Do the Scoundrel's dreams have lots of cardgame motifs and the presence of a monkey
oh absolutely.
the scoundrel's nightmares are like. it is seated at a poker table. this is everything they've ever wanted. this is everything they've ever waited for. this is what their life has been building towards. they have no purpose or reason for existing other than this. its opponent lays down a dead man's hand. the opponent is a monkey. it is wretched and foolish and they are better than it could ever hope to be. it looks down. the cards are blank. they shuffle and draw and their hand comes up covered in blood holding an overripe fruit. the monkey looks them in the eyes and asks if they're worthy of this. they don't know. there's sun in their eyes and roses growing in their throat and they have absolutely no idea. there is a hollowness in its chest and they keep scratching at it and they come up empty and there is only stardust and they look up at the ceiling and they can't recognize their face in the mirror anymore. it picks at its skin. it comes up empty. this is everything they've ever wanted.
and it is seated at a poker table. there is no opponent. they sit alone in a field of flowers and their only prize is a single bloodstained fig and it is wretched and foolish and they are no better than they started.
and they sit there awhile. picking at the flowers. picking at their skin. staring at the stars. they feel hungry. it is peaceful. they feel hungry. they never let go of the fruit.
and then they wake up, drink seven bottles of wine, bully the doomed scientist, hold a railway board meeting to enact several hundred dozen labor law violations, break into a building, break out of jail for reasons entirely totally definitely unrelated to breaking into said building, and end their afternoon by diving directly into the nearest reflective surface to continue hunting birds for sport
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So apparently there IS a throwaway line in the antilles episode about how fulcrum is a codename they give to EVERY secret informant. I think I have to walk back some of my previous statements - I think I'm right, still, but I'll admit that like, the reveal isn't 'kallus was fulcrum ALL ALONG' but instead 'kallus is A fulcrum agent' and that's less offensive, but it still smacks of poor planning when they completely drop the idea for a full season AND in all of star wars (that I know of, I'm trying not to dig too deeply to avoid spoilers) there are only 3 fulcrum agents (kallus ahsoka and andor) that we see. Getting to see more use of fulcrum as a network would have made it less irritating, and of course the way Ahsoka worked in the first season-
Hey wait a second! She wasn't a fucking informant at all! She was literally giving orders to rebel cells! Ahsoka as fulcrum was literally calling shots for the ghost crew. You could argue she was GIVING them information, but as a handler, not as a secret spy!
And it's stupid to argue, because it doesn't matter (and because the sample size is so small) but at the core of it is that the kallus shit feels so forced. I'm not like 'oh wow that's cool', I literally immediately went back and brought up old episodes because I was like 'that's fucking wrong'. I literally stopped watching the show so I could argue the point. Regardless of whether I'm right, my reaction was to stop everything to check because I couldn't believe it.
And at the end of the day I don't feel like the difference between 'kallus was fulcrum ALL ALONG' and 'kallus is A fulcrum agent' changes anything about my core criticisms - that it's completely rewriting a villain to make them more palatable and set up an undeserved redemption arc OFFSCREEN. If you're going to redeem the genocidal white guy (WHICH YOU SHOULDN'T) at LEAST do it onscreen! At least SHOW ME him putting in the goddamn effort to be a better person instead of going 'oh he did it you just weren't looking in the right direction, now stop asking about it because it makes him feel bad'
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Despite everything, despite him absolutely being in a better place than he was in his young adulthood (not...a high bar to clear, admittedly). He'd be a liar if he said he was good.
Sure he's not actively on the precipice of imploding in on himself anymore, he's generally functional and to just about everyone he seemed alright.
He...honestly wasn't, feeling like he was constantly running on empty and more...aimlessly existing rather than anything that really meant anything to anyone. He's got dysfunctions he's slowly tried to force himself to get over, struggles with grasping and understanding his own emotions to the point he often got yelled at for it as a child, trouble socializing and struggling to interpret what others mean when the speak to him (and the unfortunate habit of jumping to the conclusion he's being some kind of bother/pest/etc). Academic struggles he never had supports for and just...pushed himself to "get over himself".
And he hides it behind himself, shoving the parts of him that he thinks people find "acceptable" to where it can be seen. In his mind his problems are simply not worth anyone else's time. The mindset of "other people have it worse" was drilled into him at an early age, something he still internalized when it came to himself and himself alone.
Maybe he "deserved" help when he was younger, when he was truly genuinely crumbling in on himself. Now? No, no...he was okay. He could manage, he has to it's not worth bothering anyone else.
