I’m begging for your opinions on regency era nasty Simon😭😭
i promised myself this wasn't going to become an anthology but here i am. anthologising.
he's from the absolute bottom of the social circle. his dad was the town drunk, and Simon made a lot of enemies. Price's shady dealings put him and Simon together. i want him to have gone to jail—possibly for murder—and it really shaped who he was as a person. made worse, naturally, when his whole family is killed as soon as he gets out. Simon is blamed, but there's no evidence. rumours start about how a rival gang tried to bury him alive when he was in jail, but he dug his way out. they say he died. he's a monster. a pariah.
he's probably a butcher by day but takes care of Price's dirty work by night. helps run the racket. is an enforcer. just a mean, broken man. spent his formative years in jail surrounded by horrible men.
and you!!! ahhh, Mrs Price's NOSY niece. she goes missing and you come down, sniffing around because this isn't right. why would your aunt run off when she's been raised properly? this isn't like her. it all seems so suspicious. and Price's accusations have tarnished your family's reputation - saying that she ran away with a lowly barkeep in the middle of the night. a decades-long affair, stole money from him. all sorts of nasty business that ruin your family. so, you come to stick your nose into things and ask the questions no one else will.
Price doesn't want you anywhere near his almost wife/servant girl, so he sics the biggest, meanest dog he has on you. only. instead of killing you, Simon takes a disgusting interest in the prim socialite who somehow manages to talk down to him even as he towers over you. it breeds an obsession. unravels all these awful thoughts he's had about the upper class. and his boss giving him the go-ahead to ruin this pretty little bird that always seemed so untouchable? well. sure.
he's keenly aware of how your circle works, and uses that tongue advantage. mocks you when you snap at him to keep his filthy hands off of you, and tells you that you should have stayed in your ivory cage, little bird. gets a sick, twisted pleasure dragging you down the social ladder just by lying his dirty fingers on you. from gold cuffs to a pair of rusting, iron shackles. he loves ruining you. gets off when you call him all sorts of nasty names, trying to act all prim and haughty still, even with his cum drying on your face.
you call him a monster and he pinches your face between his thumb and forefinger, cruelly asking you if he's a monster, then what does that make you? the little fool carrying his monstrous brood. who in your little circle is gonna want you now? knowing that a beast like him put his hands all over you and his babe inside of you? probs whistles to himself as he gets to work on "disappearing" your aunt for good while your whole world crashes down around you lmao
Price is miffed that you're not just as missing as your aunt, but. whatever. Simon's content. you're taken care of. and he gets to pretend to be a good man with his pretty little servant girl tucked into his side. everyone wins.
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okay after seeing the student count of aguefort courtesy of idonthaveanyurlideas... this was originally going to be me talking about the classes, but i got fixated on the schedule LMAO.
anyway.
i will be using california school standards simply because that is what i am familiar with. and using the (erroneous) assumption that aguefort has any sort of state/education board requirements...
listen. i love applying stupid, horribly mundane realism to ridiculous fantasy.
Now. In California you have some credit/class requirements for graduation. I'm not bothering with the specific classes (like Algebra and the types of history) because we are going to be making some fantasy requirements up.
But okay bare bones, to graduate high school in California you need:
3 years of English
2 years of mathematics
3 years of social science
2 years of science
2 years of physical education (wish someone had given me this fucking memo)
1 year of foreign language OR visual and performing arts
So. Let's get started on what your 4 years at Aguefort could look like.
Let's preface this with the fact that probably every Class teacher probably has to have at least one or two periods of a core subject (and they probably grumble the whole time about it).
Now let's do some "equating" of those core subjects to fantasy core subjects.
English Language Arts = Common Language Arts
Mathematics = Same. You need math no matter what. Suck it up.
Social Science = Split up into history, government, and geography.
Physical Education = The idea of wizard/sorcerer PE is making me lose my shit so yea let's add this in here.
Foreign Language/Arts = Largely the same. I'm assuming these would be your languages, tools, weapons, armor proficiency.
Okay we got our equivalencies.
Now I'm going to once again do some speculating on high school schedules based on my time teaching in middle school (very similar structure) and the high schools around me. Please don't doxx me with this information.
TYPICALLY in my experience you will have 6-7 classes each will be about 50 minutes each with a 40 minute lunch. We’re gonna use 6 classes for this because when you do 7 classes things start getting really fucked.
Now schedule-wise, some schools will do a "full" day where you go to all your classes and then switch to block (attend your odd classes/attend your even classes).
