Firestarter vs Loki

[Wildling]

I was thinking that this was live-action Charlie for some reason in my post.

Yes, it's even worse for Loki if it's book Charlie. Movie Charlie only blew up buildings, book Charlie outright disintegrated them and needed to evaporate nearly 10,000 cubic feet of water to calm down by the end of the book.

In my case I just never watched any live Firestarter.

But watching the clip above it looks like another example of adaptation downgrading. Charlie's brief quickdraw kill of Rainbird didn't just send him backwards but liquefied his flesh (and another guy there) on the spot.

And he fired.

The power leaped crazily out of her, totally out of control. On its way to Rainbird, it vaporized the chunk of lead that otherwise would have buried itself in her brain. For a moment it seemed that a high wind was rippling Rainbird's clothes-and those of Cap behind him-and that nothing else was happening. But it was not just clothes that were rippling; it was the flesh itself, rippling, running like tallow, and then being hurled off bones that were already charring and blackening and flaming.

And even with no one daring to attack her anymore she was just getting started.

Secretaries were fleeing from the other house now, running like ants. She could have swept them with fire-and a part of her wanted to-but with an effort of her waning volition, she turned the power on the house itself, the house where the two of them had been kept against their will... the house where John had betrayed her.

She sent the force out, all of it. For just a moment it seemed that nothing at all was happening; there was a faint shimmer in the air, like the shimmer above a barbecue pit where the coals have been well banked... and then the entire house exploded.

The only clear image she was left with (and later, the testimony of the survivors repeated it several times) was that of the chimney of the house rising into the sky like a brick rocketship, seemingly intact, while beneath it the twenty-five-room house disintegrated like a little girl's cardboard playhouse in the flame of a blowtorch. Stone, lengths of board, planks, rose into the air and flew away on the hot dragon breath of Charlie's force. An IBM typewriter, melted and twisted into something that looked like a green steel dishrag tied in a knot, whirled up into the sky and crashed down between the two fences, digging a crater. A secretary's chair, the swivel seat whirling madly, was flung out of sight with the speed of a bolt shot from a crossbow.

Heat baked across the lawn at Charlie.

She looked around for something else to destroy. Smoke rose to the sky now from several sources from the two graceful antebellum homes (only one of them still recognizable as a home now), from the stable, from what had been the limousine. Even out here in the open, the heat was becoming intense.

And still the power spun and spun, wanting to be sent out, needing to be sent out, lest it collapse back on its source and destroy it.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

I get what he means. It would make sense for a group as powerful as the TVA to enhance their enforcers into super humans. The issue is we don't have evidence of that, which makes Loki having protracted battles with them really hard to justify.

Which was ultimately my point.

Ehh, either the magic dampening effect in the TVA also made him less super human (and considering they apparently brought in Titans, Kree, and Vampires alongside other Variants), or the TVA Agents themselves are amplified.

Either way could easily explain Loki having an issue with them.

Rumbles operates on feats.

[Captain Morgan]

It's also not like they couldn't have mentioned the TVA being super human, or demonstrate it for that matter. They showed us super soldiers just fine over in Falcon and Winter Soldier. They should have used that chunk of the budget on the show that was actually good.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

It's also not like they couldn't have mentioned the TVA being super human, or demonstrate it for that matter. They showed us super soldiers just fine over in Falcon and Winter Soldier. They should have used that chunk of the budget on the show that was actually good.

"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit."

[big_adventure]

This is a nothing statement.

What it means is that there is an explanation for them doing as well as they do against a guy who laughs off the best hits MCU Captain America can deliver, who isn't liquified by getting rag-dolled by an enraged Hulk, who survives shots from his brother, etc.

Yes, we go by feats: we go by high end feats consistent with the presentation. Either we simply have to throw away anything to do with those fights, or we have to throw away a ton of feats from a stack of other movies.

When Flash gets tagged by Deathstroke we don't throw away Flash's speedfeats based on that one horrific showing. Likewise here.

[Sharpandpointies]

The fact that this is book-Charlie does have me feeling things are not going to proceed well for Loki. Sufficient speed in her reactions to Rainbird pulling the trigger (it seems an unconscious reaction to him shooting) that she simply annihilates him and the bullet, so Loki isn't hitting her with anything he can throw off the bell (if he throws a knife, I suspect it won't be on-target after getting hit by her combined pyro and psychokinesis - it's easy to forget she's also a psychokinetic). Massive area affecting attacks, so Loki going invisible isn't really going to help a lot. Pyrokinesis that starts on the level of slagging metal, insta-melting people, and vaporizing lead completely, and moves up to simply detonating entire buildings like it's nothing (not 'burning them down', nope, it's 'boom, gone').

I'm none-too-sanguine about Loki managing terribly well against a bloodlusted book-Charlie, and no shame there.

[Captain Morgan]

What it means is that there is an explanation for them doing as well as they do against a guy who laughs off the best hits MCU Captain America can deliver, who isn't liquified by getting rag-dolled by an enraged Hulk, who survives shots from his brother, etc.

