#(hard to be done considering how mcu treats him-)

[godlygivenanxiety]

Peter: pretty messed up that my body, a chemistry lab made of meat, simply chooses to make me a bit nervous at all times for no reason

[luna-rainbow]

Oh no I totally agree that it is undoubtedly fair, truly warranted, to criticize the way the attempt to rewrite his victim hood into him being at fault. I less so sent that ask towards you (bc I’ve followed you for a long time and know how you feel) and more so in a response to other anons. Truly, the erasure of Bucky being a victim sends me over the edge and the whole thunderbolts thing has me raging. That wasn’t really what I was trying to get at in my first ask. And I very very much agree that the whole ‘amends’ and Sam’s (ooc) line of basically tell him to man up and work harder, etc., was all rooted in toxic masculinity from the writers. I was more so trying to say that even though TFATWS did have some major issues, I don’t think Bucky was completely off from his prior characterization, unfortunately they did seem to teeter back and forth and be contradictory with his trauma. Especially considering some of the stuff the cast and crew have said in interviews that do lean towards Bucky being a victim. But when you look at a majority of his actual behaviors and personality, it’s pretty fitting unlike some people try to argue. While the whole going to Zemo thing was wildly unlike Bucky, I do think that him being shitty to Sam doesn’t really fall into the same category. I say that because some times, just real people, characters can be assholes and they have flaws, and you know in the end he knew he was in the wrong and partially didn’t understand Sam’s reasoning. So I do think that isn’t a mistake on the writers part but that’s just my personal opinion. In all, while I do think he wasn’t done justice or utilized properly, Bucky’s primary characterization wasn’t wrong. It was more so the way the storyline tried to depict him and how some of the other characters treated him.

Ah, thanks for coming back to provide more context 😅

To be honest, I credit Seb with 90% of Bucky’s characterisation in the movies and the show. Let’s face it, Bucky’s characterisation was pretty thin if we’re going off the scripts alone (including the movies). He was a plot device for Steve, not a fully written person. Seb was the one who made Bucky give the long weighty looks to Steve during the war, the child-like confusion during the conversation with Pierce, and those sad reflective half-smiles during CACW/IW/EG. He’s a small side character with an exceptional narrative importance, and a lesser actor would have just peeled off the lines and called it a day. Seb went hard into it - he researched vets and PTSD, he made headcanons for Bucky’s relationship with Steve and even his fighting style, for a character that had 15 lines in the movie with his name in the title and only 2 emotive scenes, he’s tried very hard to make it a believable, human emotional journey.

If you look purely at Bucky’s lines in TFATWS — particularly his to-and-fro with his therapist, Zemo and even some of the ones with Sam, under a different actor they could have been aggravating, petulant and caustic. Sebastian kept it consistent with Bucky’s journey up to now — he was weary, uneasy and always a little vulnerable under the gruffness. Sebastian is very good at doing vulnerable, and that alone saved Bucky from being a flat alpha male. Under a different directorial/writer team I would have said they did a good job with the consistency, but MCU directors since Russo’s are notorious for letting their actors take the reins with their characters especially for emotional beats. By and large, because they’ve been so lucky with their casting, that’s worked, but it’s going to fray at the seams eventually.

I think one of the reasons why people say Bucky was out of character (apart from some of the decisions) was that he had a period of healing in Wakanda, and when we saw him in IW he was smiling and friendly. When we meet Bucky in TFATWS he’s raw and nervous again, and something has made his recovery go backwards. The series then avoids the giant elephant in the room for both Sam and Bucky, which was how much hurt EG!Steve’s decision caused both of them…so while we can understand the context for Bucky’s anger, that context was never acknowledged to be true…and if we ignore that context, then there’s no reason his recovery should have gone backwards.

TFATWS was full of crappy contradictions like this.

[dilfdoctordoom]

The write up you did about mcu Gamora was applause worthy and I'm thankful you took the time to do it. It's hard to put my feelings into words and I think reading what you wrote was the first time I realized I'm not just disappointed. I'm hurt. I won't speak for other people but as someone who identifies with Gamora's background it was painful to watch her death shoved aside and no effort made to develop 2014 Gamora. Like you said Gamora was a driving force behind the team and the movie was written like she had less significance than a background character.

The worst part for me is how everything felt like a punishment rather than choices meant to heal the wounds inflicted by Infinity War. Instead of having everyone show her more love after what happened there's hardly any love at all from most of the characters. She doesn't get to proudly stand as Guardian either and is turned into a ravager when ravagers don't seem to be held in a particularly high regard by Gunn based on past comemts he's made and the limited focus they have had in the movies. It's like Gunn saw her as less worthy because of what was done to her and it continues to nag at me.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! I have so, so many feelings on how she's been handled and I barely scratched the surface with that post.

Gamora's one of the characters at Marvel that I identify with the most and I think she was truly wonderful representation for abused women. She escapes from that, she got a family that loved her, she was always to exist outside of it-- for two whole movies, she was this wonderful, dynamic character that we got to see heal and grow from her past.

Seeing how volume 3 treated her is brutal. You're completely right about the Ravagers; they're positioned as "less than" & characters like Kraglin & Yondu are "elevated" to Guardian status... so it feels like a downgrade to put Gamora with them, which feels like such a deranged choice considering what happened to her.

I know a lot of people praised volume 3 for being "feminist" for not having Peter and Gamora get back together... but that doesn't really hit when the movie acts like, because they aren't together, she isn't worthy of her family anymore. With every other movie, Gamora was a fully formed character outside of Peter Quill; in volume 3, her whole purpose is to serve his narrative.

It's exhausting. I adore Rocket, but the second Gunn decided to set the movie after Endgame, it needed to be Gamora's story. I think it could've functioned well for Rocket had we stuck it in the almost five year period between volume 2 and Infinity War (I'd argue it would work better, as the ramifications of Endgame don't seem to be felt by Rocket, despite him losing his family for five years).

Gamora got fridged. There's no way around that. But you know what? Barbara Gordon was fridged to-- so a later writer took her and retooled her into a feminist icon, one of DC's best characters.

Gamora doesn't get that chance. She's realistically never going to get that chance; I know Zoe Saldana said she'd return as Gamora if she was asked, but... I don't think she will be.

The last appearance of Gamora is going to be in What If...? and that stings. That show has already had a shaky handle on her, from cutting out her episode, to removing her from any cosmic stories. She's not involved or even mentioned in an episode that heavily involves Nebula & Thanos. She doesn't get to cameo alongside the rest of the Guardians in the Party Thor episode. She's wholly absent, cut out of everything, and it's exhausting.

She was one of the first leading women of this franchise, and the first leading woman of color. Both Gamora and her fans deserve a hell of a lot better than what Marvel has given us.

[caatws]

I'm not sure my thoughts on Gamora and vol 3 will be welcome because I'm not a die hard fan. But I do think after reading the many questions and comments about it there is one crucial thing people are missing that maybe would help others see why Gamora's treatment in vol 3 isn't so great.

In Infinity War Gamora's death reduced her to a tool for Thanos and to make him sympathetic. This was obviously horrible. But the more concerning issue is how the mcu never moved away from using her as a tool.

In Endgame she primarily exists to show how far Nebula has come in her development. We see the contrast between past and future Nebula but also how future Nebula has grown in regards to her relationship/feelings towards Gamora. There are some decent story elements for Gamora too and Endgame would have been a new starting point if vol 3 had used it as a stepping stone to build a bigger story focused on her. But that's not what went down.

Instead vol 3 brings her in primarily to have a push and pull dynamic that serves as a way for Peter to start healing. You'll notice hardly anyone else interacts with her. We never get to explore or hear about her time after Endgame. How the guardians coped with her future selfs death is completely absent from the plot. That's because non of this matters to the story since her purpose is mostly bringing Peter closure. Her dynamic with the ravagers is barely explored because they don't exist to be a real fleshed out family. They exist for her to have a place to go back to once everything is done. There are a few strong moments for Gamora but it's like she's kept from fully integrating so that we as the audience will let go and come to not care the same way most of the guardians don't care.

Gamora was one of the strongest characters over the course of vol 1/2 and the start of Infinity War. She was a survivor who had hurts and pains as well as healing and growth. She formed the guardians. She supported and maintained the family they became. She mended her relationship with Nebula and had a lot of heart. She exemplified the themes of gotg. Then because of Thanos they tossed all that and her over a cliff. It's awful, but what makes it crushing is that they never went on to have her family mourn her and never bothered to have any real investment in her past self coming to the future. She mostly stayed the tool Thanos turned her into. It's also upsetting that they didn't further explore her relationship with Nebula given it was one of the most defining relationships for both of them. Instead they have Nebula become part of the family and be treated as if she's always been there helping and supporting them while both past and future Gamora were treated like some outsider they all barely knew and didn't care about.

Like I said I'm a casual fan so maybe I don't count but I think the way Gamora ended up being handled from her death onward is some of the most thoughtless and mean treatment I have seen for a character. Especially one who was an abuse survivor. (I'm sorry this is long but I wanted to break down all the points as clearly as possible)

your pov is definitely welcomed and encouraged here anon! i think there's a lot of value in considering perspectives of more casual fans with this as well bc it can rly show the extent of the issue. like, it's one thing if the more diehard fans are the only ones to find an issue with a work, as that suggests the issue could be more on the nitpicking side of things, but if all kinds of viewers with different amounts of familiarity with and investment in the work are seeing the same issues, then that probably more strongly indicates that those issues exist.

so in a way, it's validating to hear that others are finding these issues—which you laid out so clearly and thoughtfully, thank you!—without necessarily having the same close relationship with the franchise.

[susandsnell]

hey love, have u seen the new gotg/do u plan to? totally understandable if u can't look at crisp rat on the big screen again/if ur disneymarvelled out. also! what's ur favorite art house horror annnnnnnd ur favorite werewolf movie? hope ur day/night is going well!

!!! this was so sweet to wake up to this morning!

I have seen GOTG 3 and I was really pleased with how it turned out (for the most part, lol, but that I enjoyed an MCU movie as much as I did in 2023 is in and of itself a testament to Gunn's skill with wringing emotion from the popcorn pics and creative graveyard that is Disney right now). Peter Quill means enough to me as a character that I'm able to separate him somewhat from Pratt in my head, thankfully (as he made like...borderline homophobic comments in press for the film, to nobody's surprise). Really liked how well my girls Nebula and Mantis were done, and I was actually pleasantly surprised by a lot of Gamora's storyline given how much needed to be salvaged from IW-Endgame. Loved the gradual reveal that Rocket has been the emotional core of these movies all along, especially in those backstory scenes that let Gunn really show off his horror background. (Come on, that wailing mimicry/face stuff had to be a Silence of the Lambs reference! In an MCU movie? Fab.) It was a wonderfully emotional sendoff to a trilogy that has saved and helped me in so many ways, and I think the most meaningful choice of all is the shift to contemporary music symbolizing letting go of one's past and nostalgia and moving forward - an important character moment for the Guardians, sure, but also almost a jab at how modern Disney is riding on nostalgia and refusing to evolve. (May be a bit of a stretch, but considering the delightfully hammy High Evolutionary feeling like a continual jab at Disney management and Gunn's probably rightful anger at how the company's treated him, who knows?) I'm 90% disneymarvelled out, but once in a while, there'll be a fantastic work of animation from them or a pleasant surprise that'll play exception to the rule.

