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felassan · 1 month

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I was sent a link to an 'interview with Mark Darrah about BioWare' video that I hadn't seen before. it's called "Mark Darrah on BioWare, Dragon Age 4, & EA's Impact" and [here is the source] link. the interview took place in 2022, so bear that in mind when watching, but it still has interesting insights and things in there. Mark had been invited on to chat after his BioWare Magic video. the video description reads as follows:

“Mark Darrah spent over 20 years with BioWare and has overseen its many incredible RPGs such as Baldur's Gate, Knights Of The Old Republic, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, and most notably on his portfolio, Dragon Age. He was also present during the pre-EA era and experienced much of the changes within the company after BioWare had been purchased by them in 2007. Today, he joins the show for a sobering conversation on the status of this once beloved gaming titan after speaking out in a recent YouTube video of his on "BioWare Magic" in which he holds the developer accountable for their bad processes. The conversation goes into deep waters no other outlet has reached yet, so we do hope you enjoy our biggest interview yet.” [source]

the rest of this post is under a cut due to length.

this post is just some notes and transcribed quotes of interest from the video, in case that's of any use to anyone, for example for accessibility.

Dragon Age: Dreadwolf / 'current or recent general BioWare'

Mark explained the ‘hockey stick’ analogy about game development that he has previously outlined in a video on his own channel. There is a tendency in game development, that is not unique to BioWare, to focus on “microscopic efficiency”, especially so in studios that have gotten bigger and bigger. This ends up building a backlog of content and things being built in isolation from each other, and devs working in isolation from one another. But at some point, a game has to come together for different reasons, like an upcoming demo is approaching or money is running out etc, and when that happens, this completion tends to build upon itself and it ends up happening rapidly. At BioWare, historically the idea of ‘don’t worry, it’ll all come together really fast at the end and it will be great [like magic]’ [I am paraphrasing there] was called “BioWare Magic”. This term is from the late 90s but it still has bubbled around within the studio in more recent times. Mark said, “I think it’s partially because of the way that the leadership works on projects at BioWare. There’s a leapfrogging that happens. So the team that led KOTOR ended up being the team that led ME1-3 and Anthem, but meanwhile, between those games, other games are being done with different leadership teams. So culture can have this weird sort’ve almost, like it takes two steps forwards and then one step back as a new leadership team kinda gets into the driver’s seat. Because basically, what ends up happening is that the team that is closest to ship, at least for the big games, tends to drive the studio to a large degree.” There are other leadership teams in the background at those times, but from a culture perspective they are largely in the background.

Sonic Chronicles had a team of just over 20 devs and Mark led this. The smaller team size meant they had more agility and more ability to control and understand what was going on in a way that doesn’t really exist on larger teams. “Something that BioWare has been struggling with is, BioWare has had big teams all along. In the Baldur’s Gate [era], it was teams of 100+ people at a time, at a time [in the industry generally] when teams elsewhere in the industry were tiny. So BioWare has processes that have been around for a long time that are actually pretty good at dealing with team sizes between, say, 100 and 200 people, but what’s been happening for a while is that those teams have started to get beyond 200.” “What has happened at a lot of other studios, they have processes that work at 60 but don’t work at 150. They’ve had to develop new processes to work at larger sizes. BioWare kind’ve got to skip that step, they didn’t do that, but now they’re having to do that, because now we’re beyond what their processes can handle.”

On what prompted Mark to make his ‘BioWare Magic’ video: “I don’t know, it was just kind’ve, it’d been chewing away at me and I know that James Stephanie Sterling, it’s one of their go-to things, when they’re talking about process, is to go ‘BioWare Maaagic’, when talking about BioWare specifically or just game development in general, because someone did say that, on Anthem, I don’t know who but I do have my suspicions. So I think maybe it was just eating at me for a while. I don’t think anything in particular triggered it.” “BioWare Magic kind’ve became a term that I recognized as something that was being used to kind of paper over things that weren’t great, processes that were problematic, on DAII. Part of the reason it was gnawing at me was I kind’ve felt like this was a term that we had left in the past. We talked this way in the early days of Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights and DA:O, but that we had learned our lessons – I think most people had, but I think there remained enough people in senior enough positions that hadn’t had the experience of shipping as many games, or had been in places where they hadn’t shipped for a long time, or had just kept this romantic view of ‘just keep going, just keep driving, it will all come together in the end.’”

“As to why the revamps of Anthem and stuff [got cancelled], I don’t know. EA has launched things that have fallen on their face, Battlefield 4, Battlefront 2, that then they’ve spent the time to fix, but in the case of BioWare, that hasn’t been the case. That’s not what happened with Mass Effect: Andromeda. Maybe it’s partially because BioWare is doing multiple things at once. If you’re at Dice, and you want Battlefield 4, and it’s a problem, it’s like, well, ‘you better fix it because you got nothing else to do’. Whereas with BioWare, it’s like, ‘well, you could fix it, but don’t you want those resources on Dragon Age or Anthem or whatever’s coming next?’ So maybe it’s that. I don’t know, I’ve thought about this and I can’t.. It could also just be ‘too big to fail’. Battlefield was too big to fail. Anthem wasn’t. It disappointed but it wasn’t a franchise that needed to continue.” “[looter shooters] It’s a tough genre, there weren’t a lot of people who understood it from a dev perspective.”

On the EA “scapegoat” / blaming EA: “I think there is some truth [in it], I do think it’s an easy scapegoat and I think it’s very easy to say, ‘oh, Big Evil Corporation’, but you have to remember that, honestly, I mean BioWare would have probably shut down in 2007 or 2008 if we hadn’t been acquired by EA. The coffers were pretty empty before it got acquired by BG Holdings or Elevation Partners, the company that sold BioWare to EA. There was no money left. So they kept the company going, it’s hard to be too mad at them. I think that EA doesn’t understand what BioWare is. I think EA ultimately understands sports games, and shooters because you can kinda treat them a lot like a sports game and you get away with it, they’re quite competitive. But if you look at the franchises within EA that are not like sports games, The Sims, BioWare [franchises], they’ve struggled with that, they don’t understand and they’ve had a lot of trouble, and so when they look at BioWare, what they see, RPGs are expensive. So what they see is, thee are expensive, they don’t sell as well as Battlefield, what’s up with that? Has EA had negative effects on BioWare? Absolutely, but I don’t think necessarily in the way that people think. So, like, some of the stuff you’ve heard about Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, it’s like, ‘it’s gonna be a live service extravaganza’, ‘it’s gonna be singleplayer’, like that bouncing back and forth, that’s mostly coming from EA, that’s the kind of stuff that you’re getting from EA. But in terms of second-to-second pressure around what the futures of the individual games are, it happens, but that’s usually just rogue executive, not actually EA saying ‘we need this to be more BIG HEAD TURTLE RACING’, that’s not really happening. Or if it’s happening, a decent Executive Producer can judo it out of existence. So I do think, yeah, I mean, was there pressure on DA:I and ME:A to be on Frostbite? Absolutely, like that was politically basically effectively mandated, so there’s been impacts, and honestly I think maybe, since I did the BioWare Magic video, I’ve been thinking about this. One thing that happened before EA was that BioWare games slipped more, like wayyy more, which was probably why the company was almost out of money. So games have slipped since EA, but other than SW:TOR, games have not slipped years, except because of massive externalities. So Dreadwolf has moved, but because of it basically being restarted, but other than those externalities, things haven’t really moved as much. And I think maybe the reason why BioWare Magic maybe worked in the past was because you pivoted eventually and then you just kept going until it was great. If your date can’t move as much, you’ve pivoted and then you run into the date [and crash], and you’re just, that’s what it is, and you’re done.”

On Frostbite and whether the ‘omg Frostbite Bad’ stuff from players is overblown: “Every time you change engines, there’s a consequence to that. I do think there’s a fetishization of engine use by fans, but also honestly by devs. I think there’s a ‘grass is always greener’ [thing going on/mentality]. My feeling is, the best engine to use is almost always the engine you just used. So if you just shipped a game on Frostbite, probably you should use Frostbite for the next one, because you’ve built things to ship that game, so you can build on top of it. There are extreme circumstances where that’s not going to go, Eclipse was long in the tooth and it didn’t look very good, and so it’s hard to imagine that you could continue going down that road and continue using Eclipse indefinitely. Bethesda has essentially done that with their engine and it shows, but it’s left them being incredibly successful. Honestly, the mistake that I think that was made at BioWare regarding Frostbite, it’s again this sort’ve, independence of leadership. DA:I was made using Frostbite and we went in learning the lessons that Mass Effect had learned on ME1 from Unreal, like respect what the engine is, build on top of what’s there, don’t try to force it to be something else. And a lot of stuff was built and then ME:A started in the middle of DA:I’s development and basically started over again from blank DA:I. And then that’s going on, and then Anthem starts, again before DA:I has shipped, and starts effectively AGAIN from a blank sheet. So for me, for BioWare the problem wasn’t Frostbite, the problem was never Frostbite, the problem was we went through the pain of adopting an engine three times when we should’ve done it once.” “I’m sure there was somebody there that wanted DA:I to be on Unreal, but I didn’t feel that from the team as a whole. What I would’ve wanted to see, in a world where resources were unbounded, would’ve been a fast follow of DA:I, something that came out in 18-24 months, built not just on Frostbite, but on the DA:I tech base. I think there was an opportunity there. You know, we’ve pitched all kinds of stuff inside of Frostbite for, in early Joplin, like making the tools available to the public, like modding and what happened with DA:O and NWN, where the tools were available for building modules and things like that. There was no appetite for that within EA at the time. Interestingly enough, right before I left [his EP job], there seemed like there was growing appetite, but now with the latest news on Battlefield, I’m actually wondering if they won’t ceremoniously take Frostbite out behind the shed and shoot it in the head. They’re definitely laying blame on Frostbite for, in the case of Battlefield, which I mean, of all the franchises where I feel that’s undeserved, that would be Battlefield.”

On leaving BioWare at that time a few years ago: “Casey and I did not coordinate our departures. Certainly I didn’t coordinate with Casey. Casey resigned a day after I did. It is possible that I triggered him to resign. I don’t believe that’s what happened. There was timing for other financial things that sort’ve lined up for both me and him that I suspect was probably the trigger for both of us, but we were not coordinated in this. It was frustrating, and was it getting more frustrating? I don’t know that it was, but for me at least, because we were getting to the period where Dragon Age was going to be in the primary driving position for BioWare - I don’t think that anything corporate changed in November, early December of 2020 that triggered me [to leave]. Casey would’ve been in conversations that I wasn’t in, so it’s possible that there was a trigger for him that I’m not aware of.”

