#loki s02e06

[lucianalight]

A Glorious Culmination

Let's talk about that perfect ending with its beautiful scenes and epic soundtrack, shall we? Here's all the reasons why I loved it:

The ending answered the question "what makes a Loki, Loki?"

"Authority, independence, style". Sure, but that's not all of it. And it's not the real answer.

So who is Loki? A villain? A loser? What defines Loki?

There are many characteristics that define Loki but one of the main ones that truly sets him apart imo is that he is a catalyst for change. Loki when faced with options he doesn't like, or a problem that looks like doesn't have a solution, makes a new way, creates a new solution, chooses an option that didn't exist before.

He has the power to destroy, like the mythological tale of Ragnarok.

And to give life. Like how the Ragnarok he brings, means the beginning of a new cycle in Norse mythology.

-"Yeah it was the best character development. Loki went from wanting a throne to..."

Let me stop you there.

Loki went from not wanting a throne but thinking he must have it to be considered worthy and an equal to Thor, to taking a throne despite not wanting it, because it was the right thing to do.

The fact that Loki sacrificed himself once again for the people he loved and cared about, wasn't a new character development. In the movies Loki risks and sacrifices himself every time when it matters. For Thor, for Asgard, for the world. The only development here was that this time he sacrificed himself for every universe there is.

And his sacrifice wasn't treated as sth he deserved by the narrative because of every terrible things he'd done. On the contrary the narrative acknowledges that this is the last thing Loki deserves. That he is paying for others' mistakes and wrongs. He spends centuries to save the timelines. He spends a long time trying to stop Sylvie without harming her. And when everything seems lost, he makes a decision to save everyone but himself, he creates a different path. He faces his deepest fear, to not hurt the people he loves.

If there is any character development, it's for the narrative and the audience that finally recognized who Loki actually is.

The Symbolism

I have to say my first reaction to the new Loki costume was:" This is the worst Loki costume ever :))))" also me two days later: "I'm gonna set it as my wallpaper." But I loved the symbolism. The biggest horns Loki's ever worn to show the weight of the crown. His cape that was connected to timelines, to show the burden of a throne. The simplicity in his clothes in contrast with his other outfits. Because this wasn't about the recognition Loki always wanted and deserved. This was about the responsibility Loki decided to literally put on his shoulders and feeling the gravity of it.

His shoes though :)))) I mean

Either let him be bare footed or give him boots you cowards :D

The Parallels

The fact that how the ending parallels the first Thor movie and everything came back full circle.

How Thor and Loki destroyed sth at the cost of themselves losing the people they cared about.

Loki doing sth not because of a desperation for acceptance, not because he thought it was sth someone else wanted.

Knowing if he chose the easier way, no one could have fault him for it because it seemed there was no other way.

He did it because he knew it was the right thing to do, because he knew who he wanted to be.

Loki not giving up, not letting go, not falling down from a broken bridge, but ascending, holding on as he fixes what's broken.

He holds and carries the whole universe on his back. It's not only a beautiful Atlassian tragedy, but also parallels Norse mythology in more than one way. Yggdrasil, the tree of life in Norse mythology, the one that Loki holds in his hands in the finale, wasn't the only parallel in the ending.

There's a subtle and beautiful nod to Norse mythology. The tale of Loki being bound till Ragnarok. The myth that says when Loki gets freed, the end of the world begins.

What a marvelous tragedy. And what a glorious culmination.

It's not all tragic though

Loki now is literally the most powerful and heroic character in MCU. He's holding the universe in his hands and keeping it alive. You can't top that.

And it makes his portrayal in the recent movies in which he was unfairly underpowered, even more ridiculous than before and that makes me happy :D

There is also a possibility to see Loki again and I'm not talking about the other variants. Marvel now has the best dues ex machina through Loki. He might be able to appear in any universe as an illusion to warn about dangers or help the characters. He might figure out a way to keep the tree alive without being there himself. That way he can find Thor in the sacred timeline. Or maybe the Loki who survived Thanos and is still in the sacred timeline finds Thor. Maybe there's still hope for a good reconciliation and a good story for Asgardian siblings.

