After the timelines have broken free, Loki decides that all he wants is to join Thor in New Asgard. With a stolen tempad he travels to a timeline where the previous Loki died at the hands of Thanos. Now Loki helps his brother in rebuilding a home for the displaced people of Asgard while simultaneously learning to live a universe where it feels like this is the last place he should be. He wants nothing to do with the humans living nearby, but one in particular is not getting the message.
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Takes place after the events of Season 1 of the Loki series, in a timeline where the Snap was prevented. Slow burn female reader insert fic.
Will be updating every other Thursday if all goes according to plan.
Loki Fic Masterlist
AO3 Link
Chapter 1: New Neighbors
Chapter 2: A Ride and a Wager
Chapter 3: Fighting Words
Chapter 4: A New Perspective
Chapter 5: A Lie and a Secret
Chapter 6: What Others Make of Us
Chapter 7: Sea legs
Chapter 8: Summer Rain
Chapter 9: A Long Day
Chapter 10: An Excuse to Indulge
Chapter 11: The Witching Hour
Chapter 12: Any Port in a Storm
Chapter 13: Work and Leisure
Chapter 14: Stars and Stories
Chapter 15: Earthen
Chapter 16: Selecting Titles
Chapter 17: Retaliation
Chapter 18: Chill
Chapter 19: The Tempering Flame
Chapter 20: The Rabbit and the Tree
Chapter 21: Moving Forward
Chapter 22: Worthwhile Confrontation
Chapter 23: Lodestar
Chapter 24: Ensnared
Chapter 25: A Fire Within
Chapter 26: The Longest Nights
Chapter 27: Resolve
Chapter 28: The Light in the Dark
Chapter 29: Storm and Shelter
Chapter 30: Two Sides of a Coin
Chapter 31: A Failing Strategy
Chapter 32: Guilty Pleasures
Chapter 33: The Tales We Tell
Chapter 34: Under the Weather
Chapter 35: Twisting Branches
Chapter 36: Lessons
Chapter 37: The Rainbow Bridge
Chapter 38: A Feat of Strength
Chapter 39: A Quiet Life
Chapter 40: Foolish Mortal
Chapter 41: Eating Crow
Chapter 42: Cautious Restraint
Chapter 43: A Perfect Fit
Chapter 44: Birthright 11/23/23
Blurbs
Little vignettes that didn't fit in the main story.
#1: Pop-Tarts (originally posted between Ch. 12 & Ch. 13)
#2: Image Manipulation (originally posted between Ch. 18 & Ch. 19)
#3: Card Shark (originally posted between Ch. 33 & Ch. 34)
#4: Fanfiction (originally posted between Ch. 44 & Ch. 45)
Now with its own concept album! Thanks to @loopsisloops for this wonderful Thrown soundtrack.
Taglist beneath the cut.
Thrown Tag List
If you would like to be added or removed from the tag list please leave a comment or send me a message/ask.
My finale thoughts are not organized but here they are.
It's complicated.
I really do think it's beautiful. As far as the story is concerned, I love it.
Where the character is concerned, I hate it.
Part of it might be where I am in my life right now.
But I think this probably would have hurt regardless.
Since we first met him in 2011, I have always summed up Loki's popularity with this: he's wounded. Loki is wounded which makes him relatable, because who among us isn't?
In the 12 years since, he's been presented in different lights and at different stages of change and it has been great, I have loved every iteration of him and his story. But the ending I always hoped for was not this one. Loki is wounded, and I am wounded, and so what I desperately want to see is Loki healed, Loki happy, and maybe then I could see part of myself in him there as well.
Seriously, the only, only thing I have wanted from the MCU for years now has been for the sun to shine on Thor and Loki again. The worst possible outcome for me is Loki alone for eternity, when all he has ever wanted was to connect with people around him.
Though I suppose he is connected to everyone now.
Clinging to the hope that this might not be the end. Hard rules have not been established, and it's never hopeless with comic book stories. Comic book fuckery can always save us. Remember, Wolverine died in 2017. Right this minute, not only will he be in another movie but Hugh Jackman is even playing him.
There could be something else for Loki in the future. Though a part of me does hate to lose this beautiful ending.
In the meantime, I suppose that's what fanfiction is for. I'll keep writing stories where Loki is healed, where Loki is happy, where Loki makes the connections with other people in the way he has always craved, and the way that I crave also.
