therapy isn't enough i need to be someone else

@funnier-as-a-system

THE DOOR - a comic about plurality, homesickness, and how sometimes you can't control what happens inside your own head.

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The answer is great, but the framing of the question is entirely wrong.

Secular/religious is a Christian distinction.

Judaism is about orthopraxy, not orthodoxy, so there’s not really any such thing as a “secular Jew” any more than there’s any such thing as a “religious Jew.” (Jews may use those terms, because we live in a Christian society and that’s the language we have, but it’s not a great fit.)

If a Jew is practicing Jewish customs, they’re doing Judaism. The asker is like “what if they do Jewish things but aren’t like super-religious about it?” which is asking about *belief.* It’s basically “Are there Jews who practice some Jewish customs but don’t believe in any religious reasons behind them?”

But “religious belief” isn’t a key component of Jewish practice. (Kavanah, intent, is but that’s not necessarily “religious” by Christian standards.)

Whether you’re an atheist Jew keeping kosher for ethical or environmental reasons or just because it’s a way to be engaged with your ancestral culture and practice, or an Orthodox Jew who keeps kosher because it’s a mitzvah, end of story, you’re doing Judaism, full stop.

Jewish practice doesn’t fit into Christian frameworks.

one of my absolute favorite conversations i have with random gentiles goes like this:

me: i face a lot of harassment and weirdness when i wear a kippah and star of david in public.

gentile: ok but u could just not wear them.

me: i mean yeah but i do.

gentile: but u could just not wear them and then ppl wouldn’t harass u and be weird to u.

me: yeah maybe but i do wear them.

gentile: but u have the option not to.

me: correct. but i choose the option to wear them.

gentile: but if u didn’t wear them then no one would know.

me: sure. but i do wear them.

and it goes round and round and round in a circle for like 20 minutes bc goyim cannot comprehend why i would not want to just shut up and assimilate.

anyway here’s ur reminder that telling ppl who are being oppressed or discriminated against to just hide whatever it is that people are targeting them for is contributing to said oppression and discrimination. forced assimilation is violence, and telling people “just don’t do/wear/say x thing that’s a core part of your identity” makes you complicit in that violence, if not actively a part of it.

I couldn't disagree with that last line more. It might be more subtle than overt physical assault, but it very much is an active part of the cultural violence. Not complicit, not tacit endorsement, that is being an active agent of oppression.

did you not read the last phrase of the last line?

i mean I agree but also maybe you could have explained why you wanted to keep wearing these things. like it almost feels like your both missing the point

like responding to this post with "u should just explain to gentiles why it's important for u to wear culturally significant items" is literally what i'm talking abt. gentiles don't need to understand why i wear a kippah and star of david in order to condemn the antisemitism i face when people see that i wear those things. you are still putting the onus on marginalized people to explain to people why we don't deserve to be harassed for refusing to assimilate. the entire point of the post is to get gentiles past the initial "problem solving" response of "remove the thing that's making you a target" and progress to the stage of "stand up to the people who are targeting you because of those things." the point is to get people to stop seeing our existence as a problem to solve.

i have watched the kiss scene and the breakup as a whole more times than i can count and my brain is still trying to process all the things it picked up on.

my newest painful obsession: aziraphale thought crowley came back for him.

they kiss, aziraphale says i forgive you and instead condemns them both, crowley leaves. the lip touching itself is fucking essay worthy because holy SHIT the amount of micro expressions flickering across his face is endless, michael sheen acted his ass off.

i think it's a mixture of surprise, unspoken love, a HEAVY dose of fear, disbelief, and oh my god what did he just do what did i just do. he turns away from the door and we get a very very quick shot of how exactly he is angled.

standing up straight with faked spiteful anger, the same anger he spit at crowley out of fear and insecurity, chin up, clearly waiting for something - or rather someone. we gotta remember that every single time crowley has left aziraphale, he came back. every. single. time. he came back and apologized, that's what they do.

crowley comes back and aziraphale forgives him and they continue bearing their silence.

the bell rings when the door opens again, just like it did when crowley left, and just. look at his face. how quickly he swivels around. the blink and you will miss it spark of hope.

and then the pure devastation when he realizes it's not crowley.

