#avengers 1 meta

[aurorawest]

Abt this funny post summing up tje avengers movie. Do u have meta on what loki was doing in the first avengers relating to "not actually wanting to win the battle of new york" idk

I guess I don't really have meta, because I don't really subscribe to that theory? At least not in the sense that you often see people talk about it, where he throws the battle on purpose. I guess what I think is that deep down, some part of him knew Thanos had brainwashed him. Maybe, subconsciously, he didn't fight to his full ability?

I guess an analogy would be like, professional sports players. Their job is to win games, but maybe their heart isn't totally, 100% in every game for whatever reason. Maybe sometimes they even want to be traded, which, obviously, they need to play well for another team to want them, but maybe their lack of commitment to their current team means they don't play to their full potential.

One of my head canons about Loki is how desperately he hates the idea of choice being taken away from him. So I don't think he would have purposefully lost the Battle of NY, because I don't think he would have wanted to admit that Thanos was controlling him in any capacity. He'd rather be a monster than have control over his own mind or actions taken away from him. This is covered pretty heavily in my fic Here, Here and Here, and to some extent in Afterimage, as well.

[makomoto-chan]

*please do not translate, copy or take credits

a/n: English isn't my first language sry

Quite embarrassing trip to Asgard

You’ve been on the spaceship for a few hours, neither of you have spoken to the other since you got on; you’ve sat in opposite seats and avoided each other’s gaze. You still feel short of breath every now and then. You didn’t think that a simple question could bring out everything you’ve been trying to deny so far. You want to talk to Loki and at the same time you’re angry with him, you want him to come and sit with you, even if only to be silent, to feel him close, but you know he won’t.

The stone man approaches you and takes a position on the couch next to you, making it lean towards him. He watches you for a while, then glances away and turns in your direction again. He whispers “hey. I’m Korg.”

You remain silent. You’re not sure if you want to talk to someone, but you decide to be polite. “Hey.”

“I think that guy you like has a crush on you.”

You raise your eyebrows in shock. It’s definitely not the kind of conversation you were expecting. “Excuse me?”

“The man with the black hair,” he insists, “you like him.”

“Okay... I don’t see what it has to do with you,” you reply, puzzled.

“I think you two are cute together.”

You furrow your eyebrows, even more confused, “I don’t think so??” you try to cut him short.

“But-”

“Listen, I don’t think you understand what kind of person Loki is.” you interrupt him. “You can’t just look at him and guess how he feels. You can’t do that.” Then you add in a low voice, “and in any case, you can be sure he’s not interested in me.”

“...Mhmm... Maybe.” he gets up and leaves.

It was easier than expected. You watch him walk away and sit down next to Loki. ‘Of course’ you think. You roll your eyes to the sky and let yourself fall onto the couch; the sounds seem more and more distant and shortly after you feel yourself slipping into sleep.

You open your eyes again and notice that the couch is tilted again, even if only slightly. You turn your head, still half asleep, and see Loki sitting next to you. You stare at him sleepily for a while, but soon you need to take an extremely deep breath when you realize that your heart seemed to have shrunk and that you had stopped breathing without realizing it. Once you realize this you can’t help the vaguely labored breaths that follow.

“I had to talk to you,” he begins.

“I don't know what Kirg told you, but-"

"please listen."

you sigh "okay. About what?” your voice is slightly hoarse from your nap.

“This may sound weird, but about us.”

“Why?”

“I have to explain.”

“Yeah, that's the idea of asking someone to have a talk, usually.”

He’s silent for a moment, then nods, “Good. So... It’ll take a while.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, start!”

“Right, sorry.” There’s another pause, then he starts again, “I’m sorry about the ghost.”

“Don't get me wrong, but is that all? It didn’t take long.”

“No, don’t- don’t rush me.”

You give an exasperated sigh.

“I... wanted to leave... I mean, go back to the Grand Master. I was fine there. I thought about following you to the spaceship and then sending you guys off with... what do I call it? a fake me, to make things easier. If it had worked, I wouldn’t have had to explain anything to you.”

“But you could have left anyway. Why did you come?”

“I don’t know either.”

Your gaze softens a little, as if you were talking to a stubborn child. “Hm. You never lie to me, do you?”

He sighs deeply, exasperatedly. “Oh, come on.”

“I’m glad you’re here. But if you have to fix things, lying won’t do.”

“I...” you see he’s having trouble moving on, but you don’t say a word. “I...” he continues, “actually, I wanted to convince you to stay with me, at first, when I found out you had a plan to leave. But you were so excited about it, and Thor, the Valkyrie, and the Hulk... I realized I wouldn’t have been able to stop you anyway and I opted for the easier option. I was a coward. I should have told you so many things but I was afraid you wouldn’t care. When you said you wanted- for... for me... I... I didn’t think you wanted... I don’t know, really, I don’t know, but when you told me those things... and when you agreed to leave with the rock... I wanted to pull you towards me and beg you to stay there, I wanted to hold you in my arms, but if you hadn’t agreed..." he stops, then cuts short "Anyway, I didn’t want to get rid of you.”

You stare at him with your eyebrows raised in shock and after a few moments the only thing you can say is a long “wwwwow.”

Loki watches you and bites his lip, his eyebrows furrowing in a mix of confusion and nervousness.

“I mean... Not that I’m not flattered-”

You see his face relax suddenly and he cuts you off “okay.”

“wait- what?”

He gives you a smile, too relaxed to be true, and stands up “I got it, no need to explain.”

You make a move to grab his arm but stop in mid-air, quickly saying “no no no no no- wait-”. When you see that he’s listening to you again you start over “yeah, once said it’s worse than expected, I had thought it would have sounded differently- it’s not what you think-”

“so what is it?”

“so... well, first of all I want to say that... I didn't... I wasn't expecting this... but... it's not bad... I mean- as a surprise- huh, I'm doing it again... anyway... I..." you pause to think about what he just said, and the only vaguely logical thought you can muster is that you wish he had done it, that he had hugged you. "You could have pulled me in, y'know..." you say before you even realize you're speaking.

By the time you register what you just did, it's too late, Loki is already staring at you. "Really?" he asks surprised

you keep quiet for a while, but eventually nod.

He stays silent for a second, then asks you “would you still accept it if...?”

You nod again, with a small smile on your lips this time.

As his arms wrap around you you realize that he is shaking, so you hug him back. When he feels he's being reciprocated his grip tightens, he hides his face in your shoulder and remains still like that.

"I'm not mad anymore" you whisper.

"Yeah, I guessed it." he mutters back.

[gloriousburden]

I kind of like to pretend that Ragnarok and onward never happened, but what do you mean Loki was killed by Thanos? What? Loki… killed by Thanos… the same Mad Titan who tortured him and took advantage of him…

After escaping him… his death still came by his hands… woah it’s so miserable and poetically tragic…

Wtf, Loki is dead… Wtf…

Like all of this

His story really is finished like it’s just all over. I just can’t like it’s so hard processing the fact he really is gone.

Wow he literally never got a moment of peace. He’s so dear to me and so beloved by me, and he’s just gone. He died YOUNG. He had potential. He never reached old age. Even on the throne, he still never got to be himself because he was playing Odin for however many years.. even in his last years, he was hiding behind an illusion. The fact that when we see him in Thor 2011, an origin story, it’s one of the last years in his story and it just “began”…

These literally all being from the last years of his life… when we met him and thought he had so much ahead of him, he was already in the last years of his life.

