#there's about to be some very dead villains

[wonderlandcrown]

Yuu and The Housewardens (SPOILERS FOR ALL THE BOOKS, BOOK 7 EXCLUDED)

A thing I really wanted to talk about was the amount of times Yuu has interacted with them during their own books

Because a few months ago I think I saw someone complain about how we only interacted with Leona a few times in his own book, and then I realized that in book 2, 5, 6 and 7, we aka Yuu barely interacted with the respective housewarden.

These obviously parallel the original movies, the amount of interactions or times we've met with each housewarden represent the times when the original villains actively participated to bring down the protagonist.

Just to clarify, twst doesn't follow the plot of the original movies 100%, there are some tweaks in plot as seen in book 1 where we met with riddle a few times more compared to alice and the queen of hearts(who have literally only met one time, but the duration was pretty long)

In book 2, the plot rlly isn't that different from the original. We met Leona and Ruggie earlier even before book 2 started just like how Scar and the hyenas were present before Simba was born. We interacted with him again when going to Savanaclaw to investigate the "accidents", and then finally the showdown between overblot!Leona and Heartshackle(counting Cater and Riddle). It's the same way in The Lion King, Simba has like 2 on screen interactions with Scar before their showdown at the end.

Book 3 was very Yuu-centric, and that's because Ursula was incredibly active in trying to take down Ariel, much more effort compared to the previous two. Ariel had to take things into her own hands, very much like Yuu when their friends got roped into doing basically free labour for Azul. I don't think anymore needs to be added here.

Now onto book 4, also incredibly Yuu-centric! The Sea Witch and the Sorcerer of Sands are not that different in terms of taking care of their adversaries, after all. Aladdin was actively trying to mess with Jafar from day 1, and Jamil decided to avenge his ancestor by sending us off to the edge of the world/j (i dont believe in the great 7 being the overblot boys' ancestors🙏)

Book 5!! Time to talk about my Vil💜 Despite having to live under the same dust-laden roof of Ramshackle dorm, we barely talked with the gorgeous housewarden, obviously referencing how Snow White and the Evil Queen probably barely(or never) talked to each other despite living in the same castle. Though Evil Queen is more active in taking down Snow White after she finds out she's alive, I wish they'd(the writers) included more scenes where we talk and chat with Vil, even if it's just him insulting us💀(no im not saying this as a vil simp whatareyoutalkingabout/hj)

Woohoo we're on book 6🗣️ Hades was so sure that Hercules was dead and never bothered to double check lfmao, unlike Scar who would've been wasting resources and time, couldn't Hades, just like, teleport😭😭😭???

Okay getting off track here, my point is Hercules and Hades are probably the only hero and villain on this list where they'd met multiple times(ignoring jafar since aladdin didn't rlly know he was evil) Yuu definitely had their time to shine in book 6 and all the other characters had been amazing in this book. We had more Idia screentime around the start and the end, but with adequate screentime midway too. Say what you want but book 6 was my favourite.

Book 7 is still ongoing, as it has since I've joined the fandom😭🙏 But did Aurora even interact with Maleficent??? Someone PLEASE let me know, as book 7 is yet to finish, I won't be making assumptions

[yallemagne]

Uh Oh! You have activated my Ramble (c)

The gist for my daydream of Swan Lake (as it would be via shouldering out "The Frog Prince") is that

Tiana/Odette does make a deal with Facilier/Rothbart, but not in the sense of "I'll get you your restaurant!" but in the sense of her actually being new in the area, not realizing what he is/does. All he tells her is that he can, "Arrange a meeting with some powerful Folks around here. I'm no businessman myself, just a man with friends..." Et cetera. Enough patter to make her agree to 'meet' those friends and shake hands on it--cue the swan curse and her being trapped with her fellow cygnets on the water. Why?

Facilier's Friends are counting down the days until he pays off a 'debt' of young women (imprisoned via his magic until the big date) for a favor he made years ago...

...to save Odile's life as a child. Yeah, yeah, anti-villain route, I know. Stay with me. Basically, this version of Rothbart didn't pull a spell to make Odile a lookalike; it was just a 'Prince and the Pauper convenient doppelganger' coincidence. It'll come into play with the Naveen-Siegfried thing, but anyway. Odile. Kid. Either dead or dying. Rothbart-Facilier pleads with his Friends to save her, a Friend obliges. And then demands payment in the form of receiving her as recompense (gross arranged bride coding) when she comes of age; her eighteenth birthday. Facilier pleads anew, haggling to save her.

