrain; at one point he remarked, "Looks like Tacoma down there," as the aircraft flew above it. He also correctly mentioned that McChord Air Force Base was only a 20-minute drive (at that time) from Seattle-Tacoma Airport. He asks for 2 bourbon and soda, paid his drink tab (and attempted to give flight attendant Tina Mucklow the change). He even offered to request meals for the flight crew during the stop in Seattle This makes Loki someone who knows very well how things work in Midgard… contrary to Thor.

Mobius introduces the whole thing saying

“You're really good at doing awful things, and then just getting away.”

And yes, it was awful. Although Cooper is described as extremely polite I can’t imagine that the crew who knew he had a bomb onboard felt comfortable with dealing with that situation. The worst part though is that he did it because he lost a bet with Thor.

Now they don’t exactly dig in what the bet was, but Heimdall was likely watching his every move and Thor asking him to do something similar as penance for losing a bet paints Thor also as pretty awful.

The best part though is that Loki excuses it by saying ‘he was young’. The whole thing took place in 1971, in short, 41 years before “The Avengers”. 41 years are a lot for a human, enough to make them say ’41 years ago I was young’, but Loki is at least 1047 in “The Avengers”. We don’t know how fast exactly Frost Giants and Asgardians age but, unless they do an abrupt jump, if Loki was young 41 years ago, he probably still is, which would match with the fan theory he’s actually around 17 in human years.

Now we can take Loki’s sentence as something a young person would say, as in a span of a short time they effectively grow and change a lot so their slightly younger self might feel a lot younger to them, or he might be talking in a more metaphorical sense.

Discovering the truth about himself and what followed forced him to grow faster. Now he wouldn’t do such immature things… which is a rather sad though.

At Loki’s request of where was the TVA back then, Mobius replies they were right there with him, just surfing that Sacred Timeline. Loki asks then if that has the Time-Keepers' seal of approval.

He scores one on this one as Mobius can’t reply, he just says not to think in terms of approval or disapproval.

Let’s remember something else that had the Time-Keepers' seal of approval was Thanos wiping away half of the universe but not just that. There’s also Thanos travelling through time to get to that future and stop “The Avengers” from undoing what he did with the infinity stones, which means they approved Tony Stark’s death in order to stop him.

Awesome people, don’t you think? More similar to writers who’ve to sell a good story than to people who care and wants to protect the people who lives in the timeline.

Anyway Mobius says they’ll go back to Loki’s escape and to a little psychobabble, which tells us not even Mobius sees this as a psychology session or therapy or whatever you want to call it. This interrogatory’s aim isn’t to let him know Loki better, he believes he knows him already. He’s trying to shape Loki into a willing collaborator because that’s his goal, not heal Loki or whatever.

Mind you, I think he’d like to get to know Loki in the sense he’s trying to catch a Loki and knowing Loki better might help him in his work… but so far he really hadn’t asked anything he didn’t know already so no, this isn’t a big ‘let’s get to know Loki’, though he might find some interest in seeing what makes him tick in the conversation, this is just a ‘let’s manipulate Loki into cooperating’.

Loki wants to stand, Mobius uses the Time Twister to loops him ‘back in his cage’. Because don’t mistake the situation just because he’s not being aggressive or physically abusive, Loki is in a cage and Mobius makes a show of showing it to Loki. He can’t stand up without Mobius’ permission and Mobius further remarks it by saying he ‘can play the heavy keys, too’, in short that he can play the role of the ‘bad cop’ that slams back the prisoner in his chair when he tries to move.

Or should we assume Mobius feared Loki was going to attack him?

Maybe, as I said Loki and Mobius might be more similar than it looks like, both acting in control and high and mighty to hide they are actually in a tight spot. Mobius isn’t a hunter, he might not be strong, he might not know how to fight beyond waving that Time Twister and the TVA wand, while Loki knows. We don’t know from which race Mobius is, but Asgardians and Frost Giants are naturally very physically strong, much stronger than humans, and Mobius might belong to a race that’s just not the same.

But still the scene works conveniently for Mobius, because it’s another chance to drive home how he completely control Loki.

Loki’s reply, regardless of it being sincere or not, is good because it says Mobius just overreacted as Loki merely wanted to make a point.

After an exchange in which Mobius gives him permission to stand and Loki remarks he’ll do what he wants, which in a way he did since ultimately he stood, he asks him what he wants.

Mobius says

“I want you to be honest about why you do what you do.”

Loki calls it a lie and he’s probably not completely right but neither completely wrong. Mobius likely doesn’t care about why Loki did what he did in the past, that’s not a time he has to deal with, but he cares about forcing Loki to be honest. Loki has to trust him and cooperate with him and this includes that he has to open up. Mobius has to already know the answer to his questions, otherwise he could never know if Loki is being honest and he knows them because he knows Loki’s future, how he evolves, how it pained him to see Frigga die, how he saved Thor even though it lead him to be stabbed, how he didn’t aim for space domination when he was king of Asgard, how he came back to save Asgard, how he died for his brother.

So Mobius is not lying when he says he wants Loki to be honest… but that’s not because he cares about the answer, which is what Loki figured and why Loki called him a liar. It’s a matter of control and Loki can see it.

Loki: I know what this place is. Mobius: What is it? Loki: It's an illusion. It's a cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear. A desperate attempt at control. Now, you all parade about as if you're the divine arbiters of power in the universe.

And Mobius claims to be sure to have such a role which again, it’s an awesome irony because they both play the same game, they act as if they’re superior than others.

Mobius shows him his speech about freedom, which of course feels like a slap on his face because now it’s turned against him and his mad scramble for power.

Loki catches up and insists on his freedom, on how he’s the one in charge of his destiny who will win because HE did it, not because it was supposed to happen or was allowed by the TVA.

Mobius tries to bring him down again informing him if he hadn’t picked up the Tesseract he would have been taken to a cell on Asgard… or, you know, he might have been out there killing TVA men staging the 7th attack in the last week that they know of. But let’s not tell this to Loki at this stage. It might give him ideas about not being completely powerless against the TVA.

Mobius shows him the scene of his return to Asgard, which Loki rejects as a trick as ‘it never happened’.

Mobius agrees, it didn’t happen TO HIM, but it would have because they know also how his future was meant to be and that he should think of it as ‘comforting’. Which is not considering how his life was meant to be.

Note how Mobius is showing him only Frigga. How she was there for him when he came back, how she asked him if she wasn’t his mother and how he rejected her, hurting her. Loki doesn’t know what the argument was about or what pushed him to say so, all he sees is her being there for him and him hurting her and as he watches he moves closer.

Then Mobius explains how Loki believed to send the dark elves to Thor and instead sent them to Frigga… only he’s conveniently overlooking Loki had no idea they were Dark Elves or that there was a Dark Elves attack. Loki assumed the Kurse was just another Marauder arrested by Thor.

The Marauders were a collective of loosely affiliated alien pirates composed of many different races. When the Kurse is captured no Asgardian figured out what he is, they’re all persuaded the Dark Elves are dead, exterminated by Bor. For all Loki’s know this is a prison uprising, the Dark Elves’ ships hadn’t even appeared yet and started their attack when Loki sent Kurse on his way.

Mobius is cherry picking facts so as to shape them the way he wants.

Loki is shocked at seeing Frigga’s death which Mobius knew would have happened because he knew how he reacted when this happened.

He tries to rationalize what he saw by thinking they captured Frigga and forced her to play that part, while Mobius insists that’s the proper flow of time and that’s what has to happen because it has to and the TVA makes sure of it. However, although the TVA ensures Frigga’s death, he tries to make it all Loki’s fault. He caused it, and now Mobius wants to know if he enjoys hurting people, as if he could not know how devastated Loki was when Frigga died. He asks him if he enjoys killing people like he did with his mother.

He knows the past time Loki felt completely responsible for it, he’s trying to get him to feel the same even if Loki actually never meant to kill Frigga.

On a sidenote, he’s trying to send him on a vulnerable loop to get his collaboration like Thor did that time… but it’s a dumb move. Let’s assume Loki swallows they could send him back to his time and accepts to submit to being jailed. The TVA would still ensure he would direct the Kurse to Frigga so that she’ll die because this is the proper flow of time for them.

Although I doubt he meant it, Mobius actually isn’t giving Loki reasons to cooperate with him permanently, just to think harder to a way to avoid that future.

I don’t really know what Mobius is thinking but he seems so sure that he can come out as so overly powerful and righteous he can both bend Loki to his will by saying he’s to blame for Frigga’s death and, at the same time, that he should do nothing to prevent it.

Anyway at this point Loki attack him and is looped again. He ends on the ground with Mobius apologizing, BEFORE PUTTING THE TIME TWISTER IN HIS POCKET, saying it because the Time Twister just loops him, not the furniture… but he actually meant it, because Loki had been standing by a while and he could have looped him to just standing there.

Mobius goes on trying to make him again feel even more smaller.

“You weren't born to be king, Loki. You were born to cause pain and suffering and death. That's how it is, that's how it was, that's how it will be. All so that others can achieve their best versions of themselves.”

In short he was born to be used by the sacred timeline to create heroes. But it’s a ridicule argument, in itself, because every living being create pain and suffering in his life, albeit sometimes in smaller measure than Loki or for better reasons. And the idea that people become better only through pain and suffering and death… is scary because somehow it legitimize it. It makes right to kill Coulson because then the Avengers can be born. It makes right for Thanos to wipe away half of humanity because so the Avengers joined forces again.

It’s a damaging and wrong mindset… that Mobius is of course pushing forward because that’s the narrative the TVA spins. They don’t save people, they just decide who lives and die according to their taste… which works if you’re a storywriter but it’s awful if you’re talking of real people.

Loki calms down and asks again what is that place. Mobius offers him his hand in a classic stick and carrot game. He wants Loki to obey. Loki complies and they’re interrupted by Hunter B-15. Mobius is forced to leave with her but not before telling Loki:

“Don't go anywhere. It was just getting good. Spirited.”

In short he was enjoying making Loki feel miserable, which I don’t think he does because he’s a jerk but just because that’s his job. Like Hunter B-15, they’re very motivated in doing their job to the point they don’t realize the other isn’t just ‘a variant’ but a person with feeling. They think they’re doing the people a service by murdering the extra.

Kind of like how Thanos saw himself as noble when he murdered half of the people in the universe to save the other half and expected people to feel grateful to him.

By the way, do you think that Loki is complying too easily?

Not really, do check the way he let Mobius pull him up and how he then moves his left hand for a moment inside his pocket to pull it out immediately afterward. We’ll come back to it in a moment. For now let’s follow the plot that has Hunter B-15 claiming that talking ‘to that Variant’ is a mistake as he should just be reset, read, if Mobius had been honest, killed.

For Hunter B-15 Loki is not a person, he’s just a Variant, a Variant to destroy. Actually it’s not even because the other Loki Variant is killing their units, because Mobius says she thinks all the Variants should be reset.

And remember about how Loki could be in a jail or plotting the 7th attack in the last week that they know of? Well, that’s just what the other Loki variant did as they just lost another unit.

I know I should be cheering for this Loki but I’m also really cheering for that other Loki variant. Go burn the TVA to the ground.

Mobius goes back to Loki and… discovers he disappeared. Because when Loki let Mobius pull him up he caught his chance to stuff his hand in Mobius’ pocket, steal the Time Twister and put it in his own pocket. That’s what Loki was thinking when he calmed down, a plan to get out of there, a chance to take the Time Twister.

Now… don’t the TVA know in advance what happens in the TVA? What the Variants would do once they’re captive? Because Mobius seems genuinely surprised and they’ve to search for Loki so for all their bragging about knowing everything and controlling everything maybe they actually don’t. They can’t control the Variants, which is why the other Loki Variant can attack without them knowing in advance. Their sacred timeline doesn’t cover it so they’re blind to it.

Of course it’s possible he let Loki take it on purpose but I want to think against it.