We think he’s moving onto greater things, but all his attempts of greatness fail. the only thing ahead of him is death… foreshadowing…

In his last years of living, though he was still young, he found out that he was taken in as a political pawn, it became apparent to him that no matter what he did the man who he thought to be his father would never love him, he attempted, he was tortured, he failed at subjugating Midgard, he failed at retrieving the Tesseract for Thanos, he was imprisoned in the dungeons of the palace he grew up in for almost 2 years and no one checked on him, his mother was murdered and he didn’t get to go to her funeral… so much in only 3 years, and those 3 years were some of his last.

It’s so sick. He also never got a chance to mend his relationship with Thor…

His life was over before it began like oh my

He never got to be loved or accepted I’m sick and they’ve been wanting to kill him since TDW (which thanks MCU writers we can tell)

[magnusmodig]

VI TALKS ABOUT THOR/MCU / @chenshixianyou / ACCEPTING !

╰┈➤ 🔥 + brodinsons relationship (how it is portrayed either in canon or fan-portrayals, you pick)

||. I don't have many bad things to say about brodinsons in canon, that is for absolute sure. At least, I don't as far as 2011-2013 brodinsons goes. And Infinity War brodinsons. That said, I do have some nitpicks with Gag//na.rok's version of the brothers– which boils down to that they are not the same dynamic as expressed in the original three films. (Yes, I do count AVENGERS as the 2nd brodinsons film, bite me.)

As far as canon goes, Gag//na.rok does a couple of things wrong, but off the cuff the first thing that burns my biscuits is the bold claim that Loki has always had a habit of physically assaulting Thor for funzies. What started off as an improv by Ch//ri.s became a meme throughout the MCU fandom, and then from there a fanon with the brothers. It's a funny gag, I will give it that, genuinely. I chuckled when I first saw it. But having done such deep dives into both brothers in preparation for this blog in particular, I can say with absolute certainty that there is no way in hell that Loki was ever going around hurting Thor for the heck of it and I can prove it with not one but TWO meta. The first and ONLY time that Thor gets stabbed by Loki is during AVENGERS at the top of Stark Tower, and it was deliberately done on Loki's end. Thor actively stumbles out of surprise and shock that he was just harmed by his own brother— someone he once fully believed he could trust to the world's end, and whom he cherishes deeply, mind you— and is so disturbed by Loki's action that he is continues to stumble and stagger after the fact. Not because the dagger did any lasting damage to Thor (although it did draw blood, which is part of the point I'm about to elaborate on), but because it was his brother's hand who dealt the blow, and the stab itself was a symbolic gesture of severing sentiment.

(Also, because I'm sure some people will assume I'm miscounting, no Loki does not stab Thor during the Svartfalheim heist in THOR: THE DARK WORLD. It is an illusion from every moment onward after Thor and Loki share the following lines: L: You still don't trust me, brother? T: Would you? L: No, I wouldn't. Everything after that, from the moment Loki pulls out his dagger, was a ruse that both brothers were actively engaged in and had consented to. At no point is Thor caught off guard by Loki's theatrics, because the entire scene features the brothers attempting to trick Malekith (which they succeed in) to destroy the Aether (which they do not succeed in). If anything, I would go so far as to personally suggest that the brothers had designed equally elaborate schemes in the past that included similar theatrics, given the ease with which they pull this ruse off. And I say that with confidence because it is plenty clear that the brothers interactions, from the moment that Loki is released from the prison cell, and including the entirety of the escape on the Dark Elf ship, harkens back to a time long before the brothers had experienced their falling out. THOR: THE DARK WORLD does its job in showing us that the brothers, despite everything, still work well together, and they share an innate chemistry and brotherly bickering during their various adventures, including the quest to rid Jane of the Aether.)

To review the actual scene in question, I have gathered screenshots from the movie (and timestamps.)

It's important to remember 1 key detail about the brothers, and 1 key scene that ties into the moment of the Avengers tower, and that is the cliff scene, and that the brothers mostly talk in subtext.

Yes, they are talking about the overall Chutari invasion that Loki is spearheading in New York City at the exact moment in the context of which they are speaking to one another...

TO THAT END, I need to establish one other key component to fully understand the true weight behind their dynamic:

Thor and Loki's feud throughout this film has nothing to do with Earth, the threat to Earth and very rarely ever is outside of purely objective, logistical potential for harm and intergalactic war.

It's what sets Thor apart from the other Avengers from start to finish; it is what makes him the outsider. The other Avengers consider Loki an enemy. Some of them even hate him. Thor does not. He actively defends Loki and clearly loves him dearly. ("[Loki's] brain is a bag full of cats. You can smell crazy on him. / "Have care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason but he is of Asgard, and he is my brother." 00:53:37-00:53:47) The other Avengers see Loki and other aliens as a threat to humanity to be warded off. Thor, the resident alien of the group, obviously is testament to the polar opposite of that hot take, says as much. He knows that Loki is currently acting as the rare exception, not the rule. ("Why is S.H.I.E.L.D. building weapons of mass destruction? / "Because of people like him." / "Me? [...] My people want nothing but peace with your planet.")

There is ALSO the entirety of their opening scene together to keep in mind before I go through the Stark Tower conversation:

THE CLIFF SCENE (00:44:44-00:47:07)

T: I thought you dead. (in reference to Loki tossing himself into a black hole at the end of "THOR") L: Did you mourn?

THESE LINES IN PARTICULAR set the tone for the entire conversation. Please keep in mind that this is their first conversation since their falling out, and while I can't go into every facet of the emotional damage done to the bond between the two brothers (and especially the trauma done to Thor...), what I will say is this: the last time that Thor saw Loki was when Loki threw himself into the abyss of space to be torn apart by a black hole, and this was done RIGHT IN FRONT OF THOR'S OWN EYES after an equally traumatic banishment experience. There are A LOT of emotions going on there, and it's easy to forget that in place of much of Loki's dialogue in this scene, and for the reason I'm going to highlight right below.

T: We all did. (subtext: I did [note: Loki doesn't catch the subtext.])

This is when the brothers slip from literal meaning and into subtext, and begin to bob and weave between the two. It all starts with Thor's inability (or unwillingness, depending on how you want to read it) to speak his heart plainly to his brother. Loki asks "did you mourn [me]?", and Thor diverts from "I" (personal) did, to "We" (impersonal) did. He is actively distancing himself from the topic of grief and the mourning he experienced after Loki's "death"... but it's about as close as Thor will ever get to admitting that he, personally, mourned for Loki, and mourned deeply for him.

He then attempts to continue the distancing/deflecting with the following line, although we don't know what he was going to say to finish the sentence.

T: Our father—

L: (interrupting) —YOUR. father.

Loki interrupting this is rooted in his personal grievances towards Odin. These are grievances I will not be touching on for the length of this meta as they are virtually irrelevant to the topic at hand. Just know that in interrupting Thor here, he does rob Thor of his ability to continue to distance himself from the situation... but he also robs Thor of his ability to express whatever he might have expressed about his grieving if he had been allowed to continue.

Either way:

T: We grew up together. We played together, we fought together. Do you remember none of that?

Thor and Loki, despite being masters of speaking in subtext, have a shared habit of taking one another literally. When Loki says "I am not your brother" / "Odin is your father", Thor is taking Loki's meaning as something akin to "I am disowning you, Thor Odinson, very specifically, and I want nothing to do with you." As you can imagine this is an extraordinarily painful thing to hear, especially when BOTH BROTHERS were lied to about Loki's blood heritage for their whole lives, and Thor actually found out much later than Loki.

