#i remember in mcu fandom

[essayofthoughts]

#vox machina's story is that much stronger for vax having permanently died for several reasons#but one of them being that if vax hadn't died there isn't really anything narratively for him to DO.#vex and percy raise a family and lead a city. keyleth leads her people. grog learns to read. scanlan and pike get married and then divorce#and scanlan runs a mercantile enterprise while pike rebuilds a wholeass religion while running a bakery#even tary's leading a non-profit adventuring brigade and getting married#what is vax's 'happy ending'. i will be soft with keyleth and love my sister forever :) like great. anyway#vax was someone who yearned for purpose and he became a celestial champion. that's an actual STORY#critical role#cr meta tags from @burr-ell

But exactly this - if you don't like Vax's choice, that's fine, you're entitled to your feelings, but it was still a choice that player and character made, and which gave both purpose and joy. To tell someone they can't make a choice that brings them those things because you don't like it - I mean that's TERF shit baby! That's "your choices make ME unhappy therefore you shouldn't be allowed to make them". It's shitty!

Yeah, Vax's ending is sad, but Vax's ending also gave the character purpose and is something Liam has said repeatedly he is happy with and at peace with. The Raven Queen didn't force shit - simply enforced the rules of her literal godly nature and was very open with Vax what those rules were.

People make their own choices. To try to deny that because you don't like it, or because you think there's external factors - I mean maybe there is, we live under capitalism for example, but we still make choices. To take that way from people is to deny them agency. To take it away from characters is to make them boring.

i truly am baffled by some of the cr fandom when it comes to the topic of the gods and c1 and death in general because. the raven queen didn’t kill vax. in fact she gave him more time. she Does get the blame from keyleth and some from vex but even those two by the end were more so just holding grudges wrapped up in their own issues that were exacerbated by vax’s choices. but it was always vax’s choice. which, y’know, i’m aware of a portion of the cr fandom’s propensity for dismantling every interesting choice a character makes into something forced upon them, but the role of fate in exandria has never been like bad faith you must adhere to the path chosen for you, it’s much more like what brennan has spoken about wrt specificity: as one makes more choices they become more particular to a given outcome. but that’s not some curse by the gods that dooms characters that’s literally just. what living is.

and of course death is a complicated thing that everyone approaches differently but. god the amount of people who view vax’s dynamic with the raven queen as an injustice or his death as some unforgivable thing the raven queen caused some how? in the words of laura bailey, Were We Watching The Same Orb? it isn’t an injustice that vax, completely willing to pay whatever it cost him to save his sister, was bound to the Deal He Agreed To. his role as the champion was one he found meaning and purpose in. further, it was the raven queen that allowed him to be resurrected later in the campaign. like, it isn’t fair that vax had so little time but it is time he chose and time he was given, but vox machina tends to fall on the reaping the benefits side of unfairness of power in exandria. if what makes the gods — particularly the matron of ravens — irredeemable is that they have the power to make choices that mortals can’t like denying someone’s resurrection, how irredeemable must the group of heroes called vox machina (whose members drop like flies to be revived moments later) be to the everyday person who just has to watch the people they love die and make peace with it?

of course it sucks that vax could not have a happy ending or epilogue like the rest of vm, except of course, vex has a family and is happy and loved, and keyleth is strong and alive and protected, and i think that looks a lot like what vax wanted most.

[darksouls2-gendercoffin]

I know it comes with the territory in Souls games, but I always get a little wistful and sad when I reach Altus Plateau and the Roundtable Hold starts to empty out. depending on how you handle things with Diallos he’s in and out of the hold a couple times, and Ensha doesn’t tend to last much longer once the player’s reached western Liurnia, but Corhyn can just… leave. admittedly this prompts an interesting quest line with important lore, but realizing Corhyn can get up and leave and then (depending on quest timing) realizing Rogier died in his sleep while you were away, seeing Fia goad D into making a move and then leaving the Hold after dealing with him, it’s just…sad.

the Dung-Eater arriving initially got me hoping that a few more people would gradually trickle in but that’s not the case, and by the end of the game it’s just you, Hewg, and Roderika alone in an area that once felt if not crowded at least comfortably busy. there were people living here, there were rooms conspicuous for their emptiness rather than that being the norm.

