#and loki IS genderfluid! the original god was!! and it's shown in the comics too!!

[queer-crusader]

Finally finishing Loki and I just... I'm disappointed. Putting opinions under the cut.

Like, I've seen the criticism, I got spoilered, and I won't lie, it definitely influenced my further viewing. But even so, it disappointed me. I don't think the whole "Loki not even being the main character of his own show" is as egregious as Tumblr made it out to be for me, though yes, a LOT of focus was put on Sylvie - her revenge narrative, Loki just being along for the ride ("a flea on a dragon's back". Thanks for being self-aware, show). To me, there are other frustrating factors.

"Glorious purpose" seems the catch-phrase of this show. Which seems... stupid, to be honest. When Loki uttered it in the Avengers film, there was a clear madness to him. Marvel claimed officially that Loki was under the influence of the mind stone by then, but the show still thinks that was genuinely Loki talking - and it is something all Lokis seem to agree on.

Then there's the whole throne thing. Loki mentions near the end that he doesn't want a throne. He says it like he's finally had a realisation, like this is his emotional growth. But it ISN'T. This show is set after Thor 1, in which Loki very clearly says to Thor: "I never wanted the throne. I only ever wanted to be your equal." So this is not some grand revelation. This has always been the case, and something he was fiercely aware of. He's never wanted to be a ruler.

"Don't you want to win in New York? Kill Thanos?" This is more of a headcanon, but one shared by much of the fandom - a headcanon marvel can't have missed, since they saw our collective outcries that Loki was brainwashed and claimed it canon years after The Avengers, just because they couldn't ignore it anymore if they were making a show about Loki. Anyway, the collective headcanon is this: Loki didn't want to win in New York. His plan was doomed to fail from the start. Earth is unruleable, a space army coming through one wormhole and the gate has a built-in self-destruct button. He scattered the Avengers, but he also got them together. The headcanon was that he planned it all, in a way that seemed good to Thanos, but was meant to make him fail.

As to killing Thanos, yeah, he deserves that. In fact, Retro Loki says it beautifully - the knives look cool but are fucking useless, something Loki should know without getting his neck snapped by the Mad Titan. Thanks for spelling out something obvious, again something the fandom has been yelling about since Infinity War came out! Did the writers steal Retro Loki's survival tactic off a Tumblr post? Because it feels a little like it, almost in an attempt to soft-retcon that film. "We can't fix that dumb plot point, but we can show that we understand Loki better, that we you came up with a better idea of what could have been." Again, thanks.

This show is just full of the writers showing us things we already knew. They make Loki a bumbling idiot - and I get it, conflict is the heart of western storytelling, but he doesn't need to be incompetent to struggle. The thing is, were they to make him as formidable and clever as we once felt he was, they would have needed to make his adversaries even cleverer. And much as I enjoy certain bits of the story (croki my beloved)... I just don't think they were quite up to that task. It all feels like a fanfic, which on the one hand, can be fan service. But on the other hand, it feels like a Frankenstein fanfic. A puzzle of stolen tropes from fics the writers have read and put together, none of it quite their own. I'm making assumptions and not being very forgiving, but this is just how I feel.

And that brings me to my next and almost final point. What really hammers the fanfiction feeling home for me is all the self-reflection. It can be done and it can be done well, but this show didn't do it well. The self-reflection felt out of character, disingenuous, inaccurate, and clunky.

The writing is clunky, and at times rushed. And it's just... almost bad at times. There wasn't a single moment where I went "oh this is revolutionary" or "this quote will haunt me". Most of it was incredibly mediocre. This absolutely includes the quote where Loki canonically notes that he's bi/pan/not straight. Russel T Davies said it spectacularly; marvel/Disney pats itself on the back with each weak nod to the LGBTQ+ community. If they want to be ground-breaking, they'll have to do better than a queer on-screen kiss.

And speaking of kisses: I just... No. I don't have anything against selfcest in fics, I'm not afraid to admit I've read it before, and in canon media it can be utilised in fascinating and clever ways. This show did not do that. To have Loki berate himself, only to romantically fall for another version of himself that is, let's be real, very different from him, is not some deep representation of growth and self-love to me. It is once again clunky. You want growth? Stick to those self-reflections and do better, or become more metaphorical. Either way, write more cleverly.

I'm sorry, my standards are high, and this just didn't meet it. I appreciate the effort! I'm glad someone with love for this character tried to make something of it! But it fell on its ass, and came out as a butchering of a beloved character only to make space for a hopeful replacement. That to me is a massive failure, and not one I can forgive easily. Your show is called Loki. Act like it. And if making it a love letter to him and us was your intention, do better.

[alirhi]

Loki ranting

Okay. I had this thought in my head of like just compiling links of all the Loki shit I've posted/reblogged so far so that when I get into a conversation about the show and how it fucking disgusted me, I can just be like "here. here's this masterlist post, go read all this shit. This is my entire argument, and not only mine, but a lot of stuff posted by people far more intelligent and level-headed and eloquent than I am, whom I happen to agree with." Because the alternative is constantly getting fired up all over again, and that is exhausting.

BUT! I'm stupid and don't know how tumblr works. Apparently I can't just be like "give me all the Loki-tagged shit I've got" I can only search all the Loki-tagged shit on all of tumblr. And I'm not scrolling back through all of my posts. I talk too fucking much for that shit 😂

So, I'll try to remember all of my grievances with how the MCU has treated Loki, and all of the excellent posts made by other, equally upset fans, and put it all together here under this nice, neat little cut for everyone else's sanity and scrolling convenience...

For people who actually read my shit fairly regularly - bless you, you crazy, patient people. I love you! - this is going to be a lot of repetition of shit you've already read. Probably at least twice. I'm passionate and I have a terrible memory lol. Sorry.