So to sump up this was an epic, symbolic, beautiful and tragic ending. And yet hopeful. I loved it💚

[amethysthollis]

What if...?

(wait for it)

[tv-moments]

Loki

Season 2, “Glorious Purpose”

Directors: Aaron Moorhead & Justin Benson

DoP: Isaac Bauman

[sheliesshattered]

Sylki fic: When She Sings She Sings Come Home

Loki/Sylvie, 3200 words. Post s02e06 fix-it, angst with a happy ending. Also available on AO3 under the same title and username.

--

When She Sings She Sings Come Home

Sylvie wakes with Loki’s voice in her ears.

It’s been months since she last saw him, striding out to the Loom to save the timelines. Winter has come and gone, here in this little corner of a branch that she’s made her home. Every day that’s passed, she’s half expected to turn around and see him standing there, like that night he appeared in the parking lot next to her truck. But for months, there’s been nothing but the absence of him, growing larger and more crystalline every day.

She wakes with his voice in her ears, singing that ridiculous song from the train on Lamentis.

To Sylvie, everybody! he’d said, grinning at her, not drunk only too full. She would give anything to see him smile like that again. She would give anything to see him again.

And it isn’t that she hasn’t looked. Of course she had. She’d barely gotten through a single shift at McDonald’s after leaving Mobius standing outside his variant’s house before she’d used He Who Remain’s TemPad to try to find Loki.

He wasn’t dead. She knows he isn’t dead. But he also isn’t anywhere. There are an infinite number of branches now, layers of reality twisting around each other into something larger, a shape she can almost see, almost recognize. But Loki isn’t on any of them. No matter where she searches, he remains just outside her grasp.

Sylvie goes to work, she drives her truck home, she listens to music at the record store, she checks in on Mobius, she tries to sleep. But everywhere is marked by Loki’s absence, and every moment is overlaid with the sound of him singing.

She can’t find Loki, but that song is a thread she can pull at. Where did he learn it? The words were almost Asgardian, but not quite. Something similar, a branch of the original. A variant. Because of course it was.

It’s not until she thinks to quietly spy on the New Asgard settlement in Norway, forty years on from her quiet life in Oklahoma, that she hears the language again. Norwegian.

Remember this place, she hears Odin say, in a memory that is not hers, rippling through the interwoven timelines because it is what she needs in this moment. Home.

She turns her back on New Asgard, on the man who is almost but not quite her brother, on the Valkyrie who will come to lead their people like the hero out of a saga that Sylvie had once wished she could become. She turns her back, and walks into this strange, beautiful land. Norway. One tiny place on one tiny planet in one insignificant branch of the ever-growing tree of time, where the syllables are shaped into words that resonate with Loki’s voice from so long ago.

Sylvie wanders into pubs, into taverns, into bars, into concerts. She hums the few notes that never leave her head, and hopes to find someone who knows the song.

Until, miraculously, one day, she does.

“It’s an old drinking song,” the bearded man at the bar tells her, gesturing with his beer. “It’s about taking the long way home, but knowing you’ll get there in the end.”

“Can you teach it to me?” Sylvie asks, unblinking, gaze trained on the stranger’s face.

“For that, I will need a lot more beer.”

So she buys him beers. She coaxes the song out of him. She buys rounds for the whole bar, until they are all singing it. They teach her the words in Norwegian, teach her to shape the vowels as carefully as any incantation, and then teach her the meaning behind the words.

In storm-black mountains, I wander alone

Over the glacier I make my way

In the apple garden stands the maiden fair

and sings, “When will you come home?”

“You, I think,” her drunk bearded acquaintance says to her, “you are the maiden fair.”

