shitposting rave 4: (almost) anything goes

Valiska would so not mind. Except for the part where she'd have to teach her pet owl (the one with actual feathers, not the one with glasses and silvery floof), all the dogs, and all the thylacines, and every other animal in the house that they're friends, not food.

She is still purring, except when she's actually talking.

 

'Suffer' like it's not fresh air under the wings of half the ship. [He rolls his eyes, smiling a little.]

 

What students are capable of being fond of their teachers? Teach me your secrets, oh wise one.
[She sounds only a little sarcastic. Iaconian Noblemechs were brats.]

Aww, your poor old caer just worries a lot. But I'll stop being embarrassing now.

Some people actually find it not so charming taht I'm doing my damndest to make up for all the shitty COs everyone's seemed to have been cursed with.

 

The ones with soft teachers?

 

-noofs her-

 

We ´preciate it. Now what´s our kitten gotten into?

 

SIRE! I haven´t done anything, Caer is fussing!

 

weeh! -the red pikmin sprout struggles to get away from the tongue. pikmin does not like tongue. tongue means death for pikmin.-

 

Valiska looks perplexed. She's not actually sure why the students love her so much. She knows why they love Ford (who wouldn't?) but...

After a moment, she shrugs. "Well," she begins, still thinking it over. "I think it has to do with a lot of things. The Interdimensional Paradigm concentration attracts a lot of people who are really quite intelligent, and often come to university when they are still of an age to be missing their mothers. And the ones who came right after the war, well, some of them no longer had mothers to miss. And I teach self-defence as well as alchemy for the first quarter of every year when all the new students come in. And...I don't know. I may be soft," she says, glancing at Libre, "at least with the ones who are not very well off. When I was a student, students didn't have stipends, and I had to work. As a cursebreaker, which is gruelling, and I'd help my mother when she was short-staffed at the bar--I never worked in the back, because no, but that didn't mean I never had to dodge grabass, and..." She shrugs. "I try to be understanding when students have other responsibilities, and feel like they still have to work for pay, or when they come to us with deficits because they're really brilliant in one or two areas but struggle with others?"

 

I know right it's almost like "you'll know your aft from your ailerons when you try to use the wrong one to steer" isn't actually good teaching inclined to make your vict-- sorry students like you. [Despite his words, Venture's wings are still at ease; it's been a long, long time since he was inducted into the AC.]

Treating students like people is usually a good first step yeah :P

 

Valiska nods. "I think people forget on both sides that teachers and students are just people. Everyone in our government has had a rough life, but then so have most of our people. We're just now starting to see kids come into the university system who don't remember the war, or the days when people went hungry if not everyone in the household could work, or the days when getting sick or injured could cost you everything you'd worked for overnight. Or the days when gangs were better protection than police, even if you had to pay them more than you could afford."

 

[His wings tilt down a little, and he throws a guilty look at Nichrome; he's been the unsafe officer more than he'd like to think about, especially with a Decepticon fanatic rebel right there for contrast.]

....yeah. Last time I was anywhere near anything resembling a school it was 'three day crash course on how to transform shoot things and follow orders' so. Results may be skewed and all that jazz.

 

Valiska smiles in a way she hopes will be comforting. "We've all lived through terrible times," she says. "And done things we might not have done. If we'd known the things we know now."

 

Ford sighs, but happily. "Lise," he says, "the students love you because you're kind. You're fair, and you're demanding, but you're kind. And they know you will fight for them if they need it. Because, as Dipper likes to say, you are a mama cat, and you always have been."

 

Valiska blinks at him, slowly, several times in succession.

And continues to purr. It is a very loud purr for such a small woman. Especially with the mis chiming in.

 

[Quietly, for a giant robot:] Yeah. Primus willing we can at least fix the first thing for all the new kids.

 

[She nods.] Humble students are something I did not have much experience with until later in life. Although... in my case the problem was rather the students not thinking of me as a person than the other way around. I did not have the privilege of being a real teacher after all.
But I can't say the teachers were particularly gentle with the bra-... the students either.

Many people had a lot of things to unlearn. For example not to shoot at everyone with a High Iaconian accent first, ask questions later. Luckily we are past this stage and the... other side has largely abandoned their entitlement. Or died. One or the other.

[pats his leg, gently] Real school involved a lot of "please stop selling your class notes on campus", some "no really you actually have to show up for class" and a little bit of "stop throwing the teaching aid around, only the teachers are allowed to do that."
That last part was the least fun.

I feel morally obligated to mention that focusing on "could have been"s and "We would have done things differently" has a track record of going awfully wrong the second people involve timetravel.

I'm not going to let things get that way ever again. None of us will.

 

What you mean it's not supposed to be fun to be mechhandled like some sort of overcomplicated automaton? Better call doc C in I think my processor's broken :P

[He shrugs, looks away.] I don't wanna be the one to jinx this ceasefire. Been a nice one that's for sure.

 

[She snickers] I think the difference is in making the choice about that. Nothing broken there.

Hey. C'mon, we're doing good, you won't jinx anything. If anything... we aren't going to let anyone drag us into anything if we aren't all in agreement about it. Things are different now. We all have... a lot more people to think about than back then. It's been a long while since ideological purity was all I cared about.

 

'The Team'll be safe' isn't the same as 'the universe will be safe' or 'Cybertron will'...

...damn I sound like Curls on a bad day. Emotional honesty hour sucks I'm gonna go back to being party bird now kthnx. [He summons a cylinder of something red and glittery, and sits down to better lean on Nichrome without tipping her over.]

Spoiler: avoidance what avoidance that was a masterful topic change