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protemporescitor · 2 months

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"But she ded tho" (a.k.a. the dumbest argument against Clerith) - A rant

To expand on my previous post, in which I posited the crazy, far-fetched theory that in a fantasy setting mayhap death is not the relationship brick wall that it would be in a more grounded, realistic one*, I just want to bring up a few points to further buttress this off-the-wall notion.

"Cloud can't be with Aerith. She's dead!"

We've all heard it a thousand times. It is the argument most commonly levelled against Clerith. It is also the worst (and laziest) one.

It's often delivered in a declamatory and glib fashion, as though it were some sort of obvious conversation ender. Q.E.D. End of debate. The ultimate gotcha. "Checkmate, Clerith fans!" the haters think to themselves, chortling and patting themselves on their backs for this profound insight. (Insert tasteless and juvenile comments about Aerith being "shish kebab-ed" by Sephiroth as desired.)

And all I can think is "That's it? That's your best argument? That's some weak tea, man."

Despite its myriad flaws, this idea continues to radiate throughout the fandom a good quarter century after the original title's release, as though it had never once been challenged. It is a feeble and untenable position, a house built on sand, and one that deserves to be thoroughly demolished. With Rebirth on the horizon, and all the shipping wars nonsense rising from the grave once more as a result, it is high time, if you'll forgive the expression, that we laid this cliché to rest once and for all.

(*Note: Even in a more "realistic" setting lacking any kind of fictional afterlife, this would still be a gross oversimplification of the story's themes of loss, regret, and yearning, as well as entirely ignoring the idea of love transcending death, but we'll set those concerns aside for the time being.)

Lastly, before we begin: This is not an anti-Zerith / CloTi screed. Those pairings both have an undeniable canonical basis. My aim here is simply to demonstrate that the notion that Cloud and Aerith are forever separated by death is rendered invalid by virtue of the type of setting that their story takes place in. (Something that, frankly, one would reasonably assume to be perfectly obvious. Alas, such is not the case. And so I find myself yet again pointing out the glaringly obvious.)

Now, without further ado, let's begin:

Part 1. Before (the Compilation) Crisis

In the beginning, there was the year 1997, and Squaresoft had just released their latest title. And lo, it was good. We spent days and weeks following our favorite polygon people around their embattled little globe. We fought, laughed, cried, and struggled up until the Meteor Crisis reached its crescendo, and the credits rolled. Gosh, what an ending! But what did it all mean? How did things REALLY turn out? Did we get a happy ending at all?

According to some, Cloud lived happily ever after with his childhood sweetheart, Tifa. According to others, he continued to roam the earth in search of his Promised Land to be reunited with his tragic lost love, Aerith. Yuffie swiped everyone's materia (again). Cid finally went to the moon. Red XIII opened a haberdashery in Costa del Sol, or something. No-one really knows for sure.

And so, the fandom began to spread to every corner of the internet in search of answers. Thus began the age of dissension. Opinions clashed across fanzines, blogs, and fanfic country alike. Wild fan theories abounded pertaining to special codes, methods, and blood rituals capable of bringing back our erstwhile flower girl. The fan-made media bubble surrounding the game turned into a lawless land of misinformation and vicious disagreement. None were spared.

A brief digression on why said rumours persisted for as long as they did (CAUTION: Massive spoilers for Chrono Trigger).

One side proposed a simple solution. A way to cut the proverbial Gordian Knot of our fandom. It was quite obvious, really. Just staring everyone in the face. The flower girl was dead, and that was that. Thus, there was only one possible conclusion to our narrative. Cloud's feelings on the matter were, of course, irrelevant. With Aerith out of the picture, the only logical choice left to him was to settle down with Tifa, and that was that. Never mind the themes of doomed, tragic love and the possibility, strongly hinted at throughout the game and outright confirmed during its ending, of existence after death.

Overall, direct evidence for said afterlife was scant, but not entirely absent from the story. As an example, at one point during her childhood, Aerith speaks to Elmyra, trying to comfort her, saying that the spirit of her husband wanted to come visit her, confirming that an afterlife presence did indeed exist. But for some, this simply wasn't evidence enough. And so the war raged on. Which brings us to…

Part 2. Advent Children: The smoking gun

Remember back when a certain portion of the fan base insisted that Gaia erased all the humans at the end of the story, on the flimsy basis that we don't see any during the game's brief post-credit scene? Well, that little theory was neatly undone by subsequent releases in the Compilation, showing regular ol' humans still roaming around Gaia in all their everyday human-ness. Hence, it is rarely brought up these days. Would that the pernicious notion of "but she ded tho" could follow in its footsteps, given that the same film roundly contradicts it in every way possible.

For starters, the film inexplicably bring two characters, Rufus and Tseng, hitherto assumed to be dead, back to life, probably in an effort by Square to shoehorn as many recognizable members of the cast into their animated feature as they could. But that's not all. Next we have three characters that everyone agreed were deader than doornails ALSO making appearances, first in flashbacks, and then directly influencing the world of the living. Zack speaks to and encourages Cloud during his struggle. Aerith reaches out to him (quite literally) from beyond the grave and assists him in defeating Bahamut. And of course Sephiroth pops back into existence just in time for his contractually-obligated boss fight near the end of the film. All three demonstrate quite clearly and definitively that death is not the impenetrable barrier to continuing interactions between the living and the dead in the world of Final Fantasy VII, as a certain segment of the fan base would have everyone believe it is.

To be blunt, I don't know what level of dense you'd have to be to keep up this so-called "argument" in light of this information. Advent Children reiterates what most of us already knew, that our story takes place in a fantasy setting* with a confirmed afterlife existence.

(*You'd think that the name of the series would clue people in.)

The notion that death represents, within the context of said setting, the ultimate end was already softly contradicted by the original game's narrative, and then (because that was apparently too subtle for some people) flat-out annihilated by the existence and events of Advent Children. It should have long since ended this nonsense. But somehow, it didn't. These revelations, obvious though they are, remain ignored for some reason. And so, the cycle of willful ignorance continues.

But we're not done yet. We now move on to more tangential, but still relevant arguments against this line of "reasoning".

Part 3. Stop Hitting Yourself: Why "but she ded tho" is insulting to everyone

And I do mean everyone. Let's examine this, shall we?

It's insulting to Cloud.

To suggest that he loses interest in Aerith the moment she sinks beneath the waters, or that he is obligated to move on simply because she is no longer among the living, with no mourning period, no time to work through his guilt and grief, is to portray him as shallow and uncaring, something that goes against virtually all the characterization that he's been given throughout the story. The line of thinking apparently goes "Well, she's gone. That sucks. She was cute, too. Better move on to the next available piece of meat."

Sounds pretty gross when you write the quiet part out loud, doesn't it?

It's insulting to Aerith.

"Didn't even toss the b@#h a Phoenix Down, just dumped'er in the water LAWL"

I'm sure you've all come across comments like that at some point, usually originating from some errant redditor or blogger. Thinking themselves fine fellows and enlightened, above-it-all gadflies, they provide us at length with this and other prime specimens of 14 year-old internet edgelord "humour" that carries about as much edge as a perfect sphere. Remarks like these serve little purpose beyond confirming my suspicion that our fandom is indeed plagued with illiterates who can't tell the difference between the terms "revive" and "resurrect", and insist on conflating game mechanics with storytelling. And you wonder why some people are confounded by words like "flammable" and "inflammable".

(All right, I'll put the salt down. For now.)

"The party's designated white mage dies, oh no, that's so sad, boo-hoo, life goes on," I hear you say.

But boiling Aerith's role down to one of merely that of a temporary party member who kicks the bucket halfway through the story, never to be heard from again, both cheapens her purpose within the larger narrative and denies the clear effect that she continues to exert, directly and indirectly, on it and the other characters after her passing.

Though Aerith may have departed the world of the living, the story makes it abundantly clear that her influence on it has not ended. There are hints here and there that she still tries to assist her friends from the afterlife. As an example, when the party rediscovers Cloud in Mideel after assuming that he might be lost for good, a villager sums it up best with the following remark: "That boy must have one hell of a guardian angel."

It's only mentioned as a vague hint in the original story, but it is clear that some beneficent force is acting on Cloud and Tifa's behalf, aiding them in their survival and uniting them in the Lifestream in order to help Cloud recover his memories. Later supplemental material confirms that to have been Aerith's doing. If that's not enough to convince you, though, the original game's ending leaves little room for ambiguity as to Aerith's continuing influence. When Holy sputters and fails, she coaxes the Lifestream itself to intervene, burning away the calamitous meteorite, helping her friends put an end to the planetary crisis long after her own demise. I suppose the lesson here for silver-haired godhead wannabe villains is this: Strike her down, and she shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

So the idea that Aerith's participation in the story immediately comes grinding to a halt upon her death is both puerile and easily demonstrated to be false. But even if that were the case, downplaying her lingering influence on Cloud and the other characters in this manner would still be ignoring the creators' intent. Whether one interprets Cloud and Aerith's relationship as romantic or merely platonic, it is clear that her death, the loss of one of his closest allies, is something that wounds him deeply, and scars him forever. Two years on, he still pines for her company and desires her forgiveness for his perceived failures. She clearly occupies a special place in his heart, and her memory and legacy live on within him, spurring him on as he wanders the planet, searching for some way to meet her again, defying the impossible. (Which, as we all know, isn't going to happen. This is, after all, Final Gritty Reality we're talking about here.)

Ah, but all of this is a moot point, you say? Even if he did wish to be with her, preferring the company of the last Cetra over that of his childhood friend… well, too bad. That's no longer an option. We can spout all of this verbiage about "soul pain" this and "star-crossed lovers" that, but at the end of the day, Aerith is still dead, and that's that. At least, that's what ardent CloTi fans will insist, no matter what. So, what is Tifa to Cloud, then, by their own logic?