The most important thing to keep in mind here is that Thor is defending their bond as brothers. In that way, he is also defending the love they share. They grew up together. They played together. They fought together. They loved each other, because they were - and still are - brothers. Does that mean nothing to Loki? THAT is what Thor is asking here.

Loki is ... a prat and a dollop-head in this scene. I'll save a full scale line-by line + 2011 context meta for another time, but it's also worth nothing that thunder strikes multiple times throughout the length of this conversation and they are at the following intervals:

L: He did tell you my true parentage, did he not? (thunder rumbles. aka: yes, he did.) L: I remember you tossing me into an abyss (thunder rumbles. The thunder continues during:) T: So you take the world as recompense for your imagined slights? (aka: Thor is taking Loki's words to literally mean the black hole, instead of Loki's jealousy being 'an abyss'.) L: And you are doing a marvelous job of [protecting the humans and Earth] (Loki is taking a pot shot at Thor's insecurity of being a worthy, protector king here. Maybe I'll talka bout it in another meta...) L: I have grown, ODINSON! (Thunder rumbles. Loki is yet again distancing himself from Thor as a brother.)

T: You give up the tesseract! You give up this poisonous dream!

The brothers continue their argument. Notably, they are still talking to each other straight and without subtext with these lines. (For the uninitiated, they're arguing about being worthy to be king and what that entails which... is an entire meta that I really should discuss at some point...)

Thor then weaves the literal into the subtext of the conversation that Loki has been avoiding this entire time, which is their bond, their brotherhood, and Thor's grief.

T: You come home. (subtext: with/to me.)

Thor does NOT plead. He does not beg for anything, to anyone. Still here he is, pleading with his brother to come home. Why? Because Thor wants him to come home. THOR misses him. THOR wants him back. This is his heart's desire, and Thor is FINALLY making this conversation expressly about himself - about THEM - even if he doesn't say what's unspoken.

You, my brother, come home to me.

Silence.

This time, Loki DOES catch the subtext. He understands. It's why he is so, SO silent here; it's why he stares the way he does. He wasn't expecting Thor to plead with him over sentiment. He certainly wasn't expecting Thor to care enough to want him back.

So, this time, Loki pivots. Loki turns it into something far outside of himself. Loki makes it impersonal.

L: (about tesseract) I don't have it. (subtext: I won't/can't come home to you.)

Loki rejects him, and Thor understands Loki's meaning, but he misunderstands that from Loki's perspective, he feels himself far too neck deep into his own ambitions to turn tail now. It would be a disgrace on his honor, and Loki does not believe that he is truly welcome back, no matter what Thor says.

This all fuels the TOWER SCENE later on. (1:46:52-1:47:42)

T: You think this madness will end with your rule?

One again, the brothers are in conflict, and there is a literal text and a subtext. Overtly, they are speaking about the Chutari invasion and Loki's part to play in it, but make no mistake in believing that that's what this conversation is about. It is STILL about coming home, and it is still about them and their bond, because while Thor is fighting for Earth's safety.... I really do believe he's fighting for his brother even more than that. (yet another meta for future vi to worry about... Thor, bless him, is not an impartial being and he can't surrender his personal attachments for any cause. It's his most selfish trait, and his greatest strength but I digress.)

L: It's too late! (subtext: it's too late for us/for me [to go home to you].) L: (resigned) It's too late to stop it.

Remember that their conversation at the Stark Tower is a direct continuation of their conversation on the cliff. So when Loki says "it's too late", he isn't just talking about the invasion. He can stop that if he tries to. If anyone can, it's Loki, the greatest sorcerer in all of Asgard. Loki means it's too late for them. It's too late for HIM. It's too late for him to come home after everything he has done up to this point. (I'd imagine he may also be talking about the events of 2011 but that's neither here nor there.)

As you can see from Thor's expression, Thor is in tune with Loki's true meaning. He knows Loki is talking about himself. Hence:

T: No. We can. Together. (subtext: No it isn't too late for us. I want you to come home.)

We can fix this. We can go home, together. It is not too late for us. You can still give up this poisonous dream. I still want you to come home.

There's a long pause in which Loki stares at Thor exactly like on the cliff, and then he gives a weak smile and that is when Loki stabs Thor in the abdomen with a tiny dagger. It's enough to make Thor stagger, because Thor isn't expecting it. Thor is reaching out with arms wide open towards his prodigal brother, and once again, Loki rejects him. And to make it clear that Loki truly believes it's too late for him (something even he deeply regrets, btw. He's crying in this scene.), Loki does the one thing that he has NEVER done, and draws Thor's blood in combat. He actually WOUNDS him, and he does it by his own hand.

This is not something he had done before. Ever. Period. In THOR (2011), they sparred, but Loki was not going out of his way to actually harm Thor. (If anything he was trying to goad Thor to harm him.) And when Loki snapped Thor's neck with the Destroyer, nearly killing him, that was not done by Loki's own, personal hand, physically and in person. It's also possible that Loki wasn't actually intending to kill Thor with the Destroyer, especially given even Thor forgets his own limitations as a mortal being.

BUT THIS? This was deliberate. This was personal. This was done entirely by Loki's own hand, of his own volition, and in a way that neither he nor Thor can ever take back or pretend was a mistake.

L: Sentiment.

And so in this way, Loki is trying to rid himself of his sentiment; his lingering love for his family and especially his brother. And, in another way, he's likewise telling Thor that his sentiment won't save Loki; all that they share, all that love, all that sentiment is worthless. Because in Loki's eyes there is no saving Loki.

Loki can't go home to his family, he has fallen too far. (and yet, he still loves them; he too is filled with sentiment.)

T: You give up the tesseract! You give up this poisonous dream! You come home. L: I don't have it.

^^^ A screenshot of Thor's reaction to the dagger in question. It's small, it clearly does very little to Thor. It barely has any blood on it, but it did draw blood nonetheless, because Loki can get close to Thor, Loki knows Thor's weaknesses, and Loki knows Thor's sentiment.

It is after Thor throws this dagger - this manifestation of their bond's slow disintegration - onto the floor of the tower that Thor finally commits to protecting Earth as his number one priority... even if doing so and ignoring his sentiment continues to pain him and cripple him greatly.

Thor stumbles (1:50:25-1:50:40)

He isn't stumbling and staggering because the dagger did damage to him. He's stumbling and staggering because of who did it, and how much that person means to him. Thor has been betrayed, his heart has been broken, and while he knows without a doubt that he must stand against Loki and beside the Avengers to keep Earth safe from his own loved one... it comes at a great cost: sentiment.

This is also why the quintessential Avengers circling shot ONLY happens after Thor has the Tower moment with Loki, because then and ONLY THEN is Thor actually on the same page as the rest of the Avengers.

So, no. I don't think that Loki would have ever in a million years have stabbed Thor before that point. Not for a joke save the (apparently canonical now...) one time, and certainly not as much as fanon likes to say he would have. Thor trusts Loki implicitly. Loki is the only person in their Asgardian group who can effectively and consistently rein Thor's impulses in. They are a perfect match for each other; two sides of one coin. And Loki's betrayal would not mean as much to Thor in this scene if Loki had ever caused Thor physical harm (meaning: enough to draw blood) before AVENGERS' Tower Scene.