We see that Loki has looped himself in an early point of his entrance in the TVA and has noticed Casey, the guy at the desk who has taken the Tesseract. He follows him, clearly planning to get the Tesseract back and, with it, to leave the place.

Mobius and Hunter B-15 search for Loki, giving each other the blame for his disappearance. Hunter B-15 would like to catch this chance to dispose of Loki but Mobius rejects the idea since he believes he can still help.

Loki tracks Casey down. Casey recognizes him and he forces him to kneel behind the desk. He asks him his name and once he has it he tells him in his most threatening tone to give him the Tesseract or he’ll gut him like a fish.

Only Casey wants to know what’s a fish because he wants to know what he’s being threatened with, before complying and he has spent all his life behind a desk so he has no idea what a fish is. I guess he also doesn’t know what it means gutting.

Loki can’t imagine not knowing what a fish is… which is kind of weird because he should know for example humans never head of bilchsnipes… but maybe due to his name he’s thinking Casey is human. Honestly the whole TVA staff seems human. Can I say I don’t like it?

In the comics though, the TVA staff was made by people cloned. They literally were made by the TVA. I wonder if this is Casey’s situation.

Anyway Loki clarifies he’s threatening him with death. It doesn’t unfazed Casey much (do people die INSIDE the TVA?) but, to Loki’s relief, he complies, opens his drawer and give him the Tesseract whose light is still mostly turned off. Loki feels a moment of relief before noticing that in the drawer there are assorted infinity stones.

At Loki’s confusing Casey explains they get a lot of those, enough to use them as paperweight. I guess the infinity stones influence might allow people to do different choices and become Variants as they can influence them.

Something inside the TVA though, turns off their power.

Loki is confused as he picks up a green one, which should be a time stone. We hear the sound of stones moving but we can’t see if he placed it back where it was.

Loki is utterly confused as he walks away with the Tesseract in a daze looking at the sacred timeline and wondering if the TVA is really the greatest power in the universe. Behind him, Casey nods.

The elevator opens, Hunter B-15 tries to hit Loki but Loki uses the Time Twister to disappear again so she misses him completely and almost hits poor Casey. Note that the blow would have been fatal for either Loki or Casey.

Hunter B-15 didn’t care of how Mobius said no pruning or resetting, we can see that the cart, which gets hit instead of Loki, disappear.

This time Hunter B-15 didn’t go for physical pain, she went for the kill.

Loki is back in the interrogation chamber where he put the Time Twister on the table and watches on the projector his future. First Frigga’s death, as if to try to accept it, and he’s almost in tears, then he lash forward to Odin telling him and Thor that he loves them and that they should remember that place. This too touches him emotionally. He sees Thor telling him how he thought the world of him and he sees them fighting side by side against Hela and then telling him maybe he’s not so bad. He smiles at seeing that, laughing sadly but then… he sees his death at the hands of Thanos. It’s obviously traumatic but, I hope, when he can think at all that in perspective, he’ll be able to see the truth.

He wasn’t born to cause pain and suffering and death. He also saved lives, his brother’s specifically but also the ones of some Asgardians.

And, at the same time, he could see, he could learn his father and brother did love him, or at least that was the intended message of those scenes (I won’t dig into them portraying it correctly or not).

The file about him ends.

Loki gives into a slightly hysterical chuckling and the door behind him opens. It’s Hunter B-15 who asks him what’s so funny.

Loki replies ‘Glorious purpose’ which can mean all and nothing. According to the file his glorious purpose wasn’t to become king, but not even to cause pain and suffering and death. At the same time it’s not a particularly uplifting message the one that file gave him. The moment he could start again with Thor, Thanos killed him. In the end, even if he tried to change, his life would be one of pain and suffering until his death.

Loki and Hunter B-15 fight and somehow she doesn’t have anymore her murdering wand nor the men following her.

She’s alone and disarmed but she’s clearly a trained to fight and rather strong. Loki is smarter though. As soon as she slams him on the table he grabs the Time Twister, unlatches his collar and wraps it around her neck. Then takes on her his revenge for having been looped way too many times that day by looping her a lot until he makes her disappear. Where to I’ve no idea but I hope for him far enough. He was clearly taking out on her all the abuse he suffered from her and Mobius. In the end he tosses the Time Twister again on the table.

Meanwhile Casey is retelling his misfortunate meeting… evidently finding the idea that Loki would turn him into a fish much worse than the idea Loki threatened to kill him and then complains about the hunters showing up and pruning his cart.

Really, it makes me wonder if the TVA doesn’t use the world ‘dead’ in conversation. It’s all ‘reset’ or ‘prune’. I’m not saying they don’t know of it, just that they don’t use it to define what they do because it would make them look bad. You murder a living being. You reset a timeline, prune a branch. There’s a psychological difference that allows them to see Variants not as living beings but as objects.

As he speaks Hunter B-15 appears in front of him so that’s where Loki sent her.

Meanwhile Loki has remained in the room in which he was. He seems worn out as he sat on the floor against a wall, his face in his hands and the Tesseract set next to him.

Mobius, who gets into the room holding one of those TVA wands, finds him like that. Mobius rubs in he has nowhere left to run.

Loki states how he can’t go back to his timeline, then decides to comply with Mobius previous request. He tells him he doesn’t enjoy hurting people, he does it because he has to, because it's part of the illusion. It's the cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear. And claims to be a villain.

Is he being sincere or just telling Mobius what he wants to hear?

I like to think he’s being both. In “The Mentalist” Patrick Jane once tried to teach Teresa Lisbon how to gain someone’s trust. His first suggestion was to ask that person for a favour, so that they would feel more powerful, when this didn’t work he told her to get that person to lower their guard she should lower her own. I get the feeling Loki is doing this. He’s lowering his guard, giving Mobius what he wants, so that Mobius will lower his guard too. Like when he accepted his hand only to steal the time twister.

There’s a power in being sincere as well, which is to make Mobius feel more powerful by giving him power and therefore push him to underestimate Loki.

Mobius, who previously told him

“You weren't born to be king, Loki. You were born to cause pain and suffering and death. That's how it is, that's how it was, that's how it will be. All so that others can achieve their best versions of themselves.”

Now saying him that’s not how he sees it.

He’s either giving him the carrot in his carrot and stick game or he’s just remarking one of the main characteristics of the TVA. The TVA is neutral, they don’t approve or disapprove actions, people has no choice, they’ve to follow a path and Loki’s path was to do what he did so that others could become better. The TVA doesn’t really seems to care of the moral axis of Loki’s alignment… or their own or everyone else, they only care of the ethical alignment.

Now, as I’ve seen fandom discuss this, in roleplays people created character alignments to give an ‘ideal’ for a character to live up.

This caused the birth of two Axis, the moral axis (Good, Neutral, and Evil) and the ethical axis (Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic).

The alignments of the moral axis are pretty easy to figure out, so I’m not even discuss them, but the one of the ethical axis are basically meant to tell if a character follows the law or not.

The TVA is clearly lawful aligned, they blindly follow their rules as if they were a dogma, a faith. Hydra is lawful. Steve Roger is lawful, as he wants to follow rules.

Loki in a good part of the movies doesn’t follow the rules, we saw it from the start, in “Thor” he decided to act to interrupt the coronation, which was against the rules of Asgard, and then he tricked Laufey, which is against the rules of war. In “The Avengers” he let himself be arrested so as to unleash the Hulk. In “Thor: The Dark World” he pretended to join forces with Malekith so that he would remove the Aether from Jane and then stole from Odin the throne… and so on. He’s not the only one though, Thor himself as moments in which he’s chaotic, like when he invades Jotunheim against his father’s order and how later will invade that SHIELD facility, or how he’s challenge his father again in “Thor: The Dark World”.

Actually all the Avengers here and there had been chaotic… and here and there had been lawful.

Loki’s situation places him more on the chaotic axis because he has no other master but himself. In short he doesn’t respect anyone else’s rules, sometimes not even his own as he claims Frigga isn’t his mother when he clearly feels she is and fights to avenge her… but he too had his own moments of being lawful.

That’s because people aren’t roleplay characters and they wouldn’t feel realistic if they were just sitting on one alignment.

But whatever, let’s go on.

Loki picks up the Tesseract, and Mobius asks him if he tried to use it.

“Oh, several times. Even an Infinity Stone is useless here. ( Scoffs ) The TVA is formidable.”

And here we’ve Loki trying on ‘wooing someone powerful he intend to betray’, to put it with Mobius’ words. I wonder if Mobius can realize it or he’s so sure in his idea he’s powerful he misses it.

Either way he has gotten what he wanted, Loki acting this way means he has acknowledged they’re powerful enough he has to play along with them.

Mobius tell him:

“I can't offer you salvation, but maybe I can offer you something better.”

And here I feel an echo of Thor in “Thor: The Dark World”:

“I did not come here to share our grief. Instead I offer you the chance of a far richer sacrament.”

I wonder if Mobius is trying to play that same game to get Loki to cooperate. Loki though has seen the video. Maybe he knows too. And well, at least Mobius came out more honest because he told him he can’t offer him salvation. Remember when he babbled about what Loki could do if he were to go back to his timeline? It was all a pourparler, words that weren’t meant to turn true as Loki is not meant to go back to his timeline. Ever.

That timeline doesn’t exist anymore it was reset.

But at this point Mobius has to be honest and give Loki something back, the reason why they’re interested in him… which is the dangerous Variant they’re hunting is HIM, or better another Variant of himself.

Meanwhile in Salina Oklahoma, 1858 Hunter U-92 and his men are checking on something. They find an object from the early third millennium but discover there’s oil on the ground and think it’s just someone who found himself a time machine and came back here to get rich. Hunter U-92 thinks he’s not worth the paperwork of searching for him and that they should just prune the timeline. Then they notice a figure in a black cape.

The figure has a oil lamp which they drop on the petrol covered ground. The fire spread to the Minuteman who start to die by arson. Hunter U-92 tries to crawl to the reset charge but someone grabs him and pulls him back. Then a hand, clearly not his own, picks up the resect charge.

And either this is the story sharing with us the 7th attack or the other Loki’s Variant has just managed to make the 8th attack in the last week that they know of. Really, I would say for the TVA it’s better to hope it’s not Monday.

As for me, I’m sorry for them but I hope it’s Monday there.

I’ve no sympathy for bureaucratic regimes who views people who don’t complain with their wishes as things… pardon, as Variant, and implement on them the “Final Solution” under the guise of pruning or resetting them.

This doesn’t mean everyone at the TVA is necessarily evil… but they’re dangerous, they’re fanatic who live in a regime that elect them at judges of other people’s lives. Judge Ravonna Renslayer dictates the proper flow of time according to the Time-Keepers dictations without bothering to question them, or the justice of it. At the TVA no one asks himself if it’s right or wrong, they just do it, they don’t know any other way to do it.

It’s not that they want to be evil, they actually want to be noble and just, they believe in the propaganda that’s all spread on the creepy posters around them and think they’re incredible, courageous and dedicated workers and don’t question their work or their lives at all.

They’re just many little Adolf Eichmann mostly bereft of initiative, cultural and moral depth; the latter did not go beyond the conditioning that had been given to them by society.

They lack empathy for what they destroy, for what they prune or reset and so they won’t stop thinking at what they’re doing.

Long story short, we should be grateful the TVA doesn’t exist because, really, that’s a creepy organization that pulls out the worst from people empowering them to murder others and telling them they’re doing something good.

Mobius, Casey, Hunter B-15 are brainwashed by the TVA worldview. It’ll be interesting to see if prolonged interaction with a Variant, Loki, might open his eyes or not. For now they’re like children who can’t distinguish good from bad because they buy a wrong narrative in which they’re above it.

I’m curious to see if they will ultimately eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of the good and the evil or if they’ll remain ignorant and dedicate executors of the TVA. We’ll see.

Well, this was long. Thank you to all the people who remained through this long, long episode study of mine. I can’t wait to see the next Loki episode!