Most purpose is more burden than glory. You just choose your burden. And trust me, you never wanna be the guy who avoids it ācause you canāt live with the burden.
Interesting things that you can get from trying all the options but that reveal a general characterization and idea of astarion and tav's romance.
I wanted to talk about Astarion's feelings regarding intimacy and sex, and indipendence, and how this can give a small timeline of his relationship with Tav.
CONFESSION VS NO CONFESSION
If you don't get the confession or drow potion scene, astarion will still stop having sex with Tav, and at the start of act 3, if you ask about it he'll tell you that he's tired of paying with sex, and that you were a bad deal now. It was all transactional but he's done. If you say you're hurt, he'll reply that it hurts more to use his body to get nothing in exchange, basically. I think this confirms that up till some events leading to the confession, the relationship was transactional. He only says "This is the one talent I have".
Given that the only difference IS the confession, but that the game assumes there's party interactions that are not shown, we can assume that he started to genuinely fall for Tav somewhere around end of act 1 and act 2. This is confirmed by the fact that if you choose him over someone in act two, he'll be confused but immediately resorts to saying it's because of your good sexy times... But, he is surprised (positively surprised) if you say it want something real with him.
The thing is... Astarion is a people pleaser. He manages to find autonomy because of finally being actually free and slowly regaining it on his own (if you end up in this wrong/broken romance situation). He stops having sex with Tav, he decides he does not need to pay anymore for whatever Tav is giving him or not.
BAD CHOICES / SAYING NO / FEELING NOTHING
If you choose the very bad choices during the confession, he will tell you that having sex with Tav has felt different "I supposes", but then he'll reveal that he didn't know how to say no after you push him. He also says that he never felt anything while having sex (does not exclude tav from this sentence, so it's assumed that this is true for their sexual meetings too), but after Tav pushed him he felt something for the first time (being that he felt horrible). I want to elaborate more on this but I need the next two points first.
INTIMACY VS SEX
In a Karlach/Astarion party romance scene, Astarion gets very mean when he realizes he cannot have sex with Karlach. The dev notes reveal that its because he feels vulnerable and confused by the fact that his one method of connecting with people is not available to him in that situation. The notes also stresses that he really wants what Karlach is offering (just spending time together) but maybe even he doesn't realise it yet. Full scene and dev notes are here.
Furthremore, most of the scenes that people associate with astarion romance are actually scenes that happen even if you do not romance him. The bite scene, offering him to feed him your blood, the bear one, discussing character's blood, the mirror scene, and probably even the scars scene... these are all general scenes, not romance ones. The only romance scenes (as far as I know) in act1+2 are: him propositioning you if you have more than 40 approval, or him propositioning you at the party, the sex scene, the second sex scene ("cheeks all flushed"). It shows how he has a desire to connect. Some of these scenes are not connected with manipulating you, but really do feel like a true desire to connect.
Regarding these last three points, I think Astarion's "It felt different from you" does come from this desire to connect. It had felt different not because the sex itself was different, but because he honestly felt like he was connecting with Tav. That is why the options that you can offer him are so important:
In particular, asking him "what do you want" will reveal that he doesn't know. From the devnotes of Karlach/Astarion we already know that he is confused about his own need to connect. But also it is important that one of the option is "we can be together without sex". Sex is what he knows, "the talents he has", and it is also the only way he knows how to connect with people because he has been made to do it for 200 years. Telling him that you can be together and show him intimacy and companionship without sex, means he will have the safety to explore other ways. And be seen as a person.
What he needs/wants is the safety to pursue what he likes ("this", your relationship) and he thinks he might want. Safety being the important word.
That is why it is clear in the game that between the confession and post-Cazador Tav and Astarion do not have sex, even Astarion remarks twice about it to ask to Tav if he is really okay with it.
That is why it makes the cemetery scene so impactful. He is not fully healed, but he wants to reclaim sex as part of his way to connect with someone as an act of intimacy.
(Instead if you choose Ascended Astarion you confirm that you only see him as sex and not a real person. The sexy kinky vampire - I will talk about this in the last point, where I talk about the bite).
RELATIONSHIP
I wanted to write a little bit about the way he defines the relationship in act 2, post confession. The confession doesn't mark a clear "we are in love from now on", it is more like offering him this step, slowing down, making sure that you can be there for each other, allowing him to be free and supporting him.
