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the-lekhika · 9 months

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I just want to reflect how much the Loki show ruined Loki as a character for me and how much disheartened I was with it.

I had always wanted a spinoff on him, which explored him more. And the Loki show did anything but that.

Do you guys remember how Loki was in Infinity War for like 5 minutes, yet Tom Hiddleston was at almost every media interaction the cast had? The same thing happened in the show as well. They used him to market the show, then sidelined him in his own show. I think that was unacceptable, because they used Loki as a bait to promote a character that I held no emotions for.

Sylvie.

The argument that one does not like Sylvie because they “hate a strong female character/a character with complex arcs” is so pathetic. I don’t think I would’ve liked Sylvie even if she had the most elaborate arc in the MCU (which she doesn’t) because it just wasn’t meant to be about her.

I wanted to see Loki’s story, his journey, and if you take this moment to interject with the statement that “she’s Loki too, just different”, then I say that I wanted to see our Loki, the one who was broken when he found out that he was the monster parents told their children about at night, the one who had plethora of iconic dialogues while fighting the avengers, who was killed only for us to realize that he wasn’t.

Everytime I said that we needed a Loki spinoff before it was announced was not because I wanted new characters, it was because I wanted to see more of the character that was already there, very much beloved by the fans. I wanted them to explore his character in a deeper sense and maybe dip a little into mythology as well.

I think Loki was one of those characters that neither needed a love interest nor was ready for one. I don’t ship him with either Sylvie or Mobius, because it feels like neither of them genuinely like Loki for who he is.

Loki had far more compelling things they could have explored like his jotun heritage, his trauma from the time with Thanos and his magic that is the only memory he has of Frigga instead of his love life.

The whole show felt like it was written by someone who wasn’t the least bit interested in Loki and barely looked into him before creating his female counterpart.

It feels like a disrespect for the fans who were connected to Loki on an emotional level.

Why am I saying this now, after like 2 years since the show came out?

I don’t know, after hearing the news about season 2 releasing in October, I just feel so upset. Tired. I hate this show much because it made Loki so irrelevant to me. A sidepiece in his own show. He went around in ugly costumes and all the regal vibes I had from him just disappeared.

I still remember a time when Loki was on the top of my favorite characters, and I loved him so much. I still do, but I’m not sure if I’ll watch the 2nd season and my 13 y/o self would hate me for this.

I’ve gotten detached from his character and I hate myself for it because Loki was someone whom I adored more than anything else in the fandom world.

Loki is that one character who is loved by the fanon but absolutely despised by the canon.

#pro loki #loki laufeyson #loki odinson #anti loki series #anti loki show #anti sylvie #anti sylki #anti mobius #anti lokius #loki deserves better #don't mind me #i'm just a very upset fan who loved loki #i think loki's character was done the most justice in thor the dark world and for some reason we overlook that movie #THAT film gave me the loki i wanted traumatized regal bitter and still proud and cunning

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recreationalfanfics · 1 year

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Hiya! So happy to see another loki fan!

Could you do him and a bubbly, optimistic y/n! Real puppy dog energy, but she's also kind of clever. Like people underestimate her because they think shes ditzy, maybe loki did at first too, but she really just sees the bright side of stuff and is high energy, so they're actually really smart!

Srry this was so long!!! Have a great day!

YES! I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS PROMPT SO MUCH THANK YOU♡

- CONSIDERING THE EGO OF THIS MAN, HE DEFINETLY HAD THE GALL TO UNDERESTIMATE YOU. I mean, look at you. So bright eyed and happy, you were chatting with your fellow peers and your enemies alike knowing full well you're entering this contest that will costs the lives of many people.

- He thought you were niave really or maybe just really stupid. I mean, you often got lost in the arena, you were so unaware of your surroundings at times that you would just casually walk into objects and then proceeded to apologize to them, and overall seemed so happy and enthusiastic even though you were losing.

- He never saw your frown fall and he always found that interesting, as your fellow human was sent to Niflhiem, there was no sadness in your eyes. Obviously no one else noticed because they were too busy grieving but Loki did and thats how his interest in you starts.

- One day he corners you to ask about why you smiled despite the fact that it looked like humanity was doomed. No one knows what happened, Brunhilde just watched as you walked away and Loki followed you.

- Since then, people are so baffled by how close you and the God of Mischief are now. The way you two started talking to one another as if you weren't on completely opposite sides, decorating his nails with nail polish that you somehow acquired, and overall just glued to the hip.

- Sometimes you're a bit clumsy, like when your eyes light up when you look at Loki and run over to him, only to trip over your own feet but he just teleports and grabs you by your waist by teasing you about how clumsy you are.

- You always find his tricks amusing and even let him know what he could do to make them even "funnier", you're the only person who actually has a sense of humor because while Ragnarok was fun, everyone was so terribly serious sometimes but at least you knew how to have a little fun.

- Loves how openly affectionate you are with him, he is pretty touchy but not obnoxiously so, yeah he'll have his arms wrapped around you here and there but you're the one who just grabs his face when he floats upside down and covers it kisses or playing with his hair absentmindedly as he tells you about his latest prank he pulled.

- He also never really annoys you, even when he is being a little mean at times. The gods see it go over your head and they feel bad for you but they don't actually know when he says passive-aggressive things, you're not really bothered because you know he's a sore loser and you had just finished beating him in a game that you were simply too good at. He never goes too far but its clear he's still sulking.

- The gods aren't sure how but you've somehow managed to get Loki wrapped around your little finger almost as much as you're wrapped around his. Some gods admit that it's strange to see Loki so absent but they assume that he's just manipulating you and you just happen to be the new toy he's playing with since you seem like you mean well, but they also don't think you're all that bright.

- That doesn't mean that they don't enjoy your company, you're very fun to talk to but conversations are always cut short because of Loki's possessiveness.

- He especially hates it when Hermes mentions some boring fact about Greece and what it was like back in the day and somehow you get interested and start asking him questions and Loki just rolls his eyes in annoyance as this conversation goes on for LONGER THAN HE WANTS IT TOO.

- Zeus gets curious as to why Brunhilde lets you near the God's so much or why she let's you near Loki in general.

- Zeus: "If I were you, I'd be very concerned or at the very least, pick a new champion. Who knows what sick game Loki is playing at?"

- Brunhilde can't resist that mischievous smile and looks at Zeus with a raised eyebrow, "Really? I don't think they're really playing any games with each other and even if they were, Loki wouldn't be the one I was worried about."

The day of your fight came, everyone felt bad for you because the Gods had pitted you against their wisest diety. The humans weeped, after all, you were such a delightful soul but you stood know chance against such a revered and knowledgeable God. Göll was horrified as she started to tear up, you had become something like a big sister too her in your time here. Always comforting her after she lost her sisters and reassuring her that their sacrifices won't be in vain.

"I-I...We can't lose her too, Brunhilde!" Göll weeded. Bruhilde looked at you as you entered the ring, the both of you sharing a crimson smile.

"We won't, Göll." She assured.

While Heimdall was doing introductions, Loki was floating upside down and kicking his feet excitedly when you walked out. It wasn't uncommon for him to switch sides but for the first time since Ragnarok started, he was rooting for the humans.

"You seem quite happy. Aren't you worried about her?" Hermes noted. Loki turned his head towards him slightly: "Hmm? No. Not really. Why?"

Shiva speaks up, "Hey, I like that little mortal as much as the next God but she's...kinda out of her league this round, isn't she? I mean...look at who they're going against."

The round starts and your battlefield takes place in a clock tower where gears grinded and other mechanics clanked and clacked loudly. Your opponent looks at you smugly as you play with your divine weapon, a bouncing ball.

"I know, I feel bad for the poor God." Loki snickered, "After all, she's is quite clever when she wants to be~"

The very first thing you do, much to everyone's surprise, is throw your ball into one of the gears. The God against you taunts you for creating such a dumb mistake and you just smile at them, shrugging your shoulders carelessly.

"I can't watch this." Shiva groans, looking away. The green haired God smiled: "Aw, but you're gonna miss the good part!"

As they charge at you, you seem completely unbothered, standing still in one place. As they went to attack you, something sounds like it breaks and one of the giant gears hits the God into the side of the arena. Sending them crashing into the other gears, they try to shake it off and go after you again but realizes that one of their garments is caught in the gears, causing them to stay stuck.

Everyone watches from the screen and the God's can sense something is about to happen.

"What on Earth is going on?" Aphrodite frowned, confused as to why you haven't done ANYTHING to attack. Thor looks at Loki and narrows his eyes: "What did you mean by she was clever earlier?"

"Exactly what I said. Wisdom is fun and all if you're boring, you can know everything all you want. But cleverness is all about using the area and everything around you. Sometimes even the people." Loki smirked as he looked at the other Gods.

During your fight, the God still hasn't been able to get loose and your ball that was stopping the two gears from moving couldn't handle the pressure of being squeezed into two different directions before it finally shot out of the gears and directly at the God. With such force that their body which was struggling to be untangled now went limp and everyone gasped, the ball now having created a clean hole through the God's chest. You tilted your head as you looked at the camera, directly towards Brunhilde.

"Was that really it? I've had checkers matches that lasted longer."

The gods are horrified, unable to comprehend how their colleague could have been beaten so easily by a human like you. Meanwhile when humanity recovered from the shock, they cheered with such ferocity and excitement as you walked out of the stadium, your valkyrie appearing beside you and suffering from a killer headache and you apologized sweetly but congratulated her for being such an awesome partner.

"W-What just happened!?" Ares demanded, turning around to glare at the God of Mischief, "DID YOU HELP HER!?"

"Hmm? Oh, nah. She did it all by herself, can you believe that?" Loki grinned. Zeus grabbed him by his shoulder warningly: "Loki...if I found out you betrayed us for a mortal-"

Loki looked shocked but then laughed, his hand covering his mouth and tears nearly forming at the corners of his eyes.

