Jebbifurzz

Loki canonically has spent a lifetime showing his emotions, opinions and needs up his ass, trying his best to be helpful and responsible and "deserving" of love.

Frigga and Odin are only comfortable with Thor's coronation because Loki will be there to "guide" Thor. It is pointed out repeatedly that there were many times when Loki was the only reason Thor and warriors 4 survived, including the Jotunheim scene. Multiple characters refuse to believe at first that Loki could've done anything malicious, because he was nothing but good for the most of his life.

And yet they still betrayed him, even the ones who didn't believe the accusations, over a simple suspicion with no evidence. And yet he was scorned every time he had a need or an opinion. They dumped the responsibility of carrying Asgard through the war on him and left him behind. And later on, nobody even cared if he was in NYC willingly. Nobody was willing to give him a second chance, nobody was even willing to give him a single glance.

Because they weren't grateful for all of what he had done for them, no, they were pissed that he stopped doing it.

Additional reminder that Loki’s betrayal on Sakaar as shown falls apart in more ways than that:

He’d already helped Thor kill several Sakaarian guards by the time he actually turned on Thor; presumably Sakaar is advanced enough to have security cameras, so the Grandmaster would find out about that.

As a result of that, it’d make more sense for Loki to have betrayed Thor earlier—like, say, right before they started encountering guards. Loki could say he had a plan to deal with them, then, as soon as the elevator doors open, turn Thor over.

The Grandmaster wanted both Thor and Hulk. Why would Loki get that nonexistent reward when he didn’t do the whole job?

Actually, considering that, it’d make more sense for Loki to have suggested earlier on that Valkyrie go to arm the gladiators herself while Bruce went with him and Thor. Then he could turn them both over as soon as they ran into the guards.

Loki cares about what happens to Thor. Once he realized that he couldn’t persuade Thor to let Hela alone, he’d probably go along with Thor to increase Thor’s chances even realizing that he might die. (Note his attitude about this in TDW. “This plan of yours is going to get us killed.” *goes along with it anyway*)

Until the elevator scene, and when Thor went on his spiel of “this place is chaotic, lawless, savage- brother, you’re gonna do great here”, and insisting that “maybe there’s still good in you”…. while Loki has spent the last hour risking life and limb to betray an all-powerful being just to help Thor…

That when Loki said “I’m probably better off staying here”, he was hoping for Thor to give some form of protest. “No, it’s not safe” or “I need you to help me on Ásgarð”. Loki needs to be needed, he always has. And I think he’s at a point where he needs Thor to admit that he needs Loki, specifically, and really always has.

And not only does Thor NOT do that, but he gives some bullshit droning lecture (very much like Odin would have done) about all the times Loki “screwed up” (like that time he was brainwashed by Thanos, or locked away in a cell, or faked his death and promptly ensured Ásgarð stayed safe and peaceful while Thor gallivanted across the realms), and is far too pleased with himself for pushing Loki away.

Loki’s “yeah” is not triumphant or even accepting- it’s fucking SAD. Thor has the same self-satisfied grin and attitude he’s always had, and clearly isn’t thinking ahead more than 30 seconds- because if he did, he’d realize that Loki staying on Sakaar after betraying the Grandmaster, helping Thor escape, and killing many guards, only has one possible ending- death or torture for Loki.

Thor proves he still doesn’t think ahead, refuses to admit he needs Loki…. and then suggests “Get Help”.

Loki says no. He tells Thor flat out that he hates it, it’s humiliating, he’s not doing it. He says no and refuses consent every way he can think of-

And Thor does not care. He bulldozes over his brother, and decides that he has a right to use his brother’s body however he likes, to humiliate him and hurt him and find that funny, and there’s nothing Loki can do about it.