Yes, we go by feats: we go by high end feats consistent with the presentation. Either we simply have to throw away anything to do with those fights, or we have to throw away a ton of feats from a stack of other movies.

When Flash gets tagged by Deathstroke we don't throw away Flash's speedfeats based on that one horrific showing. Likewise here.

Yeah, I wouldn't say this invalidates his old feats. At least not until we saw it across multiple stories. But I will say it makes me question his feats within the show, specifically the off the cuff catching a falling building with TK.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

What it means is that there is an explanation for them doing as well as they do against a guy who laughs off the best hits MCU Captain America can deliver, who isn't liquified by getting rag-dolled by an enraged Hulk, who survives shots from his brother, etc.

Yes, we go by feats: we go by high end feats consistent with the presentation. Either we simply have to throw away anything to do with those fights, or we have to throw away a ton of feats from a stack of other movies.

When Flash gets tagged by Deathstroke we don't throw away Flash's speedfeats based on that one horrific showing. Likewise here.

It's a weird situation because it's Loki specifically from Thor 1, and Avengers; the things that come after not being the version of Loki in the show. He has more appearances, and more getting slapped around in the Loki show as a side effect of this, at which point his **** feats outweigh his good ones. You, further, can't also say "well the feats are up in the air because 'nebulous TVA augmentation'" because that's not at all how it works. Unless there's something specifically to show they're no longer human, they're human.

It gets even worse when you find that the woman who slapped all **** out of Loki to the point where he conceded he wasn't a match for her, got her **** slapped up by a 10-year old kid stomping on her foot.

[Captain Morgan]

It's a weird situation because it's Loki specifically from Thor 1, and Avengers; the things that come after not being the version of Loki in the show. He has more appearances, and more getting slapped around in the Loki show as a side effect of this, at which point his **** feats outweigh his good ones. You, further, can't also say "well the feats are up in the air because 'nebulous TVA augmentation'" because that's not at all how it works. Unless there's something specifically to show they're no longer human, they're human.

It gets even worse when you find that the woman who slapped all **** out of Loki to the point where he conceded he wasn't a match for her, got her **** slapped up by a 10-year old kid stomping on her foot.

To be fair, it was a 10 year old Asgardian kid. If you assume the narrative of the TVA agents being enhanced to roughly Asgardian, or slightly under, equivalent (and again, there's no evidence of that and it is supposition) then an Asgardian kid stomping on a TVA foot isn't particularly egregious.

I'm also not sure how the wibbley wobby timey wimey nature of this works out for feats. He's the same version of the character moved from his own timeline, as opposed to the other variants that are actually different versions. I'm also not sure the distinction matters, because I think his most impressive feats were all in Thor 1 and Avengers 1.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

To be fair, it was a 10 year old Asgardian kid. If you assume the narrative of the TVA agents being enhanced to roughly Asgardian, or slightly under, equivalent (and again, there's no evidence of that and it is supposition) then an Asgardian kid stomping on a TVA foot isn't particularly egregious.

I'm also not sure how the wibbley wobby timey wimey nature of this works out for feats. He's the same version of the character moved from his own timeline, as opposed to the other variants that are actually different versions. I'm also not sure the distinction matters, because I think his most impressive feats were all in Thor 1 and Avengers 1.

He has much better illusion stuff post Thor 1, though I suppose it's largely irrelevant becuase he barely ever uses it in the show.

The kid thing is more pointing out that this woman got beaten by an asgardian child stomping on her foot, and then proceeds to whomp all **** out of a Loki that can no-look catch exploding arrows and shrug off said exploding arrow detonating in his face such that he's all but groveling.

What, are we just assuming she's the the Hulk?

At which point the nebulous TVA boost falls apart further becuase, well, you know, the kid stepping on the Hulk's foot was a TKO.

[Fallman]

Enh. The TVA explicitly depowers him while he's there. Admittedly, it only mentioned magic, but also futzing with his strength is a reasonable assumption. Outside of the TVA, his feats aren't that bad. There aren't the best, but he does shrug off some big hits, so he's back to being super tough when he's outside.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

Enh. The TVA explicitly depowers him while he's there. Admittedly, it only mentioned magic, but also futzing with his strength is a reasonable assumption. Outside of the TVA, his feats aren't that bad. There aren't the best, but he does shrug off some big hits, so he's back to being super tough when he's outside.

It's not a reasonable assumption if only magic was mentioned.

[Fallman]

Loki's powers are magic; where else does his strength come from? He's a frost giant and an Asgardian, who are respectively space magic and space magic.

[Beadle]

Loki's powers are magic; where else does his strength come from? He's a frost giant and an Asgardian, who are respectively space magic and space magic.

By that argument, when his magic was cancelled, he’d have ceased to exist.

Are we just setting an arbitrary threshold that the only bit of his physical stats that are magic are the bits above baseline human? Because that seems a rather random line to draw.

[Fallman]

And yet, that's what the series seems to go with. He's normal tough inside the TVA and super tough outside it. For whatever reason, he doesn't have his powers inside the TVA, and that's pretty consistent.