DoctorImpossible

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Thor, for not noticing that Loki had been under the influence of the same sceptre/mind control as Hawkeye had been during the events of the Chitauri invasion. What, did Thor think Loki just suddenly became a wannabe dictator of his own free will? Despite that completely contradicting everything he knows about the personality of the brother he has known for millennia?

Speaking of which, Thor again, but also Sif and all of the Warriors Three, for the events of the first Thor film. First Thor is banished without his hammer and "the power of Thor", to Midgard. Fair enough, he learns some humility and stuff, Loki is currently the only possible heir to the throne of Asgard for a while. 

Then, when Odin enters the Odinsleep, Sif and the Warriors Three *commit treason* against both Odin and Loki, by visiting Midgard to try and find Thor and convince him to come back to Asgard to steal the throne, effectively staging a coup while his father is in the Odinsleep, and we're... supposed to think that they're the good guys? I think?

Loki, quite rightly, as the rightful (albeit temporary) King Of Asgard, sends the Destroyer (an Asgardian law enforcement tool created for exactly this purpose) down to Midgard to take down Sif and the Warriors Three. They, and now Thor, resist arrest, destroy the Destroyer, and, in Thor's case, violate their exile, to return to Asgard. Once there, all five violently assault Loki, the rightful King Of Asgard.

Fortunately for them, Odin wakes from the Odinsleep and opts to apparently punish them far, far less than he will later punish Loki, for the "crime" of *being tortured and mind controlled by an enemy of Asgard*. 

So, yeah, Thor, Sif, and The Warriors Three are four traitors and their big, dumb, royal accomplice, well deserving of far more of a punishment than a mere strike to the face, but since that is what is on offer...

Aye. Happy Pride.

15 hours ago, Greywind said:

I'm waiting to hear how he spins the beating the Hulk gave him into a victory for himself.

Well, I can do that for you. Look at Loki's eyes from the Thor film and any film apart from the first Avengers film. Green, right? (Except in his blue-skinned, red-eyed, form of course.) That is his natural eye colour. 

Now look at his eye colour when he arrives on Midgard to take the tesseract. Bright blue. 

Who else has their eye colour changed from whatever it was before to a piercing blue? Anyone being controlled by the stone in his sceptre. When Hawkeye is under his command, mind controlled, he has bright blue eyes, unlike his usual steely grey eyes whenever Jeremy Renner played him in the rest of the MCU. 

Loki isn't invading midgard because he was hoping to conquer it. Asgard has always been the only place he cared about, except for his targeting of Jotunheim simply to win his father's approval in Thor 1. Loki is here to attack Midgard as a cover for him first grabbing the Tesseract (and therefore an infinity stone) then also attacking New York (which is, canonically, where the Sorcerer Supreme is, at that exact moment) to get hold of the Eye Of Agamotto and therefore another Infinity Stone, since Earth has the rare distinction of holding two of the infinity stones at the time. Well worth Thanos risking his own infinity stone, carried by a mind-controlled god, to bring him back two more. 

You can even see how badly hurt Loki had been, just before he was mind-controlled and sent to Midgard to capture infinity stones, much more so than after Hulk's beatdown. He'd been tortured, for a long time, whether for information or simply to make sure that the mind control would take effect. 

How does this make losing a fight to the Hulk into a victory for Loki? Well, much like Dr Selvig managed to resist mind control just enough to include an off-switch for his portal, Loki managed to resist his own mind control enough to pick a fight with the Hulk and then opt to monologue instead of being ready for an actual fight. Which, much like Black Widow's punch to Hawkeye's head to "recalibrate" his brain, was able to reset Loki's mind to free it from the mind control. You may notice that his eyes, after the beatdown, are back to their normal emerald green, instead of the bright blue of the mind control effects. He also suddenly changes from Shakespearean villain monologues, that we know are not his usual mode of speech, to the casual quipster that we are more familiar with.

"I'll take that drink, now."

7 hours ago, mattingly said:

 

He'd just Wash out.

I don't really think DC was trying to poach Whedon to take over their film department for any long term basis. He was just there for that brief time and then gone, in and out like, oh  I don't know...

...a leaf on the wind?

Sting

22 hours ago, Logan.1179 said:

I shall *not* beware. This doggo can attack me any time.

I have long questioned my religious beliefs, specifically regarding my faith in the Gods of the Norse. I finally made my mind up to follow them recently, specifically because Disney have supposedly tried to claim that they own the trademark on the name Loki, and using my legally mandated right to the religious freedom to use one of my Gods' names as I see fit, just to mess up the plan of a wealthy, dictatorial mega-corporation like Disney in response to such a spurious proclamation, seems like an appropriate thing to do for Loki.

I assumed that the point of his appearance in the Marvel short about breaking him out of the minimum security prison (with guest star Justin Hammer cameo) was that real Mandarin has ordered him to be captured so that Trevor Slattery can be the next host for the Mandarin's possession. Like, since he had been public about supposedly being the Mandarin, the actual Mandarin was giving him a "cruel irony" punishment.