"Please, don't tell me you didn't notice anything off about (Y/n)? Even I knew it but I thought you'd all see it. Although, I can't blame you, she nearly had me fooled." He sang in a know it all manner, "That's why I went to talk to her after Adam's match, after all, she was so chipper...a bit too happy. You know what she told me that day when I asked her why?"

The Gods all stayed silent, Loki kept them in suspense before quoting those exact words you told him: "that she couldn't wait to see the look on your faces when she avenged her friends."

They looked at him and then at you, who was now waving at the cameras and even blew a kiss at where Loki was.

"She...She was acting the whole time?" Hermes frowned.

"You knew?" Odin finally spoke up, rising to his full height and standing in front of Loki. Loki only lowered himself onto his chair and brought his knees to his chest, "I wasn't sure. After all, she complimented my boots right after so I assumed it was her optimism but I had my suspicions. I didn't know for sure until this battle. It's terrifying, isn't it? How she played us into just giving her a win on a silver platter."

Loki then bit his nail with a smile, a blush on his face growing as the Gods were realizing how you'd play them for fools the entire time.

"She's so perfect.♡"

#record of ragnarok x reader #record of ragnarok #ror x reader #shuumatsu no valkyrie x reader #snv x reader #ror loki #ror loki x reader #snv loki #Loki x reader ror #loki x reader snv #loki x reader record of ragnarok

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insanityclause · 1 month

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When Tom Hiddleston landed his career-changing role in Marvel’s Thor back in April 2009, he never dreamed he would be playing the character for nearly 15 years. To be fair, no one did—except maybe Marvel’s mastermind Kevin Feige, who had begun laying the cinematic groundwork for a multi-billion dollar franchise. At the time, Hiddleston happily threw himself into extensive research and prep to play the duplicitous brother of Thor (Chris Hemsworth). “I was cast in April 2009, and I had about eight months to build the character from the ground up,” Hiddleston says on this week’s Little Gold Men. “So that was a deep dive into everything Loki from any comic book, any Norse myth, any saga, everything—from the whole run of Marvel comics to the ancient Scandinavian stories, and how he pops up in The Ring cycle for Wagner, and Jim Carrey is wearing the mask of Loki in The Mask.” Hiddleston was trying to discover “this sense of, what's Loki's impact on human imagination and culture? And then synthesizing all of that into the story we’re telling. That was such a delightful period of discovery and curiosity.”

Hiddleston’s scene-stealing portrayal made him an instant fan favorite, laying a formidable foundation for a character who went on to appear in six more films and the stand-alone series Loki. The two-season series threw the character into a new dimension and timeline, stripped him of all his creature comforts, and gave the actor new challenges to tackle.

“In successive iterations, [my approach] has been, how do I keep it interesting?” he says. “I genuinely say this to myself and to others: ‘We're not reheating yesterday's meal in the microwave. We're cooking up something new.’ It's trying to find new ingredients or new challenges for the character, for us as actors, so that it feels like the same person is growing. Because that's what human beings do. They don't stay the same, they grow. Sometimes they regress, but there's always movement.”

Hiddleston has gone on to star in a wide array of projects outside the Marvel universe, of course, from his Emmy-nominated, Golden Globe-winning work in The Night Manager to Jim Jarmusch’s acclaimed romantic vampire drama Only Lovers Left Alive and Steven Spielberg’s epic War Horse. But he’s definitely spent the most time with the God of Mischief. And though no official announcement has been made, the final episode of Loki season two strongly indicates the closing of a formative chapter.

The actor and executive producer stopped by Little Gold Men for a thoughtful discussion about the gift of developing and playing a single character for so long, the surreal fun of working with drama school classmates turned costars Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Wunmi Mosaku, and getting to come up with the character's last line (for now). Listen below, where you can also read excerpts from the conversation.

Vanity Fair: Did the series version of Loki feel a little more stripped down, or did you have the same kind of mindset playing him as you did in the films? Tom Hiddleston: Yes. I think it was stripped down literally in the sense of taking away the costume, but stripped down spiritually and in his soul. I thought [the concept] was such a brilliant idea, and it wasn't mine. It was [executive producers] Michael Waldron and Kevin Wright, and the great and the good at Marvel Studios. I thought for any character, if you were presented with your life and watching a kind of highlight reel of it, what would it add up to? Would it be satisfying? Would it be meaningful? Would it be amusing? Would it be disappointing? And I thought to do that with Loki especially, as it's the journey of a life that the audience is familiar with, but he hasn't seen it. I just thought it was a brilliant conceit. And then I leaned into this idea of the leopard being challenged to change his spots. Because you'd have to if your life ended up in murder by Thanos and humiliation. You'd want to try something new.

And that was really fun, developing a story which was actually very philosophical. It asks the question of Loki, as I hope it asks the question of all of us: Are we in control of the course of our lives? Do we have any free will, and can we break free from any kind of predetermination? It seemed like a great question, and a fun way to ask it.

You’re also an executive producer on the series. How did you take on that role? What did you get to do?

Honestly, it was such an honor and I loved it. I loved the extra imagining and problem solving. I was invited into the writer's room really early, season one, even earlier on season two. And to borrow the words from Lin Manuel Miranda, to be in the room where it happens, and to sit around the table and break story and crunch through the great creative ‘what if’ questions—what if Loki did this? What if Mobius [Owen Wilson] did that? What if they couldn't find Sylvie? What if the TVA ran on an energy source, and it wasn't energy, it was time?

Can you take any credit for bringing Ke Huy Kwan or your RADA buddies Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Wunmi Mosaku on board? I love that that was a little bit of a through-line, that you all got to work together.

Well, when their names came up, Gugu and Wunmi particularly, I was able to say, those guys are great. And Ke was just an amazing idea because actually, [his character] Ouroboros was coming to life on the page. Somebody suggested Ke, and Everything Everywhere All At Once had just come out. And I was like, genius: somebody call him now before we lose him. He was so joyful and optimistic and happy to be there, so honored to be there. He'd wanted to be in a Marvel project his whole life, I think, and, and he brought everything and more to that character.

The day he landed, he came from the airport straight to the studio, probably thinking, ‘I'll just say hello and go back to my digs.’ And Owen and I were actually rehearsing the scene before Mobius and Loki meet OB for the first time. And he came in and he listened. And then we got to the bit where we were like, ‘You're in the next bit. Do you want to do it?’ He said ‘Okay!’ And he stayed and rehearsed for three hours. I think he felt completely crazy having just [traveled] across the continents, but it was so brilliant. And the chemistry was so immediate between the three of us, and so funny. We all love Ke.

Thinking about your journey with this character and all the places he has taken you, has there been a surreal aspect to it? I think about you being in drama school with Gugu and Wunmi—now you're getting paid to play.

It's a wonderful question, and I'm never unaware of the great gift that this job is. Especially because it happens all the time,: I go out into the world and I meet young people or children, and they're so amazed that they’re meeting Loki. I'm obviously not Loki, but the response is so immediate and so emotional and so joyful. What a gift. It's the best job in the world. And I never dreamed back then that I would be part of something with such reach and for so long. It just is the most unlikely, surprising, delightful thing. And we—Wunmi and Gugu I've known for a long time. It is amazing to look and go, ‘Can you believe we're here, we're doing this?’ It is exciting too, because it feels right in some way and they're great actors. They are brilliant.

Do you get recognized as the character, or are people starting to recognize you for your other work?

Oh, it's always different. I went to a friend's birthday party the other day—a friend and his wife, both turning the same age. They got a taco stand. I went to get my taco and the guys were like, ‘Only Lovers Left Alive, man. Love that film.’ And I said, ‘Thank you very much. That's very kind.’ Some people say The Night Manager. Some people stop me in the street and go, ‘It's you! You're the dancer.’ And they're referring to some talk show, some bit of dancing I did on a talk show from like a thousand years ago, which really tickles me.

Speaking of dancing, I wanted to bring up your physicality. With the most recent season of Loki in particular and that time slip, did you have to have massages and stretch after? Because it seems like such a jarring movement.

It's jerky, yes. I had to put my body under a kind of relentless physical stress. But I think it pays off in the way it's presented. In terms of movement and physicality, it comes from my own admiration for other performers when I sense that there is a really, alive and visceral physicality in the performance. Some of people are great actors, very cerebral, very intelligent, but sometimes not always fully embodied. And I love the actors who are giving me a sense that the whole body is occupying whichever space that is. They could be on a horse, they could be driving a car, they could have just run in through the jungle. I don't know, it could be anything, but a real sense of physicality is always something I admire in other actors.

One of my favorite things in doing a little research about your work on this season was that you got to craft Loki’s last lin,e and it also maybe came from going on a run. Can you talk about that? Well, first on running, I love it and it is a big part of my life. And a big part of my creative life. Running outside, in space, in the world with only your own legs to carry you and your own breath to fuel you, I find incredibly freeing. And it's where I do some of my best thinking and dreaming and imagining. Things bubble up from inside you. So I often run at the beginning of a day, very early and with an awareness of what's coming, what the scenes of the day are. Sometimes things will bubble up. And maybe that's just extra oxygen in the brain, who knows?

