#shell game

[waffliesinyoface]

i think, its very funny when SIOC fics have different viewpoints that show the main characters in different light

like, off the top of my head: Tori Mendoza: [screaming internally, thinking about the ramifications of yogurt-sealing, thinking about alfalfa] Enemy Ninja: “Oh god... its the fucking SPLEEN EATER”

Shikako Nara: [okay i know i need to show off if i want to get promoted, and i need to clue gaara in to his sand’s weakness, but... this is gonna suck.] Everyone in the crowd: “what the fuck. what the fuck. how did she just do tha- how many explosive notes does she HAVE” The Raikage: *offscreen fury* Netsui, Cloud Genin: ᵒʰ ᵍᵒᵈ ᶦ ᵗʳᶦᵉᵈ ᵗᵒ ᶠᶦᵍʰᵗ ᵗʰᵃᵗ 

Keisuke Gekko: “hey isobu it wouldn’t be too overkill if we did the v2 cloak, right? That’s probably not unheard of in this dimension??” “I’m bored, so, i don’t care. Let’s smash some shit.” “thanks isobu” The Entirety of Class 1-A: 

#fanfiction #Plasticity #Dreaming of Sunshine #Catch Your Breath #Shell Game #i specifically referenced shell game!Kei in this post because that is Kei trying to tone it down. and failing. #also netsui's reaction comes largely from View From the Clouds by Witchbreaker on Ao3. #RIP netsui; probably shouldve looked in a bingo book #the raikage's reaction; however; is canon.

[punctuated-equilibrium]

Cover art for "Shell Game" by the exceptionally talented Halogalopaghost. ❤️

#shell game

[cyb-by-lang]

lmao I was rereading Shell Game and suddenly got smacked in the face with a Batman reference and how it would feel like if dealing with him, while Kei is talking to Aizawa. (Chapter doppelgänger)

I know they’ve definitely been other Batman references by Kei, but this suddenly felt so funny, especially with what’s going down in the latest crossover chapter.

Yep! Kei likes bits of Batman's aesthetic, and maybe some of his spookiness and how it relates to fighting while constantly outnumbered

BUT

she doesn't really...necessarily like Bruce as a person. She can't trust him because she has a half-dozen competing mental profiles of the guy, and getting the guess wrong is how you get Cask of Amontillado'd (like KGBeast) or get your neck broken in the Siberian tundra (KGBeast, again).

Or left on a derailing train. Or plummeting down an empty elevator shaft because whoops "dying of fundamental forces" is the same as the death not being Bruce's fault.

(Hooray, Dark Knight trilogy)

Or maybe the version you end up with is just a cagey asshole who has half the number of sidekicks as expected and also runs a digital panopticon with which to stalk Literally Whoever and also WILL HIT YOU WITH HIS CAR. (Arkham games universe, but TDK!Bruce does at least half of this)

Like, the sheer number of cooks in this kitchen makes for a very hard guessing game. Is the resulting recipe going to put someone into anaphylactic shock? Will it merely scorch the roof of some poor diner's mouth? Will it be totally fine and all the worry was for nothing?

Hard to tell.

Better plan for the worst.

Meanwhile, Aizawa is a ninja high school teacher/pro hero who only has one writer and therefore is not randomly going to whip out complete nonsense and have it called canon via someone citing an elseworlds story written forty years ago. Probably.

Also Kei is about five times meaner in her head than out loud.

#shell game #a ninja's guide to gotham #asks #anonymous #shouta aizawa #bruce wayne #keisuke gekko

[browniefox]

You’re in a strange courtyard. You do not recognize it, but it feels oddly familiar.

You look down and see you’re reflection. You’re wearing a golden dress. A crown lies upon your head. The gold is all glowing, and you give a twirl, splashing in the liquid at your feet. It’s only then you realize your reflection is coming from a pool of blood. You look behind you.

There is a hare sitting on top of a dead child. It, too, is golden, with shiny fur and bright purple eyes. The longer you stare, however, the less sure you are it’s really a hare. It’s eyes are sharp, hold intelligence. It takes a few hops forwards, and you realize the shiny fur is actually dull, that there is blood all over its mouth, that it looks like a dead and rotting creature that somehow still moves.

