how did they learn to translate languages into other languages how did they know which words meant what HOW DID TH
English Person: *Points at an apple* Apple
French Person: Non c’est une fucking pomme
*800 years of war*
Fun fact: There are a lot of rivers in the UK named “avon” because the Romans arrived and asked the Celts what the rivers were called. The Celts answered “avon.”
“Avon” is just the Celtic word for river.
Fan Fact #2: When Spanish conquistadors landed in the Yucatán peninsula, they asked the natives what their land was called and they responded “Yucatán”. In 2015, it was discovered that in those mesoamerican languages, “Yucatán” meant “I don’t understand what you are saying”
W H E E Z E
I love entomology so much because so many words kind of happened by accident or by a native speaker trying to say “WTF are you saying?“
A lot of ‘humans are weird’ posts play with the idea that humans are one of the few species that actually evolved as a predator and, as such, we are unusually strong and fast— but what if we’re not.
What if we’re tiny?
What if, to the majority of species in the galaxy, ten feet tall is unusually short— it basically only happens due to rare genetic conditions— and the average human is basically cat sized or smaller?
Instead of being terrified by our strength, the aliens’ most pressing concern is how exactly they’re going to communicate with us when we’re all the way down on the ground.
There are experiments, with aliens crouching low or humans standing on high platforms— but it usually ends up being either uncomfortable for the alien or dangerous for the human, or both, and just generally impractical for everyone.
But, while the diplomats and politicians are trying to figure out a dignified and simple solution, the ordinary people who actually have to work with the aliens have found one. Humans are, generally, pretty good climbers, and most species have conveniently places scales, feathers, fur or clothing that can act as a hand or foothold. Sure, some humans have a fear of heights, but those aren’t typically the ones going into space. Besides, climbing on a living alien often feels safer than climbing up a rock or something— at least you know you’ve got somebody to catch you.
Soon it becomes accepted that that’s the way humans travel with aliens— up high, easy to see and hard to tread on (there were quite a few… near misses, in the first few meetings between humans and aliens), balanced on somebody’s shoulder like the overgrown monkeys that we are.
Many humans see this as kind of an insult and absolutely refuse to go along with it, but they aren’t the ones who end up spending a lot of time with aliens— it’s just too inconvenient to talk to somebody all the way down on the ground. The ones that do best are the ones who just treat it like it’s normal, allowing themselves to be carried (at least, it’s ‘carrying’ when the aliens are within earshot. Among themselves, most humans jokingly refer to it as ‘riding’), and passing on tips to their friends about the best ways to ride on different species without damaging feathers, or stepping on sensitive spots (or, in at least one case, ending up with a foot full of poisonous spines…).
The reason they don’t feel patronised by this is that they know, and they know that nearly everyone else in the galaxy knows, that humans are not just pets.
After all, you’d be surprised when a small size comes in handy.
Need somebody to look at the wiring in a small and fairly inaccessible area of the ship? Ask a human.
Need somebody to fix this fairly small and very detailed piece of machinery? Ask a human, they’re so small that their eyes naturally pick up smaller details.
Trapped under rubble and need somebody to crawl through a small gap and get help? Ask a human— most can wriggle through any gap that they can fit their head and shoulders through.
If you’re a friend, humans can be very useful. If, on the other hand, you’re an enemy…
Rumours spread all around the galaxy, of ships that threatened humans or human allies and started experiencing technical problems. Lights going off, wires being cut— in some cases, the cases where the threats were more than just words and humans or friends of humans were killed, life support lines have been severed, or airlocks have mysteriously malfunctioned and whole crews have been sucked out into space.
If the subject comes up, most humans will blame it on “gremlins” and exchange grim smiles when they’re other species friends aren’t looking.
By this point, most ships have a crew of humans, whether they like it or not. Lots of humans, young ones generally, the ones who want to see a bit of the universe but don’t have the money or connections to make it happen any other way, like to stowaway on ships. They’ll hang around the space ports, wait for a ship’s door to open and dart on in. The average human can have quite a nice time scurrying around in the walls of an alien ship, so long as they’re careful not to dislodge anything important.