But to the point about that last line: one of the things I kept trying to guide our team back to was that the whole series, both seasons, was really about finding purpose, or re-finding, re-defining, re-discovering a sense of purpose. And I think a primal need in all of us, is that we need our lives to mean something. So I kept coming back to this line from The Avengers, ‘I am Loki of Asgard and I am burdened with glorious purpose.’ And we kept thinking, well, if Loki has a second chance, he gets to redefine his purpose or re-imagine it. I went for a run and was listening to some film scores, and it was a beautiful day. I was thinking about the journey of playing this character and where it started, and all the people that I have had the great good fortune to work with and become friends with—that completely unique kind of soul-sharing relationship where you make something together. And I remembered the end of the first Thor film, and how emotional that felt and. I just suddenly thought, that's what he should say—but it should mean something completely different. Loki's last line in Thor, directed by Kenneth Branagh, is, ‘I could have done it, Father. I could have done it for you, for all of us.’ And of course his effort to gain his father's pride has been misguided and ill thought-out. And then at the end of Loki season 2, 14 years later, he turns to Mobius and Sylvie and says, ‘I know what I want I know what kind of god I need to be. For you. For all of us.’ It felt very resonant somehow. I hope the audience picked up on that.

Are you able to just say goodbye when it's wrap time, or do you have any sort of meditative, formal way of saying goodbye to a project or a character?

That's such a good question. I think it's a very honest, immediate feeling of relief, which they say is the most intense human emotion. You'd think it was anger or grief or something, but actually relief is—the way relief kind of washes through you, and a sense of finality that some finish line has been crossed and there are no more miles to run. And for me anyway, huge amounts of energy have been stored inside myself which had been poured out over time—over maybe 20 weeks or however many months.

I love that feeling of completeness. The great joy of what I do for a living is that it involves very intense, very close working with a team. And the pride that you can feel with your teammates, with your crew, with your cast—you just hang around and say goodbye, but it never really is goodbye. And there's just a sense of, like, “that'll do, pig,” you know? Yeah: that'll do, pig.

#tom hiddleston #loki #little gold men #emmy fyc interview #babe

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johannestevans · 4 months

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Woe, Boypussy Be Upon Ye: Transing Characters in Fanfic & Fanart

What’s the deal with envisioning your blorbos as transgender?

Originally published in Prism & Pen. Also on my Patreon.

It’s a meme, I made it. Here it is.

It’s been unbelievably positive for me as a trans dude, the change in approach to trans characters in fandom and subsequently in media in general, and I just wanted to write a bit about my experiences with the cultural shift and how positive it’s been for me personally.

What’s weird about people in fandom confidently, nay casually, writing characters as transgender and just having them be a regular dude with a pussy or a regular girl with a dick is that like… I remember when it wasn’t a thing.

Back in 2009, for example, which was a big time for fandom — Superwholock was running rampant, Star Trek (2009) had just gotten a new generation of fans into Trek — or even in 2012, when Les Misérables (2012) had dropped and gotten new people into Les Mis, or when the Hobbit had revamped a lot of interest in Tolkien’s books and the original Lord of the Rings films, not to mention The Hobbit itself, none of this even getting into the Marvel movies, like…

It just. It wasn’t a thing.

Sure, there were transgender characters around, characters that people wrote as trans, but I remember it so strongly as being very niche. It was deep, emotional work where people had to work to “justify” the emotional work they were doing, and even then, they couldn’t just say a character was trans and be chill about it. In order to justify a character being transgender, one had to put in mountains of evidence, or admit the trans perspective was a genderbend of sorts.

For me, I’m pretty sure the moment when things started to change was when I was reading and writing a lot of Loki-centred fanfiction, roundabout 2014–2017 — and the more permissive culture was very much borne of Loki being seen as an exception.

Loki, of the Marvel film and comics, is an alien secretly kidnapped and adopted into the Odinson family, and is known to change his body and appearance frequently, including changing his apparent gender or expression.

He was, in the comic canon (not to mention the original Norse mythologies) quite genderfluid, after all, so even if you didn’t refer to him as explicitly transgender, you could explore him as being some variety of genderfluid, nonbinary, or intersex — as an alien, as a Jötnar as opposed to being AEsir like Thor or Odin, as a god.

But then things changed a bit more.

Welcome to Night Vale, a weird narrative horror podcast, started in 2012, and one thing you could rely on from a lot of fanfics is that people might have weird or alien or otherwise not-not cisgender but not entirely cisgender genitals either. The Magnus Archives, also a narrative horror podcast, started in 2016, and when I got into the fandom in roundabout 2019, which is also when the new Good Omens TV show was due to release and there was a resurgence of interest in the book as well, I remember experiencing a sort of newfound thing where like…

I’d had a mental block around writing many trans characters, before — I could create my own characters who were trans, but a big part of me still felt like I wasn’t allowed to just make a canon character trans if they’d never been mentioned as being trans before or made explicitly trans.

What was it that stopped me?

My own dysphoria? Perhaps a little. Maybe some lacking self-confidence.

Most of all, it just felt as though I couldn’t justify it. I couldn’t justify seeing a cis man written by cis people in a cis show and saying, “Hey, no, he’s like me, actually” — even though I could easily do it about the same character being gay or Jewish or even chronically ill or disabled.

It was like there was a mental block inside me I just couldn’t get past.

I still had a lot of the old online cultural expectations stamped onto me, I think, even being an out trans man who knew many many other trans and intersex and nonbinary people of every gender imaginable in fandom.

I think for Welcome to Night Vale and then especially for The Magnus Archives, part of what made it so easy for people to write and envisage different characters as trans, the fact that there was such limited physical description of characters, the fact that you were attached to them by their voices alone, allowed people to envisage them in whatever way they liked.

In The Magnus Archives, most of the main characters are envisaged as trans in one way or another — Daisy Tonner particularly is explored with all flavours of butch dykey complexity, trans in whichever ways or directions are juiciest and most interesting. But for so many of the characters — from Jonathan Sims and Martin Blackwood to Sasha James and Tim Stoker to Elias Bouchard to Peter Lukas to any of the other Entities — there is no end to the characters people will explore or envisage as trans or nonbinary or just straight-up outside of gender or gender-weird.

No one has to justify a period character being trans with no problems. Loads of people write Izzy Hands or Stede Bonnet or Edward Teach, as being trans in Our Flag Means Death alongside the canonic nonbinary character Jim Jimenez. Any and all characters, trans or otherwise, are invited to participate in ye olde top surgery performed by Roach, the ship’s surgeon, or somehow get hold of ye olde hormones in whatever handwavy way necessary, and it’s cool and fine.

And what’s wonderful for me is the way I see the current approach to trans characters gleefully and delightedly applied to fandoms that are years if not decades old.

I see people write House MD fanfic now where they just go, right from the beginning, yeah this or that character is trans, and they’ve always been trans, and it’s chill. What if James Wilson was trans? It’d rock, that’s what. What if Greg House was trans? Yeah, he’d probably do his own T-shots under the table.

People write Spock as trans now, or guys from M*A*S*H, or Jean Valjean.

What if in the X-Files Dana Scully and Fox Mulder were T4T? Makes complete sense, and also, the idea fucks absolutely. They’re already so lesbian vibes for each other, it fits perfectly.

I wrote a silly little Tumblr post a few weeks ago envisioning Morticia and Gomez Addams as T4T, and it blew up immediately — I think about how if I’d made that most a decade ago it would have been met with crickets, if not a bit of scorn, and not just from transphobes, but just people who like me at that time hadn’t been able to relax and have fun with it.

That’s the real crux of the matter, the impact a lot of fandom has made on me and the way that trans characterisation is approached, the hunger I have for trans characterisation now — it’s the idea of being trans as joyful and delightful, as inherently fun and sexy, but also just as being something every day and normal. A detail you can include as casually in your interpretation of a canon character as any other headcanon.

There’s a beautiful freedom in it, and I’m so grateful to have been able to learn from and grow because of other trans people paving the way with their confident headcanons and delving into trans ideas in their fic.

It’s done wonders for me everywhere — not just in my fanfic, but most of all in the original works I pen now, each one of them featuring trans character after trans character.

#musings #fandom #fandom culture

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doctorofmagic · 6 months

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A friend of mine sent an ask but requested to stay anon! So here's the question:

I'm not the craziest about this ship so maybe my perception is not as deep as the fans. But I can definitely vouch for their relationship. Stephen assisted Tony several times in the past, despite their conflict between magic and science.

There was a time they were on opposite sides (check Civil War), which can definitely be perceived as angsty juice. After that, they never really had their time to talk about it, but they became closer and closer thanks to the Illuminati (and I mean, not in a healthy way since this group is not supposed to portray goodness. It's complicated).

Still, despite all the troubles that ensued, they've become even closer, and Tony always goes to Stephen whenever magic is involved because he truly trusts him. In an alternate future, Tony even becomes Sorcerer Supreme.

616 is not the best source of food for this ship imo, tho. I think Midnight Suns and Marvel Action: Chillers (IDWverse) are more interesting in this regard, they feel more... how can I put this... married. if not, then certainly domestic.

And yes, I do have a list of recs for some ships (because I'm insane). It needs some updating tho, so my apologies if it's not complete. I'll do my best!

1 - Avengers v1 #116-118 + Defenders v1 #8-10 (read concomitantly) 2 - Marvel Team-Up v1 #50-51 3 - West Coast Avengers #78-79 4 - What If? v2 #113 5 - New Avengers: Illuminati #1 (one-shot) 6 - New Avengers: Illuminati #1-5 7 - Civil War #1 8 - New Avengers v1 #28-30 9 - Invincible Iron Man v2 #22-24 10 - Marvel Holiday Special #1 11 - Avengers v4 #8-12 12 - Doctor Doom and the Masters of Evil #1 13 - Iron Man Legacy #6; #10-11 14 - New Avengers v3 #1-7; #9-10 (+Infinity #1-6); #18-22 15 - Invincible Iron Man v3 #3; #5 16 - Avengers v8 #1-6 17 - Doctor strange v5 #1 18 - Gwenpool Strikes Back #3 19 - Avengers: Loki Unleashed! #1 20 - Magnificent Ms. Marvel #9 21 - Tarot #1-4 22 - Mech Strike - Monster Hunters #1-5 23 - Fallen Friend - The Death of Ms. Marvel #1

Extra: Marvel Action: Chillers #1-4

Aaaand that's it! (we don' talk about the MCU...)