aziraphale thought crowley was coming back for him. he was WAITING for him to come back. even after all that, he couldn't imagine crowley actually leaving him behind, especially not after that kiss and his entire indirect love confession.

just like crowley thought for a tiny heartbeat that aziraphale was kissing him back, aziraphale hoped, hell, he fucking thought he KNEW crowley would never abandon him. not after "i could always rely on you. you could always rely on me." aziraphale has taken him for granted, of course he thought it was him coming through the door.

but that spark of hope gets stomped out beneath the metatrash's feet and he fully turns around, unable to face him and the reality of it all.

this time, he went too far.

this time, crowley did not want forgiveness.

he was about to say i love you and turned it into i forgive you, still clinging to their old ways, their old rituals, just that they are no longer those beings, no longer in that specific relationship. everything has changed.

they both thought the other would never abandon them. turns out they were both wrong.

Loki, promo shot for Thor 1

Eritrean fighter from the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (1978)

feliz día de la independencia!!

I love how her smile just went supernova when he started singing!!

So this came about because my brother and I are on a MMM (Marvel Movie Marathon; it's a regular thing), and stopped at Infinity War earlier this afternoon. I know we're probably exhausted by the IW rants, especially about those first 5-10 or so minutes, but this is happening. Don't like, don't read. Anyways, we all know what happens. Loki hands the Tesseract over to Thanos in exchange for Thor's life, right? And is then brutally murdered. And while choking the life out of and then snapping the neck of a famously un-killable character and saying "No resurrections this time," is a great way to introduce a villain, why did it have to happen? Like... well, here's my reason for objecting. In Avengers 1, the Other told Loki that 'he [we're assuming 'he'is Thanos] will make [Loki] long for something as sweet as pain' if 'the Tesseract is kept from [them]'. Well, the Tesseract was kept from them. For about 6 years. And while asphyxiation followed by an extreme force snapping/crushing the vertebrae in one's neck is certainly not a nice way to go, it's rather quick. At least, it is in this instance. Hardly the kind of thing that makes one 'long for something as sweet as pain'. Now, I'm not asking why Loki's death wasn't more drawn out (I would never ask that), I simply think it doesn't live up to a 6-year-old promise. Call me crazy, I dare you. Anyway, even after the stabbing attempt with what's often termed 'a butter knife', I think I'd have liked IW more if, well a) Loki had survived the attack on the Statesman, and b) if that survival was done well, like, say... if someone had thought 'oh, hey! What if Thanos decided to take Loki with him?' If that had happened, Loki could have still been MIA during the movie, but there'd have been a chance for him to come back in the main timeline/continuity (*mutters under breath* rather than that god-awful show we're supposed to be grateful for). Alternatively, the Black Order/Chitauri/whatever could have tortured him into submission again so he was fighting against everyone like 2012 all over again. Just my opinion. .... *inside my head* the second option would be a great fic idea, but what if someone else has already written it? Besides, I'm not sure if I'm skilled enough to take on a project like that and make it work. What if it turns out terribly? .... So, that's my opinion. Celerieth out. 👋🏻

Yeah, taking him prisoner and torturing him like he did to Nebula and Strange would've made much more sense.

Loki hustled him, Loki betrayed him, Loki ran away from him, Loki defied him.

That is the kind of thing that Thanos needs to make an example of him. It needed to be horrible and public to send the message to the rest of the universe what happens when you cross Thanos. Even if they couldn't make it too graphic because of the PG13 rating, they could've kept him alive.

There are a few reasons that I think Loki was killed off so early in the movie:

Fandom Mentor Moment™: don't talk yourself outta writing a fic that you wanna read just because you think someone else might do it better/already did it. Remember the two cakes. People will happily read the same fanfic premise over and over and that's great. Only talk yourself outta writing a fic idea because you don't feel like writing it.

*honestly, they could've stretched out the whole thing over 2 movies simply by giving the massive cast of characters actual in story attention and just discarded the timeskip crap of EG. It's not hard.

**most of the mcu characters are too competent for the Russo brothers, look at how stupid everyone had to act in CW.

What interesting is the differences between what Branagh and even Whedon tried to make in a sympathetic villain and what Russos wanted to make in sympathetic.

