Loki Appreciation 2021

[Raye]

Yeah, not much of a surprise to us, but people who haven't read the comics seem pleased, even though, like in the comics, it was only a dialogue confirmation, which, as we've seen in the comics, doesn't mean a ton if they are unwilling to act on it. But still, maybe it will serve as the kick in the pants they apparently need in the comics to do something a bit more substantial than a line of dialogue now and then. Cus yeah, checked the Pride issue, and nothing.

spoilers:

So, Loki followed Sylvie through the portal to the TVA, where she was planning on attacking the Time Keepers, Loki fought her, but one thing led to another and they ended up transported to a planet on the verge of destruction in the future, and had to work together to escape. Though they failed in the end. But we did learn a bit about Sylvie and it does appear she has a completely different backstory, her mother died when she was very young, she's always known she was adopted, but not by Asgard, apparently, etc. which does point to her having a completely separate timeline that split a very long time ago. Besides that lie, it was revealed that the TVA was lying about the various agents working for the TVA, they were not created by the Time Keepers as they believe, they were all variants at some point that got roped into working for the TVA. this may also explain Mobius' love for all things 90s, he may have been a variant from that time period. Hopefully this means Mobius can be freed of their control, or something

end of spoilers

[Seth_Brower]

So ... I really don't often like all the "ooo let's do wild theorizing" that can surround these Disney+ series as it tends to really run far afield of what they end up with ... BUT.

spoilers:

and Given the initial "pushback" against Sylvie's enchanting Loki, and her follow up explanation of how it tends to work. My mind did go to the fact that possible the entirety of the episode past that "attempt" was actually all inside Loki's mind as they struggled for dominance over control, as a scenario concocted to get him on her side, doesn't make any character development not stick, but felt "Loki" in its plan/double crossing nature.

end of spoilers

[Raye]

spoilers:

it's possible, and could give an out for the predicament they are in, if it is all fake. though I owuld find it kinda disappointing if none of that rally counted, tbh.

end of spoilers

Solicits are out: https://aiptcomics.com/2021/06/23/se...ferno-is-here/

And though not shown there, in the Marvel Previews, it is shown, though tiny, that Loki will have a variant cover:



So it sounds like rather than changing the enchantment on Mjolnir, he just... leaves it under watch of the Avengers, (out of sight out of mind i guess) telling them to not let anyone take it? But then someone evades detection of the Avengers, and takes it, shocker. Gee, I wonder who could know about that whole situation, cus he was on the cover for the previous issue, and has already picked up Mjolnir twice during Cates' run so knows the enchantment is busted, and may want to and have the ability to sneak into Avengers Mountain undetected. We can't yet be at the Thanos and Infinity Gems thing, he's still dead, and the Infinity Gems are still bound to people, so that's still way off in the future. But that does still remain a possibility if the enchantment is not fixed, so though it appears it hasn't happened yet, i do think that still has to come, Thor has to make a new enchantment, but not for himself, to prevent that bad future.

[Raye]

Went and got Marvel Previews, so was able to get a larger version of the variant cover:



heh, Miles' earmuffs.Not sure why the King of Jotunheim would be fighting hsi own subjects alongside Spider-Man but... hey, variant cover, doesn't need to make sense i guess.

[Fanto.mx]

The thought that perhaps everything post the enchantment attempt spoilers:

was actually an enchantment is interesting, though she fell asleep, none of this is a memory, and the time door dingus broke. I suppose it could have all been her showing him both what they can do together and what happens if they don't,

end of spoilers but that feels unlikely to me.

I do think the revelation/lie that spoilers:

all TVA employees are variants is super interesting. None of them remember existing outside of the TVA, so there are definitely mind shenanigans going on. The few clues about that that we've gotten so far make this idea a really intriguing possibility. If we look at Loki, Mobius, C-20, and Casey, we see a range of mind wipe levels. Loki wasn't wiped at all. Mobius seems to have some bits of his past intact (Josta and jet skis), C-20 had an intact personality, but her memories were buried DEEP, and Casey seems to be a blank slate and in this set-up, the not-knowing-what-a-fish-is joke isn't a joke, but a clue. This makes good sense on the part of the TVA, since people like Casey need zero creativity and zero interests outside their work. But field soldiers would need a little bit of creativity and maybe to retain some soldier training. And investigators like Mobius need a lot of creativity and familiarity. And Loki is a wild card, purposefully.

end of spoilers

[Raye]

That's true, her falling asleep may nix that idea, we'll have to see i guess.

