I really love the payoff for a bit of Siz's background, where she goes "Wait, my own master, when I apprenticed, taught me a whole bunch of obscure wizarding culture so I could... translate her personal notes properly? Okay, then."
Alde was a serious Slyth grand dame who was about 120 at that point, who really didn't want to take Siz on, but did it because she'd owed a favour for about a century to Siz's predecessor. (I have backstory fic, I love Alde.)
But Siz was, at that point, an even more awkward young adult than she was later, very 'paint by numbers' with social skills (here are acceptable topics to ask about, here are the ones people don't like talking about), and really not good with the kind of manners/culture/etc. that would let her move comfortably in complex academic circles in a field where a lot of people who do it don't need to work for a living (or at least can work weird hours.) And even without her own awkwardness, she was a nice kid from a yeoman Huff family a generation or two away from being farmers.
And so Alde sort of shrugged when Alcor said "This is the payback I want", and said "Ok. I'll teach her All The Things" (making her earn it every step of the way) and then did. (They eventually became very close, but the first year or two were really rough.) And thus able to have those conversations.
And it's that stuff that let her manage Raz's social circles as well as she did, I think.
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Date: 2015-09-02 10:09 pm (UTC)Alde was a serious Slyth grand dame who was about 120 at that point, who really didn't want to take Siz on, but did it because she'd owed a favour for about a century to Siz's predecessor. (I have backstory fic, I love Alde.)
But Siz was, at that point, an even more awkward young adult than she was later, very 'paint by numbers' with social skills (here are acceptable topics to ask about, here are the ones people don't like talking about), and really not good with the kind of manners/culture/etc. that would let her move comfortably in complex academic circles in a field where a lot of people who do it don't need to work for a living (or at least can work weird hours.) And even without her own awkwardness, she was a nice kid from a yeoman Huff family a generation or two away from being farmers.
And so Alde sort of shrugged when Alcor said "This is the payback I want", and said "Ok. I'll teach her All The Things" (making her earn it every step of the way) and then did. (They eventually became very close, but the first year or two were really rough.) And thus able to have those conversations.
And it's that stuff that let her manage Raz's social circles as well as she did, I think.