Thanks for passing by, I'm sending you much love! Take care!

#how can the sorcerer supreme be of assistance?#ask #doctor strange #stephen strange #tony stark #iron man #ironstrange #marvel comics #rec list

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buffyfan145 · 6 months

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Haven't seen this shared over here yet but very interesting seeing Marvel & "Loki" producer Kevin Wright say not only that Loki and Sylvie's romance was canon but that season 2 was driven by their "deep emotions for each other". He also said they wanted their relationship to be more messy and realistic and that they didn't have the time this season to have them have more one-on-one scenes. Also Kevin's last comment here was very interesting too. 😀

"I think it felt natural, and more realistic, and messy, and I think that was our thing is like real relationships are messy. And we wanted to do that and not force something that felt inauthentic just to like service fan dreams of seeing these two happy together. They both need a lot of personal work to get to a place where they could have a good relationship."

So again sounds like it's not over even if the "Loki" series does end. This Kevin is also the same one that said Loki "needs to get to a place so he can reunite with Thor" a few weeks ago, so something for sure is in the works. I have a feeling it's back in the movies as we already have rumors about Mobius and the TVA (and maybe Loki) in "Deadpool 3", then that "Thor 5" is searching for a new director but still in the works, and of course Loki now being in charge of the whole MCU and multiverse and both "Kang Dynasty" and "Secret Wars" dealing with that. I already expected more but this gave me even more hope.

#loki series #loki #sylvie #loki x sylvie #sylki #tom hiddleston #sophia di martino #spoilers #marvel

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cillianhead · 7 months

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Hey all! I'm sorta new to tumblr... I mean I've been reading fan fiction for like... forever on here but I've really been tempted to start writing stuff myself even if no one sees it.

I used to write stuff on wattpad and was pretty popular there but that was quite a while ago lol. Anyway... sorry this is so awkward.

I mainly write for fem and gender neutral readers :-) but am also willing to write for male readers too!!

Here are some of my interests and people I'd love to write about:

Cillian Murphy (characters: Jonathan Crane, Neil Lewis, Thomas Shelby, Kitten Braden, etc (pretty much any Cillian Murphy character bc we <3 him))

MCU characters (specifically: Bucky Barnes, Loki, Wanda Maximoff, Tony Stark, etc) Any marvel characters!

Pedro Pascal <3 (Any of his characters)

Harry Styles

Any sort of DILFy figures to be honest or any characters! I'm open to requests for anything :-)

I don't know if this selection of things is sorta too random. I really love writing and it would be cool for people to read my stuff! It's cool even if they don't but we'll see... just gotta come up... with some ideas first or something maybe?

Open to requests <3

Okay! Bye... I'll make another post... saying a bit more about myself so then maybe people will feel more comfy reading my stuff? Okay byeeee...

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gods-of-mischief · 6 months

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Our trust issue - thoughts after S02E05

I'll be completely honest, when I first saw the fifth episode, it really hit me, I was losing hope. I thought the angst between them and the tears in their eyes was enough after the last episode, but I was wrong. The day I first saw the episode, I was having a really bad day and I was sad and disappointed in a way the whole time… but now with hindsight, I realized how much I was experiencing it with them, like I was experiencing their joy and sadness with them and suddenly the sadness was just too much and it fell on my shoulders too. I wonder if this has happened to me before… and I don't think it has. And it just goes to show how powerful this story is.

I love the stories and have had many favorite couples, but Loki and Sylvie are just different. Their story came so unexpectedly, I never knew I would be so interested in it before it happened… but the beginning wasn't easy and the founding fans will remember what it was like. So much hate from some people and nonsensical assumptions pretty much ruined it for everyone who wanted to see Loki and Sylvie together. We were the weird ones.

I think that's the main reason why so many Sylki fans are scared, why they have trust issues, because everything between them was presented so vaguely in the beginning. Something like, "maybe it's a romantic line, maybe it's not"… and when it slowly became clear that the love was there, a bigger and bigger fandom started to build. But unfortunately, the antis never went away and never stopped spewing poison. The fan "war" has been there from the beginning and it's still there.

Two years is a long time to wait for a new series. The creators could have chosen any path they wanted. Even one where building up Loki and Sylvie's relationship could have been "too controversial" for them after the way some reacted to it. They could have slowly but surely thrown the whole thing in the trash. Maybe that's why it's so easy to lose trust when that clear confirmation, that clear confession hasn't come in five whole episodes and there's only one more until the finale. Again, we don't know if we'll see them in the next series, the next movie, what's next. The fear is understandable.

Two years is a long time, even for our own various assumptions, imaginations and dreams of what happens next. But just because things don't turn out the way we want or expect them to, doesn't mean it will turn out badly.

There is still a lot of unresolved stuff between Loki and Sylvie, there is still fear and hurt feelings. But their eyes don't lie, their looks don't lie. This isn't a dismissal of their relationship, because the way Loki looks at Sylvie… that's a love that can't be denied. They, too, have a big problem believing that the other won't hurt them, and we, the fans, are also afraid that we will be hurt and that "they will take them away from us."

But as Loki said "hope is hard". Like that's not just a message for Sylvie, but for all of us. And the pain between them is so palpable that it adds that extra bit to the story. Still, I firmly hope that with the finale, we all, and especially the two of them, get our well-deserved reward for patience… for trust… because I don't know who in the fictional world deserves a happy ending more than them.

#marvel #sylki #loki #sylvie #sophia di martino #tom hiddleston #loki and sylvie #S02E05 #thoughts #emotions #i just want to say

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cleolinda · 1 day

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Weekend links, April 28, 2024

My posts

I spent the first half of the week struggling through (well-medicated) mania and the second half currently with a sinus infection! I’m not enjoying it! Not either one!

Reblogs of interest

Pro-Gaza protests at universities in the U.S.: a solidarity Passover seder and an accidental Pulitzer photo

Canada Agrees 200 Islands Belong to the Indigenous Haida Nation

The Hot Vintage Lady Polls continue to go for the throat. I felt so bad about Dorothy Dandridge that I started posting and reblogging propaganda for her, but Ava Gardner, my beloved, went through anyway. Backing her felt like a wish on a monkey’s paw ("Not like this!!"). (See all poll results here.) I tremble to think what round 5 will look like. Like, there’s a point when your girl is gonna come up against a Hepburn, you know?

Notably gone this week: Judy Garland, Julie Andrews, Lupe Vélez, Irene Papas (who took out Vivien Leigh in the previous round), Gene Tierney, Barbara Stanwyck, Lena Horne, Jean Seberg, Anita Ekberg, Angela Lansbury, and Cyd Charisse. Like I keep saying, everybody loses. Everybody but one. Round 5 will start May 1st.

Hozier Watch 2024: His first U.S. #1, which he’s now playing at shows! The first U.S. #1 for an Irish artist in 34 years! What?? you cry. Did “Take Me to Church” not do that ten years ago? Well, I went and looked it up: No. That was the “Blank Space” era. Say no more.

Speaking of Taylor Swift—Paste Magazine went IN on the new album and got threats as a result. Meanwhile, Taylor’s fans are harassing the ex-boyfriend who did nothing wrong (as opposed to the racist one) because her PR is egging them on. I’ll admit: even though I’m not a fan, I found the Paste review to be overlong and not focused enough on the actual songs, proportionally. But that post about the PR saga is everything I miss about Fandom Wank.

(“My rival dresses to display her legs, and her shoes are of an alluring fashion”)

Meanwhile, the Watcher guys issued the best apology possible, although it was still excruciating to watch. (Background.) They will remain on YouTube while introducing the streaming service. As a Patreon member, I haven’t asked for my free subscription code yet, but I’m going to. Some fans forgave them pretty easily; others have walked away. I’m curious to see if this affects the mood of anything new they film, since a segment of the fandom got really, really ugly about it. Mostly it just felt sad all around.

Meanwhile, in Alabama: nobody wants to measure the feral hog.

Turns out Death Note had a good reason to concoct “American” names like “Bobson Dugnutt.” Also, I somehow had two posts tagged “death note” this week and I don’t even go here.

The worst brownies ever created and what Tumblr has to say about them

“You roll up to the Wizard Battle and your opponent takes out his spellbook but it’s just one of these”

I know that Loki is not Odin’s son in actual Norse mythology, but the bredlik is amazing.

TIL that Florence and Ravenna are still feuding over Dante’s remains

Maybe haunted dolls cost extra

Chorses

Video

Branch manager

Senior branch manager

“Free serotonin from Honey the Italian greyhound”

Sola learned to show love from her humans

I have seen many of jauncydev’s videos about dog personalities, but I have never seen him commit quite this hard before

I like tie-dye videos anyway, but this one is sick as hell

The sacred videos: you are not prepared for this police sketch, and neither is this news anchor

The sacred texts

Kick his ass, baby. I got yo flower.

Gold Star, You Tried: A compilation

A personal favorite: “mayhaps I TWIMST aroumd”

The origin of “By Talos this can’t be happening”

Personal tags of the week

Seasonally: cherry blossom. Also, art: an old standby, but it was really good, and also, I’m sick.

#weekend links #odds and ends #linkspam

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bbyboybucket · 3 months

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what is going on with thunderbolts??

Several things bestie. I’ll try to keep this as concise and calm as possible:

- if we’re first talking about real life, there has been stuff going on for a while because the script was rewritten twice and changed directors months ago. And It keeps getting delayed for reasons the now unrelated to the strike.

