Pink Flamingos/ Fourth Man Kayak and other ramblings

[lucky_kari]

No: HPFGUIDX 36538

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Edblanning at a... wrote:
> I never actually got the hang of the pink flamingo thing. Would 
someone in 
> the know please explain in words which a bear of very little brain 
would 
> understand.

Marina has explained her side of the pink flamingo story, but I'll 
give you the LOLLIPOPS spin on it. Marina called LOLLIPOPS the pink 
flamingo in the Gothic cathedral, and Tabouli pounced on the image and 
now flaunts it as proof for LOLLIPOPS (look at the colour contrast! It 
just works!). I'm a pink flamingo in a Gothic cathedral person myself, 
though currently in hiding from Tabouli, after I lost my temper when I 
saw Elkins climbing on board with another pink flamingo (Snape loves 
Mrs. Norris.) Tabouli says something about a little talk. Now, what 
can that be? No, I'm keeping Avery company on the kayak. Speaking of 
which.....

> I know I'm naive, but I thought the case you'd made out was so 
convincing 
> that everyone accepted its nearly canon ( deuterocanonical?) status.

Wow! I can't say how unexpected this is. Just us five (including 
Avery) on the kayak, and suddenly everyone wants to crowd in. 
 
>And you guys get so involved 
in your 
> role plays that the rest of us can only sit back and watch in amused 
> admiration. 

I suppose our speculation does have a little RPG flavour to it. /me 
casts her thoughts back to the scene were Cindy was allegedly yelling 
"Suck it up!" at Elkins, while I was allegedly making tea in a 
Viking's helmet and reading snippets of the head-catapult scene in 
LOTR.

No. Certainly not. Canonical speculation. Every bit of it. 

>And besides a kayak's so....well, little...and a bit wet 
and 
> uncomfortable. 

Ah, but Cindy prizes toughness. The kayak, I think, is supposed to 
build our characters. Unfortunately, us sycophants aren't benefitting 
from the situation. 

>Now, if only you could upgrade a little.....

I'm a little attached to the kayak, but with all the passengers, we 
might have to. :-) 

> Then, of  course 
> I'll have to give serious consideration to how I'd like to take my 
Fourth 
> Man, so to speak. I don't think I phrased that very well, but you 
know what I 
> mean. 

As Elkins has noted, I'm a Fourth Man with Remorse. Frankly, I don't 
get the point of Imperius AND Remorse. Don't they cancel each other 
out? Or is Avery one of those sensitive souls who worries about 
everything? Lupin without EDGE? 

>And I've even been known to come round to the idea of Bloody 
Ambushes - 
> as long as they were offered, not demanded.

Yes, of course. Come right around this corner, behind the bushes, 
where no-one can see you, and you can see the selection we're 
offering. That noise? Probably the wind. There's certainly nothing 
behind that corner but our selections. 

Donning her FEATHERBOA and Viking Helmet, Eileen hails Elkins.

Elkins is talking to someone else:
>Avery himself, although he sometimes shares the kayak with us,
>doesn't get to express his own opinion on the matter, because 
>he's just an in-jokey parody of somebody else's fictional 
>character, and so doesn't count. ;^)

Avery never counts, does he? Do you know what that does to his 
feelings? 

But, come to think of it, has Avery every talked since we kidnapped 
him from his stint collecting stamps in the basement/working under 
Fudge/advicing Percy Weasley? He only looks at us with those big brown 
sorrowful reproachful eyes and moans. It's getting on my nerves. 

<Elkins pauses in her rather desperate attempt to convert Jamie to 
her cause, frowning. Wait. What is this? Something seems amiss. 
Eileen is looking decidedly....dejected. She hasn't even put on her 
life-jacket, and her Lucky Kari helmet is drooping at a distinctly 
dispirited angle.>

>Smarting? Because I called you a SYCOPHANT? Oh, but Eileen, 
>consider the *source,* will you? I mean, I'm all in *favor* of 
>sycophants! Look, I've even got the badge to prove it.

>There is *nothing wrong* with being a SYCOPHANT! We are fine people, 
>people of great sensitivity and refinement. Oh, sure, we may not 
>have much in the way of those boring old heroic virtues, like 
>Toughness and Valor and Honesty and Integrity and the Courage of Our 
>Convictions. We may not get much in the way of reader sympathy, and 
>we may rarely get happy endings. But we have something even better 
>than that! We have...we have *soul,* is what we have! We have 
>complexity! We're cross-motivated! We have pathos, and we have 
>bathos, and sometimes we even have a touch of eros! We. Have. 
>HUMANITY. 

Well said! I grovel behind every word of it!

BTW, did you feel a twinge of sympathy for Pettigrew when he said the 
Dark Lord forced him to betray the Potters? I did (at least the first 
time around) and Lupin's reaction still doesn't feel good for me. I 
mean, "Who doesn't crack every once and a while?" Now, of course, it 
looks like Pettigrew's guilty as sin.

>Elkins offered to read Eileen that nice bit at the end of Return 
of the King where nasty old Saruman finally gets his, if it will help 
her to feel better about the whole SYCOPHANTS thing.<

Grima Wormtongue, the patron saint of sycophants! But he didn't 
survive, Elkins, he didn't survive. Even Frodo couldn't save him.

Eileen goes off polishing her SYCOPHANT badge sadly.