Which brings us to perhaps our most salient, and most overlooked point, at least as far as CloTi shippers are concerned. If all that wasn't enough for you, you may want to consider that it's deeply insulting to Tifa, as well. Grievously so, in fact. Quite possibly more so than any other character in this whole equation. And the reason why should be plain as day if you stop to think about it for a fraction of a second.

Here's the thing… if you can't articulate why you think Cloud would prefer to be with Tifa in spite of Aerith being alive, then you are essentially declaring her the "winner" by default on no other merits than the fact that she's still sucking down air. Stating "but she ded bro" means relegating Tifa to the role of a consolation prize. I don't think I could ever hurl such a staggering insult towards her as her biggest fans keep doing, without even realizing they're doing it.

Ask yourselves, is that really what you want for your supposed favourite character? To frame her as being doomed to eternally play second fiddle to her fallen friend? Cloud's "plan B"? The "side piece"? Someone who only stands a chance if her rival in love is literally six feet under? I'm sure she'd be thrilled by the high regard in which her own fans seem to hold her. (Hey, you said it, not me. It's not my fault if you don't take the time to actually consider the ramifications of what rolls off your keyboard. But by all means, keep insulting your own favorite character just to put down a ship you don't like.)

In closing, if we unearth the subtext and reframe it to highlight what people are, in essence, saying, it's this: "It's a good thing that she-who-shall-not-be-named bit the dust, because otherwise our beloved Best Girl Tifa (tm) wouldn't stand a chance."

It's a simple enough question: Why do you think that Cloud and Tifa belong together? What, in your mind, makes them a good fit for each other?

"Well, the competish is dead." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for your best girl, now is it?

Part 4. "Heads, I Win. Tails, You Lose": A brief word on hypocrisy

In fandom, it's often the loudest and most obnoxious voices who tend to drown out the more reasonable ones, those of fans who are just minding their own business and grooving on the thing that they like. Which, unfortunately, renders this next part a necessary component of the greater argument that I'm trying to make. Multishippers and sane, reasonable CloTi and Zerith fans may consider themselves exempted from the following harangue.

The rest of y'all, buckle up.

The too-oft repeated refrain of "but she ded tho" entails a twofold hypocrisy. The first part is:

Case of Tifa: Fan hypocrisy regarding death.

Strident anti-Clerith fans, with their usual level of maturity, will often bring up Aerith's demise in a gleeful, mocking tone that can best be summed up as "ding dong, the witch is dead!" And if the shoe were on the other foot? If their Best Girl Tifa (tm) were the one pushing up daisies instead of Miz Gainsborough? Would they be quite so cavalier in their attitudes?

Who wants to bet that these fans wouldn't be making this "argument" so loudly if it was their ship that was in question? Consider this scenario: Suppose that the remake trilogy does the unthinkable and has Tifa die in Aerith's place. What then? Would they accept that "but she ded tho" is, at best, a double-edged sword, one that applies equally to their own favourite ship were their fortunes to be reversed?

Something tells me that's not the case.

But if you think that's hypocritical, you ain't seen nothing yet. This first point pales in comparison to…

The Zerith Exemption: Fan hypocrisy regarding the afterlife.

You know what my favourite thing about this whole debacle is? When people inform me that because they are separated by death, Cloud and Aerith have no hope of ever being together again. They will then unironically pivot to shipping Zack and Aerith, two characters who are together in the MOTHERFUCKING AFTERLIFE.

It's wild. How do you even compress that much cognitive dissonance into one skull? We're talking about mind-melting, Olympic medal-worthy levels of mental gymnastics here.

Now, before someone accuses me of being morose, I'm not suggesting that Cloud hop off the nearest cliff just to be with his beloved (Aerith would not approve of him throwing his life away, for one), just that when he reaches the end of his natural life (which may not be too long, given the cells eating away at his body), he can finally be reunited with her in the afterlife.

Many ardent CloTi shippers see themselves as bound by law to uphold Zerith as a shield against the dreaded Clerith plague. But to proclaim, implicitly or explicitly, that the afterlife encompasses one but not the other is not an idea that can be taken seriously. It remains an utterly bizarre blind spot, one that beggars belief.

On a related note, there is the infamous misconception that is…

Part 5. The ZaCloud Fallacy

While this is not directly related to my main point, I nonetheless find myself compelled to address this issue. There is a long-standing confusion that bedevils our fandom, one that has its roots in the Shipping Wars (tm). I am, of course, referring to the ZaCloud Fallacy.

We owe this particular misapprehension to Crisis Core, a prequel/gaiden game that was released ten years after the original FFVII. Already, its existence can mess up the timeline, so to speak, as, strangely, people tend to treat it as a sequel rather than a prequel, and as though it were adding new and vital building blocks to the world of FFVII instead of merely distorting the original story while retreading it with a far less interesting cast of characters. It also retcons major elements of the original story that it shouldn't have (such as the events taking place in Nibelheim five years prior to the main narrative), lazily steals Clerith scenes only to rehash them with Zack and Aerith, and forces players to endure, at length, crimes against literature, courtesy of Genesis.

It's an odd prequel, to say the least, given how heavily it relies on the original story for context. Sequentially, it may take place before FFVII, but it can only be fully appreciated with the original in mind; it cannot be treated as a stand-alone story. The worst thing about Crisis Core existing is that playing it first can outright ruin people's perception of the original narrative by spoiling several major plot elements and even lessening them in the process. Crisis Core's writers are especially guilty of cheapening dramatic moments like Zack's last stand by transforming it from a quiet, tragic, harrowing scene about sacrifice to an utterly over-the-top and emotionally overwrought trainwreck. It all merely serves to add to the confusion, especially for gamers who started with this title instead of the original.

But if that were not enough, Crisis Core's reckless meddling with the story combined with the acrimonious and all-consuming nature of the shipping wars has resulted in one of the most nonsensical misconceptions in the entire fandom. During Crisis Core's ending, Zack implores Cloud to carry on his legacy, thus giving rise to the erroneous assumption that Cloud's behaviour in disc 1 is merely that of him "being Zack". Clerith-hating fans, in particular, pounced on this idea as a way to put a safe distance between him and Aerith, characterizing their interactions, whether platonic or romantic, as merely a case of Cloud utilizing Zack's memories and personality around her (Never mind that Zack and Cloud's personalities are as different as night and day).

It is a fundamental and willful misreading of the story, a gross oversimplification of a more complex and granular truth in service of a fan-originated meta-narrative, one that has been assembled in order to reach the conclusion that Cloud and Aerith's relationship is null and void, and that therefore the romance between him and Tifa remains unchallenged. (Never mind that the story is intended as more than just some playground tug-of-war romance). To maintain this lie is to do violence to the story by destroying Cloud's character arc and reducing him to a virtual non-entity until the very end of the game.

Having already been rebuked in regards to this pervasive delusion, certain fans have tried to hedge their bets by suggesting a second, more advanced version of this idea. ZaCloud Fallacy 2.0, if you will, which states that Cloud is only in Zack Mode (tm) when he's around Aerith. I don't even know what to say about that sort of nonsense. To paraphrase Charles Babbage, I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such an assertion.

I'd go into this in more detail, but YouTube creator LinkOnTheBrink has already covered this topic extensively in their superlative video essay "How Shipping Can Ruin a Narrative".

It may seem like I'm trashing Zack or Zerith here, but I'm really not. That was never my intent. So let me be clear about this: I like Zack. I just hate Crisis Core and what it's done to this fandom. If you prefer CloTi and Zerith to everything else, I don't much mind. Ultimately, this isn't about shipping wars nonsense, but protecting the narrative from such nonsense.

And that leads us to…

Part 6. I Against I: Where the fandom went wrong

We all know that the infamous FFVII Shipping Wars (tm) are as stupid as they are inescapable. Anyone who's spent any time at all within this fandom has inevitably run afoul of them and their detritus at some point, whether they've chosen to participate in them or abstain from the whole debacle. But there's a reason why this acrimonious dispute has raged on for as long as it has. Much like Blade Runner fans would argue until they were blue in the face about whether or not Deckard was a replicant, fans of this story have been squabbling about CloTi versus Clerith for ages for similar reasons. (Zerith got roped in as a "political wedge", I would argue, as much as a pairing in its own right.)

It's more than just a war over shipping, it's a war over canonization, over character motivation and psychology. Of how we ultimately interpret the story and its characters. Given the vagueness of the story's ending, one can't help but wonder and speculate as to how everyone ended up afterwards. (Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus may have offered some answers, but they still largely sidestep these questions in a noncommittal, to-be-continued manner.)

The problem is that, for many fans, it isn't possible to simply say "It's my preference" and be done with the matter. Unlike most rarepairs and bananas pairings like Cait x Jenova, CloTi and Clerith remain hotly contested because they go beyond mere shipping, or even aesthetic preference, or which characters one most identifies with; they lie at the core of how we perceive the story and its inhabitants. In that sense, I don't consider it to be an entirely frivolous debate, just an unsolvable one.

So, what's the answer?

There's this long-standing piece of received wisdom about JRPGs vs. WRPGs, where the latter involves more freedom at the expense of focused storytelling, and vice versa. This idea might hold true to some extent, but it is not some iron law that must be obeyed without question. For a game like FFVII, choices that radically affect the narrative structure would be considered an aberration and not the norm. And yet, it might represent the only way out of this quagmire that doesn't involve throwing half the fandom under the bus in the process.

For me, Mass Effect and similar titles (e.g., Quest for Glory) have already presented an obvious solution: Let the players choose. (There is already some precedent in the form of the Gold Saucer scene, although it ultimately doesn't change the outcome of the story all that much.) It may not be a perfect solution, but I'd argue that it's far better than leaving one side out in the cold. At least this way, everyone gets something.

