#loki discourse

[trickstersmagic]

King Shit 👑 

Also this just reminded me that I need to watch Crimson peak again. 🏃🏽‍♀️

[lokiified]

listen man i understand the dislike for sylvie, i can get behind that. but i will forever defend loki’s character in the tv show. yes, he’s very very different and the change can feel drastic, but i think realizing that:

- the love and acceptance you always longed for from your family was there the whole time

- your own “glorious purpose” never existed

- you willingly die at the hands of your greatest fear

- the things you thought were the greatest powers in the universe (infinity stones) are being used as paperweights by a society that is in control of time as you know it

- your choices have never been your own,

would kind of change your perspective of yourself and those around you, and maybe make you act a little differently.

have whatever opinions you want, but that’s just my 2 cents on it

[emptymasks]

Fluidphobia and transphobia in episode 5 of Loki

16 minutes in. “Have any of you ever met a woman variant of us?” “No, never.” “Sounds terrifying.” I don’t even have words for how much that made me want to cry. That’s so unbelievably stupidly fluidphobic. Loki is also a woman, Loki is genderfluid, it’s likely all Loki variants are. So by saying that Loki has never seen himself as a woman is incorrect, it sounding ‘terrifying’ is beyond upsetting, and all of it is fluidphobic. (And also one of the variants with President Loki is played by a female actor anyway so??)

This is disgusting. It’s pure fludphobia. And if this was homophobia or transphobia you all would be talking way more about it. Posts talking against it would be getting more notice. The media would be talking about it. The Marvel team would have to address it. But no one cares enough about genderfluid voices.

And they had the audacity to say this:

It would have been better if they’d just not made MCU Loki genderfluid. I can’t believe I’m saying that. But the fact that they had the audacity to boast about how great they were for doing it, and then gave us fluidphobic representation. Not no representation, bad representation. I’d rather no representation that bad representation. At least no representation can’t create new slurs used against genderfluid people. No representation can’t create misunderstandings about how genderfluid have to shape-shift to be a different gender, how they’re a different person when they’re a different gender. No representation wouldn’t have caused the surge in fluidphobia in the fandom. Just yesterday a tweet was going around and getting popular saying Sylvie can’t be genderfluid because her name is ‘Laufeydottir’... Even though Loki’s is ‘Laufeyson’ and he’s genderfluid you know almost like someone can change what their assgined-at-birth gender is. 

And it goes beyond fluidphobia into pure transphobia when you see “sex: fluid”. Parts of the fandom are now saying “sexfluid” to refer to genderfluid people. It’s not only now basically become a slur, but think about the implications. ‘Sexfluid’ means someone must change their genitalia when they’re identifying as another gender. That’s fluidphobic because of course real genderfluid people can’t shapeshift. However, it’s also transphobic because it implies that in order to be a woman Loki must have a vulva, meaning that one needs a vulva in order to be a woman, meaning that they’re implying trans women without vulva’s aren’t really women. That’s a transmed belief, a transphobic belief. You could look at that and say I’m reaching, or that I’m reading too much into it. But sex and gender don’t mean the same thing and this is how fans are using the word, this is what viewers of the show think the words means. 

I’m not talking about the fans on here, or even the fans on Twitter, I’m talking about the majority of Marvel viewers. Because the majority aren’t part of fandom communities, aren’t part of LGBT+ communities, they don’t go on social media to look at what people are saying about the show, and all they know about genderfluidity is what they see in this show.  And even then, just search “Loki female self” on Twitter and there are hundreds of people calling Sylvie that. The main stream media keep calling Sylvie “Lady Loki’”in their articles. ScreenRant keeps doing it, official Loki merch on Gamestop is doing it.

I’m not sorry if me talking about this and complaining is ruining your experience of watching the show, that just means before you were ignorant to the fluidphobia in the series. I’m not saying the show should be cancelled, I’m not saying you can’t watch it or you can’t enjoy watching it because I’m still watching it, I’m still finding moments I enjoy in it. You can be critical of something and still watch and enjoy it.

EDIT: you know what? “that’s terrifying” is also kinda fucking sexist

[nerdby]

If Loki knowing about the Infinity Stones in the television series has been tripping you up, please go back and rewatch the first Avengers movie--

In the first Avengers film, Loki had two Infinity Stones in his possession while battling the Avengers. One of them is the space stone which was encased in the tesseract and the other was the mind stone which was encased in Loki's staff. The mind stone was given to Loki by Thanos because Thanos knew it would aid him in making Loki betray Thor and try to take over Earth. This is because the mind stone acting as a drug that would allow Thanos to control Loki's thoughts and actions.