the Hold always feels a little bit like a once-bustling space that’s long since been emptied, but when you first get there there’s this slightly hopeful atmosphere of those glory days possibly returning as you and your new comrades supposedly work toward the same task. that’s the point, obviously, but it’s still sad to see it die—to see this former communal space where (it’s fun to imagine) these brave and stalwart people gathered to discuss their journeys, trade resources or help each other out, and confer over battle strategy, become desolate and lonely again.

the Hold is a place full of potential, and it really cultivates a ‘wow, I wish I could’ve seen this place when it was full of champions working together’ sort of feeling’. it feels like it’s part of a history of chivalric romance and epic quests, and seeing it reduced to a burning empty husk only underlines how far it’s fallen. I really love it there. it’s silly, but I wish we got to see it when it was at the height of its usage back in the Tarnished’s heyday.

[silverpen-and-paper]

💚 2011-2013 loki ask game 💚

i haven’t seen a 2011-2013 loki ask game before (or any loki ask games, actually), so i decided i’d make one! there are thirty-one questions, so if you want, you could answer one for each day of this month (+1). or you could go by the normal ask game rules. or you could answer them all at once in a single post. up to you :D

(fans of ragnarok and the series can participate too if you’d like! the questions are aimed mostly at the 2011-2013 era fans, but i’m not gonna ban people from having fun)

post dividers by @/cafekitsune

pick a favorite movie: thor (2011), the avengers (2012), thor: the dark world (2013)

how did your interest in loki begin? (optional: how has it evolved over the years?)

what do you think happened in the time between loki’s fall from the bifrost and avengers 1?

how do you interpret loki’s “death” in thor: the dark world? (“it was an illusion,” “loki was actually wounded but it was part of the trick,” “loki didn’t intend to pretend to die at all,” etc)

do you have any headcanons/theories about loki’s biological mother?

have you watched any deleted scenes from thor 1, the avengers, or thor 2? if yes, choose one deleted scene that definitely deserved to have stayed in.

which do you prefer: jotun loki with horns (a popular fanon design), or jotun loki without horns?

pick one (or more) of loki’s powers and explain how you think it works.

favorite loki quote?

favorite tom hiddleston quote about loki?

how would you describe thor and loki’s dynamic to someone who has never seen the movies?

do you think laufey actually abandoned loki to die, as odin said, or do you prefer the theory that laufey put loki in the temple for their protection?

do you have any headcanons about asgard? (phsyics, culture, environment, history, etc?)

do you have any headcanons about jotunheim?

do you have a favorite loki fanfic? (if you’re a fic writer, you’re allowed to choose your own)

do you think loki would keep a journal? if yes, what kinds of things do you think they’d write/draw/glue/etc in it?

choose any ship involving loki and share your opinions of it, whether positive or negative.

what do you think loki’s biggest fear is? (if not *the* biggest, one of the biggest.)

find an insect/arthropod that reminds you of loki (aesthetically, behaviorally, etc).

what hobbies/interests do you think loki has, outside of magic and fighting?

headcanons about loki’s childhood?

what styles of midgardian outfits would loki be most comfortable in?

headcanons about loki’s jotun form?

what song lyrics remind you of loki?

loki’s worst moment?

loki’s best moment?

say you go back in time and get hired as the director of a mcu loki movie, series, or episode that you dislike. assuming you’re already changing the biggest stuff you criticize, what is the pettiest thing you’d change?

if you could have one of loki’s powers, which would you choose?

if you could watch one movie/tv show with loki (as in, you are both sitting on the couch together and watching it), what movie/show would you choose? what would loki think about it?

imagine you were in loki’s place — you’re the frost giant baby that odin took from jotunheim. what do you think your life would be like?

has loki ridden a bilgesnipe? (would you ride a bilgesnipe?)

[littlefankingdom]

"Well, people can ship whatever they want and you cannot stop them. Yeah, these characters are aro/ace/aroace, but headcanons don't hurt anyone. You cannot gatekeep characters, learn to share."

I'm going to share your organs with the black market.

[mat-of-superwholock]

I HONESTLY DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW THE UGLY OOMPLA LOOMPA WON.