“And what if I am?” Sylvie asks, raising her chin, still dead-sober despite the bourbon clutched in her hand.

“Then you must sing for him to come home!”

“From an apple orchard, if you can manage it,” leers his friend next to him.

“Will it work?” she hears herself say.

“Of course it will work! Music is magic. Galdr, they used to call it, in the old religion. The power of your voice to shape reality.” The man is drunk, but his words tug at something in Sylvie’s memory, long buried. “Sing, and he will come home.”

“As simple as that?”

The bearded man laughs uproariously. “When has love ever been simple?” he demands jovially. “When has magic ever been easy? But that does not mean it is not worth trying. There is beauty in the trying. There is love in the longing.” He’s slurring his words, barely managing to stay atop his barstool.

But he’s not wrong.

I know what kind of god I need to be, Loki had said, tears shining in his eyes. For you. For all of us.

But Sylvie is a god, too, she reminds herself, as she tosses back her bourbon and turns her back on the little Norwegian town, with the northern lights rippling over head. She’s not the goddess of chaos anymore, and she hasn’t felt mischievous since she was a child.

But the goddess of galdr, yes, that perhaps is something she could be.

She returns to her little Oklahoma town, cloud cover obliterating the stars, and drives her truck to the record store. There’s only one song she wants to hear, only one voice to sing it, but music has been her comfort since she came to this place, and she cannot simply become the goddess of music-turned-into-magic because she wishes it to be so. Music has been her shield, her cocoon, her comfort these long lonely months. Now she must learn to form it into other shapes, into weapons and tools. Into a lighthouse, shining out into the vast dark of the multiverse.

She taught herself enchantment, while running for her life from one apocalypse to the next. She can teach herself galdr in this quiet little record shop in this quiet little town.

Sylvie slides the headphones into place, and lets the music move through her.

Oh, sweet nothin'

She ain't got nothin' at all

Oh, sweet nothin'

She ain't got nothin' at all

But what if she had something? What if she had the one person who would make all of this worth it?

I know what kind of god I need to be, she tells herself. For you, Loki.

She murmurs the words along with the music, infusing them with intent, with magic.

And for one fraction of an instant, she can see him.

He’s alone, on the throne he never wanted, surrounded by the threads of the multiverse, pulsing green as they grow and twist. There is nothing, nothing else, only Loki alone in that vast emptiness, in that expanse of everything that ever was or ever could be.

His eyes are dull, unfocused, far away. And then— a flicker of recognition, a spark of life—

Sylvie loses the connection.

She’s alone on the sofa in the back of the record shop, with Lou Reed singing in her ears.

He ain’t got nothing at all

She drives home. She tries to sleep. She keeps hearing Loki’s voice, keeps seeing him alone in that emptiness. She murmurs into the darkness— not quite a song, not quite a spell—

But trees dance and waterfalls stop

When she sings, she sings “come home”

There is a shape to the enormity of what Loki has done. There is an order to the way the branches of the multiverse wrap around each other. It is just outside her grasp, but Sylvie feels that if she could just see the shape of it, she might understand.

She might be able to reach him.

In storm-black mountains, I wander alone she whispers to the emptiness of her tiny apartment, in this tiny town, in this little branch of a timeline, one miniscule part of a greater whole, and falls asleep dreaming of trees dancing, of waterfalls stopping, of Loki taking her outside the flow of time to tell her that there was no other way to keep her safe.

Sylvie wakes with her own voice in her ears.

The song is coursing through her, jeg saler min ganger, and she can feel the magic at her fingertips, on the tip of her tongue, pushing at the insides of her ribs, swelling her lungs and begging to be released.

I know what kind of god I need to be.

She gets into her truck and drives. North and east, away from everything she knows, vaguely towards those northern lights dancing over the fjords, too far away to reach on roads such as these.

But once upon a time, when she was very young, there was another road. A rainbow road, the Bifrost, that could take her anywhere just like magic.