Your father showed you Monty Python and the Holy Grail when you were young. Any dirty jokes went over your head, but you liked some of other comedy bits. You can remember the part where the knights need to get past a terrible beast that looks like a cute little white rabbit. You laughed so much at the cartoonish blood and action, and you dad had laughed along. The sight before you reminds you of that, but something about this feels oddly more real. Why does a laugh still build in your throat?

(You once laughed at a horror movie in the same way, as blood gushed from a poor dumb victim of the murderer. Your date had slowly pulled his arm off your shoulders, and a few days later he broke up with you. After that you watched horror movies alone.)

You stare at each other for a minute before the hare takes off, fast fast fast into the woods. You do not hesitate to chase after it.

Through the trees and shadows, the rabbit flees and you chase, panting and gasping but refusing to let it out of sight. Your hands are full of your golden dress skirts, which despite your best efforts are becoming dirty and torn. The hare leads you to a large meadow, and you can see glints of fur through the long grasses. You’re getting slower and it is only getting faster.

That is when you feel the ground shaking beneath you. You turn around just in time to throw yourself out of the way of a beast.

At first you think it’s a giant black bear, but closer inspection shows that there is something inside the bear fur and skin, something with long black and white tendrils that almost puppeteer the bear skin around. Atop the not-bear sits a figure, riding the huge monsterous thing. A white mask with purple tear marks adorns her face. She does not look at you, too focused on chasing after the golden hare, hands tight on a set of reigns.

After her is a other impossibly large bear, this one with two heads that bite at each other. Two riders are on this one, both with golden bear masks to match their mount.

Many more beasts ride on, a hunting party. All their mounts are monsters of animals that are made too big, given too many fangs and claws, look stitched together or dying or already dead. Chickens and rabbits and foxes and bears. But they all run swiftly, faster than your legs can carry you. You also realize that every rider wears a mask, and that they are all children, their innocent youth hidden behind the terrifying masks they put on.

Bringing up the rear of the hunting party is an adult man, who comes to a sudden halt right before you. His mount has three heads. The rabbit and bear heads are surprisingly docile. The middle fox head, though, looks older and far more scarred and snaps at you, just barely too far to actually catch you in it’s large and sharp teeth. The mask worn by this rider is an almost childish white bear mask. You can see his hands and the edges of his face, though, and that he is a rotted corpse of a human, a surprising reversal of the children riders.

“Well?” he says.

“What?” You do not know what he wants from you.

“Will you take up your mask and join the hunting party?”

They are hunting a hare. It should remind you of a silly old cartoon, or maybe the Aesop fable; it feels very far from that.

“I am not a hunter,” you say.

“And yet you chase our quarry,” the man replies.

“I will be a hare,” you tell him. He studies your face. You can see, just barely, purple eyes looking at you from behind the mask.

“You will not keep up,” he tells you, “At best, you will for a while. And then he will bite your leg and leave you to be trampled by the rest. Or you will fall behind, and if you are not running with him, you are chasing, you are hunting,”

“I will be a hare,” you assert again. The rider shifts his hold on his reigns, and you realize they are not leather. They are chains, shackled to his wrist and sunken into the flesh of his mount.

“Wear your mask and run then, little hare; the hunt does not cease. Lead or chase; the choice will be made for you.”

He spurs his mount on. The fox head yowls and spits but its legs run again to catch up with the rest.

You look down and there’s a mask in your hands. You cannot tell whether it is a hare, like the hunted, or a rabbit, like many of those forced to hunted.

Red blood splashes at your heels; the pool from the dead child’s body had still grown, and it reaches you again.

You jolt awake from the dream, heart pounding in your chest.

You try to fall back asleep and ignore the mask that you know sits in your bag at the foot of your bed.

#browniefox speaks #fnaf #vaguely #shell game #shell game spoilers #vanessa #Michael afton #was listening to ghost riders in the sky #and got possessed to write this #I love dream sequences #browniefox writes

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

There is no better analysis of Trump's motivation than Fintan O’Toole’s essay in The New York Review of Books, The Ultimate Deal:

"Secrets are a kind of currency. They can be hoarded, but if kept for too long they lose their value. Like all currencies, they must, sooner or later, be used in a transaction—sold to the highest bidder or bartered as a favor for which another favor will be returned. To see the full scale of Donald Trump’s betrayal of his country, it is necessary to start with this reality. He kept intelligence documents because, at some point, those secrets could be used in a transaction. What he was stockpiling were the materials of treason. He may not have known how and when he would cash in this currency, but there can be little doubt that he was determined to retain the ability to do just that."