I say we start a revolution from Tumblr! Which fandoms are with me?!

[rodedreeve]

daredevil for my wife

[mumblesplash]

mcu and mcu-adjacent writers who acknowledge sleipnir’s backstory but try to spin it so the original myth was ‘a misunderstanding’ or change it into something more palatable are fucking cowards. loki is that horse’s biological mother and if you can’t face that you don’t have what it takes

[vengeancemoths]

comics fandom is bad

[bythia]

What the actual fuck! Someone has stolen a lot of fanfiction and is selling them on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. They are using the author names Plush Books on both sites. I learned about it from this post on Twitter:

I have already contacted several people or asked others to contact authors I wouldn't be able to reach out to myself.

I would ask everyone to look through the list to look for their own fics, though a whole lot of people are already going through it and trying to contact authors. The more people report this to Amazon and Barnes and Noble, the sooner this will be taken down. And the authors who have had fics stolen from them have the most standing in reporting the issue.

Here are the links to the two platforms selling the books:

Barnes and Noble

And Amazon:

[findafight]

i do want catws opinions!! so much!!! mcu cap am was one of my major interests for quite some time, so i am Very interested! tbh don't much care for the rest of the mcu all that much, like ive seen quite a few of the movies but absolutely far from all of them. and like tbh i cared the most about catfa & catws and then steve and his relationship with people, idk i just love his character so much, I've done some sort of analysis inside my head of his character, but it's been A While so i don't remember any of it in words, just vibes lol. also idk how i feel about cacw, it just sorta didn't feel like His story, it felt more like avengers 2.5 or smth.

also related to steve & peggy, i feel like the thing that makes their story stay so strong Is the missed opportunity, the longing for something that can never be. it's this thing that was on the brink of possibility, and where the potential was so big and tangible, and they both felt it, and then all of a sudden the possibility is gone, it's lost, forever. idk like i think steve going back in time to dance with peggy would be sweet, But, it just doesn't move me as much unless peggy also knows that the moment is a promise fullfilled and a dream that can never be, it's one more aching moment together and then it's goodbye. idk like i thought the scene in endgame when they danced was absolutely beautiful, but to me it is a dream, and to me it feels kinda disrespectful to all of them(steve peggy & bucky) to have steve go backwards, that's not him, maybe when he first woke up after the ice, if presented with the possibility he wouldn't be able to resist, but otherwise his character is LITERALLY about getting back up again!! and then also peggy had a life?? with someone else!! and she was happy with her life! he literally knows this, he talked to her when she was old! why would he disregard that?? and then why would he live the rest of his life knowing bucky is the winter soldier and then NOT DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT????????? idk it's just like, when SO MUCH of steves story is so closely intertwined with bucky it just doesn't make any sense to leave him??

also while i am a romantic stucky believer, truly more than that i am a soulmates stucky believer! so the stobin tws au really really hit me in the feels yk.

Okay so. What makes CAWS so good, and one of the best mcu films, is that it uses superheroes not as a genre, but as a vehicle for a genre. Winter Soldier is a spy thriller. Arguably TFA also does this by being a war film? But WS embraces it. It's so clearly a spy thriller with a superhero setting! More superhero movies should have co-genre I think. It can be watched as a stand alone, with good solid introductions to characters, to the point that it's bascially the only mcu movie I've watched with my mother that she hasn't asked "who's that?" and why they were doing stuff. Basically every other one, besides the first in their series require prior knowledge of characters for most of the impact of them.

WS doesn't? We see Steve and Natasha have a friendly relationship, that steve's a supersoldier and also takes risks (no parachute), that they're some kind of soldiers, that there's some secret operations going on. We get this! Then we meet Sam and we see that Steve is also incredibly lonely, we see him at the Howling Commandos exhibit, and sure maybe it's hamfisted by focusing on bucky or whatever but that sets it up! we now who steve is, why he's lonely, and some of his values.

and even without TFA, as soon as the mask comes off, we know this is someone steve knows. When he insists on saving Bucky, he uses the line "even when I had nothing, I had Bucky" having watched tfa before just makes it hit harder.