"Ah, but this is not feasible," I hear you respond. "Not for an Eastern-style RPG, at least. Only one of these pairings can be correct, and one must, above all, respect the creator's vision."

Yeah, look where that got us.

Part 7. As You Like It: Ship whatever you please (just stop this nonsense)

I realize that this little essay of mine has been digressive, rudimentary, rambling, extemporaneous, and scattershot. So let me try to reach some kind of meaningful conclusion here.

Much of this anti-Clerith rhetoric we've seen over the years seems to stem from a place of insecurity, whether it's murmuring "but she ded tho", claiming that Cloud was only ever Zack in disc 1, inventing a fictional sex scene underneath the Highwind from whole cloth, and so on… The thing is, there is no need for it. Clerith and CloTi both exist canonically. Even the game manual says as much, describing Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith's relationship as a love triangle. In other words, the love triangle is what's canon, and the rest is by and large up for interpretation. (Zerith also canonically exists, and we've known this since the OG.)

The true reason why this whole disagreement has gone on for eternity, I suspect, has less to do with any debate over canonicity alone than it does the sheer enmity and pettiness that it has continued to spark for so long. It has metastasized over the years, going from being a mere squabble over which pair is canon to an exercise in holding the other side in contempt. That endless cycle of disrespect and reprisals is undoubtedly where it all went wrong in the first place. (If I had a nickel for every time someone commented "but she ded tho" or "wHy iS zAcK bLoNd iN tHiS pIc?" when someone posts a piece of Clerith fan art, I'd have a pretty nice collection of coins by now.)

Obviously, we should all try to just click off when we encounter content that we dislike, but it's not always easy, especially when something we harbour a strong aversion to is so deeply enmeshed within something that we do enjoy. And so, our fight-or-flight instinct kicks in. Before you ask, yes, I'm as guilty of that as anyone else.

Still, I firmly believe that the occasional olive branch can go a long way. So let me simply say that I have the utmost respect for Tifa and Zack. They are worthy characters in their own right. So create and share all the CloTi/Zerith fan works your little hearts desire. Hire a fleet of skywriters to declare Zerith your favourite couple. Throw a giant CloTi parade through the middle of Times Square. We don't mind. Honestly.

As stated above, whether it's CloTi, Clerith, or Zerith, you can stop fretting over which one is canon; they all are. The other three permutations (Zakkura, Zifa, AerTi) don't get much in the way of canon acknowledgement, but they probably should at this point.

In the end, this is about saving the narrative from the shipping wars, as much as anything else. To say that you prefer CloTi or something else to Clerith is fine. To assert that Clerith doesn't exist in any form, however, is where I begin to take exception.

Ultimately, I say ship what you like. All I ask is that you retire this sort of narrative-wasting nonsense. It's time we threw it into the garbage can of gaming history where it belongs. As for questions of motives, character interpretation, canonization, and so forth… if we cannot reach an accord, then let us at least try for a more amicable disagreement.

As for my fellow Clerith supporters, the next time you see the withered old canard that is "but she ded tho" being bandied about in the wild, feel free to laugh and treat it with the derision and contempt that it so richly deserves.

#final fantasy vii #ffvii #ffvii rebirth #final fantasy vii rebirth #final fantasy 7 remake #clerith #cloud x aerith #rant #final gritty reality #but she ded tho #spoilers

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pix3lplays · 11 months

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Blog intro!

Hi! I’m Pixel!

this is where I’ll be writing Honkai: Star Rail, Genshin Impact, Dr. Stone! (Spoilers for Dr. Stone’s manga are on this blog) One Piece, Hades, Kingdom Hearts, and Triangle Strategy

Also if you wish to say something to Argenti, please feel free~

here are my rules:

-I only write the male characters (Aeons get a pass for this rule)

-Only x readers, no ships

-no nsfw, although sometimes I’ll be a little suggestive haha

-I also don’t write polygamy, sorry

-please specify which men you want! Putting “the Hsr men” will result in me defaulting to whoever I feel like. No longer doing ‘All Men’ since there’s too many, thanks for understanding

-I only write Yanqing and Arlan platonically.

-Please no body based requests such as certain physical characteristics, I’m just uncomfortable writing about that. Plus sized!reader is allowed though!

-No self-harm topics please!

-No child!reader please! I’m just not interested in writing it.

-Only fem! Or GN!reader since I’m a woman and that’s what feels comfortable for me, thank you for understanding!

-Here’s the Dr. Stone characters I will write:

Senku Ishigami (in the chapters where he’s an adult) Hyoga Akatsuki Tsukasa Shishio Ryusui Nanami Stanley Snyder Dr. Xeno Houston Wingfield (I will love you forever if you send a Stanley or a Dr. Xeno request oh my gosh)

Ok so I’m not Incredibly far into the One Piece anime yet, and the freshest scenes in my mind are the Live Action stuff so please keep that in mind, try to keep spoilers to a minimum please! Anyways here’s the One Piece characters I’ll write:

Roronoa Zoro Sanji Vinsmoke Sir Crocodile Captain Smoker Portgas D. Ace Red-Haired Shanks Dracule Mihawk

So yeah, feel free to send a request for any of these characters!

I will be taking a break from Genshin

I will also write fire emblem three houses boys! I love them very much!

Added the Buddy Daddies to my list!

Here’s the Hades list:

Zagreus, Thanatos, Hypnos, Dionysus, Ares

New character!! Writing Spike Spiegel!!

Adding the Ace Attorney characters! Basically the main characters and a few villains, go ahead and ask for the character you want, I’ll most likely be confident in writing them since I Love those games and I’ve played all of them completely through except the Edgeworth ones!

Adding Epsilon from Pluto!!

Adding some Kingdom Hearts characters! Here they are: Xemnas, Xigbar, Saïx, Axel, Vexen, Marluxia, and Zexion

Final Fantasy VII characters I’ll write: Cloud, Sephiroth, Rufus, Tseng, Reno, and Reeve

I’ll write Magus from Chrono Trigger

Feel free to send in an ask! Thank you for reading!

Credits to @0fps for the header

Masterlist Masterlist II Masterlist III Masterlist IV

Masterlist V Masterlist VI

Anon list (I’m so sorry if I forgot you just remind me lol): shady anon, 🫛anon, Star Fries anon, Aquarius anon, tulip anon, Star Ruby anon, 🌌 anon, (E), 🤡anon, 🐉anon, ♣️anon, Starcatcher anon, 🌺anon, 🍂anon, 🐞anon, 🎆anon, 🍠anon, 🎲 anon, 👾anon, tea anon, Phoenix anon, top hat anon, 🫶🏻anon, sky-faring anon, 🌱anon, 🦉anon, 🧚‍♀️anon, 🪐anon, ✉️ anon, 🎪anon, 😭anon, 🎭anon, 🦭anon, 🐑anon, Argenti’s Spouse anon, 💮Anon, 🪷anon, 🪄anon, 🍡anon, 💫anon, joke anon, 🍁anon, 📦 anon, 🫧 anon, 🐜antnon, 🦜 anon, 🪽anon, 🪶anon

#Honkai: Star Rail #Honkai: Star Rail x reader #My writing rules #Dr. Stone #Dr. Stone x reader #Buddy Daddies #Buddy Daddies x reader #Ace attorney #Ace attorney x reader

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legendaryvermin · 4 months

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top 10 video games:

not strictly new. but the stuff I enjoyed most this year.

1. Sea of Stars - JRPG by the folks who made the Messenger. perfect economy of storytelling, good combat that takes notes from Paper Mario and Chrono Trigger

2. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk - Tag and Grind that could teach Sonic a thing or two. amazing game, finished it twice!

3. Chants of Senaar - Puzzle game about language. You learn and translate 5 languages while climbing a tower. super satisfying to have breakthroughs in understanding.

4. Ninja 5-0 - Lost GBA gem. This game kicks outrageous amounts of ass, and has a cool grappling hook. what more could you ask for?

5. Skies of Arcadia - Steal this mana system. also, what a delightful romp, very Dragon Quest.

6. Jedi Survivor - This game learned so much from its predecessor! it switched from a Soulsborne lens to a more Metroidvania one and I think it really paid off.

7. Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon - Friendly enough to be familiar to people who haven't followed the series, adversarial enough to get you to try new bullshit. also, spoilers, but one of the bosses is a Roomba.

8. Tears of the Kingdom - It's Banjo Ka-Zelda: Nuts and Bolts, and that's a good thing. in any other year this might be number 1.

9. Ghost of Tsushima - A wonderful set of gorgeously told short stories let down by a trope-laden and western-gazey central story that seems to fundamentally misunderstand samurai in Japanese history.

10. Baldur's Gate 3 - I reserve the right to use this again next year because I'm literally still in the underdark. it's this low because it's still D&D, for good and for ill.

#video games #goty 2023 #goty #top ten #top ten 2023 #game design #sea of stars #ninja 5-0 #ghost of tsushima #tears of the kingdom #bomb rush cyberfunk #chants of sennaar #skies of arcadia #baldur's gate 3 #jedi survivor #armored core 6

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veemo4 · 10 months

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2023 Media Thread (Re-do to add a Read More Link)

Spark The Electric Jester 3:

Man I was holding off on spoilers for MONTHS until the holidays when I could get this game, and I only beat it in the beginning of the year and well…HOLY SHIT I didn’t know I needed existentialism in my funny little platformer- Gameplay is INSANELY solid, like honestly some of my favorite platforming controls I have ever used! Music is top notch as well!

