#verbally eviscerating someone. i think it'd make me feel better)

[iamanartichoke]

I need spoilers for episodes 5 and 6. They've got to be out there. I can't take two more weeks of this.

I think what's giving me this vaguely ill feeling, right now, is the sinking realization that there was no grander plan behind Loki's getting drunk, breaking the Timepad, just general kinda incompetent behavior. There were theories and there were hints and subtext and it amounted to nothing.

Cut for spoilers/negativity, sorry.

Basically I'm getting major "that opening scene in IW was just too full of holes, the-sun-will-shine-on-us-again, one little dagger, Loki has to have something up his sleeve - oh .... no, no he's really dead, there was no greater plan" flashbacks.

It's so incredibly frustrating for Loki's narrative to come so close to something profound, again and again, only to swing and miss at the last second. The pieces are there. The threads are there. And tptb keep choosing to just ... sit on them, bc idk, it's easier for Loki's complexity to remain unexplored?

Tom says that episodes 4 and 5 are where the series takes off and I'm just like, you can't wait until the second to last episodes to have something happen! You've been dropping breadcrumbs since episode 1 - episodes 4 and 5 are where you start to sweep them up! You've only got 6 total!

Also, I was really interpreting Loki having confused friendship with romance, bc that's what makes the most sense for his character but then there was this, and the aforementioned 'oh so this really is just surface-level material and I shouldn't even waste my time examining the subtext and context clues' feeling occurs. (Note - this article isn't overly flattering to Loki, bc of course it isn't, so just be aware of that before reading.)

So, yeah, it's just - it's not exactly the content of this episode that has me so upset. I can live with bad plots and dangling threads. Lord knows I tolerate other, arguably much more terrible tv shows for the sake of the parts I like (Reign, Once Upon a Time, a few seasons of Pretty Little Liars, just to name a few).

It's not the content. It's the refusal of tptb to take Loki's character to the depths he deserves, especially since they promised us that this series would really explore his identity and his gender and all of these things that the fandom mostly has wanted. It's frustration in the overall way the surface-level plot makes Loki's characterization suffer. And it's definitely the trigger of those feelings of heartbreak and fury and denial and grief that followed IW. I practically have ptsd from that death scene.

(I realize that these are hefty words to use to describe one's reaction to fiction, especially in the sense that an emotional downward spiral is being legitimately triggered by a tv show, but - look, everyone already knew I was cringe, okay, so leave me alone with my feelings.)

I think that if the show had more episodes, there would have been hope for it? Like all the breadcrumbs that have been dropped implied lots of fascinating things to be explored, but they just didn't have room to explore them as thoroughly as they'd need to in order for all of it to have an impact. Loki/Sylvie does not feel earned. Mobius turned on the TVA super quickly (so did B-15, for that matter). Ravonna went from kinda sus to outright villain in, like, ten minutes. And Loki and Mobius's friendship didn't exactly come out of nowhere, bc it was set up as the outcome from the first episode (in my opinion) but it did happen much too quickly. It wasn't earned, either. And the reason I'm harping on this is because these are all really good character journeys that could have been done so much better - yeah, even Loki/Sylvie - if they had just paced them better, used more of their own subtext, and had a few more episodes in which to develop the characters alongside the complicated plot.

(Yeah, there may be a season 2, but I'm not here for waiting a whole nother year or so for it to be filmed, produced, and released only for it to continue to ultimately not meet my expectations.)

So, yes. I'm sorry for the negativity; I realize I went from "hey I mostly liked this! It wasn't that bad!" to "I will ragequit and kill everyone in this story and then myself" in, like, a few hours but - well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'll most likely rewatch it again tonight. I may or may not cry it out and then do my best to enjoy the remaining two episodes for what they are, not for what they could or might be. Once the rawness of all of this fades, I'll focus on the things I liked and come up with my own headcanons, I suppose. Or maybe I'll overall change my mind again. Idk. Whatever. I just need a glass of wine and a few more xanax tbh. (Great. Now fiction is going to give me a drug problem as well lmfao.)

Also - it is actualy really, really funny that, if you think about it, it turns out that a fanfic by Tom isn't actually all that good. (I'm being facetious, but the general sentiment is true.) I'm sorry, Tom. I know you're excited about this and you said this episode was your favorite, so I hope you don't see some of these reactions (either here, or on twitter, or reddit, or wherever he may end up) and feel bad about yourself/your project. I guess there's just no universal cup of tea for everybody.