The Russos desperately want the audience to feel bad for Thanos even though he's an abuser. They frame a scene to be tragic for Thanos, the put his pain front and center after he just murdered his Gamora. The person he kidnaped, made every day of her life filled with fear for her life and forced her to do terrible things which caused her deep self-loathing she would never truly get over. The Russos want the audience to feel bad for Thanos because he's sad because had affection for the person whose life he made a living hell. Like, that's kinda messed up.

I think a major problem is that Thanos's plan is really dumb and not enough time really focused on that. A more interesting narrative that focused on his arrogance and one tracked mind. But instead that kinda try make him cool.

What are you going to do with Loki. Revealing that everything in the first Avengers was really him. If everyone so desperate to make Loki nothing but terrible they'd have to admit that Thanos is even worse, or they'd show even when all seems lose that Loki no longer going to let himself be pushed around by Thanos anymore. Either way it doesn't fit with what they want so easier to just kill of Loki.

I am still sad that the original concept never made it in to the movie

SOURCE

I feel like Thanos would have made a deal with Loki

Give up the Tesseract without a fight and you can have asgard back ... all of asgard ... including it's queen ...

-> the reality stone can not just take people away it can give people back ... whome ever Thanos chooses ...

It agnowledges that Loki is powerfull enough to give Thanos a run for his money (like he might get the tesseract in the end but it would cost him a lot of time nad maybe not .. maybe it would stay forever lost in one of Lokis pocket dimensions)

It makes Thanos mre of a perosn even if not necessarely more sympathetic, since he is willin to negotiate ... a side of him we have not seen before ...

And Loki having just lost everythinga nd everyone ... might make the deal

You could even cut away before he answers leaving the audinec ein suspension ... did he agree? didn't he agree?

Does Thanos have the Tesseract or not?

Never show the infinity gauntlet ... and then suddenyl, No! Thanos has te whole thing

No!

Loki!

How could you!

Ah ... but now Thor is back becasue Thans does keep his contracts , the avengers are complet again ...

Time to do some avenging and timetravel shenanigans ...

Lamentis Page 04/05/06/07

This is me, a week after season 2's trailer release, realising that i'm never gonna get shit done if i only post full coloured pages. I'm gonna try to churn as many drafts as i can now. They are gonna suck in art quality, but at least i won't get burned out as fast between pages.

Plot that i try to change from season 1: -Loki doing research so he have actual cards to play in his game of life or death. -Sylvie's tempad having an actual reason for running out of battery mid-mission. Seemed like a very easy, very dumb and very avoidable way to die in the series.

Thanks for still sticking with me guys. i'm doing my best :')

sneaky Loki 👀

It was SO nice to get pics of a lesser known Loki costume (aka never made for screen). Some of the old Ragnarok concepts are so beautiful, and it constantly saddens me that they never got past the visual development stage! I know it’s all part of the process, but still 😜

Concept by Christian Cordella

Photo by @sennedjem

So, I recently came across a reddit thread about how Loki’s been degraded since Ragnarok, what I found interesting was some of the responses which assert that Loki’s “villain decay began the moment the Hulk smashed him in the iconic ‘puny god’ scene in Avengers’’ and that he was already the butt of most jokes in the movie -  the Black Widow outsmarting him, Hawkeye of all people got to one up him by blowing him out of the sky, Coulson blasting him through a wall - were a few examples cited. Which was then used to argue that Loki’s always been a bit pathetic, never much of a threat with Thor being an exception to the norm so it follows that his current portrayal in the MCU is not something to be surprised of. I feel most people would consider this a good argument but only if they haven’t given much thought to the narrative(s) and Loki’s role in it. So I want to discuss why The Avengers propping up Loki only for it to tear him down is not only different from what Ragnarok and The Loki Show set out to do but also entirely acceptable. 

First of all, I think a lot of it is retroactive projection with audiences subconsciously comparing Loki’s threat level to that of Thanos later in the MCU who was obviously set up to be the heroes’ worst nightmare over the span of a decade, I mean c’mon the writers had him kill Loki who was up until that point the defining villain of the MCU as a very on the nose statement that yes THIS is the ultimate big bad and he’s unlike anything you’ve seen before so of fucking course the Chitauri Invasion from 2012 would seem like a minor skirmish if you’re looking at it through the post-snap lens of the abject horror that is Thanos’s M.O. - destroying half of all life in the UNIVERSE and succeeding at it to boot.

