autistic-parker

[autistic-parker]

OR ACTUALLY an addendum to Possible Chicanery because I thought of something funnier and an attached persona:

Replacing the Razzle Dazzle alias for the stage magician/traveling carnie persona: Charlatan Chicanery

[autistic-parker]

Oooh! Eckles has lost his fucking mind! Hohoho!

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Very funny/stupid Scam Likely name I just came up with:

Possible Chicanery

[autistic-parker]

People talk about how dark The Legend of Zelda is when you think about it, and it is, but I also think it’s genuinely the most hopeful game series I’ve ever played. Because the world ends, again, and again, and again… except it doesn’t. Not really. The world always heals. Everything gets better again. And yes, 100 years or so after that, things will go wrong again, but then they heal yet again.

And in games like Breath of The Wild and Majora’s Mask, the apocalypse is actively happening, and yet people are still doing things. They’re talking to loved ones, and doing things they love, and being happy. You can say that in Majora’s Mask it doesn’t matter since side quests like the couple being reunited get erased, but I strongly disagree. Because they were happy, and them being happy for just a little while has value.

To me The Legend of Zelda isn’t about an endless and unbreakable cycle of death and destruction and decay. To me it’s about how when things go wrong, it frequently feels like the end of the world, but it isn’t. Not even the literal end of the world is the end of the world. The people in Hyrule sometimes entirely forget about prophecies of their demise because apparently it isn’t a big enough deal to preserve.

And heck, even if the world does end, why not be optimistic about it? Live until you die, don’t just cower away in fear. Because if you’re going to die, then you should at least try to die happy.

[autistic-parker]

i’m gonna kill myself

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Callisto stabbing a cuff link through his ear has me thinking

"Ew! You didn't even sanitize that! You're going to get an infection!"

[autistic-parker]

I know it's November third, but I have made some choices and my Halloween playlist is now almost seven hours long. No regrets.

[autistic-parker]

Reblog to put candy in your followers halloween buckets :)

[autistic-parker]

DAY 31: FREE FOR ALL/IT ENDS HERE

It starts when, a snowy morning, Pixie is staring out at the landscape. The sun has risen fully, and they’ve reached a patch of flat land covered in snow sparkling snow. Pixie can see his breath in the air ahead of him, huffing out in friendly little clouds, and he almost shivers and then huddles a little deeper into the warmth of his clothes. He can see the stable they’re headed for up ahead. They could all warm up there. They could have a nice night there.

And then someone, who had been quietly creeping up to him for a while, grabs the back of his collar and dumps snow down his shirt. He yelps as it slides down his spine, soaking his back and making the fabric cling uncomfortably. Pixie spins around to see Froggy and Gull both staring at him.

Gull is the one who starts laughing first, but Froggy is the one who’s close enough to have done it, so Pixie leans down and grabs a handful of snow as well before throwing it at Froggy.

~~~~~

What follows is an all-out war, every hero taking his turn getting pelted with packed snow that explodes into showers of white everywhere. Gull still spends the whole time absolutely cackling, though his laughter is now joined by others.

The first to go out is Ghost, lying down on the ground with a massive foggy sigh. Cowboy laughs down at him, but then when he gets hit by a snowball as well he steps wrong. He was standing too close to Ghost and he falls prone and sends up his own shower of snow, coating his dark clothes and standing out against his dark blond hair. He laughs one last time and then rolls away from Ghost and heaves a sigh of surrender.

Then Bunny gets pelted in the face with a hit from Pixie, who gives a triumphant whoop as Bunny too lies down on the ground in surrender, chest heaving. The triumph is short-lived as Vandal aims a snowball to smack Pixie from behind. Pixie lurches forward, and when he tries to take a step his foot catches on an unlucky rock and he too abruptly hits the ground.

In response, Rover sneaks up from behind Vandal as well. Vandal just manages to sidestep Rovers first shot, but then a well-timed snowball from Gull slams directly into his chest. Vandal also loses his balance and lands on his back in the snow, putting one hand to his chest and the other up to his forehead in a showy display of loss.

“Oh no,” he says, his voice edged with laughter, “I have been slain. Avenge me, Froggy.”

From a little ways away, Froggy launches a snowball over the now supine Vandal which bursts rather spectacularly as it hits Rover, showering his darker hair and darker lashes with flakes of white snow. He rather less dramatically goes to his knees and then lies prone, face turned to one side, panting.

“Which just leaves…” Bunny says, and then trails off.