Every bit of magic she has now she has taught herself. And this, too, this song swelling in her chest, is magic of her own making.

There is beauty in the trying. There is love in the longing.

She drives past fields of wheat and fields of corn, through days and nights, with the glare of the sun or the pattering of the rain against the windshield. Sylvie drives and drives and drives, and keeps the song tucked away inside her, growing in fury like a hurricane in a bottle, like the storm that had raged outside the night they met.

She drives until the scent of apples wafts through the open windows of the truck, and then she pulls over, knowing this was her destination all along.

Iðunn, a childhood memory whispers, too long ago now to have any meaning at all. The apples of eternity.

Home she thinks, and then hears, from a memory not her own:

Asgard’s not a place, it’s a people.

This could be Asgard. Asgard is where our people stand.

Her brother’s voice. The voice of the man who had once raised her as his daughter. The family she lost and can never regain, no matter what shape the multiverse twists itself into. Words reaching across time, across branching timelines, to reach her here and now, because it is what she needs to hear.

Sylvie climbs out of her truck and walks into the apple orchard and doesn’t look back.

She walks until she can no longer see the road from between the trunks and branches. She walks until there is nothing but the smell of apples, the soil under foot, and the sky over head. She walks until the song finally bursts out of her, all of her desperation and loneliness flooding out of her lungs to shake the very air around her, in the shape of words that are his but also hers, now.

But trees dance and waterfalls stop

When she sings, she sings “come home”

In storm-black mountains, I wander alone

Over the glacier I make my way

In the apple garden stands the maiden fair

and sings, “When will you come home?”

But trees dance and waterfalls stop

When she sings, she sings “come home”

When she sings, she sings “come home”

When she sings, she sings “come home”

When she sings, she sings “come home!”

And then he is there, standing beside her in the sunshine and the scent of the apple orchard. Loki glances around at the trees dancing in the wind, his eyes bright, before his gaze snaps to hers.

“You’re here,” Sylvie croaks, her voice burned through with the force of the magic that poured out of her, the magic that’s brought Loki to her.

“No, not really,” he says, his eyes never still as they trace over her face. “I’m still there too. I’m sort of everywhere, really. It’s hard to explain.”

“Help me to understand,” she says before the words even have the chance to fade away. “You said you knew what kind of god you needed to be. You saved us, you saved everything, and then you disappeared. Make me understand.”

“I can’t, Sylvie,” Loki says gently, and there is a sorrow in his eyes deeper than oceans, more boundless than the vastness of space. “It’s been centuries for me. Lifetimes. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

Enchant me, he had begged her once, standing in the McDonald’s parking lot in his ridiculous TVA uniform. You can see what I saw.

“You don’t have to say anything,” she tells him, raising her hands slowly towards his face, green magic flickering between her fingers. “Just let me see what you saw.”

“Sylvie,” he starts, and there are tears in his eyes again, like there were in that last moment before he turned his back on her to destroy the Loom.

“We’re the same, remember?” she says, and if her voice cracks it is only because of the abuse it’s suffered, only because of the magic that poured out through her vocal chords to shape reality to her desires. “You shouldn’t have to bear this burden alone, Loki,” she tells him, with as much tenderness as she can force into her ruined voice. “Let me understand.”

“It was the only way,” he says, as if in warning, but Sylvie cups his face in her hands before the tears can fall from his eyes.

Centuries. Lifetimes. The same day, over and over again. Reality unspooling, starting with Victor Timely and ending with her, again and again. Their fight in the Citadel at the end of time, relived hundreds of times, always with the same ending. Always the death of He Who Remains, and the unraveling of everything, failure after failure after failure.

And yet in all of them, she does not kiss him. And he cannot bring himself to kill her. Until only one choice remains.

I know what kind of god I need to be. For you.

Sylvie watches in Loki’s memory as the temporal radiation burns away his TVA uniform, as his magic replaces it with something older, something primal, something true. She watches as he grasps the decaying branches of the multiverse and breathes life into them, wills them to live, to be whole and part of a whole.

