Familiar Ground
I return to an earlier notion of mine, that the key to success lies in acquiring a select group of like-minded companions, a team similarly committed to the shared goal of world domination. If only the available talent pool was a bit less... shallow.
The Red Bull - have I mentioned him before? I do not believe I have - there is one who shows great promise. The excellent bursts of prismatic color that he can generate from his fingertips are quite an advanced example of energy generation and manipulation. How unfortunate that the man himself has so little self-confidence! Oh, yes, he walks with the appropriate swagger and, yes, his speech is laced with lazy cruelties, but - by the power of my monocle, I can see - inside he is a drowning little boy, so desperate for help that he unwittingly knocks away hands offered in friendship or in support. Personally, I feel some measure of sympathy. Professionally...
Look you: the reason those goody-two-shoes superhero groups always triumph (and they DO, damn it all) is that they use teamwork. Everyone has a role to inhabit, a job that they can do and perfect. For the Red Bull, admissions of imperfection are impossible, suggestions of the same a lethal affront to the previously-mentioned impoverished sense of self-worth. This Red Bull knows how to speak, but he does not know how to listen. He would make a less-than-satisfactory teammate, I think.
With a melancholy flourish (all that power! wasted!) I must strike him from my list of Possible Collaborators.
I move on.
The Red Bull - have I mentioned him before? I do not believe I have - there is one who shows great promise. The excellent bursts of prismatic color that he can generate from his fingertips are quite an advanced example of energy generation and manipulation. How unfortunate that the man himself has so little self-confidence! Oh, yes, he walks with the appropriate swagger and, yes, his speech is laced with lazy cruelties, but - by the power of my monocle, I can see - inside he is a drowning little boy, so desperate for help that he unwittingly knocks away hands offered in friendship or in support. Personally, I feel some measure of sympathy. Professionally...
Look you: the reason those goody-two-shoes superhero groups always triumph (and they DO, damn it all) is that they use teamwork. Everyone has a role to inhabit, a job that they can do and perfect. For the Red Bull, admissions of imperfection are impossible, suggestions of the same a lethal affront to the previously-mentioned impoverished sense of self-worth. This Red Bull knows how to speak, but he does not know how to listen. He would make a less-than-satisfactory teammate, I think.
With a melancholy flourish (all that power! wasted!) I must strike him from my list of Possible Collaborators.
I move on.