#like good luck to whatever college student had Victor's dorm after him

[cissa-calls]

there is something inherently special about horror linked to spaces - and the haunting within them. How actions and creations within a space hold onto them, long after the people are gone and time has supposedly healed wounds. Something is never truly resolved because what happened can never be undone

[atlanxic]

part 3 of arc-v college au! lots of world-building

ive been intentionally setting up college au so that the other series arc v crosses over with can be added as i consume them

like i figure... the city is in georgia, the main setting town is a college town in pennsylvania

but anyway, im figuring that the main setting town will have three schools in it, being archibald victor's institution of higher education (AVIOHE but generally referred to as "the V"), Zexal Univerisity, and a trade school the name and students of which i have yet to decide on

lets call the main setting town new yarmouth, just so we at least have a y somewhere in there and i can refer to it properly

the trade school can be called new yarmouth technical institute

all three schools have lgbt student organizations, and sometimes those organizations have joint events, so there's definitely going to be mingling

conceptually, zexal uni is considered the main school of the area, they have the highest budget & theyre Known out of state, they get students not only from all over the country but all over the world

the v is a proper school, but its reputation is less prestigious. its a younger school, it has a greater focus on the arts, and its easier to get into

ZU has been around for like... 90 years, the dean is very eager to round it up to a century

the V is about 45 years old

NYTI is about 30 years old, but quickly gaining a reputation for offering a high-caliber hands-on education, and being very accessible

this is subject to change as i get into zexal, but thats sort of how im laying it out right now

the people in arc v who grew up in standard or fusion dimension have always lived in new yarmouth, or at least nearby

people from arc v xyz dimension are from one of the suburb towns supporting new york city

& synchro city in georgia, like i said

im going to continue calling it synchro city instead of The City

although people from it still refer to it as The City

[yuugo voice] im from The City

[shun, having grown up near nyc] you mean new york??????

i dont actually know anything about how gx and the original series are going to fit into this, but since i seem to be consuming ygo canon in reverse order, thats a worry for next year probably

new yarmouth has a yearly pride parade, which is scheduled in such a way that it doesn't overlap with the parades in philly or nyc, since the organizers often attend all three. it is primarily a college town, and known as a liberal and artistic city. theres a mid-sized non-chain amusement park on the outskirts of the city. the local transit is acceptable but not great. most buses run once an hour, but some of the more populated routes run every half hour, and the suburban routes run every 2 hours except during rush hour. buses to the suburbs stop around 11pm, buses within the city proper stop at half past midnight.

the downtown core is all walkable, but only if youre determined. ZU and the V are about a 50-minute walk apart. with ZU to the north and the V kind of to the south-east. NYTI is to the south, only about a 20-minute walk from the V. the main strip of downtown is closer to the V than ZU. its slightly south of the true center of the city

the main strip of downtown is largely comprised of restaurants and clothing shopping. if you head west you'll find more furniture shops. south towards the v and nyti there are more auto shops and cheaper restaurants, some chain stores popping up as you pass the schools and get into the suburbs. going north from the main strip, youll find office buildings and city hall, as well as the intercity bus & train station, although when you get very close to zu, a handful of student-oriented businesses pop up again. a pizza parlour, a coffee shop, a bar, an office supplies store. zu students often complain that they dont have as many food options as the v, but their on-campus cafeteria is actually significantly better.

the dorms for zu are north and west of the university, apartment complex style. the dorms for the v are to the east of it, and are mostly sets of town houses bought up by the university. the v's dorms hold significantly less people, and as such, are reserved for students from out of town, and especially first years. getting into dorms if you lived in-state before college is almost impossible.

they do, however, have a lot of arrangements and agreements with local landlords, and its fairly easy to find an apartment with help from student services.

so!!! back to our main cast. we've already stated that shun & yuuto dorm together first year. and then ruri and rin share another dorm. the formatting for a lot of the v dorms is like.... you have a townhouse with 3 large bedrooms, each containing two beds, two dressers, two desks, and a closet. for each townhouse unit, there are two bathrooms and one kitchen. most of them are sorted by gender, but some of them are mixed. they do their best to honour student requests about who theyre roomed with, but theres only so much they can do.

yuuya, yuzu, sawatari, gongenzaka, and reiji are all still living with their parents. yuuya and yuzu have the good luck of living within a 45-minute walk of the v. sawatari lives in a mansion to the north of the city and drives to school every day. reiji lives in a condo downtown, and while he can walk to school when the weather's good, he often feels that it's easier to catch the bus. gongenzaka lives out in the far suburbs, and has to take the bus to school. since the v doesn't have a firefighter program, hes going to nyti, but he hangs around the v a lot because all his friends go there. he is often downtown for an hour before and after school, since the bus that runs past his place only runs every 2 hours.

he also has to leave campus events early fairly often in order to make it home before the buses stop. yuuya repeatedly tells him that he'd be allowed to crash at their place for the night, at any time, but gon's father gets angry when he doesnt make it home for the night, so he tries to avoid it.