Anyway, first, for those who don't know me and haven't been following my explosions of rage for the past couple of months, some quick background: I do not read comic books, so Loki's Marvel comic canon means nothing to me. I know almost nothing about it. The reason I'm so in love with the character in the MCU is because I am an eclectic witch and the deity I've actively loved and worshiped the longest in my life (literally for as long as I can remember) is Loki. So when he was mentioned in The Mask, I squeed. When they named Matt Damon's character after him in Dogma, I cheered.

When Thor came out in 2011, I just about died from happiness. I was hungry for any representation of this underappreciated god, no matter what it was. I didn't even bitch about how underpowered he was, because at least he was there. But I'm getting slightly ahead of myself.

I can hear anyone reading this going "Why Loki? Isn't he, like, evil? Like basically the Norse version of The Devil?" Because I heard all this shit irl all the fucking time. And no. So let me give you a quick rundown of who Loki actually is.

Loki is a Trickster God. He's often referred to as the God of Mischief. He is not and never was evil, simply chaotic and hedonistic. Loki Laufeyjarson was the son of Laufey (that's mama; they changed her to a man for some reason in the movie) and Fárbauti. Right from the start, from his name, we get a sign of how Loki goes against traditional norms of the time, because in Norse culture, families were patrilineal, and surnames were "son/daughter of father" (which would have made him Loki Fárbautitason), not the mother. But Loki's surname is matrilineal. Feminist icon woo! lol

Though he's a Jotunn, Loki is counted among the Gods (Aesir) in Norse tradition. Depending on his mood, he is alternately helpful or disruptive to the other Gods. I'm not gonna sit and teach a whole text class on him lol but I'll use my favorite example of Misunderstood Loki - the conception of Sleipnir!

So, get this shit. This is also part of why I DO NOT follow Odin and never fucking will (a very small part, but still part of the reason). So, the other Norse Gods are petty motherfuckers, and they wanted some shit built but didn't want to pay the dude doing the building. So they were like "okay, if you can get it done in X amount of time, we'll pay you, but if you can't manage it NO MATTER WHAT, this whole thing is free." And they made sure he had NO help, nothing but him, his materials, and his Very Good Horsey. And this guy and his horse were fucking BAMFs. So it was looking like he was definitely gonna get it done in time, and Odin was like "nah, fuck that shit. I'm cheap." and so he sent Loki to distract the work horse. Loki transformed into a mare and lured the horse away, got fucked, got pregnant, gave birth to the 8-legged (for some reason) horse Sleipnir. Odin rides Loki's son into battle. Um. Kay.

So Loki helped Odin be a petty mf, and Odin got himself a new pet out of the deal.

Oh, also, because he's smart af and a shapeshifter and a master magician and genderfluid, Loki "fails" to fit the super fucking toxic and narrow Norse/Aesir view of "a real man". He prefers intelligence and manipulation to solve problems rather than violence, he's not afraid to behave like a clown if it gets shit done, and that grosses the Aesir out, so they constantly ridicule him for being "less than a man".

Loki is the God of the outcast and the misunderstood. The marginalized people from all walks of life. He is the God of the LGBT community. In modern terms, he's pansexual, polyamorous (married to Sigyn and they are deeply in love, but boy gets around and I've never seen any indication that Sigyn gives a shit) and genderfluid.

Okay. Focus, Ali. This is part of why I usually post multiple rants instead of one big long one XD The longer I ramble, the more I get sidetracked and forget the original point.

So. Loki's awesome, and being a Trickster, is powerful as all fucking hell. There's not much he can't do.

And now we come to Thor (the movie, not the deity). Loki's there! 24-year-old Ali is spazzing! All is right with the world!

Oh lord, they've actually done him justice?! Amazing! He's complex and nuanced and emotional, just like the real Loki! I loved this movie. Loved. It. The climactic thing with trying to blow up Jotunheim never really made much sense to me until someone made an excellent point the other day about Loki being raised in a racist society that was racist against his own race, he just didn't know it yet, poor child. Baby Thor was never corrected when he pledged to commit mass genocide, so Baby Loki probably absorbed the lesson then that Jotunns=evil and killing them all will win his father's love. Anyway, 2011 Loki was a beautiful, heartbreaking portrayal of the God I've loved all my life and spent 24 years longing to see depicted on the big screen.

Then The Avengers happened. And I saw another Loki very close to Norse mythology - mainly, how he's treated. In the beginning of the movie, he's sick, exhausted, and in pain. He can hardly stand, he stumbles and needs help when he walks. He was very obviously tortured, and the sickly blue light of the scepter's control is in his eyes. That gets less and less pronounced as the movie goes on, showing Loki working his way free of it, but in the beginning, he's a mess. Because he was tortured and used by Thanos. Marvel directly confirmed this, and that he was under the scepter's/Mind Stone's control. Loki's actions are not his own in The Avengers. He's under both threat and Thanos' direct control. The movie actually shows The Other directly threatening him to keep him on task, because this is not Loki's plan. It is not what he wants. He's being used and villainized... Just like in real life. It hurt to see this done to him, but the accuracy was too beautiful to ignore.

Thor: The Dark World comes out. I've heard people complain that this movie is the weak link in the Thor trilogy. I disagree. I think that's Ragnarok, for a bunch of reasons, but we'll get there. (And for the record, I loved Ragnarok, too. It was a funny movie. Infinity War and the Disney+ series are the only portrayals of Loki in the MCU that I truly fucking hated.) Anyway, good, fun movie. Had its faults, as all movies do, but it still followed Loki's real-life arc in a way. How? By having Loki dragged back to Asgard in chains and imprisoned underground. Again, not super happy that this happened to my love, and having to see it on screen was painful, but at least in the MCU he's not chained to a rock with venom dripping on his face for eternity, so there's that. (poor Sigyn. how tired do her arms get, holding up that bowl? best wife ever, amirite?)