Nier Automata: The End of YoRHa Edition:

Holy fuck how did I manage to avoid spoilers for this game for YEARS??? That ending was beautiful~ (Yes I did do all the main endings)

Chrono Trigger: I should preface this by saying I did modify this game a tiiiiny bit to have PS4 button prompts and fixing the Classic filter. Other than that, I can see why it’s a lot of people’s favorite RPG! Short enough in case you wanna replay it, and the foundation of the NG+ system definitely helps incentivize replays! Can’t wait to play Chrono Cross!

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII:

I binged both FFXIII and FFXIII-2 during October and November of last year, but took a short break to avoid burnout. And well, yeah this game was neat! I will admit though that since there’s no way to REWIND time like in Majora’s Mask that I got INSANELY stressed out but that didn’t take away from the sweet release of seeing these characters I love finally get their well-deserved happy ending :)

Mega Man Zero:

I put this one off and on throughout like 2 years because I just wasn’t good at it, but it taught me a VERY good lesson in perseverance! Really excited to play Zero 2!

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion: ZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK ;w; Story was pretty…alright for the most part, but I couldn’t feel attached to any of the original characters :/ Honestly my eyes were on Zack just…being real with what’s going on. I may not feel bad for when people he cares about dies, but I can EASILY emphasize with him because I know that HE knows them. Knows them more than we ever will know. Also the gameplay and music are fucking stellar.

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes:

I should preface all of this by saying I don’t remember what order I beat all of these in lmao. Anyways my route was Golden Wildfire and the story for it is such an improvement over its equivalent in Three Houses!!! I love Shez so much as a protagonist even if his outfit is a tiny bit dumb.

Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker

Man I really wanted to like this. And like, music and area wise I loved it! But the story feels…It just doesn’t feel like the finality for all we’ve done so far. I could not care at all for Meteion because they spend approximately like 20 or 30 minutes making us meet them and then throwing us IMMEDIATELY into the angst like, no. This isn’t even a case of “Well I don’t care but I can understand why others do” NO THE GAME MAKES YOUR WOL FEEL BAD AS WELL, MEANING YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO CARE! NO! I DON’T! I was able to at least pretend a little bit to roleplay as needed but man. At least Footfalls and the post-endwalker dungeon themes kick ass though. (Warrior of Light’s name for me is M’bahlon Tia)

Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe

SO CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTE I love kirby games sm and this is no exception. REALLY loved how hard the Magolor Epilogue got at certain points though that was great.

Fire Emblem Awakening

I CAN SEE WHY THIS SAVED THE FRANCHISE WHEN IT CAME OUT!! It’s a REALLY good game! I went with the default male Robin settings since that’s what’s in Smash Bros. And man just, everything about this game is AMAZING!!! Sadly cannot see myself replaying it anytime. I could just load my endgame save and grind out support conversations with other characters or do that…new game plus thing I think it was?

Another Eden: The Cat Beyond Time and Space: Bound Wills and the Hollow Puppeteer

I did this event initially back when it came out (and in fact is the main reason why I played the game in the first place) But I got horrible units and died super often, and revived every chance I got. But losing my save data and getting a better unit HEAVILY boosted my chances of getting through the event and man, it was a lot of fun! I love seeing tiny mona :3 JUST LOOK AT HOW SMOL HE IS AAAAAAAAA

Mighty Gunvolt Burst:

I had a lot of fun with this one! I used one of the DLC characters (I think they’re the Zero character from Mighty Number 9 but) it’s a great romp!

EDIT: ALSO SHOULD MENTION IT FUCKING OWO’D ME

Final Fantasy XV

“Walk tall…my friends.” I got this game YEARS ago but haven’t truly delved into it recently. And well… That ending got to me. It really did. The gameplay took me so long to get used to (especially since I had been more used to the more refined gameplay of Final Fantasy 7 Remake 3 years prior) Music is amazing, love the characters! I just wish the other episodes were finished and weren’t just put in a novel :/

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

HOLY FUCK THIS GAME WAS SO COOL. I always heard like, right, about how good this game was but I figured it was just nostalgia talking for people. NOPE. As someone who’s first paper mario game was super (never beat it, I was a really stupid child) and then played Sticker Star (Again, very stupid child but also that game is bullshit because everything is so obtuse and it sucks) But this? This was a big breath of fresh air. I am so excited to go back and play 64 and Super!!!

The Super Mario Bros. Movie

Honestly? Way better than I was expecting. You can FEEL nintendo had a strangle-hold on the movie’s production though from how Chris Pratt in the final movie actually fucking voice acts somewhat (it’s a start), there’s no bad Illumination tropes, Peach is a dragoon, Toad and Bowser easily steal the show, and just, ALL THE REFERENCES WOW. EVEN THE NEWER THINGS. I didn’t see any Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi references though which makes me sad. I hope that if there’s a sequel it’s actually better and doesn’t fall into any traps movie sequels usually do, maybe even say if the other kingdoms from Mario Odyssey are in this universe (and maybe Isle Defino) The movie definitely could have used an extra 20 minutes spread throughout to add more to the main group dynamic.

Mega Man Zero 2

OH MY GOD THIS WAS SO MUCH BETTER BALANCE-WISE HOLY SHIT Cyber-elves requirements to be leveled up were MASSIVELY lowered and the enemy AI isn’t as overly aggressive! Loved the music too, especially Departure and the ending theme which was adapted for the song Clover! Can’t wait to do Zero 3!

WARE WA MESSIAH NARI! HAHAHA!

Mega Man Zero 3 was really good, but either I am getting way too good at these games or they are getting easier haha. Loved the music and gameplay though, and how Cyber Elves were handled here is absolutely the best they have ever been! If there’s any game in this series I am gonna replay, it’s Zero 3 without a doubt! On to Mega Man Zero 4, the last of the GBA era.

Mega Man Zero 4

I finally did it. I beat the entire Mega Man Zero series. While I do not agree with how the parts and cyber elf system were handled, It was not a bad experience by any means! It felt nice following Zero’s character arc throughout these games. I’m maybe gonna take a break before I tackle Mega Man ZX, but hey, I feel like that game’s gonna be fun! It’s the only one I actually OWN on its original hardware after all! :D

Sonic and the Black Knight

This was a fun distraction for a few hours! I had a lot of fun with this! Granted the second King Arthur fight took me an hour but besides that it was a quick and good romp! Probably has one of the best final boss themes in a sonic game I’ve ever heard! :D

The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past

Pretty fun game all things considered, but I didn’t like how punishing some of the design philosophies were in the end parts of the game. Music’s great though! Maybe I’ll revisit it one day, but not anytime soon. Still, can’t say I disliked my experience.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Where…do I even begin with this?…It was…genuinely amazing. I was waiting for a sequel to Breath of the Wild for years, and during my high school years I was wondering how they would even follow it up! Doing a sequel to an open-world game is harder than a lot of other genres. But yet….they did it. They somehow did it. Those 6 years of development time more than paid off. It felt…amazing to run around a changed Hyrule from the last game. The mechanics were amazing, and the character development was really cool! The new rune abilities are dope!!! BUT THE MUSIC MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM THE MUSIC OH THE MUSIC IS SO GOOD THE ENDING MUSIC MADE ME ACTUALLY CRY AHHHHHHHH PLAY THIS GAME PLAY IT NOW

Kirby and the Forgotten Land

And here we are! Finally got around to this! It was a really dope game! Loved the combat and music! I even did most of the bonus content and the Ultimate Cup Z, but I kept dying at the final phase of the final boss of that so I just gave up lol, it’s purely bonus content anyways lol. But honestly I loved this game! Can’t wait for the next mainline kirby game!

The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD

FINALLY GOT AROUND TO PLAYING THIS ONE! I owned this on real hardware since its release date but never got far. I finally got around to it with the motivation of beating Tears of the Kingdom, and I gotta say, it’s pretty good! Not exactly like, absolutely top tier game that everyone MUST play but, it’s decent! Bosses are a big sour point though. Music was pretty decent, though the final dungeon theme is a bore. Only other current Zelda games I gotta beat are the 2D/Top-Down ones, so maybe I’ll do one of those next! Possibly either Phantom Hourglass or Spirit Tracks.

Pokémon Scarlet

HOLY SHIT THAT ENDING SEQUENCE WAS ACTUALLY COOL AS HELL!!! Like yeah, the game has its decent chunk of technical issues but, holy shit….those last two hours of the main story are phenomenal. TOBY FOX CONTINUES TO BE THE GOAT THE MUSIC HE COMPOSED IS AMAZING! I love how easier it is to capture pokemon compared to Sword and Shield as well. I do like Dynamax raids more as a multiplayer component, but I much prefer the Tera mechanic in terms of PVP. I stlll need to do the post game before the dlc comes out later this year, but all I really got is just the refights against the gym leaders and all that jazz. There’s also the Needle thingies I gotta pull out and the wall things I gotta investigate in order to get the other legendaries, but all I really care about is finishing the core of the main story, I got other games to get to lol. Probably thinking of either Paper Mario or Chrono Cross next haha.

Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Final: Build & Ex-Aid with Legend Riders

Okay so context: my friend @arcadiusdragoneyes is showing me and @darkspine576 Kamen Rider Build since it’s one of his favorites and he wanted to indoctrinate introduce us into Kamen Rider AND IT’S FUCKING WORKING. I only know one part of this crossover, but I think it did a good job of giving across the feel of the other Kamen Rider series very well! Kamen Rider Build is so extra I love it. Can’t wait to finish Kamen Rider Build!

#long post

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silent-partner-412 · 3 months

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you know what, fuck it. here’s all the things i would’ve changed about sea of stars. i’m not a writer so i don’t know if i would’ve done it *well* but there are a few things that fell a bit flat for me even if i really enjoyed it as a whole. spoilers for the whole game.