My favourite arthouse horror is very difficult to pick! (To say nothing of how it's kind of a hard distinction to pin down - people argue Ari Aster's works and Black Swan and The VVitch qualify, and I adore all of these, but don't quite see them as arthouse?) I'm going to go with Suspiria for now, with honourable mentions to Ganja & Hess, Possession, and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (I know this one's kind of a cheat because it's more revengey/crime drama than horror, but honestly how graphic it gets and the denouement arguably push it into horror for me). I have a big soft spot for Let The Right One In as well.

Werewolf movies are even harder because I don't often go in for them! An American Werewolf in London is a classic though, and the makeup effects are unforgettable. Other than that, flaws and all, Ginger Snaps and The Company of Wolves are both delights in their own ways.

My week has unforch been pretty wretched so far, but this ask more than brightened it up! <3 Hope you have a great time of day as well, and thank you so much for sending this!

[sofiadragon]

Consequences in the MCU are an awful mess.

Before the TV show, 70-90% of Clint's story was either beta canon or offscreen in any given movie. (In the star trek fandom beta canon is anything that wasn't in the shows and movies as aired. I don'tknow if the MCU fandom uses a term for gray-canon like deleted scenes, scripts, wikis, novelizations, and tie-in comics so I'm using the trek term.) Unless you read the wiki and watch/read tie-ins his character arc looks like a few shattered pieces randomly dropped on the floor. Some of the beta canon helps, but some makes it worse. The "Thanos was right" mug??!? Supposedly at that point Thor told everyone about Thanos giving Loki the scepter, and Thanos dusted his whole family. How anyone thought that was alright is beyond me.

In the MCU it's the guy behind the curtain making things happen who usually gets 100% of the blame for anything. Tony Stark as the merchant of death? All on Obadiah Stane. The Maximoff twins join and serve Hydra for an unknown number of years, practicing using their powers on people? All on Strucker to the point that Steve is willing to attack Tony with deadly force on sight without asking what is going on at Wanda's say so. (Mandala effect gets everyone sometimes.) to the point she gets on the team and given an American visa on Steve Roger's and Clint Barton's say so. That's how trustworthy and immediately innocent she is because it wasn't her, it was Hydra. (And no, her situation is actually miles from Bucky Barnes, but the quote fits.)

Except...

Thanos: Gamora and Nebula have to work hard to make up for their bad actions done under his order. Loki is still treated like he did all that willingly despite us seeing him under duress on screen (and far more evidence beta canon.)

Red Room: Natasha and the red in her ledger, which several characters hold against her, is something that stuck to her character. If not referencing it directly, the narrative will otherwise point out that she doesn't have any moral high ground.

Tony Stark: Yes, I just said we're supposed to excuse all Tony's failings because it was actually all Stane or the heavy metal poisoning Stane indirectly caused, but the MCU has to have it both ways with Tony. He is both perfectly innocent and completely guilty. He has crippling PTSD, Thor lifts him by the neck to threaten his life becausehe did such a terrible thing as compile a program without an interface and go to a party instead of watch the bar slowly crawl across the screen, he has to give up his city life and nearly die in space to become a "Good Man" for Endgame, and again the Steve attacking him thing - mostly verbally, but occasionally acting with violent intent toward him or his things. Steve, the man with the perfect moral compass who could take the super soldier serum without becoming a monster, trusts Stark less than a woman he just met today who said she was sorry for murdering and enchanting people and doesn't trust Stark with the truth about his parent's deaths. There is damning with faint praise, and then there is Captain America trusting you so little that when tech you built is being reprogrammed for evil and you can't trust anyone he picks the jogging buddy he met last week over the guy on the kill list.

They really can't decide if they love or hate Stark, eh? Wanda seems to be getting the Stark treatment so far. Both victim and heroine, Wanda is guilty for all the things she's done while simultaneously exonerated of all wrongdoing depending on the scene on screen that moment. It's sloppy and dissatisfying after the first watch when the explosions have lost their sparkle and you start to consider the plot.

So there is a chance that Wanda will blame the book and we are meant to memory hole all the rest, but we could also have this as a guilt that follows her the way it followed Tony or Natasha.

As for a civilian perspective, you have a major point. Most of the MCU is about elite or special people (not all of them rich, but all of them exceptionally skilled and valuable in some way - and only the one black guy has serious money trouble) and the unwashed masses aren't even a conglomerated side character. We get some idea of what a few people think at the beginning of Civil War with people who were caught in the crossfire wanting a chain of command/some kind of accountability. We get it in Spiderman No Way Home, but there it is highly tainted by JJ Jamison airing doctored footage. We get bits of Potts talking about PR type stuff in the early phases, but that is only about SI. Agents of Shield says a few things here and there, but that show is underrated, often ignored, and underwatched. Even Civil War, a movie that starts with a grieving mother and is supposed to be all about public opinion and how the public views them (at least as a cover for why this legislation exists,) drops the entire premise of people wanting their super cops to answer to the UN to focus on the private wants and needs of privileged people. The public perspective is dropped 1/4 of the way in, in favor of Steve protecting his bestie and Stark having an emotional struggle.

And that really tells you about the writers, doesn't it?

🤨🤨

I'm sick of people blaming Wanda instead of accepting that MoM was clearly massive character shift and poorly written. Wanda's not real, she is a fictional character at the whims of the writing. When previous story ended with Wanda giving up her own happiness for the sake of others to indiscriminately murdering anyone to get what she wants that's not consistent or quality writing. Putting redemption aside for the moment what I want is that character derailment rectified.

[negasonicimagines]

Tell Me I'm Not Funny

Request: darkandmysteriousbutheartofgold!ellie and wholesomeanddoesn'tunderstandwhyelliedoesn'tlikeher!reader where they're both part of the friend group but ellie just thinks reader is straight and messing with her pls

Notes: I don’t usually write MCU!Peter, so if he comes up in any future fics (like as the reader’s stepdad 👀 I’ve loved spideypool longer than I’ve loved Negasonic) you can safely assume it’s Andrew Garfield. But, for this time, this is MCU!Peter. Everyone in the friend group is 18-20, just to be clear.

This really isn't my best work, but it's a fun little slice of life piece. A lot of my ideas are pretty cinematic, I can picture them in my head but sometimes those pictures don't really translate into words. I may revisit this one day.

Warnings: D-slur (reclaimed by Ellie in one line), allusions to prior assault (an unwanted kiss that could've been more had another character not stepped in), and that's about it. Oh, and a little swearing, but this is an imagine for a character from Deadpool. If you can't handle swearing, you're on the wrong blog.

Synopsis: You’re into Ellie, but she’s with your good friend Peter. She treats you like you don’t even exist, and in the few instances she does acknowledge you, it’s usually just to make some sarcastic remark. You’re head-over-heels, though, and decide to deal with your unrequited love by writing her a song she’ll never hear.

“Fuck, that movie was terrible,” Michelle groans. “I’m just glad it was a matinee show and we didn’t have to pay as much to see it.”

“The special effects were good, but can’t Disney just leave stuff alone?” Peter agrees.

“Next thing you know they’ll be making a live action Toy Story, as if the original wasn’t traumatizing enough. I don’t want to imagine Watermelon as a sentient being. She’s seen some shit,” you snicker.

“Who’s Watermelon?” Ellie asks with a dark chuckle, and you clam up. How had you forgotten she was here?

“Oh, uh, nobody.”

“Don’t tell me you still sleep with a stuffed animal,” she snarks. “You really do need to grow up.”

“Don’t be mean, Ellie,” Peter protests.

“Watermelon is cute, everybody likes cute things!” Yukio adds.

“I think a live-action Toy Story could be cool,” Ned says. “It’d look really good if they did stop-motion animation.”

“Oh, you’re right!” you chirp. “It’d be quite the undertaking, but it would look badass.”

“I think you’re using that term a little loosely,” Ellie grumbles, and you have to stop yourself from frowning, instead you laugh it off. Why does she always pick on you? Sure, she’s got a witty remark for everybody, but she’s way harder on you. It hurts, she really is so gorgeous and funny and mysterious and everything you want in a woman, but she acts like she can’t stand you.

Ellie and Peter head off together, Peter still hasn’t gotten around to getting his license and Ellie seems happy to give him a ride. You really don’t stand a chance.

You and the others pile up in MJ’s SUV for some late-night band practice.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” you admit to Yukio in the furthest row back.

“You can,” she insists. “You’re a way better singer than Lola, anyways.”

“I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to give her the wrong impression, I-”

“For the millionth time, Y/N, you didn’t. If she hadn’t left the band, we would’ve kicked her out. Not just for cheating on me, but for hurting you.”

“I guess,” you sigh. “Why can’t you sing instead?”

“Because I’m flat.”

“Yukio, breast size doesn’t have anything to do with singing ability, you’ve just gotta practice,” you joke.

“Shut up!” she giggles, punching you in the arm. “Plus, when you sing, the songs are being sung as they were written. We’re getting the real feelings.”

“Speaking of… I have something new I’m thinking about sharing tonight. Do you mind if I text you the demo?”

“Ooh, a first look! Hell yes!”

You text her the audio file and she puts in a wireless earbud, nodding along. Her smile gets wider and wider as she listens, and when she’s done, her assessment shocks you.

“Oh my gosh. You’re into Ellie.”

“What?!” you squeak. “No way!”

“You are! But, uh-”

“Don’t even say it. I know I don’t have a chance in hell. She only tolerates me for the sake of you and Peter.” Despite the gloominess of your tone, Yukio gets a mischievous glint in her eye, it confuses you. But, that’s just Yukio. Her thoughts are all over the place; she and Ellie balance each other out that way. They dated a couple of years ago, but it didn’t work out. They decided they were better off as friends.

“Screw that other song, we’re using this as the lead single. Everybody’s gonna love it, do you have the sheet music?”

“Yeah, uh, it’s in my bag.”

“Awesome.” Yukio’s grinning like she’s won something. Is the song that good? “We’ll have to practice this one a lot, we definitely need to have it ready by the concert this Friday.”

Right. Liz’s 19th birthday party. Apparently Peter had convinced her to let the band play, it’d be cheaper than hiring a more established artist.

“Our first paying gig? I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” you remind her. She scoffs and rolls her eyes.

“We’re mostly gonna be playing covers of Liz’s favorite songs, and she only has so many. We’ve gotta beef up the setlist with originals, and this is perfect! Has that pop-y fun vibe, it’ll fit right in.”

“Yeah, but if it’s that obvious how I feel about her after one listen-”

“Only because I already had a hunch after Daft Pretty Boys,” Yukio clarifies cheerily, and you sigh.

“Fair enough.”

The gang makes it to Michelle’s house, travelling down to the side door and going into the basement from there. MJ’s parents have encouraged her creativity from day one, and were ecstatic when the band was formed. You speculate that they’re mostly happy that she’s made friends. Writing and photography can be lonely hobbies.

“Y/N has something new for us!” Yukio chirps.

“That fast?” Ned’s surprised as you hand him the sheet music. He skims it. “Holy shit, this is a wicked solo! Thanks, Y/N!”

“Well, I’m hoping highlighting everybody else’s talent will disguise my lack thereof,” you chuckle.

“Don’t be stupid, we’ve all heard you sing backup,” MJ says. “You’re Ryan Ross, she’s Brendon Urie. I’m just glad we booted her out before she decided she was gonna be the only pangolin in The Pangolins.”

Everyone laughs at that.

“Let’s try it,” Michelle continues, and everybody agrees. After a sound check and a few runs of the song, it’s still clumsy, especially on your part. You’re not really used to playing and singing at the same time, outside of backup vocals, which require far less focus.

“I suck,” you mumble, but it happens to be into the microphone.

“You don’t!” Ned insists.