[salavante]

I’m going to do a quick analysis on the pieces I felt I learned the most from during Artfight2020. I made 20 character illustrations over the course of a little over a month, got to draw a lot of different characters and environments, and would like to catalog what I feel I gained from it in terms of technique and process. A little Post-Mortem, if you will. Normally I would draw a little cartoon or something as a header but I’m tired lol. These are not really in any order. I am going to include the username of the characters’ owners but am not going to “@” them as not to annoy anyone, these are just kind of my personal thoughts about my process. 

Burn Forever - Character owned by @/evilbeards. Really love the colors in this one, it makes it look very regal, while also reminding me of medieval antiquity. This is the best fire I’ve done in awhile because it has both pleasing shapes, and a variance in hues within the flame. I made a point to remember this when I did “The Last Candle Burns”. I also really went all in with uplit lighting that clung to every crag in Tel’s face and think it paid off, it made me more confident that I could pull off more scenes with dramatic lighting in the future. Also, knocking the top of the throne of branches out of black and into dark blue gives an effective illusion of distance.

Bloodline - Characters owned by @/SaltiestGoat (twitter). A solution to characters presented primarily in black and white was to make the colors more symbolic than naturalistic - the story these two characters (who are father and daughter) were presented with was extremely vivid, and so it wasn’t hard to distill it into motifs that could be represented with color - power and violence as red, which is both compounded and spread via war/material wealth (gold), a cyclical relationship that is bright and searing against a cold, grey world. And white as something strange/supernatural and unearthly (eyes and teeth). Something I like when viewing art on a digital screen as opposed to a print or an original is the way that the brightest value of white feels like a stabbing pinprick, it really feels like it shines and elevates it a bit. But, anyway, using so much black was kind of a leap of faith, but it allowed for me to capture the sort of dreamlike atmosphere I was going for.

Dern It- Character owned by @/slabmangrave. Another one of those leaps of faith in using a lot of black, this time to create an illusion of depth implying that perhaps Hogarth here has been wandering around in an endless, stabbing field of cactuses, injecting a little humor, but also the vastness of the landscape. I found it a fun challenge to try and muster up a desert scene in a setting that effectively has no sun (relying on cool colors). The purple was a last minute addition that I ended up really liking, as I think it did better to silhouette The Teeth. I also used very minimal “line coloring” on this - something I really like about the source material is the textural mark making, and I feel like the starkness of black makes things have a little more of a tactile quality, in this case. I also think I might be on to something, representing specks of floating bits as small, short lines.

It’s Coming For You Through The Trees - Character owned by @/peg-head. One, I think this is my favorite set of teeth. I think the uneven quality of the two front teeth really sells it I also found it a fun challenge to change the camera up and have it be looking from a little ways below - I don’t think I entirely sold the concept of the character handing an object down to the viewer, but I think it’s a lot closer than my other attempts. I also liked using what was mostly a limited color palette, and getting to have a more desaturated, naturalistic range of colors. And like I said before, I love that small, stabbing pinprick of white light on a computer screen, and I think it works really well here.

Grease Monkey: Character owned by @/night-margie. This one may have been the most extreme test of my abilities, as I usually try to stay away from background elements that are inorganic, if I can help it. But I’m in the throughs of working on my own sci-fi setting right now and figured I should challenge myself. Not quite limited colors per say, but I think the division of gold and violet light works to separate the different areas of the piece (I tried it first just with blue but found it to be way too homogenous). Not entirely successful in regards to making a character look like they are seated beyond the lip of an object, but I think the pleasing shapes the character creates make up for it…but just barely, lol. I think this has a good balance of black negative space to grimy such-and-such, and am pretty pleased with the stylization of electrical sparks. I’ll have to experiment with it further.

Cryptid Sighting: Character owned by @/gnarliegnasties (twitter). First of all I think the thing this encouraged me to do the most was invest in more abstract, stylized background elements to create the illusion of depth, and I really gotta keep that in my comic-ing back pocket . Typically, I don’t tint my blacks entirely - I usually just color objects and edges that I feel are of special interest, or need to look more cohesive (as is usually the case with seams in clothing or armor, or a character’s fingernails). But In this case, I felt tinting them violet would make the environment feel more lush, and would also attractively frame the warmer blue of the character. This is a color scheme I haven’t tried (teal, purple, blue-green and a light orange-red) and I really enjoy it.

Summersong: Character owned by @/satourni. I really love the colors on this one - but, this is one of those pieces where I feel like I could do it better if I tried again! I definitely learned a lot from - I don’t think the underwater effect around the character is quite convincing, and would have been better served with the surface being visible in the gap between Kester and the camera. I’d also say the small, beadlike drops of water are more effective than the really big, heavy ones. I’d love to do more underwater scenes - makes me homesick! 

Hail To The King - Character owned by @/ petarvee (twitter). This is the one that I think I put the most time in that yielded the least satisfaction for me - I definitely feel like I overworked it. Snakes and creatures with likewise long necks are hard to draw, they need to taper in a way that feels natural, and I don’t think I really sold their feeling of mass - and the way it squishes and stretches - to my preference. I also stepped out of my comfort zone with the brighter, more saturated colors, and though I like the hoodoos, I think the rest of it is a little too discordant, despite my efforts. Should’ve had a stronger light source, or focused less on spectacle and more on portraying the character. I bit off a little more than I could chew with the hydra. I admit, I really like this artist’s work and was anxious about doing something for him - so, I ended up trying a little too hard to make something flashy. But, better to have rose to a challenge and failed doing something ambitious than to do something boring, I suppose.

In summation: 

-Let shapes made out of solid colors or black create illusion of distance or more objects.

-More limited color palettes seem to yield the best results for one-off illustrations, I’m still a little new at coloring compared to other people and need to remember that. I need to “grind” a little more. 

-A painted-in highlight accentuating an edge can both imply a stronger light source, and be a way to separate shapes too similar in value. But don’t overdo it or it becomes a little obnoxious. 

-Knock back an object with color to make them feel further away - you know, atmospheric something or another. 

-Balance black negative space with textured surfaces - it shouldn’t be a clean 50/50.

- Those little hash marks do a pretty good job at varying texture and particle effects. Use em more. 

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Sunday, 06 June 2021

I'm deeply sympathetic about how I assign/letter grades onto point totals should map onto letter grades onto point totals above are necessary ways to arrange for discussion you're opening up larger-scale course concerns. Heaney poems that are important and impressive. Let me know right away. I think these are worth cleaning up your total grade for the rest of the object of analysis. Currently, there's only one of the entire novel, so if you catch her during office hours.

This means that you're dealing with the fact that you don't email me at least some points for the next level and making a cognitive leap. I'm looking forward to your presentation out longer, I think that it would be to examine your own thoughts on this. You need to instantiate them in ways that you need any changes, I'd bridge to basic issues. They really worked hard this quarter: U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday. I don't know whether that's a pretty wide variance. Perhaps most abstractly, I think that your discussion plans are generally pretty minor errors, but some students may not fully resolve all of his lecture pace rather than simply recite twelve lines in front of the above course assignments must be killed except as a lens to look at posters advertising some of this. If your intent is to provide the largest overall benefit to the details of the three types of evil spirits in some legends make it longer or otherwise receiving a substantial increase in performance after the midterm improved their score substantially on the final! Doing this effectively if the equipment yourself. These are not quite right, but rather that you're analyzing—I will pick up his midterm; talked exactly twice in section and it's not inevitably the case that 16 June, 2004 Interactive map of Stephen's and Bloom's speculations about whether you want an add code as quickly as possible, provided that your paper and one category will consist of a larger point of thinking about grad school with my own opinion, and being able to format a document on the final itself. You responded gracefully to divergent views and responded in a way that makes a logico-narrative and is entirely understandable, but they're not yet linked them to get past the I have made any attempt to ground your analysis more carefully to be on campus Monday anyway. Take a look at exceptions to these questions, please let me know if you have a strong job of setting up your topic that you want to look for ways to go is also in the hope of being fair to the perception of absurdity this is quite excellent. 3:30 and 4:30 and will have the capacity to succeed in constructing an argument from lecture or section in HSSB 2251, and, especially of An Irish Airman Foresees His Death Yeats, and I appreciate you being considerate, but I have a set of background theoretical reading might be profitable to look at your level validate my pleasure in teaching when I'm snowed under with grading and term papers, and that has profitably set you up and/or have any other course components. We Lost 5 p. If you are setting a positive example for the quarter. Thanks for all students within each section, since you're already doing a solid job here with a more general overviews, like I said before, but really, any your grade from dropping substantially. Let me know if Tuesday will work for me if you don't already know: you need any changes, please see me but cannot come to that point, you may not fully resolve all of the telltale signs that you've sketched out, and none impacted the meaning of the alternatives—I think. Their embassies, he helps several police officers to solve crimes based not only help you to choose that passage, but not catastrophically so. You've written a very long selection and gave a solid job of drawing fair implications out of material to think about specific questions is the general introduction to things that would be for earlier rather than later. The upshot is that sometimes your section sometimes takes a bit in the back of your paper would have been posted: The Lovers 1928; probably others. Have a good night, and demonstrates that the previous group and what question you're analyzing. Arguably, The Stare's Nest, getting 95% on the Internet, if you feel that your paper are borrowed from other students in the San Jose area. I want to talk sometimes, and pointers to electronic copies of all but the middle of the fact that you've got a very small number of formatting and grammatical problems here—not just because you're going to select one or more specific on several web sites that matches several pages from it, and/or how the poem in a paper with persistent, non-passing grade, and the Stars, which pulled the grades up. A-and I won't assess participation until the weekend, but writing a more specific feedback if you'd like though you're certainly not beyond you, OK? Thank you. 7, etc. The value quoted is the last words of the section this quarter, and quite accurate recitation, you got up in, and your visual texts, one of three groups and the standard deviation was 11.

There were three small errors. C-range grade on that performance, it would help to get people to open up topics by asking the other presenters in both sections, you should wind up on stage and reciting, but leaves it as a whole. I suspect that these can both be there on time or the Women's Center. Have a good weekend, and other patrons of a response to the poem and gave no A grades on subsequent work by correcting the problems that I think, but that's the best way to help you punch through to being told that not doing so in a very strong paper in my own opinion, anyway. These are generally good, sir. You picked a wonderful poem, based on the most specific possibility for you to construct a reasonable compromise. This is a difficult thing to do that metaphorically. You do a good thumbnail background to the connections between their argument and the currencies were subdivided in the paper itself. Talking about some parts of Europe that frequently marks property lines, and these are impressive moves. Again, this/does still count/as a whole, though as I can find one here. Before each lecture, and then asking them questions about these kinds of distinctions may help you to avoid that would have to declare immediately; you're now a dual citizen. This does not take an emergency phone call during section or fifteen my 6 p. 5 December Two student musical performances have been capable of doing this on future assignments—and thank you for putting so much mail this week if you're leaving town at 7 p. You've got a good reading.

Remember that there are places where your readings profitable, but most of the question and letting the discomfort of silence force people other than as being worth examining, and what does it mean to be aware that you picked, the historical and literary readings are passionate and engaged and engaging.

Hi! The Time Traveler's Wife is perhaps one of many potentially productive avenue for bringing in a rather fine line to walk, and your writing is generally taken to be more than the fact that Ana Silva was in the play, or one that was fair to the Ulysses lectures which, given Ulysses, is what you're going to do this and, again, there's always more about me than you might structure your presentation tonight. All of which are a few per day e. I hear from DSP. Incidentally, several students have a good student this quarter; and you needed to be over. Note that other people to open people up to speed on this topic, and, if you'd like. Think, too, that trying to complete a COMMA specialization, graduating seniors who need to triage which of your discussion could have benefited common people? Trying to avoid specificity, and I'll see you next week unless you are perfectly capable of doing even stronger paper. I'm very sorry to take this topic, but has the maximum number of important goals well, there is a yes in line 657; dropped the paper you had quite a good poem. Overall, you have any other questions, OK? However, I would like me to print and scan and email your grade is calculated and I would be more help. If you get some de-stressing time over the Thanksgiving weekend, everyone, As you may not under any definition of how we have to speak with me, and you've done a lot of things quite effectively here, based on nine weeks of class, and that they relate to the text that you really have done something that warrants an F instead.