Now that’s out of the way let’s talk about The Avengers. Loki is, of course, the villain of the movie. He makes a dramatic entrance at the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility in Mojave, threatens to take over the world, brainwashes two agents and a scientist, and skedaddles with the Tesseract which will eventually allow him to open a portal through which he can bring in his army. So narratively speaking Loki is in a position of power, in fact he has power over the heroes for about half the duration of the movie since his capture was meant to be a ruse to blow out the Helicarrier’s engines and let the Hulk loose on it which did in fact leave our heroes scattered. So he’s in a position of power and he intends to abuse that power by doing standard bad guy stuff, in this case, taking over the planet (let’s forget about the mind control debate and theories of intentional self-sabotage for a sec here). He has made himself out to be a big enough threat for the earth’s foremost global intelligence agency to be forced to assemble six superpowered individuals to combat him and his actions in the first two acts have hurt our heroes a great deal plus he has personally slighted almost all of them (some more than others, what he did to Hawkeye is a pretty big personal violation). Which is why in the narrative sense, he has to earn his comeuppance by the end of the third act because The Avengers, like most superhero movies is written with the standard “the good guys always win” trope in mind. We want to see the heroes triumph because the alternative is the planet being conquered by a bunch of ugly blood thirsty aliens and that ending’s a downer.

Acts such as a dying Coulson blasting Loki through a wall mid-sentence, Hawkeye blowing him out of the sky because Loki didn’t expect the arrow to explode in his hands, and Hulk creating a Loki shaped depression in the floor are supposed to make audiences laugh, yes, but they’re also supposed to be a way to even the scales (in a narrative sense) between the good and the bad guys by serving the villain some karmic justice. This is not character degradation, especially because the movie has never denied Loki his intelligence or eloquence. The narrative tears him down multiple times but he gets back up every time with all his snark intact. He defiantly stands up to The Other even when it’s pretty clear that the latter has power over him and can inflict pain on him (“until your forces are mine to command, you are but words”). I have some issues with the reading of the Nat scene as her outsmarting him, chiefly because Loki was practically shouting in all their faces about his intentions for Bruce and the leap of logic Nat makes between “Oh no, you brought the monster” to “Banner? That’s your play” is pretty absurd but anyway, Natasha outsmarting him isn’t ultimately treated as a victory because the Hulk’s unleashed either way. Loki gets back up just fine after he’s taken the beating of his life thanks to the Hulk and is still trying to get in the last word even after he’s been thoroughly defeated. (“If it’s all the same to you. I’ll have that drink now.”). None of this makes him look pathetic. The Avengers treats him with dignity, it not only respects him as a villain but also encourages audiences to sympathize with him. Every conversation with Thor is another reminder that Loki wasn’t born evil but he’s doing what he’s doing due to a mental breakdown, the scenes with The Other are an indication that he’s clearly acting under duress, that there’s more to the story than just Loki wanting a throne.  

Ragnarok’s treatment of Loki is different. To put it simply, he’s retconned into someone who’s incompetent, who’s narratively speaking useless to Thor which is why he has to seek out other people for help (Valkyrie, The Hulk, Korg). The scene in the Sanctum Sanctorum where he’s bested by Doctor Strange as he comically falls out of a portal and is hurled through another right after isn’t just supposed to be a joke at his expense, it’s the movie establishing that Loki isn’t all that great with magic either (which is why he won’t actually use any of it aside from one or two illusions). I totally get it, Strange was probably trapped in that time loop with Doramammu for tens of thousands of years and likely became a master in practical magic during that time so there’s no reason to think he can’t be a worthy match for Loki but implying that there’s such a huge skill imbalance here that Strange was able to shut down Loki even before he was able to do anything to him just comes off as purposeful humiliation. The confrontation with Hela where Loki immediately freaks out after Mjolnir is destroyed and calls for the Bifrost was an easy way to make Loki look entirely responsible for bringing forth Ragnarok. Oh, it’s just supposed to be a harmless reference to the myths where Loki and his children do in fact, bring forth Ragnarok? Well then it’s a shit fucking reference because it misses the bigger picture where Loki and his wife were made to watch one of their sons kill their other son after he was transformed into a wolf by the gods, the now traumatized wolf son ran out into the wilds while the dead son’s entrails were then used to tie him to a rock with venom dripping over his face for all eternity. All because he showed up drunk to a party and insulted all the gods in attendance. I mean, who wouldn’t be plotting Ragnarok after that? 