Is the idea of ‘omggg classic BioWare’, the spirit of that era, overblown? “I don’t think so. I think that actually, the thing that makes a BioWare game special, for me at least, is the characters, the followers specifically. Obviously when you look at Anthem through that lens, you can kinda see a glaring problem. You have characters, but they’re not followers, not as present as they are in other games. But the funny thing is, we never said that out loud until, pretty much 2019, in the post-Anthem world, was when I think people started to really say out loud like, ‘you know, it’s about the characters, stupid!’ I think we’ve had conversations in the past where it’s like ‘BioWare tells its stories through characters’. There’s been the knowledge, but I don’t think that there’s been the acknowledgement of, say the thing that’s most important out loud and make sure that you’re respecting that. There was almost like, we were too confident in it and we’re like ‘we don’t need this because we can set it aside, we can have characters that are just in your base, we don’t need followers’. It took us saying it out loud to really acknowledge that. I think that that is still true, and I think there is still a pedigree at BioWare that can execute on excellent characters. The reality is, if you look at the story of, frankly, any BioWare game, they’re not amazing, what makes it amazing is you’re experiencing it through other characters, that elevates the story overall. Of course, that’s how it always has been and how it should be.”

On Dragon Age: Dreadwolf and the then-recent reports on its rumored release time [remember this video is from 2022]: “I don’t know where the ‘it’s got 18 months left to go’ measurement is coming from, but timeline, that makes perfect sense to me. They would’ve needed to adapt, and even like when I was still there, we were probably headed towards, yeah, probably towards 2023 even then. So I think that it’s very plausible to me, and I think that if they’ve been able to increase their completion urgency and bring things to further phases earlier, they could be in really good shape. There was stuff getting there when I was still there a year ago, and if they were able to be stable enough to keep that stuff, then they probably have a really good foundation to build upon. And I would think that they probably were able to keep the things that were nearing completion when I left, so, I mean, they probably have, for 18 months out they probably have - so I’m trying to say this correctly. Not that they have more things that another BioWare game would’ve had 18 months out, because that’s actually the problem, tons of things. [but] they have more done 18 months out than any other BioWare title probably has ever had. So a tighter core, maybe not as much stuff yet, but a tighter core, but that will let them go faster when they’re going. Essentially, if they’ve taken the hockey stick, and they’ve pulled this part up, and I think they have, then I think it should put them in significantly better shape going forward.”

One of the podcast/media folks shared the following comment: “What I personally have been told, I never call it a report or a scoop or anything like that because it’s just a sentiment, but the sentiment that had been shared with me [about DA:D] is sort’ve like, ‘we need to nail this’, not like a desperation like ‘we’re done if we don’t’, but like, we want this high score, we want to remind people why they love BioWare games.” They then asked Mark about whether he views DA:D as a “do or die moment” and about what the vibe inside BioWare was around this. Mark: “Not in the early days [of DA:D’s development], as that’s pre-ME:A and pre-Anthem. But I think, in a post-Anthem world, I think ME:A was, could weather that, but ME:A and Anthem together, yeah, I think there is some truth to that. Now would EA shut down BioWare? I don’t know, as you say they’ve done it before [to other studios], also studios become effectively in-source houses for other studios. There are fates that are almost as bad as being shuttered. So is it actually do or die? Honestly, I think the reputation matters more, because if people give up on BioWare externally, why would EA keep them around? If everyone just decides that BioWare is a bunch of hacks doing garbage then why would EA bother? One of the things that has kept EA kind of interested in BioWare is, BioWare is kind of like the sub-arm of a movie studio that makes the Oscar Bait. So maybe that excuses it for some people, it’s like, well yeah, your games cost more and they sell less than the Battlefields, but Battlefield was never gonna win Game of the Year, even if they made a perfect Battlefield, it’s probably never going to win GOTY, it’s the nature of the disrespect certain genres get. Like how you can make a perfect Marvel movie but it’s never winning Best Picture. So I do think that if BioWare is making quality that is respected and making people excited, that gives it leeway within EA that another studio that’s making things that may sell better may not get. So I do think that this needs to be a good game, and I actually think EA knows that too, and I think EA recognizes that, you know, they deserve some of the blame for Anthem and some for ME:A, less, but some. So I think that when they look at that, when they look at Jedi Fallen Order, a game that honestly doesn’t make a lot of sense within EA, it exists in part because it kind of brought in a studio that made it. Like it’s not the kind of game that EA would typically greenlight. But when they see it and that it did well, they’re not stupid.”

How much corporate-speak is there in a ‘I’m leaving the studio’ announcement letter like Mark’s when he left his EP role at BioWare? “So most public things, if it’s on the website, it’s gone through somebody, like there’s legal, it’s gone through somebody to approve a message. One of my frustrations in EA is just how, I mean, I was effectively like second Community Manager for Anthem because they weren’t willing to tell me ‘no’, and so I was able to basically put out messages that wouldn’t have survived the process. But I mean, they didn’t pay me anything to say nice things, I didn’t get paid anything on my way out to be nice, so I do actually believe that the core of Dragon Age remains strong, that there are definitely people there that know how to make a great game, and there are people there that know what the IP is, and I think that they are well-positioned to do that.”

“In terms of what, like, something that made me say ‘no, that’s enough, it’s over’ [re: his time at BioWare], there’s good days and bad days. I don’t know that there was any particular project that made me say no, enough, I’m done. Anthem isn’t the high point of my career both as a leader and also in terms of the product that came out the other side, but I don’t feel like there was a moment of ‘no, we’re done.’”

Other BioWare things

To a degree, BioWare have been a victim of their past success and were just leaning on that, or the thought from upper management was doing so. “I think that’s also partially weirdly caused by the leadership teams being somewhat isolated. I was responsible for shipping DA2. That was a big wakeup call for me and leaders on that project. But other people didn’t experience that, they were on Mass Effect at the time and then they shipped ME3 and had a different blowback for different reasons, but not for the same kind of development reasons, so they learned different lessons than I learned. They learned a lesson about the endings, but not necessarily about the way games come together.”

On Anthem’s failure and the cancelled attempt overhaul Anthem Next: “I think there’s tons of blame to go around for Anthem, certainly part of it should fall on me. For a lot of Anthem’s development, the team, this was before I was on the project, the team was not really recognizing that it was a looter-shooter. So you have to remember that this was a game that started development before Destiny even came out. No one knew what Destiny was except that they were making it clear it wasn’t an MMO. I feel that one of the early mistakes that was made was that when Destiny came out, when Borderlands was out there, there was a reluctance to draw that connection and say ‘this is BioWare’s Destiny or BioWare’s Borderlands’, that gives that clarity and draws that connection. A lot of it just came together really late. The leadership team had lost its ability to make decisions, or had that ability taken away potentially, so there was just a lot of churning happening, and decisions being made and unmade, or being left unmade for a long period of time. But what that means is, when I came in, I’m great at making decisions, and in a vacuum, decisions got made, but what that effectively resulted in is I just took the stick and pushed it down. I’m used to working with a leadership team that pushes back and I think what happened is this leadership team was so desperate, so hungry for decisions to be made, that rather than pushing back on the stick that I’m pushing towards the ground, they’re actually pulling it towards the ground like ‘Yes, finally!!’ And instead of me aiming like this [motioning with his hands like a plane’s downward flight] and the resistance happening like this, I think what happened is this actually caused us to go way too fast [and crash land]. It’s hard for me to see a path where things are actually way better, because we knew a lot of things, we went into the Christmas break before it shipped having not done a complete balance pass through the loot structure, and we did it in this awful hotseat way with QA playing the game 24 hours a day over that break. So we knew that things were shakey, but the team was tired, and you know, EA wanted it in the fiscal year, and the problem is.. so I do see a path [in an alternate universe] where you get a better Anthem, but that path requires the game to basically enter Beta around the time when it launched, and then sit in Beta for six months, say, and then launch in August or whenever that would have been, but EA wasn’t that company then. I don’t know if it’s that company now [video is from 2022], but it certainly wasn’t that company then. It wasn’t prepared to put a game out into Beta for that long and spend the time. I think if we had just spent six more months on it without having gone into Beta, it would have been better, but it wouldn’t have been what it needed to be. It needed to get out into the world and get the pushback.”

“There was a lot of politics in Frostbite [as an engine choice]. It was Patrick Söderlund’s engine when he ran DICE, he was in a very senior position, he could push for it. I think EA still remembers forcing render-ware down everyones’ throat and that blowing up in their face. So I think they’re reluctant to mandate it simply to save a few bucks. At the time, when DA:I, I can’t remember if it was me or Aaryn Flynn, at the time I would’ve described, Unreal was like a NASCAR car. A good fast car, you can go in a race. At the time I would’ve described Frostbite as a Formula One car. Way faster but way harder to drive, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, in a NASCAR you can probably not kill yourself. In an F1 car, I think you’re gonna plough that thing into a brick wall in 3 seconds and you’ll die. And that’s what you’ve seen happen with Frostbite in that sort’ve time period, back in the 2012 - 2015 time frame. Teams that approached the engine with respect did well, teams that didn’t ploughed their car into a brick wall. But I don’t know that that analogy still holds, I don’t think Frostbite is still the graphically-superior engine to Unreal anymore. Back then it made sense to use Frostbite, we could get a better-looking game using Frostbite than using Unreal. I question if that is still the case.”

“In its very core EA is a publicly-traded company. I haven’t worked in a senior level at other publicly-traded companies, but it is very visible. It is difficult to move a game between fiscal quarters. It’s virtually impossible to move a game between fiscal years, because of just like, that is the way the company, I’m not gonna say it’s run by its CFO, but sometimes it feels like it’s run by its CFO.”

DA:I was a victim of the moment in time it was made in, when open-world games were like taking over the universe. “It’s bigger than it needs to be by somewhere between 20-50%.

The team made DA2 in very difficult circumstances and were very aligned the whole way through.

The perception of a game in its first week after launch can make or break a game forever. This put a cloud over DA2. “Though it’s become the BioWare game that’s most fashionable to love, second after ME:A. DA2 was flawed because of the pace at which it was made. ME:A was flawed because things like bugs and things that should’ve been caught escaped. ME:A is a better game now than it was at launch [patches].” “DA2 has sort’ve recovered from the initial kneejerk reaction it received. ME:A has actually repaired itself into a better game.”