And it dawned on me last night, the reason the TVA had such a complex booking process, but especially the aura scan, was because they were determining the best placement for people in the TVA. It wasn't all useless bureaucracy after all! And yeah, I think different levels of wipe would be needed for different positions. Though i bet Casey was some kind of ruthless warlord, like he conquered the Kree or something, and he's just too dangerous to allow in the field. But Mobius, def some dude from the 90s who was late for work one day or something. My bet is he was some kind of like, councilor, teacher, or something, hence his being drawn to 'broken things'

[Yoruno]

Oh gosh, I told ya he was a girl
https://thedirect.com/article/loki-sylvie-tva-spoilers

[Cataphract]

Personally I think Sylvie’s Postman might be Mobius.

[Raye]

So, seems like she was born male like Loki, but decided very young to just go girl all the way, and that was the divergence point... Not sure how a little kid would escape the TVA and begin hiding out in apocalypses though.

[Drops Of Venus]

So I was right about one thing: spoilers:

they did add Paul Cornell and Mark Brooks to the special thanks credit of episode 3 after formally introducing her as Sylvie. And with the various mentions of her power as ''enchantments'', it definitely seems like these are the things that they have borrowed from the Enchantress for the character, even though she is supposed to also be another version of Loki, as this episode confirms that she just changed her name. I think she is essentially an original character for the show for the most part, and I like her for what she is, although I just hope this doesn't mean we won't ever get a more comics accurate version of Lady Loki and Enchantress, because I think they deserve to exist as their own individual characters too.

end of spoilers

So, seems like she was born male like Loki, but decided very young to just go girl all the way, and that was the divergence point... Not sure how a little kid would escape the TVA and begin hiding out in apocalypses though.

If the TVA arrested a little kid for simply wanting to be a girl.... that's seriously messed up. And I'm not sure if Disney/Marvel is really all that equipped/ready to discuss topics like these right now, but wouldn't this essentially make her transgender instead of genderfluid? That would certainly be an interesting angle to explore, and explain why she thinks the TVA are ''fascists''. I'm really curious to see where they're taking this, 'cause for all the talk about genderfluidity, it really doesn't seem like either of the Lokis is outside of the binary box yet. Both seem to have a pretty fixed gender.

[Yoruno]

I guess the split took place in the same (Sacred) timeline. Young Loki accidentally transformed himself into a girl, or decided he wanted to be a girl, and this caused a split. The branch was deleted, so that no-one in Asgard could remember the incident. They coudn't make the child a TVA clerk and sentenced her to pruning, but Mobius helped her to escape (he shows sympathy to children and the broken ones). Probably he was put to reset after that.

[Raye]

If the TVA arrested a little kid for simply wanting to be a girl.... that's seriously messed up. And I'm not sure if Disney/Marvel is really all that equipped/ready to discuss topics like these right now, but wouldn't this essentially make her transgender instead of genderfluid? That would certainly be an interesting angle to explore, and explain why she thinks the TVA are ''fascists''. I'm really curious to see where they're taking this, 'cause for all the talk about genderfluidity, it really doesn't seem like either of the Lokis is outside of the binary box yet. Both seem to have a pretty fixed gender.

Well, I was kinda dancing around saying this part out loud until now because it could have been a touchy subject... but.... I think this show is extremely well equipped to deal with trans oppression, because it kinda already is. One of it's central themes right from the very first episode is a pretty cutting critique of religion, with the TVA filling the role of the church. Specifically, in addition to all the fate stuff, one of the themes is about how the church can be a barrier to people being their authentic selves. It is specifically targeting dogmatic, fundamentalist belief that dictates your actions and beliefs, thinks a higher power has a plan for everything, and can dictate right or wrong actions. This can make people with good intent do some pretty awful things, because they believe it is working towards an ideal eternal reward and 'the plan'. "No one bad is ever truly bad and no one good is ever truly good." and all that. The TVA genuinely believe themselves to be a force for good, and have placed themselves in a position of authority to achieve that end. The people in the rank and file are, I am sure, not bad people, they believe they are working towards a beautiful end goal that they find comforting, and truly believe is for the good of the universe. The TVA believes, because of what they've been told by the Time Keepers, (God, which may not even exist, or at least not in the way they think) that preserving the sacred timeline (and of course the use of the word 'sacred' is no accident) is more important than anything else, they are creating their eternal reward by doing so, and feel like they are doing something good because from their view, it will benefit everyone. Their determination of right and wrong is all skewed towards that end, and they end up punishing people for neutral or good actions. Like, saving a person's life could get you hauled in. If Sylvie and Loki had succeeded in launching the ark that would have broken the timeline, and they would have been arrested. For saving thousands if not millions of lives. Or just living your life as your authentic self, in Sylvie's case. From the TVA's perspective, they are not arresting Sylvie 'for wanting to be a girl', they are arresting her because they believe that does not fit their 'sacred timeline' and thus must be stamped out, for the good of the universe. From their perspective, they are the good guys, even though from outside, this seems like an evil act. And of course Sylvie won't see it as a good thing.