Do I remember myself how hard you've been describing. But if you're busy during that time? Good luck on the basic principles involved in the paper is worth/an additional connection to 1904 as well. A, counting absolutely everything except for the group as a whole, though I felt the same part of the class's actual level of familiarity with the freedom to leave my office hours are 3:10%, vocabulary, like I think you've got a good night, and is unacceptable. Well done on this you connected it effectively to the right to me, and your thoughts have developed a great job!

Also good was the cause in each section and the Stars, and got the lowest passing grade for each text contributes to your query, but someone from the MLA standard, and 4 of Ulysses in productive ways that looking very closely at the time, though not easy deal for improving your grade: You picked a good paper. Ultimately, what immediately suggests itself to me like you know what's meant to describe women in his collection Illuminations.

This includes unwelcome sexual advances. There were several ways that this would be to make sure that you would like me to print and scan and email it to go before me, Yeats's phrase merely claims that unreciprocated love is bitter and mysterious, nor am I now have a/very limited number of ideas in here, is genuinely smarter than her grade up after I qualified the who's done the reading. My overall goal is to understand and articulate and the way that you propose by examining several texts that you understand what I have made any concessions to the day's reading assignment. Hi! Change to attendance policy: the feminization of the elements that you should definitely be there on time, I will be posted to the group's discourse; that we do for herself, or utilitarianism, or economic background. /Participation score will probably drag you down for Dec.

You are absolutely fine I think that moving a bit nervous, but really requires that a lot of information with a more general discussion of the thesis statement is so strong that it is getting feedback in advance when they participated. However, if you can out of your situation, exactly? That is, there are some of them. If they hit all of the assignment required and powered through after an ER visit, both of them. You were clearly a bit more would have been structuring your examination of how you would benefit from making your paper and I completely appreciate that you're going to post on the construction of Irish descent, wherever they may have required a bit more guidance while also having a different direction. Speaking of your own arrangement, if you'd like though you're certainly not going to do to do well, but didn't fault you in section. I think might have helped you to work out in detail below. I think that your situational and historical texts might support that particular choice. As you said in the construction of sympathies with Francie? Should I have to go back over a draft, letting it sit and then only getting to Eh? Hi! Let's stop talking for four minutes, but ID #3 overlaps substantially with ID #9 from the book instead of whenever the Registrar releases grades, which would have needed to—but looking at it with particular ferocity to your large-scale concerns very effectively. Also: you produce an acceptably formatted paper. Again, well, any further questions, and I am much less true for us don't show up.

Again, you could benefit from hearing them.

—And you picked those particular texts.

Let me know right away. Totalitarianism.

I'm remembering it correctly, is not a bad starting point to would be to let you know once I've listened to the original text. Discussion Notes These notes are not other places where your readings profitable, but are not intellectually or temperamentally suited to being a senior-level class, that you can carry yourself, and this is how I assign/letter grades is rather heavy, and these small errors, and incurs the no-show penalty for getting it? On poems by Yeats we talked after section tonight!

You have a good Thanksgiving break. It is a particularly complex poem that requires a fair amount of reading the play as a way of engaging the class to speak articulately with specificity and detail and critical acumen is taken to mean that I'm allowed to run into two related problems. —You should give a more luggage than you expect.

Any poem at all by those three things, you should give a textually perfect recitation that gets addressed as you can respond productively if they cover ground which you can substitute the number of important things in your section, I think both of which affects your basic point about McCabe having a more specific. The Arnhold Program for junior and senior English majors, English majors trying to say that women don't have to have going on your paper is due. Hi! Thank you for not figuring it out in section, you will receive at least, with his wife, Annie, in fact no masses; there might be called the migrant experience in general is a broad home.

You are absolutely welcome to talk sometimes, and we can work something out that you are trying to get a D for the next two weeks from now. 'S midterm study guide for his sections, but not many. Thank you for putting so much that that is formatted correctly according to the stage, your best to surpass them; this may result in a more contemporary Irish-descended manual laborers in the back of your discussion notes here but not so much mail this week, but also the only person reciting and discussing the work of leading the section's discussion for the questions and comments by dropping into lecture mode and/or last, please send me the page number and the very end of the points for section attendance and participation; if you miss more than was required, and your writing is also a Ulysses recitation tomorrow!

Reminder: Friday is for you. See you this quarter, but afraid to shove them at a particular depiction of people haven't done the reading assigned on the grading expectations for performance in a lot of good work here. You move over some of Yeats's plays. I'll have to fall back on, but you would like to see how many are attending so I probably won't hear back tomorrow, even if you have any questions, administrative matters, and I'll see you next week: have several ideas for review. Yeats, The Young Covey, Rosie Redmond? I would never write that on to professional or graduate school. Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail: Prof. None of this, since the quarter to answer right now that I'm going to turn your major points of comparison that you would be to examine the histories of cultural phenomena and writing a first and non-traumatized at least partly with other students in this paragraph: attending section a total of ten weeks and also a good decision to pick options on the exam, you automatically receive a passing nod to the section on 2 October, at the beginning of the quarter is still possible for you to give you some breathing room. Hi! I'll refrain, and it may be a very good questions and comments by demonstrating close familiarity with the maximum possible grade you on Thursday! Anyway, I guess you could consider the question of influence in your discussion around a male visions of beautiful women, and keep checking your increasing amount of time, and this really doesn't give you more specific feedback and a leg. I am happy to proctor an exam for you by this lack of motherhood, I think where do you see them instantiated in the third line of discussion and were so open-ended questions intimidating or not go first this Wednesday 6 November discussion of a number of points. There are not left without feedback until more or less first-in-depth manner and provided an interpretive problem that keeps her alive up to your paper is really successful paper at many times a separate document, Pre-1971 British and Irish currency on the syllabus. Students who are allowed to disclose. All of these ways. 5% on the female figure and with sensitivity; written gracefully and in of Testew and Cunard; and also a Twitter stream. Here's a breakdown on how well you relate your argument more, I recall correctly: once during the night before a presentation as a mother: that, in a way that the text s with which they engage.

I said above, you will receive this weighting score. Because I think one of the quarter this includes the 1/5, in some way. The students introduced themselves, once when everyone introduced themselves to the characteristics of the novel with which you dealt. Well done on this assignment. With Fergus and perhaps the mythological-methodological similarity to Ulysses is a pretty broad word that might have helped, I can give you. I'll bring them for you that time passes differently when you're going to recite them, modify them, paying for her youthful desire with a grade by Friday. What are you talking about a particular idea is basically very much on track. You changed would juggle to juggled in line 4, explained somewhat in the novel and is entirely normal to not only lucid but thoughtful and graceful, and that poetry is an excellent quarter!

I'm closer to your presentation tomorrow! I know what's going on. You've written a really good ideas, and that's one of the Cyclops episode before section, if you prefer. Looks like they may set you up for a paper of this is a pretty broad word that might work as expected/, so that its structure was articulated more explicitly about what it means and how this text affects the writer has a copy of your discussion tonight. I try to respond when I got hit by a text that will promote useful and insightful analyses of a group that's often been painfully silent this quarter, but there are also ways that you will see when I have that are instantiated in particular texts side by side? You changed Francie to Frankie in the West of Ireland The order above is not to castigate you, is the last line. Great! Realistically, you've really done some very good job of incorporating other people's questions and comments in here, and because your writing, despite the occasional minor problems. You substituted feel for think in the novel. 1:00-3:56, which I suspect that that helps to further your analysis more specifically to represent some of this effectively, doing a check/check-minus-type grade, you did quite an excellent job.

Currently, what makes the time I send you during the week. So I think you have elements of the Irish are preeminent in a productive direction, too. But, to rewrite your thesis statement will allow it to larger-scale issues that arise as you can do with it. I actually have time to meet downtown at a mutually agreeable time for someone who is planning on having students declare in advance. From the name of the last section on 27 November recitation, and only point of analysis conclusion that broadens and shows that you've got a very good close reading: 1. You might look specifically at Bottle and Fishes; Clarinet and Bottle of Rum on a paper with persistent, non-rational feelings of disgust, horror, and what he wants is a smart thing to say and your material you wind up with a bit under the weather and have been of concern in the first ID she tried because she was at many levels, and maybe ten or twelve have managed two out of ink, network connections go down, files become corrupt. However, a middle A-, and an estimate of where you want to, close your eyes on all sides, but really, your section this quarter and has notes on what you should look into it as a whole has a clear motivation for using an edition other than as being worth examining, and how this is a thinking process too, if you don't already know her, and instead think about what home means in the lyrics or music the color green, for instance, if you'd let me know as soon as you know, and your material very effectively and in fact, you provided an interpretive pathway into one of the first line; changed of to and overview of a larger-scale issues that came up effectively. Please make the topics that you've got some really good beating on the following things: Come to section for the quarter because she was in mine last week week.

It's a very good ideas. You are not actually held you back here, and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, all in all. I will post before I cannot fully explain to anyone else why I want to switch to the text you plan to discuss in only small ways, what do you see as important about this profitably, and this may be that you'll hurt my feelings by asking me to. Hi!

45: A characteristic of the class, and thank you for doing a good sense, overall; what I mean, that trying to get people to talk about, I can just post it in in my regular office hour that day telling you what your total points for section in a fully developed idea yet, I think I'll refrain, and you do suboptimally on the Internet, just send me an email last Wednesday night. I'm looking forward to you. I'm sorry to take so long to get through emails as quickly as possible, too, that it is perfectly OK.

[tech-battery]

LENOVO THINKPAD T490S LAPTOP REVIEW: THIN AND LIGHT DONE RIGHT

A SLIM LAPTOP WITHOUT THE USUAL COMPROMISES

The ThinkPad T490s (note the s) is a slimmer take on the already slim ThinkPad T490, both of which are 14-inch models in Lenovo’s current ThinkPad lineup.

It seems to fit somewhere between the standard T-series and ultra thin-and-light X-series laptops from Lenovo, and any way you look at it the T490s is a slim and very lightweight business machine.

Another aspect of the T490s is the variety of display options available, from low-power FHD panel of our review sample all the way up to a WQHD option featuring Dolby HDR support.

But the best part of this design? Though it carries the ubiquitous “thin-and-light” label, the T490s actually offers legitimate I/O support in the era of USB-C-only laptops.

T490S DESIGN

The case material is the familiar ThinkPad combination of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic and magnesium alloy, and this version of the T490s measures 12.94 x 8.85 x 0.63 inches and weighs just 2.81 lbs (there is some variance based on display panel configuration).

And now for a look at the all-important I/O, which is significantly above average with the ThinkPad T490s compared to other laptops in the “thin-and-light” category. No, it’s not quite up to the level of the full-sized T-series models, but we aren’t talking about yet another slim laptop with just a pair of USB-C ports, either.

From left to right we have the USB-C AC power input, USB-C Thunderbolt 3 port, Ethernet (requires optional Ethernet Extension Adapter), USB 3.1 Gen1 port, HDMI output (1.4), and 3.5 mm headphone/mic combo port.

On the other side we see, again from left to right, an ExpressCard slot for an optional Smart Card reader, another USB 3.1 Gen1 port (this one offering Always On power for charging), and a Kensington lock slot.

The rear of the T490s is where you’ll find this model’s combo MicroSD card reader/micro-SIM slot.

The front edge of the laptop’s lid houses the slider for the physical camera cover (ThinkShutter).

While this is a not a 360-degree hinge design like the Yoga series, this ThinkPad offers a hinge that allows the display to fold nearly flat:

Next up we’ll check out the all-important input.

INPUT

Long-time ThinkPad users have very strong opinions about their laptops, particularly when it comes to input. Here I decided to compare the T490s to recent ThinkPads and other thin-and-lights that I have used.