[martianbugsbunny]

Personally i doubt thor knows loki loves him

U know what I'm gonna take the challenge on this one. Now, this post will only discuss their relationship in the movies before Ragnarok, because I don't really like that movie and I think it did a great disservice to both the characters and their relationship; the brightest and best of them comes from Thor, Avengers, and Dark World in my opinion, so I will be talking about what I love rather than what I have at best apathy for. Sticking it under the cut (it got looooong because I love to think about their dynamic), so if you want my opinion, read on, and if you've seen enough opinions for a lifetime and don't want any more, scrumble away and have a lovely day

Okay so let's start with Thor. In the beginning of that movie, there is absolutely no doubt in Thor's heart that Loki loves him, and here's why: Thor is an arrogant man who is largely blind to the things he doesn't agree with or understand. He has this mentality of other people just being made to love and adore him, because he's the future warrior king of Asgard, he's the golden boy, and because Asgard's people really do love and adore him, so his arrogance is only being confirmed by other people's actions. And of course, there's nobody who should love and adore Thor more than his brother, right?

Now, here's where I want to digress for a minute to talk about how incredibly unhealthy their relationship is. Thor kind of has the same outlook that Loki expresses in Avengers, that people are beneath him, and that's why they should all be looking up to him with awe and praise, and that extends even to his own brother. He tells Loki to mind his place and kind of brushes off his advice, because even though they're brothers and that's the closest anyone could get to being his equal, it's still not enough. Thor views Loki as another person who is beneath him, but who ultimately can't do anything but look up to him and love him.

This is an illusion.

Loki does love Thor. Their relationship, with how complicated and messy it is, only works if they truly love each other, and they do. But it's not the blind, adulating love that Thor expects. It's a jealous, aching love. Loki craves being equal to Thor, a problem that's only exacerbated by the way Thor denies him that position. He craves to be loved as he's assumed to love. And the problem with a love like that is how quickly it can turn. If Thor won't give Loki the affection he needs, then Loki isn't going to show Thor affection the way Thor wants him to, either.

That first movie is in multiple ways a brutal awakening for Thor. He's not the man his father wants him to be. His entire life he's been training to be king and then that future seems like it's been ripped away from him. He has his power and then it's all gone. And his brother, this person around whom he's constructed a narrative of almost reverent adoration, suddenly turns against him, tries to keep him in exile and then to kill him, tries to take the life that was promised to Thor. That looks absolutely nothing like the love Thor has believed Loki feels for him.

I would feel some doubt at that point. I think anyone would. My sibling tried to kill me. Does he still love me? Did he ever love me?

And to add to that natural doubt, Thor doesn't understand Loki. He never really has. He doesn't know what it's like to be, as Loki says later, living in the shade of someone else's greatness, the trickster brother who's never really trusted, let alone lauded. And correct me if I'm wrong, but even by the end of Thor, he doesn't know what really tipped Loki off the deep end. He doesn't know that Loki's just found out he's a Jotun in a land of Asgardians, that he's the very thing he's been brought up to hate and fear, so Thor doesn't understand why Loki is acting so erratically, which must compound the doubt for him. From his point of view it's like a light switch flicked and now Loki's trying to kill him, which increases the did he ever? question. Was it always a facade? And I don't think Thor ever quite realizes the illusion he built around Loki, the difference between his expectations and reality to begin with, so he also wouldn't be seeing that it's not quite instantaneous, that there were years of building resentment and longing that contributed to the tipping point of Loki's changed behavior.

So by the end of Thor, yes, he's got to be wondering if Loki loved him.

But when Thor appears in Avengers, do you remember what plea he makes? He says I grieved for you, I want you to come home. That's not the kind of thing you say to someone you think doesn't care about you. That's a plea to the heart. That's Thor trying to get to the love he knows is in there somewhere, behind everything else that's built up around Loki's heart; that's Thor saying I know you still love me, I don't know what changed, but please let our bond be enough to fix it. Whatever he's been thinking about between the events of those two movies, he's moved past that doubt enough to think maybe Loki's love for him will be enough to bring him home, even if some part of him expects Loki to say no anyway. We know that in the interim he learned of Loki's status as a Jotun, so maybe Thor's even begun to try to understand. Maybe he's been thinking about the fact that life got very hard and very confusing for Loki very suddenly, and he wonders if now that some time has passed, there's a chance Loki wants to come back and work through it with him and their parents. When he says "we were raised together, we played together, we fought together," he's not just trying to convince Loki that he's loved, he's trying to remind Loki of his own love.

Again, during the Battle of New York itself, Thor makes a similar plea. He offers that he and Loki stop the fight together, and his eyes are so incredibly soft when he says it, you know he believes it can still work. That belief comes from knowing there's something in Loki that wants to say yes, something that loves Thor enough to give up his dream of kingdom and stop the invasion. His use of together is interesting not just because he's offering Loki a way out, putting it on the table that Loki can exercise his heart and choose a better path, but also because he's finally putting Loki on the same level he is. We can do this, we can return home, you just have to find some part of you that loves me enough to choose equality with me in this fight over equality with me in having thrones. He also holds back when he's dueling Loki, which is a horrible idea if you actually believe a person has the capacity to kill you, but if you don't believe that, it's an ultimate show of trust. Thor kind of puts his life in Loki's hands by not using his full strength, and only after Loki rejects his offer and stabs him does he finally use more brute force, although it's still not enough to kill Loki or even knock him out. Thor really believes, not just wants to believe, that Loki will not kill him given the chance, that there is something in him that wants to go home, and it's all because Thor, after all his shattered illusions, still believes there is love for him in Loki's heart, even if it has been touched and twisted by anger and pain.

In Dark World, Thor is much more pessimistic when he breaks Loki out of jail. He basically says that his brother is no longer in there, that he won't hesitate to kill Loki if he steps out of line. I think this is important to note because Thor isn't saying I don't believe you love me anymore, he's saying the person who loved me is dead and this shell is all that remains. Thor says he no longer has hope, but he's still clinging to that belief that Loki did love him, in his own way, and he would rather view Loki as dead than let go of it.

But beyond that, there's the fact that he not only lets Loki out of the handcuffs, he gives Loki a knife. Once again, you don't give a weapon to someone you wouldn't trust not to kill you, and you don't trust someone you've had so much tension with not to kill you unless you believe they love you. Loki says "trust my rage" re: Frigga being killed, but I would argue that actually wouldn't go in his favor. Thor has seen what Loki resorts to when he's not processing his emotions in any way other than rage: he attacks Thor, he falls into perfidy, he just lashes out at the closest target. And even despite that, despite having fought Loki in Thor and in Avengers, having witnessed firsthand what destruction Loki was willing to either cause or help facilitate, Thor still gives him a weapon and trusts that Loki isn't going to kill him. There is clearly still a part of Thor that is saying he loves me, he's not going to kill me.

Of course, by the end of that movie, Thor is rewarded in his faith. Loki stabs Kurse to save Thor, and it appears to cost him his life, and as he's dying, what does Thor say? Stay with me. In essence, loving me so much you'll die for me isn't enough, love me so much you'll stay alive for me. It's not a rational thing to say to someone who appears to be bleeding out; a person can't generally stave off death on willpower alone when they've been stabbed in the gut. Thor always ends up speaking to Loki's heart, because he knows that heart is bitter and full of rage and grief but also love, even though Loki is absolutely horrible at expressing it most of the time. I want to talk about why Loki might've faked his death and taken Odin's place at the end of that movie in another post, but part of me really thinks he chose that specific way to fake his death because he wanted Thor to see that Loki did love him, and that was the only way he could think of to reach out without actually having to confront his own pain and the enormity of the breach between them. Now, the "I didn't do it for him" could be taken one of two ways: it was actually for Frigga, or it was actually for Thor. I'm very much inclined to believe the latter, as Thor is the one present in the scene. Also, the expression on Thor's face when Loki says that is so frozen, like yes, I wanted more than anything to be told that you still care, but not like this. And it feels like Loki is doing his best to communicate that he does love Thor, but his communication skills, especially with Thor, are severely distorted, partially by that unhealthy relationship they had early on where he most likely never felt entirely welcome to speak his true feelings, and partially by the chasm that opened between them when Loki went into his downward spiral of destruction, both of himself and of others. I genuinely think Loki doesn't know how to just say it. To quote myself from an earlier post I made about Loki, he feels like "there’s no way he can possibly repair the relationships he’s broken," so he doesn't try to apologize and make up for it. Like someone else (I forget who) has already said, sacrifice is the way Loki makes up for things. So he gives Thor this image of a sacrifice, the ultimate expression of love and devotion, because he doesn't know how else to say it.

