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kafkaoftherubble · 9 months

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MAURICE TEACHER LORE

Also Maurice has two younger sisters

Felipe

History

Foreign language/linguistics

Foreign cultures

Jasmin

Math

Science

Nadine

Biology

Natural history

Lysander

Art

Music

Felipe

He's from a nomadic culture so he's spent most of his life on the road, only recently deciding to settle down in Odeda. Because he's traveled a lot, he knows several languages and a lot about many different cultures, including the damages caused by Odeda when they colonized them.

Jasmin

Half Odedan and half former colony. She grew up in Odeda but was taught of her father's home country and can speak the language. She excelled in school from a young age and was accepted in a prestigious college. Has taught in private schools for most of her career, jumping at the change to teach the young prince and princesses.

Nadine

An immigrant who studied the dragons of the north western islands and the people living there in her early adulthood. After writing a well received paper on them, she moved to Odeda to continue her study on lizards and lizard-like animals. She worked at a college and received funding from them for her research prior to becoming a tutor for the royal family.

Lysander

Well respected artist in Odeda who painted several public buildings. Caught the eye of the royal family and was offered a position as a tutor. He's not an immigrant or mixed race, but has spoken a lot with immigrants and their beliefs have rubbed off on him.

Story

Felipe was the first to suggest teaching the prince and princesses about foreign cultures and politics. Nadine and Lysander jumped at the change to teach someone of such high status their beliefs and opinions, but Jasmin was more hesitant. She didn't want to jeopardize this amazing job opportunity but agreed to say nothing when the others went ahead with it.

After some years, Maurice started talking about "foreigner political ideas". Priscilla didn't say anything because she wasn't really against suggesting new ideas, but when she passed away Volker soon had the teachers fired for spreading their "harmful" ideas. They all died under mysterious circumstances over the next few years and were replaced by teachers handpicked by Volker. Jasmin was spared because she only taught math.

This caused a rift in Maurice's and Volker's relationship, but Maurice was old enough to understand that he shouldn't speak against Volker.

Oohhhh, hmm hmm!

So is the timeline thus?

Priscilla is the empress. Maurice gets his education.

Teachers were sought after to teach Maurice.

Teachers had leeways during Priscilla's rule.

Volker is ready to snatch that throne. Murders Priscilla and her husband (L-Lucario? Wait that can't be right).

Volker jails teachers and subsequently assassinate/execute them. Maurice is now old enough to know he should shut up to not provoke Volker too much.

Extra questions that pop up in my head!

How old was Maurice when Priscilla died?

What did Maurice learn from his teachers right before his teachers' deaths?

Is he old enough to really understand the thoughts and opinions of his teachers, or is he really just being a willing recipient? Is he being indoctrinated—even if it's "good" indoctrination? When he talks about his opinions back then, is he really just parroting what his teachers think?

What I like about this angle ^ is that you can then explore a bit about the role and philosophy of education.

Even if you're teaching good things, isn't it still indoctrination if you're trying to make a kid see things in your specific, opinionated way? Kids do take after the thoughts of the adults/society around them for a long time because... that's kinda what children (and even some adults) do. Social creatures and all. Usually we argue that it's not a problem if the worldview we are trying to impart on a kid is a beneficent one (like how some would argue that it's fine to teach children religion at a young age, because religion advocates for goodness), but it doesn't actually answer the question about the nature of education itself.

What form of education is not indoctrination?

And, given that we deliver knowledge through specific narratives (for example, the narrative of evolution; the narrative of string theory; the narrative of physicalism in neuroscience etc.), then education itself is basically a mass narrative-spreading system. Hence Volker's use of propaganda and indoctrination in Odedan universal education syllabus... and ironically, Maurice's private education via his tutors. The machinery is the same: shape the child(ren) into a specific way. The difference is: "what specific way?"

I think these two examples of education (Volker-led education vs. Maurice's private education) could make for a very good contrast! It could also eventually lead to the "education status quo" stance espoused by Ira vs. "education reform" advocacy espoused by Edith.

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Apropos to this "education and tutor" lore,

Has Edith considered the logistics of training teachers under the new, reformed syllabus + system while she advocated for her reform?

What I mean is this: no matter how great your education ideal is, you need qualified people to carry them out, yea? I know this all too well because Malaysian Education Department loves revamping our education policies in quick successions (it's beyond rewriting/updating textbooks) that neither the teachers nor the students ever reaped whatever "benefits" these dumbasses tout. Hence, you need to train the educators before the students get to enjoy this reform. But how long will you allocate that time of training? How much resources? What new qualifications will you be seeking in your new teachers?

And the more sweeping your reform (I assume Edith's idea is very sweeping and revolutionary!), the thornier the logistics!