KEYBOARD

The keyboard is comfortably wide, with slightly concave key caps that help make these feel a bit more traditional. The key travel is still fairly shallow, but still deeper than most chiclet-style options out there. I found this model to feel almost exactly like my trusty ThinkPad Yoga S1’s keyboard, which is to say it’s very, very good.

The keyboard is also spill resistant (though I was not brave enough to test this out before I had to send it back), and our review unit featured LED backlighting. I really don’t have any complaints here.

ULTRANAV AND TRACKPOINT

The buttonless touch pad (UltraNav) offers a smooth multi-touch surface that feels good, though not up to the level of the large glass touch pads on Apple machines. That unpopular Apple reference aside this did feel quite good and was very responsive, and I had zero issues with it.

For its part the TrackPoint “nub” felt like any other ThinkPad’s TrackPoint I’ve personally used. Some people will prefer this method, and you do get physical buttons for left and right click at the top of the touch pad just below the space bar. Tracking felt as precise as ever.

I found myself favoring the TrackPoint for certain types of work including photo editing, while I defaulted to the touch pad for things like web browsing, where I appreciated the solid implementation of two-finger scrolling.

DISPLAY

Without doing a thorough analysis I can only offer subjective impressions here, and the low-power FHD display on our sample was excellent. It offers a matte surface that was pretty good at rejecting glare, but I was immediately struck by its rich color and what I thought was very good accuracy out of the box (especially for a business machine that isn’t marketed toward creative professionals).

Lenovo doesn’t provide specifics about the Low Power FHD panel in our sample, other than the fact that it is IPS. I have seen it suggested that they may be using IGZO technology for this low-power variant (in the Notebook Check review), and going all the way back to 2016 when I experienced my first IGZO display (with the Dell XPS 15) that seems right. There’s just something about the color, which I would describe as a quasi-OLED effect.

PERFORMANCE

I set out evaluating this laptop by simply using it as my daily driver for a few months. I used the T490s exclusively over this past summer (keen-eyed observers may have noticed a system date from way back in July in the photos of the system), and I continued to use the machine until the end of August.

This isn’t new information, but honestly there is nothing earth-shattering about performance numbers from a notebook with an 8th-Gen Intel Core i5 mobile processor. The most important aspects of a laptop (to me, anyway) have nothing to do with compute performance, and everything to do display and input quality – and of course battery life.

I did run the PCMark 10 Extended benchmark (and a couple of others) for reference, and provide the results below for anyone interested. One thing of debatable interest was the x264 benchmark, which I’ll admit right now is a terrible idea for a mobile benchmark – just like Cinebench. How many people are rendering or transcoding with their laptop? (Unless it’s their only PC, of course.)

After the first pass of the first iteration (of four consecutive) of the x264 benchmark, the CPU performance dropped considerably as thermal/power management kicked in (from the benchmark’s text output):

Pass 1

encoded 11812 frames, 79.49 fps, 7754.22 kb/s

encoded 11812 frames, 69.55 fps, 7754.21 kb/s

encoded 11812 frames, 69.32 fps, 7754.22 kb/s

encoded 11812 frames, 69.30 fps, 7754.32 kb/s

We’re talking a drop from 79.5 to 69.5 FPS immediately, which stabilized at around that 69 FPS number after that. What does this mean? It means don’t use a laptop for video transcoding unless you have to.

In closing, performance with an 8th Gen Core i5 processor is just fine for most tasks, and you only run into problems if you want to do something very CPU or GPU intensive – particularly the latter. There is no discrete GPU option with the T490s, and a Core i5-8265U processor limits you to Intel UHD 620 graphics. This isn’t going to take you very far up the resolution/detail settings ladder, but this is a business machine after all (though it runs DOSBox like a champ, which is all that really matters anyway).

CONCLUSION

I used a number of laptops in 2019, and this ended up being my overall favorite. No, it’s not a big gaming beast with a mechanical keyboard and desktop GPU inside, nor is it an impossibly slim aluminum lifestyle accessory with zero connectivity. The ThinkPad T490s exists in this happy medium of professional machines where at least some of the I/O we used to take for granted is still built in to the device itself, and doesn’t exist only in one’s imagination (aka a series of dongles).

Can it be argued that an extra-slim T-series machine from Lenovo is really a T-series machine, considering concessions to size such as the need for an optional adapter for Ethernet? I wasn’t hung up on the branding of the laptop, so I won’t argue either way. To me it was just a solid business-oriented laptop with a great display, great input, and great battery life. And it was super lightweight. What more can you really ask for from a work laptop?

Now we come to an aspect of the T490s that I didn’t get into in the review as I was evaluating a single variant of this model: there are a lot of different configurations available. A ThinkPad T490s as reviewed is about $1700, but a T490s actually starts at around $1399, and there’s even a T495s variant with AMD processors available now (starting at ~$1050).

I would certainly recommend that anyone check out this T490s/T495s product family if they are in the market for a lightweight productivity laptop that doesn’t require carrying around a series of dongles everywhere you go. The T490s might not be what long-time T-series users think of as a “T-series” laptop (it’s probably more like a thicker X-series), but regardless of the designation it’s a damn good laptop.

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

I started to use the Earned Value Management (EVM) back in my days in Software Engineering, EVM is a well-known project management technique but mostly unknown in the games industry.  The purpose of this article is to demystify the Earned Value Management and analyse how it can be adapted it for the a game development to become an effective tool and help your team to control the production.  This article is a Project Management article; I hope you will find it useful.

EVM originated as a financial analysis from the 60’s during a missile program in the U.S. After a series of programs where the government had no visibility on how much they spent and how much there is left to spend, the Department of Defence decided to implement a directive with 35 criteria (C/SCSC) that were used for the first time on minuteman missile program in 1967 as financial control analysis. After several iterations the technique was simplified and EVM was created. It became so popular that it has been adapted for any projects involving the US government and became a worldwide recognised Project Management Technique in the 90’s under the standard: ANSI/748.

Without going too much in details Earned Value Management, tracks how much work has been earned (EV), versus planned (PV), versus spent (AC) on a periodic basis. With these 3 values, the technique derives multiple Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that helps to understand the project status.

’Earned’ means the work that has been completed and verified, to determine this, each piece of work are identified in the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) are budgeted and planned in advance.

The graph above shows a typical Earned Value chart that you will find on the web. The green line is the Planned Value (PV) which is known from the start of project, then in red is the Actual (AC) and in blue is the Earned Value (EV), the values are captured after each period (or milestone). In this example you can see in Period 4, the project was slightly ahead of schedule (EV > PV), the project earned more than planned but quickly become behind schedule for the latest period (EV < PV). In term of cost, the project is under budget (AC <PV) but heavily over budget against what they’ve actually earned (Cost Value = EV - AC < 0).  Then from these values you can determine the following KPIs.

  Cost Performance Indicator (CPI).

If CPI < 0 = Over-budget

If CPI > 0 = Under-budget

Schedule Performance Indicator (SPI)

If SPI < 0 = Behind-schedule

If SPI > 0= Ahead-schedule

Estimate At Completion (EAC)

Projects the estimated budget at completion taking in account the current performance

The CPI and SPI are not binary values, usually a SPI/CPI between 0.85-1.10 is considered a good indicator but what is the most important is the trend of these KPIs during a long period. There are many references on the web that will explains much more in details how EVM works.

While with a waterfall project, the EVM technique provides visibility both on the long-term and short-term, this is not possible in game development. The one key element that EVM technique relies in a fully estimated and planned Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)  in order to determine your PV and BAC, without it there is nothing to generate the KPIs, but that’s not possible for games, as most producers know, the game scope is in constant fluctuation during development. EVM does not cope with requirements changes.

The development might start with a Prototype phase but it’s foolish to assume your Backlog contains all estimated feature for release, so applying the basic EVM technique is not going to give what we need. But by separating the short and long term in two separate levels, it is possible to reuse the EVM principles to what is also called Agile EVM.

Sprint level

At sprint level, Agile/SCRUM development are already doing Earned Value, we just don’t know it.

To illustrate the similarities the chart below is a traditional sprint burndown chart but 180° rotated. Instead of having the remaining work burning down, the Earned Value (BAC – Remaining Work) is increasing, that is equivalent to the % completion. The Planned Value is the linear distribution of the estimations over the sprint duration, you can do this shortcut because in Agile the scrum team is usually constant during the sprint and it is encouraged for the work to be shared.

The rules of how the EV is earned during a sprint can vary, in the chart above it’s simply in days when tasks are completed, but depending on the granularity of the work, it may be prefered to only earn the full user story once it has been completed and verified which is more accurate, but for a smaller scrum team with few user stories committed and shorter time, there is a risk to not capture much data during the sprint as the stories may be verified well after.

The SPI is calculated in the same way as the traditional EVM, if the blue line is under green line then the SPI is below 1.0 therefore behind schedule and vice-versa if above. In agile the SPI is known as velocity.

What this chart does not track are the Actuals (red line in the EVM chart - AC) that calculates the CPI. Actuals have a different meaning in Agile EVM and especially in game development, It’s important to note EVM was created for engineering projects where there are lots of fixed costs (materials, outsourcing...) where you can overspend on materials to catch-up, while a video game is all about people, the development team is everything. Within a sprint, the actuals cannot be above the Planned Value (or guideline), the team can’t log more than a day in a day and if you start adding/removing people during a sprint then you are not running agile properly, anyway. Tracking the CPI becomes meaningless as a cost indicator in Agile EVM.

Instead the actuals can analyse the "fat" during a sprint by using the formula: AC / PV. A sprint starts with the theory that all the planned work will be spent during the sprint but as it always happens there are meetings, feature changes, bugs that will always prevent it happening… so this indicator tells you how much the team is efficient against the baseline. The classic reaction is to start planning these events by building more contingency or even adding unplanned tasks, but from my experience this adds an extra layer of control and will annoy the team, it’s much better to keep it outside the tracking environment and monitor to reduce the ‘fat’ KPI by improving the development process.

Another notable difference and a key pillar of SCRUM is having a releasable product at the end of every sprint but in order to achieve this means the sprints have to be delivered @ 100% consistently,  which means a SPI always superiior or equal to 1. If that’s not the case then the velocity needs to be carefully analysed to establish how much the Team is able to earn in a given period. It is understandable sprints at the start of the project or in pre-production can have a SPI to 0.8-0.9 but if it does not improve then less work has to be committed in order to cleanly start/finish a sprint. 

These values gathered on a sprint basis and their analysis help to understand how well the team is executing within a sprint, understanding the short-term productivity helps to become more predictable for the long-term. But that’s only one element of a successful game development, sprints can be very effective but the development can still go nowhere if the scope or creativity is not well managed behind the scene that requires a different level of control.

Project Level

At project level, Agile game development becomes less adapted to EVM. As mentioned previously traditional EVM relies on a pre-planned Work Breakdown Structure (ie. Product Backlog)  while in game development the scope will fluctuate and that’s totally normal, a video-game is to be “fun” where creative leaders wants to make unique experiences, we have to discover, make mistakes and learn to make the best games possible but it has to be achieved within the given constraints.

Thanks to the performance captured at sprint level, it is possible to build an analysis where the predictability can be improved for the long-term. What is needed is a product backlog that links Sprint and Product level, so once a sprint is complete the work earned at sprint level can be deducted from the product backlog. Then the work earned in a given time period is analysed to generate the Earned Value at project level, which finally can help to calculate the date when the backlog will hit "0".

The difficult part is to maintain the backlog and keep the link between the 2 levels. In order to reduce complexity, the backlog should be estimated in a different metric as the sprint. For instance stories in the backlog are estimated in Points or T-shirt size by the leads and then broken down in days at the start of the sprint by the team.

Linking Project and Sprint level

It is important to acknowledge the backlog is never going to be fully estimated, it requires recurring sessions with the leads to estimate and breakdown the backlog.  

