badgernet_multiversal | Video (killed the light novel star)

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Video (killed the light novel star)

[ The video feed shows off a council room of some kind. There's a few figures in the background - a blond princess, for those who remember Cami, and a huge guy in pitch black armor who looks like the main villain of a fantasy epic. But the scarred, short-haired catgirl is front and center. ]

So a question. What are schools like where you're from? I've never been to one, so I have... no idea what they're like.

We have some here, but they're mostly for the children of merchantry, politicians, or nobility. Or for magic-users - there's a big magic academy... somewhere. Obviously I didn't get to go to any of those.

Any of you guys got schools like that?

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Pretty boring, really. Aside from all the petty drama that goes on and whatever, honestly speculating over who hooks up and who breaks up is kinda fun.

[Even if it does make Nina want a girlfriend.]

Mostly you sit at a shitty little desk and listen to someone talk for a hour and a half or forty-five minutes. Ideally, they're actually good and interesting at explaining the lessons to you, and I've gotten a few like that. Often they aren't. Sometimes they're just boring, sometimes they're really full of themselves and hate all teenagers like you, sometimes they're really stupid and get some of the things they're supposed to teach wrong. Like when I had to correct a teacher over an equation she wrote on the board and she got mad about it even though I was right. I double-checked with my copy of the textbook to make sure, too.

But honestly it isn't too hard to do well in school. All you have to do is figure out how to listen for the important stuff in all the stuff the teachers're saying, read the textbooks, and do a little studying. And do your homework, of course.

We have gym, too, which is a bunch of running around and whatever else they can think of to get you active at least a little. That isn't too hard, either, as long as you make sure to stay fit and do exercise outside gym, too.

Really, school's pretty easy. Mostly the hard part is dealing with other teens who think the most trivial things are of world-ending importance. Seriously, just because Mr. Handsome broke up with you doesn't mean your life is ending. But you can ace that part, too, if you observe carefully and copy what the popular kids are doing, even do it even better than them. I ended up pretty popular that way.

The first bit doesn't sound too different from being tutored. But I guess it must feel different to have a bunch of other people with you. [ She's not quite sure about that. What other differences are there between a class and a private tutor? Hm. ] And probably subject matter? I'm sure what you learn is going to be different in different worlds.

Honestly even this "Jim" doesn't seem too out of the ordinary. Sword exercises, right? So some basic military drills?

Besides the idiots sitting next to you chatting instead of paying attention, and the teacher overall paying less net attention to you? Yeah, pretty similar. As for gym, nothing as exciting as swords. I would love to learn to sword in gym. Really, it's stuff like stretching, games with balls, stuff like that. Push-ups. Oh, and running around the room in a circle.

Oh, push-ups and running laps aren't useless! They're good at building and maintaining core muscles. I'm not sure about ball games though, that seems kind of pointless. That's for little children to pass time.

Well, there're some ball games that're popular enough you can get rich by playing them, but that's basically the more complicated team sports stuff. And, yeah, I regularly do stuff like push-ups and running laps, it's good for staying in shape. Though with the weird changes to my body that's happened, it kinda takes a lot more to qualify as proper exercise. Like, I think you guys don't have that much tech, but you have horse-drawn carts, right? I could pretty much throw one of those, horses and all, without any problem.

We have carts, sure. But they're not always drawn by horses. Sometimes they're drawn by oxen, or drakes, or those weird skeleton horses... [ Pause. ] ...do they still count as horses if they're undead?

They're horses with a qualifier. But, yeah, it's harder to find stuff that challenge my muscles enough. I and a bunch other of the super-strong Recallers (yeah I know, that's a dumb name for a bunch of people getting weird shit from their past lives) had to bug the folks who're good at making stuff until they made us special exercise equipment.

... Wish I could tell you, honestly.

All my learning was done in the giant libraries in Aspio, just reading stuff and occasionally pestering a researcher until they answered questions so I would go away.

And then I was smarter than all of them, so the second step stopped being a thing. So, lots of reading.

I'm probably not a representative answer to this.

[ Yeah that's less than useful for Azra's secret purposes. But she can't be up-front about that, so these kinds of waste-of-time answers are probably to be expected.

Ugh. Doesn't make it feel any better, though. Maybe she could have worded her query in a different way? But how to do that without arousing suspicion...?

Oh well. Answer now, think later. ]

Another representative from the school-less crowd, I see.

Well, from the way you talk, it sounds like your world does have schools, right? Do you know the basics, like what they teach or who they let in?

Well, they're relatively recent, and tend to treat reading and math as the most basic things. Some Blastiatech principles, not enough for people to really make anything, but enough to understand why they're so important to our world.