“I don’t think there was a reason that ME:A was excluded from the remaster [MELE]. I mean, the easy answer would be, it’s on Frostbite, the others are on Unreal, so to include it means just from a logistics perspective, it’s just a lot of extra work. I mean honestly, it still looks fine, so it’s not in as desperate of a need of a remaster either, it’s not on last generation.”

On the difference in design philosophy between DA:O and DA2 and why it happened: “It’s mostly marketability. The marketing for DA2 was supposed to be ‘tree houses and frat houses’. It was like, we’re gonna make sure that the game is appealing to the people that love DA:O as the tree house, but we’re also gonna make this thing that’s AWESOME and EXPLODING. The problem is, what happened in practice is that the marketing kinda forgot the tree house completely and didn’t market to them at all, and leapt into the frat house marketing and only made this sorta thing of ‘bruuuh! Bro! You can totally bro, bro!’ It’s essentially a victim of confirmation bias. The marketing said, this isn’t DA:O, this is a heavy metal guitar riff of a game, and then when you played it and it’s more action-y, you just went yep, it’s exactly what I was worried it was going to be, and you basically discounted it. There’s a love-hate relationship with even the term ‘RPG’. I think we’ve grown past this as an industry but also BioWare has as well. I think, ‘RPG’ is seen as inaccessible, that only a very small amount of people are willing to play, so there’s been an attempt to say like, you know, this is the kind of game that anyone could enjoy, to try to reach a branch out to other people. Accessibility does matter because RPGs are expensive, so you want to make something that can appeal to as broad of a group as possible, or alternatively, you need to decide that you’re making a game for a smaller group of people and scope and budget accordingly. The other universe path for DA:O would’ve been to stay in the vein of, effectively, turn-based or pause-n-play, tactical RPGs, and accept that the game sells 4 - 7million copies, 7 on the very upper end, and budget accordingly. So that’s where EA has an influence. If there are two options, EA are definitely gonna say you wanna go for 10 million. And honestly, one of the things that I think that has hurt Dragon Age has been, it’s never been allowed to just be what it is, it’s always been, much more than Mass Effect, it’s been subject to, ‘but could you be more, could be more accessible, could you be bigger?’ Even though DA:I is the best-selling BioWare game of all time, and before that I’m pretty sure it was DA:O. I think because Mass Effect has a cultural impact because of N7 that Dragon Age simply doesn’t have. ME has genius branding.”

[source and full watch link]

#dragon age: dreadwolf #dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #dragon age #bioware #video games #anthem #mass effect: andromeda #next mass effect #jade empire #long post #longpost #(ty for sending me this link!)

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freya-captain · 1 year

Note

Low-key wondering (hoping lol) if you will be making anymore gif sets about the forced marriage au between jace and aegon🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

Thanks for liking it! (somehow i didn't see this ask till i logged in on my laptop)

I wrote another clip and hope you guys enjoy it. (i don't know why it getting longer and longer...)

Continuing on this thread

Warning: alpha King!Jacaerys x omega! Aegon; forced marriage; black wining the war; Lucemond mentioned

They made a brief stop in Pentos.

Had been traveling west for six days in a bumpy carriage, Aegon did try hard not to throw up on Jace's boots. Considering that he is King now it would've been a terribe act of crime.

He was plotting a way to escape till they reached a manse, but no sooner did he lower himself into the hot water and close his eyes than he was fast asleep. He woke naked on a goose-down feather bed so soft as if he had been swallowed by a cloud. There was no one else in the dim chamber, only two knights guarding outside that he peeked through the door.

So he came to the window. New spring grass seemed soft enough. He casually threw on some robe and jumped out of it. Everything went suprisingly smooth—no one noticed; no one followed. He saw cherry trees stood sentinel around a marble pool. The yard here was stupidly big, from where he started his explore.

He saw three gates during his wanderings - the main entrance with its gatehouse, a postern by the kennels, and a garden gate hidden behind pale ivy. The last was chained, the others guarded.

No wonder Jacaerys found no need to send someone watching over him. He knew it was impossible for him to get out, by himself. How cunning. He thought. Everyone he met either ignored him or spoke a strange language he could not comprehend. They weren't talking to him anyway, not to mention offering help.

The futile efforts made Ageon dizzy, so afterward he went back to the chamber, curled up, and shut his eyes, drowning in the feather bed once more until a soft voice woke him up.

"My prince," a servant girl stood next to the bed, speaking the common tongue, "your bath awaits. His grace expects you at table within the hour."

He rubbed his eyes, "I was having the best dream of my life." He didn't. He slept sound and deep. The last time felt like forever ago.

"Apology, my prince." She fetched a new robe for him, so much more delicate and gorgeous than the last one, decorated with intricate lace of Myr and rubies in the shape of tears, "It is my honor to present the dress to you, my prince. Look at the color. It brings out the beautiful purple in your eyes. "

He propped himself against the pillows, "I'm not wearing that. And stop calling me prince."

She seemed so well-trained, "Whatever you say, my lord."

As he bathed, the girl washed his feet, scrubbed his back, and brushed his hair. The black color was not easily washed away though. Afterward she rubbed sweet-smelling ointment into his neck, arms and calves, and dressed him once again in the old robe.

Jacaerys was reading a massive book in candlelight by the wide dinner table when he stepped in. A chronicle, Aegon guessed. His brown hair has grown much longer and curlier than the way he remembered. Despite sitting, his oldest nephew still appeared broad-shouldered and tall.

He looks different. Aegon thought, he looks like a man now.

"It seems you are finally cleared of fleas, uncle. Baths agree with you." The young alpha looked up at him and smiled, "Come sit."

Aegon cautiously took a seat in the only remaining chair, "Last time we dinned together you were still short."

He countered the remark, "Last time we dinned together your hair was still blonde." He signalled the servants, “I assume you hungry?"

The serving men came running. They began with a broth of crab and monkfish, and cold egg lime soup as well. Then came quails in honey, a saddle of lamb, goose livers drowned in wine and buttered parsnips.

The sight of it all made Aegon feel queasy. Jace gestured to him with a glass of wine. He was wearing a long velvet shirt emblazoned with the royal sigil, the three-headed dragon.

"Are you truly King now? I didn't see your crown." He asked with deliberate acerbity.

"You get to see me in crown as soon as we return the Keep." He responded calmly.

"The country is still running even when her ruler is absent, huh?"

Jace gave a soft smile, not offended at all, "My excellent small council allows me to take a small break."

Something changed in his nephew. He is no longer the reckless alpha that was so easily provoked and showed everything on his face.

Aegon felt discouraged as he forced himself to try a spoon of soup, and once he had tasted it he was lost. He had never eaten so well. Life in exile has little to do with luxurious food, or even complete meals. Not that he minded, but only in this moment he started to remember how good it was to be noble.

He did not realized he was that hungry. As he was sucking the meat off the bones of his quail, he noticed Jacaerys was staring at him without touching his plate. Indeed he was eating without a single sense of grace of a queen or a prince. How wonderful. He mused, the sooner Jace found him repulsive, the sooner he can get himself out of this hell. So he didn’t give a care. "I see you learned some magic tricks, nephew." Jace frowned. Aegon stifled a laugh and explained “You could full your stomach just by staring at me.”

"You slept too long. I already ate ahead." Jace added unnecessarily, "Plus I like watching you eating."

He rolled his eyes, "You'd like it better when I drink." He asked another sharp question, "Why didn't you ride your dragon? That one called Wellax? "

"Vermax. " He wiped the corner of Aegon's mouth with a towel , said candidly, "He was still recovering from the war wounds. I don't want him to fly for excessively long."

"Hmm, the Greyjoy's rebellion?"

Jace raised his eyebrows, "I am surprised you knew that."

Of course Aegon knew that. He heard this great usurper war even across the sea. About three years ago, House of the Kraken ambushed the Velaryon fleets and declared war against the Iron Throne. Lys, Myr and Tyrosh joined them as well. He heard Prince Jacaery led the Royal Army himself and fought besides the brave Cregan Stark, lord of the northerners. He heard the Wirewolf's bastard sister Sara Snow followed them to the battlefield too. And there was his brother —Aemond Targaryen, he and his monster dargon Vaghar were the shinest stars during the war.

"They said my dear brother burned the Iron Islands to ashes."

"He also killed the rebel leader Dalton himself in a one-on-one combat."

"I believe the Iron Islanders thanked him greatly for that —Now people only fear our house more. You gave my war criminal brother a nice excuse."

"I didn't give anyone excuses. It was the ironborns who started the fire."

"So before the fire lighted, Dalton Greyjoy didn't stealed Lucerys and kept him captive then? Or Aemond was simply sitting at home out of his respect for you?"

Jace took a deep breath faced with his sarcasm, "Luke is my brother, my blood. I would do anything for his safety. But I was not impulsive enough to start a war against one of the seven kingdoms because they had Luke. I know Aemond wanted that more than anything. But I was the Chief Commander. They rejected the peace deal and they started a rebellion first. I had no choice but to defeat and destroy them. Believe it or not, that's the truth."

"It made senses. You are your mama's boy, after all." Aegon finally commented with a mocking smile.

“I see you heard a lot in the east.” Jace's eyes started glittering with anger. Aegon smelled victory.

“I heard more that that." He took a big gulp of pale Pentoshi ambers,"I heard our precious prince, the heir to the iron throne, had an affair with the little wolf girl. Love in the flames of war, how beautiful. I kept wondering why you didn't marry her? You must've thought a bastard girl wouldn't be good enough for you."

Suddenly Jace placed his glass heavily on the table. He stared at Aegon in dead silence for a few seconds, long enough to seem like a century. Aegon was beginning to regret it. The alpha would be infuriated if he truly loved that girl. He had only wanted to provoke his nephew; he didn't want to die. He loved his life, sweet and could-be-short life.

Alpha stood up and walked over to Aegon, leaning down to cup his face gently.

"Never address me like that again, Egg. My patience is never limitless." His eyes and movements conveyed a completely different message.

Then Aegon felt it—something overwhelming, powerful, something disabling him of talking back or moving a bit, something belonging to a superior alpha or King. Now that his figure was so close, his scents were clearer than ever. Jace smelled so good, a full-fledged alpha - fresh pine needles, fuzzy animal musk, blood, cum, spicy tobacco.