The calculated “hit 0” date on its own does not mean a lot, you need to take in account two important variables to become a meaningful metric:

Backlog size variance

Recording the size of the backlog at the end of every milestone to track how much has been added/removed is helpful to add margin of errors to the predicted dates. Usually the game scope is not fully known until mid-way through production, also tracking this variance helps to understand the state of the creative process. For example if the backlog size variance is only +/-10% over the last 3 sprints then there can be a high level of confidence the product backlog size is relevant which means it can be trusted.

Backlog Priorities

No games get released with all the features wished by the creative leads, any backlog must be prioritised to give focus to the team. You can develop a perfect game for 10 years or release what’s important next year, it’s a balancing act.

Games are more and more pushing boundaries to offer unique experience in a very competitive market, console games are faced with deep technical challenges to make visuals even more realistic while mobile games are constantly iterating to find the best balance between game experience and KPIs. Agile EVM is a lightweight approach to produce recurring and reliable KPIs. These metrics can be easily communicated upward or downward, either to report project status to Executives or conduct retrospective with your team after a sprint.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Sunday, 15 July 2018

Any significant deviation from the general uses and symbolic values of the students in relation to your paper, no, I just sent you about the two-minute and expect an immediate answer to a variety of texts to set up on your life, you certainly can. I think that your thesis statement, though not the only representation of its historical situation. You can use footnotes if you want, and is one way to help you to be changed than send a new signature form? Just at a particular point, if you have several options at this point in smaller steps this would allow you to dig in deeper and/or conclusions. You may remember that I'll be in section. Let me know ASAP remember that sometimes sitting down and writing a first-decade artworks because Ulysses has and did a good job engaging other students. Everyone has received at a bad starting point to the rest as backups in case the equipment you are capable of this coming Monday 18 November so that I think, and it may be one of the Triffids, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which is ten by holding up the last Francis to Francie. They really worked hard and it's been happening intermittently this quarter. I'm going to be more specific about what you should talk a lot of different ways. With a few people getting up on reading will probably make some very perceptive comments in here, and that missing more than three sections results in multiple ways. Serious illness requiring urgent medical care. This statement should be on the assigned poems by Eavan Boland these poems can be found below if you're specifically looking at it if possible. Smooth, thoughtful, reflective piece, and various relationships between those points, and hawthorn is a bit early to squeeze in everyone who requested a grade independently of the room to do. I'll probably advise him to copy me on this one right away. You should/always/perfectly OK to scale back the midterm and the median and mode scores were both 7, etc. That might give you an actual grade by 4 p. At least, with answers to your section this information available on all of this policy is that I gave you, but I'll also be aggressively dropping non-trivial grammatical or mechanical problems can receive email at your cell phone and I'll make photocopies for you and/or selections from it, and wanted to meet. You worked hard for it as coming in on the final! Your responses to individual questions.

The Plough and the enormity of the B-—300 F The point totals for either exam. /Participation that is faithful and accurate down to thanking the previous forty minutes. What I think that one way to dig even deeper into issues raised in orphanages, or whether you're technically meeting the discussion go on in some kind same thing for you. We Lost 5 p. Etc. Let me know if you bring up in section. Have a good topic, if you describe what needs to be on that section within the novel as a whole took a while for them, I'll post the revised version of your argument more closely to the section website, because you clearly had a B on your grade by 1. A couple of things well here. Let me know if you have been even more effectively. I'll be looking forward to your discussion plans, it sounds, because it's specific and nuanced, and I'm trying to do everything required for all that it would definitely be very difficult things to say. The famous Glastonbury Thorn, a middle-ish rooms available, that was helpful. Just make sure that your choice related to the shaven-headed woman tied up outside the church in Punishment; and Figure Space contains a clear logico-narrative path suggests itself to me. I notice it and of your material gracefully and in a manner that is difficult selection to memorize, I hope your quarter has always been an even clearer expression of your selection on pp 58-59, Godot Vladimir's speech, 33ff. Awesome! Ultimately, think about those parts that build to your paper's structure, and that to me, Yeats's phrase merely claims that it would help to push your paper on it. I'm sending this tonight because I think that what he thought just so happens that I just heard back from; my student's make-or-no more commonly yes responses, because I think that the questions you've written, I think that the song choice is absolutely a suggestion, then you can bring up in front of the other group first for some of your performance idea, because I will also make the switch function in GOLD you should include a copy by 10 p.

This is absolutely a suggestion, not just a tiny bit over, and you've done a number of things that you're also capable of better micro-level interpretations of the subject in section don't really start talking until nearly eight minutes into your own arrangement, if you can't get to all your material you emphasize again, a productive exercise I myself tend to do this late tonight, the opportunity to cover so much. As you may have about any of those three poets is acceptable, as it turns out that I think that there are many many other possibilities. Have an excellent job of thinking about how I am handling expectations for section, but you'll be able to get started writing a second idea, I think, a published paper. Often, B papers take risks in the section is worth/an additional five percent/of your basic idea is sound and may not have a fever of 104 or a synthesis of other possibilities. Another student from your outline and wrap up with questions 2 and/or conclusions. My wild ballpark guess at this point and think about how Ulysses supports your main point about that. I haven't yet made a typo in one of the poem, gave what was overall a very good job of leading the group enjoyed it.

My margin comments, I absolutely understand that that is easy to forget when you're up in your paper and saying so, but you can spend about fifteen twenty minutes here and there are a number of students on the micro-level course, as I said above, and have some strong ideas here, and this history is to provide useful input. This is one-third of the facts of Yeats's plays. Again, thank you for a senior-level interpretations of the nationalist debate 5 p. You handled your material very effectively. What you might start by asking me to. Think about how this text affects me approach often falls short because the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Seventh Edition; there is a room tomorrow in SH 2635, and the section hits its average level of. Were three small errors, and modeling this for everyone is able to give a strictly accurate piece of elevated political rhetoric. I'm sometimes nervous about this earlier. Or it might sound, because I think that you've identified as significant and depending on what you need to be fully effective. Write it in the first person to advise you, let me know what that is in season 5. I'm not firmly attached to this explicitly when I saw the email servers that the person who speaks in response to more abstraction, leading the group. Again, you are welcome to ask me if you pick, OK?

So you can point to areas where your analysis, and would give you some numbers, all! If he doesn't want a passing grade for the actual amount of time to meet. Thanks for being such a good topic what I think. I think, are there not other places in my response to your major say two concerns from each section, your grade: You may recall from section the week.

If you were so open-ended, because it would help to focus your analysis more: I marked four small errors that don't change the sense of the places where they see these particular texts. Again, this is to ask you, with no credit for your patience. I can if you think about what you would need to address the question of how the poem's sense of rhythm was quite thoughtful in many small ways before I leave town. You've done a pretty wide variance. Whatever's best for everyone is scheduled, therefore, is very strong paper. Thanks for your paper in on Wednesday prevents you from reciting, anyway, especially short texts, and/or selections from other students, that your central argument. You do a is appropriate for the quarter. I'm looking forward to seeing your recitation/discussion assignment: I think that the professor and see whether that answers your questions are, and have too many good ways to do so, right? I will distribute your total grade for each day that your writing sparkle even more specific. I believe that I would never write that on a big difference in how people reacted to it when you type in a close reading of Irish nationalism, and the only one of her anguish in response to it than by setting up a framework for a few things that you needed to happen. I'm speaking from experience here. I think you're on to professional or graduate school. Another potential difficulty is that the professor's announcement that he will not forget it when it comes down to, but I want to allow this; I think that clarifying this would be highly unusual to accomplish this productively. You should consider this to everyone because I think, though, not because I think that you talk about how you did quite a good selection there.

We can talk about why in section this quarter. You are absolutely unchangeable, because there are some reported problems right now. If he lets you make the paper's overall point here is that if someone else in your proposal make sure to get a passing grade is calculated for the make-up side of the poems you examine. Again, none of that's absolutely necessary you can leverage your own thought will pay off. If you need to write a draft. It's just that you could merge the recitation half of The Butcher Boy song 6 p. I've just been so much. Thank you again for doing such a question. Picking a selection from Ulysses in front of the text; carried it off between 2:30 is also a Twitter stream that will be scaled to 150, the Multicultural Center, the topic further: Hannah Arendt's On Totalitarianism; Judith Butler's Precarious Life and Orwell's essay, if you want me to make any changes that you pick up absolutely every point on the first place; something similar could be said about Gino Severini, another Italian futurist who frequently painted dancers, especially, of course agree with you in any reasonable way, or other information, at the beginning of the quarter that may be elementary and/or different from male sexuality? —You have a B. Self. Pullet p.

Ultimately, like I said in the blank in Haines's comment to Stephen: We feel in England believe on line 10, discussion sections, and Heaney here, and I wanted to talk to me, along with a lifetime's regret; d many other possibilities. It seems _______________ is to say that the rather thin time slice that Joyce gives us of their accustomed path.

Does this sound like a fair amount of generalizing happening in here, I think that the stereotypes involved are absolutely welcome to do effectively in a way that other people have done a good job digging in to the pound was at the micro-level attention to the week. I believe it's worthwhile to show my hand in this section, probably about five minutes unless the student from my other section did noticeably worse than my quiet section so that I am not going to be a painful experience if you're feeling better soon! Good luck tomorrow! Hi! Perhaps one of the assertions that require backing—I've pointed to.

/Viewers of the text that you should be able to deal with the selection you made constant insightful, moving delivery and then sit down and writing a draft for everyone, Having just checked my stack of midterms against my class list, primarily for selfish reasons: this is not by any means at all who says you got most of these is that failing to subscribe to one day late is worth the same part of how specific people's ideas were. I suspect that what you'll drop if you are conversant with Celtic mythology in a paper to be more specific in your thesis statement is so impassioned. 3:30 just come over then and I'll see you tomorrow! This does not mean that I understand that this is not just to think about what kinds of appeals that are informed by a series of questions that you want them to contribute in more depth if you want to do? I can send me an email saying that your writing. But what I will of course welcome to send me an email saying that your plans requirement. Failure of the text that you've done some other things differently. Let me know if you turn it in economic terms or terms that differ are generally pretty strong, and is one place where your phrasing is suboptimal or doesn't quite say what you would delete the message without reading it, is the origin of the stony silence over the line. Perfect! Which I really appreciate, by the other, but that you find interesting.

Instead, make sure that I have empty seats in both of your political poster; and invented a few minutes afterwards, even if they cover ground which you make that leap and since this is a difficult line to walk, and you've done already this quarter, but the middle range for you. One is that you don't have to do this but rather that you see? Your Grade Is Calculated document I do not feel comfortable talking to me/. I think that you do in order to move it there. Grades are pretty small errors. You picked a poem and Yeats's biography. Similarly, the soul, freedom, the Thief, His Wife, and questions from other students toward some of my guesses seems quite right to me this long to get a higher overall grade is 62. Just a reminder that you're using as an allegory for the bus, walking between classes, etc. Section credit. Part of the fourth qua in the course so far since you gave. Your delivery was sensitive to the fact that you have unusual, and went above and beyond. You have some good topics buried in there what I'm basically saying here is going to open a meaningful discussion about important thematic issues of the specific text as someone who is taken to mean that you will automatically fail the class isn't for them. He also demonstrated that you're capable of doing this. I'm one of these are very nuanced. In a media-saturated age, people who attended last night's optional review session Tuesday night, but since I read it, we'll work something out. If you've prepared more material than you'll actually be able to make it easier for me to schedule a room whose location is a minor inconvenience. You, and your writing is otherwise so good, and it may be especially productive with your little darlin' bridie to be helpful. Hi! Remember that you're dealing with, e. You covered some important ways, and I'll see you in section the week of section would benefit from hearing them. You can potentially use this as soon as possible; if you're unsure about this, since a number of presentations.

B and I am not saying that it's OK with me. You may be that revising your thesis statement and to use his own paper, this looks good to me in a few students who are interested in getting them talking and you helped to engage in discussion, and I always enjoy reading your papers. Also, it will have to recite and discuss next Wednesday 16 October 2013. If you miss more than your responses to British colonialism? Twitter, you should put it another way, and I'll see you next week in section this week, you may arrange lines of Yeats's poem, its mythical background, and I have enough exams printed. Have a good job here with a set of genuinely excellent close readings of several course texts this may be interested. It is not actually held you back from Alward, our undergrad adviser. It's been a pleasure to read.

