A Geeky Artist

If you read any of my posts about Loki, let it be this one. I feel this is the best and most coherent I’ve been able to explain why I dislike the series so much.

Found this from a post analyzing Loki’s costuming throughout the MCU and it’s just… really depressing to me. Got me thinking.

(OP is speaking in favor of the series btw)

He had all freedoms taken away from him. Even the most basic such as dressing himself. He couldn’t even express himself stylistically/through his clothing.

‘He is forced to wear the same clothing as his captor.’

They’re aware.

Love and connection can change others, but this is him changing himself in order to receive that “love” and “connection.” (You guys already know how I feel about his “relationships” in the series, but let’s just go with it for now.)

Loki has never been loved or accepted for who he is, and instead of the series uplifting/proudly presenting those traits of his that haven’t been loved by others, they have him abandon those traits instead. You can only be loved or accepted if you change every aspect of who you are. You can only be included if you strip yourself of who you are. That’s the message the series/his characterization in the series sends. It doesn’t send a message of acceptance, and friendship. He couldn’t even be accepted “despite” who he is. How is him changing who he is to feel a sense of belonging acceptance?

(And I don’t even mean traits such as his coldness or harshness. No, I mean everything from his own way of speaking, his intelligence, his ability to stick up for himself, his ambition, his mischievousness, just… all of it. He lost even the non “difficult” traits.)

He wasn’t worthy of being loved as is. He had to conform in every way. From the way he expresses himself, all the way to his mannerisms. Consciously, and subconsciously. He rejected pieces of himself, to become like those around him.

I understand why the writers did this as they are ignorant and the series was never meant to be about Loki or about uplifting him, but to have “fans” accept this… Loki, I’m sorry they couldn’t love you for who you were. I know he’s not real, but it makes me emotional that the characters around him didn’t accept him for who he was, nor do his “fans.”

Ignorant “fan” talk aside, the writers in the first place didn’t understand that one of the reasons we love Loki is because he wasn’t loved for who he is. No one who truly loved him, wanted him to change and conform to other’s ideals. I understand that Loki needed to be dumbed down and stripped of everything that made him himself in order for the series to work, but no one wanted this.

To make the god of mischief, someone who’s chaotic in nature, conform to order… ooh, it is so irritating.

And this is one of the reasons I dislike the motives behind the costuming in the series. It’s not because I hate Tom Hiddleston and don’t respect his choices, or because the costuming is ugly (it is, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about), it’s because I hate what these choices represent. I hate the fact that people feel that they need to change every aspect of who they are in order to be loved, when there is always someone who will love you for who you are. I hate that it’s encouraged, and seen as acceptance when it’s nothing of the sort.

‘The new costuming shows humility’, as if Loki was ever allowed to be anything but humbled in the first place. As if he were allowed to be above anyone in the first place. As if he was able to be celebrated in the first place. Those “bad” traits, were never accepted. They don’t realize that just because Loki was the villain of the Avengers, it doesn’t mean he walked out successfully.

He was humbled just like in every movie he’s been in. Whether that’s him being rejected by Odin, disrespected by The Warrior’s Three + Sif, humbled by Thor ‘Know your place, brother’, tortured by Thanos, defeated by The Avengers, left to rot in a cell in the dungeons of the Palace he grew up in and was raised as Royalty in, denied the ability to say goodbye to his own mother after her death, threatened by people who were once his friends… You know I can go on forever.

I don’t think there’s been a moment where Loki was allowed to feel better than anyone else without immediately being shut down, denied, humbled, dehumanized, or humiliated.

So for that all to happen to him about a thousand times more in a series that was meant to uplift him… it just sucks. ‘Healthy self-worth and self- love’ he was stripped of who he was and constantly belittled, and did not stick up for himself. He just accepted everything that was said about him, and he accepted the disrespect. I don’t see how that is him having healthy self worth. He was treated horribly by those around them and instead of attempting to stick up for himself like in the previous projects he’s been in, he just accepted it. As if he felt he deserved it. He has less self worth/self love than he’s ever had.

He never got uplifted or praised or accepted or anything besides gaining new physical abilities and a new title. He’s been given a position he’s never wanted, because Loki’s always sacrificing himself. He’s always sacrificing himself the better of other characters, and other MCU plot lines. It’s what the MCU does when they get bored, or need to start a new plot.

I don’t want to see Loki be humbled. He already has been in everything he’s been in. He’s already been humiliated and made the laughingstock. I want to see him uplifted. I want to see him proud of who he is. I want to see him accepted.

I want him to realize he can be happy, even if he doesn’t belong or fit in. He can be loved for who he is.

The series did nothing of the sort, and I don’t know how people can be so unaware of that. Or if they are aware of it, I don’t know how they can accept it.

It’s not even the bare minimum “I accept you despite your flaws” no, it’s “I sort of accept you now that you’ve sacrificed yourself for me and changed every aspect of who you are, but I still do not like you as a person and I still won’t give you even the most basic respect.”