In TDW, we're shown Loki's love for Frigga, who favored him and taught him magic as a child. We see his bravado; his attempts to mask his true feelings, especially grief. We see him slowly coming back to himself after the events of The Avengers, and slowly mending his relationship with his brother. He accepts that Odin will likely never love him, but Thor just might, because they were close when they were young. "I didn't do it for him." No, no my sweet, you did it for your brother, and a little out of guilt for what happened to your mother.

At the end, Loki fakes his death and escapes, taking the throne, and I have mixed feelings about this. Not the writer's choices here; I love that completely! A natural progression in Loki's story. But my joy is tainted by how closely they're following the Eddas now. Because Loki's escape from his prison heralds the beginning of Ragnarok. And Loki will die in Ragnarok. I don't want to see that play out in front of my face. I won't be able to handle the grief (spoiler alert! IW broke me. I almost walked out of the theater. Loki's death was legitimately fucking traumatic for me. I don't even care how pathetic that is. That grief was real, it was intense, and I still shake and cry when I think about it.)

Marvel announces that Thor 3 will be called Ragnarok. The internet treats this as a shocking revelation. I roll my eyes and mumble "duh" to myself and move on XD

Then they say Ragnarok will be a buddy comedy. I throw up a little in my mouth and no longer want to live on this planet. If they're going to make something called Ragnarok, could they at least treat it with even a fraction of the respect they've shown these characters thusfar? Jfc. I mean, I'll see it anyway, because I'm a whore for Tom Hiddleston lol. But come on, people!

I hated that they made Hel the long-lost older sister and Fenrir her fucking pet/attack dog. Those are my favorites of Loki's children! Hel is such an incredible badass that the early Christians named their dimension of eternal torture after her! They were terrified of her, to the point of naming the place that terrified them most after her. That's awesome! And Fenrir's just the best. I love wolves. Those two details, and Odin's retcon of "we're not Gods! ...lol, except your sister. she's totally a Goddess. and def gonna kill literally everything, so... good luck! byyyeeeee" pissed me off royally.

The rest was great. I genuinely liked this movie. Still do. And they finally used The Immigrant Song! That was pretty cool. If they'd thrown in Bring the Hammer Down and Thunderstruck, I might've called this movie perfect. XD

I wasn't totally in love with their portrayal of Loki in Ragnarok. Yes, the falling for 30 minutes line was funny, as was "I have to get off this planet" and "YES! That's how it feels!" And "Get Help" was funny as hell. But also, like... There is no way Loki would have been the dumb one in that first encounter with Hela. Also, he can teleport and project copies of himself and shit, so... He would not have been that desperate to go straight back to Asgard and bring her right along with them. Loki's not stupid. But whatever. Movie's gotta movie.

What I did love was seeing the slow mending of his relationship with Thor continuing, and the badass fighting on the bridge. I also loved that, like Real Loki, Movie Loki helped when help was needed, was quick and clever, and while he was carrying out the main plan, he was also planning ahead and grabbing the Tesseract. Yes, that drew Thanos right to them, but that's a whole other thing. Loki never would have left that thing on Asgard to be destroyed or lost.

And now Infinity War. Hooooly fucking shit. You know what? No. I'm not going into this. He was killed, years of character growth were erased forever, my heart fucking shattered. The end.

Endgame. IW hurt me so bad I didn't see Endgame until this year. I actually watched Civil War first (for context: I had actively avoided all Cap movies until this year because I fucking hate Steve Rogers. I find him insufferable. Did not realize what I was denying myself until I watched CW and finally saw the charms of Bucky. When he appeared in IW, I was so lost. XD I was like "...who dis? Murder Jesus?" also I just... didn't care. I was numb by then from crying through most of the movie over Loki)

So, anyway. Endgame. Loki picks up the Tesseract in alternate 2012, escapes, fans go "yay! he didn't actually die!" I go "yes he fucking did. Five years of his life, gone. Five years of growth and change, erased. Loki is dead. This will not be the same."

I was more right than I could have predicted. Now we come to the point of this rant. Sorry it took so long, but you were warned lol.

The Loki series makes me so angry I actually get sick to my stomach. It was fucking TRASH. When I praised Marvel for following Norse mythology so faithfully earlier? Yeah. I DID NOT MEAN TREAT HIM THE WAY THE OTHER GODS DID. I did not mean paint him as a pitiful clown, a joke, a caricature of who he truly was, with his pain and suffering played for LAUGHS.

This is supposed to be 2012 Loki, newly freed from Thanos' control. The Loki we saw in the beginning of TDW - snarky, exhausted, nihilistic. The Loki who rolled his eyes and said "get on with it" expecting to be killed.

The bumbling clown flipping on a dime from posturing to calling himself weak is not 2012 Loki. That is not ANY Loki. That is Tom Hiddleston in a black wig doing what he's told by a shitty writer who had no fucking idea what he was doing and was salty about his (bad) original script (for something totally fucking unrelated) getting killed.

In Episode 1, Loki is mocked, imprisoned, stripped against his will, tormented, belittled, and given a flippant summary of all the trauma Actual MCU Loki suffered that this one skipped out on, with no context, no acknowledgement of the trauma he's already lived quite fucking recently, and with the narrative twisted to not only erase all the abuse he's suffered, but to make it all his fault. And this is supposed to make him want to help these people?

And worse, IT FUCKING WORKS. WHAT?! I CAN'T- FUCKING WHAT?! Remember when I said LOKI IS NOT FUCKING STUPID?! So why is he STUPID?

Episode 2, he's a child. Mentally, this Loki is a fucking child. Now we've erased all the growth and development of his entire adult life. He's dopey, impatient, impulsive, desperate for a pat on the back and actually shows it. Yes, abused and neglected children crave the positive attention we never received, and we often grow up to be a bit emotionally stunted. But not all of us, and not Loki. Not as we've seen him EVER in the rest of the MCU. Playful and a bit callous at times? Absolutely! But not a big dumb fucking puppy.