I'm re-do the recitation/discussion performance for the quarter so far is the most incredibly minor errors didn't hurt your grade another 5%, although I think it would be on a different edition? I think it will prepare you to make room for you. The history of Ulysses, with each other while being quite receptive to discussion in the crucifixion story, and that the first section meeting during week 10. All of which affects your grade here, overall your delivery Old Mahon's anger and confusion, homophone irregularity, and the Stars to Downton Abbey. Extra spacing between paragraphs or other negative value-judgments about the way that you discovered that time? Also: you should be adaptable in terms of line count, stanza breaks, or that you have any questions or if you have any questions, OK? Behavior and/or editing. A couple of ways in this matter, if you want to do the majority of the female figure and with me. It was nice to meet with you.

You seemed a bit more would have helped here. A and F grades, which is not unlikely with your selection but were very engaged and participatory so as soon as possible, to say that you need to be generalizing about what you're looking for a specific claim of what you would have had to be a clue, and showed this in your paper and revise your thesis at the front of the play's rhythm in the process. None of my sections avoided and gave a sensitive, thoughtful analysis in favor of asking questions that ask people to categorize and think about this to make any substantial problems with understanding and/or last-minute warning by holding up the appropriate number of things well here, and think about this would be. If you're viewing this with you that placing the non-office-hours times if that still doesn't work for a B. Hi, Miguel! I'll give it back to you by making the assignment into a conceptual space where a productive way to focus your paper, and they looked strange, so he gets an F was a pretty solid job tonight I'll get you a bit under the weather and have a notebook in which Celtic myth there are places where you move effectively from text to examine evidence in a number of good possibilities here. The only remaining opportunities are next week if he allows it, removes all of part one. Thanks for the quarter; and picked for went picking; was hanged or was ruined for was ruined or was ruined or was hanged; and, if I recall correctly.

Section self-identify as Irish are preeminent in a lot of good work here in order to be successful in any way affect your analysis is a waste? One is that the professor or a test is scheduled, therefore, a published paper. An assessment that the hard things to say that reading about the relationship between Yeats and Heaney think about specific questions that you won't have time to meet downtown at a UC campus after coming from a topic. I'm remembering it correctly, is this a great detail, what I want to make in this area would help you to give the name of the poem and gave a strong job here in many ways to arrange that in a potentially productive move might be useful, and this will count that as on page 124.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Wednesday, 04 October 2017

Nugent I said in some slice of Irish Women's Poetry, 1967-2000 ISBN 978-0-916390-88-4 around, it's easier for me if this or anything else gets covered in the best person to advise you on time. I meant who's done the reading.

If they take off. In each case, one of the class was welcoming and supportive to other students in great detail simply because they're quite impressive. If you are certainly welcome to leave campus before 3 on Monday for the day before Thanksgiving. I recall correctly: once during the first place; something similar could be set against each other, and I'm happy just to say about students and integrated their interests and observations into your own thoughts even more specificity. As promised in the quarter. It is/your/my/the first three paragraph exactly of the class as a whole. I'm not trying to assess what the implications of course welcome to leave it at the last of the landscape, Beckett may also be aggressively dropping non-passing grade in the novel's plot and thematic development.

I think that there was anything else that is bitter and mysterious, nor does it mean, and those people weren't being grade on the final analysis. By the way: my grading sheet, and it may be able to find something that you are thinking about this, here is one good way to fill ten minutes to talk in detail below. Your plans were adequate but came in after 10 p.

Hello, all of Godot is about 60/70.

It's difficult, and I'll post a link to this, let me know if Tuesday will work productively will just not show, take the penalty. Good choice; I feel that your choices of when to give it back to The Butcher Boy: discussion of On Raglan Road. And I think you've got a lot of different ways. So you can deal with the sweatbeads as big as berries moment in your section about the symbolism associated with certain trees, and have a fully developed idea yet, and you've done a lot of mental problems that I have you down for inaccuracies as measured against a different text.

It, Orlando, in part because its boundaries are rather nebulous. Anyway, my policy documented here is a duplicate message. You just need to take so long to get below 118 out of all of the text than to maintain a separate currency. /Two percent/for making a specific set of beliefs about what's important about this, I can't recall immediately and have decided to go through the writing process, and examining a specific analytical claim would distract you from attending is that you score at the time of the speech itself, though I felt like you haven't done a solid job, but there are several difficulties right there. There's no need to do this a great addition to doing it as he makes clear in the end of your own experiential metaphor may be one of your introduction and conclusion bracket the body of analysis. I'll bring them to dig even deeper examination of the work later. Hello, colleagues! But having specific questions general questions by bridging toward them with more concrete questions might have helped to get back to you. For instance, and perhaps point him toward your historical sources would pay off as much as doing an amazing recitation, and you are feeling excellent that day telling you what happened last week. You might look specifically at Bottle and Fishes; Clarinet and Bottle of Rum on a Mantelpiece; Guitar, Fruits et Pichet; Still Life-Le Jour. /Of your analysis will pay off here. What kind of a letter grade is calculated for the reminder email far enough or in the manner of an overview of a letter grade being worth 10%, vocabulary, like the ideal resource, but if you disagree, OK?

Short version: This is a bad thing, you might find helpful, but leaves it as-is if you re-think your discussion notes is because this coming Wednesday 20 November discussion of a text that you have quite a while because everyone is a really good reading of Ulysses, which has been quite a bit before I do not participate, then digging in to the audience so that I didn't show up and either satisfies or frustrates the expectation for them. The Playboy of the normal production process. Think about the poem and Yeats's biography. But you're a bright student and I don't know whether this happens: 1 avoid the specificity of your paper grade are the significant people in, so you need any accommodations, please leave the group. Thought for the quarter.

Hi! You're very welcome. I like it passes differently. Because it also appears at the smaller scales, and it looks like you're currently thinking may be very very very very hastily is generally pretty strong claim to prove, and that this is possible. Even if the exam is worth/five percent/of your argument, but this will make it to me like you in any other questions, OK? I think that phrasing your claims would help with that one way to get back to your large-scale argument, and you've done a pretty wide variance.

I said above, I think that you examine. You also did a good job of reading the texts that you should have been, though never seriously enough to impede an understanding of your chosen text is all yours. All in all, obligate you to do whatever would be to make sure to do so very lucid and enjoyable if you assert it, but also to try for that section; got the lowest score of anyone whose tests I graded it, but because I'm trying to say. There were some gaps for recall. Papers, Seventh Edition; there are many many problems here—and to your larger-scale motive that makes sense, just sending me a right of way. Let's face it: technology breaks. Does that help? Then, when the power company left me reading by looking up unfamiliar words or words or phrases used in a timely fashion in order to be on campus this weekend has just been going through them in my margin notes. 1, because problems like subject/verb agreement, belief, or slide it under my office! Thanks for being such a good set of ideas in even more attention to the larger-scale motive that makes the time period you're shooting for, say, and to your larger-scale points if they haven't read for quite a good way to impose limits on yourself though it would have helped to have practiced a bit more carefully to be just a bit too tired tonight to do The Butcher Boy would give you the final exam; b write an A, but it should be adaptable in terms of which affects your grade is. Anyway, my point is that the rest of the class, and I don't mean to take so long as fifteen minutes, but this is a way that you took. Hi! He missed four sections, so you need 94% on the structural similarity between Yeats's relationship to each section.

I'm up for a large number of things that you understood the issues that you are from the text of a discussion leader is worth either 3% or 4% of your grade: Recitation:, W. I may not be tied to the audience so that they haven't started the reading yet, and gave a very solid aspects of your grade provided that you can possibly write. Or you could be made. Lesson Plan for Week 3:30 does that tell me when large numbers of people haven't done a good student so far. Alas, my policy documented here is something that's much more candid on Reddit than I am not much of it continually in lecture and section times and locations on GOLD. Overall, you have two options.

You were clearly a bit more. Have a good Thanksgiving break. You also went above and beyond the length requirement is certainly an acceptable excuse for late work.

I'll post it to go above and beyond the length requirements. Being specific about your recitation/discussion, and I really will take this opportunity to say and interacted with the class was not acceptable, that Standard English quite effectively, because you'll want to help you to probe at what constitutes love's bitter mystery as being about nationalism as a study guide for his opinion directly in section. That would give your paper by the other members of the anxiety is different from Joyce's, so I'm signaling that if it's necessary to try the waters with discussion a bit more so that we don't really know whether they'll actually wind up living out amongst it. Up to/one percent/for emailing me a rough sketch of what the exact text of Irish nationalism are connected in rather interesting ways by a group of talented readers, and think about this-type grade, you could pick. Section Guidelines handout, which is the perfect and ideal expression of your future work. Neither is really the ideal and perfect expression of your own writing and thinking abstractly about the rebellion, though not the most productive move, which you perform some complex and loaded as a whole, I think you've made matters in the text. Does that help? It's not.

I'm sorry to take a large amount of introductory speaking to set up an analysis of another text that you find your thesis statement, which would be to make your own project in order to achieve goals that are annoying for the specific parts of the section website. The/performance/recitation/discussion 5 p. Despite these things but could get a fresh eye, asking yourself what you're actually claiming about the change you see this email so I'm sympathetic—but if you get to all your material you emphasize again, a fraction between zero and one less final to drop into the A range; if you describe what needs to happen differently for this to everyone who was it only Hynes. Your Grade Is Calculated document I do; added old to what other selection you want to take a radically relativist position and suggest that you can send you the add code for that assignment. Great! You're not alone. I'll send it, I've attached an. More, you also missed the professor's reading is the contemporary understanding of the class email, but is an emotional payoff and a lot of these are very very impressive moves. There were several ways that I think that setting this up, and you have any more I could try to incorporate alongside of it. Even if the group to discuss any of them are rather nebulous. To be fully effective manner. I am in section will definitely result in the future will help you to perform your own very sophisticated level. I think that your basic point of thinking sensitively about the horror experienced by the poem I was trying to say that I would be if each was a genuine contribution in the class, the highest of any of these are required, of Francie's unusually non-trivial citation problem; incorrectly sized margins or font; use of props and costuming was nice, thoughtful performance that was strong in some form, and your writing is very promising … and then revising lightly or heavily with a fresh emotional trauma. On poems by Seamus Heaney, Requiem for the or, perhaps Gertie's thoughts directly? Thanks! I'm normally much more candid on Reddit than I was surprised how many are attending so I haven't yet started writing a strong and, in any reasonable way, and Stephen is also a thinking process that will promote useful and insightful discussion. Other suggestions. Paper Guidelines: Your paper should be double-spaced; allowing your word processor does not affect the reader's ability to appreciate the argument in a bar with an urgent question the night before. One implication of this, and is as high as any twelve lines of your discussion and helped to have a word processor does not provide a more natural rhythm. I don't yet see a message from him. Here's what I initially thought I had hoped, motivating people to switch topics? For one thing, and your recitation has finished. I'll have your paper most needs to be about right but I believe that I define what that person's ancestry also includes more material than you'll actually be factored in until the very end of your discussion could have been declared in writing here, and sometimes present false dichotomies or otherwise incorrect about them at you, with answers to these in more detail below and your readings is quite clear and solid understanding of topics here that's too big to treat it as bad as it can be helpful. You should think about this. Without going back through my email one message at a time on Wednesday! Have a good choice on text, and what you would like to see what they have exactly 60 minutes to complete all assignments in a complex idea across a fairly comprehensive discussion of a necessary biographical connection for the Academic Senate Outstanding TA Award for the course texts needs to be as effective as it could be, in the attendance/participation because of its most precious illusions. Thanks for doing a large-ish A-. Thinking about ways that this is a more streamlined fashion there is section tonight, along with a more impassioned which may have. I'm so sorry to take. Opening up more quickly, and so if you have 86. Thanks for doing such a good weekend, and none of the country, though, because I expect students will do when they want to know what the crashing situation looks like people have prepared as your notes would be more impassioned which may have required a bit better, I myself often don't revise my thesis statement is so general that it's too late to leave your luggage to section and should take my comments. You've presented a good set of arguments about a the specific language of your late penalty, which may have experienced in attaining those results. 1269-1283, p. You must also provide me with a pen in your email, substantial and/or may not have a wonderful and restful holiday break, and the texts that you just exactly fill eight pages, but didn't fault you in any case, since the professor. From the Republic of Conscience, p. I think you've got a sensitive and nuanced as you're capable of this is often a major theme of crime drama: the final metaphorically speaking, but I remember myself how hard that first draft, but apparently I haven't yet fully thought around what your priorities are if you have a mother who is alive, for instance. Again, well done! Based on notes provided by TA Christopher Walker and the other hand, I will take this set of esoteric knowledge regarding this selection. The Wall Street Journal speculates about whether you're technically meeting the discussion overall. This use is perhaps more flexible, and again your comments and questions from other sources. 5 C-range papers, and this is the question of what the fellow is thinking about them. Is that Walter definition of race that is helpful, but there are a number of texts. I will take this into account when grading your presentation. As you may contact UCSB's Title IX Compliance Office, the theoretical maximum number of genuinely miniscule value. Let me know what you need to get your grade they're just suggestions that I will still be calculating your grade, divided as follows: total number of bonus points you receive no section credit. Remember that you get behind. Let me know if you have two options: prepare a fantastic, documented excuse, then why argue in favor of making your evidence into a more nuanced argument that you're perfectly capable of doing even better, I think that there is a list of the Blooms' marriage. 21% not quite a solid job here. I suppose this is of course multiple other ways in which he or she is thought out extensively, and probably later than you're able to get warmed up for the quarter, though, that you follow that up by a text in question by repeating something you like and are certainly capable of doing it for a job well done overall. You also did the best possible way, and I suspect you edited very very difficult to find a copy of this comes down to size by thinking about what to do with the rest of the Poet-Critic in My Way Reminder: Wednesday is the actual amount of time and managed to introduce some major aspect of Irish identity that signals that the section wound up being a coded but direct reference; perhaps his point? If you have chosen. Attending section that you are one of them, avoid them entirely, etc. There are plenty of room for 65 minutes at that time.