“You smell like fucking home.” He said without thinking. Then immediately bit his tongue in regret. Where the hell did that come from?

Jace's expression softened, "Do you miss home, Egg?"

He shook his head, then nodded, "A little, maybe. Though I know no one misses me at all."

“We all miss you, silly. You've gone for ten whole years. " He sat back next to Aegon and cut him a piece of goose liver with a knife. “At every family dinner, we saved you a seat and wish you could show up.”

Aegon lost all his appetite when it came to this topic, “Haha, very funny. I almost buy it.”

Jace watched him pouring another cup of Dornish Red, "Queen Alicent sometimes sat in your old room and weeping." He said in a soft voice, "And Aemond, he never said a thing. But he named his seond son Aegon, in the fifth year you left. Even Rhaenyra, she used to tell us the story how she played wooden dragons with you when you were little."

"Is toying with me fun enough for you?" He lost it, tears collecting in his lavender eyes, "I know they hated me. Everyone hated me! You expect me to believe suddenly I became a good son, a good brother that everyone missed sickly? ”

No one ever loved him. Not his father who loved only his first wife and her child, not his mother who was only content with Aemond, not his sister who seemed so relieved when she found she didn't have to marry him.... He was everybody’s disappointment. This seemed like a only good job he exceled at. That was why he fled.

"Who said that? ”Jace was half-surprised-half angry, "You can't put yourself down like this."

"I was never the one anyone wanted."

Jace was ridiculous enough to laugh, "But I want you." He took his hand and kissed his knuckles.

"..No!" Aegon retracted his hand like he'd been electrocuted. Alpha's scent was so close that it annoyed and agitated him.

He never felt so crestfallen, "Jace, Jacaerys Targaryen, listen, this is no fun anymore. I lose the game. I give up."

"Come home with me then."

"NO!" He almost freaked out, "Can't you see what kind of person I am? Do you know what I have been through? I was a Omega in exile."

"I don't care that much." There was a certain darkness in his tone, "You were my Queen. You still are."

Aegon doubted the only one that remembered the seven kingdom once had a queen is Jacaerys himself.

"No one liked it. No one likes it still."

"You'll see when we return the Keep." He shrugged, “There's a coronation awaiting.""

#house of the dragon #aegon ii targaryen #jacaerys targaryen #jacegon #lucemond #aemond targaryen #jacaerys x aegon #aemond x lucerys #jaegon #my asks

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ms-hells-bells · 10 months

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in reading more about the colombian children that survived the plane crash and jungle, i stumbled upon this story. there is almost no english news about it, largely only an AP article from 1996 about it, there's not even a wikipedia page, but i found a translated page of a guyana newspaper with the story.

THE gripping, inspiring survival experience of two young girls lost in Guyana’s jungles is the stuff epic films are made of.

Bertina and Bernadette Domingo of the Wapishiana tribe, Apoteri Village in the Rupununi began travelling from 7th April 1995 with their uncle up the Essequibo River; an uncle who had been instructed by the father of the girls to take them direct to the family farm.

Instead he diverted in the opposite direction with them, paddling for ninety-five miles in a canoe, then forcing them to trek through the jungle, threatening to kill the terrified girls when they cried.

At Pakani Falls they watched in fear as their uncle died of malaria – an uncle whose motives for his actions are shrouded in secret, lost forever in the hinterland landscape that had been the undoing of men from a time even preceding the Spanish Conquistadors.

If that uncle meant harm to his innocent, trusting nieces, as his actions indicated he did, because terrible pictures come to mind of child and female trafficking, he paid a terrible price for his heinous betrayal of his brother and nieces.

But that was no real consolation to the two young girls, who were left alone and defenceless to fend for themselves in the dense, dark rainforest, with merely a cutlass, a hammock, and their traditional tribal skills to keep them alive.

They were forced to undertake a journey that would test all their survival skills, their resilience, their character, and their survival instincts if they were to live.

The older Bertina, at thirteen, would have to become the leader, transmitting her unshakeable faith that they would survive their ordeal to her frightened nine-yr-old sister. In turn, the response of the younger girl, and the faith she reposed in her older sibling, would bolster Bertina’s spirit and inspire and encourage her to greater feats of endurance.

Before their journey ended they would have traversed over 200 miles of virgin rainforest, at the mercy of the elements, with all the inherent dangers of the deep rainforests – from the remote reaches of Essequibo to approximately 190 miles up the Berbice River – a mile away from the Lindo tributary.

They ate what they could, but their knowledge of the land and basic survival skills, inculcated from birth by the traditions of their aboriginal tribe, came to their rescue, resulting in their finding the “haiwa” wood to produce the most crucial requirement for their protection at night – light.

The girls staved off hunger by eating berries, peppers and fish caught by the traditional method. They remembered their tribe’s ancient skill of lighting an area of water with the “haiwa” wood to entice fish to the surface, then spearing them with a spear – in their instance with a cutlass.

The girls also had a miraculous escape from the claws and jaws of a jaguar and were forced to keep their terror at bay when they encountered the large snakes, crocodiles, and other large and dangerous denizens that proliferate in Guyana’s rainforests.

At one point they thought that they were about to be rescued. Hearing the sound of an engine their hopes soared as they walked quickly toward the sound and what they hoped would have been the end of their ordeal.

But as fast as they walked it was not enough and the frightening sounds of the rainforest enclosed them once again.

Rescue seemed near at hand once more when they stumbled upon a porknocker’s camp, but the camp had long been abandoned and was empty of any human presence. At nights they slung their hammock high in the trees to protect themselves from the many ever-existent perils threatening their survival every minute, with every step they took, and even in their sleep.

Many nights Bertina stayed awake for hours watching protectively as the exhausted Bernadetta slept the sleep of the innocent.

Meanwhile the girls’ parents were frantically looking for them and search parties were organized. The parents, accompanied by members of one search party went as far as Kurupukari – 60 miles from the Potaro River, but had to give up, not knowing what direction to take in the vast, dense rainforest.

Frantic messages were sent to relatives living in Georgetown in attempts to locate the uncle and girls, but to no avail.

Finally, at 5.50 p.m. on the third day of May, 31 days after they had left home, covered with mosquito bites and weak with hunger, Bertina and Bernadetta stumbled into a porknocker’s camp.

The astonished miners fed the girls and then took them into the city, where officialdom took over, affording them medical and other care.

Their rescuer, a miner named Gonsalves, said that the area in which they were found was so remote that hardly anyone ventured there.

The indomitable will to survive, their stoic resilience in the face of betrayal and overwhelming dangers, and the epic journey of these two fragile little ones is the stuff of which legends are made.

This was triumph of the human spirit against all odds. These two little girls were imaginative, resourceful, determined, tenacious, and, above all, courageous beyond the parameters of normal human endurance of body and mind.

To honour their resilience and courage in the face of danger and adversity, the Domingo sisters were deservedly conferred with a special award for courage during the 1996 investiture ceremony by then Executive President of Guyana, Dr. Cheddi Jagan.

They had also been awarded with a plaque saluting their bravery by the South Ruimveldt Policing Group.

Bertina and Bernadetta Domingo represent the best of the indigenous peoples of this land.

#over 200 miles and THIRTY DAYS #have you noticed how a majority of jungle survival stories are women #particularly young girls?

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cellsshapedlikestars · 5 months

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20 questions for fic writers

tagged by @hilarychuff

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

honestly, I'm sometimes embarrassed by how much I've written in the 3 1/2 years since I started posting. Currently 66

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,350,298. yikes.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

at this point, Jonsa. we do not talk about The Prior Fandom

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

a fairytale ending (by a WIDE margin)

the mating game

take me out

moth's wings

ever fallen in love (on national TV)

(shocker, it's all my romcoms lmao. also, let's not talk about how the top 4 are all fake dating fics. I can't help myself)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try to. I used to do it on all fics, but as discussed above, I'm a wordy bitch and at points responding to all comments on, for example, one shot event fics that I would post back-to-back got overwhelming. So I allowed myself to stop responding to comments on one shots. Recently I had quite the mental health dip and didn't respond to any for a while, but I think I'm back.

Part of the reason I like fandom is the sense of community. I started responding to comments on my first fic because I hadn't resurrected my tumblr from the grave yet, so it was the only way to interact with the fandom. Then I continued to because I appreciated the comments, even if they were simple and I had nothing else to say except thank you. I still try to on chaptered fics because, let's face it, without comments and without community, I wouldn't be posting my stories.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

probably my WWI one-shot

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I try to write at least *hopeful* endings for all my fics. I don't know if I can quantify "happiest", because I think that's different for everyone.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

of course. I feel like it's a rite of passage on ao3 to get some shitty hate comments

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

*through clenched teeth* I sure do

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I'm not really a fan of crossovers tbh

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that I'm aware of

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

not that I'm aware of

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

nope! I don't think I could tbh. I'm sort of a control freak and I even have problems letting people pre-read things, I have no idea why. I think the only people I've let pre-read anything are @hilarychuff (who is my brainstorm buddy) and @greenhikingboots (who is the reason the last chapter of the ghost inside made any coherent sense)

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

I mean, Jonsa. I honestly don't ship that often

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

sigh. white knuckles.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I'm very fast at it lmao. Like, seriously. I type very fast. I'm also somehow really good at starting a fic off with only an inciting incident, no other real plans, and somehow coming up with a full plot/ending that I'm satisfied with, while posting it as I develop the story

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

outlines. smut.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I can barely handle English my guy

19. First fandom you wrote for?

hmmm that depends on what the criteria is. First fandom I wrote for was Sailor Moon, I just never posted it anywhere. Harry Potter was technically the first fandom I posted for, but it was one chapter and I never continued it and I genuinely can't even remember what it was called, all I remember is Harry melted Voldemort with a bucket of soapy water like in the Enchanted Forest Chronicles.

The first fandom I was actually active in and wrote more than just a chapter was... A secret. I'm actually a little embarrassed about it and my fics are still floating around out there and some of them make me cringe sooooo hard. I don't think I've ever admitted to it here on tumblr dot com and I don't think I will now

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

help me out of the shape I'm in

I'm always so anxious about tagging people and leaving people out and making them feel bad, but I'll try to do it anyway. @greenhikingboots @sibyldisobedience @thewolvescalledmehome @esther-dot @periwinkle39 @eruherdiriel and anyone else who wants to do this! (also, no pressure to anyone I did tag lol)

#ask game

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blkgrlchasingfit · 2 months

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30 hours into a fast!😁

It's been a while since I posted, and I'm currently 29 hours into a fast😊

My life has been turned upside down over the past few weeks (but I feel protected & kind of in the safest way possible...if that makes any sense).