“With that attitude, we’re not going anywhere,” Yukio says. You hate it when she gets to the tough love stage of her support. You wish she’d stay in the shallow reassurances stage, it’s easier to brush off. “You wouldn’t be the lead singer if we all thought you sucked. We would’ve just put an ad in the paper. You’re awesome, get over it!”

You sigh.

“Fine. Thank you.”

“Say it,” she insists.

“I’m awesome,” you huff, it’s hard not to smile when Yukio tries to look serious.

“Damn straight,” Yukio says. “Or, I guess not, considering that was about Ellie.”

“Yukio!” you squeal.

“That’s about Ellie?!” Ned exclaims.

“Obviously,” MJ scoffs, fiddling with her tuners.

“Is it that obvious?!” You can’t help but feel embarrassed. Ellie probably knows exactly how you feel, maybe that’s why she dislikes you so much. Her boyfriend’s stupid friend has a crush.

“Wait, but at the beginning…” Ned trails off, before laughing. “Oh my gosh, I get it.”

“Get what? Oh… Y/N, have I ever told you how much I love you?” MJ asks.

“I- I love you, too?” You’re puzzled by their words, but you’ve got enough on your plate.

“Let’s go ahead and practice some of Liz’s favorites while we’re here,” Yukio suggests. “It’s a pretty big set list.”

You practice until dinner, getting a pizza and deciding to make a night of it since it was a little late for Michelle to be dropping you all off at your assorted residences.

You all sleep on a pallet in the basement, and despite your worries, you manage to get some rest.

Over the next few days, The Pangolins practice at every free moment, until it’s finally time for the party.

“So, just pictures of everything?” Oh, shit. She’s not supposed to be here. How are you supposed to sing that song with her here?

“Yeah! I know with how many people are coming, I’m probably not going to get as much time as I want with everyone, so pictures will be a good way to remember the night.”

“Why not just invite less people?” Ellie wonders.

“I want all my friends to be here,” Liz explains. “How’s the sound check going, Y/N?”

“It’s going great,” you say into the microphone, demonstrating the quality and volume with a smile. “Thanks for letting us play here tonight.”

“Well, Peter said you guys are great. Are you really gonna debut your best song so far tonight?”

“Oh, um,” you stutter, stepping away from the microphone. “Maybe not.”

“What? Oh, come on, please, it’ll make the night even more special! You’re playing covers of all my old favorites, sing me my new favorite!” Liz presses, but she’s not being demanding or bratty, she seems genuinely excited.

“If the birthday girl says so, who am I to say no?” you concede. Hopefully Ellie will be too distracted taking pictures. “You have way too much faith in me.”

“If you don’t quit with the self-deprecation, I’m gonna duct tape your mouth shut,” MJ interjects.

“But, Daddy, how will I say my safe word?” you tease, giggling at your own joke with the rest of the group. Yukio’s laugh seems the loudest. Ellie glares.

“We should practice a song!” Ned suggests.

“Ooh, a private show!” Liz seems excited.

“Any requests?” you ask her. Ellie’s resting scowl intensifies. If she’s more pissed off the more you open your mouth, you’re not sure how she’s gonna survive a night of you singing without going nuclear.

“Oh, oh, Girlfriend by Avril Lavigne, please?”

“You’ve got it,” you agree.

The song goes smoothly.

“What happened to the old singer?” Ellie asks, clearly unimpressed.

“You didn’t tell her?” you ask Yukio, grateful for the excuse to turn away from the sharp-tongued girl you adore.

“Didn’t want her to get the wrong impression,” Yukio explains. “She already makes enough rude comments towards you.” Yukio leans over her drum kit to give Ellie a pointed look.

“Oh, wait, shit, I didn’t mean it like that. You, uh, sound good, Y/N.”

You can’t help but whip your head back to look at her with a flabbergasted expression.

“What?! It’s true,” Ellie defends herself.

“Uh, yeah, but you just said something nice. About me. Liz, do you mind checking her for a fever?”

Liz obliges for the sake of going along with the joke before quickly withdrawing her hand.

“Jeez! I know you were kidding, but she’s burning up,” Liz declares.

“My internal temperature is higher due to my mutation,” Ellie quickly explains, looking a bit bashful. “Besides, I say nice shit about Y/N all the time.”

“No, you don’t,” the whole band says in unison, including you.

“Well, clearly I shouldn’t if everyone’s gonna make a big fucking deal about it,” she retorts, rolling her eyes. “I’m gonna go get some pictures of the decorations before there’s a bunch of fucking people here to block them.”

She stomps off in her heavy boots, and The Pangolins get back to work, putting on the final touches and making sure all the blocking looks right.

Soon enough, guests start flooding in, and Liz zips around to greet them, eventually meeting up with Peter and keeping him with her. He and Liz eventually pull Ellie away from her picture-taking, confident she’s done enough and needs to just relax and enjoy the party.

So much for distracting herself with work, she thinks.

They sit on the couch and eat, the dining room was monopolized by The Pangolins due to its elevation and space.

Ellie’s mesmerized by the way your fingers move until she hears Peter talking to Liz. They really are a cute couple.

“You really do need to hang out with us. Yukio told me Y/N thinks Ellie and I are a thing,” he says.

“Gross, you’re like my annoying little brother,” Ellie remarks.

“And you’re like my bitchy older sister,” Peter retorts with a shit-eating grin.

“Both of you, quiet! They’re about to play the new song. You’re in for a real treat, Ellie.”

“What does it have to do with me?”

Liz gives Peter a confused and slightly irritated look.

“I haven’t said anything to her, I didn’t know how,” Peter squeaks, blushing a little at the look in his girlfriend’s eyes.

“Explain, quickly,” Ellie demands.

But, then you start to sing again.

“Y/N-” Peter starts.

“Shut up.”

“But you asked-”

“I said, shut up,” Ellie insists.

“You know me as your boyfriend's goofy friend. I seem to have this effect on women, and your friends aren't as goofy as I am. I try my best to keep you entertained, always laughing at the jokes you are saying. I nod my head when you make a point, oh oh…

“Kiss me, kiss me with your eyes closed! Whisper that your heart shows all I want is you, yeah, you… Hold me, hold me I'm your bunny! Tell me I'm not funny, tell me I’m legit! ‘Cause I feel weak, in your hands and your feet… A precious end, I’ll never feel your touch…”

Ellie continues to listen to the song, all expression drained from her face. All the yearning in the words and your voice, all you want is…

Ellie looks at Peter, who’s looking at her with a triumphant smile.

“I told you.”

Ellie feels like she’s about to faint. She notices you’re talking to Liz— when did she leave? —your hand over your mic. Despite the knowledge that Liz is taken, Ellie gets jealous. You look so happy to be talking to Liz, to just about any girl you talk to.

She wishes you’d smile at her that way.

You nod at whatever Liz said, and the band starts packing away their instruments. Liz sets up her phone on some Bluetooth speakers, and songs that sounded so much better when you were singing them start to play.

No! Ellie internally protests. Sing for me again, please, sing that stupid song about how you think I don’t like you.

Yukio’s dragging you somewhere. Gosh, Ellie wishes it was her holding your hand.

Suddenly, though, you and Yukio are approaching her. She knows what she has to do.

“So, what’d you think of our- Eek! Finally!”

Ellie parts from the kiss to tell her to fuck off and not ruin the moment before kissing you again.

“Holy fucking shit,” you breathe. “Uh, I thought you were-“

“Dating Peter?! Seriously?! Do I need to write ‘dyke’ on my fucking forehead? I practically already have with the way I dress and act and-”

“I, uh, I try not to make assumptions,” you mumble, fingers touching your lips.

“I’m, uh, sorry for not asking.”

“No, it’s- It was good. I’ve wanted you to do that for a while. It’s just that that was the first time somebody’s kissed me, since, uh…” Your eyes dart to Yukio, who’s ruffling Ned’s hair and laughing.

“Yukio?!” Orange flickers in Ellie’s eyes for a moment, but she keeps it under control.

“No, no, of course not, uh… The old singer, Lola. She and Yukio were dating, but apparently I was the one she really had her sights on, and… She was entitled. Thought that because she wanted me, I must want her. That wasn’t really the case, I was already pining over you. Didn’t stop her from forcing a few kisses on me and trying to go further. If Yukio hadn't shown up early with cupcakes, I don’t know what would’ve happened.”

“I am such an asshole,” Ellie says softly. “Can I kiss you again? The right way.”

“I’d say what you did before was pretty right, but sure,” you consent.

Her kiss before had been rough, needy, and impatient. Just the way you like it. This, though, this is gentle, soft, and exploratory. You tangle your hands in her hair and kiss her harder. She moans into the kiss before pulling away, bewildered.

“That was…” Ellie trails off, trying to find a positive adjective that won’t sound to frilly or lovesick.

“A mistake, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, fuck, no. I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” she corrects you. “Just- Didn’t really know how. Even when you were kinda flirting with me at first, I just thought you were messing with me, so I- I am so stupid.”

“So am I,” you scoff. “I thought you were dating Peter.”

“I was spending a lot of time with him, but… I was just using him as an excuse to avoid you so I wouldn’t embarrass myself anymore. And I was asking him for advice. I figured if he could land somebody as far out of his league as Liz, maybe I stood the slightest bit of a chance with you. But I kept fucking it up. I’d just get so nervous, all of my compliments would turn into insults, all of my teasing turned into straight-up cruelty. I don’t know how you actually like me.”

“I’m a little bit of a masochist, I’ll admit,” you tell her. “I’m really glad you don’t hate me.”

“I’m really glad you don’t hate me,” Ellie replies, but she can’t help but think that what she‘s really saying is ‘I love you, too.’

She takes your hand, and you two rejoin your friends, swept up in a group hug. They wanted this to happen almost as much as you two did.

[iamnmbr3]

Another day. Another questionable interview from someone involved with the production. This time the Director (who to her credit at least is better than Mike Waldron in that she is able to say she likes Loki’s character whereas his interviews drip with open disdain and disrespect and he can’t even pretend otherwise). (x)

Kate Herron: But Loki doesn't have many friends, you know? He builds this friendship with Mobius across the second episode.

Here again we get out-of-universe confirmation that the narrative framing of Mobius in a positive light is intentional. Mobius is not Loki’s friend. He’s his captor and his torturer. Loki isn’t on equal footing with Mobius. They don’t even have a boss-employee relationship. LOKI WAS MOBIUS’S SLAVE until he escaped. He was being held against his will and coerced under threat of death to work for Mobius and his organization without compensation. That is slavery. And it’s not ok. 

Mobius also berated him by telling him that he is inherently evil and monstrous - the very things that drove him to suicide. Mobius is complicit in acts of torture, genocide, murder, privacy violation, and  police brutality and shows no signs of having any problem with it. He’s no more Loki’s friend than Thanos or the Black Order are. 

When has he ever treated Loki with dignity or respect? Even if we ignore all the horrific stuff, he’s just plain not nice to Loki. He constantly mocks and belittles him and never takes his side. That’s not a how a friend behaves!  That’s how a bully behaves! Where is the basis for this friendship??!!

Kate Herron: “And obviously, we're seeing it through Loki and Sylvie's POV. You know, neither of them are good or bad. A complete, pure good hero would probably join the queue and be like, "Well, hopefully we'll get on the train." But they're not those characters. They're going to try and get on it.”