Episode 3, a ray of hope, despite Sylvie! (I hate Sylvie) Loki casually admits he's pan/bi; labels never come up, but he admits to being with both men and women! He sings! Not really relevant to whether I approve of his portrayal or not lol but Tom has a beautiful voice, Norwegian ("Asgardian" lol) is a gorgeous, entrancing language, and I could watch that one bit on loop for eternity and never get bored. And then, finally, we see a glimpse - a glimpse - of Loki's power! He stops a falling building and pushes it right back up! Are we finally getting to see what he can really do? Will the next episode bring us Loki in all his glory?

Nope. 4 and 5 we see him mocked and pushed around and utterly irrelevant. Again. We see tiny reflections of what he could maybe theoretically do in other random Loki variants, but the "main" (lawl. main. it was the Sylvie and Mobius show. Loki was never the main anything.) Loki? Nothing. He wears his heart on his sleeve for no reason, bonds with the man who imprisoned, taunted, and gaslit him, is killed, and continues to be a moron and a joke. Always the clown. Always the dumb one. The one with the bad ideas. The inferior Loki.

Don't even get me started on that finale. I can't. This already took so much out of me. Fuck Marvel. Fuck this fucking show. I just... I'm done.

[amysgiantbees]

Avengers: Endgame Spoilers

Much like Avengers Infinity War, my feelings on this film can most succinctly be put that overall I found it average to infuriating but there were some truly wonderful parts in between that I’ll always enjoy. I’ll come to this later but here are some notes on my feelings on Avengers Endgame...

THE GOOD

Wanda and Captain Marvel (but I still needed more of them)

Wanda and Captain Marvel fighting Thanos

Steve wielding Mjölnir

Valkyrie on a pegasus

King Valkyrie

Carol’s haircut

Rhodney and Nebula bonding!

Nebula and Tony playing paper football!

Pepper fighting in an iron suit

Sam is Captain America! (He better be Cap in the films, not just this new show, I know the MCU has a history of keeping the TV shows and films separate but please not in this case!)

THE BAD

Bruce dabs. I just can’t.

Clint’s hair and tattoos

Thanos’ ecofascism being justified by the narrative in certain ways like with Cap’s look on the bright side about the environment line.

The time travel plotholes. I do not understand time travel at all in this, feel free to explain if you do. Also, Thanos not having knowledge of anyone due to time travel really took a lot of impact out of the climax for me. My biggest issue with the time travel logic in this though is how can Nebula kill her past self? 

The limited time given to emotional character arcs is a real issue for me. For a movie that goes on for so long, I felt like more attention would be given to this and less to action. Like having characters that had rivalries with members of Thano’s Children never confronting against them again.

Thor never mentions Loki. He never grieves him. He was meant to actually legitimately be dead in this one so it would have been nice if not only there was more emotion and time spent on the scene with his mother but if he said goodbye to Loki during it too. Or told Freya to check in on Loki for him, make sure to tell him he loves him form him. I know she is destined to die but if they’d come earlier in the day and let there be time to do all of this it would have been more emotionally satisfying I think at least.

I HATE fatsuits. The fat jokes and the jokes at the expense of Thor’s panic attacks and mental health are REVOLTING. It’s just sad and frustrating that they decided to throw out all of Thor’s character development from Ragnorok for a few cheap laughs. His fat suit doesn’t even look real. It doesn’t match his neck and face and he doesn’t move right. Shockingly enough you move easier when it’s your own skin. This article and the author sum up my thoughts on all of this really well: https://medium.com/@kivabay/the-centr-of-controversy-cba6f23c692e. Also, Bay has a really great quote unrelated to Thor but also sums up another issue I have with the film and I just want to highlight it here, “ I also couldn’t help but view the movie with the knowledge we pick up on the internet about who is leaving the MCU, making the character deaths feel melodramatically goofy and like executive-level calculations.“

Also, somewhat silly critique but doesn’t Thor need special Asgardian beer to get drunk not “mortal” beer in a can. Damn, Thor was just poorly thought through. And I could almost find him fighting against Thanos with zero weight loss aspiring if the whole idea of Chris Hemsworth portraying him and every other way he was handled wasn’t disgustingly terrible. Fat Thor as an idea is amazing. I’d love to see him portrayed as such in the comics as long as he’s treated with respect. 

They can’t just have the film be cathartically separate and contained they have to hint at more film’s with the “Where’s Gamora” mystery ready to go and Thor joining the Guardians. They have been advertising Homecoming for months and have the next few years of movies already planned, people aren’t under any illusions that there won’t be sequels. Just let it be self-contained. Especially since it’s already so long. 

Just personal taste thing here but the “Avengers Assemble” bit was too cheesy and the ruin of the Avengers mansion was a boring background for the battle.

Dr. Strange was wasted stopping that tsunami. Did they need that? It was such a boring use for him in the battle. This battle had so many heroes but it felt like it really used their powers significantly less creatively together than any other battle previously. 

Why weren't Fury, Carol and Maria all standing together at Tony’s funeral with their arms around each other like everyone else? It was really strange and took some of the emotion out of the scene, they’re close to each other. It could have been such a beautiful moment and tied the whole Captain Marvel “Where’s Fury?” scene together if they had them beside each other with her smiling sadly at him or leaning against him. They’re friends and it would be nice to see Fury further fleshed out and more three dimensional. 

I don’t mind that Loki is dead but it does make me retroactively annoyed that “You... will never be... a god” was seriously his last line. He had nothing nice to say to his brother before he dies? So he really did die trying to use a knife on someone who can take on the Hulk. I hope that at least in his show that’s coming soon he’s genderqueer and given the opportunity to properly show off his magic. I feel like his magic has never been displayed properly or used in particularly interesting ways so far.

