#i know i said agnieszka had identity problems but i def think vivienne does too

[cherealta]

vivienne ended up transferring to berry after getting a quiet expulsion from her old school - rubyvale.

rubyvale is an all girls private boarding school. it wasn't the same school that agnieszka went to in high school as vivienne isn't catholic nor raised by any so her father respected that at least and searched for the next best for her in their district. however this wasn't the best for vivienne. obviously the pressure to conform is present in all schools (it'd be impossible to escape it) but a private boarding school full of mostly rich kids? yeah it just escalated that pressure by 10.

vivienne made some friends. she could speak english pretty well due to her family owning a resort they'd have to communicate to tourists (she learned english since she was eleven just in case) but she felt like if she showed too much of herself she'll be judged. she kept certain things hidden (like how majority of her family is back in thailand still, her father and mother don't live together, that she's buddhist, etc etc) but these were all things she embraced in thailand.

not only that but she had to go through everything she did at thirteen in thailand. which completely shattered her world. dao, learning about how her father was sending her letters which her mother was keeping from her (i'll go into the whole letter thing and why vivienne ends up moving to the states in another post as i don't want this one to get too long). it was a lot for her. she was carrying all that while trying to navigate this completely different world. at fourteen! it was hard for her.

she managed to get herself a friend group however they weren't the best influence. i think they kind of took advantage of vivienne's need to please and would make her do stuff that she'd usually not do otherwise. which the biggest one was a unauthorised secret party. it was all planned out. to keep it just between a few students and for them to sneak into the main hall after 12AM to see how long they could stay there without being caught. one of them had begged vivienne to let some of the boys from the boarding school across from them to come too, they'd have to sneak through the back but it was manageable. so again vivienne agreed.

it was also to got against the conformity of the school too, the girls who were tried of the strict rules and standards were all on board. it was planned for 2 weeks which allowed the students that needed to know about it to know. it wasn't going to be anything too wild, just a quiet protest.

but it didn't end up being a quiet protest or just a fun little challenge. it turned into a big party. somehow it got out. a bunch of people crashed the party (including college students who were invited by the senior students) and brought alcohol and large speakers just to amp up the noise. vivienne wanted to say something desperately but her closest friend at the time told her it'll be fine everybody is just having fun and if vivienne was the one to ruin it then they'd all be mad at her. so with that being said vivienne kept her mouth shut and let the party carry on.

surprise, surprise as it gets louder and crazier someone from the school faculty wakes up to the noise and goes to investigate. she also alerts the headmistress who decides to enter the hall to see a bunch of students trying to scatter away quickly. vivienne gets dragged away by her friends which ends up with her knocking over and smashing an important statue. getting her caught redhanded.

vivienne is called into the headmistresses office next morning. to keep it from being a huge scandal and it getting out that this prestigious school had a bunch of student breaking rules with a bunch of outsiders she decides to go against expelling her. however that doesn't mean she wants vivienne to step another foot into the school grounds. her and six other students, both from the all girls and all boys school get quietly told to leave immediately. some other students leave in protest, thinking it's unfair while others leave because vivienne seemed cool and cool stuff would follow her. this was kind of the start of vivienne being seen as some sort of symbol rather than her own person.

her father tries to find the middle ground in all of this. his wife wants vivienne to be sent back immediately while he's battling his own self with the fact he did promise vivienne a good life in the states to her mother. so instead of sending her back to thailand he asks her mother to come up to the us instead and to live in another district in california. he also buys a school but because he was in a rush he ends up buying an abandoned school without doubling checking. a school that was about to be knocked down soon but gets saved by vivienne's father paying for it for his own daughter.

(i know in the game canon it's a empty plot of land. but when we're putting in long how construction takes the school would NOT be done in a matter of seconds. not only that but just other logical reasons. it'd still make sense to why max was mad the mc decided to start up a school there too because the abandoned school was planning on being knocked down soon)

i'll explore vivienne's sophomore year in other posts and things because this one is already LONG 😭 but the beef with their father is so real. he's such a terrible person. i like him from a writing point of view but him as a person? HELL NO!

vivienne would throw all her goals out of the window if it meant staying with the people she loves the most vs agnieszka would isolate herself so she could achieve her goals.

more under the cut!

vivienne grew up in a tight-knit family. she was surrounded by them mainly because one, her grandparents owned a resort in thailand which her mother and uncle helped with, and two, her three cousins feeling like siblings more than anything. because of this she would get lonely easy as not being around people for even a hour would be such a foreign feeling to her. obviously stuff happened as she got older, she grew less close (didn't help moving to the us by herself for the first year when she was just about to turn fourteen, then her mother coming over to the states too when it didn't work out with living with her father - long story). she started losing her mother's constant attention when she was around 10, leading her to try and find it in other places. the co-dependant bsf was that place. it wasn't healthy for either of them. that best friend in question being dao - who'll get her proper introduction soon hopefully. but for now i'll leave it at that (mwahahaha).