Kids start off rather young, but older than I was when Aspio picked me up. Smart orphans wind up on their own course, I guess.

I'm sure nobles have some fancier stuff, but for most, it's knowing enough to be functional in the empire, then you learn a trade.

[ Azra mentally files away "blastiatech" as "magic stuff", which is... kind of accurate. SO hey. ]

That doesn't sound. Dissimilar from what I know. Though there's also a large focus on history, politics, and trade in the schools here. Probably because they expect noble and merchant families, I guess...?

Except for magic academies. Maybe. I know nothing about what goes on there.

Hmm. Makes sense, yeah. Pretty much all youth in the Empire get the basics, but then it's up to individual businesses or the Guilds.

Maybe some people get more? But yeah, how it actually goes I'm not sure about much.

Magic schools probably have a lot of the same fundamentals, and then go into the specialty stuff like any trade school. Need to be able to read to read magic, right? And you probably want to know history so you sound stuffier than people who studied it less. That's important for a bunch of the Empire's experts where I'm from at least.

I'm not sure sounding stuffy is important to magic-users here. I know one person who attended a magician's academy, and he is.... not stuffy. He could stand to be stuffier, in fact.

Honestly, probably better that way.

Uh... I mean, where I'm from, we had school start in spring, and it was split into three semesters. It was kind of for everyone, but there were specialized schools you could test into, too. Like, if you wanted to go to music school or something. I guess I should really do a class on Earth school the next time it's my turn, huh, Azra-nee?

It might be good to know what kind of environment the Invaders came from and learned from. Or what they might expect if they get thrown into a school here. [ That last bit is veering dangerously close to revealing the purpose of this post, but Azra's not the savviest at smooth talking and hiding her intentions. ]

[That's okay, that's what Momo is for. She giggles.]

Hmm. I guess if I'd shown up in a school, I'd probably be really confused. Like, who gets taken to another world and still has to go to school? Especially since these guys are all about the fantasy and not, like, drowning in homework. That's one thing about home, they give you way too much homework, whatever club you're in takes over what parts of your life studying hasn't, and lots of people's parents make them go to cram school to study even more. It's like the whole thing's a competition to get into a good school when you're old enough for the next level, and then the one after that.

What's "homework?" Is that like housework? Why would a school assign you housework?

Not really. It's like... okay, so if you're here and studying, uh... [She looks over at the book on her desk.] Geography. And they want to make sure you're learning it, but they don't wanna do it all in tests because some people suck at tests. So they assign you work to do at home, too. Like, you might have to write an essay on how mountains and rivers affected trade routes, or make and label a map of Sengeis to prove you know where everything is, or something like that.

That doesn't make any sense. Do they think you have no other tutors? Or trainings? Or obligations beyond learning? There is a reason they are allotted the time they are!

Sometimes I kinda wonder if they forget that a lot of the time.

You didn't miss much. These days school's a lot more about 'here's how to take a test' than whether you actually learn shit or not. Must be why Gekkoukan's willing to put up with such awful teachers, since it doesn't really matter.

Other than the thing where it turns into a hell tower at night it's pretty normal.

Given it's you, I imagine you'd mostly want to know what high schools are like, pre-university. I doubt you have many guests that went to college.

Agreed. University is a lot more open about, like, "here's what you need, here's a bunch of things you can schedule, have at". But even given that, a lot depends on the model...

So if you start seeing out of a true academy, which I suspect this is-- and early modern academies-- in fact a lot of academies and universities even today-- are not nearly so regimented, and are as much about the sharing of ideas. If you see a lot of top down, especially deep in a major, worry.

you're not familiar with the sort of idiots Azra's world has to deal with on a regular basis, then

for research, read random bullshit from Japanese fanfic sites. have aspirin handy for the ensuing headaches.

Oh balls I've heard about that genre.

For the most part I guess things aren't too different where I'm from. Some of the temples where I live have made an attempt to educate the populace, and we've tried hiring teachers for the orphanage some friends and I set up, but...

Well. I suppose some things aren't too different wherever you go.

[ There's a deep sigh of contemplation. ]

I was raised in a temple, so they were the ones to teach me in terms of formal education.

you go to elementary school where you learn to read write and sing songs on the playground about barbecueing your teacher's head and flushing it down the toilet

after that some people stick with going to classes, some do online school and take hiatuses where they fuck off into the wilderness to make friends with the local wild monsters

that's popular

we had homework too but sometimes you get lucky enough to get a teacher who only tells you to finish reading a chapter in one of your books by a deadline

Edited 2021-09-12 05:15 (UTC)

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Video (killed the light novel star)

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