1. i think the true ending was well intentioned and i love garl but this was a moment where the game felt too beholden to chrono trigger to me. garl’s death sequence was fantastic, and i feel like the impact of it got softened a little since he ended up just being brought back in the end in a sequence almost identical to the chrono trigger resurrection.

2. we absolutely should have gotten at least one more moment with resh’an at the end. it really sucks that he just kinda leaves the story right at the end, especially since he was one of my favorite characters. i also really wish we could’ve gotten some more moments with him and aephorul, i imagine sabotage has plans with them based on what i know about the lore of their games but i think there was a piece missing with them in this game. even just a small thing where resh’an comes back to the party right before the end and says something cryptic about what he was up to, or even just a couple words between him and aephorul during the final boss would’ve probably been okay with me.

3. though i do think people overstate how much it hurts the game and its story, i do wish zale and valere had more personality. i think they both could’ve used an individual side quest to flesh them out a bit individually, and i wish they had some personality traits that separated them a bit. as it is they kind of both just feel like bland player conduits, which sort of sucks when a third of your main party is characters like this. plus like, i love their designs so much, i wish i felt more connected to them overall.

4. i also wish b’st got more time. he really suffered from late game party member syndrome in his writing and you can tell his main purpose was to give you a fifth party member soon after garl’s death. but the dude is so charming and fun, i just didn’t feel like his quest in the arena was enough for me.

5. i think what i personally would’ve done to fix all this would be to scrap the true ending entirely (i would make the reward for the conches be the developer room since that shit was cool as hell and i appreciated it as both a chrono trigger and the messenger fan) and make both the fight with erlina and aephorul part of the main quest. at some point during this time, i would also have resh’an come back to the party for real. i would give b’st a longer, more involved quest (possibly relating to the village of lost souls he comes from?), and both zale and valere an individual side quest that reveals parts of them that dont make them feel like carbon copies of each other.

looking back at this i’m realizing this is all criticisms related to the characters lol. i genuinely really liked the whole cast, i felt more attached to them than the chrono trigger cast i’d say. but i feel like you can kind of tell that the game sabotage made before sea of stars was one where characters weren’t really the focus cuz all of them sort of feel like they could’ve been handled a bit better. overall though i still really really enjoyed the story, the big plot beats all hit really well and i was invested the whole time. also the lore of this game and how it connected to the sabostudio universe as a whole was soooo delicious. but it wasn’t perfect, and i hope maybe the dlc will address some of my complaints.

#sea of stars #sea of stars spoilers #sabotage studios #THIS IS NOT A NEGATIVE POST #this is meant to be constructive criticism not complaining #i’m criticizing the game but none of this was deal breakers to me #i goddamn loved the game #it was my 2023 goty easily #but there are still some things people have said about this game i agree with and thought i’d get those off my chest in this post

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the-kittylorian-writes · 1 year

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"All The Little Foundlings"

Rating: General Audiences Type: One-shot Word Count: 6.5k+ Summary:

After Ragnar’s harrowing experience which sent his father Paz and a rescue party to come after him, the boy grew more fears and lost his confidence. The clan of two decide to help him in their own ways— but how will Ragnar take it?

Set after events of s03ep04 or Chapter 20 “The Foundling.”

Spoilers for s03ep04

Read on AO3 or here:

Trigger Warning: Discussion of phobias, exposure therapy, a scene of kids bullying each other

"All The Little Foundlings"

“Ragnar?”

Ragnar Vizsla burrowed himself deeper into his blankets. He’d shot the fabric over his head until it tented all over him and he was cocooned. He let the light of his antiquated datapad shine on his visor as he ignored his father’s call for the fourth time today. It was not even noon.

“Ragnar!” Paz’s bounding steps drew closer to their shared quarters as well as his booming voice, but the call wasn’t forceful or cruel.

“I’m studying, Dad!” was Ragnar’s brief reply. He’d yelled it once, certain that the thick blankets would muffle the words out.

He hated how his voice quivered. He’d skipped classes for a day as the Covert’s baar’ur suggested it after giving him a thorough once-over. Ragnar had suffered minor gashes and scrapes, but the real wounds which the baar’ur saw weren’t on the surface, Ragnar figured. He remembered how he’d respond seconds late to all the questions the good-natured medic had asked him; some questions Paz had to answer himself as Ragnar remained silent and uncooperative.

“He’s still in a state of shock,” Ragnar heard the medic tell his father, as if he weren’t in the examination room with them. “An entire day’s rest would do him good.”

Ragnar couldn’t sleep that night. The medic had given Paz something to administer to Ragnar should the boy be unable to get any restful slumber before the daylight hour struck. Whatever it was, it tasted like taffy. It made him drowsy but his mind raced and his insides trembled. His father had been by his side throughout the ordeal. Before he knew it, Ragnar had awoken from sleep he never knew overtook him. The flickering chrono on his datapad showed he’d only dozed for two hours.

The child would rather stay awake, in all honesty. When he shut his eyes, he’d feel the world tilt around him. He dreamt that the water had bubbled with all sorts of misshapen monsters, and the sky swirled and from a vortex of blood-red clouds spewed out another host of even more misshapen creatures. He’d wake up sobbing, but his father had been there at the foot of his cot. He was there when he awoke from that nightmare, and Ragnar had flung his arms around his father and wouldn’t let go. Paz had allowed it, but not right after the hulking Mandalorian was shaken awake himself by the abrupt weight thrown at him which was his son in frantic need of comfort.

He’d sleep and wake and sleep in a maddening cycle of instability within a span of a day and a half. Ragnar avoided the sleep-inducing taffy and snuck in some caf from the grown-ups’ table at first meal. One sip was enough to keep the child on edge, but Ragnar would rather endure small jitters than the dark dreams of being helplessly trapped within the raptor’s food pouch, stuck between throat and belly. It was sticky and disgustingly humid, with just enough air to sustain him without getting delirious. The pouch’s thick mucosa had kept him from thrashing no matter how hard Ragnar tried. He’d cried for long hours. It was the first time he’d heard himself wail piteously underneath the helm. He sounded like a disembodied soul.

Then, Ragnar knew he’d heard his father’s voice a few moments before the beast decided to cough him out into the open to feed its young.

It was his indeed father, and in a riotous burst of euphoria and then utter fright, Ragnar had thought he’d seen the last of himself and his beloved dad.

“Ragnar,” Paz called once more, pulling Ragnar back to the present. His father’s gruff voice encompassed the room.

Ragnar didn’t budge. He knew his father stood in front of him, but with the bundle of blanket all over his person, he also knew he was but a grey and shapeless mound in the eyes of one of the Covert’s best fighters.

“I’m studying Mando’a, Dad,” Ragnar insisted underneath his cocoon. The words on his datapad began to blur; he’d been staring at the same page mindlessly as the minutes ticked by. “I missed yesterday’s lessons.”

Paz released a chest-deep sigh. “You’re excused from lessons for now, ad’ika. Baar’ur would like to see you again. Would that be all right?”

The boy froze. Despite his general misgivings, he couldn’t exactly refuse his father. Paz had sacrificed so much to get to him and rescue him. The silver Mandalorian and the Nite Owl whose names escaped Ragnar had been with his father during that rescue along with a squad of others. It was the silver Mandalorian who’d brought him back to the safety of Paz’s arms. The ship which brought them home belonged to the Nite Owl.

Ragnar couldn’t look at both of them in the eye, so to speak. He’d run straight to the baar’ur as soon as he’d clasped arms with his fellow foundlings in a joyous greeting party. He’d never as much veered out of his way to chance upon the two Mandalorians since then. He avoided the little green foundling, too.

Ragnar sulked for a second. With a resigned frown, he unbundled himself from the blanket pile.

Paz was just a mere foot away; the giant of a warrior had taken a low wooden seat in a posture which spelled patience. His father may have been calling him multiple times, but his body language exuded a great degree of understanding.

The child marveled at how wonderfully gentle and relieved his father’s voice sounded. “Come on. Off we go.”

-*-*-

The baar’ur was a woman with deep orange and dark crimson armor. She had Ragnar hold both his arms out for a few seconds; she studied his posture.

“Are you still feeling unwell, Ragnar?” asked the medic matter-of-factly. For a split-second, the boy turned to Paz who stood a few paces behind him on the examination table. His father gave him a small nod of assurance.

“I guess I feel much better now,” replied the boy.

The lie caught up with him quickly. Ragnar felt disappointment in his gut when he saw what made the baar’ur seem dissatisfied with his answer. His arms held aloft were quaking of their own accord. Ragnar couldn’t believe it at first; he’s always had great control over his body after long months of training—his arms betrayed him. He suddenly felt cold and his hands grew clammy.

“Hm,” said the medic thoughtfully after instructing him to take it easy. Impulsively, Ragnar crossed his arms around him; his mind went blank. The medic had set Paz aside and confided in him for what seemed like a stretch of hours.

Ragnar hated himself at the moment. He didn’t mean to be a handful. He didn’t mean to seem so weak, when he’d been told time and again that the Mandalorians valued strength. But above all, as the Armorer had drilled into their lessons: survival was their strength. As far as Ragnar knew, he’d been the first foundling who’d been successfully retrieved from the literal jaws of death. The others hadn’t been so lucky.

The baar’ur was speaking to him again before Ragnar realized that his mind had drifted off.

“What is that you’re most afraid of now, Ragnar?” she asked.

Ragnar flinched. “W-what?” When he turned to Paz for guidance once more, a chill struck him to the core when he saw that his father had stepped out of the room. The medic must have noticed that he boy kept relying on Paz’s approval for every move he made or every word he spoke.

Ragnar needed to be honest.

“I hate the water,” spat the boy at last. “I hate the sky. I hate… I hate this planet!”