Because, like it or not, Loki is not stronger than an Infinity Stone.

Marvel Confirms Loki Was Mind Controlled in Avengers

Marvel has confirmed Loki was never really a villain at all (obviously).

So if you're confused about how TVA!Loki knows about the Infinity Stones, the answer is simple--

Thanos told Loki about the Infinity Stone in his staff and about the other Stones in the first Avengers movie, but also failed to mention the effect the stone would have on Loki himself. So TVA!Loki would NOT have needed to live through the events of any of the post-2012 MCU films to know of the Stones' existence.

[partyprincethor1]

almost all of Loki’s plans are extremely short-sighted and build on each other like a house of cards until they all fall down around him. He’s rarely two steps ahead of himself, and each decision is made based on how well the result will benefit Loki. Sometimes those decisions lead to him working for Thanos, sometimes they lead to him saving the people of Asgard. Loki isn’t really good or bad, he’s just Loki.

[zoufantastical]

You know one thing I never understood about Sylvie is that she has this amazing ability she learned by herself right, the ability of enchantment, which included manipulating people, possession, and accessing parts of their memories. She also told Loki while they were fighting in He Who Remain’s lair that she’s been after/running away from the TVA for a longer time than what Loki is old of.

Isn’t it strange then ,that taking her word for it, she’s thousands of years old. And it never occurred to her to recruit people from the TVA to join her fight? I was thinking maybe she has and it for some reason didn’t work out but look how easy it was to convince someone like B-15, one of the best minutemen.

It’s weird because her introduction is her mercilessly killing these (that we now know), presumably, innocent brainwashed variants. Like burning alive is a terrible death. She used them as puppets to fight each other by using her magic!

Look I was all up for accepting Sylvie as this ruthless variant up for revenge. But if that was the case then her scene with B-15 makes no sense. There was no need to include the “we’re the same” scene with a cocky tone as a way of bonding with each other if what we know about Sylvie up to that point is that she’s resourceful and would have definitely taken the opportunity with beating/killing B-15 while taking advantage of her surroundings and B-15’s sudden mental/emotional confusion.

It’s just another example of this show being all over the place. Also it kinda displays Sylvie as kind of dumb. It’s like they made her do the opposite of what Loki did in 2012 to conquer Earth. Personally, not a good look 😬

[your-dark-thor]

Look. I don't like Sylvie but at least I dislike her for legitimate reasons rather than just being all "FeMiNisM iS rUiniNg TV aNd I haTe WOmeN"

[tevanbuckley]

The thing that I can’t get over with Loki is that I just hate that Sylvie exists as a character, she’s just a terrible, awful copout. You can love her, you can think she’s the baddest bitch the mcu has ever offered up, you can think her and loki are the best romance that has ever dared grace our screens. And honestly if they’d written more effectively around the incest issue I think what they were going for could’ve worked. But you can’t avoid the fact that she exists as a character because marvel was either too ignorant or too chicken shit to actually make Loki genderfluid. After explicitly saying that he would be. That’s a fact. I don’t care how much you love the character, the show or the relationship. At some point in your enjoyment of it you have to reconcile that.

Loki could’ve been brilliant, like genuinely all of the building blocks were there. A queer character who has to break free from this oppressively normative organisation and decide their own destiny after literal centuries of trying to compete with their hyper-masculine warrior-archetype brother? Fucking sign me up. But for that to work as an effective allegory you have to be willing to centre Loki’s queerness. Why not have a good omens style relationship between Loki and Mobius where Loki is the “corrupting” influence ala crowley that allows both of them to break free, or by making Sylvie explicitly trans (and ya know, casting a trans actor). Like a Loki who’s literal nexus event was them identifying as the perceived ‘wrong’ gender and our Loki realising through that mirror that they can be literally whatever they want? Again ideally through some kind of expression of his own queer identity. Chef’s kiss. But the show isn’t willing to centre Loki’s queer identity (any identity) in any meaningful way. We get one line. One. And some set dressing that is contradicted by the script on multiple occasions.

Let me compare it to TFATWS, if you swapped Sam out for a white man the entire premise of the show falls apart. Sam’s anger at what’s happening post-blip and his sympathy with Karli is directly presented through the lens of his identity as a Black American. Now cut that one line from Loki, literally nothing about the show would change, because nothing about this show was constructed with that identity even remotely in mind. There’s no stakes to his queerness. And the idea that that’s a good thing, that “oh queer people are just like straight people, sexuality doesn’t matter” is based in some very sketchy early 2000s respectability politics. Queer people aren’t just Straight and/or Cis people with a spicy dating life. It’s not much to ask that my experience as a queer person matters more than just “he said he dated a man once”.