…and I think that is when Loki decides to “betray” him. Because Thor has just proven in six different ways that he hasn’t grown at all. He’s not more strategic, he doesn’t have empathy or compassion, and he’s the same brash idiot who swings first and asks questions never. And Loki hopes that maybe he can somehow talk his way out of this with the Grandmaster (or more likely, find a different ship and get out of this wretched place while the guards are busy arresting Thor).

people point to Jon not blinding himself in Season 4 as the main example of his insatiable curiosity being his tragic flaw that leads to his downfall but honestly given the evidence available to us the audience I don't think it was ever an option for Jon. he DIED, he was DEAD, he was being kept alive by the Eye. we are never given any indication that it is possible for an Avatar to regain their humanity, and that actually being possible would be pretty lore- and tone-shattering for TMA. this tells me that either Jon would've been unable to symbolically reject the Eye by blinding himself, or that he could've done it but it would've killed him. heck in that very same season we are shown how Daisy being cut off from the Hunt makes her terminally(!!!) ill, the only thing that can keep her alive at that point is her connection with her Entity.

If the choice that Jon faced in S4 was "risk everyone's lives and keep his coworkers trapped at the Institute by continuing to indulge his insatiable curiosity vs. blinding himself to get his and his coworkers' freedom at the cost of his eyesight and the chance to Learn More" then yeah I'd say Jon made the wrong choice, but that wasn't the choice he was facing. The choice was "risk everyone's lives and keep his coworkers trapped at the Institute by continuing to indulge his insatiable curiosity vs. getting his coworkers' freedom by literally killing himself". And that is a VERY different situation! Maybe others might still argue that Jon was in the wrong but I can't for a moment agree with the idea that Jon was morally obligated to kill himself.

Honestly the fact that this is barely brought up in the story is kind of weird because Jon was looking for any excuse for his actions at that point so the fact that he DIDN'T latch on to the idea that no, he can't blind himself because he would *literally die*, feels like a missed opportunity, and also has resulted in people treating the situation like Jon had an actual choice between two options that both involved big personal sacrifice but both had merits, when all available evidence tells me that's not the truth of the situation at all.

I never saw it as an addiction metaphor I saw but how disabled people are denied aid and stuff because its 'wrong' and you 'should just be able to exist without it'.

But 'it hurts me to see you using cane/meds/wheelchair'

So it made sense to me that yeah he'd feel great using it but also feel horrible guilty

Context: [Link]

I didn't get into this in the original post because I was worried I wouldn't be able to word it right (in part because I haven't finished my relisten, and in part because this is More than just meta about a story I like and I didn't want to say anything ignorant).

BUT I'm absolutely glad that you're bringing this up.

because the truth is that my Other problem with the discussion about monsterhood in the magnus archives as addiction (in holding characters morally accountable for being monsters because they "should" be able to just Choose not to do monstrous things if they were good people) is that it Is accurate to how people treat addicts, and that's a bad thing when people parrot it without realizing that.

because the truth is, addicts often Do need their addiction to survive. medically, emotionally, or just. You Know. because addiction often means you can't just cut cold turkey without major consequences (consequences that, to be clear, Can Kill You). and they Are often treated poorly by the people around them for not just being able to Do Better as if anyone could be expected to do "better" in their situation.

when ""better"" means being in pain, when ""better"" is unlivable without the necessary support to Make it bearable.

and this Absolutely crosses over with ableism. in real life And in the show.

you don't Need to be an addict for someone to treat you like you're immoral for needing aid they don't. though I think it'd be a mistake to talk about it without Also keeping addiction in the conversation, because it's not right when people do it to addicts either.

needing aid to survive And being an addict aren't mutually exclusive, and that's what I meant when I said my last post was In Conversation with the addiction metaphor.

jon's situation being a mirror (in many ways, it's not an exact one to one of course) with addiction doesn't mean that he's Less deserving of compassion or that his situation was somehow his own fault, it means that we should be taking that compassion and understanding of his situation and Apply That to the real people who are also deserving of those things.

we Watched jon be stripped of his own agency and forced into a position where he could Only be a monster or die, and in response many people have said that he should've just Chosen not to be, as if the choice is Reasonable. as if asking him to starve or die is Reasonable.

and of course, I'm not qualified to speak about addiction in detail, but it's just something that's sat wrong with me for years. the Show's use of addiction as a metaphor works for me because of the empathy and humanity it's Meant to show to addiction. but the fandom's reception to that messaging isn't. always stellar.