What's the point of all this? Thor knew Loki loved him. That's the whole point of their story. Their love for each other is the cornerstone on which that immense cosmic narrative is built. Even with doubt, anger, bitterness, frustration, grief, pain all complicating their relationship and getting in the way of actually expressing love to each other, the fundamental truth of Thor and Loki is love. Is faith. Is hope. Is saying maybe you don't know how to say it, maybe you're trying to shut it down, but I know there is something in you that loves me and that's the part I choose to believe in.

Thor knew Loki loved him.

[musclesandhammering]

Friendly reminder that there’s only one multiverse in the mcu. It covers everything- Marvel, Sony, Fox, etc. Those are all universes inside the multiverse… of which there is only one :) :)

[sleepy-grav3]

Amity Park hates the Justice League but loves Red Hood and sometimes other heroes

A/n: I got this random idea so here it is. Oh, and this is good reveal AU ok?

-------

Due to the Justice League mocking them and ignoring their villain problems that were also publicly interdimensional problems, everyone hates the JL. It got worst with the GIW coming in, who blatantly went against the meta-laws (which included aliens, demons and so much more that weren't human from the beginning). They started to think the Justice League supported them.

In the Infinite Realms, however, there's a revenant that many adored and others respected. He did not hold back against criminals. Criminals that would rape, kill, traffic, sell drugs, and more to people. He especially didn't like when they brought kids into this. He'd avenge people the way they should've been: by promising that their abuser/killer/whatever wouldn't be able to do it again. And in the place they lived in, the only way for that to be possible was by major injury, heavy social outcasting, and/or death. Most prefer the 3rd.

And after how long the Amitians dealt with the attacks which eventually came to a slow once or twice a week type thing, they started opening their minds to the idea of coexistence. Well, further than they had. So when people started to cross over and start making their small haunts in their side of the veil, the Amitian's began to become aware of the popular hero Red Hood. He was part of the undead community, which was trustworthy in everyone's books.

So Amity Park started making merch. Most of it was for Team Phantom, but there was plenty for Red Hood as well. There were other heroes on the side, like for Superboy 1 (who they renamed to Supernova due to their hatred for Superman for 2 reasons, the obvious and that he rejected a mirror-born), and Raven (the half demon).

And with this coexistence, Team Phantom had noticed the positive feedback about killing in the name of vengeance. So they went on the offensive, and after a good year of that, the GIW lost funding for producing no results and just taking up resources. The acts were still there, but nobody enacted them in Amity, and nobody actually knew or believed them outside of the haunted city.

Then the Justice League find out about the hero group there due to tracking merchandise after they started to sell outside of the city. Superman was the guy everyone liked, so he was sent over. He immediately got thrown out and was now questioning who the heck Supernova was and when he rejected him.

Flash? Outcast. Everyone ignored and walked away from him. they had the police, who never did anything or even had to anymore, kick him out.

Green Lanter? Oh the poor guy. He had his ring taken away and thrown out of the city somehow. It took hours to find it.

Wonder Woman, they had to be ok with her. Not at first, but once Phantom had a talk with her and people learned that they were cousins through Clockwork (Kronos) and Pandora, they were ok. ish. Tolerated was the best word and she got the info back to the league.

The batfamily took a trip there, dragging Red Hood along somehow. And right when Red Hood was noticed, a crowd began to form as everyone practically worshipped him. There were many victims he had avenged and an Ancient (Lady Gotham) came and gave him the gifts she couldn't without scaring the guy.

At one point, the poor guy even cried.

[dclovesdanny]

Dead Serious

1/4

Damian hadn’t died until he was nine. He didn’t learn about soulmates or except the reality of them until a year after he went to live with father. It was two years after that that is soulmate, started dying again and again.

Damien would find whoever was constantly killing his soulmate and she would make sure that person suffered. Already knew his soulmate must have been a meta-in order to still be alive. After so many deaths, he would’ve suspected human trafficking if the thoughts weren’t so mundane. They were thoughts of tiny things, a place called the nasty burger or complaints about ‘The Fruitloop’. They were childish and well Damian did not like his soulmate dying so much. It did give him an insight onto his soulmate.

Damien felt his heart dropping into his stomach on the day his soulmates last thoughts were ‘they’re going to cut me up if they find me.’

It had been four concerning weeks of radio silence since, and Damien had never felt so scared. No matter what though, he was going to find out what they did to his soulmate and avenge him.

Meanwhile, ghosts have an innate sense of their soulmate or rather what soulmate is generally feeling. Danny is Getting pretty concerned with how angry his soulmate has been getting, but he can’t do anything for that right now. Right now, he has to lay low, and Gotham is the perfect place for that.

[jingyichickenwings]

This is less of a Deep Cut and more of a case of schadenfreude, but I love when various members of a creative team are messy in public about their high budget group project. Reality TV for nerds. It speaks to a profound lack of media training or fucks given. You guys realize that future employers can Google you, right? Unintentionally hilarious.

Linke and Yee were told in no uncertain terms that their season 1 storyboard was shit, so they hired Overton, who hired half a dozen actual writers, and they did basically a full overhaul. The script was objectively much better. But this was Linke's baby, and several years later you still see signs that he is Big Mad that he didn't get his way, and that he doesn't know or care about what actually became season 1 canon. I'm sorry that your Jewish stereotype villain didn't get to be a pedophile, I guess? Idk. Yes, yes, I am sure your version of Svengali is really innovative. Maybe someday, buddy.

Meanwhile they start writing season 2 in early 2020, while the season 1 air date isn't until November of 2021. So, they don't have public feedback on the script yet, just, yanno, actual writing professionals. Anyway, according to Overton, they needed to fire the non-management part of the writing team because of the pandemic?! Lmao babygirl you do your best and I respect commitment to the official PR excuse but nobody sensible believes this. Netflix writers average 110k/year, and you needed six or so from season 1. That is not a big part of the overall budget. Also, y'all could have saved money with Zoom meetings.

So the very thing that saved the season 1 script got line-itemed "because of the pandemic". That sounds like an extremely convenient excuse for Linke to be like, no, fuck you all, we are going back to Plan A, the rough draft of season 2 based on his shitty version of season 1. Honey. That ship has sailed. You already lost this argument.

So presumably some combination of Linke/Yee/Riot/Netflix was like, it's important that we have at least one actual grown adult writer on staff. So Overton gets to keep her job.

Now, I want to preface this by saying that season 2 would have been even worse without Overton. That being said, there is a reason they needed a deeper bench of writing staff. Overton and Linke over-connect with the characters Caitlyn and Jayce respectively, to a degree that they frequently forgot to evaluate how other characters would likely behave in certain situations. It led to contrivances, plot holes, etc. There is a lot I could add here but tbh go read any of the meta already out there.