- Second real life issue is apparently something about it just sucks, because three actors have dropped. A long time ago, the person who plays Ava Starr, Hannah John-Kamen supposedly dropped out. However, there’s rumors that Goliath is in it so it’s unclear if maybe they negotiated to get Hannah back in the cast.

- Steven Yuen was supposed to be the main antagonist, he dropped out of it recently and marvel went to several actors to take his place, and multiple rejected it. Now, Ayo Edebiri (who was supposed to play Val’s assistant) has also dropped the movie. These are confirmed by the actors themselves.

- They are very obviously trying to recreate James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad after they seen how successful it was, however they’re very blatant about it. It’s barely hidden that they’re actually trying to create their own version of what their competitor made but the issue is that they aren’t actually thinking or trying to make a good, compelling story here. It’s solely cash grab and trying to get hype. That’s it.

- Bonus for real life issues: This isn’t talked about a lot and it’s messy, unclear situation, but essentially the team of people writing and directing Thunderbolts are actually proud rapist defenders.

Now let’s get into the issues with the movie itself and why I (and many many others) think it’s gonna be awful:

- Just to give a basis, other than some people here on tumblr, majority of the rest of the MCU fan base does not want this movie to be made. It’s a pretty general consensus amongst everyone that what they’re doing is not good. And I’m saying this just so you know I’m far from the only one with these opinions.

- The villain of the movie is Sentry/Void. Which is an absolutely awesome character but it makes absolutely zero sense for him, one of the most powerful characters, to be the antagonist against a team of 3 super soldiers and 3 regular humans. Realistically he would obliterate them, and for the thunderbolts to beat him, it’d take a lot of plot armor. And to me, that’s not only a waste of Sentry as character but also a waste of a movie. Because me and most others, don’t want to watch a movie where the protagonists only win because of plot armor. I wanna watch something thought out, engaging, where the threat is real and the end battle is hard because they’re on par. This is not that. And Sentry/Void could be used with other characters in such a cool way, there’s so much potential that’s been thrown out by doing this.

- With him being the villain, what’s been confirmed to happen in the third act is that Sentry will become Void, but the void is a new dimension in the multiverse. That’s literally what he becomes and the thunderbolts have to enter it. For one, that makes absolutely no damn sense to do for this movie and two, they already have a dimension in the mcu called the void. It’s in Loki.

- If they are gonna have team with only hand to hand combat abilities, then it should be a grounded, more street level movie. And it’s not. And it’s fucking stupid.

- There’s no power/ability diversity on the team which makes it kinda boring for one, but two, if they’re gonna have an extremely powerful villain, they need a team that’s not just people who know combat. There’s so many characters who should be Thunderbolts that would be more fitting and make the movie more interesting. White Vision should absolutely be there, especially considering that he’s government property. It makes no sense that he wouldn’t be on a government team and he alone would bring some uniqueness to the skill set. Abomination should be there. Zemo, despite being a normal human, should absolutely be on the team considering he was the actual founder and primary leader of it in the comics. For fucks sake they could introduce a new character or two just to give the team some interesting abilities.

- I’ve been saving this for last. As a Bucky fan, obviously one of my biggest issues is that he’s apart of the team. I’m gonna try to keep this short, but he doesn’t belong there, it doesn’t make sense for him to be on the team after the past ten years of his arc and development. All this time he’s been the good guy victim who’s overcome the fact that he was manipulated and used by the villains. But now, they’re pivoting into villainizing him, which is not speculation, Feige and other people involved have made several quotes now claiming he’s bad.

- Even if it’s technically comics accurate, Bucky is a very different character in the MCU than he is in the comics. He’s a much more violent and rough character in the comics because that’s all he’s ever known, he was raised as a child soldier then became an assassin. In the mcu, unlike the other characters on the team, he is not morally grey. Yes, what he does have in common with Yelena and Taskmaster is that he was mind controlled and is now a hero, but it’s a very different situation. Yelena and Taskmaster were from birth raised as assassins, even if they’re reformed and free now, the only thing they have experienced and been taught is violence, they have a rougher edge, they’re very much morally grey because of it. Bucky on the other hand, lived a normal life until he was nearly 30 years old. He was grown man when hydra took him. In those 30 years, he developed a strong moral compass and I’d say it’s close to that of Steve’s. Take Hawkeye as an example, even though Yelena is a good guy now, she was still perfectly fine with killing Clint because she viewed him as a bad person. She’s not afraid to kill someone if she deems it necessary. Bucky, on the other hand would not do that. He consistently talks about how he doesn’t want to kill or severely hurt anyone, whether they’re a villain or not. And in TFATWS, he even pulls his punches. Also he doesn’t kill Zemo when he has the opportunity, Yelena (and definitely any other team member) would have. That’s a big part of where the difference lies and how they’re not following what’s been established for his character.

- Also it’s claimed that Bucky is supposed to be the leader of the team which is another thing that’s out of character. For one, he’d never willingly join this team and lead it. Basically the only way is if he was forced by conditions of his pardon. Two, he doesn’t have the leadership skills, he’s not a natural leader, he’s always preferred to be the side kick and let someone else take the lead. Three, there’s no way in hell he could actually manage that team and get any one of them to respect him and follow his authority. I’m sorry but they would absolutely all brush him off as a joke. Even TFATWS, John Walker uses Bucky as a damn doormat yet I’m expect to believe he and other people like him will listen to what Bucky says? No.

For your sake, this is all and this is the simplified version of my thoughts because I don’t wanna make this longer than it already is. But yeah, I don’t know if you’ll disagree with me, but I think this is just a damn mess of a movie that either needs to be entirely scrapped or be revised top to bottom.

#I’m very sorry for how long this is #I tried my best to keep it short but….#anyways yeah I’m extremely anti-thunderbolts and I’m manifesting it just gets cancelled at this point #asks #thunderbolts #mcu #marvel #bucky barnes

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starlightbelle · 6 months

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Infinity war death is better because he did it for thor. Tree loki never made amends with thor. Why cwnt loki have both his friends and his brother

Interesting

If you’re asking me if I think he deserves to have both his brother and his friends, then I would respond emphatically: YES

Without question or hesitation.

Loki deserves to live. He deserves happiness and satisfaction. Loki deserves to love, and to be loved in return. He deserves his brother, and he deserves his friends.

Loki’s sacrifice is valid in both. I don’t disagree with you there. But his death was badly written in Infinity War and thus the execution seemed a poor reflection of his character…or at the very least incomplete.

He sacrificed himself for Thor, yes, and that intent is such a worthy sacrifice. But the way Loki’s skills and abilities were so underutilized by the writing did such a disservice to his character.

In reality, Loki is probably more scrappy and definitely more resourceful than that. He’s smart/clever enough to know better than to reveal himself to Thanos without a backup plan (or more).

And Loki would NOT go out without a fight. A real fight. He would use every ounce of his power, every tool in his arsenal, everything remotely at his disposal to do as much damage as he could in what time he had. He would fight and fight and fight even if (and especially if) he knew he had no chance at making it out alive.

Thanos was intended to be menacing but Loki is far stronger than he was given credit for in that scene and his death was used merely as a plot device…they killed Loki off so easily in that opening scene as a way to demonstrate Thanos’ power and establish him as a real threat. That’s all.

They reduced what should’ve been a meaningful sacrifice to save the life of his brother down to a pitiable demonstration of the lengths he’s willing to go to to protect those he loves.

Thor’s life and countless others were at stake and Loki would fight tooth-and-nail to protect Thor’s life. If he knew he would die regardless, Loki would try to inflict whatever impairment he was able to the slow his enemy down or cause them as much of a handicap as he is able.

What I like about LOKI’s ending is how Loki was shown to withstand the time radiation without even the use of a suit. It was reminiscent of Thor taking the full power of a dying star. He’s able to do that because he isn’t human; he’s the only person on that Team (save for Sylvie maybe) who could make that play.

I think the point you’re trying to make is that Loki sacrificing himself for Thor is objectively more impactful to the audience than him saving the multiverse? Because at least that way he showed his brother that he loved/cared for him?

I definitely agree I wish we’d gotten to see Thor and Loki’s story get closure, but I knew having Thor make a cameo on the series was pretty much impossible. It would be more satisfying to fans of the characters to see them reunite/ make amends/ etc.

I don’t disagree. At all.

That’s part of what makes his sacrifice that much more heart-wrenching. It’s very Shakespearean and it’s tragic, and it’s not the happy ending I think Loki deserves…but it is fitting in the sense that Loki chose to sacrifice himself.

He does that a lot, actually. He’s a very self-sacrificial character

Loki’s desire to be loved/have friends/not be alone is constantly at war with his intense passion/ love and need to give and give and GIVE of himself to make that a reality.

It breaks my heart that Loki will never get reconciliation with his brother, that Thor will go on never knowing what happened to his brother, with the last memory of him being the Attack on New York. This hurts, it’s heartbreaking…but despite that, Loki ultimately did make the sacrifice play so those he loved (that includes Thor) would be able to live even if that means never seeing any of them again.

He is incredibly selfless by resigning himself to an eternity of isolation to sustain the lives of those he loves.

Despite the tragic nature of his ending, I think it’s also kind of beautiful.