How popular is the take that Melanie and Georgie were actually in a Fearscape?

I feel like this must be a common take, but it's hard to find just meta-theories for TMA, but just incase, here's how I came to this conclusion.

Melanie's Blindness

The are alot of blind people in the world. I know Melanie blinded herself under spooky™ circumstances, but nothing actively spooky was occurring other than being inside the magnus institute. Also as seen with Gertrude/Agnes, the flesh book and The Dark ritual, when you want to avoid an Entity, or several, you usually have to do some explicity spooky things.

Because of this I think Melanie is just normally blind, she herself seems to think her immunity is just because of her blindness too. Now I know Jonny hasn't always been great on numbers and scales but there are ALOT of blind people, maybe the Eye only ignores people who are completely blind and not visually imperared but still, Jon should've been seeing dozens of blindspots just within the UK in the beginning of S5. So I think it's safe to say Melanie's blindness isn't why she's "immune".

Observation Isn't Overt

We know the Fearscapes aren't constant hell, the camera is the most explicit, giving prolonged relief, but it was still a Fearscape, waiting for all that paranoia to ripen until it breaks and the fears decend. We see it in other Fearscapes like the falling titan or the medical centre where there might be hours or days of relative peace, but the fear is still there and the victims still exist to suffer. I think the camera can also explain how Melanie and Georgie weren't visible to Jon even outside the tunnels, their fearscape relies on feeling "free" to some extent.

Furthermore, Jon still knew they where alive, so The Eye knew that aswell, it didn't hunt them down to put them in a fearscape however, and that was because they already were, they were just "freeranged" and The Eye just wanted to monitor their vitals.

Lastly, Helen knew where they where. I know she was better at navigating the tunnels than Jon in S4, but we know in S5, all power comes and goes through The Eye, it's how the smitings work, if she could find them so could The Eye.

Specificity

Basira inherited Daisy's Fearscape, allowing her to travel freely, but she was still in a Fearscape, having to endure all the horrors Daisy commited and then having to carry on, viewing the Fearscapes without Jons protection. Knowing this helps plug another hole in our original theory, which is that this is quite a specific Fearscape. We know some are small, Martin's only has a few dozen, but Basira's is just hers. This I think sets the president that although Melanie's and Georgie's Fearscape is highly unique it's still possible. (Maybe The Eye chooses unique ones for its Ex kids)

Georgie's Fear

I know people will bring up Georgie and I'll have to make a much longer post eventually but I think we've only ever been told how her power works from her POV, which I think is inaccurate. If we actually look at how she acts she does feel Fear, she just displays it as worry or anxietyusally for others. I think what Georgie actually is, is what everyone else is, an Avatar, specifically of the End. We only have one other End avatar, Oliver, but we see a numbing of emotions in him too. I think she's unable to feel fear like others because she's an End Avatar and that brings a dampening affect, for further proof see the book of the damned with Gerry and Eric, both who know it feels "bad" but still have their emotions dampened. Basically, Georgie is a misidentifyed Avatar and she can still feel Fear just not like she used to be able to.

What the Fear / FearScapeUK

Now what is their Fearscape? Firstly it doesn't fit nicely into the 14 but that's okay, we know in the apocalypse Smirks 14 is largely redundant. But their fear is simply their followers, both having this crushing fear of failing them, having to be the perfect leaders, and of losing them, which they always will. Just before S5 ends we see the Cycle about to restart.