this didn't get better when she moved to the states. in fact it got worse. she went to some fancy boarding school that her father sent her to because he still couldn't face her properly. she had nobody that she knew by her side. everyone was a stranger. not only that but she had to learn american customs, to conform to their standards. so she did anything, literally anything, to get the attention she needed. she didn't want to be alone. because for vivienne being alone meant she failed. it reminded her of her mother's sudden distance. she never got a full reason why, just guesses, and it lead her to believe she wasn't a good enough daughter for her mother anymore. not only that she couldn't let them leave like dao. it lead to a lot of hurt and trouble for vivienne. even though she hates looking back on this part of herself i think it helped her grow a lot. it made her realize her actions can have bad consequences, even the smallest ones.

at berry high where she could make her own rules and not subject herself to hellish social standards she was setting herself at the boarding school i think it helped her relax and be a lot less reckless. but she still loses herself at times. not only that but it's hard for the students to see vivienne faltering because they see her as a symbol more than another human being (not exactly their fault and honestly this more how vivienne thinks than the actual reality. but i'll explore this a lot more when i go into detail about how the ace saga personally affected her). hell she even did fall into the trap of pushing people away because guess what - she's human!

but at the end of it all, vivienne doesn't even know what she wants for herself. even by the end of her senior year were she grows A LOT. this leads her to have a gap year and going back to thailand for a year. it helped her understand herself more and to heal a bit from her childhood. now in the year of 2024 which she's currently 26 i think she still has a lot of places to grow. learning how to be selfish for ONCE will help this girl by a long run. somebody tell her it's okay to argue for her opinions, thoughts and feelings instead of feeling like somebody will shoot her in the face if she ever does anything that they don't like.

then you have agnieszka. a lonely child. her mother and father clearly fell out of love by 1996, but they didn't divorce. her mother had to fight her family to even marry him. he was a poor immigrant from poland, to her family they saw him as a nothing more than a dirty social climber. her agreeing to name her agnieszka was a massive fuck you, so divorcing him will just let her family have that win which she'll not let them have. then on the other hand agnieszka's father had finally managed to get himself (and by extension his siblings) a very comfortable life. why would he give that up? they live in the same house until agnieszka has moved out, trying to keep up an "image". even after her mother found out about vivienne and his affair, she still stayed. but they don't share the same room. they don't even sit in the same room as one another.

agnieszka being undiagnosed with autism didn't help either. she constantly felt out of place. her mother tried to "correct" her odd ways, her father told her that she should only embrace those ways in private. this caused her to mask, which lead to her hiding such a key part of her identity. she would just be whatever people said she was. it was easier that way. it's not like she agreed with most people. she didn't understand why life worked the way it did. why her parents lived like that. but it seemed like a easier choice for her at the time.

when she went to school (catholic private school no doubt) she had to conceal even more of herself. she had a gut feeling she liked girls when she was around 14, though she didn't get the confirmation until a girl kissed her. hell she barely knew this girl! she doesn't even remember how it happened. but she was afraid - until she was 17 when she started to give less of a fuck. it became an open secret to the sapphics of the private school. letting herself be their experiment. nothing real ever came out of them. but agnieszka didn't complain. it wasn't like she could hate a bunch of cute girls wanting to kiss her. but it didn't help her with the feeling that most relationships are just superficial nonsense that people use to get further in life and for their own selfish reasons.

she had friends in school - though she lost contact with all of them except two. a lot of them didn't understand why she'd cut herself off from her parents just to live a life she wanted. but agnieszka was tired of living in the shadow of somebody or just being an extension of them. she wanted to make a name for herself but she didn't want to let people in too close. if her parents failed her how could anybody else not?

this is why she chose to showcase her art and became a fashion designer. some of the collections were about personal parts of her life covered with fancy and pretentious words as the name of the collection and then some were things she was simply liked. it allowed people to know who she was while simultaneously not directly saying it.

i think like vivienne (but instead of high school it was university) helped her grow. she learnt to let people get close to her, to build actual connections. it was hard at first. she was still lowkey socially awkward and had a hard time understanding others but as time passed she had a better grasp. though she made sure she lived life how she wanted. if anybody disagreed? they could simply leave. no matter how close. but at the same time i think learning that relationships don't have to be this super complex soul-bonding thing could help her... a lot.