Normally nobody notices them, and the ones that do tend not to say anything— it’s generally recognised that having humans on your ship is good luck.
If there are humans on your ship, they say, then anything you lose will be found within a matter of days, sometimes even in your quarters; any minor task you leave out— some dishes that need to be cleaned, a report that needs to be spellchecked, some calculations that need to be done— will be quickly and quietly completed during the night; any small children on the ship, who are still young enough to start to cry in the night, will be soothed almost before their parents even wake, sometimes even by words in their own tongue, spoken clumsily through human vocal chords. If any of the human are engineers (and a lot of them are, and still more of them aren’t, but have picked up quite a few tricks on their travels from humans who are) then minor malfunctions will be fixed before you even notice them, and your ship is significantly less likely to experience any major problems.
The humans are eager to earn their keep, especially when the more grateful aliens start leaving out dishes of human-safe foods for them.
This, again, is considered good luck— especially since the aliens who aren’t kind to the humans often end up losing things, or waking up to find that their fur has been cut, or the report they spent hours on yesterday has mysteriously been deleted.
To human crew members, who work on alien ships out in the open, and have their names on the crew manifest and everything, these small groups of humans are colloquially referred to as ‘ship’s rats’. There’s a sort of uneasy relationship between the two groups. On the one hand, the crew members regard the ship’s rats as spongers and potential nuisances— on the other hand, most human crew members started out as ship’s rats themselves, and now benefit from the respect (and more than a little awe) that the ship’s rats have made most aliens feel for humans. The general arrangement is that ship’s rats try to avoid ships with human crew members and, when they can’t, then they make sure to stay out of the crew members’ way, and the crew members who do see one make sure not to mention them to any alien crew members.
The aliens who know, on the other hand, have gotten into the habit of not calling them by name— mainly because they’re shaky as the legality of this arrangement, and don’t want to admit that anything’s going on. Instead they talk about “the little people” or “the ones in the walls” or, more vaguely, “Them”.
Their human friends— balancing on their shoulders, occasionally scurrying down and arm so as to get to a table, or jumping from one person’s shoulder to another, in order to better follow the conversation— laugh quietly to themselves when they hear this.
Back before the first first contact, lot of people on Earth thought that humans would become space orcs. Little did they know, they’d actually end up as space fae.
Okay I want to talk about Loki’s plan in Avengers. I just found this post which theorizes that it was Loki’s plan all along to present a big enough threat to assemble the Avengers so they could take down Thanos (but not SUCH a big threat as to actually do a ton of damage).
I’d like to complicate that theory a bit. Strap in, because this might be long. I do not think it was Loki’s intention to lose the Battle of New York…but I do think he considered getting defeated by a group that could go on to defeat Thanos an acceptable alternative. Basically, to survive, he either needs to impress Thanos by winning or lose in such a way that Thanos can’t get his hands on him. Either way, he’s still going to be in someone else’s power, so there isn’t a truly triumphant outcome possible for him.
The main reason I don’t think assembling the Thanos-defeating team was his conscious, primary plan is this moment:
To me, this proves that his actual plan was to turn Tony and sic him on the other Avengers, and I kinda think this plan would’ve worked (or the victory for Earth would’ve come at a much heavier price, like that nuke taking out the entire city and all the Avengers with it). Thor and the Hulk are both capable of defeating Iron Man, but they wouldn’t only be fighting Iron Man. They’d be fighting him, Loki, and likely the full Chitauri army, all while also trying to minimize collateral damage in one of the largest and most densely populated cities on Earth. Tony on Loki’s side would have tipped the scales and bought the Chitauri enough time to move the whole army through the portal and start spreading out. It would have been chaos, and for all we know, that was only Phase 1 of the invasion plan. The Black Order (including Ronan, Nebula, and Gamora at this point), the Outriders, and Thanos himself could have been waiting in the wings.
But the arc reactor prevented Loki from gaining his trump card in this battle, and he couldn’t win without it.
(Okay I just got sidetracked for like an hour watching Tom Hiddleston interviews from the Thor/Avengers era. Really nice line from him about Loki’s motivations in Avengers: “His motivation is to gain absolute power, and through that, self-respect.” Damn, son! Back on task now.)