Cue Friend and company demanding quantity in exchange. A flock of pretty cygnet maidens to trade for his daughter by the appointed hour. He agrees. And Odettiana's resemblance to Odile is what makes him fixate on her specifically as a perfect finishing touch to the trade.

Then there'd be the requisite tangle of Odile and Odette meeting, Glam Goth Voodoo Flapper meets Hardworking Would-Be Entrepreneur trying to establish herself. They contrast, but bond. And, of course, Siegfried is thrown in there as the heartthrob. The whole 'confessing true love' shtick still applies, which would endanger Odette's status as the final sacrifice, so Facilier encourages Odile to ~steal her man~ (and unknowingly doom Odette and the other girls who she has no idea even exist; ever since the Friends saved her, Facilier's forbidden her to go near the water where they're trapped)

There's a whole angsty blow-up at the climax, all the different loves clashing together Romance (Siegfried and Odette) Friendship (Odile and Odette and the cygnets) and Familial (Odile: "You can't do this to them!" Facilier, hoarse: "BETTER THEM THAN YOU!")

Wheeeeeee

At risk of sounding like a complete dingus about something you're clearly very passionate about, I think this idea is neat... but I personally wouldn't replace the original movie with this concept. My judgement is defo extremely skewed by nostalgia (though, I still take issue with aspects of TPaTF. for example: Disney's inability to have a Black protagonist be Black for more than half of the film TWICE NOW). Still, the recharacterization of Tiana as a naïve newcomer wouldn't be my thing personally. I'd like it better as its own separate film. We do need more than a singular Black Disney Princess after all.

[dotthings]

One of many ways spn functions is as a morality play, and there are times when there's no one right answer or take, where the point was to raise questions and to explore those questions within the narrative, and yeah, a nuanced approach is necessary in discussing it.

Let me trace out some story beats in S9. This has a bearing on MoC Dean.

Vampires using Annie/Alex to lure scumbags who prey on underage girls. Alex knows they’re scumbags, yet she confesses she couldn’t stomach being the bait any more—“the blood, the screams.” Do those guys being scumbags make it less of a psychological torture on Alex to be used as human bait so the vampire family who took her in can kill humans? Alex them makes a choice to let “Mama” turn her, then she regrets it. Her personhood asserts itself and she chooses to save Jody, who showed Alex true kindness, and take the vampire cure.

MoC Dean with dead eyes beheading a vampire way too slowly, demanding the vampire look at him. Dean’s usual style is quick, efficient. He does not actually “enjoy killing”—he gets satisfaction out of saving people, making the world safer, killing unrepentant monsters. Saying Dean “enjoys killing” is a mis-classification of what’s really going on with Dean usually. Joy isn’t what he experiences. MoC Dean relishes killing in ways Dean himself doesn’t—the mark heightens innate negative emotions, it’s a magical tattoo, and while Dean’s sense of personhood isn’t missing, it constantly battles with the mark. Does the fact that he’s killing an unrepentant vampire mean there’s nothing to say about what the mark is doing to Dean? Treating that like it’s just another kill? It doesn’t matter because it was an unreprentant vampire? What about the impact on Dean? (as with Alex).

the villain Bloodlines turning out to be a regular human whose son was murdered. He went on a serial rampage killing monsters, and so ruthless he killed a human—Ennis’s fiancee—just because she was in the way of his monster kill. Ennis then shoots the murderer point blank, not in self-defense, but execution style. The tone suggests Ennis will wind up on his own arc about vengeance. And so we say but the guy was killing monsters so the way he was killing is okay, right? And then that it's fine how Ennis executed a human, because the guy had lost his mind and was on a monster-killing rampage where he didn’t care if he killed human civilians in the process, nor did he care if the monsters were ethical or not.

after MoC Dean kills Abaddon, MoC Dean keeps stabbing her dead body. It’s not the kill itself that’s out of line or scary, it’s the how, and it is very much about what that does to Dean. When Sam’s voice gets through to Dean he stops, he seems lost, like he’s woken up from a nightmare.