#loki #loki series #loki spoilers #loki season 2 #that’s my take on it at least #Loki is my favorite Marvel character and so I do have a lot of thoughts on this #so much more than what I’ve written here #but thank you anon #you gave me the opportunity to express some of my thoughts after that emotional finale #as well as some pent-up thoughts I’ve had since Infinity War #MCU #marvel #my post #loki meta #marvel meta

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onehundredandeleventropicalfish · 1 year

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Any thoughts on the theory that Delirium is the only Endless that can break the fourth wall / is aware of their nature as graphic novel characters? I've seen it mentioned as an explanation to why she knows of things outside Destiny's garden.

oh interesting

i've never heard that theory before, but i am perfectly willing to believe it! (at least in the comics universe, dunno about the show)

both because a) delirium has literally broken the fourth wall before, to get back to her realm when she was upset

and b) the reason i say comics more than show, is that the netflix show is standalone. but the comics are dcu. and while it's definitely its own story, the dcu is integrated into sandman - both in small ways, like neil gaiman populating the dreaming with minor forgotten characters from other dc stories, and in large ways, like dream finding himself suddenly in the aspect of the martian dream god in the presence of martian manhunter, and being surprised because he thought this aspect was dead, that there were no green martians left

and while my knowledge of dc is kinda sporadic, i have a friend who's super into it, so i have it on good authority that those kinda fourth wall breaks are not new for dc, i believe one of the superboys was actually from our universe and a fan of the superman comics before he found himself in that world?

so yeah, if we take destiny's book to be the complete respository of sandman comics (which would make sense, given volumes like overture where we get stuff like this)

then yeah, since destiny's book is stated to contain everything in the universe, "there are things not in your book" is good evidence that delirium is very aware that the sandman comics are not the only universe out there, and that in at least one universe, they are fictional characters

(though if that is true that's one hell of a secret for delirium to have to keep to herself, she'd have the most responsibility of any of the endless)

(maybe also with dream, who is the only other endless we know to have definitively crossed universes when he rewrote the old one, it's confirmed even the endless forgot about the old universe, only dream remembers)

(i'd love to see a fic taking this headcanon, because that would mean delirium also knows of the old universe)

but that idea of responsibility brings me to another thing i've been thinking about in regards to delirium, which i think is the most tragic thing about her

there may be only one endless in charge of destiny, but i think the forces of fate act equally through destiny and delirium, just in opposite ways. if the endless represent the most fundamental parts of life, it makes sense that the oldest and youngest kinda bookend things this way

for the most part, she is everything i said in that post, she's a lot more aware than people assume of her

but she has moments of being unaware. times where the delirium takes over. and when she loses herself, fate takes control

like. sure, there were a lot of pieces surrounding dream's tragedy, and yes as any tragedy it does come down to the fact that dream was not the person who could ever have gotten himself out of that situation. but the situation still needs pieces to be moved into place.

destiny starts it off. and destiny gets both the privilege and the tragedy of knowing he has to start it. he calls a family dinner because it has to happen, which kicks off season of mists, which means dream makes that deal with loki, who kidnaps daniel, and now lyta's orchestrating dream's demise

delirium doesn't know what's going to happen. she just gets impulses that overtake her. it's been three hundred years since destruction left, but all of a sudden all she knows is she has to find him now. strongly enough that she's willing to ask every one of her siblings to help, despite admitting they scare her. strongly enough that she'll go on her own if she has to. strongly enough that it's the only thought in her mind, as the chaos within her makes her feel physically sick

coincidentally, this is at the exact moment dream is brooding over thessaly and will take literally any distraction offered, which means he goes with delirium, which kickstarts a chain of deaths destruction accidentally set up centuries ago, which means they need to find destruction to stop it, which means dream has no choice but to get help from orpheus, and there's only one thing orpheus has wanted from dream these last 3000 years

delirium thought if she found destruction it would bring their family back together again. but all it did was make him go even further away, and cement another piece of dream's tragedy

and then there's kindly ones, the next time she loses herself. part of her can sense that something bad is about to happen, but she doesn't know what, she just knows she lost her dog, and has to find him. and she goes to visit destiny to help, and sees that dream's statue is visibly upset, so she goes to visit dream to try and cheer him up and distract him again like last time, but he can't come with her this time, so he just sends a nightmare to help her find barnabas. and then on the way she runs into nuala and tells her dream's in trouble and won't leave the dreaming, which nuala takes to mean the dreaming is the danger and she summons him, and dream can't find it in himself to refuse, which gives the kindly ones control over the dreaming

and from there delirium tries so hard to save dream but everyone she goes to for help just tells her it's too late. and in this instance they're right.

she sees so much and understands so much and in some ways she's actually one of the more stable endless, bc she may be delirium but her current state is resilient and sustainable compared to the knife's edge dream and desire especially are living on, trying not to break by just ignoring the things they can't handle

delirium's seen the deepest depths of what she can't handle and pulled herself back together again

but how much is that knowledge and tenacity worth, if when it comes down to it she causes the things she tries desperately to stop?

i haven't written a meta about this yet bc honestly i think about it and just wanna give del a hug

but this is a good place for it i think, bc like. how does that change, if delirium is aware that she's not in charge of her life?

i can't decide if it would wreck her further (or rather, has already wrecked her further) or if it doesn't change anything at all

#sandman comic spoilers #the sandman #ask #delirium of the endless #meta #mine

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lokiforever · 1 year

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New teachers at School 🏫❤️

A/N : Sorry guys I forgot to mention the reader and her best friend live together in an apartment

Chapter 2

Tom : For the first thing please call me Tom when we're alone and for another......

Knock Knock

Tom : Excuse me

Tom opens the door slightly

Tom :Hello mate, mornin' miss Carter

Jk: Hey!!

Y/B/F/N: Morning, Professor

Tom : What brings you here?

Mr Jungkook : I was going to the library so I thought you would like to join...

Tom : Oh, I'd love to...but I have to discuss the teaching assistant thing with miss Y/L/N

Tom opens the door further so you were now visible

Y/N : Hello, professor

Jk: Hello, Miss Y/L/N

Jk : She can also join, anyways miss Carter would also be joining us.

Tom : Oh, that's great. Let's go!

Jungkook : Mmhmm

In the library

Tom : So girls are you having any issues with any of the topics in History, English or Science?

Y/N : Thank you so much, Professor. But, no, everything is clear. All thanks to you both.

Y/B/F/N:Thank you, professor. Me neither...

Tom : Anytime!

The rest 1 hr passes by, discussing some Shakespeare and reading.

*After I hour *

Mr. Jk : Miss Carter?

Y/B/F/N : Yes, professor?

Jungkook : I think we should go now......we have to discuss tomorrow's timetable, remember?

Y/B/F/N: Oh, yeah... Right. Let's go.

Jk: I gotta go. Bye Hiddles

Tom : Ok, Bye Kook

They give each other a quick nod and a friendly /manly hug.

After a few minutes......

Tom : Uhhh..... Miss Y/L/N?

Y/N : Yes, Mr Hiddleston?

Tom : May we go to my office, if you'd be comfortable there? Otherwise it's fine, we can sit here ...

Y/N : No,no it's fine. We can go to your office.

Tom : Ok then, let's go

God, this man!!!!!! How can someone be so perfect? He is just amazing. Not to mention the fact that he resembles very much to Loki, your mcu crush and comfort character. 'He's your professor y/n for God's sake ' you thought.

In Mr Hiddleston's office

Tom : Miss Y/L/N, tell me about yourself cuz as we will be working together, we should know each other.

Y/N : Firstly please call me Y/N.

Tom : Mmhmm

Y/N : Uhhhhhh..... I like to draw, cook, I recently started writing. I hate it when people put fake allegations against me and my favorite color is not specific.......but I guess we can say black.

Tom : Really?! I'd love to see one of your works someday....

'No you wouldn't cuz they are about you only....and Loki I only write fan fictions!!' . It was only when your professor's soothing voice snapped you out of your thoughts.

Tom : Y/N??

Y/N : Y-Yeah, s-sure why not?

Two more hours pass by, discussing the syllabus and even talking about your and his interests.

*After two hours *

You yawn

Tom : I guess it's enough for today..... Would you like to go to the cafeteria for some tea, coffee or something to eat? It'll be on me.......maybe cuz it's your first day as my teaching assistant

Y/N : Tom you really don't have to -

Tom : Please, I insist!

Y/N : Ok, fine

*At the cafeteria*

Tom and you were standing at the counter.

Tom : Hello, I'd like an Earl gray, please.

Y/N : Hey.A cup of hot chocolate , thank you!

You both took your orders and headed to the tables and couch. There you met someone.....

Y/N : Hey, Mr Jungkook. Hi, Y/B/F/N.

Tom : Hi Kook, Miss Carter *nod*

Both of them greeted you back. They were sitting on the couch, talking, smiling and laughing.

Mr. Jungkook : Miss Carter was a little tired, so I thought a cup of coffee could help.

Tom : It indeed was a long day.

After finishing your drinks you all headed out and said your goodbyes. You and your best friend sat in your car and returned to your shared apartment.

In your apartment

Y/N : So, how was your day, my dear?!

Y/B/F/N: Couldn't be better!! How about yours?!

Y/N : Amazing!! Though I frequently had to remind myself that I can't fawn over my professor 😂😂😂

Y/B/F/N and you start laughing and talking about your days

********* TIME SKIP *********

'November ; time for the annual feast '

You and your best friend were getting ready for the annual feast. It was an amazing event ; dance, food, drinks and dresses.

Your dress 👇🏻

You let your hairs down in waves and wore some plain black heels and a simple makeup ;neither too much nor too less. You were taking your car for going there but your bestie had to go to her mother after the feast, so she'd be taking a cab.

*At the feast *

Tom and Jungkook's jaw dropped after seeing you both and your by seeing Tom. Same was with your best friend except the fact that she was enchanted by Jungkook and you by Tom.

You were standing in the middle of the hall with a drink in your hand. A guy named David was constantly trying to make conversation with you. But oh lord, you could already sense the negative vibes from him. It was when Tom came to the rescue. God bless him!

Tom : Would you mind if I steal miss y/l/n for a minute, Mr. Richard?

David Richard : Of course not, professor. Take your time!

You followed Tom untill that David guy was no longer in veiw.

Tom : You look ravishing today, my dear!

You blush at the compliment

Y/N : You don't look any less either, Professor.