She watches as the branches twist around each other, each variation of the timeline finding support in its neighbors, building into something greater than the sum of every moment of every timeline that has ever existed.

She sees the shape of what Loki has done, the enormous, infinite tree dancing in the nothingness outside of time. Yggdrasil, the worldstree, green and glowing, alive and growing, all because Loki willed it so. To restore freewill and safeguard it forever. For all of us.

His hands cover hers and Loki gently pries her fingers away from his face. “Enough, Sylvie. Enough. I know what I’ve done.”

There are tears on her face, the apple-scented wind plucking at the wetness as she stands there, staring at Loki. Even without the enchantment, she can see him sitting on his throne, alone but for the infinite tree he tends.

“It was the only way?” she asks in the ruins of her voice. It is only when he folds his hands around hers that she realizes she is shaking, trembling like a leaf in the wind. Not like dancing. Like shattering, collapsing in on herself with the weight of what he’s done.

“No,” Loki admits. “There was one other way. I could have left He Who Remains in charge. I could have let the TVA go back to pruning the timelines. But I would have had to kill you. I would have had to kill you with my own hands, and watch as you died, and then betray everything you ever believed in. I lived every variation of every action I could possibly change, but not that one. Not that.”

“You don’t even know me,” Sylvie blurts out before the words have fully formed in her mind. All of this, to save her? She cannot, she cannot—

Loki’s expressive face twists, stung by her words, hurt in this moment even beyond the deep sorrow that he wears like a cloak. “Of course I know you,” he says, wounded, his gaze searching her face. “Like I’ve never known anyone. Sylvie, I lov—”

She surges up onto her toes and kisses him, there among the apple trees. She kisses him for what he’s done, for what he refused to do. She kisses him for the loneliness they have both known far too much of, she kisses him for coming when she sang for him to come home. She kisses him because there is nothing else she can do, because there was never any other way for her, either.

And Loki kisses her in return, with a desperation borne of years, centuries, lifetimes of facing this alone. He kisses her in the apple garden, as the trees dance and the waterfalls stand still. He is there, kissing her, but also somewhere else, far away and outside time, tending to the tree that he gave his life to save.

“I can’t stay,” he says when they finally part, pressing his forehead to hers, his hands cupping her jaw in an echo of how she had enchanted him moments before. “I want to stay, more than anything, Sylvie, but I can’t, I can’t.”

“I know,” she assures him, even as she clutches at his robes for fear he will disappear at any moment. “I know you can’t stay here with me,” she says, then takes a deep breath to steady her ragged voice, her thundering heart. “But you don’t have to be alone.”

Loki pulls away abruptly, only far enough to see her face, confusion pinching his features.

“We’re gods, you said,” Sylvie explains, tripping over her words, her voice trembling with the weight of what she has already done, the weight of what she plans to do. “We have a responsibility. That’s what you told me, in that ridiculous room full of pie. We can’t just give everyone freewill and then walk away.” She offers him a small smile, the best she can summon at the current moment. “You have to sustain Yggdrasil. But you don’t have to do it alone.”

“I did this for you,” he says, holding on to her as desperately as she is clutching at him. “So you could have a life. That’s what you said you wanted, to live.”

“It’s freewill, Loki,” she says, shaking her head. “You can’t just give it to everyone and then be surprised when I use it to choose to be with you. I know what kind of god I need to be. You taught me that. I won’t let you bear this burden alone. That’s the kind of god I choose to be.”

“I can’t let you sacrifice yourself for me—”

“The only sacrifice would be giving you up.”

He gazes at her for a long moment, his uncertainty slowly transforming, then sings softly, “I stormsvarte fjell, jeg vandrer alene,” and this time Sylvie understands the words. “Over isbreen tar jeg meg frem. I eplehagen står møyen den vene, og synger: ‘når kommer du hjem?’”