I would have rewritten the scene where Banner and Rocket look for Thor. Banner, Thor and Valkyrie’s interactions are stale and strange. It would have been better (so as not to erase all of his character development) if he was still dealing with his PTSD or the loss of his people poorly but was at least trying to help the Asgardians. But then show Valkyrie having to help him and being the clearly stronger leader due to being able to deal with this grief better after having experience working through grief from losing her Valkyries. She could also be helping him with his alcoholism instead of judging him since she has been there! It would have shown her mentor abilities and kingly traits. You could still have him join the Guardians in the end but now he’s just less negligent. Then he isn’t passing a burden for convenience but because he recognizes Valkyrie was there for his people when he couldn’t be and is the better, more loved leader. Instead of what should be a great moment for Valkyrie that she’s shown as earnt and is deserving of it just seems like Thor was like “Well it turns out ruling was too hard for me I’m going to f*ck off to space now look after them for me.” Still, love that she gets to be king. 

Did I mishear her name or is Clint’s daughter not called Kate? Why aren’t we getting Kate Bishop? I know she isn’t Clint’s daughter in the comics but they’ve changed people’s backstories before and after seeing Clint training with a young girl in the trailer I was just really excited for her. I love her character in the comics, but maybe she has a name change here? 

Also, why does Clint go overseas to fight people? I’m sure there are more than enough bad people in America for him to fight for YEARS. There are Neo-Nazis for F*CKS SAKE. It just seems racist to imply he’d have to look in places predominantly occupied by POC to find bad people. Also, that Sword scene was strange. It felt really unnatural and fake like it belonged in a completely different movie. 

Also, little nitpick but I just found it to be a weird moment when that kid Ant-Man talks to didn’t say “What do you mean?” or “How do you not know?” I get not wanting to talk about the snap but how could he not be mildly curious or confused as to how someone seems to be ignorant to the biggest tragedy in world history.

Also, I really would have loved if the final battle had more consequences. More deaths and injuries. I think it would have been more realistic and added more to it. I especially really would have loved it if they had shown Clint getting injured in such a way that his hearing was permanently damaged. It would be nice to finally have him have that important comic book trait. 

Also, that scene where Joe Russo, a straight man, plays a gay man is bullshit. Let us have gay superheroes. That is such a pathetic attempt at representation. Make Loki Genderfluid, make Carol a wLw, Give Okoye and Valkyrie a girlfriend or acknowledge they’re wLw. 

Furthermore, I understand that the shot of all the women at the final battle was probably foreshadowing A-Team but I don’t think the creators realised that, One: it makes it look like they’re trying to hide that they killed the only original female member of the Avengers while giving all the men satisfying endings. Two: that there are A LOT fewer women than men but also that there’s enough of them that more of them really should have been featured before then and had more time spent on them. Just so many women yet so few films focussed on them. Furthermore, for those people who don’t know about A-Team it also just feels like a moment of pandering.  

Look, Black Widow has never been one of my favorite characters but she deserved better. As soon as she was proclaimed infertile in Age of Ultron it was a death sentence because what use is a woman who can’t reproduce. She didn’t even get a funeral. Clint should have died. The snap forced Natasha to fully commit to her found family and lead the Avengers for years. The snap sent Clint into a debatably racist murder rampage. Natasha did something good after the snap it gave her more purpose. Clint’s purpose was to bring his family back and he could still do that by sacrificing himself. It’s honestly far more satisfying to see Natasha get her happy ending than Clint because Clint’s ending is just far too similar to his story in Age of Ultron. It is just hilariously underwhelming when everyone else has an emotional ending just to have Clint’s be a regurgitated version of him retiring with his family in Ultron. Also, Natasha dying for guilt over some vague bad that’s she’s done in her past that we know nothing about is so unsatisfying. This video I feel also sums up a lot of my feelings on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A81p1N2gnNY&t=649s. Also from a monetary standpoint, not that Disney needs more money, but there’s way more demand for Black Widow films than Hawkeye. Just why Hawkeye, no one gives a sh*t.

More so I’m not against Tony using the gauntlet but I think it got in the way of Nebula having a fully satisfying conclusion to her arc. At least one woman should have had a satisfying, fully realised arc. It would have been great if Nebula got to finally kill Thanos but honestly, I wouldn’t be as mad at it if she hadn’t got wrongfully blamed for doing it by Thanos or had her arc conclude in an otherwise satisfying way. She gets abused further by Thanos for something she never did and never gets an opportunity to even just face him and confront him about ANYTHING. 

Also, Vision is barely mentioned in the film. Which wouldn’t be so frustrating if he wasn’t the reason why an ENTIRE ARMY of predominantly black people was sacrificed in Infinity War. They had to save him because they all apparently cared so much about him but can’t remember to mention him more than once afterward. 

I really hate that they were so scared of spoilers that they didn’t let all of the actors read their scripts ahead of time and cut out massive chunks of their scripts and didn’t tell them who they were playing against. I would rather spoilers than poor acting that ruins the timelessness of a film. This is meant to be epic! 

[trans-pagans]

Are there any nonbinary gods? I think I read somewhere that Loki is genderfluid but then again that might just be marvel comics

So this is actually a somewhat complicated question to answer.

The thing is, there almost certainly are nonbinary deities because the deities we think of as “Pagan” come from a number of different cultures and all of those cultures had different ideas about gender and gender roles. At least one of those cultures probably had some concept of nonbinary genders and had deities that reflected said concept. 

The problem here is, we don’t really know which ancient cultures did or didn’t have accepted nonbinary genders and we can’t really look at their spiritual texts to figure it out. Most of the myths and sacred texts Pagans use today were preserved or translated by Christian and Islamic scholars, and just like we try and interpret these texts now using our own cultural backgrounds and norms, these original scholars did too. Neither of these cultures has a long-standing precedent for the existence of nonbinary people, and the languages these scholars were using to translate and preserve myths reflect that, so even if some of these deities were originally talked about using gender-neutral language or were shown to be explicitly fluid in their expression of gender, those aspects of them usually got translated out. 