(Incidentally allowing Marvel to bring back Ben Kingsley after wasting him as a kind of glorified cameo for the whole Iron Man 3 thing. It was also kind of a waste of Iron Man 3. If they had just admitted from the outset that it was the Extremis guys who were the villains and that the plot was more of a delve into Tony's PTS, they'd have been much better off.)

To be honest, it looks like a lot of fun. Big dumb violent fun. Which is, frankly, 100%  better than DC's previous failed attempts at superhero films. Superman killing Zod? Batman brands criminals? People hating/worshipping Superman? 

Edit: Man. I'm kind of depressed now. I grew up a pretty huge DC fan, and now *Suicide Squad*, of all things, is the highlight of the current DC films for me... I don't even *like* the Suicide Squad as a concept (Amanda Waller would definitely have been killed, or replaced, or erased from time by her second month on the job, if she didn't have infinite plot armour). And yet, this is the only actually *fun* DC film series now? (I would say Shazam, too, but I'm not sure that there's gonna be a '2'.)

Oh. It actually is just the name of a specific chocolate? It definitely sounded like one of the daft misreadings of something else.

Also, here is my Pulp Images tax.

On 5/29/2021 at 9:06 AM, tkdguy said:

Lamont Cranston (The Shadow) would fit right in.

There is a large sloping shadow on the wall behind the Hardy boys on the upper balcony that seems like it might be the shadow of The Shadow, wearing the distinctive cape, whilst remaining unseen.

Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads!

I have to admit, I have always actually fancied trying out some of the weird stuff that gets passed off as food (since the actors don't actually need to eat it) in any given space opera or science fantasy. The thing is, I know that really it is all just weird play-dough shapes, or porridge has been dyed very slightly to look grey instead of beige, or even just colourful fruit cut into cubes to make it seem alien, but those are not what I want to eat. I want to eat the IC stuff that they're there to look like. 

I am honestly quite curious what a Skor is. What words used in the name of any brand of chocolate look at all like Skor when upside down or something?

(The) New Mutants

Edit: Damn it! Distracted for five minutes (checking that it wasn't, technically, "X-Men: (The) New Mutants" - which it isn't by the way - in case that mattered. Ah, well, O it is...

Oblivion 

Did you know, thanks to a very old law that is still in place nobody living in London is allowed to be buried there? 

Apparently, you need to be dead first.

On 6/17/2021 at 12:08 PM, mattingly said:

 

Have you seen the What We Do in the Shadows TV series?

 

Oh, my god, yes! Tilda Swinton, *as* Tilda Swinton, turning out to be the secret leader of all vampires in the council of elders!? Such an amazing choice.

There are 10 kinds of people. Some can understand binary, and some don't get this joke.

There are 2 kinds of people. Some of them can extrapolate from incomplete data. 

1 hour ago, Cygnia said:

Wait, did Ragnarok start already!? Dang it! I'll get my boots.

Nothing Else Matters - Metallica

So close no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
And nothing else matters

Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I don't just say
And nothing else matters

Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
And nothing else matters

	Never cared for what they do
	Never cared for what they know
	But I know

So close no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
And nothing else matters

	Never cared for what they do
	Never cared for what they know
	But I know

Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I don't just say
And nothing else matters

Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
And nothing else matters

	Never cared for what they say
	Never cared for games they play
	Never cared for what they do
	Never cared for what they know 
	And I know

So close no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
No, nothing else matters

Currently watching a handful of my favourites of Tilda Swinton. 

Only Lovers Left Alive - A slow paced emotional drama with John Hurt, Anton Yelchin, Tom Hiddleston, and Tilda Swinton. Tom Hiddleston is a vampire with depression. He's currently going through a small period of suicidal thoughts so his old friend, and fellow vampire, Tilda Swinton, travels from her home in Tangier to visit him at his house in Detroit and keep him company, hopefully dissuading him from acting on it.

Orlando - The life of a person born a man in the 1600s, quite androgynous and a skilled poet, as he becomes Queen Elizabeth's confidante, ceases aging because she told him to, romances a Russian Princess and an American rebel (who may or may not be the spirit of freedom and adventure), and one day wakes as a woman, still being very androgynous, because the masculine world was no longer suiting her.

Constantine - A DC action film that totally butchers the DC trickster wizard and his world, not even pronouncing his name in the right way. But, at least it makes good use of Tilda Swinton as the appropriately agendered archangel Gabriel, who advises Constantine on the will of God as he tries saving the world from Satan's rebelling son.

The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe - Tilda Swinton plays Jadis, the White Queen. She's an immortal, albino, giant, who created Narnia after destroying her last world in order to have somewhere new to conquer and currently reigns over it as the Queen of an endless winter without a christmas. (Yeah. Fun fact: when Aslan said "Don't quote the deep magic to me, witch. I was there when it was written!", what he's carefully not mentioning is that, though he was there, it was *her* who wrote and cast the deep magic. She actually *is* Queen of Narnia, rightfully, and the Humans from our world are colonial invaders.) 

Pretty much any of Lindsey Stirling's songs on youtube as inspiration for a game.

I'm not sure why a str requirement to use a weapon would mean that the weapon does less damage when someone strong enough *can* use the weapon effectively. Could somebody explain what that rule means, please?