Podcast / Burdened With Glorious Podcast

”I am Maureen of Chicago-“

“And I am Megan, daughter of Michael and Lisa-“

“And we are Burdened with Glorious Podcast!

— The opening of every episode

And this… is Loki Odinson.

Burdened with Glorious Podcast is a (mostly) comedic podcast hosted by real-life friends Maureen Skaggs and Megan Lerseth that is mainly dedicated to Marvel’s version of the Norse Mythology trickster god Loki, and his Disney+ series in particular- but, as often happens with friends, the discussion tends to go all over the place, with frequently bizarre results.

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This podcast contains examples of:

• Author Appeal: Megan in particular is a huge fan of The Terror and brings it up about as often as it can organically be fit into the discussion at hand. She has also mentioned several times that “weird old guys” like Captain Barbossa are one of her favorite fictional archetypes. For her part, Maureen brings up Loki: Agent of Asgard nearly Once an Episode, and both hosts are very into 1980s New Wave and synthpop music (with Gary Numan practically being a running joke of his own).
  • Episode 6, “I’ve Seen the Future, and It Works” has a long segue into the girls talking about how much they love the Tim Burton Batman movies, to the point of the episode being titled after a line from one of Prince’s songs from the soundtrack of the first movie.
• Berserk Button: Megan goes on a long, furious rant in Episode 8, “That’s Our Secret, Cap”, about the scene in The Avengers that tries very hard to Godwin's Law Loki when he forces a crowd in Stuttgart, Germany to Kneel Before Zod, by pointing out that Loki’s speech isn’t fascist (and specifically contradicts a lot of the tenets of fascism, though it is still authoritarian).
  • She gets especially angry about the “fucking Schindler's List violins”.
  • Neither host takes kindly to the Moral Guardians who consider Loki and Sylvie’s relationship to be incestuous.
• Big Applesauce: Megan, though born in California, lives in New York City, and one episode was recorded there while Maureen visited. A significant chunk of the Avengers episode centers around Megan talking about the impact the events of the movie would actually have on the city.
• Body Horror: “Let Bicons Be Bicons” has a brief diversion into how the people of Pompeii probably died, and it’s not pretty.
• Brainy Brunette: Maureen.
• Brief Accent Imitation: “Ladies and gentlemen, the first appearance of Maureen’s Loki voice.”
  • Maureen also does a pretty good Hank Hill “BWUH?”, and generally takes any opportunity to voice-act on the show that she can get.
  • Megan’s occasional “Fitzjames voice”, which is mostly just doing a clipped RP accent (or at least a brief attempt at one) and then adding an elongated “Francis” (“Funk, Francis? Jazz’s deformed cousin?”).
  • Both of them, however, invoke Owen Wilson’s famous “wow” multiple times.
• Colbert Bump: In a very strange example, the show’s mention of a Jesus Christ Superstar website maintained by Megan’s friend (and the girls’ future A Good Nightmare Comes So Rarely cohost) Gibson precipitated a rush on tickets to a reunion concert tour for some of the film’s stars.
• Crack Pairing: Megan ships Thor and Nebula, of all people. She calls it Thorbula.
• Deadpan Snarker: Both hosts at times.
• Fangirl: Both hosts to some extent, but especially Maureen, who is very open about her crush on Loki (and Tom Hiddleston in general). In fact, she says she was first interested in befriending Megan because Megan was one of the only Loki fans on Tumblr circa 2011 Maureen encountered who wasn’t a little in love with him.
• The Ghost: Jess, the show’s transcriptionist, and Gibson, the girls’ future cohost on A Good Nightmare Comes So Rarely .
• Kavorka Man: Discussed at length in “And This? Is Gary Numan” via the phenomenon of the “Tumblr Sexyman”, which Megan argues Loki isn’t because he was clearly intended to be a Pretty Boy, while the Tumblr Sexyman is basically a version of this trope but for “complete internet goblins”.
• Lady Swears-a-Lot: Megan, ironically mixed with occasional severe Gosh Dang It to Heck! thanks to working with children at her day job. Maureen is more inclined toward the occasional Precision F-Strike.
• The Men in Black: Discussed in “Let Bicons Be Bicons”.
• Never Live It Down: The time Maureen was all but propositioned by “the creepiest Loki cosplayer ever” at New York Comic Con while dressed as Elsa.
• Polyamory: Megan’s suggestion for how to resolve the fandom’s complaints that Loki and Sylvie end up But Not Too Bi is to give Loki a boyfriend in Season 2, have him date the boyfriend and Sylvie simultaneously, have the boyfriend be gay and merely friendly with Sylvie, and for Sylvie and the boyfriend to team up to tease Loki on movie night.
• The Power of Friendship: Discussed in “Let Bicons Be Bicons”:

”[I]t’s hilarious to realize that all it took was friendship with just some guy with a moustache to take [Loki] from, you know, the seething, greasy-haired, paranoid mess he is in Avengers 2021 to, you know, this motion-blurred ball of fluff bopping around like- you know, like the traumatic memories on constant replay in his head have been replaced by the Brodyquest music.”