In addition to the Mary Sue type behavior, Overton thought it would be Neat to make the writing more like Avengers, like multiverse time travel fuckery is a shiny beach pebble and not narrative napalm. What in the ADHD was she thinking? Even if they had the run time to world build enough for this, there was nothing in season 1 to even suggest this as an option. And let's be fucking honest, multiverse a lot of why Marvel is on a downward spiral. If Viktor can go to Build-A-Bear Workshop and 3-D print a million Jayces, why should I give a shit about his kill count? He can just be kind, rewind, and try again. Actions are decoupled from consequences.

Anyway, moving back to the topic at hand of the Arcane team. Apparently, Overton, Linke and Yee only half-wrote season 2?! Linke said something about how they "extensively collaborated with Fortiche on the story"? Which, it's not inherently a bad idea to get creative feedback from your art team, but ummm, maybe the writers and Fortiche should have worked to a point of agreement on basic story beats. Based on a lot of what Fortiche has said, the art for season 2 passive aggressively advances what they wanted the writing to be against Linke's wishes. They literally have just been straight up disagreeing with Linke and getting paid for it. Which, to be fair, I respect the sheer pettiness! Linke can't write his own damn show but wants to slow down the very expensive art team? When the actual writers that got fired "because of the pandemic" would have caught a lot of the season 2 issues?

So post airing of season 2, Overton is all about that girlboss copaganda, Linke is having multiple public meltdowns and getting fired by Riot(?), and multiple voice actors and artists at Fortiche are being like "yeah, we actually wanted something else so there are now multiple competing narratives for season 2". Which is hilarious. The way in which the show is messy is the same way in which the creators are messy. These bitches are a cautionary tale about hubris and the need to engage in team-building.

(EDIT MARCH 11: the fired rumors seem to be old/inaccurate, see comments for details)

[wise-writer-girl]

For once, I agree with both sides: Tony has seen it, and was deeply traumatized, and Steve is being exactly who he thinks he has to be in this brave new world that he didn't ask to save.

Iron Man (2008)    |    The Avengers (2012)

[emsromanoff]

The fire in her eyes | Part 1

She was Hydra’s secret weapon—firebound, nameless, and controlled. When the Avengers storm the last hidden base, Natasha Romanoff comes face to face with the girl behind the flame. A mission becomes a rescue. And maybe… something more

pairings: Natasha Romanoff x female OC

warnings: none for now, (mindcontrol?)

A.N. It’s my first post here and the first chapter of my avengers series. I am open for request and ideas how the story should continue. <3

A snowy, hidden Hydra base lay buried deep in Eastern Europe—Russia, to be exact. The Avengers had infiltrated. After a string of brutal attacks and unexplained fire-related incidents over the last few months, the team had finally tracked the source. Hydra was still out there, pulling strings from the shadows. Gunfire echoed through the metallic corridors. The mission had been simple on paper—shut it down. But with Hydra, nothing ever stayed simple.

The hallway was dim and cold. Flickering overhead lights cast long, twitching shadows across the concrete walls, where Hydra’s serpent insignia loomed in red. Ice crept along the surfaces, but the air ahead shimmered—hot, unnatural. Natasha Romanoff moved like a whisper, gun raised, breath steady. Her senses were razor-sharp.

“Most of the guards are down,” she whispered into her comm. “But something’s not right.”

Steve’s voice crackled in her ear.

“Copy that. Stay sharp. We’re a minute behind you.”

She didn’t respond. Her instincts screamed louder with every step.

The spy rounded a corner.

And stopped.

At the far end of a ruined lab, a figure stood barefoot among the rubble. Young. Female. Surrounded by flickering flames. No weapons. No armor. Just a tattered outfit and a terrifying stillness. The girl turned slowly. Her eyes weren’t glowing—they were burning, molten gold like dying embers. Emotionless. Branded. Hydra’s puppet.

Natasha didn’t flinch.

“Who are you?” she called, gun aimed.

The girl tilted her head, unblinking. Her voice was flat, mechanical.

“Target acquired.”

A sudden snap of heat flared in her palm—a fireball bloomed in her hand like a small sun.

Natasha stiffened, her body reacting before her brain caught up.

Of course. Hydra’s still making metas. Great.

“We are not here to hurt you,” she said calmly. “You don’t have to fight me.”

The girl’s expression didn’t change.

“Directive: Reduce target to ash. Complying.”

She hurled the fireball. Natasha dove behind a pillar, the blast scorching the concrete behind her.

“Jarvis,” she hissed into her comm. “Can you scan the girl?”

Jarvis’s voice answered moments later.

“She is a mutant, Miss Romanoff. And she is indeed under Hydra’s control. I am attempting to disrupt her brainwave patterns. Stand by.”

Another fireball exploded nearby, forcing Natasha to duck behind shattered machinery. She grabbed a metal panel to use as a makeshift shield.

“She’s strong,” she muttered. “Too strong. Her fire’s melting bullets.”

“Try not to die,” Tony’s voice cut in. “We’re on our way.”

“Noted. Bring marshmallows,” Natasha replied dryly.

The mutant advanced slowly, fire dancing in her hands. There was a strange calm in the way she moved, but something behind her eyes was fighting—buried, distant.

“You’re quick,”

the girl said, her tone oddly curious.

“Hydra thought you’d be harder to kill.”

Natasha narrowed her eyes.

“Yeah? Tell Hydra they need better intel.”

The girl raised her hand again—but before she could strike, a flash of lightning lit up the lab.

Thor dropped from above like a thunderbolt, hammer-first, slamming into her. She flew backward, crashing into the far wall. Flames burst out around her like a shield.

Thor landed beside Natasha, electricity crackling around him.

“She’s strong. But not a god.”

“She’s too young,” Natasha said. “And not in control.”

The girl stood again, unharmed. Her eyes flared red this time—hotter, angrier. Her long black hair billowed around her face like smoke. Tony and Steve burst into the room seconds later.

“Did I miss the fireworks?” Tony quipped, raising his gauntlets.

“We’re working on the finale,” Natasha replied. “No killing.”

“Copy that,” Steve nodded. “We take her alive.”

The mutant let out a strangled sound, clutching her head as voices overwhelmed her mind.

“Get… out… of my head!”

Rage surged—an explosion of flame spiraled around her, keeping the team at bay. She stood in the center, trembling, torn between the weapon she’d been forced to become and the person still hidden underneath.

Jarvis’s voice crackled in again.

“I’m close. I just need a few more seconds.”

“We don’t have a few more seconds!” Natasha shouted, ducking behind cover again. “She’s losing it!”

“Hold the line,” Steve ordered. “Don’t let her out of the room.”

“She’s not trying to leave,” Thor muttered. “She’s trying to end us.”

The mutant raised both arms, summoning a whirlwind of fire. Her body glowed like a furnace.

Then—

A high-pitched tone burst through the lab’s speakers. Her body seized, her flames sputtered, and she collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

Silence fell.

Smoke curled into the air.

Natasha approached cautiously, her boots crunching glass. She knelt beside the girl, brushing hair from her pale face. A red burn mark blazed on the girl’s arm, raw and fresh.

“Damn it,” Natasha muttered. “They pushed her too hard.”

“She going to live?” Steve asked, stepping beside her.

“She’ll live,” Natasha said, lifting the girl gently. “But we need to get her back to the facility. Fast. And find out exactly who she is.”