Some schools do certain days as block schedules while still having a M/F "full" day so students can go to all their classes. I'm gonna operate on the assumption that Aguefort does a fucking mind splitting version of this but we won’t get into that in this post.
So, let's make a sample schedule for... let's say a freshman because freshmen always get the short end of the stick because they hardly ever get to actually have electives because of all their core classes they have to knock out.
Period 1: CLA: Common 9
Period 2: Math: Introductory Adventuring Math
Period 3: Physical Education: Non-Martial Option
Period 4: Science: Introductory to the Bestiary
Lunch
Period 5: CLASS SPECIFIC
Period 6: CLASS SPECIFIC
Now, the thought here is to ONLY have a class specific class after lunch so that way the last 2 hours of the day, no matter the scheduling day, are dedicated to working on honing your class skills. So, if you do a standard go to all class you are still spending kind of a "home room" with your class which might switch off.
Like, for example if you're a fighter your class specific period 5 might be an extra physical education with Coach Daybreak (yikes) and a bunch of other general martial students, but your period 6 is then lecture/basics/fundamentals with Corsica. This also would align with MCAT kids because period 5 might be with your "primary" class and then period 6 is with what you've multi-classed into.
HOWEVER, this class schedule is missing some of the required classes.
So, this student, for example, does not have at a glance a language/art elective or social science. This is generally pretty common for freshman. You get jack shit because you gotta do your prelims before the fun stuff.
I'm imagining that language and arts would probably be more a junior/senior year thing. Sophomore if you're lucky.
Class specific classes also might double into that.
Ambitious students also might ask for a zero period, a lunch class, or a period 7 class (with parent/admin/teacher approval).
Now, using this same student let's make a sophomore year schedule.
For the record, to meet their grad requirements they need:
2 more years of CLA, 1 more year of math, 3 more years of social science, 1 more year of science, 1 year of phys ed, and 1 year of language/art.
This is also assuming that the student "passed" every class with at least a D and earned their credits. (Popular chant of my high school history teacher who I hated: D is for diploma.)
Now, I have a lot of moving parts so I'm not gonna move periods around but let's say we have:
Period 1: CLA: Common 10
Period 2: Math: Basics of Adventuring Mathematics
Period 3: Social Science: Geography of Spyre (Semester 1)/History of Spyre (Semester 2)
Period 4: Science: Advanced Bestiary Sciences
Lunch
Period 5: Phys Ed: Non-Martial Option
Period 6: CLASS SPECIFIC
Now, I'm imagining as a sophomore you might have a bit more “leniency” to take more non-class classes since you've presumably mastered the "basics" of your class. So sophomore year is when you start getting into more rigorous academic work and you sacrifice one of your class specific classes so you can start getting your social science credit out of the way.
This means that you are spending less time doing class specific things, but you are expanding your horizons as a student. This also means that this student gets to knock out the following requirements for graduation: Math, Science, and Physical Education.
So, this means they now have 3 extra classes to devote to either their MCAT, their primary class, and/or other graduation requirements. Let's do a check on what they need now that they've cleared 3 grad requirements:
1 more year of CLA, 2 more years of social science, and 1 year of Language/Art. Plus whatever other class specific graduation/party requirements might be set in place at Aguefort.
Let's do their junior schedule:
Period 1: CLA: Common 11
Period 2: Social Science: History of Solace
Period 3: Language/Art: Forgery 1 (for non-rogues)
Period 4: ELECTIVE
Lunch
Period 5: CLASS SPECIFIC
Period 6: CLASS SPECIFIC
Now juniors will have more elective options AND the option to go back to having two periods of class specific classes or a second elective. This student is on track for graduation as long as they are passing with Ds.
So, now all they actually need is 1 more year of social science. I remember my high school did this very deliberately. They wanted us to take government and economics in our senior year and that was literally the ONLY requirement for graduation (plus the high school exit exam). But if you were trying for college, you would probably take another year of language arts, another year of science, another year of something so it looks better. Now, let’s do senior year schedule:
Period 1: ELECTIVE/Free Period
Period 2: Social Science: Economics of Spyre and Neighboring Countries (Semester 1)/Government of Spyre (Semester 2)
Period 3: ELECTIVE/Free Period
Period 4: INTER PARTY DYNAMICS COURSE
Lunch
Period 5: CLASS SPECIFIC
Period 6: CLASS SPECIFIC
Now, again, just doing some vague assumptions here but I think your senior year at Aguefort would be about that final fine tuning of going from student to adventurer. You’d probably have some party dynamic classes you have to take that would be an equivalent of the high school exit exam. Senior year, typically, is a breeze from the seniors I’ve talked to. I don’t think Aguefort would do it, but I know I’ve substituted for senior English which was mostly them practicing composition needed for college.