So then the question becomes which of our deities were originally nonbinary, and this is a subject of heavy debate. Usually, the deities we interpret as nonbinary in the modern day have one of three characteristics:

a) Deity shapeshifts and has at one point or another shifted in order to present as a different gender then they typically do.   

b) There’s a feminine and masculine version of the same diety.

c) Deity has a propensity to cross-dress. 

And honestly? If you look at any of those traits in a deity and say “I’m nonbinary, I relate to that in my own experience of gender, and I think this diety is also nonbinary” then more power to you. I know I’ve certainly done the same and I’m not here to tell people how they should view their gods. 

But, BUT there is still a lot of debate around this. You asked about Loki? Well, boy howdy is that an interesting deity to look at. From what I’ve gathered both online and from talking to trans pagan folks irl, the vast majority of trans and nonbinary pagans do in fact view Loki as genderfluid. This is true almost to the point that it’s taken as a given in queer pagan spaces, but not all trans pagans agree with this assessment. Laine Mardollsdottir wrote an article on this a few years back and while it’s certainly not my viewpoint it is an interesting read if you want to hear some different perspectives on this discussion.  

As far as other nonbinary deities go, I really think what gender you perceive a deity as being is up to you and your experience with them. The gods aren’t going to have the same concept or expression of gender that we do, and quite frankly, I think the fact that we feel the need to assign genders to our deities at all is simply a product of humans having trouble with conceptualizing god forms, so do what you want. Here is someone else’s list of gender variant deities if you want to take a look, but remember, we don’t actually have a solid basis in text for a lot of these interpretations, so it’s really up to you to figure out how you interpret different deities genders.

Hope that helps!    

[tumblunni]

Ehh I mostly Really do not like what they did with marvel Loki, and then the movie version in particular. I’ve heard that the recent threequel kinda hits the reset button on the entire thing and reestablishes him and like he actually has a decent brotherly relationship and gets redeemed now?? So like woo! I’m happy for you! EVen if i’m still mostly not interested in this character!

BUT ANYWAY SORRY WHAT WAS I ORIGINALLY MAKING THIS POST ABOUT WHUPS

What i mean is im not particularly interested in marvel loki in any way, but i always thought his movie plot was a really interesting and sad idea. That they TOTALLY WASTED! tho really it’d be wasted even if they pulled it off perfectly cos i still could not get over the general dissonance of ‘wtf loki wasnt his brother he was like twice his age and knew his dad before he was born, and also he was never half anything and always knew he was a jotunn’. Srsly its fuckin weird that in mythology he never had any magic excuse for working with the aesir, he just.. decided to. And he was good. he was one of the good guys. he turned bad later and he was always a morally nebulous comedic trickster man but he was never fuckin... im only here cos i was raised as a human guy. and also im somehow younger than my best friend’s son who was kinda my nephew i guess. srsly he just.. was a giant who.. chose to switch sides. its not a hard plot to do. why did they even feel they had to change that... tho also incidentally historically jotunn didnt mean giant, it was more like ‘chaos spirit’ in practise. loki being like a 4 foot tall angry gremlin wasnt particularly unusual in the mythos so its funny how out of place he is in the marvelverse actually. and also they weren’t all ice but had fire and ice as basically races or countries, and loki was never really stated which one he was, or if he was some sort of neutral aligned one or there were other elemental types that just never got a starring role in any particular story. or in some interpretations the vanir are considered to perhaps be a form of elemental god too, though that’s just an attempt to nail down how exactly they were meant to be different from aesir. Though there are some textbooks that describe loki’s name as coming from fire, that was actually brought up in-universe during one of his adventures where he fought an evil clone of himself named logi, which is the one that actually means fire. and also there was utgard-loki who was an entirely unrelated rival of his, apparantly just because they had the same name and he was pissed about it? anyway other-loki tricked loki into fighting logi who was actually a magic clone made from wildfire, who was by definition unbeatable in eating contests cos fire consumes everything. Also thor had to outdrink a magical ocean guy and got his ass kicked by a grandma that was actually death in disguise and somehow ‘nobody can fight death’ quite literally meant she was a master of suplexes. Also a cat. A cat was there. And they slept in a giant glove. It was a fun myth cos for once thor and loki got their asses kicked and it was kind of a moral about pride and stuff. Damn that other-loki and his gary oak role in my loki life..!!

SORRY SORRY IM GOING OFFTOPIC AGAIN sorry, mythology stuff was kinda my special interest as a kid and i got stupidly pissy about ‘innacuracy’ in something that wasn’t even claiming to be an adaptation, more of a ‘vaguely inspired by the thing’ I guess...

anyway WHAT I ORIGINALLY MEANT LOL is that ‘he never knew he was a monster thing and was raised as a human and got super sad when he found out’ is wildly innacurate and OOC to fuckin everything about this proud-as-fuck magic man who walked around being Aggressively Gay And Trans Erryday and calling odin out on his shit even when he knew he was gonna get his ass kicked. srsly loki never being able to stop being Happy About Himself is kinda what started his actual turn to evil in the myths, he got drunk and couldnt stop telling crude sex jokes and making up dumb rumours about how he was better than all the gods and banged all their wives and also their wives’s husbands btw. And odin was like Hey That Was Even More Loki Than Usual and murdered all loki’s children and locked him in the centre of the earth having his eyes constantly melted out with acid and regrowing and also a snake was eating him and also he was pinned with his dead son’s own guts as chains and also lets punish the wife who wasnt even there and tie her up too forever hugging her screaming hubby and trying to hold the acid out of his eyes with a comically small cup and her increasingly scarred skeleton hands. Because he was rude at a party. Then loki turned evil when he finally escaped and Hey I Think He Might Have Had One Or Two Reasons. Mythology is kinda fucked up sometimes, lol!