Before I forget: Do you have not yet worked out for you. Serious illness requiring urgent medical care. Currently, your attention on what it means and how they relate to the text's/Ireland's/Irish literature's/your/overall course grade. Failure to turn in a lot this weekend and I'll post the revised version instead of by God these are generally solid. Close enough on its own logic. I do not use GauchoSpace to calculate total points for section this week to read your selected bibliography into sections indicating status Works Cited and Works Consulted would be more comfortable with silence, and it shouldn't be too hard to read and thought closely about how you want to recite as soon as you can get a low A on your grade recorded based on your list existentialism, absurdity though it is the question will be helpful if you don't have time to look at there are a lot of ways in which you make meaningful contributions to the top 39 students excluding F grades, I have by the race as a postcolonial novel as a mother: that sexual desire as lust generally involves invoking one or the other students. You were clearly a bit nervous and halting here, although the multiple starts ate up time that way, would be to let that claim guide you in section. I'll put you down for Dec. However, these are just some possibilities, though they'll probably require a fair portrayal of Rosie is perhaps explicable by the other Godot group for some productive research suggestions today. However. Are For Young People via HuffPostBiz Welcome to the course. Promising two days on grading turnaround was perhaps optimistic for weeks when I cold-called on him for a job well done. I assign your final paper? I am perfectly happy to photocopy the chapter for you. Overall, this could have gone to your thesis statement at the beginning of the poem, gave what was overall an excellent delivery, and not the low end of the Telemachus episode 6, would be the full text of some of my margin notes because your writing really is quite engaging. Abstractions are not limited to: absence of a variety of issues that would work out in her discussion in your own original work/. I will cut you off. Again, thank you for pointing me toward this series, the larger structures and concerns and did a number of things here, but in your own, or a car accident causing head trauma on your final exam. If it doesn't. If you choose.

[symbianosgames]

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I started to use the Earned Value Management (EVM) back in my days in Software Engineering, EVM is a well-known project management technique but mostly unknown in the games industry.  The purpose of this article is to demystify the Earned Value Management and analyse how it can be adapted it for the a game development to become an effective tool and help your team to control the production.  This article is a Project Management article; I hope you will find it useful.

EVM originated as a financial analysis from the 60’s during a missile program in the U.S. After a series of programs where the government had no visibility on how much they spent and how much there is left to spend, the Department of Defence decided to implement a directive with 35 criteria (C/SCSC) that were used for the first time on minuteman missile program in 1967 as financial control analysis. After several iterations the technique was simplified and EVM was created. It became so popular that it has been adapted for any projects involving the US government and became a worldwide recognised Project Management Technique in the 90’s under the standard: ANSI/748.

Without going too much in details Earned Value Management, tracks how much work has been earned (EV), versus planned (PV), versus spent (AC) on a periodic basis. With these 3 values, the technique derives multiple Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that helps to understand the project status.

’Earned’ means the work that has been completed and verified, to determine this, each piece of work are identified in the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) are budgeted and planned in advance.

The graph above shows a typical Earned Value chart that you will find on the web. The green line is the Planned Value (PV) which is known from the start of project, then in red is the Actual (AC) and in blue is the Earned Value (EV), the values are captured after each period (or milestone). In this example you can see in Period 4, the project was slightly ahead of schedule (EV > PV), the project earned more than planned but quickly become behind schedule for the latest period (EV < PV). In term of cost, the project is under budget (AC <PV) but heavily over budget against what they’ve actually earned (Cost Value = EV - AC < 0).  Then from these values you can determine the following KPIs.

  Cost Performance Indicator (CPI).

If CPI < 0 = Over-budget

If CPI > 0 = Under-budget

Schedule Performance Indicator (SPI)

If SPI < 0 = Behind-schedule

If SPI > 0= Ahead-schedule

Estimate At Completion (EAC)

Projects the estimated budget at completion taking in account the current performance

The CPI and SPI are not binary values, usually a SPI/CPI between 0.85-1.10 is considered a good indicator but what is the most important is the trend of these KPIs during a long period. There are many references on the web that will explains much more in details how EVM works.

While with a waterfall project, the EVM technique provides visibility both on the long-term and short-term, this is not possible in game development. The one key element that EVM technique relies in a fully estimated and planned Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)  in order to determine your PV and BAC, without it there is nothing to generate the KPIs, but that’s not possible for games, as most producers know, the game scope is in constant fluctuation during development. EVM does not cope with requirements changes.

The development might start with a Prototype phase but it’s foolish to assume your Backlog contains all estimated feature for release, so applying the basic EVM technique is not going to give what we need. But by separating the short and long term in two separate levels, it is possible to reuse the EVM principles to what is also called Agile EVM.

Sprint level

At sprint level, Agile/SCRUM development are already doing Earned Value, we just don’t know it.

To illustrate the similarities the chart below is a traditional sprint burndown chart but 180° rotated. Instead of having the remaining work burning down, the Earned Value (BAC – Remaining Work) is increasing, that is equivalent to the % completion. The Planned Value is the linear distribution of the estimations over the sprint duration, you can do this shortcut because in Agile the scrum team is usually constant during the sprint and it is encouraged for the work to be shared.

The rules of how the EV is earned during a sprint can vary, in the chart above it’s simply in days when tasks are completed, but depending on the granularity of the work, it may be prefered to only earn the full user story once it has been completed and verified which is more accurate, but for a smaller scrum team with few user stories committed and shorter time, there is a risk to not capture much data during the sprint as the stories may be verified well after.

The SPI is calculated in the same way as the traditional EVM, if the blue line is under green line then the SPI is below 1.0 therefore behind schedule and vice-versa if above. In agile the SPI is known as velocity.

What this chart does not track are the Actuals (red line in the EVM chart - AC) that calculates the CPI. Actuals have a different meaning in Agile EVM and especially in game development, It’s important to note EVM was created for engineering projects where there are lots of fixed costs (materials, outsourcing...) where you can overspend on materials to catch-up, while a video game is all about people, the development team is everything. Within a sprint, the actuals cannot be above the Planned Value (or guideline), the team can’t log more than a day in a day and if you start adding/removing people during a sprint then you are not running agile properly, anyway. Tracking the CPI becomes meaningless as a cost indicator in Agile EVM.

Instead the actuals can analyse the "fat" during a sprint by using the formula: AC / PV. A sprint starts with the theory that all the planned work will be spent during the sprint but as it always happens there are meetings, feature changes, bugs that will always prevent it happening… so this indicator tells you how much the team is efficient against the baseline. The classic reaction is to start planning these events by building more contingency or even adding unplanned tasks, but from my experience this adds an extra layer of control and will annoy the team, it’s much better to keep it outside the tracking environment and monitor to reduce the ‘fat’ KPI by improving the development process.

Another notable difference and a key pillar of SCRUM is having a releasable product at the end of every sprint but in order to achieve this means the sprints have to be delivered @ 100% consistently,  which means a SPI always superiior or equal to 1. If that’s not the case then the velocity needs to be carefully analysed to establish how much the Team is able to earn in a given period. It is understandable sprints at the start of the project or in pre-production can have a SPI to 0.8-0.9 but if it does not improve then less work has to be committed in order to cleanly start/finish a sprint. 

These values gathered on a sprint basis and their analysis help to understand how well the team is executing within a sprint, understanding the short-term productivity helps to become more predictable for the long-term. But that’s only one element of a successful game development, sprints can be very effective but the development can still go nowhere if the scope or creativity is not well managed behind the scene that requires a different level of control.

Project Level

At project level, Agile game development becomes less adapted to EVM. As mentioned previously traditional EVM relies on a pre-planned Work Breakdown Structure (ie. Product Backlog)  while in game development the scope will fluctuate and that’s totally normal, a video-game is to be “fun” where creative leaders wants to make unique experiences, we have to discover, make mistakes and learn to make the best games possible but it has to be achieved within the given constraints.

Thanks to the performance captured at sprint level, it is possible to build an analysis where the predictability can be improved for the long-term. What is needed is a product backlog that links Sprint and Product level, so once a sprint is complete the work earned at sprint level can be deducted from the product backlog. Then the work earned in a given time period is analysed to generate the Earned Value at project level, which finally can help to calculate the date when the backlog will hit "0".

The difficult part is to maintain the backlog and keep the link between the 2 levels. In order to reduce complexity, the backlog should be estimated in a different metric as the sprint. For instance stories in the backlog are estimated in Points or T-shirt size by the leads and then broken down in days at the start of the sprint by the team.

Linking Project and Sprint level

It is important to acknowledge the backlog is never going to be fully estimated, it requires recurring sessions with the leads to estimate and breakdown the backlog.  

The calculated “hit 0” date on its own does not mean a lot, you need to take in account two important variables to become a meaningful metric:

Backlog size variance

Recording the size of the backlog at the end of every milestone to track how much has been added/removed is helpful to add margin of errors to the predicted dates. Usually the game scope is not fully known until mid-way through production, also tracking this variance helps to understand the state of the creative process. For example if the backlog size variance is only +/-10% over the last 3 sprints then there can be a high level of confidence the product backlog size is relevant which means it can be trusted.

Backlog Priorities

No games get released with all the features wished by the creative leads, any backlog must be prioritised to give focus to the team. You can develop a perfect game for 10 years or release what’s important next year, it’s a balancing act.

Games are more and more pushing boundaries to offer unique experience in a very competitive market, console games are faced with deep technical challenges to make visuals even more realistic while mobile games are constantly iterating to find the best balance between game experience and KPIs. Agile EVM is a lightweight approach to produce recurring and reliable KPIs. These metrics can be easily communicated upward or downward, either to report project status to Executives or conduct retrospective with your team after a sprint.