I'm going to be real with you I've watched civil war once and was like "this is kinda stupid? very stupid" and then stopped really paying attention to most marvel movies.

oh yes so true about Steve and Peggy. It's compelling because the could have beens. If that had happened, but then steve went back to present, I would not be mad. It wouldn't be weirdly stealing someone else's life? Especially combined with the Agent Carter Tv series, Peggy has closure for Steve's death. Though it's still an ache, and she mourns and misses him, she's still living her life. She isn't caught up on him as a romantic interests. She has multiple (they should have given us more cartinelli tbh we were robbed in s2) in the series! She had a good, long, and happy life. Steve just dropping in sometime in the 40s(?) with the expectation of pursuing a romantic relationship with her would likely be a shock, and unwanted. They both would have changed from where they left off, both having mourned each other and their relationship. It wouldn't have worked! But to have him drop in. tell her "hey. I can't stay for long. I'm sorry it has to be this way. But I owe you a dance, and it's been killing me breaking a promise to my best girl." That!!! would have!! been! so sweet! A final goodbye for both of them. The final closure and fulfilled promise from oh so long ago.

Steve had spent at least ten years out of the ice before endgame. I just. How could they slide him back to what he would have done directly after being thawed? Like I don't think even lost sadman beginning of ws steve would have stayed back. He's changed and he can't go back to what things were. he keeps getting up, even when he shouldn't! That's what's endearing about Steve, his stubbornness, and his willingness to put himself on the line to protect people. That's why he was the first and only (official) American supersoldier. He carries on, even when it's almost unbearable for him to do so.

It's so... It felt cheap and insulting to him and Peggy and Bucky. Because you're correct!! It means Steve went back to nineteen fourty-whatever and chose not to do anything about the 80+ years of horrible things that happened in the world. Especially chose not to do anything when he knew exactly where Bucky, who he had previously jumped behind enemy lines with nothing but a wing a prayer and a shield to save, who he had defied governments for, who he's nearly died for multiple times, was??? how in the WORLD did the same screenwriters and directors who made one of the best marvel movies that highlighted and used their friendship in such a compelling way also write/direct that for them? how? valuing romance over any other kind of relationship I guess?

yeah I think what's compelling about stucky is that there is so much love there, that they've known each other for their whole lives, and will continue to be (or should be) a vast part of each other's worlds no matter what that relationship looks like. They're soulmates, whatever that looks like for them. and if it's romance then that romance is built upon the deep devoted friendship they have. That's everything about them. Everything is built on a sickly and scrappy kid who couldn't leave well enough alone and got pushed into the dirt by bullies he stood up to over, and over, and over again, and some charming schmuck who looked at him and thought "I'm gonna help him keep get back up". to the point where they broke over half a century of brain washing because of it.

[veliseraptor]

Hey Lise, I know this is asking you to harken back to your MCU days but did you ever come across a meta post that was like, "we shouldn't compare Loki and Bucky's trauma; Loki's trauma is much more like Steve's pre-serum trauma and look at how ✨awesome✨ Steve is and how he dealt with that same trauma? Loki has no excuses!" Because I did and it still makes me mad to think about to this day.

If I'm remembering the post you're thinking of properly - and I definitely may not be, I could be thinking of a different post entirely (the staple of "compare the antagonist's trauma to a protagonist's trauma, comment on how the protagonist handled it sooooo much better and how that indicates that the antagonist deserved what he/she/they got, because the way somebody handles trauma is determinative of their goodness or evilness as a person" is a recurring tradition across time and fandoms, I'm sure there are multiple posts), that's not actually what I got from the one in question? perhaps it was just my lens, but (again, if I'm thinking of the same post), I recall it being relatively morally neutral, or at least more about looking at the ways in which "actually while the easy comparison is loki and bucky due to the position they occupy in the narrative, loki and steve have more in common in some ways and that's interesting" and I read it as, personally, a bit of a stoki manifesto.

like, "actually these characters people don't tend to associate/look at together have some very interesting parallels! isn't that neat?" more than anything coming with a moral judgment.