~~~~~

Froggy spins around just in time to see Gull there, popping out of a crouch to smack him right in the face with a snowball.

Froggy also goes down now, lying on the ground, breathlessly laughing.

“Woohoo!” Gull cheers, and throws his hands up in the air.

“Woohoo!” Pixie echoes.

And soon the whole group has joined in, cheering for Gull, the winner of their impromptu snowball fight.

[autistic-parker]

Please reblog if YES so your followers will know!

[autistic-parker]

DAY 30: MOUNT/NOTHING ELSE TO TELL YOU

When they crest the hill in the early morning, the whole group suddenly falls silent. Riding behind Cowboy, arms wrapped around him, Froggy leans over his shoulder to see what he’s looking at.

The sun is rising, brilliant dawn painting a the sky gold. The horse underneath them shifts. Froggy hears snorting from other horses (they’d all been riding for too long this time, all of them saddle-sore and tired) and errant pebbles skittering their way down the slope. He stares up at the sky and takes a deep breath.

The air is fresh and cool and, bruised as he is, very very relaxing.

Cowboy and Froggy sigh in unison, their breath releasing as little clouds, mixing together in front of them. Froggy leans back again.

The ride can’t be taken very fast. They’re all trying to be careful, all maneuvering around each other, all trying not to knock anyone off their horses. Froggy settles in and listens to the pattern of the horses hooves, listening to the others breathing around him. His legs are starting to cramp. He can’t be bothered to care.

Froggy squeezes his eyes shut and shakes himself. He can’t let drowsiness take hold now. He can’t fall off the horse. Besides, he’s used to silence. The textured silence of the wild Hyrule he’d always lived in. The buzzing silence of a world that was truly alive now, no matter what else.

When they reach their destination (a stable a days ride away from where they’d camped) (they planned to leave the horses here this time), Froggy slides off the horse ahead of Cowboy and has to grab onto Cowboy’s tunic as his legs buckle underneath him.

“Easy there,” Cowboy says, his hand coming down to grab Froggy’s hand. “Need someone to help?”

Froggy squeezes his eyes shut for a brief second, and then shakes his whole body to wake himself up. His mouth tastes stale and gross, and he’s suddenly not sure he could even casually chat with the stable master right now. He shakes his head and starts to make his way toward the river nearby.

He doesn’t manage to spot what anyone else is up to as, dropping to his knees, he dunks his head and shoulders into the water. It’s icy cold this early in the morning, and when he immediately yanks himself out of the water, his long hair dripping and clinging to his face, he’s gasping for air. He feels so much more awake now.

“Whoa,” Gull, one of the others who had been riding with someone else, approaches from the side. “You don’t look great.”

Froggy just starts gathering up his wet hair in his hands to wring over his shoulder back into the river. Gull takes this silence in stride, not noticing or not caring. He smiles. Staring at him in silence like this, Froggy notices Gull doesn’t look great either. The dark circles under his eyes are too pronounced, his eyes themselves are red, his clothes are covered in dust from the road.

Hopefully all of them would get a chance for a bath this evening.

Froggy sighs heavily and sits back.

[autistic-parker]

There's this way that the increasing awareness of certain things and when stories say or do bad things has been warped into an excessive need for "purity" and that obsessive need for "purity" has made people so squeamish about anything viewed as "icky" that they want to put anything "icky" in a box and act like instead of just being icky it's somehow evil.

[autistic-parker]

The thing about the sandman tv show that makes it so much worse than the comics is that there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about what Sleep is as a character. He is rarely the protagonist of any of the stories. He is the main character, certainly, the stories revolve around him and what he is and means, but they aren't really about him because he is an undying endless being and that would be boring.

And also the fact that the tv show seems to have missed that sandman is supposed to be horror and toned out and flattened every little bit of nastiness that makes the atmosphere so interesting

[autistic-parker]

He's not supposed to have a character arc! Fuck you!

the sandman tv show is also shit and weak for getting rid of all the interesting horror and grotesqueness from the comic aka the only thing that makes it a good comic

[autistic-parker]

DAY 29: DEKU/GET OUT

Partway through the woods in a Hyrule he hardly knows, Froggy flattens himself against the ground as something wooden and vaguely human-like and very angry pops out of a flower. It’s mouth is shaped similarly to an octorok, as far as he can tell, and he also sees that they can do similar things. What is launched over his head and the heads of Rover and Gull (also flat to the ground) are seeds rather than rocks, but they could probably do an equal amount of damage when launched at high speeds.