Dean’s personality changes the more often he kills. If people think dictator Dean is an empowerment, rather than the mark eating away at him, or if they think Dean sometimes being bossy means that MoC Dean is proof of how bossy/abusive Dean truly is, they aren’t paying attention. The MoC is pulling Dean away from who he essentially is.

The MoC is a constant war within Dean between the mark vs his personhood, how and who is truly is as a person, and eventually down the line the mark would win, no matter how strong Dean is. I love how the MoC arc shows show powerful Dean’s sense of self is, how much he fights against it, but ultimately the scary magical tattoo would take him over (I’ll talk about that more when I’m rewatching S10) and Dean would be lost.

Dean drenched in blood, left in a daze in the aftermath, killing in a style he wouldn’t usually consciously choose, the body horror, the attack on his personhood, all matter. It’s not just the fact that he kills. An unrepentant vampire, Abaddon, human traffickers…nobody here is arguing about how “deserving” those kills are. But there’s a tendency in discussions on S9 to focus on the killing itself, and brush past the actual issues.

[explodcor]

Anonymous said: Someone kidnapped Todoroki, how does your muse react to a picture of him unconscious and tied up? (Hope this isn't too angsty <3)

Katsuki was fuckin' worried sick when Shouto hadn't returned any of his calls or texts. He hadn't even been left on read. He'd returned back to Endeavor's Agency after his patrol shift, but Shouto was nowhere to be found.

Then, he received a text from an anonymous number. He impulsively went to delete it but paused when he saw that a photo attachment was sent along with the text. He felt his guts twist into knots as he went to open the message.

Nothing could prepare him for what he saw. The photo showed Shouto slumped over and tied to a chair. There were Quirk suppressant cuffs over his boyfriend's wrists. Along with this was a message that read: "If you want him to live, come alone with 500,000,000 Yen." Alongside this was coordinates to their location.

Katsuki's face paled white as a ghost, and his eyes went wide.

Though, as panicked as he suddenly felt, nothing could overpower the unbridled rage that quickly rose within his chest.

"Who do these fuckers think they are?!" he growled.

His legs were already moving for the front doors. "Burnin'!" he yelled over to the side-kick. "Tell Endeavor his son got kidnapped! I'm gonna go kill these dumbass fucks!"

"Hahh?!" The side-kick gawked at him. "If that's true, you can't just barge in there by yourself! It's too dangerous!"

"Don't care who you send to cover me, but I'm not waiting around here for his permission to go after Shouto!" Katsuki snapped back with a scowl. He hurriedly sent Burnin' and Endeavor a copy of the coordinates. "I just sent over the location of these assholes!"

A sudden feral grin spread across his face as he continued rushing for the door. "I'M GONNA MAKE THESE FUCKERS REGRET EVER KNOWING MY NAME!"

[bixels]

vague-posting about this here cuz i don't feel comfortable yapping about my su takes on twitter, but after everything that's happened the most interesting thing about the su fandom to me is that so many are 100% there for applying the "everyone can change and deserves a second chance" message to everyone, even the diamonds. except for one ☝️ she doesn't count. cuz she's dead.

[companion-showdown]

Who had the worst time aboard the TARDIS?

TOURNAMENT MASTERPOST

[mohntilyet]

Personal headcanon about the "you picked the wrong dellamorte" line, I don't think illario actually likes rook outside the context of them being someone close to lucanis. Like rook on their own isn't much to him, but when they meet it's yet another person talking about his cousin (why isn't he good enough for whatever job they're hiring for?) and on top of that they somehow bring him back from the dead (another whole can of worms for illario). Now he starts turning on the charm, but whether he's actually interested or this is just one more thing his cousin has that he doesn't and it gets under his skin, who knows. Either way, rook ignores illario, the guy who lives off his charm, and is instead interested in the guy who's never even dated before and thinks giving someone a knife is how to flirt. Infuriating

NO THANK YOU !! i am genuinely sorry if i have ever implied illario is into rook like i see some takes about it and unless it like ties into your rook's personal backstory i don't seriously think he's romantically jealous. at all. my enjoyment of that line stems from illario's pathological need to make it about himself and not see his strengths but what lucanis has, and therefore what he doesn't. he's annoyed enough to try and goad you in the middle of a fight about the 'wrong' dellamorte and completely blind to the fact that the venatori are at best, a stupid fucking alliance, and at worst, a cult that will devour the crows from the inside out and illario would have been the one to give them the keys. he sees lucanis make allies, needs his own, and instead of charming the other talons/houses as he should, he (probably spitefully) picks the venatori. or maybe he just thought it would be easier. ugh he makes me want to telekenetically throw him around

[prolibytherium]

I never touched it but I feel like i only ever hear positive things said about song of achilles.. in (rough strokes at least) what makes it dogshit to you?