[amageish]

Marvel United: A Pride Special #1. Art by Luciano Vechio.

I saw some discussion about this cover and people not recognizing all the characters... so I did the only logical thing and made a reading list. Here's a comic recommendation for every queer character on this cover!

Shela Sexton / Escapade: A trans mutant superheroine figuring out her place in a bigoted world In a subversion of the usual mutant metaphor, Shela's parents accepted her mutanthood wholeheartedly... only to disown her when she came out as transgender. You can read her debut in Marvel Pride 2022.

Natima Ngoza / Beisa: A trans woman born in Mohannda who fled to Wakanda when running away from her judgemental family. She's a love interest for T'Challa and a take on the Catwoman archetype. Read all about her in the underrated 2023 Black Panther run!

Cooper Coen / Web-Weaver: A Spider-hero from Earth-71490, Cooper Ceon saved his classmate/crush Peter Parker from a spider bite on a high school field trip... only to be bitten himself. You can read about an adventure of his on Fire Island in Marvel's Voices: Spiderverse.

Gwen Poole / Gwenpool: An aroace Marvel Comics superfan iseaki'd into the Marvel Universe. With the power of meta knowledge, she will find her own place in the canon she loves so much. You can read her realizing she's aroace in ARomancing of Gwendolyn Poole (get it?), part of the Love Unlimited Infinity Comic.

Jean-Paul Beaubier / Northstar: Gay French-Canadian mutant sports superstar and Marvel's first textually gay superhero. You can read about him taking on anti-mutant bigotry in his home country in Alpha Flight (2023).

Rachel Summers / Askani: The sapphic daughter of Scott Summers and Jean Grey from the Days of Future Past timeline. You can read about her and her girlfriend fighting bigots in the British wizarding community (I wonder what THAT could be an allegory for) in Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain.

David Alleyne / Prodigy: Bisexual mutant supergenius. New Mutant, Young Avenger, X-Men, and most recently a professor at Empire State University. You can read about him and his boyfriend in the Young Avengers arc of the Marvel's Voices Infinity Comic.

Bobby Drake / Iceman: Founding X-Men and jokester who realized he was gay later in life. Bobby... He's gay! You can read about him bringing Rogue home as a fake girlfriend to meet his bigoted parents in Uncanny X-Men #319. While this story is before he came out, I think it is an EXCELLENT showcase of his character.

Xuân Cao Mạnh / Karma: Lesbian mutant hero and founding member of the New Mutants. Depending on how you define "superhero," she's arguably Marvel's first lesbian hero. You can read about her relationship troubles, as well as her reunion with her once-lost brother, in Karma in Love, part of the Love Unlimited Infinity Comic.

Charlie Webber / Sun-Spider: A pansexual Spider-hero with EDS. Originally a fan-submitted Spider-sona, she's grown in relevance and even had a speaking cameo in Across the Spiderverse! You can read her story in Edge of Spiderverse #4.

Logan Lewis / Nightshade: Sapphic teen genius and legacy hero to the original Nightshade, a redeemed supervillain. You can read her solo adventures as part of the Marvel's Voices Infinity Comic.

Billy Kaplan / Wiccan: The gay son of the Scarlet Witch... to grossly oversimplify the situation. He also may kind of be God? Good for him! Read about him in Young Avengers (2013).

Teddy Altman / Hulkling: The gay son of Captain Mar-Vell and Skrull princess Anelle. A Skrull/Kree hybrid, he was sent to live on earth for his protection - y'know, Superman stuff. Read about his wedding to his husband Hulkling in Empyre!

Ms America Chavez: The multiverse-travelling latina lesbian of the Young Avengers, Ultimates, and West Coast Avengers. Read about her helping her CLOSE PLATONIC FEMALE FRIEND Kate Bishop raise the baby landshark Jeff in It's Jeff! Yes, that is my America recommendation. I also love her role in Ultimates, but this is funnier.

Aaron Fischer / Captain America: An unhoused gay man and champion of the marginalized, selected by Steve Rogers to have the title of Captain America. You can read about him in Avengers Academy.

Justin Jin / Kid Juggernaut: The Korean-Canadian gay himbo grandson of Jin Moon-Ho, the original Juggernaut who Cain Marko took the name/powers of. Read about him summoning Doctor Strange to ask him about PreP (yes, that happens explicitly on-panel - it is awesome) among other things in Avengers Academy.

Raven Darkhölme / Mystique: The shapeshifting sometimes-nemesis and sometimes-ally of the X-Men. While she may not care about things like "human lives" and "the law," she does harbor a lot of love for wife Destiny - as well as their adopted daughter Rogue and biological son Nightcrawler. There's a lot I could suggest here, but I'm going to pick Marvel's Voices: X-Men as I ADORE the Mystique/Destiny flashback story in that.

Kate "Kitty" Pryde: The original new teenager on the block, Kitty Pryde has had a LONG road to embracing her bisexuality. After literal decades of queercoding, you can finally read her dating a woman textually in the currently ongoing Exceptional X-Men (aka the best current X-book).

[s0fter-sin]

how canon do we think warzone is? characterisation things like the takedowns and voice lines?

obviously the takedowns are flashy as hell, that's the point, but things like ghost's "cheers ya slag" and "done and dusted" paint him as so much more arrogant than the campaign suggests

but he is arrogant ("i've seen better" "who?" "me") and we never see him work solo except for the opening scene in mw2 where he chooses to remain danger close to a missile (either just bc or bc he wanted to ensure the kill) so who's to say he doesn't act like that on his own? you even see a hint of it in the camera mission when he shows off to soap and jumps off the building to land on the shadow; what is that if not an arrogant, flashy takedown?

if he's happy to do that in the middle of a stealth mission what else would he do just bc he can?

we know warzone is canon in some respects like the seasonal cutscenes (ala alex's resurrection and "i wasn't in that tank") so at least those are canon but what about everything in between? do specgru and kortac exist in canon? is the 141 part of some greater allied team? (which begs the question why do they never try to contact them when the world is literally on the brink but that’s a very meta, “why didn’t anyone call the avengers in their solo movie?” level of nitpick and we don’t do that here, serious nitpicks only)

do we consider them in character? or is it technically an au? is warzone even made by the same team? would characterisation mean anything to them beyond “does it make the character sound cool?”

even zombies, soap takes on a lot more of a leadership role than we see in the campaign, do we think that's how he acts when he's not with the 141? bc that's a significant shift to go from a leader to a clear subordinate without any chafing or annoyance at getting dropped down the pecking order

then you take skins into account; things like ghost's senpai skin is obviously an au but if he gets new takedowns with it (i haven't played and don't know how it works Imao) do we think main ghost still has that skill set? or is it possible for him to learn it? would he want to?

i think the campaigns are set in stone canon but even that characterisation can be touch and go considering how dirty they did price in mw3 and even how mellow he was in mw2 compared to mw19 and just... everything about the final mw3 mission (and mw3 in general, even shepherd being in the helo when they detain makarov in verdansk is ooc as hell and only exists to serve the narrative)

(characterisation in this aspect is difficult to pin down bc it's hard to tell how much is them writing the character of soap, the character of ghost, and how much is them just writing generic military man 1 and generic military man 2; there's some personality and growth but we have to admit it's thin and subtextual at best. how much of soap's behaviour is bc that's how they wanted soap specifically to react and how much is it bc that's how a military guy would react? (things like being angry about releasing hassan when graves reacts the same way))

so if canon isn't even consistent, can we even trust warzone's characterisation?