He couldn’t reel himself in for the last one. He did feel a colossal wave of relief after admitting to those fears; it had taken a huge weight off his shoulders. An infernal ball of shame that overcame him trickled in seconds after.

“I—I didn’t mean…”

The medic gently motioned him to silence.

“It’s all right, Ragnar,” she said soothingly. It flowed like clotted cream from her vocoder. “We know this planet has brought us great challenge, but that was why we had chosen it. Trials and adversities sharpen us like tools. As for those fears—I believe we can get to the root of that. Every warrior has their fears, and we’d like to defeat those fears, yes?”

Ragnar’s voice was lodged in his throat. With a mute nod, he acceded.

The medic’s voice sounded hopeful. “Very well.”

Ragnar wasn’t sure if he was indeed amenable to the implications of those words.

-*-*-

“ STOP!! STOP IT!!”

Two other foundlings much older than Ragnar held him fast on either side as they slowly dragged him out into the open, straight to the embankment. The suns overhead were suddenly a blight over his skin, despite being covered from head to toe. The world was tilting around him again and the droll laughter of the two helmed teenagers gripping his arms, keeping him from breaking free suddenly felt like a shroud licking at his consciousness.

Ragnar shouldn’t have told them what he was up to.

The baar’ur had called it “exposure therapy.” His father had agreed to it as much as Ragnar believed he did so himself—he wanted to get better. Exposure therapy was gradual, but these two truants hadn’t taken him seriously. Ragnar had the spotlight for only one morning, on the day he returned in one piece with the rescue party. They’d showered him with praises: how brave he was, how steadfast his spirit was for weathering the night close to the belly of a raptor beast. There were pats on the back, clasps on the arm, warm head-butts and warmer cheers.

The novelty of it quickly eroded away. Now, he was just Ragnar the scaredy-Tooka.

“Little Vizsla can’t get near the water without wetting his underpants,” one of the older boys jeered.

“His dad’s gonna disown him ‘coz he’s nuna poodoo!” hollered the other.

Children can be cruel. Ragnar had always known this. He’d played with them and fought with them long enough to recognize power play among the foundlings. The more scathing the teasing, the better. He’d tried his hand in it himself, and with a heavy heart, he realized that he didn’t possess a knack for overly brutish insults.

“LET ME GO!” cried Ragnar as he planted himself heavily on the sand to weigh the teenagers down.

He began to tremble like a feeble newborn pup. The sky was so vast around him. He could hear the lapping of the shore nearby.

No adult Mandalorians were within earshot, it seemed. It was foolish for Ragnar to try to take the medic’s advice without proper protocol. From now on, Ragnar felt doomed to always learn the hard way. It seemed as though he’d become wired towards his own downfall.

Under the helm, Ragnar shut his eyes tight. An unbidden sob escaped his throat. The teenagers were prevailing over his strength. He thought he felt the weight of water jab at his boots…

Then he heard the shocked and vexed screams of his persecutors—they’d suddenly released him and to his own shock, Ragnar saw them fly out on either direction as if they’d been taken out by an unseen grenade blast.

They trailed forcefully over the sand, leaving jagged marks amidst a puff of golden yellow grains. They swore and coughed, and swore some more. “What the hell?!”

Ragnar felt bare, but his senses had suddenly become sharp as he’d been trained to, when he could be in real danger. He’d become more attentive now, especially after mistakenly letting his guard down which had allowed the raptor to snatch him up.

He’d turned to the source of an angry string of babbles.

There, standing under the shadow of a crest of sandstone was the little green foundling, both of his tiny clawed hands upright. He was wearing a very determined look on his crumpled little face.

“What the—“ The two teenagers seemed to have caught the drift of things. Even through their visors, Ragnar could feel raging disbelief emanate from the two older boys. Dusting themselves up, pinning the little green child with their helmed gazes for a second, they began bolting for the sanctuary of the cave.

“Yeah, that’s right!” roared Ragnar shrilly at the two. “Touch me again and you’ll get what’s coming to you!”

There were no replies of retaliation. Ragnar was panting from the adrenaline surge of his earlier panic. He calmed his heart down, and when all was quiet, he turned to the green baby.

He felt heat course over his cheeks. He’d had a bit of contempt towards this child before. Rumor had it that this kid was special, other than the fact that he was of a different, rare sort of species.

“Th-thanks,” Ragnar finally told the green baby after a lengthy standstill of him and the kid just staring at each other in uncertainty.

The kid’s face was suddenly alight. Ragnar was mystified. The child was grinning, baring his tiny sharp teeth and pink tongue. Then, he giggled and waved in glee.

The baby didn’t toddle away. Ragnar didn’t know how else to continue this interaction, but he couldn’t linger out in the open. When he took a few steps forward, the child waddled awkwardly to the same direction, his beige robe hampering his steps. Ragnar took a few steps to another direction; the baby followed.

Where’s the kid’s dad? Ragnar wondered.

The suns were beating down on him again, and once more Ragnar felt his pulse race.

The baby seemed to understand his inner dilemma. The green child’s head tilted and made a sound of inquiry. “Baaah?”

Ragnar was dumbfounded. This kid’s dad was right—he didn’t know how to speak. Without words Ragnar could understand, he was at loss.

“Grogu!”

Ragnar gasped; the green baby squealed in delight in reaction to the voice.

Out from a rocky bend emerged the silver Mandalorian. “Grogu,” the man called again, and said child immediately broke into an even more gawky run towards his father.

Ragnar hardly moved a muscle as the silver Mandalorian took notice of him.

Grogu, Ragnar thought, memorizing the kid’s name.

The Mandalorian had picked his boy up, and Grogu settled easily on the crook of his father’s arm. The man regarded Ragnar for a while.

“You alone out here, kid?” inquired of the silver Mandalorian.

Ragnar shrugged, pretending nonchalance. “Wasn’t. Roarke and Joff tried to bully me but—“ Ragnar talked fast and was out of breath when he pointed at Grogu. “He saved me. How does he do that? Does he have powers?”

The words came out the moment Ragnar thought them. He’d become too excited and flustered. Maybe that’s why they’d told him the kid was special. He’d been told that Grogu once trained with sorcerers. Did that make Grogu a baby sorcerer? That would be… wizard.

The silver Mandalorian didn’t beat around the bush. “He does.”

“That’s so wizard!” Ragnar remarked aloud. He didn’t mean to sound as though he choked in his own fascination. “So what else can he do?”

Grogu made a sound of what seemed like a squeak of protest. The kid’s father chuckled in response.

“You’ll see. Grogu and I were on our way to feeding the raptor hatchlings when he knew you seemed to be in some kind of trouble. We’re going there now. Wanna come with?”

Oh gods, Ragnar thought, breaking in cold sweat. He forgot to mention this to the baar’ur. What else did he fear?

Those raptors.

He forgot all about the baby raptors. He hated being in storage within their mother’s food pouch. He hated the way he’d been flung about in the clawed hold of the beast at breakneck speed. Now, there were three of its babies the Covert needed to manage and tame. These beasts were too wild and this planet seemed too frontier. They had little experience with such savage creatures.

Exposure therapy, Ragnar also reminded himself, and this time, he was in the presence of a grown-up. Maybe he’ll be okay—and his dad seemed to trust the silver Mandalorian enough.

Ragnar gathered all his courage before he replied.

“Okay.”

-*-*-

The hatchlings’ enclosure had been quickly welded together. It was wide and high but tucked over a large stone outcrop where it would not be too exposed to the elements. The enclosure was reinforced by beskar, it seemed. Ragnar held his breath as he heard the raptors’ little shrieks again, and with their small beaks tried to nibble at the enclosure frame. The frame rattled but held fast.

Ragnar trailed his gaze upwards. A sentry watchtower was positioned nearby where a Mandalorian guard can keep an eye on the hatchlings in shifts.

They were, after all, now part of the Covert as foundlings. Ragnar had scoffed at the thought. Their mother had tried to make her babies eat him, for Maker’s sake! And who knows how many bits of unfortunate foundling made their way to these babies’ bellies? Ragnar grew squeamish.

Ragnar stilled his quivering breaths. He gingerly followed Grogu and his dad, who approached the enclosure in very calm and sure strides.

Grogu uttered a series of melodious babbles that reverberated through the enclosure.

What followed shortly took Ragnar in complete and utter awe.

The hatchlings ceased all their frenetic squawking and flailing. They quieted down as Grogu held out his three-fingered hand over them.

The raptors eyed Grogu curiously with their beady eyes on their skeletal-hollow features.

“Easy, Grogu. Remember—easy does it, kid. Like last time. All right?” encouraged his father.

Soon, the raptors were trilling happily after cautious sniffs and attempted bumps of their equally skeletal beaks on Grogu’s hand.

The silver Mandalorian turned to him.

“Here,” said the man, propping Grogu into Ragnar’s arms with little warning. Grogu giggled and wiggled in his arms. Ragnar hissed nervously; he didn’t want to drop the baby. In that vein, Ragnar was surprised that Grogu weighed no heavier than a Loth-wolf pup of about a week old.

“Sir?” Ragnar didn’t know what else to call Grogu’s dad.

“It’s Din,” the silver Mandalorian told him. “Just call me that. I’ll be back in a jiffy. The raptors’ food should be ready.”

Grogu wriggled some more in Ragnar’s arms. The boy stared at the green baby, then at the raptors, then at the baby again.

“Let me get this straight,” Ragnar said thoughtfully. “So, you’re a kid sorcerer who’s now a foundling who has magic powers, and your dad’s name is ‘Din.’ Did I get that correct?”

“Bwahhh! Baa!” said Grogu.