The apple orchard dissolves around them, replaced by the rippling greens and blues and purples of Yggdrasil, shimmering in the darkness outside of time.

“Home,” Sylvie says, and kisses him again.

[tomshiddles]

LOKI S01E02 // LOKI S02E06

[tv-moments]

Loki

Season 2, “Glorious Purpose”

Directors: Aaron Moorhead & Justin Benson

DoP: Isaac Bauman

[lokimobius]

LOKI S02E06 “Glorious Purpose”

[marvelgifs]

LOKI S02E06 Glorious Purpose

[loki-for-hire]

Loki S02E06 // Destiny

[marv-el-spot]

Loki gets much closer to Sylvie in this cut extended scene.

LOKI S02E06 GLORIOUS PURPOSE || MARVEL STUDIOS ASSEMBLED: THE MAKING OF LOKI SEASON 2

[tomshiddles]

Loki & Classic Loki (S01E05 - S02E06)

[editfandom]

Loki - Loki, S02E06

[kcscribbler]

🤯 magical hug / extraordinary or special for Lokius!

Here we go, I hope you like!

Characters: Loki (Marvel), Mobius M. Mobius Additional Tags: Gen or Pre-Slash, Friendship/Love, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Post-Episode: s02e06 Glorious Purpose (Loki TV), Post-Canon, Smart Mobius M. Mobius, Magic and Science Series: Part 4 of Tumblr Hug Game Fills

Summary:

Still reeling from a narrow escape with the averted Loom meltdown, the TVA is making a lot of changes. One in particular is long overdue.

Written for the tumblr Hug Game, for the prompt of "Magic Hug."

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Five Fics Friday: December 29/23

Happy Final Five Fics Friday of 2023, everyone! I hope you're going into your long weekend ready to chillax and have a great time! Why not sit down with one (or ALL!) of these fantastic fanfics to get into it! Enjoy, and love y'all! :)

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Again by DiscordantWords (M, 9,953 w., 24 Ch. || Post S4, Christmas / Advent, Wishes, Second Chances, Grief/Mourning, Angst with Happy Ending) – It never seemed like the right time. And then time ran out. [TRANSLATION: Русский]

Full Mount by ArwaMachine (E, 37,619+ w., 7/10 Ch. || WIP || Post-TRF, Fighting, John Whump, Hurt/Comfort, Bed Sharing, Mixed Martial Arts, Angry John, Sherlock and No Boundaries, Masturbation, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Fighting, Toplock, Reunion) – After Sherlock unceremoniously returns from the dead, John finds himself inexplicably angry all the time. So he does what any emotionally-constipated British man does: he joins a Mixed Martial Arts gym. As John throws himself into the sport and joins in on underground no-holds-barred brawls, situations arise that just might force John to face what is really going on underneath all the rage.

RECENTLY BOOKMARKED LOKIUS FICS

might just have been you by markofalover (T, 2,395 w., 1 Ch. || LOKI SERIES || Lokius, Post-S2, Recovered Memories, Mutual Pining, Reunions, First Kiss) – The thing about Ohio, is that Mobius isloki n’t limited to one slice of key lime pie per week.

Let Time Pass by sharkbait33 (G, 2,759 w., 1 Ch. || LOKI SERIES || Lokius, Post S2, S02E06 Fix It, Reunions, Sad Mobius, Pining Mobius, Protective Loki, Forehead Touching, Angsty Fluff, Timey-Wimey) – Loki’s resolve is only as strong as their want to see them happy. All of them. Mobius doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to go; he doesn’t want to stay. So, where does that leave him?

[lokimobius]

LOKI S02E06 “Glorious Purpose”

[lucianalight]

Connections between Gods of Stories: Science-Fiction, and Magic being a Powerful Lie - Approaches to Storytelling

From "Loki God of Stories - A Comparison between MCU and Comics" series - Co-Written by @lucianalight (Luci) and @theitcharchives (Hollow)

“All science is fiction until it’s fact.” The line said by Timely implies that in Loki’s series, fiction is closer to science than one would think.