But. Anyway. I was going to make a post more on what I think class sizes look like, but this came out.
I have no real ending thought here except for the fact that I find the idea of Aguefort Academy having to at least pretend to function like a real high school, so the state doesn’t swoop in and shut it down infinitely funny.
I don’t really want a senior year but if there is, please, AAA losing their accreditation or revealing that their degrees actually mean nothing would be SO FUNNY PLEASE.
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if dorian didn't show up, do you think louis would have shot minnie?
I do. I know some people think either he wouldn't have or he would've missed so that's why the writers had him shoot Dorian instead, but mmmmmm no, I don't personally think so. I like to think that if he had taken the shot, his shaky hands would've caused him to shoot her fatally.
Mostly because I'm already so normal about the fact that of the Ericson crew, Marlon and Louis are the only ones with a body count. Well, that we know of, but shown to us in the game, at least. Plus, we know it's Louis' first kill.
Like yeah, Clementine and AJ become part of the crew and they have bigger body counts, and if we're counting indirect kills caused by actions, then Tenn has a count... and I guess everyone has blood on their hands for blowing up the boat... but I'm talking about killed directly with a weapon like....... I lied, I'm not normal about that at all, Louis and Marlon are the ones who have killed someone in Louis' route. I'm also not normal about the fact that Louis kills Dorian and then even as he's clearly in shock, he tries to go with Clementine to get AJ, and then later on when they talk about it, he says it feels like bile but not quite and he's glad he has it in him to do it.... listen, listen, listen... I'm obsessed with that.
Anyway, so if Louis shot Minerva, I think he would've accidentally killed her and can you imagine? He's already enough of a mess after killing the woman who pinned him down and tried to cut his finger off [or succeeded] but he knew Minerva, they were friends before the twins were taken. Even Violet couldn't kill her even though that would've been the smarter thing to do, and we know thanks to meta knowledge that killing her would've saved lives, but Violet couldn't, and I don't think Louis would intentionally either.
Speaking of Violet, if Louis killed Minerva, I hate to think about what that would've done to Vi. I think she might've actually left at that point, like what was planned before it got changed to her being burned. I don't think she would've attacked Louis over it, though, like yeah she attacked Clementine in the cell but Louis? I don't know, but I don't think so just because it's Louis and he'd be a mess about it anyway.
Though if he did kill her, it would be a neat parallel to draw... y'know, because Louis forgave AJ for killing Marlon even though he was pissed and heartbroken, and Violet was annoyed with him the entire time... but could she ever forgive Louis for killing Minerva? Y'know? We already have a similar parallel with AJ shooting Tenn, but still.
If Clementine killed Minerva in that moment, though, then I could see Violet attacking her since in her eyes, Clem proved her right.
So yeah, I get why they added the Dorian kill to his route. It adds another compelling element to Louis as a character, but we also need Minerva alive for episode 4; Louis can't kill her, he can't miss, and he's not going to stay with her because we need Violet to stay on the boat and him to be on shore for all routes.
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jorge martin is just an off-brand motogp version of george russell. both incredible qualifiers, hard racers, have issues sometimes keeping their tyres together, have stayed in a satellite/backmarker team for three years begging the big manufacturer to accept them into the main fold and will randomly decide that they are actually done with race by beefing it into the gravel/walls on the last laps.
this is why ducati did not hire martin, he hasn’t done the power point presentation
strong last line but hm... do I agree with this...
I don't entirely disagree with the profile of racer, though jorge's a bit more in the flame bright and early mould (partly also just because of the different rhythms of those two racing series). he cut his teeth not just on being an exceptional qualifier but also a starter. even though this year, you do kinda have to say pecco's just?? uh?? he's never been a BAD starter but I swear he didn't used to be this good? some of his starts from the second or third row this year have been genuine works of art. this isn't relevant, just needed to mention it. that's part of why jorge does so well at sprints... he's really good at that abbreviated format, where it's just all out from the very start. mr russell was considered quite a poor starter in his williams days (though lbr that may have partly been car characteristics) - the qualifying's very strong and very consistent, but for a while the question was of capitalising off the line. he's got a few more drives that are about working his way through the field... like qatar last year. I just don't really associate jorge with that?