Anyway, I've have been diligently using some unexpected free time over the next month or so to do some serious inner work. Insight Timer has been an extremely useful app.

I've been especially drawn to meditations around:

Manifestation

Quantum Jumping

Shifting Realities

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)

Releasing trauma

Connecting with Higher Self

Connecting with my Spirit Guides

Calling upon Archangels

Working with my Akashic record

and more!

My goal with all of this self-work is to really get a hang of intentional manifestation & get my life/shift my reality to my preferred timeline for my life. I'm sick & tired of being sick & tired😫 The disappointment that I often feel in terms of personal achievement is rough sometimes, so I refuse to let this unplanned, unexpected free time go to waste.

#chronicles of water fasting #fasting for weight loss #self concept #black femininity #manifesting #glow up journey #working on myself #sick and tired

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avatar-news · 2 years

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An eleven-year-old Avatar Yangchen meets a new past Avatar and travels to the Spirit World for the first time in the first official preview from Chronicles of the Avatar: The Dawn of Yangchen

With the highly anticipated first Avatar Yangchen novel by The Rise and Shadow of Kyoshi author F. C. Yee due to hit shelves in under two months, we have our first official preview from the prologue: Voices of the Past; and Chapter One: The First Step, courtesy of Gizmodo!

In it, a young Yangchen is an uncontrolled conduit reliving past Avatars’ experiences both good and bad, including a new named past life: Avatar Gun, whose tragic memories of a haunting failure send her into a feverish state.

You’ll learn more about Avatar Gun in the preview, but with them we now know of ten named Avatars:

Wan (fire) ...

Gun (unknown element) ...

Salai (unknown element) ...

Szeto (fire)

Yangchen (air)

Kuruk (water)

Kyoshi (earth)

Roku (fire)

Aang (air)

Korra (water)

Man, this franchise is so cool. Note that we don’t actually know the order Gun and Salai are in.

We also learn the names of five past Avatars’ team members: Jetsun (Yangchen's older sister, featured in the preview and the POV of the prologue!), Mesose (Gun's companion), Angilirq, Praew, and Yotogawa, as well as the name of the Earth King who died about ~300 years before Yangchen’s time (so about ~850 years before ATLA and about ~920 years before TLOK, wow!): Earth King Zhoulai.

With all that lore setting the tone, we then follow Yangchen’s first journey into the Spirit World at age 11, at a stone circle above the Western Air Temple similar to the one at the Eastern Air Temple where Yangchen’s future life, Korra, enters the Spirit World for the first time centuries later!

Without further ado, you can read the full preview here:

Voices of the Past

Jetsun paced down the hallway, trying to stay ahead of the screams.

The high ceilings of the Western Air Temple tended to make echoes of whispers and explosions of dropped teacups. Though the girl was back in the infirmary being watched by the elders, her cries of pain sprang from every surface, bouncing off the hard stone.

Jetsun couldn’t take it anymore and broke into a full run. Ignoring decorum, she sped past her sisters, ruffling robes, upsetting inkpots, prematurely ruining colorful sand paintings that were meant to be ruined only once they were finished. No one scolded her or gave her sharp looks in passing. They understood.

When she ran out of floor she jumped. The upside-down construction of the temple meant that despite its overall size, there was very little space to stand on, nothing connecting the spires but thin air and a three-thousand-foot drop. She didn’t have her glider. Eminently dangerous, but she could make the leap without it.

Air at her back and air against her robes gave her enough loft to land on the next tower, the one containing the Great Library. Tsering, chief caretaker of the books, waited in front of the tall shelves. The older woman’s kind eyes were edged with worry. “I saw you coming. Is it happening again?”

Jetsun nodded. “Mesose,” she said.

Tsering blew out a breath, a silent whistle of frustration. “That could be Mesose, famous scholar of the Ru Ming era. There’s a Mesose village in Hu Xin; it might have been named after a founder. Or it could just be someone called Mesose, in which case we’re stuck.”

Avatars tended to run in exalted circles. Or they elevated the people around them to fame. “It has to be the first one,” Jetsun said.

Another wail turned both their heads. The child was suffering. “Help me and it’ll go faster,” Tsering said. “Northwest corner, start with the poetry shelves, Ru with the three drops of water radical.”

They split up to search different sections of the ancient vault. Jetsun ran her eyes over labels and titles as fast as she could. Not every book fit on a shelf. Many of the tomes kept at the Western Temple were so old they were written on bamboo slips instead of paper. She passed rolled bales of text wider around than some of the pillars connecting the ceilings to the floors.

Five minutes later she emerged from the library’s depths, clutching a treatise on she didn’t know exactly what. What mattered was the author’s name.

Tsering met her by the door. “I couldn’t find any leads. You’re holding our best shot.”

“Thank you.” Jetsun sprinted back in the direction she came, the book tucked under her arm.

“Use your glider next time!” Tsering yelled.

~~~

Jetsun burst back into the infirmary. The huddle of elders parted to let her through. The girl’s thrashing had settled into dry, cavernous sobs. She pounded her fist on her pillow over and over, not the involuntary shaking of a fever but rather the deliberate motion born of a steady, all-consuming anguish that should have been beyond her eight years.

“We’ll leave you two alone,” Abbess Dagmola said. She and the rest of the nuns filed out. Too many people sometimes ruined the effect. Jetsun opened the book to a random page and began to read.

“ ‘The level of risk can be determined by elevation, nearness to the source of water, vulnerability to rapid flows, and potential economic damage,’ ” she said. Confused, she briefly turned the volume to look at the cover. A Discourse on Floodplain Management.

Why in the world do we have this book? Jetsun shook her head. It didn’t matter. “ ‘Understanding previous measures taken to mitigate the damage from flooding is essential, for they might compile danger instead of reducing it.’ ”

The girl took a shuddering gasp of air and relaxed. “Half a year and that’s as far as you’ve gotten?” she said, smiling at no one. “You have to stop taking on so many projects at once, Se-Se.”

It worked. Thank the spirits, it worked. Jetsun kept reading, plowing through the unfamiliar concepts mechanically. “ ‘On the subject of silt deposits . . .’ ”

The first time the child went through this, they had no clue as to what was happening. The healers did their best to cool her fever and keep her as comfortable as they could. As the incidents reoccurred, her babbling, incoherent at first, started to coalesce into sentences, names, slices of conversations. The words meant nothing to her caregivers until one day they heard her talking to His Majesty the Earth King Zhoulai. A man she’d never met, who’d died three centuries ago.

Thankfully, the abbess had thought to take notes. She’d written down every intelligible scrap, and in scouring her pages she pieced together a pattern. The names. Angilirq, Praew, Yotogawa. Names from every nation.

Names of past Avatar companions.

Not every phantom the child spoke to had made it into the annals of history, and some that had were never acknowledged as having close ties to an Avatar. Jetsun could only imagine the stories lost to time, filtering through the girl, merest fragments sticking in her throat.

And the conversations were pleasant, frequently enough. She would laugh with her friends in towns that had been renamed, provinces that no longer existed. Jetsun had watched her leap from her bed and bellow at the success of legendary winter hunts, sit on the floor and meditate with someone else’s inner peace.

But occasionally she would have waking nightmares. Bouts of sorrow and rage that threatened to tear her apart. She wouldn’t mutter names but scream them as if she’d been betrayed by the universe itself.

By accident, they discovered she could sometimes be calmed by figuring out the past figure she was talking to, when it was possible, and speaking back to her from that perspective. The deeper they could dive into the role the better, like parents reading a bedtime story, doing voices and parts. Familiarity was the best balm they had, and they acted their hearts out for her.

The girl nodded off by the time Jetsun reached a chapter on the proper construction of seawalls. Tsering entered the room. No glider, Jetsun noticed. She probably wanted to see if she could still make the jump too.

“How is she?” the librarian asked.

“Better,” Jetsun said. “Who was Mesose?”

“A companion of Avatar Gun,” Tsering said, coming over to the bedside. “Skilled poet and engineer, who died in Ha’an when Gun failed to hold back a tsunami.”

Jetsun found a sour taste rising in her mouth. “Failed?” Not the choice of words she would have used for someone, Avatar or not, bravely confronting a force of nature. Ha’an still stood today as a port when it sounded like it could have been wiped off the map along with everyone who’d lived there at the time.

“It’s what’s written. After Mesose drowned, Gun disappeared for quite a while before returning to duty.”

You were grieving. If the waters that Gun fought were the same ones that killed Mesose, then both the girl and the past life raging through her might have personally witnessed their friend take their last breath before plunging below the waves. They would have searched for a body in the wreckage.

And worst of all, Jetsun thought, they would have had to struggle with the terrible question of what if I’d done things differently? What if, what if, what if? Perhaps Gun was the one who’d demanded the label of failure.

It was simply unjust. To remember the events of a single life was painful enough. Reliving dozens of lives would be . . . well, it would be like getting caught by a tsunami. Swept away by forces beyond your control.

“She’s a smart kid,” Jetsun said. “If she keeps having these visions, she’ll figure out who she is long before she turns sixteen.”

Tsering sighed. She reached out and stroked the sleeping girl’s hair, now matted with sweat.

“Oh, little Yangchen,” she said. “What are we going to do with you?”

The First Step

At the age of eleven, Yangchen had known who she was for a while on an intellectual level, and treated her Avatarhood with a child’s seriousness at the behest of her elders. This is a very important secret, all right? Like Tsering’s custard recipe. Best not to talk about it until we figure a few more things out.

The involuntary bouts of vivid memories still occurred. The ease with which past Avatars slipped into Yangchen’s speech troubled the leaders of the Western Temple. She would eavesdrop on their discussions about her, air spouting herself under windowsills, hiding behind pillars.

“You know, we keep asking that question, what do we do with her?” she heard Jetsun say one day, sharper than she usually was with her elders. “The answer is, we’ll prevent her from hitting her head on the ground, and when the memories are over, we’ll carry on. That’s what she needs from us, so that’s what we’ll give her. Nothing more, nothing less.”

As if Yangchen needed another reason to worship her older sister. Jetsun wasn’t related to her by blood, or maybe she was in the manner of fourth or fifth cousins, but it definitely didn’t matter. The girl who cut up fruit in a stupid way but at least gave you the symmetrical pieces was your sister. The girl who showed you no mercy on the airball court and laughed in your face as she kept you scoreless was your sister. Jetsun was either the person who would listen to Yangchen cry with utmost patience, or the one who’d upset her in the first place.

So it made perfect sense that Jetsun would guide her through her first attempt at meditating into the Spirit World. A guide was an anchor as much as a pathfinder, a calling voice in the darkness. “Don’t have so many expectations,” Jetsun told a Yangchen buzzing with excitement. “Not everyone has the ability to cross between realms. You won’t be less or more of an Avatar, or an Air Nomad, or a person, if it doesn’t happen.”

“Pfft. If you did it, I can do it.” If you did it, I need to do it. To become more like you.

The older nun rolled her eyes and flicked Yangchen on the forehead where her arrow point would eventually be.