I think this could become one of Ira's arguments! I basically imagine Ira's reform is just textbook rewrites and stripping away "overt" monarchist overtone at most. There is very little re-training of educators under this sort of change.

Edith's though would need a lot more work. Resources. Time.

We need Ira to have more supporters, right? Hahhaha dude is so isolated at the moment 😝 Well, maybe this could earn Ira some points and allies!

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So after we talked about Volker needing a Benedict (but before she ended up being Lyndis 😏), I was wondering what sort of person would become Volker's advisor. Why would someone stand behind a shithead like that? Why offer their intellect to someone like that?

Love for the royal family?

Love for the ideal of the country/love for Odeda?

Love for a specific political ideal?

Love for Volker? (this is probably the most cliche reason, haha!)

Love for power and further ambitions?

Love for social experiments? (This one seems kinda chaotic. It's basically a Mad Scientist in a position of power.)

Or no love—pragmatic alliance because of how much this person's fortunes is tied to Volker?

I thought the last possibility is pretty intriguing to imagine, so I tried to come up with plausible backstory for this. And since we were also talking about Maurice's backstory including his tutor way back at Monday...

The scenario was this: Lyndis (in my head at the time the name was "Blanknedict" 😂) joined the royal family first as a governess/tutor. She was to teach either Maurice or his siblings (you filled in the blank for me in this ask, hehe! So it's "Maurice's sisters.") on magic??? Or science ???

But Lyndis wasn't being a teacher for teaching's sake, per se. Before becoming a governess/tutor, she had been engaging in Machiavellian proclivities back in her town. They range from good things all the way to assholery. Maybe it was to manipulate the town folk to treat a solitary old woman more nicely just because the granny was nice to her that one time. Maybe it was to screw with the local pastor because he criticized her harshly that one time. Or to cause an expulsion of a neighbor because she hated how inefficient they were at providing the village some produce. Maybe it was to cause another person to lose their livelihood because this person offended Lyn before.

The corrupt town mayor had a habit of employing urchins to do some of his petty crimes, which he then "solved," to bolster his reputation among them townfolks. Lyndis was one of his employees, which gave her the first environment to exercise her schemes and be praised + rewarded for it.

The idea isn't that she's a manipulative monster from the get-go. It's that she lacked people who could help her channel these gifts for good. And the environment she was raised in had limited her into becoming something better.

Anyway, as she grew up, the sort of things she found objectionable became less and less. She found people too easy to fool and manipulate—at this point, the mayor had become so reliant on her, she was the real mayor this whole time—that she became deeply suspicious of collective intellect. This, I thought, would explain why she was against the sort of ideals Brandi and the rest advocated, for democracy rests on one's faith in the people's collective ability to rule.

She was really a shadow dictator, and under her rule, the town did prosper. This, I thought, would help her develop this idea that the best way of governance is one very wise, very powerful person ruling them all.

Her ambitions grew. Seeing the failures of Odeda (the same ones that tormented Volker, for that matter) pissed her off, and soon she decided to aim for the royal court where she believed her talent could be exercised. She would remake Odeda in her vision from the shadow. To do that, she decided to join in through the cover of an employment. She chose teaching, but originally, she wasn't even the governess going for the royal family's interview. She killed the real one, assumed her identity, and steadily sabotaged other people's chances so she could get there.

Then once she became a tutor, she began to look for the medium she could latch on—the same way the old mayor was her medium for power. She found Volker's ideals and character to be the best for her after they met each other in some... event, whatever. I don't know what aristocrats and royals do. She bribed servants and children into becoming her spies, collect secrets to blackmail those she could not bribe, and basically tried to construct her own spy network. She even dabbled in some murder if she needed to advance her schemes.

On the outside, though, she played the role of an affable, intelligence, reasonable woman who was simply a bit pragmatic in her decisions. Cosmetics may be most people's way of dressing up, but Lyndis' cosmetics are her reputation and impression.

Volker got wind of it all, though! He had evidence of her schemes and shits—which could get her executed. Lyndis, not content to die before her ambitions came to fruition + not disliking Volker's own appetite for power, agreed to formally work for him. From then on, she amassed even more power and control over the country through her alliance with Volker, and she provided counsel and schemes for him. It was a win-win partnership of equal footing, and they looked out for each other. Lyndis supported Volker's megalomaniacal quest to become god because she found immortality a useful asset. But she was smart enough not to be the guinea pig of her own experiment, and so Volker was her "test trial." Ultimately, she wanted an eternal dictator of whom she could support from the shadow.

I thought it was pretty interesting a dynamic, so here you go! Something my daydream made up because Dear Emperor is just that fun.