the bottling thing is debatable and we could get into that debate, but like, never mind that. we're leaving sports analysis now and getting back into vibes territory. the thing about jorge is that he has had a competitive bike from the word go. mr russell, whatever you think about how clutch he is or isn't, did not set a foot wrong in terms of making the mercedes case for himself. what happened with him was basically just... a series of unfortunate events that got him stuck in a spectacularly uncompetitive car for three years. got one shot in a good car in said three years (sakhir 2020) and delivered the perfect performance. but jorge!! jorge had 2022!! he blew it!! he did get unlucky with the gp22 vs the gp21 comparison early that season and how bastianini was able to take advantage of the early stage factory spec malaise, and he's far from the only gp22 who was struggling early on (cf one 'pecco bagnaia'). but still, some of his rides that year were. truly horrendous. and the way the whole thing played out left him with a massive chip on the shoulder.... that's the thing, right, I think what's so key about jorge is that sense of grievance, the fact that he was rejected for that factory seat and we're now several years on from that. and it's a really thin line between that being a good thing and a bad thing. like, anything that's a potential source of motivation fundamentally can be helpful, right? in 2007, casey showed up at ducati as not their first choice, kinda a stopgap, and also after yamaha had pulled the plug on a potential contract not once but twice. he has spoken again and again how yamaha and honda's behaviour towards him made him want to show them exactly what they were missing out on. he used that! it was good for him as a competitor that he had something to get worked up over! he's done it throughout his career! but on the flip side, if you're so busy feeling victimised that you're kind of already... primed for failure, then you've got a problem. like, if the takeaway is you're probably screwed anyway because you're being sabotaged by the factory, then even if that were true you're fucked before you start competing. you've already lost in your own head, you've made excuses before you've even started. it's a thin line! thinking the world is out to get you can either be a good way to get yourself to going, or it can be a loser mindset
quickly circling back to georgie boy, my main feeling is that they kinda have a different type of malaise. one is an overthinker and the other is at times very much an under-thinker. grussy actually shares the overthinking trait with his fellow 63 more than anyone else... all three kinda have this fun meeting point of a lot of cockiness and a lot of insecurity - they just balance them in other ways. and russell reminds me more of pecco in that kind of... being constantly thrown up against a Big Legacy of someone you admire, being in the shadow of greats and having to make your own name... you're very much part of a succession plan that leaves you with massive shoes to fill... (though admittedly grussy has also gone through the unenviable experience of getting to work closely with his hero and eventually having most of said hero's fans absolutely despise him. can happen, I suppose.) jorge is a bit more baggage-free. he's very much the main character in his own story, not so much faffing about with the narrative implications of all this shit. more straightforward! if jorge wins, it's about him. if he loses, it's also about him. ducati has been his world for the past few years, to the point where he's gotten a bit parochial about the whole thing. early this season, he was talking like - sure, the championship lead is important, BUT this is also giving him power in contract negotiations!! which... yes, that's true, but also that should be way down the order of priorities my man. jorge martin might be the only person in this universe who... genuinely might be more obsessed with beating pecco than marc? like, beating the marc marquez would be great and all, 8x world champion bla bla, but pecco is his personal antagonist! he's known him for years! that's ducati's golden boy! he needs to beat pecco so badly! there's something really fun about a rivalry where it feels like at least one side's feelings towards the other... kinda go beyond a personal relationship, like at a certain point it becomes about what the other guy Represents. jorge isn't worried about legacy and the shoes he's got to fill and can he truly live up to all those expectations as much as he's worried about himself and also occasionally pecco bagnaia
anyway, I've been thinking about the bottling thing... what jorge said about it earlier's been rattling around in my head since I saw the quote
man, it must be really tough, right? like, you don't know why it's happening... it's not just cockiness - though there is an element of someone who's kinda used to bulldozing his way through problems with sheer obstinacy and stubborn self belief (another distinction with the 63's, who are more introspective and prone to self-flagellation following mistakes). but it's also just... you can't figure out why it's such a fundamental shortcoming of your game! today, from the way pecco and also luca (apparently) were talking about it, it seems like there was something noticeable about how jorge was gradually losing a bit in his control and precision as a result of how the tyres were going off, as a sort of precursor of the fatal error. which... well, it's at least a somewhat understandable mistake, because it comes from pressure? it's not just the tyres going off each time - the mugello sprint crash was lap four, jerez was lap ten. but an interesting thing about his big errors this year is that they have all come as a result of serious pressure - as a result of pecco directly behind him in the case of jerez and sachsenring and like... in anticipation of the massive points damage he knew he was probably going to take in mugello. it sounds obvious to say pressure is more likely to generate mistakes, but of course that's not always true of our title contenders! pecco only really wakes up when he's already dug a hole halfway to the centre of the earth - but when he faces actual pressure, his track record is mostly very strong. his biggest howlers this season, portimao + catalunya sprints, both came when he was leading comfortably. martin has also made these pressure-light mistakes in the past, most memorably indonesia last year but... well