They snuck onto a train??? That’s what she thinks a grey character is? That’s so dull! Loki was a complex and grey character. Larry (as I call the tv show character) and Sylvie...got on a train without a ticket. That’s laughable! That doesn’t make me think about complex morality or issues. And c’mon. All the heroic Avengers have done that level of rule breaking MANY times and they don’t lose their “pure good hero status.” Tony Stark constantly does things like that! I want Loki back. HE is a grey character. But I haven’t seen him in the show so far. Instead I get Larry the watered down clown. 

Kate Herron: “When Loki and Mobius are at Pompeii, for example, that's shown through Loki's POV, right? He's joyous and he cracked the case. Pompeii was horrific, but we're seeing it through his perspective and he's in a completely different headspace.”

You know a scene can have more than one emotion right? Like he could be happy about solving the case but also horrified at the destruction of Pompeii? Instead he is laughing at the people who are about to die horrifically and seems to have no compassion for them whatsoever. Sure people can headcanon reasons why he behaved that way (and more power to them. Fixing dumb canon is what fandom is all about!) but the narrative framing is to me pretty clearly lighthearted and the director confirms that intent. There seems to be no awareness that by having Loki behave so callously it makes him come across as incredibly cruel. Far more than he ever was in canon. 

In Thor 2011 Thor is laughing while slaughtering Jotnar (as is considered appropriate in his culture) but Loki isn’t. He kills when he has to but he doesn’t enjoy it, something that’s unusual for the culture he was raised in. This Pompeii scene could’ve been a great time to see Loki’s more compassionate side as he looks at the people who are going to die. We could’ve seen some real conflict from him. And it would’ve been a great moment to start introducing the concept that he’s more than just a simple villain to more casual viewers. Instead, although they think they’re “redeeming” Larry over the course of the show they’ve made him far worse and more villainous. I wish they had hired an experienced Director who also understands Loki - like Kenneth Brannaugh!!! - rather than a Director who has never headed up a major project before. Though even the best Director couldn’t fix the abysmal and ooc script and story Mike Waldron came up with. 

Kate Herron: “I think that's the thing that's really key for her is that she's a completely original character, completely born out of our writers, and that, for me, was exciting.” 

Remember when I said Sylvie is the favored OC? Called it. 

Kate Herron: “The train scene I love because Loki doesn't get many wins and it's nice to see him having a nice sing-song. He's just enjoying himself. Because I think that's such a funny way, as well, to show the difference between him and Sylvie is that she's on a mission. She's like, "We're going to get off this moon." And when she's offered a drink, she's like, "No, thank you."

WOW. I hate this SO much. So suddenly Sylvie gets to act more like Loki and Loki suddenly doesn’t know how to be subtle and is just a dumb clown messing everything up. C’mon! This is absolutely ridiculous. This is not Loki silvertongue. This is not the Loki who tried to diffuse the situation on Jotunheim and almost succeeded. This is not the Loki who was always a restraining voice in Thor’s ear. They’ve turned Sylvie into discount Loki without any depth or complexity or vulnerability and they’ve turned Loki into discount Thor ft. dumb clown! Absolutely outrageous. 

Kate Herron: “everything is not what it seems and even in our design, people have picked up on certain things. Like the way that they dress, or the posters and that there's something a bit more going on there.”

If the TVA actually turn out to be twist villains I will laugh SO hard; I’d say that twist is too dumb even for Marvel but...it’s really not! Like. Guys. If they’re gonna be TWIST villains you have to not have them do obviously villainous things on screen!!!! BECAUSE THEN IT’S NOT A TWIST!!!!

From the moment we meet them we see them commit acts of police brutality, murder, genocide, trial without due process, enslavement, privacy violation, and torture IN ORDER TO ELIMINATE FREE WILL. Like. They are literally the most evil organization in the MCU. Even Thanos can’t compare. So having them be revealed as villains will fall flat. Because the twist isn’t the audience learning new information or the main character learning it. It’s just the narrative suddenly acknowledging it and treating their atrocities seriously. So the twist is in the real world not the show. And it’ll make Larry look like an even bigger idiot than he already does if he’s suddenly like “Wait the people who tortured and enslaved me are evil?! What?!??!” (I stg if he has to fight miss minutes in the end like I joked about I will lose it).

Also. Why make it a twist?! When you treat the villains as a joke it robs the narrative of tension. Their acts of evil should’ve been acknowledged from the beginning in order to create sympathy for the protagonist and tension in the narrative as we watch him try to escape this situation! Smh. The only funny joke in this series is how badly the writing fails. 

[bifrost-glitter]

Did u see the article (I don’t have a link sorry) about Michael Waldron basically saying he doesn’t care what fans think? He calls it “fan service” but like my guy you’re making a show for fans of Loki 😂

he is really pushing my buttons

Uuuh, do you mean this one:

Loki Season 1 head writer Michael Waldron spoke with Insider about why the show's second season won't rely on fan service to drive its story.

Waldron made it clear that his team's job is largely "trusting their own instincts" rather than the desires of fans. According to the screenwriter, the task at hand is figuring out what parts of fan expectations are "worth biting into" and when it's a better move to simply "(create) something totally new" for the plot:

"Part of any creative team's job is trusting their own instincts, especially working in big IP projects like this. That's what you have to do. You have to understand the parts of the expectations that are delicious and worth biting into and the parts where you're better off creating something totally new."

First of all: What does Waldron define as ‘‘fan service”? Does he mean the naked Loki scene? Does that mean we won’t get any naked Loki scenes in season two? Oh no, I am so disappointed, my ace ass couldn’t care less about it, and I’m sure a lot of straight guys and lesbian girls, too.

Other than that, I really have no idea what could be considered fan service in this show. I, for one, did not get any fan service at all, which would be stuff like Loki being in-character, Loki getting a cool new outfit, Loki using magic, Loki meeting Sigyn, Loki having adventures on Asgard, Loki talking about his time with Thanos, Loki having actual friends, the Warriors Three and Sif apologizing for their treatment of him. You know, the usual, impossible fan service stuff, one might dream about.

Or could it be, that the legitimate critics about the show finally have reached Waldron’s ears, but he still subtly tells everyone to “fuck off, I do what I want!”?

The latter wouldn’t surprise me, because gaslighting and attacking fans rather than listening to their critics is a thing nowadays in Hollywood. The same happens right now with He-Man fans. So, in that case, Kevin Smith and Mike Waldron really can shake hands with each other. Way to go boys, that’s exactly how you treat fans of the show!

The thing is, Waldron doesn’t care about Loki or his fans, and he never did. If that would be the case, he would have watched the movies Loki was in and take notes, he would have listened to Hiddleston’s advices, he would listen to fans right now. And quite frankly, he doesn’t even HAVE to, because die-hard mcu stans liked the show, the money milking of Loki is done, and it will continue during Phase Bore.

[lokeanwelcomingcommittee]

I have a question. I've been watching Lokis film (marvel movies) and i really loved Lokis character. I don't know why others call him evil. I really loved him. I wanted to know does real loki and marvel loki related to each other? And i really want to talk or meet real one . Is this possible? Even i don't have an spacial religion can i still be in contact with loki and talk to him?

Hi Nonny,

I admire your enthusiasm, and I know you probably didn't intend to be offensive in any way, but please take a step back for a moment and think about how this comes across.

In a hypothetical scenario where you had zero background in Christianity, could you see yourself going to a Christian after binging Good Omens and saying, "Hey, that Aziraphale guy was pretty cool in Good Omens! I've done no further research and have no intention of becoming a Christian, but would it be okay if I prayed to one of your holy figures?" Yes, I am aware that Aziraphale doesn't actually exist in Christianity, but that's the point. Without researching the actual religion, you wouldn't know!

If you wouldn't do this, why do you consider it okay here? Is it because you see our faith as less serious or less real? If so, why do you want to interact with one of our gods in the first place?

If you actually would, can you maybe see how self-centered this view of religion is? How maybe taking people's sincerely held beliefs, conflating them with comedic works of fiction, and asking them for access to their sacred rites without any obligation to follow their traditions or honor their sacredness might be rude?

The MCU barely resembles actual Norse myth or Heathen religion at all. The character of Loki in the MCU barely resembles the Loki of Norse myth or Heathen religion, in terms of divine role or relationships with the other gods or even basic personality traits. Here's a post that lists some of the most glaring differences, but it's far from an exhaustive list.

To be clear, there's nothing wrong with first learning about Loki through the MCU or other pop culture. Most people do nowadays. There's also nothing wrong with being a Marvel fan and worshiping Loki, in the same way there are plenty of Christians who enjoy Good Omens and Dogma and The Life of Brian. Most people are able to separate religion from fictional works loosely based on religion. It's just that if you take those pieces of media and treat them as an introduction to the actual faith, you're going to get a very, very wrong picture.

And I absolutely do encourage you to get a more accurate picture! But for both your sake and the sake of people you interact with, it's important to go in with the mindset that this is and was people's actual religion. And it's important to go in with the mindset that this is a god.

Whether or not you intend to convert to a new religion, the sort of spirit work your ask suggests you're looking to undertake pretty much inevitably will alter your beliefs and perception of reality. (And not even necessarily in a theistic direction.) This almost always causes an existential crisis. The work is, in fact, more or less intended to do that! It may severely negatively impact your mental health in a lot of other ways. Whether or not you believe any actual metaphysical forces are involved, the psychological buttons these techniques are deliberately pressing in order to induce altered states are very real.

There's are reasons initiations exist in many mystical traditions, and reasons clergy and spirit workers generally require a training period working with more experienced practitioners, and one of them is that having support while grappling with this stuff is really important. Even in the best case scenario, it's a whole lot of hard work and emotional struggle.

People find the work worth it, or they wouldn't do it. I'm not trying to scare you away if it's something you genuinely want. But for your own wellbeing it's important to understand the gravity here. This is not the kind of thing you pick up for fun on a whim purely because you stan a character in a superhero franchise.

If you would still know yet more, we have a reading list where you can find more on the myths involving Loki and modern Heathen spirituality. We also have an FAQ that covers the basics of building your own practice--including, yes, an introduction to communicating with Loki (in ways that don't require deliberately entering an altered state) and discerning whether to give that communication any more weight than you would typically give your own imagination speaking to you.

I genuinely do wish you a fruitful spiritual journey, wherever it may lead, and apologize if this post comes across as overly harsh. It's just that not addressing this stuff and giving you an unqualified green light would ultimately have been doing you a disservice.

- Mod E

[lokiondisneyplus]

A review of “Journey Into Mystery,” the penultimate Loki Season One episode on Disney+, coming up just as soon as I paper cut a giant cloud to death…

Journey Into Mystery was the title of the first Marvel comic to feature either Thor or Loki. It began as an anthology series featuring monsters and aliens, but Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and Larry Lieber were so smitten with their adaptation of the characters of Norse myth that the Asgardians gradually took over the whole book, which was renamed after its hammer-wielding hero(*).

(*) The early Journey Into Mystery stories treated Thor’s alter ego, disabled Dr. Donald Blake, as the “real” character, while Thor was just someone Blake could magically transform into, while retaining his memories and personality. It wasn’t even clear whether Asgard itself was meant to exist at first, until Loki turned up on Earth in an early issue, caused trouble, and Blake/Thor somehow knew exactly how to get to Asgard to drop him off. Soon, the lines between Thor and Blake began to blur, and eventually Thor became the real guy, and Blake a fiction invented by Odin to humble his arrogant son. It’s a mark of just how instantly charismatic Loki was that the entire title quickly steered towards him and the other gods.