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What did you come up for Lyndis, though?

#Dear Emperor and Lyndis

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kafkaoftherubble · 5 months

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I think the universal education in Odeda doesn't make sense with Volkaire's philosophy so instead it'd be very expensive. If you're poor or disabled then you're just screwed but you can get a free education if you join the military cause it's basically proving that you're patriotic and could be more useful to Odeda if you get an education, hence Ira's college degree despite growing up with hardly any money at all

Well, universal education typically comes later after private education including learning in churches/religious institutions and military academies in a few societies I know of. After all, to implement universal education, you kinda need to have a centralized state with federal control over cities beyond its capital, but if I remember correctly... Not all societies had a strong federal control back then.

Even societies with strong centralization didn't necessarily feature universal education. Medieval China (and countries that were influenced by it) had effective bureaucracies and a very powerful central seat of power. And yet the most "universal" aspect of its education was the imperial exams (科举), where everyone could take part to get a job in government administration or become civil servants. So they had some form of standardized curriculum (memorize a selected collection of treatises), but no actual "universal education."

So yea. I think it can hold! You'll have to revise the part where nationalistic propaganda was introduced through universal education though! And you'll have to consider the fact that a lot of your population will be illiterate.

#dear emperor and lyndis

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kafkaoftherubble · 9 months

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Lyn hi thoughts? Sorry in advance if this is incoherent, more sick than usual. Shout 9ut to auto correct by making this 70% more readable by catching a lot of my typos and spelling errors.

Ira is from the north. The north was, invaded so he joins the military to fight the invaders. This fight continues for several years, even after Ira becomes a minister. It's the only thing that matters to Ira, he just wants his home to be safe.

During the story, Volker dismisses the military and has them stop defending the north and gives that land to the invaders.

From age 15-30, this is what Ira feared most. He didn't want his home to be removed from Odeda, but ot happened anyway because Volker didn't wanna bother continue the fight.

Even when iy dores happen though, Ira doesn't mind because Volker has so masterfully manipulated him, making him believe strange things he would never even consider before.

Does this make sense with the story or should I change it? It happens like one quarter in, should it be later so the reader can better understand how much Ira loves his home and how much Volker lied to him?

Sorry for the tardiness! I hope you're feeling way better now, man.

I think this sequence of events works!

This sells his conflict hard. Better still, it is entirely believable that Edith's imprisonment + Ira's oldest intent for his part of the land is what motivated him to go against Volker after being very loyal to the latter.

It's psychologically possible that Ira's earliest intent, while dear to him, has become steadily co-opted into Ira's latter-day loyalty to Volker that he can, and does, sideline it for a bit. Hence, he will need one more psychological break to make him finally turn his back on Volker. Sorta like the perfect excuse for him to renew his commitment. Then, even after Edith was free, Ira would not stop there—because now he's remembering the one cause he has always place close to his heart again.

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Even when it did happen though, Ira doesn't mind because Volker has so masterfully manipulated him, making him believe strange things he would never even consider before.

Aha! This is a case of intense undue influence! Some may call it brainwashing. As luck would have it, I had just listened to a neat, 37 minutes long science podcast about brainwashing:

I'm gonna make some notes on it when I have the time (unfortunately, it means "not now". Because I haven't gotten the time yet!), and I wouldn't mind sharing with you the notes when I'm done, if you don't wanna listen to it or if podcasts aren't your thing.

BUT! It really is just 37 minutes long, and I think it can give you some general idea of how this manipulation could be written in the story. This episode centers around cults—why do they act in a way they would have never after they joined it? And the cult here didn't necessarily mean religious or spiritual flavor. One of the speakers was actually an ex-member of a political/ideological cult. That's some proximity to the Volker-Ira situation, yea?

Lemme know if you need my notes version if you don't feel like listening! I'm gonna make notes either way and helping out a friend will give me a bit more urgency to complete it sooner (the other urgency comes from the worry that my memory may fade due to so many things I have to give a damn about. What if these specific memory cells have been remodified for something else before I can record them?! Hahahaha!).

#dear emperor and lyndis

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kafkaoftherubble · 10 months

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Hmm I'm working on the royal family + advisors and the teachers right now. Volker's older sister, Priscilla, was next in line to the throne so he had her assassinated so that he could become emperor instead. Do you think her husband should also be assassinated?

"Do you think her husband should be assassinated?"

....Have I really become the Benedict?! HAHAHA HAHAHA

Uh hem, yes. You never let any cockroach slip away, see, even if you have killed the largest one that can fly. Because the other one might also be capable of flight. Or show up again when you think you're safe, or when everything is so close to fruition, or when you're at a critical period of your plan where everything has to be right.

