“Oh, Log-Kun, you’re the only one who understands me.”
Silverstream bursts into Twilight’s office excited. Because Silverstream. She’s never gotten to be a courier before. Twilight gets her to focus long enough to relay the message from Smolder, “Heading home for a week to deal with family issues.”Twilight worries about Smolder traveling so far alone, but there isn’t anything she can do. She runs a school, not a prison.Change scene to Smolder flying over the ocean, amusing herself by practicing lines for her next tea party. She’s checking her reflection in the water while she speaks.Suddenly a horrible sea monster appears below the surface, swimming rapidly up towards her. She gains altitude to escape, but the monster leaps high out of the water with gaping jaws. Smolder inhales, as if to scream in fear, but instead lets out a huge gout of flame at the monster. It shuts it’s mouth to protect its delicate tongue, sails past Smolder and back into the water with a huge splash.Cue music.Smolder gets home to the Dragonlands without issue. Because she’s a dragon. She finds her brother, Garble. She finds out what his deal is.He tried to practice his poetry alone, but it wasn’t working. He needs the reaction of an audience. He adjusts his beat to the body language of his listeners, and takes inspiration from them on what words to weave in. In other words, his hobby is treated less as a comedic device and instead as a legitimate passion of his.He tried his poetry with some of his friends, since Smolder was away. As he feared would happen, they ridiculed him and won’t even hang out with him to do dragon stuff.Smolder consoles her brother, and they try out several things. Their initial goal is to find something he can do that will impress his peers and regain their acceptance. We, the audience, get a chance to see not just silly “dragons are tough” things chosen to intimidate Spike, but actual nuance and dedication to those activities. Smolder helps him confront his estranged friends who challenge him at various activities to win back their respect.First (example) lava diving. Garble isn’t bad at this. But he isn’t as good at it as Dragon Friend A. Garble loses, more teasing. 2nd place is first loser, after all.Two more friends, Dragon Friend B & C similarly best him, and he takes 2nd place. He’s pretty good at all the things, just not the best. Each of his three friends are especially passionate about their thing.Dejected, Garble slinks away. Smolder ponders what to do next.Her solution is to challenge her brother at beat poetry. She gets Ember to judge. The other dragons watch, thinking it will be funny to see Garble lose at his own thing to his little sister. But he wins.A, B, & C complain that Smolder went easy on Garble. She challenges them to step up and try to beat her score. They all lose, of course, but have to admit they can’t do it even as well as Smolder.So Garble can do his poetry and still beat two out of three of his friends at any one of the other activities. While none of them can even take “first loser” in beat poetry. They regain respect for him and open up to the idea of trying out different things that are difficult to do.
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