Okay it's been a while since I actually read it so some of this might not be spot on accurate. Sorry if at any point I say 'the book never does xyz' and it actually does once or twice but I think my underlying criticisms are accurate

-Patroclus is made into like this soft gentle tender quivering little yaoi boy. In the source text, he's shown as compassionate and moved by the suffering of his own men (and apparently having some medical skill, tending to the wounded in the camp), but very much invested n combat and very, very good at it (pages worth of descriptions of the guys he's killing left and right). In this, the arguably more complex character from this 8th century BC text is flattened into Being A Healer, he doesn't want to go to war he just wants to help people, he only goes because Achilles has to but he doesn't want to fight he's a HEALER he's a gentle lover NOT A FIGHTER who just wants to help he just wants to help everyone around him he HEALS while Achilles is a doomed warrior who is so good at fighting and KILLING its a DICHOTOMY GUYS!!!LIKE THE BEAUTIFUL SUN AND MOON DOOMED LOVERS SO SAD patocluse HEALER . (I Think he's specifically characterized as being BAD at fighting but might be misremembering)

-I don't remember much about Achilles' characterization I think it just makes him less of a jackass while not adding anything of interest and levels out into being mad boring.

-Not getting into the literal millenias old debate whether the mythological characters Achilles and Patroclus were being characterized as some type of lover by the original oral sources of the Iliad or its Homeric writers. We will never know. We don't even know what (if any) culturally accepted conventions of male homosexuality existed in bronze age Greece (we know much more about their descendants). But there are some interesting elements of their characterization in this direction, with how unconventional their relationship is WITHIN the text itself- Patroclus is described as cooking for Achilles and his guests (very specifically a woman/wife's job), Achilles chides Patroclus like a father, but there's also scene where Achilles' mourning of him directly echoes a passage of Hector's wife mourning her husband, Patroclus is explicitly stated to Achilles' elder, and is overall treated as his equal or near-equal, closest confidant and most beloved friend (to the point that pederastic classical Greeks would debate over who was erastes (older authority figure lover) and who was eromenos (adolescent 'beloved')- many took it as a given that this text depicted their present-day cultural norms of homosexual behavior but it existed so Outside of these norms that it had to be debated who was who). Their relationship is non-standard both within the text and to the descendants of the civilization that wrote them.

Basically what I'm saying is this book had opportunities to like, explore the unconventionality of the relationship (being presented here as explicitly lovers), explore the dynamics of why Patroclus wants to do 'women's work' (besides being a tenderhearted softboy), the weird dynamics where they take on paternal roles to each other but also roles of wives, how they feel about being this way, and just kind of Doesn't. Which I guess isn't an intrinsic fault (because it omits much of what I just talked about to begin with). it's just like.... Lame. This book takes jsut abandons everything interesting about the source text in favor of flattening it into bland Doomed Yaoi.

-The conflict that sets off the core story of the Iliad is Achilles and Agamemnon fighting over Briseis, an enslaved Trojan woman taken by Achilles as a war-trophy, Achilles spends most of the story moping because he was dishonored by his 'trophy' being taken. Achilles and Patroclus and everyone else are raping their captives, all the women in the story are either captured Trojans (or in the case of the free women within the walls of Troy, soon to be enslaved, and are slave owners themselves). Slavery as an institution and extreme patriarchal conventions are innate to the text and reflective of the context in which it was developed. You cannot avoid it.