Just Melanie and Georgie -> save a few -> save even more ("get greedy") -> lose a big chunk -> lose them all -> alone again, Repeat.

They'd go through this anguish over and over until the End consumes all, it allows them freedom like Basira and Daisy but they still only exist to suffer like those in every other Fearscape.

also, it always strikes me as a little silly when people try to label elias as a groomer, and say he’s a bad and untrustworthy person because of the emotional manipulation. like yeah he was manipulative! that is correct! remind me, how many violent mass murders have been committed in this podcast so far? how many of the “good” main characters have personally killed people and committed atrocities?

you argued that one of the main themes of the podcast is the blurry line between fate and free will, and yeah! i was talking about that! the line gets blurry when you’re being groomed and manipulated and unknowingly nudged by circumstance and people beyond your control

jon was in fact groomed and violated by elias throughout the show, thats just the truth of the situation. and elias was using manipulation tactics in that conversation with him…its not too crazy to point out how the central antagonist of the show who’s notorious for his extensive manipulation is in fact manipulating someone!

one of the main themes in the show is the blurriness of choice, sure, but it’s also fundamentally a dissection on how fear affects different people and what people are driven to do under desperate circumstances under fear and traumatic stress…we as people are made irrational by fear, and that’s apparent with most of our cast. all the main characters have made bad and immoral decisions in some capacity (some more than others, like daisy vs someone like melanie for example) but that doesn’t take away from the fact that elias is still a bad person who definitively emotionally abused the protagonist ? i’m not sure what saying “the main characters are bad too so you cant say elias is bad!” proves…two things can be true at once

you ask if i’ve “missed the arc where jon willingly gives himself to the eye” which in my opinion is a very gross oversimplification of his character arc. if you’re referring to season 3, he had barely realized this was happening to him but was already becoming physically reliant on statements by that point and was told by ELIAS that the literal world was at stake, and that jon was the only person who could save it .. what choice does he have then?? in his perspective he HAD to keep feeding into the eye because he was made to believe the fate of the world was at stake because of the unknowing, and then by season 4 he was then fully reliant on statements and would experience extreme physical repercussions if he didnt continue taking them … the idea of free will and consent become blurry under abusive circumstances where you’re being continuously manipulated (this situation also ties into the addiction allegory, which is another whole complicated topic that i won’t get into right now)

the point you made about how the show tells us avatars knew exactly what they were doing is Also a very gross oversimplification of the shows themes…did YOU miss the part of the show where the audience is made to watch as our protagonist slowly becomes one of these avatars due to circumstances beyond his control and desparate decisions he made under helpless situations, causing us to sympathize with him therefore having to reevaluate the simplified views we had of the other avatars? did you miss how characters like agnes and gerry showed us that its never quite that simple, how certain circumstances we’re placed under cause us to make desperate decisions because it’s all we know to do? how situations leading up to avatarhood are extremely complicated especially when its all someones ever known? how the show DIRECTLY criticizes the whole “avatar and human” system because it forces very complex ideas into strict boxes of good or bad, monster or human, perpetuator or victim? how humans will find a way to simplify and categorize very complicated things under a strict narrative? its barely even subtext, its TEXT!

the bit about how “jon was becoming an avatar before elias even knew him” is just kind of ridiculous to me..are you referring to when he was a child?? or when he first joined the institute and didnt even know what the fears or an avatar was?? what?? how is that possibly his own choice? was it not literally revealed to us that the web has been subtley nudging and manipulating him since he was a child? are you implying its his choice because he read some childrens book, really? this part just kind of confuses me, it seems like you’re just going through mental gymnastics to defend elias at this point instead of actually discussing the nuances of choice and consent.