I want better for him. Not more humbling that he accepts without any complaints.

like, let me describe this without using any of the language that the series does;

a secret police dedicated to killing entire groups of people "for the greater good," one day picks up a man from one of these groups and tells him that if he doesn't help them catch the person who is trying to take them down, they will straight up kill him.

he is then given a coat to wear, branded with the secret police's logo, as well as clarification in huge red letters that he is NOT one of the secret police— he is part of the group the secret police kills.

this secret police is marketed as morally gray, and the company who makes the show releases merch for you to dress up as the secret police (or as the group that they kill) for fun because they want you to think this is cute and aesthetic.

and also the secret police uses gas chambers.

oh and also also, people draw cutesy ship art of this man and the "good cop" cuddling, while the man is clearly labeled and wearing a bland jumpsuit that the secret police forces him to wear.

Jul 9, 2025

The Flint water crisis began in 2014, after lead-contaminated drinking water was found to be leaching out from aging pipes into homes citywide.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Natural Resources Defense Council, with help from other activists and nonprofits, have released statements on the recent progress, celebrating the milestone.

The statements which they chalk up the crisis to “cost-cutting measures and improper water treatment,” that the state “didn’t require treatment to prevent corrosion,” after a “a state-appointed emergency manager” switched the water supply to the Flint River.

There is no safe level of lead exposure; each nanogram causes harm. In addition to long-known risks, such as damage to children’s brains and certain cancers, there is also significant evidence that exposure to lead is linked to numerous cardiovascular diseases, including stroke and heart attack.

The coalition mobilized the citizenry and filed a lawsuit against Flint and Michigan state officials to secure safe water. The result was a settlement in March 2017, under which a federal court in Detroit ordered Flint to give every resident the opportunity to have their lead pipe replaced at no cost, as well as conduct comprehensive tap water testing, implement a faucet filter distribution and education program, and maintain funding for health programs to help residents deal with the effects of Flint’s tainted water, according to the NRDC.

The coalition then returned to court six times in six years to ensure the city and state kept to the timeline, which was delayed by COVID-19, and other reasons which The Detroit News described as “spotty record-keeping” and “ineffective management.”

On July 1st, the State of Michigan submitted a progress report to a federal court confirming that, more than eight years after the settlement, nearly 11,000 lead pipes were replaced and more than 28,000 properties were restored where the maintenance had taken place.

Of the 4,200 buildings where lead pipes are known to still be in service, their owners have either left the properties vacant, abandoned, or have declined the free replacement under the Safe Water Drinking Act. The coalition has said it will continue to monitor city and state progress on these remaining lines.

We've got:

Shadowheart: amnesiac in the chronic pain gang. Her amnesia and chronic pain are both caused by Shar to help control her as a cult member. Her disabilities tie directly into the theme of the loss of bodily autonomy to a bodily defect (the tadpole vs. Shar's wound). However, Shadowheart's happy ending doesn't inherently involve being cured. If she chooses a Selunite path and frees her parents (arguably the happiest ending for god's favorite princess), Shadowheart remains an amnesiac (lacking all memory of her childhood and early adulthood) with chronic pain. It is just that Shar's control over Shadowheart's body/mind is no longer control over Shadowheart. Her arc is a really cool twist on the whole "God gave you disability as a curse/test" nonsense--in this case, that is literally true, but she still lives a happy and fulfilled life with her disabilities and doesn't require a cure.

Gale: as pointed out by OP, Gale has a chronic illness that gives him chronic pain. Unlike Shadowheart, his illness is terminal: he must find a cure or he dies. Also unlike Shadowheart, he is in the midst of a pretty clear depression episode and grappling with suicidal ideation. His happiest ending is finding a cure and living as a professor/retired adventurer. While Shadowheart's happiest ending entails living to the fullest with your disabilities, Gale's happiest ending is about finding a way to live when everything in your body, mind, and environment insist you must die.

Karlach: Karlach, like Gale, has a chronic and terminal condition. In her case, she's a fantasy disabled veteran who's going to die because the fantasy military experimented on her. Her relationship to disability and death is directly foiled to Gale's--but her arc comes with the knowledge that a cure is almost certainly impossible. However, care is not--she can go to Dammon, she can go through fantasy surgeries to manage her quite literal and quite firey flare-ups, and she can find a care network who will emotionally and physically support her as her body fails. When a cure is impossible, it is her care networks that keep her alive--Wyll (and whoever decides to join them) going to Avernus. Karlach's relationship to disability is all about finding joy even in impending death, and learning that care is more powerful than cure. (This is one of the reasons why I personally am happy that Karlach DOESN'T get cured at the end of the game--it would completely ruin the message around the power of care ethics and the futility of cure ethics, a central theme in the whole story!)