His interactions with the Grandmaster who obviously has power over him show him being completely subservient to him. I know a lot of people don’t agree here but I think there’s also some subtext for Loki being in a (probably unwilling) relationship with the Grandmaster (he’s also wearing his colours, blue and yellow) but the story doesn’t linger on that because the entire thing is treated as a joke even though the implications are quite horrific because the narrative has no sympathy for Loki and he’s certainly not treated with respect. This is what character degradation looks like. Loki is retconned from someone whose motivations are multifaceted and stubbornly ambiguous to a shallow trickster who has compulsively betrayed Thor all his life and hey he’s not even doing all that good on the trickster front anymore because Thor easily got the drop on him in a scene which makes no sense at all. What’s damning is that unlike The Avengers, Loki is not in a position of power here, he’s actually quite powerless so repeatedly poking fun at him doesn’t achieve the same effect here at all because attacking a powerless person is just bullying and that’s exactly what Ragnarok is doing. The narrative might assert that he deserves it but that assertion is based on a retcon of his characterization so it’s inherently unfair.  

Finally, The Loki Show. Loki’s suddenly made out to be less physically powerful and struggles in fights because the writers have to prop up Sylvie as the better fighter. He’ll also fail to reliably manipulate people even once and is so incompetent that he’ll also mess up the simplest of plans knowing that he isn’t just dooming himself but also his partner (Lamentis). He’s going to sit in a chair making more anguished faces by the minute as the big bad drops exposition on him and will have nothing of note to say, no counter arguments of any kind. This is character degradation because Loki’s being denied both his intelligence and eloquence. Sure, you can make an argument for him having an existential crisis after watching the time theatre in Ep. 1 so he’s failing to operate at his best for a while but continuing to do this for all six episodes is unacceptable. The interrogation with Mobius in Ep. 1 and the time loop cell in Ep. 4 are both instances where the narrative completely tears Loki down but he’s not allowed to pick himself up in a dignified fashion afterward in either scenario. An excuse could be made for Ep. 1 which made an attempt to understand his character motivations but ultimately the narrative is not treating him with sympathy because both instances of assault (mental and physical respectively) are framed as something necessary to humble him with. The narrative here too, asserts that Loki deserves it but that assertion does not consider his past history of trauma and abuse and therefore does not have a full handle on his character motivations which again, makes it inherently unfair.  

That’s the difference. The Avengers treats Loki with respect and sympathy so much so that his failings also appear to be dignified. Ragnarok and The Loki Show don’t. 

Right. Especially bc an antagonist has to be treated with respect and dignity for the narrative for it to look impressive when the heroes get one up on them. In Avengers Loki serves as the antagonist; if he were just a pathetic joke, any time the Avengers got the better of him wouldn’t seem cool or impressive. And he’s absolutely treated as complex and with dingy in both Avengers and in TDW which came after that. TR and then that abysmal series were a radical departure from that. 

And by doing that the MCU kind a shoots itself in teh foot ...

MARVELEDITS 15K SPECIAL: favourite suits/quotes/abilities — loki

i am loki, of asgard, and i am burdened with glorious purpose.

I just realized something ... he propably could easily learn that enchanting trick, since he already is capable of rumaging around in other peoples memories ... forcing them to relife it as a fight move to cripple or distract ...

Picked up Myths of the Norsemen by Robert Lancelyn Green in a bookshop today. I've never read it, so I decided to see if he also erased Sigyn. The good news is, he didn't erase her, she's still mentioned in the cave scene, as evidenced below:

It's a terrible quality picture, I know (I have shakey hands), but I think it's readable. Still, while the part about Sigyn's role in Loki's punishment is correct, there is one thing that stands out to me as glaringly wrong. In most works, Sigyn is listed as an Asynja, a female Aesir, a goddess. Here, she's a Giantess. Now, it's not as bad as her being gone completely, but it still isn't right. This... makes no sense and I don't even know why I bothered posting it, sorry.