So yeah, I’m fairly convinced that taking over Earth with the scepter and the Chitauri army was the real plan. But to what degree was it Loki’s own plan?
There’s a lot to consider. Thanos had the Mind Stone before putting it in the scepter and lending it to Loki for the plan (and so the Other could maintain influence over him). Based on what Wanda can do to people’s minds with powers she got from the stone and reasonable assumptions of what else it’s capable of, it would be very easy to, say, revise Loki’s memory of this:
into this:
I used to think Loki was just revising history to justify himself, but this is a completely nonsensical lie to tell to one of the only other actual witnesses to the event. He would not have referenced this moment if he remembered it correctly. He might’ve chosen “know your place” or said something like “I remember you recklessly starting a war in retaliation for a mere insult, yet you would condemn me for my ambition?” So yeah. A fake memory proves Thanos screwed with his head.
As far as I’m concerned, at this point he’s already off the hook for what he does in Avengers because he is incapable of making real, autonomous choices when his memories have been revised to suit Thanos’s goals. He is a puppet without self-awareness, not a free agent. But that’s nowhere near where this ends. He looks absolutely dreadful in the post-credits stinger of Thor.
And at the beginning of Avengers.
Could be the effects of falling through the void and traveling by Tesseract, but given that Thanos has no qualms about making children fight like dogs and replacing their body parts when they lose, the chances that Loki had a pleasant time are vanishingly small.
But before I forget, I want to address the eye color theory. Tom has blue eyes, guys, and so does MCU Loki.
At no point do Loki’s eyes have this extremely obvious starry blue cataract effect:
Thor got multiple very close looks at Loki’s eyes over the course of the movie, and he’s known him his whole life. He would notice something weird going on with his eyes.
Whatever Thanos did to Loki, I think he did it with the unfiltered Mind Stone, before he stuck it in the scepter, and it was done with much more precision than a brief poke on the chest. I think the blue gem on it when it’s in the scepter is some kind of mod designed to prevent Loki from using the Mind Stone for any purpose other than the ones Thanos allowed, while still letting the Other maintain whatever mental link he’d forged to keep tabs on him. Hence the mind whammy Loki puts on Clint and Erik turning their eyes blue instead of yellow or something.
Thanos’s plan is antithetical to what Loki wants when he’s in his right mind. The Loki of the first Thor film didn’t want power or a throne. He wanted to be loved and respected as Thor was. Loki is the God of Mischief, and we’re supposed to believe he really thinks freedom is a lie and subjugation is peace? Mischief requires freedom to exist! And would a Loki in his right mind try to do essentially the exact same thing Laufey did in 965? Loki who hated Laufey so much that he arranged to murder him and make it look like he did it to save Odin’s life, then desperately tried to destroy his entire planet? I think Loki in his right mind would be appalled by the plan to conquer and enslave Earth. But Thanos’s tampering has cranked up his self-loathing to the degree that he now wants to live up to the worst Asgard might think of him, which is to be Laufey over again. In this state, he wants to deserve having been tossed into that abyss by the brother he loved so that he can make sense of it, and what better way than this?
But he’s still working under extreme pressure. The Other seems to have a pretty strict timeline for him, and he’s not impressed with Loki’s efforts. He also seems to expect treachery. Why would he expect that if the recruitment process had gone smoothly or if Loki hadn’t shown signs of resistance? I think Thanos took a major gamble here. Asgard is currently severely handicapped by the loss of the Bifrost, but that won’t be the case for long, so this is his one shot at the Infinity Stone he knows is on Earth without interference from them (heck, maybe he knows about the Time Stone already too, but he only needs the Space Stone and then he can get the rest himself, so a minion like Loki doesn’t need to know about that one). Thanos spent as much time as he felt he could risk on reprogramming Loki into his Tesseract-retrieving tool, but it still wasn’t perfect. This accounts for how rushed and obvious Loki’s plan is. And also this.