~~~

They went topside to the meadows above the cliffs of the Western Air Temple. There was no need to travel all the way to the Eastern Temple, the jumping-off point for many spiritual journeys, when they could try closer to home first. Besides, Jetsun scoffed, the extra sanctity of the Eastern Temple was more reputation and less proven truth.

In the grass was a meditation circle, a stone slab floor laid level in the earth. Five columns of rock jutted out around the circle, unevenly spaced. They looked like fingers and a thumb, the triple Air Nomad whorls at their tips the prints. Yangchen knew about this place but had always avoided it. “It feels like a giant is about to grab me.”

“Or let you go,” Jetsun said. “A hand either opens or closes. But it can’t do either of those twice in a row.”

Yangchen never knew how Jetsun managed to be so blunt and cryptic at the same time. The two of them sat in the giant’s palm, facing each other. They weren’t alone. Abbess Dagmola and Librarian Tsering had come along and relegated themselves to assistants, setting up incense, a windhorn. The abbess herself was going to ring the meditation bell. There was no hesitance by the two much older women in deferring to Jetsun as guide.

The session began. The smoldering incense was sharp and earthy, like tree resin. Yangchen could feel the overtones of the horn through her stone seat. She lost count of the bell strikes that both marked time and pointed out its meaninglessness.

She suddenly saw a bright glow through her closed eyes, as if she’d been laboring under clouds the whole time. When she opened them, the light was intense but not blinding. Colors were brighter, as if the elements themselves had been ground in a mortar and then repainted on the backing of the world. Red flowers in the meadow glowed like embers, green veins pulsed through canopying leaves the size of house roofs, and the sky was bluer than a cake of solid indigo dye.

Yangchen had performed a feat of Avatarhood. It had not happened to her involuntarily, it had not struck her down like thunder between her temples, it had not racked painfully through her limbs to damage the landscape. She’d done it. She’d done it.

Her victory. And best of all, her favorite person in the world was right there beside her to share the moment. “Huh,” Jetsun said, in one of her classic understatements. “First try.”

Yangchen wanted to laugh and leap a mile into the air. But she would maintain a cool head, just like her guide. “Maybe I only remembered how.”

“Humility isn’t more important than the truth. I think you pulled this off yourself.”

She thought her heart would burst. Over the hills of the Spirit World, a pod of great winged whales, translucent and jellylike, slowly floated through the sky. Nearby, a bouncing mushroom released a cloud of spores, which turned into twinkling fireflies.

She was struck by a question. “What do we do now?”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Jetsun said. “We don’t do anything. There is no use to the Spirit World, and therein lies the great lesson. Here, you don’t take. You don’t anticipate or plan; you don’t struggle. You don’t worry about value gained and lost. You just exist. Like a spirit.”

A pout of disappointment crossed Yangchen’s lips. “Do we have to exist in this one spot only? Can we at least explore?”

Jetsun grinned down at her. “Yes. Yes, we can.”

Yangchen took her sister’s hand and decided there was a chance she might like being the Avatar.

Adapted excerpt from the upcoming book Avatar, The Last Airbender: The Dawn of Yangchen (Chronicles of the Avatar Book 3) by F.C. Yee, published by Amulet Books, an imprint of Abrams; © 2022. Courtesy of Gizmodo.

#chronicles of the avatar #yangchen series #the dawn of yangchen #yangchen #jetsun #gun #excerpt

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ride-thedragon · 24 days

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The gifts of Maidenpool.

Against that we have The Testimony of Mushroom…and in this case, the Chronicles of Maidenpool as set down by Lord Mooton’s maester. Maester Norren writes that “the prince and his bastard girl” supped together every night, broke their fast together every morning, slept in adjoining bedchambers, that the prince “doted upon the brown girl as a man might dote upon his daughter,” instructing her in “common courtesies” and how to dress and sit and brush her hair, that he made gifts to her of “an ivory-handled hairbrush, a silvered looking glass, a cloak of rich brown velvet bordered in satin, a pair of riding boots of leather soft as butter.” The prince taught the girl to wash, Norren says, and the maidservants who fetched their bath water said he oft shared a tub with her, “soaping her back or washing the dragon stink from her hair, both of them as naked as their namedays.”

#hotd #house of the dragon #nettles #nettles asoiaf #netty #a song of ice and fire #daemon targaryen #daemon x nettles #dettles #daemon and nettles #maidenpool #nettles x daemon

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sshbpodcast · 11 months

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Shuttle, Shuttle, Boil and Buttle: Shuttlecraft in Star Trek

By Ames

Diagrams emphatically not to scale here.

A Star to Steer Her By is hitting the open road today. Or open space, I suppose. Pack a lunch for a nice day trip because you can’t get too far in a shuttlecraft in Star Trek, but you still need some flexibility outside your massive hero ship. We’ve covered all those Federation starships before (check out parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 here!). Like they say, “warp’s fine if you like going fast in a straight line,” but what if we wanna do some offroading? Now it’s the little guys’ time to shine!

We’re only going to be looking at classic Trek shuttles from The Original Series through Enterprise because newer series just have too many types of shuttles to count and also because Ex Astris Scientia has a great selection of these shuttles chronicled for easier reference. So strap in and scroll on to see all the screengrabs we could find and listen to this week’s podcast episode (discussion at 1:01:56) for a couple games of “I Spy.” It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

[Images © CBS/Paramount, Ex Astris Scientia, Eaglemoss Ltd., probably others]

TOS: Class F

This simple boxy affair is probably the most recognizable shuttlecraft, especially after the Galileo-7’s starring turn in the eponymous “The Galileo Seven,” among many other episodes throughout TOS. It’s definitely function over form with this basic brick of a vehicle, but that just makes it more endearing.

TAS: Aquashuttle

The Animated Series had a little more flexibility to showcase some new designs, though just how much was getting designed is still really minimal on that cheapskate show. It was nice to see a craft that could transition from space to atmosphere to water when we saw this eraser stub of an aquashuttle in “The Ambergris Element,” so that’s something at least.

TAS: Copernicus-type

We meet the Copernicus in “The Slaver Weapon” and it’s a cute little mosquito of a ship. Everything about her is just so pointy and sharp, and she looks fast to boot. We know very little else about this type of craft, but we appreciate her typical nacelles and her speedboat shape.

TAS: Heavy shuttle

Comparatively more bulbous than the Copernicus we just looked at is this much heavier-looking shuttle from “Mudd’s Passion.” Again, we don’t see much of this thing, but it looks like it’s more durable and able to take a bit of a beating, and it even has a little bit of curve to its windshield!

TOS Films: Travel pod

There’s much more budget by the time we get to The Motion Picture, so the model for this small travel pod that ferries crewmen around spacedock is pretty logical even if some of the compositing is… less so. The purpose of the pod is so simple that its design really reflects that. It even returns for a hot second in the final scene of The Voyage Home.

TOS Films: Executive shuttle

We catch a couple of glimpses of the SD-103 Executive Shuttle from The Undiscovered Country, and again, it’s a pretty simple shape that does its job and then goes home for the day without needing to do much more. This one has a polite little wedge shape, clearly allowing the most room it can to move people back and forth and that’s that.

TOS Films: Type 4 Shuttle

In The Final Frontier, we have a new Galileo and it’s looking like a pretty obvious progression from the original television show. This is what the Type F would look like if they’d had the money and time in the 60s, and we’re digging it. It has the same kind of pointy front, a window that could still stand to be bigger, and empty cavernous space inside that we expect from a shuttle.

TNG Films: Hawking

I’m putting this one back to back with the Type 4 so you can appreciate the very slight differences between the Galileo and the Hawking that we see in Generations. Is it just the added side windows that’s particularly different? And why did it take them so long to add side windows in the first place?

TNG: Type 15 Shuttlepod

Let’s step back to the rest of TNG, now that we’ve already gotten things out of order. We see these things throughout Next Gen and they’re like tiny little remote-controlled toy cars. You can barely fit one person in these things, let alone anything more than that. We hope you’re not flying too far because these flying mousedroids look cramped!

TNG: Type 6 Shuttle

We see these things throughout TNG and Voyager. You’ll notice they are very very similar to the shuttle from Generations above, but a little more squished. One could surmise that the model designers whipped out the Type 4 from The Final Frontier since it was already of the necessary quality for film, and decided to take a cue from this shuttle for the extra windows!

TNG: Type 7 Shuttle

A new design for yet another new Galileo. These things run concurrently with the Type 6 as we also see them consistently throughout TNG, but their design is much more distinct. Their edges are more rounded and their rumps more spankable. Their nacelles also look more like the Enterprise-D’s nacelles. They even come with two options for their much more curved window unit: long and extra long!

TNG Films: Type 11 Shuttle

Picard and Worf chase Data around in Insurrection in one of these cute little doorstops. Everything about these shuttles looks pointy, from the face to the windows to the nacelles! It pretty much clicks that this is the kind of craft you’d find on the Enterprise-E, a ship that’s much longer and more streamlined than the rounder and more bloated D.

TNG Films: Captain’s yacht

In Insurrection, we also steal a glimpse of the Cousteau, also known as the captain’s yacht. What the hell a more weaponized ship like the Enterprise-E needs with a yacht is debatable, but it’s got some of the more movie-era design elements on it, like the pointier nacelles and tapered face. We also like that it looks like those nacelles tuck in for easy storage!