“What is that?” Gull asks as he crawls closer to Froggy.

“Reminds me of an octorok, but I’ve never seen something do this that was a plant?” Vandal says from behind them, still around a corner and out of range. He’s taken out his shield and sword, but curiosity seems to have briefly overtaken a will to do anything about it.

“What,” Pixie says, sounding incredulous, “you’re telling me none of you have seen a deku scrub before?!”

When Vandal, Froggy and Gull all shake their heads Pixie turns a questioning look on the rest of the heroes behind him.

“That’s absurd!” Pixie continues, “They’re all over the place in my Hyrule! They were even in Termina!”

When he says that Pixie suddenly snaps his mouth shut, his expression souring. Froggy hasn’t heard him talk about Termina before, but he thinks maybe… it has something to do with those odd masks he carries. Pixie sighs heavily and then glances out at the creature.

“In that case, maybe we should just head back the way we came instead of disturbing this gentleman?” he says.

“Would there be an exit that way?” Cowboy says.

“Can’t say.” Pixie looks up and around at their surroundings, a forest currently lacking notable landmarks. He sighs again. “Alright, then. I’ll handle it.”

The rest of the group watches as Pixie takes out his shield. He gets low to the ground, the shield out in front of him and his sword still sheathed, and creeps towards the scrub.

Froggy thinks he was a little bit right to compare it to an octorok when Pixie deflects the blow back towards the creature. The seed ricochets right back at the thing, smacking it with a clonking noise. This seems to incapacitate it long enough that Pixie runs up without much problem, and then stares down at it with a serious expression.

“Is he..talking to it?” Froggy wonders aloud.

“He did call it a gentleman. Maybe these things are sapient,” Cowboy says. His eyebrows have drawn together, and he’s frowning. “Are octoroks not sapient?”

“Definitely not,” Froggy, Vandal, and Gull say in unison.

“They’re just weird animals,” Vandal says, and Froggy and Gull nod.

Cowboy grunts in acknowledgment right as Pixie calls out from the other end of the maze.

“Alright! We’re good! He just wants us out, so let’s get going!”

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DAY 28: BONES/PERFECT

When Froggy slipped and started tumbling down the hill towards the massive leviathan bones, he had a sudden sick feeling as if something massive were trying to swallow him whole. The pouring rain made the landscape slick and oozy and the sky dark, and thus made the feeling even worse as bone flew past his vision and the ground scraped at him with rocks that almost felt like teeth.

When he finally slammed into one of the giants ribs it knocked the air out of him, and he tried to turn his head upward as he gasped.

He heard someone tumbling in beside him, slamming equally hard into the ground but only stopping when they ran out of momentum on the flatter ground underneath the ribs.

Froggy could taste blood in his mouth, smell ozone in the air, as he barely managed to shove himself down into a supine position. He was still gasping for air when Vandal picked his careful way to his side.

“Sheesh,” Vandal said as he carefully came to his knees by Froggy’s side. “quite a nasty fall there, eh, Froggy?”

Froggy nodded as he put a hand up to his chest. His rito gear seemed to have cushioned him at least a bit. Nothing was broken or anything, but he might have bruises on his chest and possibly scrapes absolutely everywhere else. He moved up to a sitting position as his breathing finally started to settle down. When he looked back over at Vandal, Vandal wasn’t looking at him.

Vandal was staring up at the leviathan bones. His eyes were wide, the expression in them torn between awe and… sadness, Froggy thought.

“Remarkable thing, huh?” Froggy said, and smiled at Vandal.

Vandal blinked. He shook himself, and finally looked back down at Froggy. He swallowed, and then nodded. He finally reached into his bag and offered Froggy a potion.

Froggy’s smile dropped as he took the potion. The way Vandal was looking at the skeleton- like it was familiar and yet unrecognizable- was one Froggy knew quite well. He might just have been better at hiding it than most. Traveling across different Hyrule’s certainly made one feel small.

“It’s very-” Vandal said, nodding, but then paused. He looked up again, and then back down at Froggy and cleared his throat. “It’s… remarkably whole. I can’t say I ever would’ve expected that.”