Some part of Loki wasn’t committed enough. A committed Loki might have a backup plan if he failed to enthrall Tony with the scepter. A committed Loki might have come up with an entirely different, far more subtle plan that would have succeeded before anyone knew it was in motion. Instead, he lost. And maybe, deep down, beneath what Thanos did to him, that was what he wanted. Maybe Selvig was able to create a failsafe because Loki wanted there to be a failsafe. Maybe he reacted to defeat with resigned glibness (”If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll take that drink now.”) instead of rage and terror because he has some confidence that the Avengers won’t kill him and will defeat Thanos before he can do so.
So why, if Loki was Thanos’s puppet rather than his willing pawn, didn’t he tell anyone what had happened to him after the tampering wore off*? Pride. Asgard’s culture obviously prizes strength, but Loki, on top of already not being the Asgardian ideal, not to mention actually being a member of a hated other species, now he’s a victim. He’s spent his whole life wanting to prove himself to Odin, so how can he admit that he was weak enough to be tortured, manipulated, and brainwashed?
*I think the tampering would’ve worn off as the result of one or more of these factors: an exploding arrow going off in his face, getting Hulk-smashed, being in Asgard’s dungeon and worlds away from the Mind Stone, and the death of the Other (because he’s the one who canonically has the mental link with Loki, not Thanos himself).
Even as he refuses to deny responsibility for his actions in Avengers, Loki never acts that way again. In the Dark World, former friends are lining up to kill him if he puts a toe out of line, but he never betrays Thor. He goes along with Thor’s plan to *pretend* to betray him (which required a lot more trust on Thor’s part than he admitted to having), nearly dies protecting the woman he hated for having the audacity to change Thor for the better in the space of three days when he’d failed to do so over the course of centuries, and nearly dies again protecting Thor. (I do believe that wasn’t a trick. I think he came near enough to death to revert to his Jotun form, which changed his anatomy enough to make it no longer a mortal wound.)
Then he overpowers Odin and takes the throne, with which he does nothing villainous at all. Far from it. If he’d been on Thanos’s side, this would have been his chance to redeem himself from failing in Avengers. The Mind Stone was on Earth, and maybe could’ve insisted that Thor retrieve it instead of let Tony and Bruce hang onto it for a few extra days, but the Space Stone and Reality Stone were both within his immediate grasp, and he could’ve turned them over in exchange for clemency for himself. Instead, he sends the Aether to Knowhere and sits on the Tesseract in Asgard’s vault for the next four years, while spreading word of his own noble death in the form of stage productions. If it wasn’t for the surprise existence of Hela, this would’ve been a pretty foolproof way of thwarting Thanos’s plan indefinitely and keeping himself safe.
So there you go. I feel like this got pretty disorganized and I have a headache now so I don’t feel like tailoring it more than I already have, but I don’t think I left out any of the stuff I wanted to address. What we have here is a pretty sizable pile of evidence pointing to Loki not acting of his own free will in Avengers. It doesn’t excuse his actions in Thor (regicide and attempted genocide, in particular, as well as the attack with the Destroyer), though, and I’m kinda annoyed all of that got so overshadowed, because I’d really have liked them to deal with it.
Now, it’s possible that all these character inconsistencies between Loki in Avengers and Loki before and after it, all the indications that Loki wasn’t working for Thanos willingly or while in his right mind, and the offscreen lengths Loki is implied to have gone to to prevent/delay Thanos from acquiring/regaining three different Infinity Stones are all the results of lazy writing and failure to make the most of this character. But even if that’s true, it doesn’t negate how well these elements fit together.
As a writer, I know what it’s like to have my stories and characters come alive and do their own thing to the point where I feel like I’m being dragged along behind them, and the end result is, completely by accident, way more interwoven and coherent than I thought I’d be able to pull off. I’ve built arcs I never thought would happen, twists I never saw coming, and meaningful relationships between characters I never even considered including when I started. I’ve been in writing workshops where we tell each other all the cool things we noticed the particular writer doing in their stories, only for the writers themselves (me included) to be like “Yes I absolutely meant to do that you have recognized my true genius. *sweats nervously*”
So it doesn’t actually matter if all of this happened by accident, because either way, it’s there for fans of the character to extrapolate from.