But obviously you can't have your soft yaoi boys doing this, so the author has them capturing women to Protect Them from the other men. Their slaves are UNDER THEIR PROTECTION and VERY SAFE (and they might even Like And Befriend Them but I might be misremembering that. Briseis does though). Our heroes have apparently absorbed none of the ideals of the culture they exist in and the author seems to think "they're gay and aren't sexually attracted to their captives" would translate to them being outright benevolent (also as if wartime sexual violence is just about attraction and not part of a wider spectrum of violent acts to dehumanize and brutalize an accepted 'enemy')

In the source text, Briseis mourns Patroclus as being the kindest to her of her captors, who tried to get her a slightly better outcome by getting her married to Achilles (which probably would be the Least Bad of all possible outcomes for a woman in that situation, becoming a legal wife instead of a slave), and wonders what will happen to her now that he's gone. This is a really really sad, horrible, and compelling dynamic which could be fleshed out in very interesting ways but is instead is tossed entirely aside in favor of them being Besties. Like brother and sister.

All of the above pisses me off so much. If you don't want to engage in the icky parts of ancient/bronze age Greece then don't write a retelling of a story taking place in bronze age Greece. I'm not gonna get mad at children's adaptations of Greek myths or silly fun stories loosely based on them for omitting the rape and slavery but it is SO fundamental to the Iliad. If you're not willing to handle it, either fully omit it or better yet set your Iliad inspired yaoi in an invented swords-and-sandals setting where you can have all your heartbreaking tragic doomed lovers plot beats and not have to clumsily write around the women they're brutalizing.

-The author didn't seem to know what to do with Thetis and she made her just like, Achilles bitch mother who spends most of the story trying to separate our Yaoi Boys (iirc her disguising Achilles as a girl and hiding him on Scyros is made to be more about getting him away from Patroclus than trying to save her son from his prophesied doom in the Trojan War) until she sees how much they loooove each other and I think helps Patroclus' spirit get to the afterlife or something in the end?

-This is more of a personal taste gripe but it has that writing style I loathe where the prose feels less like a story and more like an attempt to string together Deep Beautiful Hard Hitting Poetic Lines that will look great as excerpts on booktok (might predate booktok but same vibe). It's all very Pretty and Haunting and Deep but feels devoid of real substance.

I really like The Iliad and The Odyssey in of themselves. They're fascinating historical texts that give a window into how 8th century BC Greeks told their stories, saw their world, interpreted their ancestors, etc. And genuinely I think these texts have 'good' characters, there's a lot of complexity and humanity to it.

WRT the Iliad- all of the main Achaeans are pretty fascinating, the one singular part where Briseis Gets To Talk and laments her situation is great, Achilles fantasizing that all of the Trojans AND the Achaeans die so he and Patroclus alone can have the glory of conquering Troy (wild), Achilles asking to embrace Patroclus' shade and reaching out for him but it's immaterial (and the shade being sucked back underground with a 'squeak' (the squeak kinda gets me it's disturbing and sad)), Hecuba talking about wanting to tear out Achilles' liver and eat it in a (taboo, exceptioally pointed) expression of rage and grief for his mutilation of her son's corpse, just one tiny line where the enslaved women performing ritual wailing for their dead captors are described as using it as an outlet to 'grieve for their own troubles' is heartrending, etc. A lot of grappling with anger and grief and the inevitability of death, a lot of groundwork laid for characters that could be very interesting when expanded upon in the framework of a conventional novel.

And Song Of Achilles really doesn't do much with all that. I know a lot of my gripes here are kind of just "It's different from the Iliad", I would have thought of it as mostly mediocre and forgettable rather than infuriating if it wasn't a retelling (and I DEFINITELY have strong biases here). But I think the ways in which it is different are less just a product of a retelling (of course there's going to be omissions and differences) and more a complete and utter disinterest in vast majority of its own subject matter, to the book's detriment. I think a retelling has a point when it EXPANDS on the source, or provides a NEW ANGLE to the source. This book doesn't Really do either, it just shaves off the complexity of its source material, renders the characters into a really boring archetype of a gay relationship, and gives very little else. Its content boils down to a middling tragic romance that has been inserted into the hollowed out defleshed skeleton of the Iliad.

Bottom line: I definitely would not be as mad about it if I wasn't familiar with the source material but I think it's fair to expect a retelling to Engage with/expand on its source, and I also think it's weak purely on its own merits. This book was set up to disappoint Me specifically.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

winston my quant of billions

[pagesofkenna]

(arcane spoilers) im not really in touch with what 'the fandom' is saying but i have seen multiple people responding to apparently 'the fandom' being mad that Jayce tried to destroy the weird magic cult thing, which im just surprised at? I thought people didnt like weird cults. like i cant quite parse what was going on with that place but there was definitely some manipulation and mind control at hand (not even sure how much Viktor was even aware of it too)

i mean, i assume people are just sad he had to attack Viktor about it but like... weird mind control cult thing is ok as long as sad boyfriend is in charge? is that really it?