yuusho is still a famous entertainer who dropped off the face of the earth when yuuya was about 11. he was an actor, more in musicals than on film, but he was in one movie, which yuuya has watched countless times. the movie was never available in major theatres, but it ran the film festival circuit and won a couple awards. its regarded as a must-watch by a select few hipsters, and essentially unknown by the general public.

for the sake of this au, barrett and selena are related. he's her uncle, they live together in a decent but not expensive apartment complex. barrett is a veteran. he's slightly hard of hearing, and tends to be louder than he needs to be. he's strict, but supportive when it matters. when selena first came out to him, he yelled at her for it, and she ran away from home. she was about 16 at the time. she couch-surfed with her friends and ignored his calls for 10 days. on the 11th day, he waited for her outside her school and apologized.

"i dont understand it and i dont like it, but i love you and i want you to come home. ill try my best to support you, this is hard on me too"

she reluctantly went home, and he started going to pflag meetings. by the time selena goes to university, he's over his initial upset over it, and walks with pflag in the local pride parade. she never met her father. her mother was also in the military, but died in service when she was 9 or 10.

barrett has taught her how to shoot multiple kinds of gun, and its a skill she's proud of. having been raised in a military household, she believes american involvement in the middle east is justified through all of grade school. when she gets to college, those views are challenged, and by the end of first year, she's a lot less convinced. her and barrett argue about it frequently.

when second year rolls around, ruri and rin lose their spot in the dorms, and yuzu is growing sick of her father's smothering affection. the four of them find an apartment together.

new yarmouth is big enough for two high schools. to the north is a private school, attended by the canon fusion dimension crew. and to the south is a public school, attended by the canon standard dimension crew

selena and yuzu met at pride the summer after they graduated high school, and exchanged phone numbers. after a few weeks, they discover they'll be going to the same college, and get excited about it. they go on a few casual dates before they start considering themselves a couple

no one is entirely sure why reiji is going to the v instead of zu, since he definitely had the grades in high school to make it into whatever college he chose. im going to say its because the v offered him a scholarship, whereas zu didnt, and while his father offered to pay his tuition, he resents the idea of depending on his fathers fortune any more than he has to.

dennis is the eldest child of a single mother, and has two younger siblings. he kickstarted his love of entertainment by putting on puppet shows for his younger siblings, and then joined the school plays and dinner theatres throughout junior high and high school. his mother thinks he's extremely talented, but worries that acting isn't really a career. as a single mother of three, she can't afford to help with his tuition, so he gets a student loan and works part-time through university. im going to say his part-time is working at an expresso bar downtown. its frequented more by the north-end office workers than by students. he's outgoing and flirtacious as a barista, and ends up being quite popular with the working women who frequent the shop. he puts up posters for all the school productions he's involved in on the community bulletin board in his expresso bar, and a lot of his customers do show up.

he ids as gay and bigender, both of which are a secret from his family, or at least he thinks theyre a secret. when he comes out to his mother as gay in third year, she tells him that she'd had her suspicions since he was in junior high, but didn't want to be pushy or presumptuous.

between working part time, being involved in school productions, and actual classwork, dennis does not get a whole lot of sleep, and is pretty hard to get ahold of for social events. despite that, he manages to show up to almost every queer alliance meeting at least for half an hour, and a lot of sawatari's parties as well. he drives an old orange beetle with several dents and only one working headlight.

i am not really sure what i want to do with sora's backstory? i feel like they're also from a military family

yuugo and rin grew up in the same orphanage. they went to a very low-income school. yuugo was sort of a class clown, and was well-liked but not well-respected in school. he has been and still is known to shoplift, despite rin's disapproval. their orphanage was near the auto district of the city, and they both grew into a fascination with motorcycles. as kids, they would spend their afterschool hours peering at the repair shop up the street.

as they got older, the workers there grew familiar with them, and would show them tricks or ask them for small favours. when theyre 16, they both start working there parttime. the guys tell them that theyre free to apprentice there when they graduate, and that they can sponsor them for basic certification, but theyre both too ambitious to agree to it. the shop workers are all low income, living in the shambled apartment complexes nearby. they work long hours and many of them keep trucking through workplace injuries.

yuugo and rin both respect them deeply, but starry-eyed with the self-made-man myth of american capitalism, theyre determined to get full degrees instead of basic certification, and find jobs designing and testing motorcycles for major companies, rather than repairing them. the guys at the shop are supportive, and joke that they better send them money once theyre rich and successful. they both get into the v on scholarship, though rin manages a full scholarship while yuugo's is only partial.

yuugo tries very hard to get part-time work at one of new yarmouth's garages, but with only informal training, no one is willing to hire him. he's immensely resentful of it, and eventually settles for working delivery at the pizza place closest to campus. its open until 3am, and he often takes the night shift.