• Precision F-Strike: A Maureen specialty.
• Product Placement: Parodied in Episode 6 when the girls’ Batman tangent leads to a spontaneous plug for the Batman ‘89 comic.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Maureen is the blue and Megan is the red, though Megan is the more likely of the two to make Viewers Are Geniuses references while Maureen is significantly more versed in mainstream pop culture. Funnily enough, this is also their usual cosplay character dynamic, with rare exceptions like Maureen as the Harley Quinn to Megan’s Poison Ivy.
• Repetitive Name: “His name is Mobius M. Mobius, and the M probably stands for Mobius.”
• Running Gag:
  • Megan tends to refer to The Avengers (2012) as Loki’s “[x] day coke bender”. The number increases every time it’s mentioned.
  • “This… is the best of the 60s. THIS… is the best of the 70s. And ''this''… is Gary Numan.”
  • Referring to Loki’s hairstyle in The Avengers as resembling a Christmas tree.
  • “What a waste of a[n] (actor’s name)”. First showed up regarding to Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser in Guardians of the Galaxy and then became a regular joke.
  • Maureen’s quest to eventually score with a Loki cosplayer while dressed as Sylvie.
  • Megan reminding any professionals who may be listening that she wants to write Loki material herself.
• Shout-Out: The show’s display art is a pastiche of the cover of Gary Numan’s album The Pleasure Principle.
  • Most of the episode titles are references:
    • Episode 1 is “No Timeline For Young Gods”.
    • Episode 3: “Don’t Call Me By Your Name” (specifically punning on Sylvie not wanting to be referred to as Loki)
    • Episode 4: “Hark! A Variant”
    • Episode 5: “Time and Space Jam: A New Legacy”
    • Episode 6: “I’ve Seen the Future, and It Works” (from the song “The Future” by Prince on the Batman (1989) soundtrack)
    • Episode 7: “And This? Is Gary Numan” (from a scene in The Mighty Boosh that Maureen and Megan explain as summarizing an entire character dynamic)
    • Episode 8: “That’s Our Secret, Cap”, which is fittingly both a very angry episode and about The Avengers (2012).
  • Megan compares Odin to the infamous Miette the cat tweet in “And This? Is Gary Numan” (“Oh! Oh! Banishment for son! Banishment for son for one thousand years!”), which Maureen then in turn compares to Lemongrab (“ONE THOUSAND YEARS BANISHMENT!”).
• Screw Yourself: Maureen discusses her desire to use this trope as a pickup line toward Loki cosplayers while dressed as Sylvie.
  • Invoked almost by name in “Let Bicons Be Bicons”:

”…it is probably the most important question that has yet been brought up in any of the Disney+ Marvel shows, and that is, of course: ladies and gentlemen, can Loki indeed go fuck himself?” (cue the Scare Chord and Dramatic Thunder from Young Frankenstein)

• Seinfeldian Conversation: Often.
  • “Let Bicons Be Bicons” begins with a long and only tangentially related discussion about Bonnie Tyler. It eventually turns into Megan dissolving into helpless laughter while talking about Tyler’s song “Ravishing” having been recycled from an entry theme Jim Steinman wrote for Hulk Hogan and Maureen using the “Hulk!” chant in the latter version to steer it back on topic via Thor: Ragnarok.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: “Joss Whedon. Fuck that guy.”
  • Megan mentions that she actually used to write a version of herself as one of these towards Loki on a roleplaying board.
  • Jim Steinman tends to be invoked as one of these.
• Synth-Pop: The opening theme, and something of a running joke on the show in general.
• Understatement: Megan referring to Loki in The Avengers as “not doing great, folks”.
• There Are Two Kinds of People in the World: “Every character you ever know is on a spectrum: either jazz funk or Gary Numan.”
• Unusual Euphemism: In Episode 7, Maureen attempts to delicately refer to Natalie Holt (the composer for the Disney+ Loki series)’s suggestion about Loki and Sif’s prior relationship as “playing sword and magic fingers” and “hiding the sausage”, before Megan bluntly interjects “THEY HAD SEX.”
• Waxing Lyrical: Maureen is particularly prone to this.
  • She refers to her realization that she was attracted to Thor’s hunkishness as “well, call me Hayley Williams, because you are the only exception.”
  • Megan is much less skilled at this, though in the first episode she stumbles awkwardly into “Well, slam in the back of my Dragula, how the hell are ya?” when trying to think of an appropriately folksy greeting for Mobius.

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