In S02E05, Ouroboros is a scientist and a writer. We are introduced to the concepts of What and How, aka science’s staples, then When and Why, aka science-fiction’s staples. 

And the Where, though unmentioned–the original people present had to be reunited together to recreate an aura and pinpoint a location in time and space: Where became a staple of science-fiction.

Now, the Who seems to be about “the people he cares about/wanted to see”. (It is said in The Making of Loki -Luci). Yeah it stands as the theory behind the practice, but I have a headcanon: it is my (=Hollow’s) personal understanding and belief that the Who is essential to magic–once Loki understood the Who, he understood his role. He could control the time slips because he wanted to protect those he cared about and their lives. He would have to sustain the timelines because he wanted to find a solution to the dilemma and thus he broke and substituted the equation. Magic needs a who, a will to direct it to not just be aimless energy, and Loki made his choice to use his own and his power to allow everyone else to make their own choices. “Who he wanted to protect” is not the relevant part, “who wants to do the protecting” is.

These six elements are not only the fundamentals of journalist articles, but also of stories. You kind of have to answer them to have a plot–or at least it’s a good start.

In S02E06 Loki spends centuries learning what OB knows, which leads Loki to learning how to stop time with his magic. Something HWR can do with technology, Loki substitutes with magic.

Then, in Thor 2011, Thor says in Asgard magic is considered to be a science. So for MCU Loki, magic is a science.

In MCU Loki’s universe, science, fiction and magic all cover roles that combine into answering all questions for one goal: tell a story. So Loki, who is a master of magic (Who), and thus also a scientist (What, How), can cover the remaining elements (Where, When and Why) because he wants to rewrite the story–he wants to exercise his will over his fate. 

In Loki’s series, if you are a magician you are a scientist, and science deals with facts. Magical facts then are still facts, and if you can write with magic, you can change reality. Even stop time and jump across it–because you want to, and you are a master scientist in the branches of mischief and chaos.

Comics Loki says “So let’s talk about magic. [*...] At the core [...] magic is taking a thought and making it real. Taking a lie and making it the truth. Telling a story to the universe so utterly, cosmically perfect that for a single, shining moment… the world believes a man can fly.” (-Loki; Agent of Asgard #1) “What is a lie, Verity? A lie is a story told. That’s all. And we can rewrite our stories. All of us. Write our own happy endings. Our own redefinitions. We don’t have to be what we’re told to be. Even by ourselves.” (-Loki: Agent of Asgard #13)

Comics Loki is the God of Lies. MCU Loki, not so much–he’s never quite had the opportunity to be a god of lies. He’s called the God of Mischief, and he does Mischief aplenty. Comics Loki’s journey to becoming God of Stories went through understanding that his propensity for crafting lies was just exercise for learning to craft stories. With lies, comics Loki does magic. He is not quite a scientist–comics never really gave the vibe magic=science. Magic is magic and works more on possibilities and potentials than facts, has its own rules (* “We can dicker on the exact rules, if you like. There are all sorts of grimoires and cryptonomicons. I’ve got an AD&D manual somewhere” -Loki: Agent of Asgard #1 - Loki’s mention of Dungeons and Dragons manuals delightfully suggests that, one: it exists in E-616 and he plays it, two: that one could actually do magic while playing it, and three: something poetic about writing and creating magic and playing pretend and the power of imagination).

Well the point of all this is–both MCU Loki and Comics Loki deal with storytelling in their own way. Comics Loki has a true magician approach to it. He writes and rewrites stories because it is his potential blooming and flourishing. MCU Loki has a near-scientific approach, that still beautifully flows into magic, and is quite flattering to Loki–he rewrites the story and holds Yggdrasil because he is Loki and he wants to, and he can. Because “we are gods” babey.

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