(but that's a whole seperate gripe let's stay on track Imao)

do we think it's canon? or is it just battleworld where they can act however the devs want so we spend money on it?

[musclesandhammering]

That’s what I was leaning toward. Like even when Thor disobeyed him, he was still able to take his powers and even when Loki went off the rails, he was still able to imprison him. But he knew if Hela came back, he couldn’t control her like he did the boys.

Also, the point you made about Odin treating Loki like a petulant child really got me thinking. Even in TDW when he says that everywhere Loki goes there’s “war, ruin, and death” in the next breath, he turns around and condescends him by treating all of that like a big tantrum. Like even when he’s admitting that Loki is a threat to the nine realms, he still feels the need to minimise his power and diminish his suffering. Which is very ironic considering the root of Loki’s anger all throughout the first 4 movies is the fact that his family refuses to acknowledge his pain. Odin (and Thor and Frigga) say exactly the wrong things every time they speak to Loki.

brb just thinking about how Odin banished Hela a thousand years ago and then he banished Thor in 2011 and then his anger turned to Loki and Loki decided to banish him to a retirement home before Odin could get him

[raayllum]

Will probably chuck something like this into a bigger speculative meta at one point about Xadia's in-universe history, but from a "why would the story Choose to do it like this, as opposed from any other lens?" I want to reexamine the Mage Wars conflict. Specifically, in this case, that the Mage Wars were the result of (predominantly dark) mages being leaders/kings.

On the one hand, at first glance, it makes a lot of sense. We routinely see most of the series' mages turn to magic, dark or otherwise, as a result of desperation and/or ambition, or both in an attempt to consolidate power.

KPP'AR: You made the same choice you've always made. The one that gives you power. (5x02)

VIREN: I am the High Mage of Katolis. I have power, purpose, and I intend to use them both. (6x06)

Even Claudia, despite being more driven by her personal loyalties to her family over political ambition like her father ultimately was, seeks the power to fix things. To un-paralyze her brother; to bring her father back from the dead (twice). To carry out Aaravos' revenge not to bring down the Cosmic Order for 'humanity's greater good,' but to avenge his wrongly executed daughter.

Because magic, at its core in TDP, is about having knowledge and power.

Or is it? Put a pin in that, for a second.

The main thing I'm meandering my way to is that the mage warlords... didn't have to be warlords. Like, we could've had mage wars where mages were the top or chosen generals, sworn to their respective royal families and fighting to the end. It would've amped up the assassin-dark mage parallels as servants or pawns/perpetrators of the cycle, been an even darker version of Harrow and Viren's fragmented bond of king and high mage, or even what Aanya seems to have going on with hers, etc.

But instead, the mages responsible for the mage wars were indeed kings and rulers, people who sought more political power void of any other checks and balances or relationships. They were in charge; they were not servants at all (at least, not to anyone but unknowingly Aaravos).

Which makes sense: it's easier to manipulate people and get more of it with the more political power they have, especially because the Mage Wars possessed an unstable and rapidly changing political structure ("When one mage rose to power, another was quick to dethrone them") built on competition and bloodthirstiness.

I've speculated in previous metas that Aaravos wanted the remaining warlords to go and wage war on Xadia pre-his imprisonment. If that's true, then Viren being a mage turned warlord (king) is more than repeating history... and we see Karim as another mage grappling for the throne, even if he's less directly manipulated by Aaravos.

So the show paints a pretty clear message through arc 1 Viren, Karim, and Kpp'Ar: mages who chase political power are more likely to go out of control, and mages who rescind political power are more likely to... end up being Better and with happier endings, at least in theory.

In my mind, the main reason to set the mage warlords up in "magic as a tool for political power" is to demonstrate the dangers of Viren and Karim's ways of thinking, as well as for arc 3 with Aanya's mages (brother?) potentially seeking her throne and war with Xadia.

The good news: while Callum is still part of the occupational high mage line of Kpp'Ar to Viren to him, and has acquired the literal embodiment of it through the Staff of Ziard now being his (more on that here), Callum has never wanted political power in his life!

Knowledge and power seeking are still things he has to contend with, the way any mage would, but since Callum is far more oriented around love than ego or anything else... while other mages have repeated the history of waging war at Aaravos' behest, and others likely will in arc 3, it is less certain that Callum will be one of them.

He's a mage, but not a warlord; he has no reason or desire to be. Because magic in TDP is about knowledge and power, yes, but it is also about Love, particularly for him.

Rayla's note in Callum's spellbook: That's not cheesy at all Callum. Love is magic!

A simplification, perhaps, given that Claudia is also driven by love (as Terry spells out in 7x05, even if it's becoming warped as part of revenge) and because Callum still has ambition... but unlike the bulk of the show's other high mages or mages turn warlords, he is not ultimately More Ambitious than he is Loving, and that, I think, is what's gonna Save him.

[kalinara]

I've been contemplating why many of the Throuple or "Scogean" fics and meta that I see don't really work for me. This is not intended to target any one author or commenter. This is just my own personal, general opinion.

And I think my main issue is that I look for Throuple fic/meta that specifically deals with the 616, that is, the main comic book, continuity. And, for all that this is where the Throuple is actually canon*, it's actually pretty rare to find fic/meta about this specific dynamic.

(*No one's buying the eleventh hour denial, Marvel)

I think what a lot of Throuple writers don't realize about the 616 continuity is that Scott, Jean and Logan really are not a ship of two well adjusted individuals and their weird self-loathing, feral pet that they've coaxed in from the cold.

That dynamic may work for some of the other continuities, and that's perfectly cool, don't get me wrong, but if we're specifically talking about 616, the dynamic is ultimately very different.

I mean, yes, Logan is Logan. And he's got a lot of trauma and issues under his belt. He's also about 200 years old and has learned a shit ton of coping mechanisms. He's not always friendly, he's not always civilized, and occasionally he's an outright judgmental asshole. But he's mostly figured out his own shit.

Now let's look at Scott Summers and Jean Grey for a minute. The first and best of Xavier's child soldiers.

Jean Grey is the living embodiment of a god, who is constantly dealing with the fact that a loss of control on her part could and has led to billions of deaths. She has to deal with the fact that she dies, a lot and basically every time she comes back it's to a very different world than she left where everyone is yet again in some new bizarre crisis. She's constantly trying to relearn herself, her surroundings, her relationships, and atone for the things done when she'd lost control.

(A.X.E. X-Men #1)

Scott Summers is arguably the more normal of the three. He's not a god or an immortal, right? But this is a man who, in his last canonical nervous breakdown kicked Xavier from the mansion (twice), went from being headmaster of the School, to the benevolent dictator of the entire mutant race, to being an outlaw revolutionary that decorates college dorm rooms Che Guevara style and ended up on the cover of Rolling Stone even as SHIELD, the Avengers, and pretty much every world government wanted him captured or dead. Oh, and he thought it was a great idea to try to teach a new batch of students in the fucking left over WEAPONS X facility.

He's a little more stable now, admittedly. I'm not quite sure what to make of the whole outsourcing his moral accountability to his wife bit. But I'm sure the panic attack and the fact that he's now living in an abandoned Sentinel factory are not something we really need to worry about.

(Uncanny X-Men #527)

Obviously, everyone is going to have their own read on the throuple, but to me, the throuple is less two well adjusted people with their poor feral friend, and more one somewhat sane old dude who is dating a tormented goddess, and a modern version of Alexander the Great perpetually on the verge of a psychotic break.

I'm just saying, in the 616 continuity, LOGAN is the well-adjusted one.