Leaving Lord Husband alive is to leave a kink in your armor. A pinprick hole at the back of your helmet. A cockroach in your room. A husband widowed is a husband who will snoop around in suspicion. A husband who will then find ways to avenge his wife. A husband who will seek ways to upstage you, too, milord, because he had tasted the feeling of being in proximity of the throne. How many widows of dead kings and widowers of dead queens had later ascended the throne themselves throughout history? Too many.

Kill him.

Murder him, and his kin, and his family, and his retinue, and his retainer... and be clever about it. Send some to exile before killing them. Send some to a warzone before sabotaging their campaign and killing them there. Try using slow poison on others so they die from "sickness." Manipulate any enemy who already harbored enmity against your target, and incite an event that ended up having them killed. Be clever, milord! We don't want the public to so easily see we are behind it.

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However, if you want to add some chaos factor, this Husband will work! Maybe that Husband somehow survives and becomes his own faction in the bid to take down Volker. Maybe he's also vying for the throne; maybe he wants to start a new royal family line.

Or! If the Husband survived, he can be Ira's ally! Maybe he likes some of the current royal family due to his lingering love for Priscilla, ya know?

Wait. Is the Husband the father of Maurice?!

#Dear Emperor and Lyndis #at this rate I really *am* gonna be Volker's slimy advisor ahahahahhaha

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kafkaoftherubble · 9 months

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DID I EVER TELL YOU ABOUT THE ROCK MAGIC [dear emperor]

No, but! May I guess?

Is it... about Edith's arm?!

#dear emperor and lyndis

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kafkaoftherubble · 7 months

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I started on a first draft of dear emperor btw. Still in chapter one because it's hard to make progress with my laundry list of problems but it's something

If you look up at your ceiling from time to time, you might see something that kinda looks like this:

Don't worry! It's someone being so excited, the soul was astral-projected out of the body like a ghost. Ghosts do not need plane tickets, you see. Flying across the ocean is tiring for them, sure, but they can always just possess some dude flying in first class all the way to Denmark.

Also if you listen closely you can hear "PAI TING PAI TING PAI TING!!! SPARKLE SOUND EFFECT!"

#dear emperor and lyndis

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kafkaoftherubble · 9 months

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Brandi and Lewis are so cute together I love them...

Oh boy, if their Creator is shipping them... I think we've got a winner, boys

#dear emperor and lyndis #I saw the other letter! But that one needs a bit more time to digest and all so I'm gonna finish up my work for the week #then come back to that!

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kafkaoftherubble · 4 months

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SUPPORT SYSTEM!!!!

Between chapters, you can walk around. It would be like a mixture of a pokemon game (gen 1-5) and triangle strategy, like how you can walk on the battlefield before battles.

During these parts of the game, you can talk to your party and other NPCs. There'd also be some stuff you could do but most important right now the cooking minigame.

Every character gets three endings, one alone and two paired. Eg, Edith can either be paired with Ira or Brandi or she can also be alone.

If you play the game without doing anything extra (eg a speedrun), the character will get a solo ending.

If you do stuff like paired up attacks and have characters do activities together like cooking, they'll get friendship points.

During exploration phase, you can sometimes get a character to follow Ira and bring them to another character and have them talk. This activates something similar a support :3

When characters get close, they'll have stat bonuses and attacks they can only perform together.

Oooh! So an overworld map! To talk to allies, survey the fields for materials or loot, stuff like that. Fire Emblem Engage actually has this exact mechanic. In that one, it has the Castle to explore between chapters—and the Overworld map on the battlefield where you can talk to your allies and collect stuff. Meanwhile, I'd just played an SRPG game demo going by the questionable name of Unicorn Overlord lately, and it also features an overworld where you can walk around, gather resources, talk to characters, unlock chapters (to get new characters), or even have those Pokemon-style chance encounter where a sprite of your enemy roam around until they see you and chase after you. When you "bump" into them, it's a single battle!

And here I thought the Fishing Minigame (TM) would show up before the cooking one, ahahha!

That's good. Though I love seeing an abundance of paired endings because it both showcases some lore regarding the character and gives them closure with people they have rapport with—I also think that limiting paired endings will vastly improve the quality of endings as a whole!

Oh, I love paired-up attacks. It's just cool shit. I'm superficial like that! Ahahhahaha.

I like the idea of leading one character to another for extra conversations, brutha! I'm seriously nosy about character conversations, hahahaha.

The increased stat bonuses for being near your friends is typical Fire Emblem mechanic, so I approve! Also, will dual attacks be shown in some sort of special animation? This would require a lot of work to write for attacks, but it gives you a chance to add individual and/or rapport flairs in a pair's attack!

#dear emperor #dear emperor and lyndis

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