Tournament of Lokis: Round 5

TBI!Loki^^^ Propaganda:

"thats it. look at her. shes haunted shes gay shes played by tim she sacrificed herself and died slowly and painfully over 80 years to give the Yggsdrasil system a chance to survive. shes so tragic and i was crying during ragnarok v"

Tournament of Lokis: Final Round

TBI!Loki^^^ Propaganda:

"thats it. look at her. shes haunted shes gay shes played by tim she sacrificed herself and died slowly and painfully over 80 years to give the Yggsdrasil system a chance to survive. shes so tragic and i was crying during ragnarok v"

Tournament of Lokis: Round 2

Vote for your favorite Loki. Propaganda is welcome. You have one week.

Tournament of Lokis: Round 2

Vote for your favorite Loki. Propaganda is welcome. You have 1 week.

Hilarious Croki propaganda:

Tournament of Lokis: Semifinals

TBI!Loki^^^ Propaganda:

"thats it. look at her. shes haunted shes gay shes played by tim she sacrificed herself and died slowly and painfully over 80 years to give the Yggsdrasil system a chance to survive. shes so tragic and i was crying during ragnarok v"

Tournament of Lokis: Round 1

Propaganda is welcome. Vote for your favorite Loki. You have 1 week.

TBI Loki Propaganda:

"thats it. look at her. shes haunted shes gay shes played by tim she sacrificed herself and died slowly and painfully over 80 years to give the Yggsdrasil system a chance to survive. shes so tragic and i was crying during ragnarok v"

Tournament of Lokis: Round 4

Loki's from 2010s Tumblr

Tournament of Lokis: Round 5

spoil it!

So Laurits (the Loki of Netflix Ragnarok) is given a heart to eat by their estranged biological father ( a call-back to that myth where Loki is impregnated from eating a witch's burnt heart), and they gets a ginormous tapeworm from it (Jormungandr), gets hospitalized and has it removed( "gave birth"). And they keep it on a fish tank.

Tournament of Lokis: Round 4

Kid versions of Loki.

Tournament of Lokis: Round 2

Vote for your favorite Loki. Propaganda is accepted. You have 1 week.

Tournament of Lokis Update: Semifinals

So my account is back to normal. I will probable hold the tournament starting tomorrow afternoon. The winners will be paired in the ways described.

The winners of Round 5:

Atreus (GOW)

Loki (MCU)

&

Loki (The Bifrost Incident)

Triki (Dislyte)

On "Lady Loki" PSA: You mean Loki being Femme?

“Lady Loki” is NOT Loki being genderfluid. The name is a mixture of “Lady Sif” (because Sif’s title is “Lady” like “Lord”) and “Loki” because Loki stole Sif’s body after Ragnarok ensued, and trapped her in a dying old lady’s body. Loki first shows up possessing Sif’s body in Thor Vol. 3 # 5 back in 2007. Loki continued to use male pronouns in Sif’s body, but just gets misgendered by everyone else. And as much as I love aspects of Loki’s characterization in that era, having that plotline in this political climate would be awful, incredibly damaging, and way more problematic than anything the Loki show gets accused of. I need people to know what the fuck they’re talking about before they refer to wanting "Lady Loki" in the Loki show because this is what you're talking about.

I will be open and say I am not a fan of much of the majority of Thor comics. They are fucking annoying and read like some Gary Stu male fantasy because they’re always going off about how Thor is the fucking best and his plot armor makes him the only and best choice to be Asgard’s ruler despite there being other characters with similar qualities in Asgard but Thor’s “just better”. The misogyny is off the charts in these with all the ridiculously and impractically scantily clad “warrior” women that all want to fuck Thor and have little personality past that. I also loathe the “Loki’s just evil” crap. My fascination with them is more like gawking and wanting to be pissed off. Plus, I find pre-reincarnation Marvel comics!Loki to be a fascinating study of a Comics Code Authority/Hayes code era villain (and I kinda root for him because the narrative annoys me). He’s up there with all the Disney villains despite not originally being Disney.

In those pre-reincarnation comics that often piss me off, Loki is meant to evoke disgust and to “disturb” through his failure to be the epitome of manliness. Marvel has tried to distance themselves from that once they had their “Are we the baddies?” epiphany by retconning Asgard to be more progressive. It kinda annoys me because panels exist where they’re being queerphobic to Loki. To me, it’d feel more organic if Asgard was shown going through societal change rather than “We have always been progressive, what the fuck are you talking about?” But that's just me.

I remember when Loki was about to come out as bisexual in the comics on 2013 after becoming very popular largely due to Tom Hiddleston’s Loki (Young Avengers #13 where he flirts with Prodigy, followed by Agent of Asgard revealing he's a genderfluid shapeshifter in 2014), queer organizations expressed concern over the whole “queer-coded villain á la Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs.” If you are not familiar with Buffalo Bill, he is the main antagonist from Thomas Harris’s very copagandic and transphobic book, Silence of The Lambs, the book with Hannibal Lecter (played by Anthony Hopkins who plays MCU!Odin lol) where he’s like “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti. T-sss-tsss-tss.”