If you ask him "what we are" he will say:
This could even imply that before the confession he did see you as a victim or a target, but that is just how he saw EVERYONE. Everyone was a target or a vicim, or a night of disgust/abuse. His knowledge and ability to identify intimacy and relationships has been so beaten down that he actually expresses confusion now that he finds himself with a real relationship. That "whatever in the world could you be?" is asked with genuine surprise and bafflement.
INDIPENDENCE
Another important and fundamental side of his romance is his indipendence. There are some choices that I would normally go for and then I realized gave no approval, or low approval. I will make a full posts of these approvals, but for now I wanted to focus on three.
Someone here on tumblr already noticed and wrote an amazing meta about how offering your blood to Astarion (the next day) gives NO approval.
You can see that telling him to feed on you gives no approval. Be it because the game explicitly associate bite = sex (seen from the drow woman) and he sees this as you seeing him as some sexy vampire or be it because you are making dependent on you, I am not sure.
But if you agree instead with his suggestion:
Another occurrence, is the two times you can tell him you will protect him. DorianDarkstar on twitter also noticed and made me realize that he does this twice. There are two occasions where you can tell him "I will keep you safe" and he doesn't fully like that.
There is a scene where you can tell him that you will watch his back if he watches yours and he approves (5 points!). If you tell him he is safe, instead he finds that pretty annoying.
There is also a dialogue in late act 3, where you can tell him that you will protect him. To which he answers with almost resigned annoyance.
It is important for him to be an equal. He says so in his romance talk after Cazador. (and that is why I love Durge Astarion so much as I explained here).
So yeah, there is I think something interesting to be found not only in non used scenes (not used by the player, as some of these choices are very bad), but also in finding out what he approves or disapproves of.
I am obsessed with the misdirection in Astarion's romance. I said it before, I was absolutely tricked too. When you read a text or consume media every line is put there for a reason, it is a waste otherwise. By the party scene you kind of have a certain idea of what Astarion is. You know that he dislikes helping others, you know that he lies, he flirts a lot, he is vain, he is a killer, and he wants power (from the conversations about the tadpoles and Raphael).
At this point, if you chose him as a romance, it could also be that you enjoyed the idea of him being a vampire and all the tropes that come with it.
So when, after the first night together, you can ask him "It felt like you weren't fully there" there had to be a reason. From a writing pov, why was that line added?
As a player, you have to wonder. And by this point in the story it seems like a warning there is little that might convince you that what he answers with is not the truth, mainly because it falls right into the classic stereotypes of this kind of romance. Of course he is a danger, he did not want to lose control, be careful in the future - this is how it would sound to me if I romanced him without spoilers. I know because when I got his sex scene, I reloaded and romanced someone else because this kind of aggressive seduction vampire fantasy was not my thing.
If I had read this line, I would have been sure it was a small hint that romancing Astarion could end up very badly. Another small misdirection that could easily end up as a clue is in their second pre-sex scene together. Astarion is making sure the MC will stay with him, and he is very seductive. The funny thing is that if you choose the "yes" (1st option in the pictures just below) you don't get any other information or clue, but just flirting. You actually get even more of the fantasy, he talks about how he cannot stop thinking about you, he even presses on the word "dangerous", and his mannerism is all business
If instead you ask him to be better he goes on and on about his lines, he directly tells the player that these are all fake, basically. You can even ask him if these lines work on Cazador's targets, and he says "well, they worked on YOU".
So at this point as players we know that the player is being manipulated and teased up till a point. I definitely fell for it by immediately cutting the romance short, and never thinking about it again until I got the strenght potion scene. I got that scene as a friendship one, which has different options.
It is a bit different than the romance, he is much more direct in my opinion. He talks about his body as one of the few assets he has, and he is much more confused about why he was being "too precious" about the potion, he is actually surprised by himself.
And as I said, it is much more direct when he says that he never had a choice before (and he is specifically talking about sex). In the friendship version you can also convince him that he needs to use all of this that he has because he might, to protect himself and get advantage, which at least gives credit to our MC if we do romance him.
(TW!! for SA) In the romance scene instead you never get these options, you CANNOT convince him to keep using his body, and if you try to do so he will break up with you, as he should, he is much more confident.
And regarding the whole misdirection if you have not maximized his approval, you won't get his confession but you will find out the whole of his story after the drow potion scene. That is the scene where he thanks you for respecting his consent. I feel like it is such a monumental and surprising one, definitely not one I expected.