Another thought: Trump also collects trophies. Clearly, he considered these documents to be trophies of his inside information and status level.

Trump collected two things throughout his life: bargaining chips and status symbols (trophies). Status symbols are worthless without display. Thus, Trump displayed them on occasion to people without clearance. We know of a few. I bet there were many more.

These documents were status symbols and bargaining chips and potential get-out-of-financial-ruin cards...if sold to the highest bidder. The fact that an alarming rate of intelligence agents were killed or exposed in 2021 combined with the Saudi 2 billion dollar investment into Jared Kushner post Trump presidency ties motive together. Trump runs a shell game, constantly distracting the public while he commits treason for personal gain.

#Fintan O'Toole #The Ultimate Deal #selling us out #trophies #my boxes #status symbols #shell game #TFG #secrets #currency #money #transactional thinking #the highest bidder

[books-to-add-to-your-tbr]

Title: Kingdom Keepers

Author: Ridley Pearson

Series or standalone: series

Publication year: 2005

Genres: fiction, fantasy, adventure, mystery, science fiction

Blurb: Finn Whitman and four other teens have been hired as Disney World guides, but with an odd twist...with cutting edge technology, they have been transformed into hologram projections capable of leading guests around the park. What begins as an exciting theme park job turns into a virtual nightmare as Finn and his pals attempt to thwart an uprising by a menacing group of Disney villains.

#kingdom keepers #disney after dark #disney at dawn #disney in shadow #power play #shell game #dark passage #unforeseen #the insider #the syndrome #ridley pearson #series #2005 #fiction #fantasy #adventure #mystery #science fiction

[trump666traitor]

taxes are for the little people

#the little people #tax cheat #scam artist alert #liar #lock him up #hail satan #ponsi scam #shell game

[hopecomesbacktolife]

from Shell Game, chapter 9, by Melissa Crandall (Star Trek #63)

from The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, Book Four, chapter IV, Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien

#star trek #major lotr feels rn #tolkien #book quotes #shell game #Melissa Crandall #i love it when characters do The Thing #emily #also tagging as #faramir #bc he gets the line in the movies and it fits him too #three 10/10 characters <333 #my heart #i love characters full of love and compassion like this. so much. my beloveds. #i have such a Type when it comes to characters who make me emotional at the slightest mention and. yeah. i love them so much

[ramarlpso]

nora: ECKS JAY NIYUN WHAT HAPPENED?????

Jenny:

#this was funnier in my head #shell game #mlaatr #barack hussein obama

[aeshnacyanea2000]

The crowd looked at the last melon. They were street people. They knew the score. When the object can be under one of three things, and it’s already turned out not to be under two of them, then the one place it was certainly not going to be was under the third. Only some kind of gullible fool would believe something like that. Of course there was going to be a trick. There always was a trick. But you watched it, in order to see a trick done well.

Terry Pratchett - Jingo

#Terry Pratchett #discworld quotes #GNU Terry Pratchett #quotes #Jingo #shell game #tricks #there is always a trick #human nature

[pulchritudinous-plants]

new things we learned in the Shell Game rewrite

•philby’s best with math and sciences whereas willa has won awards for reading and spelling

•wayne calls willa isabella

•finn seems to think this is the first time he’s ever heard someone call her that?? like it kinda seems like he didn’t know that was her full name

•wayne thinks willa has always been the smart one

•finn’s grandfather often smelled of alcohol

•finn and willa both go to edgewater high together now, apparently

•jelly likes watching Jeopardy!