TNG Films: Argo

One last instance from the TNG films and it’s not a favorite (both the film and this vessel). In Nemesis, Picard and friends go down to a primitive planet in the Argo (great name; I’ll admit that), whose purpose seems mostly to be carrying a dune buggy for no damn reason. That aside, this shuttle also just looks unfriendly. More like a fighter jet than a diplomatic craft and that’s not our thing.

DS9: Type 10 Shuttle

Apparently this thing, the Chaffee, lives on the Defiant, though we’re damned if we can figure out where because the Defiant doesn’t even seem big enough to house a full-sized shuttle of any kind, much less a shuttle bay. But in “The Sound of Her Voice” we do get a quick shot or several of this weird little dustbuster of a ship that shares the same tucked-in nacelle look as its mommy ship. Weird.

DS9: Type 18 Shuttle

Oh boy, I’m glad Deep Space Nine mostly used Runabouts instead of these things because they’re goofy as all get out. They do get used in season 3 episodes “The Search” and “Destiny” before we settled into the Defiant, and it’s a good thing because the Type 18 just looks like an old school UFO or something, with a protruding undercarriage like a submarine ride in an amusement park. This design is just trying too hard.

VOY: Type 8 Shuttle

We see these things mostly in early Voyager before the Delta Flyer is introduced, and they look so similar to the Type 6 in TNG that they may as well have not bothered with the update. When in doubt, always check if the nacelles look like they belong on your hero ship or not. That’s my rule of thumb, anyway.

VOY: Type 9 Shuttle (AKA Class 2)

That rule also works on the other shuttle we see pretty frequently in Voyager, especially notably in “Threshold” when the Cochrane breaks the warp 10 barrier. It’s a nifty little ship, closer to the shuttles that we saw in Insurrection than the other series ships in that it looks streamlined and zippy and a little bit like a phaser without a handle.

VOY: Delta Flyer

Once Voyager introduces the Delta Flyer in “Extreme Risk” early in season 5, we use this thing all over the place, even replacing it almost perfectly after it shatters to confetti in “Unimatrix Zero.” And it’s a solid design! It’s clear Tom put a lot of effort into the ship because it looks incredibly sturdy with its triangular shape, embedded nacelles like the Defiant has, and nifty front window that almost reminds me of a stained-glass window.

VOY: SC-4 Shuttle

This special, slightly futuristic shuttle visits us in the series finale “Endgame.” It’s a lot like the Class 2 shuttle in its shape and resemblance to a phaser, but this one’s also got nifty shields like a suit of armor that it fits within! So that’s something to look forward to later in our watch.

ENT: Inspection pod

Moving on to Enterprise, the last leg of our day trip. We’ve mentioned before how much we appreciate the design elements in Enterprise looked like the stepping stones between today’s space technology and the future aesthetics we see in Star Trek, and this little pod with its docking side and its conical shape flat out looks like the module on a modern rocket ship! Cool!

ENT: Shuttlepod

We see an absolute ton of these things in Enterprise (in a majority of episodes, as a matter of fact!) because the transporter didn’t quite work consistently yet. So it’s shuttles or nothing for our prequel friends and this one is actually incredibly cute, with its sorta submarine feel and its cyclops-eye window like a porthole looking out into space.

— Get that barricade ready as we come into the shuttlebay. It’s so good to be back because we’ve got so much to do around the ship! We’re still traveling through the Delta Quadrant with Voyager over on SoundCloud or your favorite podcast application, we’re still sending out a distress signal on Facebook and Twitter, and we’re shuttling off to buttle-oh!

#star trek #star trek podcast #podcast #shuttlecraft #the original series #the animated series #the next generation #deep space nine #voyager #enterprise #the motion picture #the voyage home #the final frontier #generations #insurrection #nemesis #galileo #delta flyer

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kachikirby · 4 months

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GranEssex Chronicles: Chapter 1 - Unmasked Origins

It was supposed to be another standard-issued mission: Head to a planet known for its high crime rate and eliminate a notable criminal group. What Kurabe wasn't expecting to find was that her target was already eliminated, by, of all things, a child. The child was clearly a Star Warrior just from appearances alone. He was dark blue in color, had piercing white eyes and was wielding a stick with a stone tied to it.

"This gang was a class-A planetary-level threat. Did he seriously defeat all of them by himself?" Kurabe thought to herself as she approached this unknown person.

"My name is Kurabe. I'm with The Organization. I was sent here to deal with this group, but I see you already dealt with them." She said diplomatically.

The child just stared at her.

"I'll need to take you in for questioning. Come along peacefully and-"

Kurabe was cut off as the child dashed at her, swinging his makeshift club. She quickly blocked it with her left sword, Rubis, but was surprised by how powerful the attack was, even being pushed back a bit by the force. Though she noticed one thing: he had very little skill in combat and most of his attacks were slow and sloppy. Still, he had incredible potential. Potential that excited her. Just as she had that thought, her other sword, Grenat, was knocked out of her hand by another blow. Thinking fast, Kurabe quickly traced a rune and teleported behind the child, knocking him out with one quick karate chop to the head.

"I'm sorry, but this was the only way." She whispered as she wrapped the child in her cape and began to carry him back to her battleship.

As she stopped to pick up the sword Grenat, Kurabe noticed he was covered in cuts and bruises. Most likely from the fight with the gang. None of the injuries seemed fatal but they would need to be treated quickly to prevent a potential infection.

"Should I have Bukiset...? No, it would probably be better if I treated him myself..." She thought.

There's no doubt that the child would be intimidated if too many people crowded around him at once, making him much more difficult to deal with.

---------

Soon they reached the ship and was greeted by the GranEssex's vice captain, Mercury.

"Welcome back, captain. How did the mission...go? What's with the kid? Are they alright?" The woman uttered in surprise upon seeing the bundle.

"Outside of a few cuts and bruises, he's fine. Actually, he's the one who eliminated the mission targets, so you can submit it as completed."

Mercury just looked at her in shock, but quickly regained her normal expression. "I'll get the med kit."

"Yes, please do. And take it to my room."

As her subordinate began to leave, Kurabe began to think back on the emotions she felt from the child while fighting and carrying him back. At first glance, it was a mismatch of unsure feelings, but she could now pick out a single one: fear.

"Who would leave a child on a planet like this?" She wondered. She could always ask him when he awoke, but she doubted that would be much help.

Kurabe walked to her room and set the child down in one of her chairs. Mercury quickly arrived with the med kit in hand.

"Do you want me to handle it, Captain?"

"No, I can handle it. Besides, I think having too many people around him will make it more difficult to talk to him."

"Understood, I'll leave you to it then." The woman said and left, leaving Kurabe alone with her thoughts and the child. Quickly she walked over to the sink and filled a bowl with water.

"...alright, first is to clean the area with mild soap and water to prevent infection..." She thought, attempting to recall what she remembered about first aid.

---------

While cleaning him up, Kurabe felt... off for lack of a better term. Why was she so concerned for this child? Sure, she didn't like seeing children hurt, but this was different. Could it be because they were the same species? Her mentor had once told her about how Star Warriors tend to feel a certain closeness to each other. Before she could question that feeling more, the child began to wake up.

"Good morning." Kurabe said as kindly as she could.

The child's eyes widened in fear, likely due to not knowing where he was. Then his eyes focused on Kurabe, and they became sharp again.

"Calm down, there's no need for any of that." She said with a glare, causing the child to loosen up, but still on guard.

"Where am I?" He asked.

Kurabe was caught off guard by his jaded tone.

"A child shouldn't sound like that..." She thought and then cleared her throat.

"You are on my battleship, the GranEssex. I brought you back here to treat your wounds and ask you a few questions."

There was a brief moment of silence.

"And you are?"

"Kurabe. I doubt you've heard me. And what's your name?"

He was hesitant to reply to her for a moment, but then decided to give in.

"...Meta." The child quietly replied.

"Meta..." Kurabe repeated with a slight hum.

"The name suits him..." She thought to herself as she began to put away the med kit.

"What were you doing on this planet, Meta? I sincerely doubt it was by choice." She then asked in a soothing voice.

He gave a questioning gaze towards her. "I live here."

"What about family?" She asked, dreading the obvious answer.

"...what's that?"

"You mean you don't have any parents? Not even a guardian of some kind?"

The child shook his head after thinking for a moment. "...I don't know. I live on my own."

"Then he's an orphan..." She thought with a slight sigh.

"Let's change topics then. Meta, why were you fighting those men and why did you attack me?"

"...they attacked me first and I didn't want to die. And you looked like you would hurt me, too..."

"Well, I wasn't going to."

The child slightly gritted his teeth before speaking. "I've heard that before. My entire life I've struggled to stay alive. Many people have pretended to be kind just to hurt me."

Hearing that broke the warrior's heart. Gently, she took one of his stubs in her hand, as if to comfort him. Then, she removed the visor that covered her eyes, showing a gentle, sympathetic expression.

"I'm sorry to hear that. What about now? Do you feel like I'm threatening now?"

She began to feel a warm, trusting feeling in her hand as he looked at her silently.

"No, but why? I attacked you. Why are you being kind to me? Do you just pity me?"

Admittedly, even Kurabe didn't have an exact answer for that.

"It's because I saw potential in you as a warrior."

"What does that mean?" He asked, all of his previously shown hostility replaced with confusion.

"I am one of the greatest warriors in the galaxy. The fact that you impressed me with your strength says enough."

Despite those words coming out of her mouth, Kurabe knew there was more to it than that. There was this other, alien feeling she was starting to develop, and she didn't know why.

"...I could tell you were powerful when we clashed." Meta admitted. "Stronger than me."

The warrior gave a nod in understanding. "Meta, do you wish to become stronger?"

"I need to become stronger. Living on this planet taught me one thing: only the strongest thrive. That's why I named myself Meta. To be strong and durable like metal."

"But even metal can break and bend without reinforcement, no?" Kurabe responded quickly.

The child became silent upon hearing this, as if acknowledging that she was right.

"And my training would be the reinforcement to your metal."

There was a moment of silence.

"Can... I have time to think, please?" Meta asked, quietly.

Kurabe was pleasantly surprised by the sudden politeness.

"Take as much time as you need to think." She replied with a smile.

Then she heard a slight growl coming from the blue puff, whose cheeks seemed to redden in embarrassment.

"You must be starving. Wait right here." Kurabe said, leaving to grab something for the child to eat.

Meta looked around at the room he was in. It alone was nicer than anything else on this planet. Could he obtain something like this if he stayed with Kurabe?

"Do you like sweets?" The warrior suddenly asked.