Tom extends his hand for you to take it. From the corner of your eyes you could see that your friend already found someone. You were really happy for her.

Tom : May I have this dance, my lady?

*********************

Taglist:

@holdmytesseract @dishahaldar @jennyggggrrr

Hope you like it! See you guys in the next chapter. Bye. Have a good night /day 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻💗💗💗💗

#professor hiddleston #hiddlesarmy #Tom hiddleston #Jungkook #Professor hiddleston x reader #Professor x student #Marvel #Loki #Hiddleston

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eternally--mortal · 11 months

Text

One of my many time travel headcanons slots into the irondad—spiderson corner of the Marvel fanverse. I love Spider-Man and his stories, but I also suffer from visceral second-hand embarrassment and second-hand pain of seeing someone neglected or abandoned or alone, so most of my voluntary interactions with the Spider-Man/Marvel fan sphere come from the warm and fuzzy and emotionally rewarding sections with Tony and Peter becoming family. I know there are some arguments about how realistic that may or may not be to the movies, but I don’t really care. I love that those fan fictions and fan arts exist and I embrace them because they’re my favorite way of intaking that particular corner of media. So if you’re on that same page with me, enjoy my little private time travel headcanon:

In a Universe where Tony survives, Beck would have to curb his plans. They wouldn’t have formed the same way. For one thing, the drones and the glasses wouldn’t have been accessible through Peter / Tony’s will. For another, Peter would have been immediately more obviously tied to Tony, because Tony wouldn’t want to let him out of his sight after saving the world for Peter. In this version Tony and Pepper essentially adopt Peter and share informal joint custody with May. Peter gets to be Morgan’s older brother and he eventually sees Tony as his dad. They take their time to adjust: Peter has time to settle after the snap and find a new equilibrium, and the group of them develops a normal family routine. There’s definitely an optional version of this where Harley’s there as well because I have a soft spot for that, but this is mostly about Peter and Morgan (sorry Harley. You’re awesome, I just didn’t imagine you in the bulk of this story).

Beck’s team takes longer to get their shit together—partially as a plot device to allow Peter to adjust enough to call Tony “dad” and partially because Tony isn’t dead in this version, so their plans have to be different.

When the public figures out that Tony has a ‘son’—one that’s just as smart as he is—Beck and his crew decide not to go directly after the drones. They go for the kids instead. They figure ‘hey, if the rumors are true and the brat is just as smart as Tony, he can build whatever we want him to. If not, we can use the kids as leverage to get what we want.’ They go after Peter and Morgan and steal some of Tony’s super-secret-recently-invented time travel technology and hop around the space time continuum for a little bit. They don’t realize that Peter is Spider-Man because they’re convinced he’s Tony’s son and have fixated on that rather than on the fact that Peter might be a superhero (since Tony so obviously considers him a son they didn’t do as much digging into ‘why on earth would Tony Stark take interest in this random kid?’). But Peter doesn’t know whether he should play his hand as Spider-Man. They keep him separated from Morgan most of the time and he has to keep her safe because they’re threatening him with her. Peter doesn’t want to take the risk that he’ll escape and they’ll portal away with Morgan somewhere/when where he can’t find them.

Beck and his crew haven’t tried to reach out to Tony yet. They’re pretty confident that they can use Morgan to get whatever they want out of Peter instead. And besides that, Beck really just wants to make Tony suffer, so he figures taking his kids somewhere unreachable is the best way to do that. But he also wants to be able to watch Some version of Tony, just to remind himself of whom he’s torturing. So after hop-skip-jumping their way through the time stream, Beck takes them back in time to just after the Avengers saved the world from Loki—or some other convenient time within the span of movies. There’s some flexibility there. (The watches work for all of these trips. It’s possible that Peter and Tony revisited the tech to eliminate Pym Particles as an energy source. Maybe Beck’s team of engineers found another power source. Or maybe they just have a huge stash of particles. I don’t know. I didn’t really think about that part of the story. This is really mostly just background.)

Peter wants to lessen the risk of being more permanently separated from Morgan, he wants to make it easier for Tony to find them, AND he likes that they’re in a time period where he can reach some version of the Avengers. So he sneaks out while they’re trying to make him build something and he sabotages all of the time bracelets so they can’t be used again.

The real meat of the story comes with the back-in-time Avengers. Tony gets an odd transmission that he can’t open (because Peter sent it to JARVIS in the hopes that His version of Tony would find it and see it in the future and would know when and how to come back and get them). Then the Avengers run into the future version of Tony who shows up in the past. Younger Tony gets super suspicious, and he and the other Avengers assume that this is some super villain using a copy of the Ironman suit.

Beck’s crew may also have done something to get them on Team Cap’s radar, and Cap may be investigating some of their movements as potential remnants of Hydra or something else equally suspicious. Especially since Beck’s crew may have been too bold entering into this part of the timeline when they assumed they’d have access to an escape (before Peter broke the bracelets).

Finally the Avengers have a run-in where they see Tony’s face. Maybe they even catch him and drag him back to Avengers Tower (which of course he would know how to control / escape). He won’t tell them what’s going on because he takes one look at his younger self and sees a traumatized man with narcissistic tendencies who is Not ready to be a father. So he just tells them that Beck “stole something from me” and to “not get involved.” He plays up some of his familiar bravado and ego so they won’t dig too far into what exactly Beck might have stolen.

Meanwhile Beck is getting fed up with Peter, for obvious reasons. They’re trying to get him to fix the bracelets on Top of everything else they wanted him to do, but he keeps stalling for time. Beck keeps almost catching him recording covert videos, and before Peter has the chance to upload and send any more of them, the crew packs up and ditches the base where they were originally holding the kids. Peter and Morgan are now stuck in the past together, but Peter’s finding fewer and fewer opportunities to escape with her without revealing himself, and now that they’re in the past he’s afraid that Beck might discover his identity and go after Peter’s younger self as well before he even has the spider bite. Besides that, none of Beck’s team realizes how much food Peter needs to eat to stay functional. And when he’s difficult they do things like withhold food (which is a problem for his metabolism), withhold heat (when he can’t thermoregulate, so it’s basically like drugging him because it makes his body think it has to hibernate), actually drug him, etc. He’s hedging between causing problems to make life difficult for Beck, playing at good behavior in order to get more time with Morgan, actually practicing semi-good behavior to buy some time for Tony to come get them, and trying to formulate a better escape plan. And when Beck relocates them to an old Hydra base, Peter decides not to take any risks about showing off his spider powers.

The Avengers team breaks into Beck’s old base after the relocation. Cap is convinced that Tony made some stupid world-ending tech that’s going to get them all killed and that That is what Beck stole. That, or it’s just the time travel tech. To be fair, Tony is also pretty convinced that it’s some sort of tech, and he’s fairly invested in finding out what future-y stuff his older self is being so cagey about. They find evidence of a lab with mechanical parts (tools and pieces that they gave Peter to try and get him to build things, etc.). But Nat comes across a room with a blanket in the corner and a couple crayon drawings and does the whole “Guys, maybe we’re on the wrong trail here” bit about how maybe they don’t really know what’s been stollen. Tony gets what he can out of the computer and takes it back to the tower to decode.

A week later he’s de-encrypted the files enough to access some of the videos that Peter made and saved behind some walls of coding.

There are little snippets that show Peter stalling for time, ones that show some of the repercussions of his sabotaging the watches, etc. There are videos that show how much Beck’s team is treating him as a stupid normal kid and trying to manipulate him in a variety of ways—sometimes with Morgan, sometimes with violence or bribery.

A video where Peter wonders if he should be building something to appease them because they’re not feeding him and he needs to see Morgan, and how he wants to hold out, but Dad he’s not sure he’s going to be able to if it means Morgan might get hurt. How he promises to take care of her.

There are videos of Peter being a little shit and pulling tricks behind Beck’s back to mess with the tech.

A video of Peter looking a little better and Morgan sitting there assisting him and handing him the right tools before he can finish asking for them. They sing a little Italian at each other (in this version May taught Peter some Italian and Tony taught Morgan and Peter some as well). Morgan tells Peter “that’s not the way Daddy builds it.” And Peter has to tell her that they don’t have dad’s stuff at their disposal. (They’re sneakily building an E.M.P. instead of whatever Beck wants. That’s why Peter had to stash the thumb drive so it wasn’t hooked up to the computer system. Unfortunately Beck gets wind of it and figures out what they’re doing before they can use it. He’s noticed the Avengers sniffing around which is why they ditch their original base.) There’s definitely a moment in a video somewhere where they’re talking about Pepper (calling her ‘mom’) and how she would be able to stop Beck maybe even more easily than Tony—Peter says it as a Half-joke to make Morgan feel hopeful—and Peter says “can you do your mom impression?” And Morgan’s face transforms into this little deadpan look and she goes “No, Tony.” And they both laugh and joke about how Pepper would just tell Beck “No” and take them home. And then we see Beck storm in and discover the E.M.P. and throw it into the corner where it smashes (which is how the Avengers find it when they investigate), and we watch Morgan get dragged off screaming and Peter screaming back for her and trying to talk down Beck while Beck is pulling the whole ‘I thought letting you work with your sister would make you behave, but obviously I can’t trust the two of you together’ bit. He says shit like ‘you’re a worse brat than your dad’ and insults their whole family and says some nasty things about Tony and then about Peter and Morgan all while he’s ordering his people to shut the place down and clear out. Beck figures out that Peter’s been recording all of this after his team drags the kids out and he leaves a nasty message for Tony about how he’s going to pay, blah blah blah, how he’s never going to get his kids back. Something dramatic.