And I think Disney+ has a lot more freedom to deal with these subjects, because they don't have to worry about selling tickets to individual movies/shows, they are selling subscriptions, so foreign markets lose a LOT of their power wen it comes to dictating content. Disney can say to them, that they can just choose to not carry a particular show/movie and Disney doesn't lose much in that scenario, becuase people will still probably find something that makes them want to subscribe. Like Disney didn't back down about Out at all when Russia got all mad about it. From what I can tell, they just ignored it. It's still there on the service in North America and Europe, though it may not appear on the Russian version specifically when that launches. It will be sad if China and/or Russia blocks the release of Loki in their particular versions of the service, but they don't have the power to do more than that, unlike with the movies where the ticket sales can cause Disney to capitulate to such demands more easily. (and China already bans depictions of time travel, so Loki was fucked there from the beginning, even ignoring all the LGBTQ themes)

As for the fluid thing... I mean, if they are using the comics as a basis, then Loki is fluid..... but leans quite heavily towards male most of the time. I have said this about the comics depiction as well, but I think it would be a mistake to have Loki begin to shift genders more often, or go by neutral pronouns etc. because that ignores the fact that, particularly for something like this, where there is a spectrum and lots of different ways to be genderfluid, by going for a depiction that's kinda in the middle, more of a 50/50 split, it's invalidating people who are more on the edges of the spectrum, like Loki is. They deserve representation too. Just saying, they are in a bit of a delicate situation here, because there are lots of ways to be genderfluid, and that includes people like Loki who are one gender like 90% of the time, and seems to prefer male pronouns except when specifically in female form, and he's not 'doing it wrong' or 'not being fluiid enough' because of that, and people that argue that are devaluing the experiences of people who are more like Loki in terms of how they view things in terms of gender.

Like yeah, i get that for it to really count it has to be shown on screen at some point, like it has been in the comics, and kind of related, this is also why i am still frustrated they haven't given him a canon boyfriend yet in the comics, it kinda needs to show at least one for it to really 'count' even though lots of bi/pan people in real life do only have the experience of dating the opposite gender, and they are still valid, but fiction... kinda needs something to happen for it to count. Just saying, if they are going to be true to the depiction in the comics, then they can't just have Loki begin flipping genders essentially at random, because that's not how it is in the comics, it has to be a bit more nuanced.

[Yoruno]

Ah, don't even start this about Russia... We don't even have Disney+, but the reviews are published anyway, and I can already see a lot of negative comments about Loki being bi. Most of the commenters probably don't even remember who Loki is! I'm really scared of what's going on, because I remember the times when it didn't use to be like this. Sorry for the offtop.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

I finished my Journey into Mystery with Kid Loki.

Now I'm digging into the Agent Loki of Asgard comics .

[Raye]

Yay! did you cry? I think JIM is like, the Pixar movie of Marvel.

If you can, you might want to try and get Young Avengers first, it bridges the gap between JIM and Agent of Asgard... but you should be able to catch up without it, just be aware that Loki was dealing with some GUILT during YA, and got aged up during it. In any case, Agent of Asgard is a different tone than JIM, but pretty cool. (it kinda lost me a bit in the final couple issues tho, personally)

Ah, don't even start this about Russia... We don't even have Disney+, but the reviews are published anyway, and I can already see a lot of negative comments about Loki being bi. Most of the commenters probably don't even remember who Loki is! I'm really scared of what's going on, because I remember the times when it didn't use to be like this. Sorry for the offtop.

Nah, it's fine. I know people aren't necessarily defined by the country they live in, you seem cool. It seems like a beautiful country. But it must suck to live someplace if you disagree with the government really strongly though. In Canada, it's not uncommon to see people get all mad about the government, and there are certainly some really awful people here (there seems to be a surge of Canadian neo-Nazis, like legit ones, with swastikas and the whole bit, which is quite concerning) but compared to some other places... the differences between the left and right are minor overall, no matter who wins, it is unlikely to turn out like, terrible. I know we have it pretty lucky.