Astarion: a vampire. No, literally, that's his disability: the man's a vampire. He cannot walk in the sun, cross running water, enter a home without invitation, see his reflection, etc. He's also constantly deprived of proper nutrients through Cazador's abuse and his condition. Like Shadowheart, he's an amnesiac. Like Shadowheart, I would argue his happiest ending is the one where he isn't cured. The Ascension ritual creates a new kind of vampire: a vampire who has all the perks of vampirism (what academics called "hyperabilities") but none of the disabilities that go with vampirism. But if he refuses the Ascension, he refuses the closest thing he has to the cure--and it is only in this ending that he truly undoes the traumas of vampirism. If he remains a spawn, he stays in a vampire's disabled body, but he lets go of the traumatic and abusive culture of the vampire master/spawn--allowing others to be his equal, allowing himself to truly care for others and to be cared for in turn. ("You give me something to care for, and that is worth the peril.") Astarion in many ways is Shadowheart's foil when it comes to disability--he too got his through lifelong abuse, and he too finds his most fulfilled and healed self in the ending where he is not cured. Like Shadowheart's and Karlach's stories, Astarion's "radiant hopeful" ending is all about the joys that can be found outside a cure for disability. His Ascendent ending, on the flipside, is about the tremendous violence that a cure ethic entails: it "cures" some of the disabled, and relegates the uncurable disabled to die because they are not truly "alive" or "people" (the other spawn who don't ascend, but must be sacrificed for the ritual because it is "kinder" than letting them live). Astarion's endings more openly link cure ethics to eugenics and care ethics to the healing and joy within disabled life.

Wyll: Wyll is interesting in that, aside from the tadpole, his plot doesn't revolve around care/cure for a disability. He only has one canonical disability at the start of the story: his eye, lost in battle, replaced by a prosthetic that Mizora uses to spy on him. Like many of the other companions, his prosthetic eye directly relates to his loss of control over his own body and soul. However, unlike the other companions, the missing eye is mostly treated as a neutral fact of his body, not an angst-ridden and plot-defining aspect of his character. Later, Mizora disfigures him as punishment for sparing Karlach. As he grapples with his scars/horns, he grapples with the narrative that deformity and disfigurement are signs of monstrosity--an old belief that disability revealed the evilness of the soul (think Shakespeare's Richard III). Ultimately, he sees that his deeds, not his disfigurement, define him--and he comes to see his horns and scarring as a neutral or even handsome part of his appearance ("I wish I had time to polish up the horns" in the epilogue). Wyll is about disability as a neutral fact of life, rather than as some trial to overcome.

Lae'zel: our only abled companion, and she's a supersoldier from outer space. You thought Baldur's Gate 3 would give us a "normal" body? You fool--normal is a myth, and Lae'zel sure as hell ain't it. She's an abled githyanki, which means she is parthonogenic, teleports at will, and can see in pitch-black shadow. She is hyperable by the standards of the "weaklings" of Faerun, but abled by the standards of her own people. Lae'zel is a reminder that "abled" is not the same as normal, and that both ability and normalcy are social constructs. After all, to a githyanki, "your large fleshy nose looks like a mistake." While the other companions are about disability, Lae'zel's story is a commentary on ability. Lae'zel's story is about an extremely abled person suddenly facing the threat of disability (getting tadpoled), and immediately floundering in fear of it. She turns to the hope of a cure (the zaithisk). Like so many of our companions do in their personal arcs, she finds that the "cure" is horrific violence done to disabled people--one that will ultimately kill them in the name of scientific advancement.

This...spiraled beyond what I intended. Truly, there are whole essays to be written about disability in this game.

CW vilified fantasy disability characterized by violent urges and trauma. SPOILERS for The Dark Urge. If you want to share the above reblog without my addition I have reblogged a CW free version here:

These 2 covered it all really well but I want to acknowledge that the dark urge is also disabled, not only by having survived severe brain damage, but also by being Bhaalspawn, an example of having an extremely vilified disability along with severe trauma.

I will not draw any comparisons to real life disabilities because they don't exist, and to avoid vilifying complex human experiences. I affirm that, in real life, disabled people, even those who experience symptoms relating to violent thoughts, are much more likely to be victims than perpetrators.

and then he gets yanked directly out of that nexus and despite that the fact that he spent, again, two hundred years in a situation that was sort of a rock tumbler for the human soul, there’s still a pebble left in there. and it’s a pebble that can be grown if placed in the right environment and provided with a support network.

so i think it becomes interesting because it really does i think force you to start thinking about the limits of free will even on as basic a level as the human personality. i think the fact that he becomes such a different character based on player choice, that his end morality is so hugely dependent on player choice, is uhhh. a big part of what the devs were going for probably.

it makes a lot of people really uncomfortable to acknowledge some bad people would be good people if literally nothing changed except they had a good support network and different circumstances. especially because it means the opposite is also true. which is even more uncomfortable.

how it should have happened...