Obviously there’s some backlash in the team to Tony finding out that he’s a dad or that he’s going to be. They try to do some calculating to figure out when he’s going to have Peter (since they assume he’s a bio kid), but some of that is messed up by the fact that they don’t know about the snap or the five years that Peter lost. It’s generally chaos. They’re also a little more rushed to figure this out now that they know that there are kids involved. (They also don’t realize that Peter has powers, but it shouldn’t really matter because he’s a kid anyway.)

(At some point there would also be a conversation later when they meet up with Older Tony where someone suggests that Younger Tony just deal with Beck in the present time to avoid all of this so that Older Tony can explain how time travel doesn’t work like that and that This future version of Beck is already set the way he is, likely on a deviant path from their own Beck.)

Beck super mad that the time watches are broken and that the Avengers are on their tail. He rigs up the Hydra base and uses some of his hologram tech to manipulate the kids into thinking they’re being rescued when they’re not (either just to be an asshole or to try and get Peter to fix the watches through manipulation), or to show Peter a hologram of Morgan when she’s not in the room and vice versa to mess with them. At one point he possibly makes Peter think he’s shooting Morgan or something as a form of punishment for Peter not cooperating. There’s a large variety of evil that Beck is frankly willing to dip into to psychologically mess with these kids (and Tony by extension).

Older Tony and the Avengers end up working together to go save Peter and Morgan, which could honestly go a variety of ways. But I like the idea that Peter and Morgan are integral to the escape somehow, by building something or by Morgan remembering something important or by Peter using his smarts or his powers just a little. Younger-Tony gets handed Morgan (by another hero, against his will) at one point while Older Tony is in another room on the other side of the base trying to negotiate with Beck who’s threatening to kill Peter (something like that), and Morgan calls him Mr. Stark or Tony instead of Dad or Daddy because “You’re not my Dad yet” and makes a comment about how there isn’t enough gray in his hair. And he’s not really sure how to respond to her so they’re kind of strangers to each other.

Morgan possibly mentions something about ‘why didn’t you bring Uncle Bucky?’ and Steve just about has a heart attack, and Peter has to defuse it like ‘I don’t think they know about Uncle Bucky yet.’

Beck and his crew are taken into custody. Peter and Morgan get some time in the med bay for recovery. We get to see them interact with JARVIS (which is a little odd because they usually just have FRIDAY). The Avengers get to see Tony being a dad—even if he’s a little cagey about it around the super hero team. There are allusions to him being married to Pepper (without them directly saying it). Peter and Tony fix the time watches (without letting JARVIS see the schematics, because we can’t have an earth-conquering robot knowing how to traverse space-time), and they go home. (Either that or we involve Harley, who’s possibly been home with Pepper this whole time and did not get kidnapped because having all three kids would have driven Beck over the edge. And Harley took care of the technology from his end and ended up altering the tech to open a doorway instead of just using the watches. Not canon compliant, but I don’t know that I mind it as an option. Because, again, The Feels are more important to me for this particular story.) There’s definitely a little moment somewhere in their stay at the tower in the past with the Avengers where Peter wants to drink coffee or something and Tony tells him ‘thanks, no, I’ll take that’ and then asks Morgan to do a Mom (Pepper) impression, so Morgan turns to Peter and goes “No,” and Peter responds with “traitor” or something. I don’t know I think it would be cute.

And then there’s just the aftermath. Peter has Aunt May and MJ and Ned waiting for him when he gets back home. There’s family time with Pepper (and maybe Harley???). All those good vibes. Back in time there’s an acknowledgement of the fact that Tony is a whole-ass person who will grow and develop. Cap wants to go look for Bucky. And the seed has been planted that something is going to go wrong with JARVIS. Tony wonders if Peter’s out there somewhere and was possibly a child of one of his one night stands. Things like that.

#tony stark #peter parker #irondad #spiderson #marvel Spider-Man #mcu spiderman headcanon #mcu headcanon #marvel headcanon #marvel fanfiction #Tom holland’s Spider-Man #I’ve been sitting on this idea for a while because then No Way Home came out #and I was depressed all over again and reminded that the way I like to view Peter’s story is not how it’s portrayed in film #and how it’s also super tragic in the comic books and in ever iteration of his story #that doesn’t mean I don’t like the films #but I’m really glad that the fandom has this corner to it #it’s been a valuable fan experience for me and has been personally healing in a lot of ways #it’s rewarding to see Tony as a parent for Peter #I’ve had this one in my head for a while #I’m sure there are scenes I’ve thought of that I’m forgetting now #or that I’ve smushed together or altered #and I know I had some alternate storyline scenes and moments when I was first considering it #I just don’t remember them now #stories I don’t have the energy to write but that live rent free in my head #let Peter and Morgan be siblings #Let Tony be Peter’s dad #I love them #they’re a lil family #time travel au #I have too many of these I know #it’s my trope weakness

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purplekoop · 1 month

Text

So Marvel Rivals, that's an interesting surprise from nowhere! A new hero shooter with emphasis on the "Hero", but with a 6v6 format... huh. Interesting.

I'd do a full breakdown of everything shown so far but that feels like a job for someone with a usable computer. For now I'll just give my quick thoughts as a fan of both the genre and the IP.

On the Marvel side of things there's a good bit to be excited for already, with an interesting roster of picks already. Got a lot of obvious staples along plenty of choices that don't feel like cheap MCU tie-ins. Glad there's already a few X-men in, and genuinely very happy to see some characters I've literally never heard of. Again this mostly feels great because of how the MCU dominance has been overtly a hindrance to games like Marvel vs Capcom Infinite, where if a character didn't have a movie already out or in the works then they had a fat chance of getting in, even for series staples like Doctor Doom and literally any X-men characters.

On the gameplay side I can't say too much on the finer details, but it looks like individual characters bring a lot of interesting mechanics to the game. Doctor Strange can make portals, Hulk has his iconic leap and even has a transformation mechanic where he seems to need to spend some time as Banner before he can do the real work, and Loki has some sort of copycat technique. So... teleporting teammates, leaping and getting angry, duplication... yeah maybe these aren't as unique as they sound when tied to characters with a history of using those abilities outside of games.

There does also seem to be some sort of unique "team up" mechanic, like Hulk can lend Iron Man some gamma energy to power up his big laser blasts, or Rocket can scamper onto Groot's back in classic fashion. Not sure if these are unique interactions based on specific synergies, or if it's a more modular system, like first example coming to mind, Kirby Star Allies. Either has some balance or mechanical concerns, but it certainly sounds interesting.

The third person camera is also unique for a hero shooter, which makes me anticipate a less aim-intensive game and one more about movement, ability usage, and team play. Definitely a fair choice given the cast, plus I imagine it's compelling to actually see the iconic character you're controlling.

Now a big point I wanna address:

Will this be the Overwatch killer??

...no, probably not, sorry.

I think regardless of how much this game succeeds or OW2 fails, I don't think it's going to be much of a competition. Not as in Overwatch is gonna curb stomp it, but I just don't see the two games butting heads that much. Marvel Rivals seems to be going in its own direction with the finer details, even something as simple as first versus third person camera seems to inform pretty sweeping differences.

Plus, in the past I think calling any game the "killer" of the previous big thing in the genre. Looking to Overwatch specifically, people tried to call it the TF2 killer, which... I mean TF2 kinda killed itself trying to be like Overwatch, so bad example, but even with Valve's shortsighted incompetence TF2 never totally died, it's still got a solid playerbase and plenty of fans in spite of its rough post-2016 history, and with Overwatch existing completely fine alongside it. And "Overwatch killers" have come in the past, but never really meant much to OW besides some players deciding they preferred the other game more. Apex and Valorant are more just other subgenres with a "Hero" twist and not quite the same kind of game as OW, but Paladins was undoubtedly trying to fill that more specific niche. And... it didn't totally fail. No seriously, any game that still has its fans and active players, however few, is worth respect in my book.

I think that's the beauty of it, that multiple teams are willing and able to make their own approach to the same concept! That's how we get interesting new ideas, and move the subgenre forward in cool ways! To be blunt, ideally for me OW2 AND Marvel Rivals go on to coexist and both be great! If people prefer one over the other then that's fantastic, but the fact multiple options exist with their own ideas and approaches is so cool to me.

It's like with a similar subgenre developing over the past few years: platform fighters, or "Smash clones" for the outdated term. In the release downtime after the three most recent Smash games, we saw more and more teams try their hand at that uniquely accessible and interesting subgenre of fighting games, and it's been so exciting to see progress over time. We saw a good number of indie attempts after Smash 4, but after Ultimate we've been seeing bigger and bolder teams take serious attempts at a quality contender to challenge Smash. And while each new one garnering the title of "Smash Killer" is more and more of a meme, we're now seeing games that genuinely reach that level of polish and quality. Rivals of Aether 2 is personally the one I'm SO excited about in this respect. But I also can't help but think of the one platform fighter in recent memory that genuinely did Fail, at least in temporary dramatic fashion:

...Multiversus.

Yes, the hellish concept of a free to play fighting game, which prided itself on its grind culture. Now the utterly bizarre mess that is/was/will be Multiversus is sort of a unique disaster, but I can't help but imagine the worst for Marvel Rivals just because it shares that dreaded "f2p" label. Maybe it won't be too bad, but considering early screenshots imply characters need to be unlocked makes me assume the worst.

Frankly my biggest hope, however unlikely it is, is that these two games pressure each other to fix their individual shortcomings. Have OW2 Season 10 making heroes free make Marvel want to do the same, and have Marvel's 6v6 format make OW2 bite the bullet and revert to the same to fix its otherwise impossible to solve balance mess.

...no that's a lie, my biggest hope is actually that Wasp makes it in as a support and gets a skin based on her Earth's Mightiest Heroes look. Or better yet make that the basis for her default design, the designs are another promising point for this game so I have hope they can recognize quality.

#marvel rivals #yes I did type this all out on a phone! begrudgingly!

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