Hopefully this was the plan all along, those elements were all deliberate, and we’ll see them come to fruition in a gloriously satisfying way in A4, but it would be just as good if they were accidental and the Russo Bros. noticed some or most of them and put them to good use for A4.
And if they didn’t notice and don’t have a satisfying plan for Loki? Well, then at least we still have fanfiction.
I love this meta!
This is a very interesting meta and in line with my own theory. I agree with most of it except some parts. It’s true that Tom’s eyes are blue but they did digitally intensify their color in the Avengers(also Thor isn’t really the most observant person). Therefore I believe Thanos messed with Loki’s head with the help of scepter, it just differes from the way Loki used it on Selvig and Clint. Also according to the Avengers movie, the Tessearct(the space stone container) and the mind stone housing are made of the same thing and are connected. I explained about the possible reason of it in my theory. And even Thanos can’t use an infinity stone directly without a medium that can control it.
(My headcanon’s also different about how Loki survived. I believe it was because the blade that loki was impaled on contained the Kursed blood which was responsible for Kursed’s invulnerability. So it had some healing powers and when it was affecting his body, Loki’s skin turned gray.)
Loki was supposed to have an important role in infinity war when Joss Whedon was involved. I think those plans were completely erased by Rossu brothers and I don’t have any hope that these details come to any fruition or a conclusion. So, yes, fanfiction.
Adult coloring books pfft who wants to color mandalas when you can find coloring pages of old cartoons:
but but if I remember anything from the little art classes I’ve had it’s never to cut your drawing on joints or waist, it looks weird. Unless you’re drawing Darth Maul after Obi-Wan, I guess. Anyhow, where are my crayons?
I always did have trouble coloring inside the lines.
When possible, SOE tailors used fabric smuggled out of Europe or repurposed from existing clothing taken from refugees or secondhand shops. Labels were also transplanted from such items or copied in meticulous detail. For tailored suits, an imitation tailor’s slip was placed inside the left jacket pocket. Thread had to be the right thickness, and preferably sourced from the region where the agent was going. Plain bone buttons worked best for most clothing items, although suspender buttons were sometimes stamped “elegant,” “mode de Paris,” or “for gentlemen,” as was common on both German and French trousers. British-made zippers bore the brand name Lightning, which had to be carefully ground off the metal pulls with a dentist’s drill.
“Meticulous care was taken that every article of clothing and all accessories should be an exact replica of items manufactured in France,” recalled Claire Wrench, an SOE worker at Orchard Court, a mansion in London where agents got ready before parachuting into France. “Even the buttons on the men’s suits needed to be sewn on in a special French style.” In France, buttons were usually threaded in two parallel lines, rather than a crisscross pattern. Such differences, which in other circumstances might seem tiny and insignificant, could give a spy away. For instance, in the 1940s, many men still wore detachable collars, which fastened onto the shirt with small studs, like cufflinks. In Britain, the stud hole on the back of the collar was a vertical slit; on the continent, it was horizontal—something a German officer could easily check.
@lbmisscharlie & other sewists: This article is quite the piece of novel fodder.
People in badly written fantasy stories will usually talk about the major historical events of their world and how magic has affected the lives of everyone, but ask a person in the real world to describe the effects of WWI and the invention of the combustion engine on modern life and they’d probably couldn’t tell you.
Broke: every character seems to know everything about the history and lore of the world
Woke: most characters can’t tell you much besides the basics but there are some that can tell you more complete but specific parts
H Y P E R W O K E: Every character tells you a wildly different version of the past and what effects it has on the present, ranging from the government is an imperialist, colonizing body obsessed with power to the one true ruler was sent by the gods and has smote down anyone who got in his way to “Oh you mean Jeff, the quote unquote tyrant of the west? I knew that guy! He was alright, never did anything wrong really just wanted some soup.” And there’s no way to tell what actually happened
The Riddler hijacks the local TV airwaves and appears onscreen holding a comically long roll of paper. After dramatically clearing his throat, he proceeds to read from it.