But once upon a time, anything was possible in Journey Into Mystery, which makes it an apt moniker for an absolutely wonderful episode of Loki where the same holds true. Our title characters are trapped in the Void, a place at the end of time where the TVA’s victims are banished to be devoured by a cloud monster named Alioth. And mostly they are surrounded by the wreckage of many dead timelines. Classic Loki insists that his group’s only goal is survival, and any kind of planning and scheming is doomed to kill the Loki who tries. But this ruined, hopeless world instead feels bursting with imagination and possibility.

There are the many Loki variants we see, with President Loki, among others, joining Classic, Kid, Boastful, and Alligator Loki. There are the metric ton of Easter Eggs just waiting to be screencapped by Marvel obsessives (I discuss a few of them down below), but which still suggest a much larger and weirder MCU even if you don’t immediately scream out “Is that… THROG?!?!?” at the appropriate moment. And all of that stuff is tons of fun, to be sure. But what makes this episode — and, increasingly, this series — feel so special is the way that it explores the untapped potential of Loki himself, in his many, many variations.

This is an episode that owes more than a small stylistic and thematic debt to Lost. It’s not just that Alioth looks and sounds so much like the Smoke Monster(*), that it makes a shared Wizard of Oz reference to “the man behind the curtain” (also the title of one of the very best Lost episodes), or even that the core group of Lokis are hiding in a bunker accessible via a hatch and a ladder that’s filled with recreational equipment (in this case, bowling alley lanes). It’s also that Loki, Sylvie, their counterparts, and Mobius have all been transported to a strange place that has disturbing echoes from their own lives, that operates according to strange new rules they have to learn while fleeing danger, and their presence there allows them to reflect on the many mistakes of their past and consider whether they want to, or can, transcend them.

(*) Yes, Alioth technically predates Smokey by a decade (see the notes below for more), but his look has been tweaked a bit here to seem more like smoke than a cloud, and the sounds he makes when he roars sound a lot like Smokey’s telltale taxi cab meter clicks. Given the other Lost hat tips in the episode, I have to believe Alioth was chosen specifically to evoke Smokey.

Classic Loki is aptly named. He wears the Sixties Jack Kirby costume, and he is a far more powerful magician than either Sylvie or our Loki have allowed themselves to be. He calls our Loki’s knives worthless compared to his sorcery, which feels like the show acknowledging that the movies depowered Loki a fair amount to make him seem cooler. But if Classic Loki can conjure up illusions bigger and more potent than his younger peers, he is a fundamentally weak and defeated man, convinced, like the others, that the only way to win the game into which he was born is not to play. “We cannot change,” he insists. “We’re broken. Every version of ourselves. Forever.” It is not only his sentiment — Kid Loki adds that any Loki who tries to improve inevitably winds up in the Void for their troubles — but it seems to have weighed on him longer and harder than most.

But Classic Loki takes inspiration from Loki and Sylvie to stand and fight rather than turn and run, magicking up a vision of their homeland to distract Alioth at a crucial moment in Sylvie’s plan, and getting eaten for his trouble. He was wrong: Lokis can change. (Though Kid Loki might once again argue that Classic Loki’s death is more evidence that the universe has no interest in any of them doing so.) And both Loki and Sylvie have been changing throughout their time together. Like most Lokis, they seem cursed to a life of loneliness. Sylvie learned as a child that a higher power believed she should not exist, and has spent a lifetime hiding out in places where any friends she might make will soon die in an apocalypse. Our Loki’s past isn’t quite so stark, but the knowledge that his birth father abandoned him, while his adoptive father never much liked him, have left permanent scars that govern a lot of his behavior. The defining element of Classic Loki’s backstory is that he spent a long time alone on a planet, and only got busted by the TVA when he attempted to reconnect with his brother and anyone else he once knew. This is a hard existence, for all of them. And while it does not forgive them their many sins(*), it helps contextualize them, and give them the knowledge to try to be better versions of themselves.

(*) Loki at one point even acknowledges that, for him, it’s probably only been a few days since he led an alien invasion of New York that left many dead, though due to TVA shenanigans, far more time may have passed.

For that matter, Mobius is not the stainless hero he once thought of himself as. While he and Sylvie are tooling around the Void in a pizza delivery car (because of course they are), he admits that he committed a lot of sins by believing that the ends justified the means, and was wrong. He doesn’t know who he is before the TVA stole and factory rebooted him, but he knows that he wants something better for himself and the universe, and takes the stolen TemPad to open up a portal to his own workplace in hopes of tearing down the TVA once and for all. Before he goes, though, he and Loki share a hug that feels a lot more poignant than it should, given that these characters have only spent parts of four episodes of TV together. It’s a testament to Hiddleston, Wilson, Waldron, and company (Tom Kauffman wrote this week’s script) that their friendship felt so alive and important in such a short amount of time.

The same can be said for Loki and Sylvie’s relationship, however we’re choosing to define it. Though they briefly cuddle together under a blanket that Loki conjures, they move no closer to romance than they were already. If anything, Mobius’ accusations of narcissism in last week’s episode seem to have made both of them pull back a bit from where they seemed to be heading back on Lamentis. But the connection between them is real, whatever exactly it is. And their ability to take down Alioth — to tap into the magic that Classic Loki always had, and to fulfill Loki’s belief that “I think we’re stronger than we realize” — by working together is inspiring and joyful. Without all this nuanced and engaging character work, Loki would still be an entertaining ride, but it’s the marriage of wild ideas with the human element that’s made it so great.

Of course, now comes the hard part. Endings have rarely been an MCU strength, give or take something like the climax of Endgame, and the finales of the two previous Disney+ shows were easily their weakest episodes. The strange, glorious, beautiful machine that Waldron and Herron have built doesn’t seem like it’s heading for another generic hero/villain slugfest, but then, neither did WandaVision before we got exactly that. This one feels different so far, though. The command of the story, the characters, and the tone are incredibly strong right now. There is a mystery to be solved about who is in the big castle beyond the Void (another Loki makes the most narrative and thematic sense to me, but we’ll see), and a lot to be resolved about what happens to the TVA and our heroes. And maybe there’s some heavy lifting that has to be done in service to the upcoming Dr. Strange or Ant-Man films.

It’s complicated, but on a show that has handled complexity well. Though even if the finale winds up keeping things simpler, that might work. As Loki notes while discussing his initial plan to take down Alioth, “Just because it’s not complicated doesn’t mean it’s bad.” Though as Kid Loki retorts, “It also doesn’t mean it’s good.”

Please be good, Loki finale. Everything up to this point deserves that.

Some other thoughts:

* Most of this week’s most interesting material happens in the Void. But the scenes back at the TVA clarify a few things. First, Ravonna is not the mastermind of all this, and she was very much suckered in by the Time-Keeper robots. But unlike Mobius or Hunter B-15, she’s so conditioned to the mission that even knowing it’s a lie hasn’t really swayed her from her mission. She has Miss Minutes (who herself is much craftier this week) looking into files about the creation of the TVA, but for the most part comes across as someone very happy with a status quo where she gets to be special and pass judgment on the rest of the multiverse.

* Alioth first appeared in 1993’s Avengers: The Terminatrix Objective, a miniseries (written by Mobius inspiration Mark Gruenwald, and with some extremely kewl Nineties art full of shoulder pads, studded collars, and the like) involving Ravonna, Kang, and the off-brand versions of Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor (aka U.S. Agent, War Machine, and Thunderstrike, the latter of whom has yet to appear in the MCU). It’s a sequel to a Nineties crossover event called Citizen Kang. And no, I still don’t buy that Kang will be the one pulling the strings here, if only because it’s really bad storytelling for the big bad of the season to have never appeared or even been mentioned prior to the finale.

* Rather than try to identify every Easter egg visible in the Void’s terrain, I’ll instead highlight three of the most interesting. Right before the Lokis arrive at the hatch, we see a helicopter with Thanos’ name on it. This is a hat tip to an infamous — and often memed — out-of-continuity story where Thanos flies this chopper while trying to steal the Cosmic Cube (aka the Tesseract) from Hellcat. (A little kid gets his hands on it instead and, of course, uses the Cube to conjure up free ice cream.) James Gunn has been agitating for years for the Thanos Copter to be in the MCU. He finally got his wish.

* The other funny one: When the camera pans down the tunnel into Kid Loki’s headquarters, we see Mjolnir buried in the ground, and right below it is a jar containing a very annoyed frog in a Thor costume. This is either Thor himself — whom Loki cursed into amphibianhood in a memorable Walt Simonson storyline — or another character named Simon Walterston (note the backwards tribute to Walt) who later assumed the tiny mantle.

* Also, in one scene you can spot Yellowjacket’s helmet littering the landscape. This might support the theory that the TVA, the Void, etc., all exist in the Quantum Realm, since that’s where the MCU version of Yellowjacket probably went when his suit shorted out and he was crushed to subatomic size. Or it might be more trolling of the fanbase from the company that had WandaVision fans convinced that Mephisto, the X-Men, and/or Reed Richards would be appearing by the season finale.

* Honestly, I would have watched an entire episode that was just Loki, Mobius, and the others arguing about whether Alligator Loki was actually a Loki, or just a gator who ended up with the crown, presumably after eating a real Loki. The suggestion that the gator might be lying — and that this actually supports, rather than undermines, the case for him being a Loki — was just delightful. And hey, if Throg exists in the MCU now, why not Alligator Loki?

* Finally, the MCU films in general are not exactly known for their visual flair, though a few directors like Taika Waititi and Ryan Coogler have been able to craft distinctive images within the franchise’s usual template. Loki, though, is so often wonderful to look at, and particularly when our heroes are stuck in strange environments like Lamentis or the Void. Director Kate Herron and the VFX team work very well together to create dynamic and weird imagery like Sylvie running from Alioth, or the chaotic Loki battle in the bowling alley. Between this show and WandaVision, it appears the Disney+ corner of the MCU has a bit more room to expand its palette. (Falcon and the Winter Soldier, much less so.)

[luna-rainbow]

Ok but the parallels between Bucky and all the NWH villains but particularly Norman and Otto though. While yes, Norman and Otto were much more willing participants in the events that led up to them becoming Doc Ock/Green Goblin than Bucky was in becoming the WS, all three men were forced into doing horrible things against their will, and were scared and horrified of what they had done once back in control. AND all three are good, kind people who immediately jump to help to protagonist once in control.

It's odd how both Otto and Norman were treated so well by the script, with no victim blaming (something I am thrilled by, since I love my sad boys and am very happy that they are (mostly) ok) but Bucky was given pretty much the opposite treatment. And I'm not really convinced that it's necessarily because of Sony's involvement in NWH as much as it is having people who actually like the characters as they are writing them.

From what I've gathered from interviews about NWH, everyone involved is big fans of not only the original source material, but also the other Raimi and Amazing Spider-Man movies. They genuinely like the characters they are working with and wanted to right by them. Whereas as we've all talked about, the interviews with Skogland and Spellman are pretty clear in their dislike of Bucky.

I think there's also an issue with Bucky in that I don't think Sebastian is the type of person to try to advocate super hard to have something changed even if he doesn't feel like it fits the character. Don't get me wrong, I love Seb, but I just don't think he's the type of person to really push the writers or directors to change something or to consider putting something specific into the story even if he feels it's right for the character. Meanwhile the NWH villain actors, who also have quite a bit seniority as actors, seem to have been involved much more in the creative process. Willem Dafoe basically told the director from the beginning, before they even had a script, that he wanted to have more to do than just a glorified cameo appearance, and he wanted to do his own stunts (which, damn, kudos to Dafoe for still being able to that sort of action stuff well into his 60s).

Idk, sorry for the essay lol, I just think it's interesting how two similar circumstances for characters but with very different executions ended up looking in the MCU.