And the options are SO SO TELLING. The one sex option you get in this dialogue is the WRONG one. The game directly tells you that by choosing it you assaulted him and disregarded his consent.
There are instead 5 good options. I checked and they all seem to have the same amount of approval.
They are:
1. Showing him that your feelings are real so he can trust them.
2. Showing him intimacy without sex (hug).
3. Confirming that you want to be with him even with his burdens (he often mentions them in other dialogues, especially when you choose between him and Gale).
4. Saying you can be together without sex.
And my favourite: 5. ASKING him what he wants, CARING about what he wants.
So yeah, I admit I absolutely fell for it, I was convinced this would take such a wildly different road. Glad to see it did not.
summary: When you made plans for your future they never involved being hired by a Mandalorian to baby-sit his adorable, green gremlin of a child. However, after your life fell apart in the span of one disastrous night, you found it to be the only feasible option you had left. Nevarro was a far cry from Coruscant, but the thriving community turned out to be exactly what you needed. Every day you spend in Nevarro you fall more and more in love with your new life, but when your past rears its ugly head you find that perhaps peace wasnāt meant for everyone.
Okay but the scene after Andrey shot Goncharov and Katya asks him if heās gonna kill her too and he tells her āI have been taught to never hurt a woman.ā
And Katya goes āI was never a woman Andrey. Just his wifeā befoRE SHE SHOOTS ANDREY
can I ask u a personal question? itās just that I love the way you write about loveā¦how itās in all of the little things ā the banter, the gestures, the affirmations. and I love reading about love, because Iām a hopeless romantic but only for the type of love you showcase so well ā safe, warm and homely.
so what I want to ask is, how much of what you write translates to real life? with your personal relationship experience, do you find that writing about love is vastly different to how you experience it in real life? like does having relationship experience enlighten you on how to write love, or does writing still involve a lot of romanticisation?
i love love love writing about love even though Iāve yet to experience it for real myself. and reading your stories truly fills me with so much hope but Iām also trying to stay realistic at the same timeā¦so I would love so much to hear your thoughts on this!! (pls donāt feel pressured to give advice! iād just love to hear your own observations/thoughts)
i have been stewing over this ask like a little potato in a crockpot all day long.
honestly, i've been writing about love ā or even just emotional intimacy ā for as long as i can remember. romance as a whole has always made me super insane, verifiably delirious even, which is a funny thing.
it's funny because i firmly believe that every writer leaves a part of themselves behind in their pieces. for me, that was always chasing those exact things you've mentioned above: safe, warm comfort and a feeling that is like home.
without psychoanalyzing myself on main too much, it's safe to say my environment all throughout my life (and currently, still) did not have much of these things at all. physical affection and verbal affirmations are in short supply when you're in a constant state of survival mode. my parents firmly believed "keeping me out of it" which resulted in a lot of isolation as a kid that i still struggle with. my room, and in turn the stories i wove alone, were my escape out of the shittiest nights alive.
i always write what i want when it came to love. the daring adventure, the slow burn, the enemy who saw all my faults and still fell for me ā the heroine, and always a love that remained steady and true despite the hardship.
i don't know if i've ever really been in love ā at least not the kind i write about. and, to that point, not the kind that i've grown to realize i deserve. further more: the kind i will not settle any less for.
i take things from my past relationships (good or bad or awful or wonderful) ā feelings and emotions mostly ā that have been ingredients to that love i chase. like i said, those pieces of me as a writer get tossed into my work often.
i think that's the funny thing now, especially as i was crafting these very raw and honorific stories dedicated to love persisting while in my last relationship. there's this line that you walk as an artist when romanticizing a brush of fingertips is a craft ā you find yourself thinking is this just how reality is? dull? stagnant? forced? is this your life now, the same saturday morning lived over and over and over and over in a small town? trapped in a flat, bound loop of time?
and then you die?
i don't think it is. i don't think love 'in real life' has to be any different from the romanticization of love in my writing ā but i do think growing to a point where you understand you deserve that sort of love is the most important part.
i've been happiest in the moments where i've romanticized my life. when i've given myself the adventurous love that write about.
This is the most beautiful thing Iāve read all day. Thank you for this. I just came out of a breakup and reading this made me realize that itās okay for me to want to chase that fanfiction kind of love. I want that.
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