one of the most fascinating bits of sports are like... limits and ceilings and how your build-up as an athlete kinda determines what's possible for you. like, sports is sort of where you experiment with notions of fate and inevitability and all that, where you question whether it's possible for anyone to ever really change. is it once a choker, always a choker? if you know that you have this problem, this flaw that is always just there in the background, waiting to be actualised - what can you do? does it give you more or less hope that there's not a clear root cause? how debilitating that must be for confidence too, always knowing that you could cause everything you've worked for to crash down in a moment.... this is where. y'know, the thing with pecco, right, is that he's now gotten to a weird place where psychologically he has to be wary of the mistakes he himself makes - but he knows that he can also bounce back from them. he has that muscle memory, because he's done it before. he chucked it down the road in india and he won the title! jorge did it in thailand and he didn't! and the problem is that it becomes a self-reinforcing cycle of sorts, because even though the margin between the two of them at the end of last year ended up being relatively slim... one of them still won and one of them still lost. which actually means that even though pecco and jorge both have made serious mistakes this year (though pecco's track record is cleaner - in portimao the points punishment didn't quite fit the crime and in the jerez/le mans sprints he was kinda just unlucky), only one of them knows they can do this shit and win the title anyway
and now jorge has an entire summer break to go away and think about that. can be a good thing, get some distance, and it's easy to slip into a run of bad form that you can't escape if there's no interruption. can be an awful thing because you're sitting with your mistakes for weeks on end with no chance to rectify them. I'm naturally a pessimist on the 'can any athlete ever really change' question because life has very much worn me down on this topic over the last few years (aka some sports results made me really sad). but I always want to be optimistic! I want to believe athletes can fix their fatal flaws! I want to believe they can get better at managing their tyres and not folding under pressure. and pressure works weirdly... sometimes it's not really a test of 'mental strength' as much as it is of what kind of in-built margin an athlete has (btw this is my best guess for what goes wrong with martin). sometimes it's beneficial in sharpening the mind and erasing the possibility of you just... not being sufficiently concentrated (which is my best guess for what happens with pecco when he's not being pressured). can you truly get better at dealing with that? or at a certain point, have you already accumulated so much mental scar tissue that you're always going to get in your own way? who knows! maybe we're all doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past forever and ever. who knows
anyway. in response to this ask. I do think it's more a case of 63's aligned in being too stuck in their own head, too concerned with legacy, and walking a very thin line between arrogance and insecurity. all three of them, though, have a bad case of 'coming through the ranks in an era of greats they'll always be disparagingly compared to'. what's new can never be as good as what came before, right? and they're constantly struggling to manage or maybe even overcome basic flaws that seem to be embedded in their make up as competitors... maybe they'll make it, just a little. maybe they never will. but it sure is fun to watch them try!
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♥ - family headcanon
tell us about ur kids farron
Or tell us about something else!
Okay, it's time for me to finish all these asks. I don't know why I've been struggling with writing lately, but I want to talk about Farron, and so I will force myself!
I can't remember if I've explained to the Tumblr Void (or if Sjofn's mentioned it), but Farron is a dad to twins!
They are a boy named Sverre and a girl named Kara. They're currently 15 years old and are back on the First in Fanow with their mother Selra.
Up until recently, Farron didn't even know he had two kids. When he left Fanow, Selra had still been pregnant, and so he technically had never met his kids.
That was until ~Dusk came along~.
He made a trip to the First (since he's the only one who could) and, being the sweetheart he is, he popped by Fanow to track down Selra to see how Farron's child was doing. At Farron's request. He'd always felt terrible about leaving his child behind, and it drove him into a depression but it was essentially leave or die for him back then.
What a choice.
That sad stuff aside, Dusk ended up making contact with the little family, and he left the First with a letter from Farron's kids and a lovely sketch of them. The amount that Farron cried, to see them, to know there was two, and to know they didn't resent him for leaving...
Their relationship is still very new and awkward to navigate with Dusk having to be their in between connection, but they're all very happy to have that connection and become a proper family, even if they have to do it from a long distance for now.
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