Post by Colton Deraine on Sept 15, 2019 16:26:58 GMT -5
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[attr="class","firstfriend"]
Bravery is believing in yourself, and that's one thing nobody can teach you.
Fucking hell.
This was the last thing he wanted to be doing today, frankly. They were supposed to get the rest of the day after they emerged at six in the morning from the Haven Forest off, but to actually do so with the email they were sent would be stupid. He was authorized to pick his half of the class, and he was going to take that responsibility seriously in no small part because it gave him the opportunity to ideally create an environment where his class had the overwhelming majority of the decent or potentially decent trainees and the other side was left with scraps.
It already started that way, frankly. Shadecloak and Van Sange picked one student to lead the class, and Shadecloak had picked him. That didn’t surprise him in the slightest, frankly, because while their approaches and mindsets differed their objectives were usually aligned. Both of them recognized that Mistral desperately needed more people capable of running Huntsman missions and that there wasn’t time to stall the progress of the competent in order to cater to the needs of the incapable. People needed help today, and it was his duty to form a class that was able to meet that need.
Van Sange, on the other hand, was a weirdo who seemed to be dicking around and playing games. His selection for the other team captain was someone that Colton knew absolutely nothing about except that she had a heart attack and almost died as a result of participating in a routine training exercise. She was part of the ill-fated Perimeter Defense mission that Kishka had no end of complaints for as well, so it was a pick that was almost downright disrespectful to everyone involved.
In most cases, the key to something like this would be to try and understand your opponent and what they were likely to do. In this case, with the time crunch that he was under, he decided not to go that route. What the psychotic cripple wanted was frankly irrelevant for his purposes, and he would be better served taking that element out of the equation on the likely reasonable assumption that she had no idea what she was doing and would likely flounder. If it had been most other people, he would have at least tried some basic intelligence gathering on who their social circle was and who they were conspiring with but in this case, he regarded it largely as a waste of time.
It was inconceivable to him that someone as devoid of positive traits as Aegle would have any form of formidable support group. Shadecloak was more competent than Van Sange, and Colton was orders of magnitude more competent than Aegle. It was clear which was the premiere class even before rosters were selected, and he doubted any but the truly stupid or desperate would make a play to get Aegle to pick them specifically. So, he spent the time in the most productive way he knew how, and that way was by watching tapes of both combat classes and midterms of each individual student.
His chief concern was overall skill level and potential to grow, as this class split seemed to be pretty permanent. He didn’t just need to have the best class for the next contest, but for the next year and then the year after that. Projecting growth and potential from the limited tapes he had was very difficult, frankly, and was likely impossible to do in any sort of sound manner. By and large, he just decided to trust his gut feeling upon watching the fights and carefully watching things like stances and general demeanor as well as rating the technical skill of each trainee.
Powerful semblances were one thing, sure, but they only got you so far. Qiu’li, for example, was likely going to be a contested pick because he was at the present one of the stronger trainees in the class. The issue there, frankly speaking, was that he had already hit his ceiling in comparison to other students. In a year, he wouldn’t even be in the conversation for second strongest student. He would have been passed up like yesterday’s trash because he lacked the ability to adapt or improve except with his semblance that naturally would not improve to the level as any non-transformation type would. It wasn’t exactly a secret that the tradition was for the transformation types to rule year one and then develop terrible habits that made them fall to the middle of the pack or worse as the years passed and the general skill level of the class went up. In other words, after a certain point having a strong semblance attached to a pathetic human being wasn’t enough anymore.
That didn’t mean that he was without value, for sure, especially in the next few months. But it certainly disqualified him from being the pillar of a class, which was something that Colton could see but Aegle wouldn’t be able to because she had no frame of reference. She had no idea what strength was because she was so far below average to be in the negatives herself and had likely never even seen anyone truly skilled in her life. Even if she had, she lacked the experience to properly evaluate it and would likely go for flash over substance in all cases due to that incompetent eye.
That, in this case, worked just fine for him. He had commandeered a video room on the basement level of one of the more remote training facilities in order to avoid contact with opportunists who would just waste his time after a shower and four hour nap after returning from the forest, and was currently in his second hour going through the midterm tapes of various people and seeing how they reacted under pressure. He had offhandedly told Rosalia what he was going to be doing as they made their way back to campus and half expected her to turn up at some point – but not for a while yet because she looked exhausted the last time he saw her. He was scribbling down in a notebook while he was sitting on the couch with a whiteboard covered in scribbles along with a notebook on his lap that he was writing stuff into periodically.
If nothing else, he was putting a lot of effort into this and if he did end up having a bad draft it would not be for lack of trying. The great part about this particular training facility’s basement was that it had a bathroom literally right there and a vending machine upstairs with both drinks and snacks so he was good. He had a few meals ready to eat packs with him as well, which he could heat up in the microwave upstairs. It was a good little setup, all things considered, and he was content to just chill out there the entire day to get as complete a profile as he could on everyone involved.