Buffalo Bill is said to not be a “real transgender”, whatever the fuck that means especially with all the policing around bodily autonomy, and some statistic about how transgenders are the least likely to be violent is shoehorned in, but everything about the character ends up being a queerphobic trope. The “difference” is that Jame Gumb “thinks” he wants to be a woman but doesn’t actually want to be (the transphobia in this book is off the charts).

I am glad Loki has gotten redemption arcs of sorts, because a lot of the tropes employed on comics!Loki just pissed me off. And I am glad MCU!Loki never went through the transphobic possession storyline in the name of being "comics-accurate".

The easiest way to represent genderfluidity in the MCU with a casting choice that predates Loki's coming out in comics would be through dialogue in the magic-less TVA. Have Loki say that her pronouns are she/her while looking the same because people can't shapeshift in real life.

I have seen criticism about the comics' "Genderfluid Shapeshifter" trope not being accurate. But even if it's not "accurate" to the real world, from what I've been told, Loki being a part of the genderfluid shapeshifter trope or that trope in general is not an issue, because lots of genderfluid and trans folks enjoy that kind of fantasy. And Marvel's Loki is based on a shapeshifter of the same name from Norse mythology that is most people's first introduction to the concept of genderfluidity (myth!Loki was my first exposure to the concept and they're a shapeshifter).

Tournament of Lokis: Round 5

Loki (MCU) v. Earth-616 Ikol (Marvel comics)

I will always wonder why out of all the Norse deities, Thor was chosen as Loki's foil for Marvel (which had a lot of influence on other depictions). Thor and Loki had to be changed a lot from the mythological counterpart to work as foils.

There are foil candidates in the mythology that require less changes such as:

Heimdall-Kismesis (and arguably my favorite). They die by each other's hand during Ragnarok. They fight as seals. They are known to have beef with each other as one is the all-seeing gatekeeper of the realm, and the other one is the god of shiftiness. And they are very different in that one is entropy and the other is enthalpy. Heimdall also has rather unique abilities such as very enhanced senses, and he was born from 9 mothers. Unique abilities are common in superhero narratives, just saying. And athough I often see it attributed to Loki in adaptations, it's actually Heimdall who suggests Thor dress up as a bride. Loki's just happy to be a bridesmaid and happily joins in. They both like to troll Thor.

Odin-There's whatever the "Blood Brothers" bond would have entailed. I've seen it interpreted in many ways from Loki being a friend, adoptive child, adoptive little brother, and even Loki being his sugar baby/side piece. I lied, I can see why he was not chosen. They probably wanted someone more evenly matched in power dynamic than King-of-Gods/Jester-Henchman and a younger hero for a demographic consisting of children. Odin has a lot of power over Loki in the myths and had him imprisoned in a very horrendous way. Myth!Odin is also a bit too much like Loki (shady) and is a bit GNC himself and basically gets away with it because he's the Allfather and unlike Loki has more power. But it works in the "Two sides of the same coin" frenemies/abusive relationship sort of deal.

Baldr (arguably the most similar to Thor comics)-Loki's destined to cause his death. My ridiculous and admittedly unfounded theory is that they substituted Thor for him because "God of Thunder" sounded cooler than "God of Light." Also, is it me or does "God of Light" sound too Jesus-like and Marvel might have wanted to avoid that? Marvel comics Thor actually shared multiple traits with Balder (esp. in early versions). The comics do have a depiction of Baldr and his moniker is "Balder the Brave" (avoiding the "God of Light" title) and he's a very bland character. They also like to make it a point to show how Thor is better because he's stronger and braver bleh bleh. The traits they have in common is that myth!Balder and Marvel!Thor are beloved by ALL of Asgard (except maybe Loki), myth!Balder is practically indestructible (except for mistletoe) and Thor was so Gary Stu-ish and "the strongest" to the point of eyeroll. Also, the reason Marvel!Thor and has parallels with Jesus is because they meshed myth!Balder (whom Snorri tried to posit as a Jesus-like figure with his resurrection and such) with myth!Thor to make Marvel!Thor.

Tournament of Lokis: Round 4

Lokis from 2000s children's media

Loki (MDLR) Propaganda:

mdlr loki propaganda !!!!! ok actually mdlr sucks major ass and i complain abt it all the time but

you should vote detective loki cause he's just a little boy working as a detective trying to get back to asgard by basically performing exorcisms. he was banished and turned into a child for unspecified crimes and also literally everyone is out to get him at one point or another. this loki is just so so sillay okay

Loki (SoTM) propaganda by myself:

Played by Alan Cumming.

First Loki depiction I ever saw in media and shares significant responsibility in me making this blog.