but getting this ask made me go back into the depths of my blog (truly, the depths) to track down the post I'm at least thinking of, and remarkably enough actually managed to find it (given that the post in question is from 2013), and...reading it from the perspective of Fandom Discourse in 2023 I can definitely see what it is you're saying, and I think if I saw it in Fandom Edition 2023 that's probably how I would read it, too, and get annoyed about it. but looking at it from the perspective of where things were at that time, before the great villain/victim discourse of Winter Soldier kicked in, I actually feel a relative minimum of judgment from the post? Like, it does describe the different choices steve and loki make in response to their experiences in positive/negative terms, but it doesn't then progress to (at least in my reading) "and that's why loki is evil and NO EXCUSES" (Fandom 2023 Edition), but stays at just...letting it be about divergent character journeys coming from similar-but-different places? idk.

like, at the very least this one acknowledges that the "bad" character was genuinely hurt and having an understandable emotional reaction. which is not necessarily something one sees these days.

idk. maybe I'm being too generous. but then, I am more inclined to be generous to a post made in 2013 concerning this, when the pattern of discourse in fandom was a little different, than I would be reading a similar post now. perhaps that's unfair.

but I did link this specific post in several "why you should ship stoki" masterposts at the time, so if your read on this post is accurate then I feel very okay about taking it elsewhere.

[lavendarneverlands]

I both love how the chronic illness community kinda runs the vast majority of my fan bases, gif makers☑️ live streamers☑️ Ao3 writers☑️ like everyone might feel like death but my goodness we/y’all make the content I live for😂🫶

[whetstonefires]

So I can't reply to @phoenixyfriend having replied to my reblog because either they've blocked me or they don't do DMs with non-mutuals despite suggesting that as a preferable forum for disagreement, but in brief:

My reblog was 'necessary' within the very limited definition of that word that applies to fandom blogging because that post was not a post About Tony Stark. I don't engage with posts About Tony Stark or most characters in general that I disagree with, in general! It's rude and life is too short.

That post, however, was not about Tony. It was a conversation between bloggers asserting an argument for why people who don't agree with your headcanons are morally inferior and have Bad Corrupt Motives.

"What does it say that Steve is, in fandom, often considered a better/more qualified speaker on the topic of chronic illness and disability than Tony" and "these people would rather listen to the white, able-bodied guy than the person actually forced to live with the consequences of life-long disability" and "viewers with that perspective continue to see his disability as a sign that he's still a bad person, because he hasn't 'earned' a cure the way Steve did."

(Which again is wild as a take because Iron Man 3 has tony 'earn' his way out of both physical damage and PTSD through willpower and smartness in the ending montage, because inspiration porn doesn't work if you stay damaged.)

It was a post about the fandom. Accusing other actual human beings of being morally at fault for how they interpreted the marvel cinematic universe.

Not like, an intense horrible attack post as these things go, but it still wasn't about characters. It was about other fans. That is different from talking about characters! Your post was about how it's sus and shameful for people to disagree with you, not about your actual positions and why they're right. Let alone about the character. That doesn't fall under the curtain of 'don't start shit' because shit was already started.

Like I don't have any Avengers fic, haven't been in the fandom for several years, and I was still sitting here scrolling my dash getting these Bad Person Motives assigned to me just for thinking one character was more meaningful disability representation, that I would be interested in hearing from on the subject, than another.

You made inflammatory statements about other actual people in a public forum, where it could be predicted they would see it.

And then flew off the handle when someone went over your post asserting their alternate perspective, carefully avoiding attacking you personally or assigning you evil motives, which would have been incredibly easy except it's a shitty way to interact so no, and speaking only in general terms about things they found personally annoying.

If you can't deal with people reblogging your posts to argue that you're being unfair, then maybe don't post about how other people only disagree with you about your blorbos because you are a better human being than those people. I mean.

[fried-manto]

Extremely blurry pictures of what was meant to be Ni from Omori: duet by @chipistrate and Narrator (Mari) from omori fantasy! By @omorifantasyau

Sorry bout that, my camera won't work with me today but it won't stop me from doing what I love!

AU Mari fanarts for everyone!!!

[kstarlitchaotics]

Again not a shipping thing

But do people forget that in another universe Strange falls into darkness and now they're showing Stark becoming an brainwashed Doom

I mean a bit on the noise isn't it and at some point sometimes heroes do fall into darkness so really this isn't anything new new

[roseamongroses]

me going thru the tags I stalk like a hawk every morning like I’m reading the newspaper