... ANYWAY WHERE WAS I, SORRY

loki being a lil emo teen dude who’s sad cos o no i am a monster and my dad never loved me = innacurate, and less interesting than many very interesting things of these myths that i wish they did instead

BUT

if it wasnt a weird attempt to change an already good story then it would be a good story yo!

like srsly there were a lot of particular elements to it that were really distinctive visually and i can see why they ended up being way more popular in fanart even if they were practically never shown again. It was a good idea to give the jotunn more of a distinct physical appearance from the Big Ol Protagonist Gods Of Generic Humanness, that like the one thing they made more accurate than the comics! And the funky blue look is really cool cos its like a fantasy equivelant of aliens, and like.. a cool lookin deep blue that isnt quite the cliche you’d expect for ice guys. And it looks nice with glowy red eyes and those weird patterns like theyre born with tattoos or somethin! And it was an interesting change from the comics to NOT have loki be a half jotunn or anything, he was just a regular jotunn orphan who was ambiguously either spared by odin as the last survivor of the war or stolen away from his real family as some sort of messed up trophy. But just like I Guess They’re Celtic Mythology Changelings Too so he magically ended up looking like a human cos he thought he was one? Which fits pretty cool with his particular magic powers being illusion-based, even though everybody else is all ice guys. (which is funnily enough also myth accurate to how NO OTHER JOTUNNS EVER SEEM TO SHAPESHIFT, GEEZ. srsly its not clear whether its some loki unique power or just a big ol plot hole XD)

And then it added a really cool visual aspect to have basically this guy who was under a glamour his entire life and didnt know it, and gets a really kinda existentially horrifying moment of finding out his face isnt his face?? srsly that was so messed up! you’re standing there and you know this is The Poorly Explained McGuffin That Somehow Powers Up Jotunns I Guess and you’re “dad this is your last chance to stop lying” and HE CONTINUES TO LIE ANYWAY but then whoops u touched the thing and I Guess You Really Was Monsters Poor guy...

BUT THEN MY PONT IS LIKE its so wasted!!! none of that really comes up again after that scene!! and we arent supposed to be sympathetic to loki and he’s just the bad guy and all we get is a twist that he did all his bad guy stuff with the unexpected motive of actually NOT betraying his father but just leading the jotunns to take over asgard and then killing them all and somehow faking being a hero so everyone would accept him back, even though nobody except the dad even knew he was a jotunn and indicated they were gonna kick him out and also why did you suddenly want to murder your brother out of a poorly established jealousy you apparantly always had yet also you still love him and just... uhh?? how was any of this plot meant to work out, dude. Srsly I am SO glad to hear they made his characterization more consistant in the sequels but i really hated the first movie so much i’ll probably never watch them lol. and did we really need to wait like half a decade to get some proper sibling dynamic? im so grossed out by how all the fans of the first movie shipped them and pulled that weird ‘not blood related’ excuse...

WHOOPS IM RAMBLING AGAIN

anyway it sucks that: * we never get to see Cool Blue Monster Loki Design ever again in the film * he’s suddenly evil and does a bunch of shit that doesnt even make sense given the motivation of Sad Because Monster Lies * we dont even get any emotional continuation or conclusion on that one big sad reveal scene that looked like it had so much plot potential * ALL THE JOTUNNS ARE JUST EVIL. At the same time that the film tries to make a moral about loki being bad for wanting to kill them all EVEN THOUGH THATS WHAT THOR DID AT THE BEGINNING * srsly the film starts off with thor being a huge jerk and then he doesnt become more sympathetic until way after loki suddenly turned unsympathetic so we have this void in the middle where we cant root for anyone. and it makes you wonder why they even bothered with SUCH a powerful sympathetic scene for this poor dude! * all the jotunns are evil and just agree to murder all of valhalla for no reason and also none of them even talk except Biological Dad Man, who is also super super evil and doesnt love loki cos Hey We Cant Have Any Complexity Here * also they mixed up the names and called him by myth loki’s mom’s name which I suppose could work if this was the same character who transitioned or something, but this was at a point back when marvel tried to cover up all references to genderfluidity being a literal superpower of loki’s. also they didnt show him having a mum at all and all the female characters were kinda poorly handled so yeah. * loki for no fuckin reason stays loyal to odin even though he just learned he was kidnapped as a kid and has been raised to want to kill his own home village like seriously what the fuck * last minute out of nowhere backstabbing of personalityless evil jotunn dad and yknow.. like the million bazillion jotunns who were all (as far as we know) super happy to have their presumed dead prince come back and perfectly nice to him as a family. like seriously could you not have at least established that they were jerks to him in.. some way? WE SAW SO MUCH OF ODIN BEING A TERRIBLE DAD UNTIL NOW. And he was supposed to be sympathetic! and his last scene up until now was being called out on lying to his adopted son for a bazillion years and the question of his goddamn motives was left wide open so we dont KNOW if he was sympathetic or not, geez! if you cant bother to establish why loki should side with odin then at least establish why he should want to murder his entire biological family right after they ACCEPTED HIM INTO THEIR HOME. They were shown being evil in that they wanted to invade asgard, yeh, but also your protagonist’s main goddamn struggle is about wanting to invade jotunheim and like apparrantly everyone’s being doing this for a bazillion years and there’s not even the slightest hint who started the damn war in the first place... * Don’t kill jotunns thats bad, loki is bad for doing that. But also all jotunns are bad and we can kill them anyway cos they invaded first. Yknow.. due to loki tricking them specifically to kill them. And them believing him cos he’s Kinda The King’s Presumed Dead Son And Seriously Why Does Nobody Talk One Way Another About Whether They’re Happy Or Not That He’s Back * did loki and incorrectly named king guy even have a single sentence together that wasn’t ‘mwahaha we shall Plot Device to Evil Invade’? not like five seconds of ‘fuck i missed my son’ or ‘its awkward to bond again with a son that grew up without me’ or even ‘what was it like to be trapped with our mortal enemies that we all assume are evil and kidnapped you’  * LIKE ACTUALLY WHY WAS THAT NEVER BROUGHT UP? the jotuns didnt fuckin know that loki got adopted by a guy and raised as a human! did any of this make sense from their perspective?? were they not even slightly suspicious when he didnt tell them where he’d been for all those years and also spent all his screentime staying in human form and never showing off that cool special effect evr again?? didnt anyone think maybe he was just an asgardian lying to them? and did nobody recognise him as the son of their mortal enemy and think that was a way bigger reason he might be lying, or even a reason not to trust him even if he was indeed a jotunn with an identity complex...? or hell, did he NOT EVEN TELL THEM HIS BIG BACKSTORY MOTIVE??? did they just think Hey Some Random Asgardian Wants To Betray His Own Kind, That’s Not Suspicious In Any Way? i mean at least that would explain about why Dad 2; The Redaddening literally never mentioned being his damn dad or showed any emotion except Generic Evil... * Anyway none of this matters cos we killed all the jotunns in a justified way even though killing the jotunns is why loki is the bad guy, and then we do some sort of magical segregation power to cut off the path between the worlds so like.. the 5% of not dead guys over there can never appear again and we can have some sort of weird sense of moral high ground. Also loki falls off a cliff and dies, but obviously its a fakeout for the sequel, The End