This was the last thing he wanted to be doing today, frankly. They were supposed to get the rest of the day after they emerged at six in the morning from the Haven Forest off, but to actually do so with the email they were sent would be stupid. He was authorized to pick his half of the class, and he was going to take that responsibility seriously in no small part because it gave him the opportunity to ideally create an environment where his class had the overwhelming majority of the decent or potentially decent trainees and the other side was left with scraps.
It already started that way, frankly. Shadecloak and Van Sange picked one student to lead the class, and Shadecloak had picked him. That didn’t surprise him in the slightest, frankly, because while their approaches and mindsets differed their objectives were usually aligned. Both of them recognized that Mistral desperately needed more people capable of running Huntsman missions and that there wasn’t time to stall the progress of the competent in order to cater to the needs of the incapable. People needed help today, and it was his duty to form a class that was able to meet that need.
Van Sange, on the other hand, was a weirdo who seemed to be dicking around and playing games. His selection for the other team captain was someone that Colton knew absolutely nothing about except that she had a heart attack and almost died as a result of participating in a routine training exercise. She was part of the ill-fated Perimeter Defense mission that Kishka had no end of complaints for as well, so it was a pick that was almost downright disrespectful to everyone involved.
In most cases, the key to something like this would be to try and understand your opponent and what they were likely to do. In this case, with the time crunch that he was under, he decided not to go that route. What the psychotic cripple wanted was frankly irrelevant for his purposes, and he would be better served taking that element out of the equation on the likely reasonable assumption that she had no idea what she was doing and would likely flounder. If it had been most other people, he would have at least tried some basic intelligence gathering on who their social circle was and who they were conspiring with but in this case, he regarded it largely as a waste of time.
It was inconceivable to him that someone as devoid of positive traits as Aegle would have any form of formidable support group. Shadecloak was more competent than Van Sange, and Colton was orders of magnitude more competent than Aegle. It was clear which was the premiere class even before rosters were selected, and he doubted any but the truly stupid or desperate would make a play to get Aegle to pick them specifically. So, he spent the time in the most productive way he knew how, and that way was by watching tapes of both combat classes and midterms of each individual student.
His chief concern was overall skill level and potential to grow, as this class split seemed to be pretty permanent. He didn’t just need to have the best class for the next contest, but for the next year and then the year after that. Projecting growth and potential from the limited tapes he had was very difficult, frankly, and was likely impossible to do in any sort of sound manner. By and large, he just decided to trust his gut feeling upon watching the fights and carefully watching things like stances and general demeanor as well as rating the technical skill of each trainee.
Powerful semblances were one thing, sure, but they only got you so far. Qiu’li, for example, was likely going to be a contested pick because he was at the present one of the stronger trainees in the class. The issue there, frankly speaking, was that he had already hit his ceiling in comparison to other students. In a year, he wouldn’t even be in the conversation for second strongest student. He would have been passed up like yesterday’s trash because he lacked the ability to adapt or improve except with his semblance that naturally would not improve to the level as any non-transformation type would. It wasn’t exactly a secret that the tradition was for the transformation types to rule year one and then develop terrible habits that made them fall to the middle of the pack or worse as the years passed and the general skill level of the class went up. In other words, after a certain point having a strong semblance attached to a pathetic human being wasn’t enough anymore.
That didn’t mean that he was without value, for sure, especially in the next few months. But it certainly disqualified him from being the pillar of a class, which was something that Colton could see but Aegle wouldn’t be able to because she had no frame of reference. She had no idea what strength was because she was so far below average to be in the negatives herself and had likely never even seen anyone truly skilled in her life. Even if she had, she lacked the experience to properly evaluate it and would likely go for flash over substance in all cases due to that incompetent eye.
That, in this case, worked just fine for him. He had commandeered a video room on the basement level of one of the more remote training facilities in order to avoid contact with opportunists who would just waste his time after a shower and four hour nap after returning from the forest, and was currently in his second hour going through the midterm tapes of various people and seeing how they reacted under pressure. He had offhandedly told Rosalia what he was going to be doing as they made their way back to campus and half expected her to turn up at some point – but not for a while yet because she looked exhausted the last time he saw her. He was scribbling down in a notebook while he was sitting on the couch with a whiteboard covered in scribbles along with a notebook on his lap that he was writing stuff into periodically.
If nothing else, he was putting a lot of effort into this and if he did end up having a bad draft it would not be for lack of trying. The great part about this particular training facility’s basement was that it had a bathroom literally right there and a vending machine upstairs with both drinks and snacks so he was good. He had a few meals ready to eat packs with him as well, which he could heat up in the microwave upstairs. It was a good little setup, all things considered, and he was content to just chill out there the entire day to get as complete a profile as he could on everyone involved.
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