On a Pale Horse (Umamusume/Youjo Senki)

[Ciber]

If you are in a soft magic setting, you can just say that they have the inertia of a full size horse without the weight. Harder to get moving. Harder to stop.

 

[FluffyVoid]

If you are in a soft magic setting, you can just say that they have the inertia of a full size horse without the weight. Harder to get moving. Harder to stop.

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Probably a good thing the magic of the setting is so restricted otherwise the startled racers may start throwing around Fireballs.

View: https://youtube.com/shorts/CRTBrgIVrUI?si=kowkgC21p4DZn43z

 

[Jetsmillion]

Probably a good thing the magic of the setting is so restricted otherwise the startled racers may start throwing around Fireballs.

View: https://youtube.com/shorts/CRTBrgIVrUI?si=kowkgC21p4DZn43z

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I think Sweep is the only one at risk of trying to cast fireball. She is the Uma that is always wearing a witch hat.

 

[WastelandWendigo]

Probably a good thing the magic of the setting is so restricted otherwise the startled racers may start throwing around Fireballs.

View: https://youtube.com/shorts/CRTBrgIVrUI?si=kowkgC21p4DZn43z

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I love Punkey Doodles.

Have another!


View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lFP-vRKnfF4

Also I'm not sure if it's just a bit, but wasn't there that moment where Agnes Tachyon created wind effects while posing with Goldship?

We entirely sure the mad science horse hasn't managed to access the arcane?


View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-KOepjD1Zl8

 

[Jetsmillion]

Hmm.... I had an odd thought, I wonder how popular Uma relay races would be? I could certainly see fans having wild speculations and debates about what the ultimate Uma team would be.

 

[eager slacker]

The Aoharu Hai campaign that is coming out soon is a relay race. From what we know Shirogane would be a popular pick for long and possibly dirt races. Both would stack the race in her favor.

 

[Neo3932156]

The Aoharu Hai campaign that is coming out soon is a relay race. From what we know Shirogane would be a popular pick for long and possibly dirt races. Both would stack the race in her favor.

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Shirogane have a lot of experience with urban roads with some dirt playing in the park but dunno if that translate to a definitive advantage in dirt races.

 

[Tamphithere]

Shirogane have a lot of experience with urban roads with some dirt playing in the park but dunno if that translate to a definitive advantage in dirt races.

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Most Uma are absolute rubbish on dirt though, while Shirogane probably has a B that can be legacy'd up to A.

 

[Renko]

I want to apologize to @WrandmWaffles for complaining about Shiro-chan's first winning concert in my last post.

I stumbled upon a clip of the Cinderella Gray anime and....


View: https://youtu.be/KBydgS_5jsk?si=smUAXVGGRp1Cd_BU

Though, I suspect the audience will all be surprised and confused with Shirogane's choice of song and performance. Kinda like how they reacted to Oguri here in the video!

After all, they expect idol songs and dance moves!

 

[WrandmWaffles]

Sorry to say, there probably won't be an update this week. I've been rather ill the past few days and haven't really managed to do much of anything. That said, I am feeling a bit better today.

I wonder how many of them were winged hussars, also wonder if people are more aware of war horse uma, in the psychological sense, in places like America or Europe since Japan isn't that open about mental healthcare.

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Relatively few would be winged hussars, since the umamusume version usually seems to be born in a roughly analogous timeframe as their horse counterpart. Shirogane is a bit unusual in this regard, but her reincarnation situation is a bit wonky.

Countries with more recent cavalry usage, such as Poland or much of Europe, would indeed have more cultural understanding of war horse umamusume, though it would be a bit faded since most of them would have died of old age at this point in history, even if the cultural idea still remains.

She's not in a career crushing dead-end job!

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There's no real indication that Salaryman was that upset regarding his job. If he was in a manager position at a fairly large company, that would mean he's actually fairly ahead if he got to that point in his early thirties, given how Japanese companies tend to promote based on seniority. In that scenario, the Salaryman seemed to have gone to most of the company social hours, so was probably more social than Shirogane, if in a more artificial way, since Shirogane has a family that requires significant interaction to prevent them from getting worried about her.

She's not risking her life in a brutal war either!

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Which...wouldn't really make her more social? As an officer she was required to at least manage the morale of her subordinates, which requires some degree of socializing with her men, even if it had to be at a distance. With a comfortable life as an umamusume in post-Cold War Japan, Shirogane didn't really get too much pressure to leave her comfort zone of interacting mostly with the people around her and not too much else.

And even when she got Tracen-ed and being reserved, she still randomly reached out and just talked to other people, like that security team earlier in the chapter.

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To be fair, they talked to her first. But yeah, while Shirogane doesn't tend to initiate social interactions herself, she isn't averse to them on principal, particularly from someone who looks to be useful to know.

Justice for Oguri Cap, the dance was great!

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It was distinctive, at the very least, at least to people unfamiliar with it. To non-Japanese it didn't really look cringe, for the most part, since we don't have the cultural context.

Well it's probably not going to be a drinking song at least.

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You never know, she may have been a wild one when she was younger. She may have some pretty bawdy songs remembered. Now she might not have taught Shirogane any of them, but Shirogane may have overheard them when her mom was drunk/tipsy.

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Kataryzna is Polish, she definitely knows some drinking songs, even if she also knows that you should probably not let umamusume drink alcohol unless you know they can handle it. And from the looks of it not all Polish drinking songs are all that bawdy.