No, it's great!!! Thanks a lot! :)

And yeah, it makes no sense. Sigyn is supposed to be an Asynja, not a Giantess. I mean, yes, giantesses who married Aesir gods became Asynja goddesses, but it's not Sigyn's case.

In the Prose Edda, Snorri lists the Asynja goddesses, but does not count Skadi who became Asynja through marriage (though he does list Gerd? Maybe because she was a princess and the most beautiful of all giantesses, and Feyr asked him nicely to put his wife on the list so she gets a pass? XDXD IDK). He also includes the Vanir Freyja and the Half Dwarf Idunn - which means Sigyn could indeed be of Vanir or Dwarf (or both) birth (Tolkien regards the "Narvi" name as dwarven, so... Who knows? :p )

We have to also remember that Asynja goddesses who married giants did not become giantesses ^^' (not a lot of cases of these, except for Ran, Sigyn & Laufey )

The Giantess Loki married was Angrboda, not Sigyn - though I do remember reading a theory that Sigyn & Angrboda were one and the same... But I like to see them as different women, with different agendas... Angrboda became the Witch of the Iron Wood and prepared Fenrir's pups for Ragnarok after all, while Loki with the Gods of Asgard and married to Sigyn ... So yeah. The timeline does not work well :/

I'm starting to wonder if writing about Sigyn is like that superstition about knitting mistakes.

There's this ton in knitting that you need to have at least one mistake in your knitting because demons are drawn to perfect rows and will stay in whatever you knit but if there's a mistake the demon will bounce out.

So yeah, do writers think that they need to have at least one mistake in how they write Sigyn to keep demons out of their work? XD

I mean, Sigyn is the incantation fetter, and as a Valkyrie, she's good with chains? XDXD So keeping demons at bay is kinda her thing? XD

Anyway, I fond it weird that writers are SO pro Angrboda and SO anti Sigyn, as if Loki was allowed to love Angrboda (and others) but not Sigyn :(

It's really heartbreaking and our girl deserves so much better, and WE KNOW LOKI LOVES HER.

Well maybe people who refer to Loki as "the evil one" can only accept someone they can also perceive as monstrous as being his love rather than accept a pretty goddess

The ideal path for Scarlet Witch forward in MCU is a quick and definitive arc.

Let’s just acknowledge the fact that Wanda as a character is kinda cursed, and I don’t say that lightly. In the comics she got nuked out of the orbit by House of M and suffered 7 years of straight up absence from comics and spend even more time doing half-assed redemption arcs to get back on her feet.

Ironically it’s probably the popularity boost from MCU that fished her out of the sewer(she barely got comic appearance when WandaVision is actually running, that’s how little Marvel cared about her.) And when her fans saw the new dawn and seemingly bright future, sike, she got nuked again by Multiverse of Madness.

The way I see it, there aren’t many paths that won’t further waste her time or condemn her character even further.(AKA being Kang/Doom’s living plot device for Secret War, at least that’s what the fandom wants for her, before that they want her as the brooding mare for MCU mutants, did I mention this character is cursed?)

 There is one storyline that could maybe both redeem her and develop her character further and maybe lead to a satisfying end though, that is a Darkhold Redeemer project based on the 90s Darhold: Pages from the Book of Sins comic series. She will be perfectly for Modred the Mystic’s role, a former victim of Darkhold who holds tremendous power, and wanting to help others who are affected by the remnants of Chthon’s power, the exact plot of course needs to be changed but Wanda helping Victoria Montesi avoiding her own prophecy and fate would be a very sympathetic premise, and of course it would naturally explore more Elder Gods lore and lead Wanda on the path of finding a way to defeat/contain Chthon, it could probably be finished in a show and a movie, then she can hopefully just peace out and never come back. A somewhat complete legacy not to be disturbed.

Also please just avoid the Billy/Tommy(and Children’s Crusade) in any actual capacity, I don’t hate those characters(and I am a YA fan), but I am going to amputate parts of her if it means I don’t have to be reminded how braindead she is during MoM yelling “muh kids” and that godawful icecream song. (Yes, that includes the none-existent Dadneto) But of course she will more likely be a spectacle generator down the line, have we learned nothing from being a fan of hers since 2005?