Ragnar shrugged. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ You really should learn how to speak Basic soon, so you can swear the Creed like me and the other kids, and get a pretty amazing helmet. And soon after that, they’re gonna teach you Mando’a. It’s part of our six tenets so that part sure is coming.”

“Ooooohhhhhh,” bawled Grogu in seeming affirmation. He held a hand again and the raptors had sat on their haunches, behaved, peaceful as peas on a pod. This certainly didn’t escape Ragnar’s attention.

“And I suppose you can—like—I don’t know, tame creatures and make them like you?”

Ragnar felt a little doltish speaking to a child who can’t communicate normally as other foundlings did.

“Eh, eh!” replied Grogu with a grin. His huge green ears arched in what Ragnar believed was pride.

Ragnar found himself giggling in spite of himself. His giggle morphed into a more nervous one when he realized that Din hasn’t made his way back yet.

“What’s taking your dad so long, Grogu?”

Abruptly, the three raptor babies shot out in unison, seemingly freed out of their serene mood. Ragnar had been close to yelling in fright, but in embarrassment, he soon spotted Din hauling a large sloshing vat full of dinosaur turtle meat. There had been so many left over from the kill Din himself had done over a fortnight ago. They’ve already been swimming in dinosaur turtle broth and jerky for days.

The irony was that the monstrous creature had tried turning Ragnar into food then, and these raptor hatchlings’ mother had been outright dinner for another dinosaur turtle in the churning, horrid waters. That was as much Ragnar saw as Din had scooped him out of plunging into sure death.

Ragnar’s blood turned cold. He couldn’t imagine his father Paz all alone again, mourning for him for Maker knows how long. Other parents were still grieving over the foundlings they’d lost.

“Okay, Grogu. Ragnar,” Din breathed, settling the vat down.

Ragnar’s heart leapt when he heard a familiar grunt of effort not far behind. Sure enough, Paz’s towering form appeared seconds after, the heavy gunner hauling two vats in his wake.

The boy silently chuckled at how Din seemed to feign disinterest over his father’s feat of strength. The silver Mandalorian was heaving over one vat. Paz barely broke a sweat over two.

“Dad!” Ragnar called happily over the ruckus caused by the hungry hatchlings. Their bony avian wings flailed about in anticipation over a hearty meal.

Paz was spiritedly huffing. “Thought it’d take you a good minute to finally face this sort of fear, Ragnar.” The large man plucked a couple of feeding spikes from the side of the outcrop where implements to care for the hatchlings were stored.

“Dad!” Ragnar protested in annoyance. Not in front of Grogu and Din!

“Now—careful, don’t get too close,” Paz boomed without skipping a beat. “These guys need to be fed twice a day with moderately large feedings. This would be their first meal of the day.”

“We don’t know much yet about these raptors,” Din added. “This species seems native to a couple of systems, but we haven’t encountered one this close before, let alone one adult and three babies.” “I bet,” Ragnar piped up without much thinking. He stiffened when he caught Paz shooting him a look through the visor. The boy quailed a little. Grogu was still buzzing like a bee in his hold.

When feeding proper began, Ragnar didn’t feel too inclined to release Grogu from his hold. The green baby seemed to be expertly keeping the hatchlings at bay. The boy only held his mettle for as long as he did because he’d felt that Grogu was shielding him from danger. However, Din was motioning Ragnar to return Grogu to his hold… the boy hesitated.

“Ragnar,” came Paz’s tone of gentle reprimand.

“Um…”

Din appeared to consider something. The man turned to Paz in some sort of wordless comprehension. His father gave Din a curt nod.

Din had popped open his vat of hatchling food. Taking a feeding spike, the man drove it through the vat, successfully spearing through three large pieces, arrayed like barbecued steak.

He had such a fearless, devil-may-care stance as he moved ever closer to the hatchlings. Ragnar swallowed hard; Din was no farther than a meter away. He held the feeding spike up, and like famished womp rats, the hatchlings hacked at the meat with their bony beaks. Din held his ground, keeping the spike in place as the babies ravaged their meal.

The hatchlings were oddly quiet, chomping at the meat in bliss, their eyes half-closed in contentment.

“Ragnar,” began Din, to the boy’s surprise.

“Yeah?” Ragnar had begun to find comfort in Din’s timbre. It was unlike his father’s, but there was truly something… paternal about it, all the same. A father’s voice held a secret kind of wisdom. Ragnar couldn’t place it; he just knew that such phenomena existed, as evidenced by Paz’s own voice.

The silver Mandalorian’s helm hadn’t turned to him as he spoke, but it was somber and respectful. Ragnar felt oddly peaceful.

“When I was your age, did you know what my biggest fear was?” Din continued.

Ragnar exchanged glances with Grogu, but the green child only stared back at him with the same wide-eyed expression. He fought the urge to turn to Paz and ask for assurance as he would often do in times like these.

“No, um, Din, sir,” replied the boy. He couldn’t just address someone else’s dad at an overly comfortable first-name basis.

“It was droids,” deadpanned Din.

Ragnar was seized with puzzlement, coupled with the curiosity of knowing the rest of Din’s story. “Droids, Din, sir?”

Din spaced out the conversation by taking the spike to the vat once more and provided the hatchlings with their second serving. As the raptor babies munched on, Din’s stance further relaxed.

“I lost my birth parents to battle droids. I was orphaned at a very young age, like you. And like you, the Mandalorians rescued me, welcomed me into the Tribe, gave me a family and a home. But I never forgot the droids. They frightened me, and it didn’t matter if they were battle droids or not. For years, I hated droids.”

That was when Din slowly turned to him. “I’ve undergone exposure therapy too. It’s never easy, but it had to be done. I struggled, I cried, I threw up.”

Din didn’t seem perturbed over Paz’s small chuckle. Ragnar wondered how far Din and his father heralded back. Did they grow up together? There appeared to be common memory of what Din was relaying to him. There was still so much to know.

“You can’t go into battle half a warrior, kid,” Din went on. “You’ll do fine. You’re handling it better than I ever did.”

To Ragnar’s surprise, and very much to his suppressed delight, it was Paz who punctuated today’s lesson on courage:

“Learn to face the fire that burned you,” Paz said, tone regal and low.

Oh great, Ragnar thought, however brimming with elation he was over his dad offering him more of his fatherly wisdom. The dads are tag-teaming me about my fears.

The hatchlings were growing restless again after chewing on the last meaty bits scattered all over their makeshift nest.

Din then handed him the feeding spike. “Now you try.”

Ragnar breathed out a thorough sigh to unravel his nerves. He turned to Grogu again, and the child gripped his arms once, as though giving him a bit of reassurance.

“Thanks, Grogu,” gulped Ragnar. With another heaving sigh, he exchanged Grogu for the feeding spike from Din’s outstretched hand.

“Here goes nothing,” muttered Ragnar as he dove the spike into the vat, and the slosh of still-fresh dinosaur turtle meat met his ears.

-*-*-

In three days, Ragnar felt he’d known Grogu all his life. At least, that was the reason he gave himself to justify always keeping the green child by his side. Grogu was indeed like a literal shield. Roarke and Joff had ceased to pester him whenever Grogu was around, and when Grogu wasn’t, they were in training where no one was allowed any form of miscreant behavior.

Grogu was with him when Ragnar would train closer to the water. He still broke in cold sweat, and he thought he’d even unfortunately developed a temporary stutter, but all it needed was Grogu’s melodious little babble to keep him grounded.

When they’d feed the hatchlings, Grogu would always be there. At least either Din or Paz would supervise them; eventually, Ragnar felt the trail of minuscule disapproval from his father which quite saddened him. He knew Paz wouldn’t shock him with a scolding over not fully facing the fire. Ragnar soon wondered if his “gradually” was “too slow.” He’d been told that everyone healed at their own pace, but what if he were deliberately stunting the journey?

Four days, then five. A full standard week, and nearly not a single waking hour had passed without Ragnar stringing Grogu around. Din couldn’t even get a minute with his own son as Grogu appeared to have become quite comfortable with Ragnar’s company. Another irony, considering that they didn’t exactly start off on the right foot.

One afternoon, as the suns set, Grogu had led Ragnar much closer to the edge of the water. The child motioned Ragnar to sit beside him, upon the wet sand.

“You sure this is a good idea?”

Grogu patted the space close to him.

“Okay,” Ragnar dubiously complied.

The boy stilled his breaths. He felt his insides turn to ice as the water and the sky beat on him again, and he was a kettledrum, beat until his inner world was bruised. But Grogu was here. He kept his heart rate at a steady pace. One can control one’s inner workings with discipline. Those were one of the many lessons during training.

Upon the warm sand, Ragnar continued to settle from within as he had settled without.

He felt Grogu’s clawed hand drape over his own.

Something like a fizzle of unexplainable energy sparked from Grogu’s little hand to his. Ragnar described it afterwards as he reviewed the day before bed that it felt like he’d swallowed a huge mint and now his insides were all… minty. It wasn’t a bad sensation at all. He remembered how calm he’d become, how secure he’d felt even as he sat barely inches away from what was still one of his worst fears.

Ragnar thought he’d imagined rocks dancing all around him. Wow, had I lost my mind or what?

Grogu sputtered out in bursts of laughter as the rocks grew spindly legs. They walked sideways and all-the-ways, but never bumping into each other and flitting over the two children.

“Crabs?!” Ragnar marveled aloud.

The crabs this time of year had shinier mother-of-pearl shells. They all crawled patiently into the water, and the suns had shone on their bodies. Soon, the water appeared to be filled with a million faceted diamonds, or stars; the water shimmered in glorious colors. His HUD registered it tremendously, and perhaps even enhanced it. He was transfixed.