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man playing guitar hero with the actual guitar controller is really really fun. no wonder that shit was so popular back in the day. in my childhood i played a decent amount of gh with a normal controller, but playing it on the guitar is definitely more fun, at least once i got used to it
wish i'd inherited my older brothers' talent for the game but twas not to be unfortunately, no 5 star through the fire and flames on expert for me lmfao but i'm still having a lot of fun doing fairly well for myself on hard and barely scraping by on expert
the 2 songs that i've replayed the most so far are hotel california & eruption. hotel california strikes a really nice balance between being really fun & engaging to play while still being totally doable even for someone with my shitty level of skill. like it's not some super easy song where you're just strumming away at the same chord progression over and over for 5 minutes, there's lots & lots of hammer-on/pull-off sequences, but those sequences are very much on the easier end of the spectrum. it is, at least so far, the only song that i've 5 starred on expert, it's really fun and obv it's a super good song too
eruption is also very very fun cause it's literally just a 2 minute guitar solo and it's REALLY HARD. it's so hard that i really shouldn't be able to do it, like it's the final song in the van halen career mode which means the game places it on that same tier of final boss-type songs as like through the fire and flames & jordan & the like, but since it's so short it's actually just barely doable for me. at least on hard, i haven't even tried it on expert lol. it's also the only song where i've successfully done that both-hands-on-the-fretboard thing that i saw my brothers do back in the day. any time it could potentially be useful i'm usually too overwhelmed by the number of notes to even think to attempt it, but i'm pretty sure eruption is specifically designed for you to have both hands up on the neck of the guitar since that's literally what eddie van halen did whenever he played the song irl, which i do think is a really nice touch
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Of all the places he could have been summoned to, Danny Phantom had never considered a private school’s bathroom to be one of them.
With glowing green skin, a shock of flickering flames for hair, and a suit made out of the spaces between collapsing stars, Danny stared down at the stupefied faces of Gotham Academy’s finest students. One of them had their face in their hands, having caught sight of him and undergoing all the stages of grief in but a moment.
They sat around a circle that he was appropriately impressed with considering the limited space they had to work with. Danny could see the empty stalls, some of which were adorned with drawings and writings that were left by the, no-doubt, extremely busy caretaker.
“Seriously, a bathroom?” Danny wrinkled his nose.
“Holy shit, that actually worked?” One of the kids blurted out, then slammed their hands on top of their mouth.
“Did you expect it not to?” Danny squinted at them, frowning. It’s Friday, so it’s not like he had much to do, but Danny would prefer it if his time wasn’t wasted.
“No- no, your… uh, highness?”
“All of that schooling and you’re still uneducated,” one of the other ones hissed at the red headed kid who spoke. It’s “Your Majesty.” He’s a king, idiot!”
That was a pretty solid burn but, “It’s actually just Phantom. Did you guys want something? I’m busy.”
He’s not busy, but who cares?
“Uh…” the kids exchanged glances. The one in the back sighed and spoke up. He adjusted his glasses.
“We’re sorry for bothering you, Phantom. You wouldn’t happen to have a solution for dimensional separation, would you?”
“Huh.” Danny tilted his head, face souring. “I hate dimensional issues. They’re the worst. Who’s causing them?”
“His name’s Klarion!” The one who slapped a hand across his mouth earlier piped up.
“Oh! The lords of chaos or whatever. Yeah, I can help, for a price.”
Danny is against unpaid labor. Extremely against it, considering his side gig is being a half-dead vigilante. Then again, are you really a vigilante if you’re not half dead on a regular basis?
“What do you want?” Despite the reluctance from earlier, it’s clear the one with the glasses made the big decisions in this weird friend group.
“… A hundred dollars.”
“That’s it? No stipulations?” When Danny nodded, the kid had a calculating expression. “Deal.” The teen said immediately. He pulled out cash and wow, Danny’s definitely in a place with a different tax bracket.
He snatched it. Nasty burger money!
“Deal’s a deal. Also, don’t ever summon me again, but if you do, don’t ever do it in a bathroom again. You kids are so weird.” Danny floated out of the circle, grinning sharply. He formed a small bird- he doesn’t know why, but it felt right- of ice and handed it to the kid with glasses. “There. Proof of the deal.”
With that, Danny disappeared. Private school kids were so fucking weird, but… Dash and his goons were probably worse. What’s a little ritualistic summoning in the face of teenagers?
——
“I leave you guys alone for ten minutes and you summon the king of the dead?” Robin narrowed his eyes at his teammates, traitors who had the good graces to look sheepish. “How could you?! I wanted to try, too!”
Kid Flash patted him on the shoulder, a granola bar appearing in his mouth now that the possible world ending terror disappeared. “Sorry, Rob. Maybe next time! Magic still isn’t real though.”
“I’m not doing this shit in a bathroom again,” Artemis rolled back to her feet. “He sounded like he was going to rip our bones out if we ever summoned him in a bathroom again.”
“Ugh…”
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