Sorry for the late reply!

I completely agree. NWH comes from a place of such joy and love. It's clear how much the people involved had understood and respected the entire franchise, all the way back to Tobey's story. The entire story was an homage to who "Peter Parker" was, and that defining trait of holding himself responsible even when there's no one else around him.

I feel for Seb, you know. I mean, people are in the acting business for different reasons, but the sense I get from his interviews is that he really enjoys the story-making process, more than being the centre of attention or having cool scenes or having an escape from reality. He seems happy to choose roles that are unconventional, if he believes that story is worth telling, even if the role might be unpleasant or unsavoury or controversial.

Erm, that's just a rambly way of saying that I think Seb has a good read on stories and characters, so he's well aware of the deficits in Bucky's story. Him even saying aloud into a panel "I only heard about it 40 minutes prior" is pretty rebellious (for him), because it paints a pretty clear picture to avid fans of just how little scriptwriters cared about his and Steve's character arcs. This especially coming from someone whose default comment is "I just read out what the writers have written" -- which, as all Bucky fans know, is really unfair to what he (and partly Chris too) has brought to their dynamic.

But...Disney and Hollywood are big machines, you know, and Sebastian doesn't really have a lot of awards or hits to his name, which gives him very little bargaining power. At the moment, Bucky is the role he is best known for, and I think it's a double whammy of his opinion isn't considered important in the Marvel grand plan and him really not having much to use as leverage. I don't know if it's partly cultural as well, but his immense gratitude towards the MCU is more than I might expect from an American-born person.

Also we really don't know how hard he argued for the EG scene because even soft spoken in that panel, he sounded pretty unhappy with the way it was done. This is getting super rambly but it reminds me of the time when Letitia Wright remarked Sebastian hates stupid questions. And since then I've noticed he does get very offish in his answers to weird questions even if he never raises his voice or act abrupt. Together with the TFATWS stuntspeople saying he was surprisingly involved and specific about how he wanted Bucky to physically move -- we fans don't really know enough about his workplace dynamics to say how it went down. I feel like he does get irritated and frustrated with incompetence, and he might have argued harder than we give him credit for, but they'd drawn up their plan and they weren't going to shift around an entire movie for an insignificant side character like Bucky Barnes.

[psycheshorror]

“Shut Up” Pt. 2

pairing: MCU!Brock Rumlow x reader

summary: Rule #1 of hookup culture: Don’t catch feelings. More plot than smut. Smut still included, of course.

authors note: Well this took me a hot minute but I wanted to continue our dear reader’s story. Reader and Brock have some self-work to do.

part one

The next morning you wake up to a relentless alarm on your phone and an empty bed.

Disappointment washed through your stomach and you tried to stifle it down with a sip of water, wincing when your hips adjusted against your body weight. If you felt sore now, you knew the bruises on your body would tell quite a story.

Flicking the alarm off on your phone, you squinted at the text message left by an unknown number two hours ago.

Meet later tonight?

You knew you were playing with fire the way the disappointment was instead replaced with utter joy at the fact that he wanted to see you again. You shouldn’t. Brock Rumlow wasn’t the kind of man that would treat you right; sure, in bed he gave you everything and more, but the absence of him left a chill in the sheets that was frankly, quite terrifying considering he had only spent the night once.

Brock Rumlow filled your body with molten lava and the next morning took it all away and replaced it with ash. And no doubt would he continue giving and taking more than you could handle.

Against your better judgement, you sent your response.

Yes.

The next three nights you spent with Rumlow, you could feel yourself breaking the one unspoken rule.

You were catching feelings, hard.

You couldn’t help it - the man was so damn beautiful. From the way he tossed his head back and whined when you were licking his cock to when he glared at you and growled when you dared to wiggle out of his grip mid-spank. He was intoxicating.

You found yourself with a black hole in your heart the morning after each “meeting”. He was a drug that came with a dangerous high and an even more lethal withdrawal.

This bed will never feel the same, you thought, fingers weaving through the spot where he should be.

Should be? you winced.

That wasn’t a good sign.

It wasn’t like Brock would ever start a discussion about feelings, considering the most you ever spoke to each other was during sex. His low, gravelly whispers of “Good girl,” as you came around his cock or the degrading name-calling that he knew you loved was as far as you two got.

It’s not like you would know how to bring it up even if he did stay the morning after. “Hey so uh, I know my vag and your dick have been well acquainted, but I was wondering if your brain would like to get to know my brain and go on a date?”

Yeah, no.

Taking the sheets off your bed and trying desperately not to huff the ghost of his scent, your phone pinged with a message. Brock’s name lit up your screen better than any Christmas lights on a tree could.

Won’t be around for a while. Mission overseas in progress.

You let out an breath of relief that you didn’t known you were holding. Space could be good. Maybe by the time he got back you’d come to your senses.

No need to ruin a good thing by asking for more.

Good luck. You typed out, hitting send and stuffing the sheets that smelled like him into the washing machine. The voice in the back of your head scolded you for replying, engaging. There was no need for that.

Clicking the “start” button, you stared into the machine, watching the dirty sheets spin through the water. As the rinse cycle began, you found yourself hoping that the memory of Rumlow’s eyes glittering with lust and praise would be washed away with it. Maybe with a little break, he could stop haunting you.

Your phone pinged again.

Don’t forget about me.

Your heart fluttered annoyingly.

Oh, fuck. This was gonna be harder than you thought.

🥀

Rumlow had never been a man that was easily distracted from a target, but during this mission, his mind couldn’t help but to wander.

Shallow breaths, the way your eyes bore holes in his when he made you orgasm, the curve of your satisfied smile afterwards.

Barely being able to register Rogers’ words in his ear as he shout out orders, Rumlow missed a shot at his target and it almost cost him his arm.

“Distracted?” Rogers grunts, knocking the gun out of the target’s grip with ease.

Rumlow finds himself knocking the target down onto his knees, securing his wrists tighter than necessary, growling at the man’s resistance.

“I’ve got some things on my mind,” he confirmed, twisting a sheepish smile on his face. Pulling the man to his feet and shoving him towards the rest of the S.T.R.I.K.E. team, he applauded himself for appearing friendly with the Captain, even with the pang of annoyance sitting heavy in his stomach. Any day now. He couldn’t risk raising any red flags.

Rogers let out a good-natured chuckle and patted his shoulder. He fought not to shrug the man’s hand off. Damn woman. He gets laid a few times and all of a sudden Rumlow feels like he’s in high school again.

“Hope it’s good things,” Rogers gave him a knowing smirk before catching up with the rest of the S.T.R.I.K.E. team.

Rumlow scoffed under his breath.

Good things don’t happen to people like him.

🥀

After two weeks of silence, you finally cracked and opened the mission file that Rumlow was assigned on. You couldn’t get over your pride to text him yourself - not wanting to come off needy, or demanding, so you did the totally-not-psycho thing and went behind his back.

It seemed like the file was taking years to download. Every second that passed, you found yourself wanting to close the window and just forget about it. You could get laid without his help. You weren’t the type to snoop around and wait for a man. Your finger twitched to click on the “exit window” tab but the file loaded before you could backpedal.

You frowned.

That was odd.

The mission file stated that he made his return 4 days ago - scrolling down, you found that his mission report was turned in 27 hours ago. Your colleague, Cal, must have been the one to process it during your day off.

You felt a familiar icy grip on your heart. Rejection. You could take a hint. Shit happens. It’s not like you two had an agreement. Or anything, for that matter. It was just good sex.

Closing the window, you tried your best to undo the furrow in your brow as Steve Rogers walked in with two steaming cups of coffee and a report tucked underneath his arm.

“Hey there, doll.” He smiled, lighting up the room. Setting your coffee down beside you, he handed you his mission report.

“Hi Steve,” you shyly glanced at the coffee, the scent hitting your senses and you couldn’t stop the smile spreading on your face.

“I’m sorry this report is so tardy,” he said, big hand rubbing the back of his head. You couldn’t help your eyes from wandering, first gazing at his golden locks that were the opposite of Brock’s dark tresses, and then Steve’s crystal blue eyes that presented a fondness that you weren’t sure Brock’s hazel ones could ever hold.

A pang of sadness struck your heart once again. Jesus, you were whipped.

“Is everything okay?” Steve asked, eyebrows knitting with concern.

“Oh - jeez, sorry Steve,” you laughed, realizing that you got so lost thinking about Rumlow that you had never replied.

“I’ve got some things on my mind.”

Steve had the strangest expression then - a flash of knowing - and he smiled with a certain kind of apologetic softness that you were confused by.

“I see,” he said. “I’ll leave you to it. Enjoy your coffee, doll.”

And with that, he turned and made his way out. You deflated. Steve never made a hasty exit with you - normally he’d stay and chat and you both would forget that he was Captain fucking America and instead just a good dude hanging out with a friend. What on earth have you done?

“I hope it’s only good things,” Steve said, before turning the knob on your door. He looked back then, giving you another apologetic, boyish smile, and then promptly walked out and closed the door behind him. Fuck. He knew something.

Oh lord. Bang the hot commander of the S.T.R.I.K.E. team, lose the golden boy. The universe could be cruel. Then again, what did you expect?

And now you weren’t even sure if you were actively banging the man. You sighed, feeling foolish. A few nights of mind-blowing sex has made you weak. Glancing at the coffee, you took a sip, knowing damn well you didn’t deserve it.

Undeserving or not, the coffee was delicious. Damn you, Steve.

It would be another week before you saw Rumlow again. You tried to find another man - even successfully nabbed one at the bar near your apartment, but the sex was as disappointing as you feared it would be. You craved the submissive state that Rumlow could so easily throttle you in. Staring at your empty bed, you couldn’t help but to think that you were right about one thing: it would never feel the same.

You huffed, throwing yourself on your bed. Time for the next best thing.

Reaching under your bed, you found the handle to a hidden drawer. Upon opening it, you were greeted with one of your favorite sex toys - a hot pink Rabbit vibrator.

Alright, you thought. Nobody better to get the job done than you.

Slipping your pants and shirt off, you shuffled the pillows and settled into a comfortable position. Clicking the “on” button, you couldn’t stifle the giddy smile on your face as your core stirred with excitement.

Rubbing the shaft of the toy against your clit gently, you sighed and threw your head back, imagining Rumlow’s thick fingers sliding up and against your slit instead.

Adding more pressure, your toes curled and you let out a mewl of pleasure, remembering what it was like for his stubble to tickle your pussy whenever he went down on you.

You hated how fast you got wet at just the memory of your midnight rendezvous with him, when the man you met last night could barely arouse you.

Clicking the next setting, the vibrations became more powerful. Any second now and you’d be able to slide the toy in and chase an orgasm.

You whimpered, sliding your panties to the side and gingerly lining the head of the toy to the opening of your cunt.

“Well what do we have here?”

You yelped, instantly dropping the toy. Your eyes could hardly believe what you were seeing.

There Rumlow was, in full tactical gear, arms crossed with blown pupils and that signature shit-eating grin.

You swallowed. Your pussy quivered.

“I saw that,” he said, slowly walking over to the bed. He leaned down, placing both hands beside your ankles. You fought the urge to cover up.

“Why don’t you continue for me, honey?”

You didn’t need to be told twice.

Picking up the toy, you inserted it with ease and moaned lowly, shutting your eyes and throwing your head back again.

You could hear Brock purr and it made your toes curl into the mattress.

“Look at me,” he demanded.

Your head snapped back up slowly, shyly, and when your eyes met his you felt small.

Fragile. Horny as fuck.