the podcast shows how the concept of choice isn’t a simple thing, and how sometimes, we just don’t have one to make because of situations we’re backed into that make us desperate . jon’s situation is fictional, yeah, but to me it’s very much applicable to real life abusive situations, and the way the fandom discusses the show sometimes seems reminiscent to how people irl will blame victims and claim they chose their situation. this fandom will often take things in the podcast at face value and say very victim-blaming-esque things under the guise of “WELL A BIG THEME IS FREE WILL!” without even wanting to discuss the nuances of that theme. that’s kind of just what my initial ask was talking about

To me, the podcast is about how abuse, grooming and violation chips away at a person's control, self-esteem and the ability to make correct decisions, often ostracizes and isolates them. Just like Jon, people in abusive situations don't often have social network of support because the abuser stripped them of that too, and just like Jon, they start blaming and loathing themselves, denied kindness or understanding which they need to heal. No one took Jon's side. In fact, characters surrounding him believed JONAH, who painted Jon as a monster. His words, "you chose it," were nothing more than guilt-trip Jon, knowing that Jon, already suffering from guilt, would fall for it and hate himself, as well as others (Basira, for example) would blame him too. This is absolutely terrifying and sadly, if we take away the supernatural part, very realistic too. For me, the podcast is about that. How sometimes, someone can use you and hurt you without your knowledge or consent, cloud your judgement with constant gaslighting and emotional abuse to trip you into serving their goal, and sometimes, you can do nothing to prevent it. What happened to Jon can just as easily happen to anyone, because people like Jonah exist and the problem lies in them, rather than in their victims' "wrongdoings" or "mistakes."

But I see that many people in the fandom take this and treat this as "Jon was SO asking for this because he did X and he did Y" and you know what's funny? It is NEVER a question of what JONAH did. Never. No one questions HIS actions. It is ALWAYS about Jon or how wrong was JON or how JON ''shouldn't have done this and shouldn't have done that so this is his fault actually cause free will etc etc." You know, almost like in real life no one questions the actions of the aggressor, it's always the victim who has to justify their behavior and prove that they were, in fact, hurt and didn't want it.

And I'm used to it. I mean, I come from somewhere where this kind of victim-blaming rhetoric is (unfortunately) a very wide-spread thing (as you can guess, typically against women.) But hearing it in supposedly progressive spaces, I'm… flabbergasted, honestly. And I know the podcast is just the podcast and it's entirely fictional and no one actually got hurt, but I can't shake the feeling that saying ''It was Jon's fault entirely" may kind of gradually shape the way we as a society (a progressive society, too) view and treat victims. I hope it's not the case, but for someone who knows irl people who were severely emotionally abused and got blamed for it (and who blamed themselves) it's painful and upsetting to hear. Anyway, I just want to repeat this: Jon was groomed, force-fed trauma, drugged against his will, consent or knowledge, violated, made to compromise his bodily and psychological autonomy, got stripped off his agency, humiliated and traumatized, with Jonah Magnus in ep 160 taking full control over him and violating him completely. It is cruel, it's disgusting, it's repulsive, it's abusive, and I view everything that happened as Jonah Magnus's fault, because HE knew what he was doing, HE actively, actually chose it without remorse, he planned and orchestrated this for his own benefit, and then, as typical abuser, painted it as Jon's choice and Jon's fault, in typically abusive, manipulative ways.

Everything else is confetti.

Hello! I'm so glad you're listening to TMA. Most of it is a really great show. Season 3 is awesome. And yeah he did plan all of it out. It feels like partway through season 5 that plan kind of went out the window - and I have thoughts on what factors might have gone into that. Definitely keep listening. Seasons 1-4 are absolutely incredible and totally cohesive. And the beginning of season 5 is good too. Then partway through season 5, imho, goes off the rails and never recovers. Of course, you may enjoy it - there were people who did.

I'm not going to give spoilers so I'll just say I personally like to imagine the show ended on a slightly open note just a few eps into s5 and that the rest of it never happened lol. So it is salvageable from that pov.

It's rare that I give up on a show/book series/other after getting so far, but it has definitely happened, when things just deviated too much, and partaking in them just became too infuriating for me.