Ragnar tried to hide the exhilaration in his voice. “Hey—that’s actually pretty,” he told Grogu simply. He didn’t want to sound that this experience was knocking his equilibrium off-guard as well as strangely stabilizing it, all at the same time.

This was the longest he’d stayed at the edge of the water as he watched the crabs gradually disappear into the depths. Nary a massive creature shot up from the waters or shot down from the sky.

When they’d both left the bank, the suns were close to setting. The horizon was a thin veil of rippling orange and purple.

“Hey, Grogu,” Ragnar nudged at the green child as he walked at the baby’s pace. He’d decided not to hold onto Grogu this time like a shield.

“Bwaaah?” asked the child.

“They’re totally right. You are magical.”

Grogu giggled.

-*-*-

By the end of another standard week, even the Armorer was impressed.

So far, Ragnar and Grogu were the only two foundlings who had begun to feed the hatchlings by hand. The rest of the kids still hung on to their feeding spikes as though those tools, in turn, were their shields.

Judge had vocalized the very words which the adults had wanted to convey:

“It can take months to be able to feed wild creatures by hand. It takes endless patience. That’s a very viable sign that a wild beast has been tamed—when they can finally eat from your hand with no sign of aggression.”

Ragnar and Grogu, this time, claimed the spotlight in tandem. Ragnar knew that such glories were fleeting, as he’d witnessed before. But soon the rest of the foundlings were a gaggle around him and the green child. The smaller ones who hadn’t sworn the Creed yet looked up to them like he and Grogu were the embodiment of Kad Ha’rangir themselves, whom they learned in school was the ancient Mandalorian god of destruction and rebirth.

“A little extreme,” Ragnar had commented to Grogu, “but yeah, we’ll take it.”

Grogu agreed.

-*-*-

The hatchlings were soon tame enough to be let out of their enclosure. The Armorer had forged for each of the three juvenile raptors a collar which identified the creatures. They were all young males but still looked fairly identical. The little mythosaur-embossed collars were draped on the creatures by none other than Ragnar and Grogu. Their respective fathers had the honor as well of adjusting the collars to each raptor’s size, until they were comfortably custom-fit but left enough room for growth, before adjustments would commence again.

“One day, we’re gonna ride these guys,” Ragnar had suggested to Grogu. Grogu made huge motions with his stubby arms.

“I’m not sure what you just said, honestly,” Ragnar admitted, “but if you said you’re claiming Lotho, nope, too bad—I’ll be riding Lotho! You can ride Argo or Buck!”

Lotho, to Ragnar’s eyes, was the handsomest of the raptor brothers—considering how skeletal and sharp and leathery they all looked. They were starting to grow the tough hide of their mother.

On one feeding session, Ragnar hardly believed his own ears when he’d specifically apologized to Lotho over having their mother killed.

“I’m sorry, Lotho. It was either me or your mom. I don’t think I’m sorry that I ended up alive, but I’m sorry all the same that you lost your mom. I think she was a good mom, all things considered.” Ragnar shuddered at the memory; there were still vestiges he knew would not leave him for a longer time. “I hope you’d forgive the Mandalorians for that.”

He also remembered how silly he’d become, confiding in non-sentient creatures which only acted according to their respective natures. When Ragnar was kidnapped to be turned into raptor dinner, he’d made peace with the fact that it was nothing personal. He was visible prey and was taken because he’d let his defenses down, crushed by his defeat to Grogu at the time.

Lotho had bumped its beak over Ragnar’s outstretched hand.

Grogu had been at a farther end with Din, and they had been adjusting Buck’s collar. The raptors’ names weren’t their idea, moreover. He giggled at the thought of the Nite Owl, whom he now knew whose name was Bo-Katan, had provided the monickers to the raptors.

“I’m just naming them after the Corellian hounds my dad had when I was little. They were seven, but I’ve named them after my best three.”

There was warmth to her voice which Ragnar had grown accustomed to, as well.

-*-*-

A standard month had passed. The Covert was abuzz with all sorts of news but Ragnar and Grogu had their own affairs. They were prepping another of the foundlings, Alia, to swear the Creed.

On the other hand, Ragnar and little Alia were trying to make Grogu repeat some words after them, parts and parcels of what Ragnar remembered was the Creed he needed to declare during his own verd’goten.

Grogu wasn’t repeating words. He repeated inflections, but he continued to babble and buzz. He sounded like intermittent com-link static sometimes.

“You’ll learn to speak Basic eventually,” Ragnar insisted. “There’s no way I’d grow up and maybe start a family and all that, and your dad’s grown much older, and you don’t have your helmet yet!”

Something struck Ragnar after a while. Alia had skipped to her parents in further preparation as the Covert had gathered close to the water once again, just as they had when Ragnar had earned his helmet, to never take it off again in front of any living being.

The boy bent over to Grogu, and with a kind whisper, asked the child—

“Grogu… is speaking Basic one of your worst fears?”

The green baby looked very hesitant. Grogu fidgeted; he shot his wide-eyed gaze everywhere save on Ragnar.

Ragnar instantly felt regret of bringing it up. He tenderly laid a hand on Grogu’s fuzzy head.

“Don’t sweat it for now,” he advised his friend. As an afterthought, Ragnar added with a sagacity he’d siphoned from his father, Paz Vizsla: “One day, you’ll learn to face the fire that burned you.”

That afternoon, it was Grogu who’d insisted on staying in Ragnar’s arms instead of Din’s during Alia’s verd’goten. Even Lotho, Argo, and Buck were there, charmingly obedient by Bo-Katan’s side. Ragnar gave out a wide smile at the sight, certain that no one would see that stupid grin on his face underneath the helmet.

Close to the water and under the sky, Alia repeated the Creed after the Armorer, and nary a beast shot out of the ocean’s depths or shot down from the burning bright horizon.

“This is the Way,” Ragnar recited in unison with the Covert, when Alia’s helmet had been secured in place. Grogu recited in his own vibrant stream of inflections.

Ragnar smiled wide again and held Grogu Djarin tightly.

-*-*-*-

Paz had come to Din one morning as the latter was making maintenance repairs on his N-1 starfighter.

The hulking Mandalorian knew Din sensed his unmoving, towering shadow over him as Din needed all the daylight he could get whilst in the middle of his tinkering—and Paz was blocking the glare.

“You know, you can talk whenever you want,” Din had told him, and said no more. He buried himself back into his work, allowing Paz to take his time as he’d conveyed.

Paz heaved a sigh, then chuckled.

“You and your son have done so much for Ragnar and me than we can ever repay,” Paz spoke at last. “We are eternally in your debt, my brother.”

Din seemed to hardly believe what Paz had proclaimed. He popped his gleaming head out from under the N-1 for a second before drifting back to his repairs.

“This is the Way,” replied Din at length.

Paz leaned on his haunches so that Din had his daylight back and Paz had sight of Din, in respect towards his brother to be at his eye level as best as he could.

Before Paz could utter another word, it was Din who broke the silence.

“Where did you learn that?”

Paz blinked under the helm. “Learn what?”

“That… proverb. Or whatever that was.” Din let out his own chuckle. “Learn to face the fire that burned you.”

It was Paz’s turn to be confused. “Din—that’s odd. You haven’t heard of it before?”

Din had fully slid himself out from under the N-1, his silver armor losing some of its sheen from engine grime. “I don’t think I ever have, Paz.”

Paz mused for a moment.

“Your adoptive father told me that.”

When Din couldn’t reply, as though suddenly his life before the loss of his own Mandalorian father flashed before his eyes, Paz felt a wave of compassion flow through him.

“I’m glad, Din,” Paz finally said, his gruff voice breaking with the rare emotion he displayed through cadence.

Din’s helm settled upon Paz. “Glad of what?”

Paz chuckled with an easy air as he lifted himself up and began to stride away casually.

“That you became our foundling. This is the Way.”

Din sat there as Paz walked back to the training grounds, readying the equipment and laying out the barricade which separated the glistening, dark ocean from the children.

From afar, Din heard the joyful squeals of children at play. Ragnar and Grogu were at their fifth round of training darts outside of Judge’s jurisdiction. Din sighed. The kids could be well covered in those bright green paintball splotches from head to toe after all that racket.

“This is the Way,” he said softly.

******

Mando'a words: *baar’ur - medic *ad’ika - little one; a term of endearment for a son, daughter, or a young person *verd’goten - lit: “warrior birth;” a coming-of-age Mandalorian ceremony

Authors Notes: I’ve been gathering info on how Ragnar could’ve survived in the raptor’s “belly” overnight as the raptor had to regurgitate Ragnar out to feed her babies, but Ragnar wasn’t only whole, he was still alive. Turns out that they may be based on real world avian species which do have a “food pouch” (an enlarged part of their esophagus) to store their prey (perhaps relatively unharmed). I just added some details to make it more harrowing for our poor Vizsla child. x’D

Grogu’s fear was a random idea I entertained, considering a few factors that Grogu seemed to not want to speak Basic even though it looks like he can clearly understand it. Let’s pretend he’d witnessed something bad in relation to learning Basic which made him reluctant about it. ;_;

P.S. Forgive this little slice of life. Seems like reclaiming Mandalore and/or finding the Mythosaur has been momentarily delayed. ^^;;

*****

Read more stories on Clan Vizsla's own clan of two: Paz and Ragnar 💙:

"A Future Yet Unknown" (also on AO3)

"Only One Creed" (also on AO3)

"From The Ashes" (also on AO3)

#the mandalorian fanfiction #the mandalorian season 3 #mando season 3 spoilers #star wars fanfics #star wars fanfiction #mando fanfic #the mandalorian #brotherly bonding #father and son relationship #paz vizsla #ragnar vizsla #din djarin #grogu #space dads club #ragnar and grogu become besties #foundlings are the future #my fics #my writing

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