“You’re so wet, honey,” he grabbed one of your ankles and yanked you closer to the edge of the bed. The same hand found it’s way to the back of your head, forcing your forehead to rest against his as his hazel eyes bore into yours. His other hand began pumping the toy slowly into your core.

You moaned and shifted, uncomfortable with the intensity of his gaze.

“Were you thinking of me?”

You felt your heart tighten. Caught red-handed.

You nodded.

“Poor little slut,” he cooed. “Can’t get enough of my cock,” he then unzipped his pants and set his fully erect member loose. Turning the toy off and throwing it to a corner of the room, you jumped when it made a concerning clatter against the floor.

“I’m gonna make sure you don’t need shit like that no more,” Brock said in a low, gravelly voice that made your resolve melt. You shook the feeling of being ghosted off and finally spoke.

“Then do it,” you challenged. He smirked devilishly and thrust into you, not giving you any time to adjust.

With that slight twinge of pain paired with the heavenly feeling of being filled, you swore you could cum right then and there.

Rumlow’s pace was relentless, needy, desperate. He forced you to look into his eyes as he drilled into you, large rough hand gripping the back of your neck while the other held your hip in place to stop you from writhing. You found your hands cupping the sides of his face, trying to hold on, enjoying the tickle of his dark hair brushing across the tips of your fingers with every hard thrust.

You’ve never wanted to kiss someone more in your life.

In all these times you’ve had sex with Rumlow, not once did either of you initiate a kiss. Whether that be another unspoken rule to avoid feelings, or the more painful thought of he simply didn’t want to kiss you, you’d never know.

He must have caught your longing glance at his lips because he growled and suddenly his mouth was on yours, stifling your heavy moans. Teeth clashing, it was as messy and rough as the sex but exhilarating all the same. His tongue slid in your mouth and he tastes like fire and smoke.

Brock Rumlow was seeping into you and consuming everything you had while he fucked you. You gasped for breath when he broke the kiss, only to capture your mouth with his again as he thrusted in harder. Hips becoming sloppy, you could tell he was close.

A large hand slipped down in between your legs and a rough thumb began rubbing tight circles around your clit. You cried. It was too much - the kisses, the sound of skin slapping skin, his breath hitting your face and filling your nostrils with his scent.

All you could touch, smell, taste, hear - all of it was Rumlow.

The coil inside you snapped, hard, and you nearly screamed when Rumlow finished with you, cock throbbing hard inside of you as his hot seed filled your cunt. The warmth of his throbbing member and his hot cum made your body feel like a temple - the pleasure he granted you made it feel worshipped.

You struggled to catch your breath as Rumlow claimed your mouth again, this time with a rough bite to the bottom lip. You whimpered.

He pulled out and for the first time, he didn’t lay himself down next to you. He promptly got dressed.

Your crashing disappointment battling the euphoria of the sex was enough to distract you from the fact that he wasn’t dressed in his standard S.H.I.E.L.D. gear. Or, for that matter, the fact that he wasn’t scheduled to go out into the field for the next three days.

You watched him leave with faux acceptance and calmness and choked down the frustrated tears that threatened to spill out. Jesus.

You were so fucked.

Pulling the sheets and comforter over yourself and positioning your back to the door, you didn’t see Rumlow’s last glance. Longing, desperation and a dash of self-hatred made the perfect cocktail in his eyes.

Maybe good things did happen to Rumlow.

But that didn’t mean he deserved them. He turned the door knob and made his silent exit out.

The last thing you remember is a singular tear spilling out and frustration drilling a hole in your chest.

That night you dreamed of Rumlow staying, and softly kissing you while his large hands caressed every inch of your body. Nose bumping yours, there was that fondness that you had seen earlier in Steve’s eyes that was now in Rumlow’s, but it looked different.

It looked haunted. Sad, even.

The next morning when you rose from your dream, willing yourself to ignore the tear stains on your pillow, you made a pact with yourself to end things the next time he came around.

[simplepotatofarmer]

I think I sent this to the wrong blog at first but I saw that you were willing to explain why it is you like c!Techno? I've never been able to 'see' it but would like to hear from someone who does.

no worries! sideblogs and all that are a pain, i would’ve answered regardless.

but yeah, i’m always willing to talk about why i love techno so much! 

it’s funny because when i first joined the fandom, i had.... a bit of a different view of techno than i do now. i was kind of in the ‘yeah he’s a bad guy but he’s funny and that’s why i like him’ camp. 

which i don’t think is necessarily a bad take, just one that is lacking a lot of nuance and not really fully understanding his character. because the more i watched, the more i realized that i was kinda off base. 

see, techno is a flawed character. i’ve talked about this before, on how i don’t think the fandom pinpoints his actual flaws in favor of saying things like ‘he has a victim complex’ or that he’s this ultra-violent person or that he’s a flat out hypocrite. 

the first one is just..... not accurate at all. the next two are a little more complicated because yes, one of his flaws is violent overreactions and yes, he often doesn’t stop to consider that people might not see his point of view which leads to him being hypocritical sometimes. 

and i love techno for those things.

he’s someone who jumps to violence first because he’s good at it and it’s what most people seem to react to! there’s been times when he’s tried to talk or to stall or to isolate himself as much as possible and it’s never worked. what’s worked is violence. 

i don’t even think he particularly wants it to be that way, based on his frustrations with being seen as a weapon and not a person. 

that’s what really drew me to techno. he wants to be seen as a person. he wants to be treated the same way everyone else is. you can see that a lot with the things he says and the way he acts. for all his insistence that being alone is the only way to be safe (this is a clip i made of that part because i think it’s super important to his character), he opens his home and himself up a LOT.

he took in tommy and maybe it wasn’t the best thing for either of them and i do think that tommy was understandable in going back to tubbo, but techno did take him in and help him. 

quick sidebar because this gets brought up sometimes: i don’t think techno was willing to sell tommy out to dream in that confrontation. at that moment, techno knew he was in dream’s debt, knew he owed him a favor, but didn’t know what dream would want from him. dream was considered as powerful as techno, this was techno testing out exactly what dream might want and how far he’d go. i’m not saying there was no chance at all that techno wouldn’t have betrayed him, but i do think it was unlikely given the way techno treats his allies 

ranboo is the next big example for me. techno denied knowing him in the community house despite literally just joking him, he avoided fighting both ranboo and niki. telling them both not to show up on doomsday, asking ranboo to leave the fight and go somewhere safe after returning the book, offering ranboo a place to live through phil....

i also remember really being hit hard by the vault reveal scene. there’s something about the way he’s generous with his items that i find endearing. even with passive mobs that literally by game design he can’t benefit from being nice to, he still gives them items, doesn’t matter if they’re his or not. there’s a lot to be learned from that, imo, and one day i’ll write a whole thing about him and that but. 

the thing is, techno cares a lot about people. for all his talk about not trusting people and being alone, his actions show that he feels differently or that he doesn’t want it to be like that. 

he said to phil that he wants to be a good person and i think that’s true. 

i think techno is someone who genuinely believes in his ideology and wants to be a good person but also does things that aren’t right.

(another sidebar: i do think that gets skewed a little because it’s minecraft so the way violence works is a bit different AND i think techno suffers a bit from the MCU villain thing where anyone willing to use violence for their ideology is painted as a bad guy which is actually interesting in general especially when techno has specifically brought up things like imperialism but that’s a whole other convo)

but back to the point, i love that dichotomy he has. he’s kind of this stereotypical ‘big tough character who has walls up and acts like he doesn’t care but is secretly a softie’. and you see that a lot in his interactions, especially with phil and ranboo.

which is why i’m not really down with the whole painting him as some kind of comic book villain type.

not saying he hasn’t done bad things, of course, or that other characters don’t have a reason to dislike him because i think they do and i think those reasons are valid.

it’s just that so often it comes at the cost of removing a lot of techno’s more interesting character traits and moments and denying any of the hurt he’s been through. 

tl;dr: i love techno because i think he’s a complex and flawed character that has a strong belief system, genuinely wants to do good and be better - the rules in the syndicate show a big change for him in that direction - but has done awful things both in the name of those beliefs AND out of the hurt and frustration he’s suffered (he stated doomsday was a revenge thing), right or wrong. he has a soft spot for people and animals and he’s hilarious and i think it’s a shame to strip him of that for the sake of making him a villain.

even more tl;dr: pigman funny and Is Right

[sweetsunflowerkisses]

the library.

Pairing: Loki (MCU) x Fem!Reader 

Genre: Angst (??)

Warnings: Implied Character Death , Mentions of Loki’s faked death, Descriptions of falling?, Cannon Divergence, Making a bunch of shit up about Asgardian relationships and Asgardians in general? Angst, Bad writing TvT

Summary: In your final moments you reflect on your relationship with Loki and wish that you could be back at the library with him.

Word Count: 1.9k (It’s kinda short TvT)

a/n: I was rewatching Thor and the first avengers movie and this idea popped into my head and I kinda hate myself for writing it :D Also I’m working on Secret Identities Are Hard To Keep, I promise TvT

Falling. You had always wondered what it would feel like going from a height like this. It was almost euphoric, the wind pushing against your back as you fell, carrying your tears up with it. These were your final moments, you knew that, there was no surviving a fall from this height, not even with the strength provided by the asgardian blood that ran through your veins. So you did what most people did in their final moments, reflected on how you got here.

It all started centuries ago, in the golden palace on Asgard, the place where you were raised as a noble, your father being one of the Allfather’s most trusted advisers. Your memory of those years were riddled with the overwhelming feelings of loneliness, your only company being the vast array books in the palace library. You were lonely until the day you met him.

It was a day like any other, your father was tied up in various meetings with the Allfather and other important asgardians and like always you were camped out in the library. Through the years that you had spent here it had become your safe space and in the very back in a small corner was your place of happiness there was a small emerald chaise lounge with just the right amount of light and all of the books you had ever enjoyed stacked up around it. What you didn’t expect was for someone to already be occupying your oh so sacred spot.

He was stretched out on the lounge, his thin form but tall form draping over the edge a book in hand. You knew who he was of course, you were a noble after all, the dark prince, the forgotten prince, the boy that spent his years in his brother's shadow. In all of your 400+ years you don’t think you had ever seen him so peaceful, so you did what you usually did around people, you turned to leave. What you weren’t expecting was to feel the feather light touch of a hand on your wrist.

You looked up your eyes meeting his soft green ones. You wondered how he knew about this corner, about you and your time here, but pushed the thought aside as your gazes locked. There was something there, an unspoken understanding from one outsider to the other. He smiled softly, pulling a book out of seemingly nowhere and handing it to you wordlessly. You smiled in thanks and watched as he left, his green cape swaying behind him. And that was how it started.

You would have expected falling to be something that was over quickly yet it somehow seemed like the longest moment of your life. You knew you were getting closer though, you could see the tops of other buildings now, so as you waited you went back to thinking.

After that fateful meeting your relationship with the raven haired prince slowly started to change, for nearly fifty years the two of you would simply give each other books you thought the other would like, starting off wordlessly and eventually progressing into bigger and bigger conversations until the two of you would spend hours in the library together, animatedly talking about whatever book you were interested in that day, no doubt blowing off countless responsibilities your fathers had begun to place on you now that you were growing older.

It was around a hundred years after your first meeting that your relationship crossed from friendly conversations to stolen kisses and secret meetings. The two of you were around 500 and 600 now, both preparing for your futures. Loki trained to become both a warrior and a king, despite the limited possibility of him ascending to the throne, and you training alongside Her Majesty the Queen and other female nobles, preparing to become the perfect wife and partner for the next generation of Asgardian nobles. Yet you still found time for each other, spending as much time as you could together, only finding comfort in one another.