Meta looked at her curiously. "Sweets? Is that like jerky?"

"No, it's quite the opposite of jerky, actually. It's... well... try it for yourself." She placed a plate in front of him at the table.

While Kurabe knew it was chocolate fondant, the child clearly had no idea what it was. Meta took a hesitant bite and his eyes widened. It was without a doubt the best thing he'd ever eaten. Almost immediately, he began to scarf down the rest of it quickly... by inhaling it. Kurabe chuckled at this.

"So, I take it you enjoyed it?"

She received an enthusiastic nod in response. Kurabe smiled. Underneath the initial antagonism was a sweet kid, though it pained her to know that such a kid was abandoned in the first place. Maybe... even if he didn't want her to train him, he could still stay here. At least he would be safe on the GranEssex. Then her thoughts turned back to what she was thinking about earlier. Why exactly was she acting like this? While yes, she was interested in Meta's potential as a warrior, but that doesn't explain all of her actions. Usually, she would just drop them into training instead of doing everything she just did.

"Miss Kurabe..." Meta said snapping her out of her thoughts.

"I think I would like to stay here. If that's fine with you..." He uttered, averting his gaze shyly after asking that.

"Of course." She simply replied.

It was then that a thought crossed her mind: did she want to be his mother? No, that can't be it. That's when she noticed something: Meta was crying. However, it wasn't out of sadness, rather it was tears of joy. Acting completely on instinct, Kurabe wrapped him up in a hug.

"...Miss... Kurabe...?" The child uttered in confusion.

"Not "Miss". It's "sensei" … and think of this as me welcoming you into my family."

The blue puff managed to wipe away a few of his tears while in her grip.

"Sensei, is this... what family is?"

"That's something you'll need to decide for yourself, Meta. But, I'd like to try being your family."

The child became silent for a few minutes.

"I don't know what family is but... ok..."

The warrior gave a slight sigh. "To put it simply, a family is a group of people that trusts, supports, and loves each other."

"But what is love?"

Admittedly, Kurabe didn't really know how to answer that at first. How would you explain something as complex as that to a child? That was when she thought of it.

"Love is... something that's different for everyone, Meta. It's not something that can be taught. Only learned in time."

The child only pouted.

"For someone who's really powerful, you're awfully clueless about a lot of things..."

Meta then felt Kurabe tighten her grip and quickly looked at her eyes in response. She was still smiling but her eyes were promising something else. Something very painful.

"What was that, Meta?" She asked in a sweet but deadly tone.

The child shrank back with fear. "N-nothing..."

"That's what I thought." She said, loosening up her grip.

"She's really nice, but she's also really scary when she's angry..." He thought to himself.

---------

For the next few hours, Kurabe showed Meta around her room. While she didn't have many things for the child to play with, there were a lot of things he seemed to be interested in looking at. Her desk. The various photos on the walls. Even the soft, cushiony sofa. But the thing that seemed to interest him the most was the large bookcase.

"It's probably because he never saw anything here on that planet..." She thought as Meta admired the wall of books before immediately pulling him away when he attempted to climb it.

"It's dangerous to climb that, Meta. If you're interested in reading something, I'd be happy to grab it for you."

It hadn't crossed her mind until now. Was he even able to read?

"Meta, not to be rude, but can you read?"

The child shook his head in response. "No. Never learned how, never saw a need for it."

She should've known.

"Would you like to learn how?"

Admittedly, there was probably no real choice in the matter if he wanted to become her student. The Organization wouldn't want an illiterate warrior on the battlefield.

"I'd rather not bother you, sensei."

"You say that, but you want me to teach you, don't you?"

Hearing that made the child avert his eyes as a slight blush appeared on his face.

"Y... yes..." He squeaked.

The warrior gave him a pat on the head.

"We'll start after dinner then."

The child gave a nod in understanding.

As Kurabe began to make dinner, she felt Meta silently watching her from the table. It appeared that he had mellowed out quite a bit since they first arrived on the ship, but his guard still seemed very much up.

"What's wrong?" She asked, getting a slight jump from the child in response. He then said... something. It was more of a mumble than anything.

"Please don't mumble. I can't understand you otherwise." The warrior gave a sigh.

A moment of silence.

"Sensei... what is family to you?" The puff asked.

"This crew for starters. Especially my second in command, Mercury. We've had each other's backs for a long time. Then there's my mentor, who is like a father to me. Even if he's a stubborn old fool. I guess in simple terms, family is the people I refuse to let go of. People I wish to protect."

Meta nodded in understanding. "Then what is love to you?"

"Love is when you'll do anything for the person you love. Regardless of if it's romantic or platonic. You'll understand more when you're older."

Her student then pouted at that. "But how do I know if I feel love? This is really hard..."

"Love is a complicated feeling, Meta, and it's something that just doesn't happen overnight. Trust me, when you feel love you'll know what it is."

After hearing that, the child seemed to understand. Then there was a knock at the door.

"I'll be right back." She said while opening the door. "What is it, Mercury?"

"I just came to check in on you. How's the kid?" The woman asked, looking into the room.

"He's doing fine. In fact, he's my new student." She said with a strange sense of pride.

"What? He agreed to becoming your student already?" She then gave a slight whistle. "That was quick. So, anyway, what's for dinner?"

"Actually, if you don't mind, Mercury, could you-"

"Give you some space? Yeah, I figured. I'll just eat with the Bukisets." The woman gave an understanding nod.

"Thank you." Kurabe replied with a smile.

"No problem. I'll check up on you two later. You two have fun then!"

With that, Mercury walked away.

"Was that the Mercury person you mentioned?" Meta asked.

"Yes, that was her."

"I see." He said, clearly curious about the silver woman.

Kurabe gave a smile. "I'll introduce her to you another time. For now, I should finish making dinner."

The child nodded, excited to see what food she was making. Hopefully, it was as good as what she made for him before.

---------

A half hour later, Kurabe placed a plate in front of Meta.

"Sensei, what is this?" He questioned after sniffing it.

"It's called chicken parmesan."

He then picked up the long noodles on the side and stared at them in curiosity.

"And that's spaghetti. I hope you enjoy it."

She then sat down at the table and began to eat her own plate of food, noting that the child was now staring at her. He then took two of the utensils and began to copy her movements with them to eat. As Kurabe watched Meta eat, she noticed he was on edge, like he was used to being on high alert. While it would be useful for the missions he'll no doubt take, it didn't make it any less sad.

"Meta, you can relax. This ship is incredibly safe, so please relax just a little."

Upon hearing that, the child seemed to understand, as he began to loosen up a bit. Then, to her own surprise, he inhaled the rest of the food on his plate.

"...Meta, I'm glad that you seem to enjoy my cooking, but please use utensils and take your time when you're eating." She said with a sigh.

"...can't you inhale, too, sensei?"

"I can, but I prefer not to. I'll have to teach you about table manners it seems." She said in amusement.

The child nodded and continued to do his best to copy her movements while eating.

Then, he seemed to speak up again. "That red sword you have..."

"Interested in swordplay, are you? Don't you worry, Meta, I'll be teaching you in the art of swordplay."

His eyes instantly lit up upon hearing that. "Really!?"

"Of course. You are my student now. It's my duty to make you as strong as I can. Both in body and mind."

"Thank you so-" The puff cut himself off, as if realizing something.

"Wait, I didn't I say I would think about becoming your student?"

"You agreed to it already, haven't you?" She replied with a slight smirk.

There was silence, as if Meta was thinking about everything that had been said and retracing every conversation. Suddenly, his cheeks began to turn red again in embarrassment.

"Can... can you really teach me about swords, sensei...?" He uttered shyly.

"I won't just teach you about swords. I'll teach you everything."

The child tilted his head in curiosity. "Everything?"

"Everything."

Before he could make a response, she spoke up again. "Well, we should probably make this a formal decision. However, I'll warn you about this now, Meta. My training can get pretty intense. Some of my previous students quit because of it. A few have even died. Are you sure you would like to become my student?"

The child seemed to hesitate.

"Don't worry. You can still live on this ship if you have second thoughts."

After hearing Kurabe say that, he then became quiet once again.

"You said that I'll become even stronger after your training, right?" He asked. "I've lived on this horrible planet long enough. I'm sure that nothing you throw at me can make me quit."

The warrior replied with a chuckle. "Brave words. But something tells me you'll be able to back them up. Well then, Meta, allow me to formally make you a member of my crew. Welcome to your new home."

The child gave a smile, the biggest that Kurabe had ever seen up to this point. "Thank you so much, sensei!"

"You're welcome, Meta." She replied warmly, noticing that Meta was now struggling to stay awake.

"Perhaps we should start our lessons tomorrow. Let me go set up a bed for you."

Seeing a nod, she hopped down from her chair and began to clear off the table.

"I believe we have an open room next to mine. I'll let him stay there..." She mused as she headed towards the room. "It's usually reserved for guests, but I think he can keep it..."

---------

When Kurabe returned, she saw that Meta was already asleep. Not having the heart to wake him, she picked him up and carried him to the bed she set up in the room next to her personal cabin. Though when she tried to walk away after placing him down and pulling a blanket over him, he unconsciously grabbed her.

"Don't want me to leave, do you?" She uttered with a slight chuckle. "Alright then, I guess I'll stay here with you for a bit."

Kurabe removed her eye visor and laid down in bed with Meta, making sure not to disturb him.

"Good night, little knight."

There was no verbal response, but the quiet, satisfied sigh was all she needed to hear as the child leaned closer to her.

---------

A short time later, Mercury was looking for her superior. She was slightly worried due to not finding her in her personal cabin like she said she would be. Then, she noted the extra room positioned close to said cabin. It looked like the door was unlocked.

"Hey, captain, are you in here?" She asked quietly while opening the door.

The only thing Mercury could hear was the soft breathing of the sleeping Kurabe and Meta. Opening the door a bit more, she noticed that the child was curled up close to her superior, who had laid an arm over him as if to reassure and protect him. At first, Mercury was surprised at this scene. But then, she gave a slight smile.

"Never in a million years would I think that she of all people would have something like a motherly instinct..."

Quickly, she grabbed an extra blanket from the closet and laid it over them with a slightly excited humming.

"Things are definitely going to get more interesting around here..."

---------

Extra: Character Toyhouse Pages

Kurabe

Mercury

#kirby fanfic #granessex chronicles #meta knight #kirby oc #kirby fc #kurabe #mercury kirby #art of rikka

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