"Did you seen Shirogane Oruze—uh, Shirogane's Polish Enka concert? It was so cool!"

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It would be a little funny if most of her fans end up referring to her as Suzuki Shirogane because they can't pronounce Orzel correctly. But if they can manage Symboli Rudolf they should be fine.

I guess Enka might be the immediate parallel they would draw, which would make Shirogane a bit more distinctive too, if they interpret it as a stylistic choice instead of her lack of musical knowledge.

I like how it is both appropriate in world for Shiro's mom to have taught her this and how it seemingly has relevance to Shiro personally.

Or rather Tanya.

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Bialy Krzyz is a song about the lyricist's father, who was part of the Polish Home Army and then later an anti-communist guerilla. While the song doesn't actually directly mention the affiliation of the fighter it's talking about to get around the Soviet era censors, it's quite obvious who they are referring to.

It's relevant to Shirogane, since as far as she knows, Tanya died in obscurity after risking her life repeatedly during the war, and for her mother, it's relevant since she had many relatives who were part of the Polish military and resistance groups.

Shirogane might end up picking this song as a nod to her Polish grandparents whom she's never really had the chance to meet in person (they did visit her shortly after she was born but she doesn't really remember that) and has only talked with on the phone periodically.

1)You don't do that on the first day or in assessments.
2)Lying about statistics is bad, for athletes it's VERY bad.

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Yeah, the examiner would have no real reason to fudge the numbers to Shirogane. Though while her max speed is slower than the average racehorse, that does mean Shirogane's top speed is unusually high for her 'breed' of horse.

I doubt it. Not any more than they had a section for women or slaves. I agree with about the modern olympics, but given how elitist and exclusionary the greek city-states were, I can't see them having a seperate section for horse-girls, especially when you consider their view of women.

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Chariot racing was part of the Olympic games, I believe, so that would necessitate uma participation, if that was still a thing.

Also, now that I think about it - ancient Greece wasn't noted for it's cavalry or horsemanship, so I doubt they'd have many(or any) Ume in high social positions.

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Horses were still significant status symbols, even if they weren't as revered as in some other cultures, so I wouldn't be so sure of there being no umamusume in significant positions. In all likelihood there would be some religious cults that had umas as significant figures, given the Hellenic myth for the creation of horses. And with how low of an opinion Hellenic cultures seemed to have of human women, the comparative superiority of umamusume aside from intellect might mean they put umas at a high status and human women even lower.

Though, I suspect the audience will all be surprised and confused with Shirogane's choice of song and performance. Kinda like how they reacted to Oguri here in the video!

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They probably would be less perplexed, since they'd categorize it as a foreign song, and not be as weirded out past the foreigness. It would be a bit of a surprise, and would accidentally perpetrate the impression that Shirogane is a foreign-born racer, which could create some interesting problems.

 

[Neo3932156]

which could create some interesting problems.

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To be fair, Shirogane odd enough on her own that, despite her 2 out 3 life as Japanese, she makes a believable foreigner.

Also Shirogane: "An interesting problem require a modern, physic-based, mathematically precise solution, recorded intensely in triplicate."

 

[CantFocusOneThing]

Since Shirogane can't be influenced by fate how would be her opinion of the people that are "fated" to win will she be able to sense it like other umas or would she be a skill like target on sight but for umas that already won the race before and because they are "fated" to win she goes extra hard on the race because she doesn't like that just because this horse won before doesn't that fate can declare that the race already ended or maybe a skill against "popular" race horses? Like the more wins or fans the uma has the more the "dark horse" she becomes.

 

[Lyrista]

I mean the Umamusume game has skills like Long Shot or Competitive Spirit, so Shiro might have something similar

 

[Lovhes]

Funny thing about Tanya/salaryman, they're actually really good at social puzzles and management. The only issue is that they don't have the intuition to grasp how to socialise, they basically learnt it manually.

This works fine for the salaryman since he managed to learn the social norms and contracts of modern society. But Tanya Degurechaff was running on modern sensibilities on a very different society, was born orphan, have a world war looming, and made some extremely faulty assumptions about the empire's rationality thinking that they'll be a monster of rationality and draft a young girl like her.

In this 3rd life as a horse girl, Shirogane have the multiple benefit of being able to live a proper childhood with a loving family Inspite of her well meaning efforts, and she doesn't have the looming threat of any catastrophe that would ruin her stable life.

Shirogane will be able to social-fu properly.
.... As properly an uma-musume can at least if what I know of them is true.

 

[Lyrista]

Networking with her racing colleagues builds partnerships, gets her training partners, and helps her learn about the competition

 

[The Unicorn]

Chariot racing was part of the Olympic games,

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Apparently so. My first reaction was that that's weird all the references I know of have charioteers as violent hooligans at best, poor gutter trash at worst. However after reading about the olympic games, and ancient horsemanship some more it becomes clear - theChariot races were not (unlike most of the other olympic events) indivuals showing off their prowess for the glory of Zeus and the fame of their acomplishments, they were rich citizens showing off the fact they were rich by owning wining teams (often including the driver). So the Ancient Olimpics might have an event where Ume slaves demonstrated how great their owner was, but they wouldn't have a section for Ume to compete in as citizens.

Horses were still significant status symbols,

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Owning expensive things you can display was a status symbol, but AFAIK, unlike many cultures the ones owning them didn't ride or otherwise use the horses, they just showed them off like they showed off their slaves and houses.

Hope you feel better.