Froggy slowly nodded. It was… there was… something strange about the way that Vandal said it. This massive thing from ages long past, for Froggy, seemed familiar to Vandal. This enormous thing. This remarkably complete skeleton, picked clean of flesh and blood.

It wasn’t his place to ask such a thing. Maybe if he wanted to share at some point he could. For now Froggy shifted to try and get more comfortable before reaching into his bag, rooting around until he finally found a hearty elixir. He yanked the stopper out of the bottle with a little pop and downed the whole thing in one go. He licked his lips, the taste unusual as ever and as enjoyable as ever. It was only a moment before relief washed over him, scrapes and bruises once again vanishing and leaving him breathing much more normally.

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DAY 27: REST/RESPITE/CURLED UP

Cowboy and Pixie, Vandal has noticed, seem to have the most frequent nightmares. Not the only nightmares by any means. Just the most often. Even Rover, rough as he is, doesn’t shake so much in his sleep. Barely even seems to dream a lot of the time.

But Cowboy tends to curl in on himself, his face tight and pale, his jaw so tight it makes Vandal’s mouth hurt in sympathy. It’s not like the guy needs to explain himself, but… well… Vandal doesn’t like it. And Pixie hardly vocalizes at all, but his breathing gets ragged and his face looks strained.

When Vandal notices Bunny, this time, sleeping on his side and obviously having a nightmare, in the little area they’ve set up for sleeping, he decides he has to do something about it. When Vandal puts a hand on Bunny’s shaking shoulder, Bunny starts and looks up at him, eyes bleary with sleep.

Vandal puts a finger to his lips and lays down as well, so he and Bunny are shoulder to shoulder. Just this. Just a little bit. Maybe that will help at least a little bit. The more grounding and obvious presence of a safe person, also sleeping. Vandal shuts his eyes to at least try to sleep. Soon he hears Bunny’s breathing settle down too.

~~~

When Froggy jerks awake from his own nightmare he’s barely aware of it. His jaw aches like it’s been too tight, and his head is starting to hurt. He licks his lips and sits up, trying to pretend nothing happened. Maybe he can have some water and just not think about it.

When he gets up to have a drink he notices immediately that while Rover is clearly on a watch, nowhere to be seen, Cowboy also isn’t where he should be. He’s standing like he just came back from some errand, much like Froggy, but has stopped to stare. Froggy heads over to see what he’s staring at.

As it turns out, the answer is Bunny and Vandal: The two of them are right next to each other. Cowboy and Froggy both watch as Vandal starts to groan in his sleep, his face pale, but then… Bunny twists, and turns over, and puts his arm up around Vandal’s chest. Vandal reaches up as well, puts a hand on Bunny’s arm. And then his other arm comes up and he hugs Bunny to him, and both of them seem to settle down into a more restful sleep.

Froggy grins at Cowboy, an idea coming to him. Cowboy just glares, but Froggy looks at the sleeping pair and then at Cowboy again, and holds up his hands in a pleading gesture. Cowboy looks at Froggy and then down at the pair and then back at Froggy. He’s just about to open his mouth when Froggy runs to grab their blankets and then runs right back, grabbing Cowboy and yanking him down to be on his left side, Bunny on his right. He hangs onto Cowboy’s arm as he settles back down to sleep.

Cowboy rolls his eyes, but settles down as well.

~~~

Rover finds himself shaken awake by Gull much earlier than he’d like. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of emergency. Glaring around the camp, Rover doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary… or… actually… What was going on over there?

Rover drags his blanket and sleeping roll with him as Gull guides him over to the pile of four heroes, all of them shifting and curling against each other and… really? Was this what it was?

Rover glares at Gull, but there isn’t much heat in it. Gull waves a hand dismissively, setting his own sleeping roll next to Vandal and settling in. Seemed a slightly safer choice than Cowboy, but still. Rover almost groaned, but decided against any particularly loud sounds as he reluctantly took up a position near Cowboy. At least Cowboy was likely to leave him be.

~~~

“Should we…” Ghost pauses, staring down at the pile of other heroes in the pale light of dawn, “do something?”

He looks up at Pixie. Pixie has his hands on his hips as he considers the others. His expression is neutral for a few moments before it breaks into a slow, horrible grin.

“No,” Ghost says, “you can’t be serious.”

Pixie gives Ghost a look that indicates just how serious he is, and Ghost sighs as he goes to collect his own bedroll and reluctantly settles in next to Pixie to keep sleeping in the dawn light.