It was when the two of you hit 900 and 800 that Loki became consumed by his anger. It was in secret of course, as most of his emotions often were, but his emotions were always something you and you alone had the privilege of seeing. By now you and the pale prince were an official couple, Odin and Frigga having blessed the relationship, allowing Loki to court you and eventually allowing the two of you to biome some form of official, not married, but official enough to be allowed to share a bedchamber without getting odd looks.

In the past Loki had always confessed his anger to you, never allowing it to influence his actions, reveling in the catharsis he achieved by ranting to you as you played with his hair, but now, as he watched his arrogant brother become more and more loved by the people, as he watched his brother be promised the throne despite his hotheadedness and obsession with being a warrior, something within him snapped. Now he would yell for hours on end, often trashing your chambers, rather than his usual soft kisses that were full of love, his kisses were messy, needy and full of all the rage he could never show. It was in everything he did every emotion tainted by the anger that masked the true emotion. But you accepted him, every bit of him and so you did what you could. You matched his energy but also reminded him that you were still there, still there to give him new books, still there to play with his hair and still there for him to lean on.

As you fell your thoughts wandered back to the present, you were nearly there, you could hear the screams below, and you could see the chitauri army and the chaos that they brought with them. You could see the faint outline of Iron Man landing on the tower and your thoughts once again returned to Loki and everything that brought you here.

After the exile of Thor and the era of Loki as King you thought maybe everything would stop, the looks and the whispers that everyone would finally stop treating Loki like he was just a liar and a danger, you yearned for and prayed for the return of the Loki you fell in love with. You were distraught when Thor returned, telling you that Loki’s ascension to the throne was all based on lies, that he had been responsible for the frost giants that had gotten in the palace, that he had tried to kill his friends, that he had tried to kill his brother. And that he was now plotting something far worse. Somehow, as much as you didn’t want to, you knew it was true, but despite everything you knew that your feelings wouldn’t change. So you fought Thor, or at least tried, not being able to actually bring yourself to deal any damage to the god, too overwhelmed with the truth of it all, so you ran. You ran back to the place where it all started, back to the library, back to your corner of safety.

You found out he was dead the next day, Thor sought you out to tell you himself, yet somehow there was the nagging feeling in the back of your brain that Thor was wrong, and boy were you right.

It was 2012 when he finally resurfaced, you had spent most of your days hiding from the asgardian population, from the prying eyes of everyone who figured you had something to do with the events of the previous year. You were once again faced with the fact that your feelings remained unchanged for him, that despite the reality of what he was doing, trying to enslave a whole population you would still do anything for him. It was Heimdall who alerted you of his return, but it was the Queen who convinced you to go to him, to try and bring back the love that you had spent nearly 600 of your years devoted to. So you did.

You landed on the rooftop of Stark Tower, admiring the pretty pattern the bifrost has burned into the gravel. It wasn’t long before Loki found you, after all the Bifrost was kinda hard to miss. It was emotional for you, seeing the man you loved after spending so long thinking he might be dead. You approached him slowly, he rushed to you in return, overjoyed at the sight of you, telling you of his grand plan, inviting you to join him, to be his queen, to rule over Midgard with him. It was tempting and for a moment, just a single moment you considered it. But you refused, nearly begging him to stop the madness, to return to you, attempting to reassure him that no matter what you would still be there, that you would still love him despite the things he’d done in the past few years. You told him how that while you didn’t quite understand everything that you could listen and love him, that you would give him everything the world never did. Yet, it was when you looked up into his eyes that you realised that something was truly wrong, that your prince might truly be gone, rather than the normal green that usually stared down at you a piercing blue met your gaze.

You backed up slowly, this was the man you loved yes but there was something else in him too, something that was evil and corrupting, something you were sure would infect you too if you joined him. And it was backing up that had been your mistake, the platform on top of Stark Tower was by no means small but you had simply landed too close to the edge, and as you stepped back you felt nothing and you began to fall.

Loki lunged, moving faster than he ever had, just barely grasping your left hand in time. And you watched as his eyes flickered in between his green and the unnatural blue and that's when you realised, he was scared. But you were slipping and his grip simply wasn’t enough. You smiled softly, knowing what was going to happen next, tears beginning to stream down your face, and with your last words you simply whispered “I love you.”.

You fell, leaving Loki only clutching air, but then he felt something else as his fist closed around the air where your hand had just been. He knew what it was almost immediately and looked down to find the gold band with a single emerald in it sat in his hand. The ring that had adorned your ring finger for the past three years, the proof that despite it all you loved him. And you smiled.

You knew it was the end now, the sound of cars and people louder than before, and you wondered what would have happened if you hadn’t been in the library that day. With your very last moments you imagined yourself on the emerald chaise, surrounded by books with Loki on your lap, playing with his hair as he read to you and you smiled for the last time

[doux-amer]

Okay, so I no longer have the energy to discuss Marvel stuff at length, but I enjoyed Black Widow, to my surprise. I went in with low expectations, but it ended up being solid. Was it a groundbreaking movie? No. But I’d rank it as one of the best MCU films and it felt like a nice change of pace from your standard MCU fare. The film avoided prioritizing action over character arcs and didn't interrupt the story with unnecessary and often distracting humor.  It's become increasingly obvious over recent years just how much the MCU has started to suffer from what made it unique and innovative in the first place—an interconnected cinematic universe. Everything feels like it's a stepping stone to some big event (hah, in that way, it's emulating the comics well), with characters's stories hastily and sloppily pushed aside for The Main Team Event TM. 

And that's why Black Widow worked. It didn't have world-ending stakes. It wasn't about one Big Bad (the big bad in this story, much like in CA:TWS, is the system which is why the "main boss" didn't have to be impressive and intimidating on his own). The story felt quiet and contemplative in between the action scenes. It was very intimate and the story benefited tremendously from that. What happened in this movie was something that would mean very little to anyone other than the people directly involved and would go unnoticed. 

This isn't something that the whole world will know about and praise her for, and no one treats it as such, both in terms of the characters and the people behind the film. With the exception of a few lines and moments, this film isn't cringeworthy, in-your-face, and ultimately shallow GIRL POWER GIRLBOSS OMG FEMINISM which Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman (and that one stupid as hell scene in IW) both leaned into and imo, were either hindered by or even suffered from. This story is very much one about the patriarchy, misogyny, agency, etc., but it tries to see what the personal ramifications are and how sickening and even banal it all is. It’s about how the world works and treats women, no matter who they are. It’s about how Dreykov, for all his power, is a dime a dozen. The world made it possible for men like Dreykov to exist and do harm. The world goes on without him there, and in the wake of his death and the destruction of the Red Room, his victims still have to deal with all the pain and figure out what they want to do, how they want to do it, and who they want to be afterwards.

Obviously, we also got to see more of Natasha and who she is, what makes her tick, and how her past formed the person she is now. And yes, I dislike Scarjo so I was ready to not care about the movie, but god, I love Natasha and miss her so badly. I ended up unexpectedly crying when the film started and didn't stop until the opening credits ended, not even because something was sad but because that was Natasha! When kid Natasha whipped out her gun and shielded Yelena, I recognized both that skill and heart instantly and it hit me hard. You got that repeatedly throughout the film, and it knits together all the little pieces of Natasha we got throughout the decade. It gives her consistency and strengthens what we already know drives her: her desire to atone and protect and her yearning for a family.

The supporting cast was good too. You could tell they had fun and you could tell they had the acting chops. I get very leery of actors who go over the top in the MCU because almost all the time, it ends up backfiring and undermining their character, but David Harbour had a lot of fun with Alexei and it never bothered me. And I think that's because, behind all of the bombast, there was real emotion behind it that he took seriously and the others did as well. Rachel Weisz...I mean, I don't think I need to say anything more. You expect her to be good and of course she was. And Florence? Yes, this might not be 616 Yelena in many, many ways and I can see how that's upsetting to people (this applies to the Taskmaster as well), but if you see MCU Yelena as her own person, man. Florence overshadows Scarjo which, well, isn't surprising considering her brilliance, but I will say, though, that part of it is because Yelena is a much more energetic character whereas Natasha is more introverted and even a little awkward and shy at times. 

I loved the relationships and they all felt real to me. When they said they were a family? I believed them. When you saw them grapple with what they'd done in the past and what they did to each other and to other people? That felt real too. 

And the action scenes! Wow, did I miss actually good fight choreography after three horrible shows full of goofy af fight scenes that had bad choreography and were terribly shot (the less we talk about Loki, the better, though TFATWS, which probably should have had the slickest shots had by far the worst cinematography). The fights were engaging and you really sensed the urgency and danger in every fight. I felt like Natasha was in danger, that she would get hurt. The hits HURT and you could tell how painful that walloping was (with the exception of the ridiculous scene where Dreykov punched her repeatedly in the face and there was no sign of impact). Everyone felt very human and very easy to break. 

The flow was great and maybe it was slow for some people, but I liked that. I liked that the story took its time to unfold. I liked that you didn't sense any impatience or panic. Everything happened in its own time, but it never dragged for me. There was a great balance between emotional, quiet moments and bursts of action, and neither felt like they undermined the other, a frequent issue I have with MCU works (yet again, one of the best examples and most recent ones is Loki; I hated the fight sequences because they felt so unnecessary and they truly disrupted the flow of things).

Were there things that I wish we got more of or thought could have been tightened up better? Yeah. I wish we got to see more of the Widows, for one thing. I also think it would have been interesting for Natasha to mull over the brainwashing she had versus what Yelena went through; what Yelena went through was much worse and similar to what Bucky went through, but Yelena has the excuse of being a victim with little to no free will whereas Natasha? She was psychologically messed with, but she wasn't being mind controlled. It would've been interesting to see that explored more in depth. I wish we got to see more of the Taskmaster. Etc. etc.

More than anything, though, what left me sad and disappointed after my initial joy and feeling of enjoyment dissipated, was the fact that this came too late. This is a movie that should have come right after CW, and we should have gotten a Black Widow movie right after the Avengers and before TWS or at least after TWS. This is, by far, the most unanimous take and it makes me wonder how everyone at Marvel feels about that, that this is, more than anything, the opinion that's being echoed consistently amongst reviewers and moviegoers alike. And it will never ever ever ever ever fail to piss me off that Markus, McFeely, and the Russos didn't know the Black Widow movie was going to even happen and they ended up offing her. That's a massive decision and I don't know, MAYBE you should have had some more communication! Maybe if that happened, Natasha wouldn't have been fridged (she shouldn't have been in the first place, and one of the things I deeply appreciated about this movie was that it pushed back on the wrongs that male directors and writers have done to her (e.g., Whedon's awful approach to her forced sterilization in AoU, the Russos and M&M saying Clint couldn't die because he had a family as if someone who isn't a parent is less important and less deserving to live and as if Natasha's relationships didn't matter)). Maybe we would have gotten more solo movies with her. We can still get more BW movies, sure, but Natasha herself deserved more. 

And that's why, despite thinking this is one of the best movies of the MCU even if the story itself isn't particularly sensational and not being blown away by it (again, I didn't think it was impressive, but I thought it was very solid), despite being pleasantly surprised by the fact that I enjoyed a MCU movie which is rare for me and walking away with barely anything to be disappointed about let alone upset about, despite thinking that this is the story Natasha deserved and being relieved and happy that this is what she got and this is how she's going to go out, I was still left sad for what could have been and what she deserved.