•finn forgets that his little sister lives with them half the time and describes her as a ghost

•all the keepers have signed NDAs about the going ons in the parks

•the dhi’s all have a publicist named jen levine

•finn considers his mom to be more techie than philly

•willa uses the alias sarah sandler on the Dream; maybeck uses randy coleman

•willa can covert celsius to fahrenheit in her head

•willa’s mom bakes a lot

•willa prefers being called brainiac to nerd

•maybeck thinks willa and philly are perfect for each other as they’re both nerds

•social situations make maybeck uncomfortable and he uses humor as a deflection

•maybeck considered jelly to be his best friend

•philby has trouble believing that he could be wrong

•charlene is impulsive when it comes to putting herself in danger

•side note but it seems like storey and mattie have just merged into the same character? still named storey but she’s got the red tips and has was in the barracks with jess and amanda and has mattie’s powers. idk what’s up with that

•storey thinks amanda is an uncommon name, apparently

•storey is 18

•willa, while usually quiet, talks incessantly when nervous

•willa considers herself good at screaming

•finn, when feeling particularly strong of wills, thinks that maybeck must feel like this all the time

once again this was very different from the original publication. philby isn’t an asshole in this, which is nice except he’s hardly in it. the cliffhanger at the end is gone as well. there’s really no hints to charlene/maybeck or willa/philby, and even the finn/amanda stuff is severely toned down. there’s no kiss between charlene and finn and most every act of storey flirting with finn or philby is gone. there’s no struggle for power between finn and philby. it’s not even implied that wayne has contacted philby.

#amanda lockhart #charlene turner #dell philby #finn whitman #jessica lockhart #kingdom keepers #terry maybeck #willa angelo #ridley pearson #shell game #kingdom keepers rewrites

[langwrites]

hi lang! i just wanted to say, when i read some of your fics i never thought about how they'd live in my brain forever- to this day i can't read or hear the words 'shell game' without thinking of your writing and it makes me happy.

Aww, thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed the journey. :)

#shell game #asks #anonymous

[cyruspavels]

Shell Game

I think what The Lion loves about The Crab Is that it doesn’t only move back and forth. 

It’s the way that the elusive yet smaller crab  Is able to keep the attention of the mighty king of the jungle. 

Problem is,  One thinks it is a game And the other is simply surviving. 

As big as the Lion is,  The crab never notices it because there’s no need to look up. 

Lions hate not being acknowledged,  So from time to time it attempts to pounce on the crab,  But the crab hides craftily in its shell until the lion gives up,  And while it sleeps,  It slowly gets back to the ocean and disappears within the sands like a mirage. 

CP’23

#Shell Game #cp'22

[cyb-by-lang]

Interesting thing that randomly came into my head. The DC universe is like Earth the most, so it’s basically been a while since someone could understand Kei’s references outside of Isobu right? I mean that would make her more suspicious, but also less lonely? Or something, because people actually get it.

The BNHA crossover is also similar, but I just feel like that world is a lot more different from Earth. So less common pop culture references, compared to the DC comics at least.

I just kinda find the idea funny of Kei making a super ‘old’ reference that no one gets, except Batman. Or maybe Nightwing. And that just confuses them more.

Anon, I would like to inform you that I spent all afternoon wracking my brain looking for a reference Bruce would get that his kids wouldn't, and the only thing that came to mind was that one time the comics accidentally(?) confirmed that Batman watched Sailor Moon. If I recall correctly, he sussed out one of the Martian Manhunter's disguises because the guy made the mistake of introducing himself as "Rei Hino," also known as Sailor Mars. Which also makes the Martian Manhunter a nerd.

Incidentally, I don't think Dick and Tim and Jason are that into older anime.

My Hero Academia also has the excuse(?) of being set in what is explicitly the nebulous barely-into-the-future, so Kei didn't really look for comparison points. That calendar, beyond the extent the Japanese school year is dictated by it, was one I didn't want to even try and figure out.

Meanwhile Gotham exists in this weird comic book limbo where everything from vacuum tube AI to actual Greek gods and time travelers and demons and interstellar space travel all exist, even if people tend to stick to their own beat. You get a real different feel from each hero's little world. Noir to space opera to some Real Nonsense.

Anyway, Kei has tried to avoid making references besides those she needs to get by as "fluent speaker with an accent," but she's definitely slipped up enough for Tim to figure out. Just knowing that WWII happened was a major thread to pull.

#a ninja's guide to gotham #shell game #asks #anonymous #keisuke gekko #tim drake #batman #dc comics #dcu #crossover

[browniefox]

New shell game update! Who's ready for bot-on-bot violence?

#browniefox speaks #fnaf #shell game

[arcadebroke]

#playstation #transparent shell #design #tech #hardware #retro gaming #gaming #video games