“The following is a list of people who can suck it. Number One: The Joker. I don’t think I need to explain that one. Number Two: Cluemaster. Fuck you, you stole my bit, and I will be like a plague unto your house. Number Three: King Tut. You also stole my bit, but did it while killing people and got me arrested for murder. Also, I’m, like, 93% sure you’re a white guy and your costume is racist.
“Number Four: The Scarecrow. I know you ate my leftover Chinese, Jon, even though I wrote my name on it. I was saving that for lunch. I had to eat a goddamn peanut butter and jelly sandwich like a five-year-old. It was all you had in the hideout. For fuck’s sake, go shopping, not all of us can live like a bridge troll.
“Number Five: The Penguin. You- No, no, wait, wait… That one should be crossed out. He replaced that and apologized. Never mind, Oswald, you’re fine. Drinks at 7:00 tomorrow, right?
“Anyway, where was…? Ah, yes. Number Six: The Mad Hatter. You carded me and left me like that for six hours because I, and I quote, ‘would not stop talking about Mythbusters.’ Well, excuse me for trying to make intellectually stimulating conversation on a level you could understand. I suppose every time you prattle on about mome raths and borogoves it’s goddamn Shakespeare? Well… Well, it’s Carroll, but… Oh, you know what I mean!
“Number Seven: Catwoman. You left me hanging by one hand from a ledge five stories up and holding a twenty-pound bag of jewels and very pointy
objets d’art while you ‘distracted’ the Dark Knight. I know you were making out with him, Selina. You were gone for fifteen minutes. My shoulder almost dislocated. Very unprofessional.
“Number Eight: Kite Man.”
Here the Riddler pauses, lifting his narrowed gaze to glare at the camera, voice dropping to an ominous tone.
“You know what you did…”
His demeanor shifts quickly, and he’s back to reading from his list almost cheerfully.
“Number Nine! Th-”
He’s interrupted by a crashing noise in the background and looks over his shoulder just an instant before a deep voice angrily growls, “Riddler!”
“Oh, for the love of-” He turns to glare at the camera, speaking quickly. “Number Nine: Batman! Interrupting me while I’m on television making very important- Hm-mmph!”
He’s reduced to muffled curses as a black gloved hand covers his mouth and pulls him out of frame. The camera tilts, a cracking noise is heard, and the broadcast turns to static.
KITE MAN’S CRIMES WERE NUMEROUS AND TERRIBLE
If I were batman I’d give him like a five minute warning, because this actually sounds theraputic.
Batman: Riddler, you’ve hijacked the TV airwaves and you know that’s wrong but I think this is actually theraputic. So I’m giving you five minutes, and then I’m taking you to Arkham
Robin: Geez get a facebook account for this crap, hell if you wanna vent to millions of strangers just get youtube.
“RIDDLER YOU CAN’T JUST GO ON TV AND SCREAM AT PEOPLE
THAT’S WHAT YOUTUBE IS FOR”
Riddler takes this advice. He gets his own youtube channel called RiddleMe_Th15. It starts out as being purely therapeutic, a platform for publically calling out those who have annoyed him. Then someone leaves him a pathetically easy riddle to solve in the comments, and he spends his next segment ranting about it, and then posing a better one.
This starts a dialogue with a number of other youtube users who both attempt to answer his riddles and pose their own riddles in return.
Riddler has found his people, and his hit count is climbing.
Seriously, Riddler would KILL IT (metaphorically speaking) on YouTube. He just does those weird animated puzzle videos where he poses lengthy, overly complicated puzzles, game theories, and riddles, then gives away…fuck I don’t know…Amazon or iTunes cards to whoever gets them right.
“Riddle me this: How can I ensure there are more videos like this one? The answer, my little quest solvers, is simple: Like and subscribe, and consider donating to my Patreon! Which isn’t much of a Riddle, but seriously I’m down to eating crackers and ramen right now and YouTube keeps demonetizing my videos because I used to be a supervillain.”
Bringing this back because “YouTube keeps demonetizing my videos because I used to be a supervillain” has to be shared and because I have some followers who have not experienced The Riddler Post.
Seriously, if you ever need a good time, just read all the responses in the notes. This post still ranks as one of the best things I’ve ever done.
Lady Karasu 