THINGS THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN REALLY COOL TO DO WITH THIS PLOT INSTEAD MAYBE: * like fffuckign show goddamn Loki Real if you bothered to invent a new design for the jotunns looking not like humans in the first place... * hey actually explore the kind of existential horror stuff of finding out your preconceived notions about some other realm’s citizens being Inherantly Evil Monsters are all wrong and also you were one of them all along * also like.. actually commit to the plot of them NOT being Inherantly Evil Monsters. like seriously i guess loki was the only not bad one cos he was raised as an asgardian?? and then he immediately switches sides as soon as his orignal nature is revealed, so i guess not. >_> * like man there’s fifty bazillion ways you could have handled trying to stop a war between two sides where neither is evil, and like seriously the dude who’s part of both works could have been the symbol of peace who did that... * also minor note but why is every other jotunn identical and never speaks except loki and Evildad Plotdevice, thats really fuckin stupid * srsly imagine if they had any form of established culture or civilization or anything instead of just Standing In A Field, Being Vaguely Menacing, With No Houses Even Nearby. like srsly their whole world is just generic jrpg dungeon tundras i guess... * imagine all the plots that could come from Not Villain Plot Loki getting to go visit this other country of the monster folks and get a first hand experience on how the citizens live and how they’re not just all enemy soldiers with no damn personality or motive beyond Bad Hatewrong The Anger Things. imagine the fuckin complex plot sads that could come from if he was actually WELCOMED by his birth family and had a dad that had been mourning him for like thirty fuckin years and just wanted to keep him happy and safe. You could have eighty more angsts if the plot of those angsts is Oh Fuck I Was So Wrong About These People And Stood By And Supported This War That Was Killing Them, And Am I A Bad Person Because I Only Found Sympathy For Them After Discovering A Blood Relation? * and like you could still have bad guys, you could have bad guys on both sides who are perpetuating the war and both have to be stopped so this peace can happen. And you can have not bad guys who were suckered in by war propeganda into working for these bad guys, and you have to try and make them reach the same realization that poor loki had forced upon him. * and like.. what if they did explore that one weird throwaway line about not knowing if odin’s motives were sympathy for the last survivor of a massacre, or a desire to steal a kid as a trophy of that same massacre? like maybe odin actually was a war hungry monster back then and his intentions were cruel in kidnapping this kid, but he realized what a horrible mistake he’d been making with his life when he began to see the kid grow up and have just as much of a complexity of emotion and potential for goodness as any of his own people. And the reason he never told loki his past was not because of Plot Device but because of shame for his original motives in this whole sad affair, and guilt in feeling that he could never undo what happened. like ‘oh god maybe the boy will be happier if he never knows he had all the stuff he lost because of me’. And thats also why he could seem distant like he doesnt love him, its feeling like he doesnt deserve to experience this kid’s love after he’s coe to realize the true atrocity of what he did to him.. * and also i dunno maybe the two dads could get At Least One Scene of Actually Talking Together and resolve some damn things... * could even be sad if odin like.. wants biological-dad to kill him so he can atone for his sins, and loki goes bursting in at the last second like WAIT NO ITS A TRAP HE’S TRYING TO COMMIT SUICIDE DAMMIT and then we find some way to resolve a plot that isnt Action Scenes And All The Bad Guys Die A Lot * also fuck i dont know if u want a ship of monster dude and not monster dude then do the two dads instead of a guy and his adopted brother, thats just gross * also MORE SCREENTIME FOR THE CUTE AND COOL MONSTER LOKI DESIGN. like yo you cant have any form of plot about accepting yourself unless you show his true form like.. more than once. as far as i know it never appears in the sequels even after they give him his super overdue redemption plot :/

^ Dat’s Pretty Neat

srsly it sucks that this is even the only damn screenshot i could get of it like fuckin 0.4 seconds of one damn movie, never shown again

its funny how just by googling it you’ll get like fifty bazillion edited screenshots of what if he stayed that way for the rest of the film and also the sequels and also a bazillion fanarts and fan jotunn ocs and like seriously fuckin EVERYONE likes the cool blue elves design, marvel, use it more often!!

look at this really great fanart by this artist here I can’t say any opinion on the rest of their art tho cos they seem to be one of those people that ship him with his brother.. sigh... >_> still drawing terrible ships elsewhere doesnt make your other art any less talented! thank u for blessing us with Casual Monster Man Knows He Is Cute BECAUSE MARVEL IS TOO COWARD TO DO IT