Mother: What are you doing today?
Me: Nothing.

Which wasn't entirely true - I went to the fruit and vegetable store - after the storm. But other than that...I just laid about, surfed the net, and watched television.

Good news - they finally proscribed something to treat my Dad's UTI. This could mean - that some of the dementia may level off.



It was muggy outside and hot. Eighty-eight degrees with 80% humidity feels a bit like a steam bath. But I'm not sweating that much. And wasn't dripping wet. Methinks my body has finally entered menopause and is past perimenopausal hell storm? Fingers crossed. Also thunderstorms - but no headaches and no edginess. And no crying jags, wicked irritability, or hot flashes. Hmmm. Feeling grateful for that. It's the little things.

***

Television

* Loki

I finished watching Loki series today - it's the first to get renewed for a second season. Honestly of the series that I've seen, it's the one I care the least about getting renewed. But I guess I can see why they renewed it first. It kind of ended on a cliff-hanger? While the others didn't? Also we got a bit more of the others?

Mother asked if she should try it. And I told her the same thing I'll tell all of you. It's a metaphysical philosophical mind puzzle by way of Marvel Comics - it's not the easiest thing in the world to follow. Particularly if you aren't familiar with the Marvel Universe or their take on time travel.

I already knew a great deal of the stuff that they relayed in the series - from reading X-men comics for the last forty-some years. The X-men delve into the whole multi-verse time travel mind-puzzle bit a lot more than the other series do, actually. Reading X-men can at times feel like reading speculative science fiction with pictures. Loki also reminded me a little of Noah Fawley (sp?) LEGION. Had that same sort of noirish mind-puzzle aspect to it. Which if you think about it is kind of necessary for trickster anti-hero like Loki.

Loki is by no means my favorite character in the MCU. I like him well enough, due to the actor. But the character - I often find annoying - he's whiny. He's less whiny here - mainly because he is too busy to whine.
Plus we have a great female anti-hero protagonist to follow - who kind of steals the series out from under Loki. It's kind of fun watching her steal it from him and Owen Wilson.

Loki sets the viewer up to expect one thing - and through a kind of sleight of hand delivers something else entirely. We're set up to believe Loki is the hero or protagonist of the series and in a way "Loki" is - just not the one we think. There's a lot of nice twists or set ups or tricks in store.
In fact the whole story is a bit of a trick - on both the characters and the viewer - with an end result that opens up the film verse in a nice way.

At the same time, it's also a satiric commentary on various governmental systems and hierarchies. And, shows how the attempt to create order is rather messy - and results in petty bureaucracies, meaningless justice systems and court systems that feel seemingly random and make no sense.



The TVA or Time Variant Agency - appears to be one thing, and is something else. We are told its' the people keeping the time line in check by capturing and removing variants from the time line. What we aren't told is they are the variants. We're also told that the Norns, all powerful aliens keep the timeline cohesive, and did away with the other branches. To keep order. When in reality it is one man who fought a multiverse war, won, and found a way to impose order on chaos, before everything went kablooey.

There's also a huge feminist theme going on underneath the surface. Women control the TVA or so it seems. But the one who is behind the whole thing is revealed to be Kang the Congueror (a black man). The women who are ruling it under him are "black women", with the white guys under them.

Sylvie - a white woman takes out Kang, and seemingly takes over, letting chaos rule. And Owen (white man) and U-92 (black woman) take over the TVA from Revanslayer - who takes off leaving it all behind. Loki - pushed back to the TVA by Sylvie is left behind, the only one who appears to remember what has transpired. Everyone else has forgotten. Except one major thing has changed - the orderly time line kept by Kang is now branching off into multiple verses.

I don't think there's a conscious racial theme here - so much as an attempt to do color blind casting. Or diversify the verse. I've been picking up on it - mainly because prior to the later films in the MCU, superhero films weren't this diverse.

There is however a conscious feminist theme - because Sylvie's nexus event, which is why she's so bitter and angry at the TVA - is that she exists. Her nexus event results in the erasure or pruning of her entire timeline. A lot of the items in the void are Sylvie's world transported there. In protest, she changes her name from Loki to Sylvie. She also is the only one who enchants people - her magic is different from all the other Loki's who create illusions. The fact that she is the most murderous, enraged, and difficult to catch of the Loki's is interesting as well. And of course she defeats the Time Line Manager - Kang, who more or less welcomes her to do so with open arms - since he will be reincarnated anyhow. (Indicating that no one really dies in the MCU. Having read the comics for years - I can attest to that - they don't. If the writers want to bring them back, they'll find a way to do it.)

The series also much like The Good Place comments on God and the afterlife. Perhaps with the pandemic - mortality is more on writers minds then ever before? God is a bit of trickster, who knows how everything turns out and all the variables, neither good nor evil. In Marvel Universe - it isn't really a fight between Good and Evil, so much as Order and Chaos, and more ambiguous. The actions don't necessarily define the players, so much as their motivations, and often they can change on a dime. It's what makes the verse so fascinating to me - the villains for the most part tend to be rather ambiguous, as do the heroes.

The romance - which apparently was controversial in the fandom? I'm not really in the fandom so was blissfully unaware. Also, I don't read MCU fanfic. No interest in it or the vids. Nor do I ship non-canon pairings.
Actually I don't really ship anyone in the verse. I'm not that masochistic - I've read and watched too many long-running serials - shipping pairings is masochistic in long-running serials written by sadistic writers.

It worked for me. I also saw it coming a mile away. It made sense thematically, character wise, and plot wise. Loki is a pure narcissist, he is physically incapable of really loving anyone outside of himself or that doesn't in some way validate himself. He even admits - making him a self-aware narcissist. His one redeeming feature is his love for his mother and home world. When he discovers it has been destroyed - this kind of sets him on a different path, just as it had in the films. As more than one character points out the fact that he falls in love with Sylvie is kind of predictable - of course he would - it's himself.

But it isn't at the same time - it's the female version of himself. And she sees things very differently than he does. While he's untrustworthy, she can't trust. They are doomed from the start - but his war with his female version and her war with her male version is a bit of twisted commentary on humanity's gender war.

There's a lot of interesting metaphysical philosophical things going on here. And I admit - I like Marvel's take on time-travel - which follows closely parallel string theory - the best. The other takes aren't physically possible and irritate me.

Unlike other writers of time travel series, Marvel's writers went and talked to actual scientists who studied quantum mechanics and parallel string theory - a controversial sub-thread of quantum mechanics. The view is simply this - time cannot be changed. It's a circle not a straight line. If you go back in time - that becomes your present and the point from where you traveled your past. If you change anything in that portion - you cause a new branch or split. Your future still exists, everyone is still there, but there's now another time line in existence and another verse.

Anyhow, what happened in Loki and it took me a while to figure it out - is Sylvie took over and let the time lines branch out, creating the multi-verse.

This leads seamlessly into Marvel's What If animated series, and Doctor Strange and The Multiverse of Madness, it also leads into Spiderman: No Way Home. In going back in time to stop Thanos, they inadvertently caused a string of events to occur that resulted in the Multiverse.

The Multiverse means that we will see the X-men in future films, along with the Fantastic Four, and various others who weren't in the initial MCU, it also means they can reboot Iron Man - if they wish, along with Captain America.

It's kind of brilliant in a way.



There's a lightening storm happening outside my window, and Netflix has finally dropped Gunpowder Milkshake the all female action flick with Paul Giametti. I'm seeing less and less people with masks in the apartment building and outside now - in part because it's bloody hot.

I'm ignoring the news for the time being. I figure it can play itself out without my notice.