(or am i taking this too seriously and its more just a continuation of the 'Jinx has never done anything wrong and y'all should stop fighting her :(' mentality, in which case i agree but you dont understand that Jayce is literally the one (1) person who's allowed to fight him about this, for tragedy reasons)

[sonknuxadow]

did we ever get an actual answer for if robotnik is gonna be in sonic 3 or not. or are we just gonna find out when the trailer comes out in like a year

[12freddofrogs]

Very weird to be in that stage where a show is grabbing hold of your brain, but you haven't finished the show so you cant interact with fandom because spoilers, and you're watching it with someone else so you can't even just keep watching until you finish

[whysamwhy123]

Ugh. I’m struggling to make any real progress on my various WIPs and I’m pretty pissed off about it. So, I’m gonna do The Thing again. Send me a word and if it pops up in any of the monstrosities I’m currently trying to get off the ground, I’ll post a snippet here and maybe that’ll help me get the creative juices flowing again?? *shrugs*

[tapakah0]

(runout of tags again I hate it here gotta bite the max ammount) #Also. I feel like Ward's perception of Oscar will be changing from now on #Yep. a bastard. a smart bastard. But let's be real. He can survive and get you out, follow him # Mhm. Cass I think I did mention that I was up for the story, because of what could possibly be in this story later # We reached the point where I open the door, close it from inside and throw the key in the window from 10th floor

Part 13 ;)

Oh no, they're roommates now?? Hope you're ready for the fluff, family dynamics, and chaos that follows~

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Masterpost

[idiosinkratico]

back to hell (i been replaying fnv and have started Dead Money again)

[long-live-astronerd-ghost-king]

DPXDC prompt. Field trip.

Some people would call gothamites petty, but given that most of the USA population treated them as scum, they believed that their behavior was justified.

They didn't like tourists, to put it mildly. Therefore, after learning that in their city were people on a field trip from Amity Park who could not leave Gotham for several days due to weekly escape from Arkham, the news channel immediately decided that a short interview from the guests would definitely amuse the locals. The reaction of outsiders never ceases to be ridiculous.

Reporter: ~Good afternoon~ Gotham News! May I ask you to share what you liked most about our wonderful city?

Mr. Lancer*still in a cold sweat and looks at every passerby as a potential villain*: Uh, no, me..It's so unexpected. Well, first of all, people here are very…

Danny *is high after the tasting samples Dr. Crane gave him for free and is extremely eager to share his happiness with others*,* picks a microphone*.

Danny: Gotham is the best city in the world! Like seriously, damn, I'd like to die here. Although there are constant shootings somewhere, half the time people don't even shoot at me! I haven't been this relaxed since middle school! And in the evenings, there is often such a pleasant scent of fear and despair on the streets. This fear toxin of yours is a real miracle! It's sooo good!

Sam *decides to take the initiative in her own hands before Fenton says too much*: Personally, I am very pleased with the number of green spaces you have in your city. It's nice to see that here eco-activists are really being listened to. Also, the fact that most restaurants have a thoughtful menu for vegetarians left a very pleasant impression.

Dash in his favorite T-shirt "it's not gay if he's dead": Four words. Hips of Red Hood. The fact that it is not marked in the guidebook as the main attraction of the Crime Alley is a real crime. This dude clearly never skips leg days. My respect.

Tucker: What can I say? The speed of internet here, even during villains attacks, is absolutely  unbelievable. I don't want to leave this place.

Jazz: I love Gotham! Finally, I was able to buy all the works published by Dr. Harleen Quinzel. *girl picks up an impressive stack of books* For some reason, they are not available online.

The camera points at a red-haired guy with a twitching eye.

Wes: I'm 85% sure Bruce Wayne is Batman. I have a proof and I am ready to provide it.

A girl with a "Good Guess" pin from Riddler enters and takes camera away from conspiracy theorist.

Star: Sorry, he slipped out at night and went to look for problems. Again. Don't pay any attention to him. He's always like this when he drinks more than two energy drinks in a row.