"- It still feels different. I'm not sure how to explain why." 

"I was beaten in school for being the bottom of the class at languages and my grades improved."

"- Huh. I was - basically beaten a lot by our weapons teacher because I was no good at swordfighting and it just made me hate his guts and not even want to bother trying." 

"Huh. I don't know what the difference is."

"- Do you like or dislike learning languages now? ...I guess I actually like swordfighting fine, now, once I had a teacher who taught a style that worked for my, er, stature." He gestures vaguely at himself; he is in fact very short and slim for a man. 

"I'm still terrible at languages but I passed the class anyway. ...in Golarion spellcasters mostly don't do swordfighting. Because you generally don't want to be anywhere near the front lines of any fight."

"Oh, I mean, I don't take a sword to real fights. It's just fun to spar with my friends who aren't mages. And it's good for training reflexes and staying fit, which does matter for our kind of magic." 

"That makes sense. I'm - glad you like it now. If there had been a way to make you like it and be good at it but it hurt would you really have minded that? Exercise ...often hurts...sparring in particular..."

"I guess it's not just the pain? I - mind just pain less, magic hurts too sometimes. It's...the humiliation, the - knowing that he was beating me in front of everyone and enjoying making me look stupid, because he could get away with it, even though I was half his size and it was obviously not fair... He broke my arm once, too." Vanyel's fingers twitch, curl into a fist. "I'm still mad about that. One of the only things I loved as a child was playing music, and - it took me ages to be any good at playing the lute again, after, I never did get all the feeling back in that hand." 

" - yikes. We had good magic healing, that might be an important difference, it was supposed to hurt but it wasn't supposed to damage you and you could go get it healed up afterwards if it was worse than expected, or just if you could afford it and didn't want to wait. I don't - like being humilated but you're not supposed to like punishments, and it's not like being dragged off to gaol isn't humiliating."

"- I mean, sure, but not being suited to a particular style of swordfighting isn't breaking the law. And neither is being bad at languages." 

"I guess you could argue that you shouldn't torture people except as a punishment for crimes and should just let them fail out of school if that's what they seem inclined to do but probably lots of those kids could be wizards with the right motivation."

"Savil said that when I teach people, it works better to focus on rewarding them for succeeding, and encouraging them when they're frustrated or scared, or helping them figure out why something is hard so they can do better at it." 

"I am not surprised that's how Good does it but it's not how Cheliax does it and we have by far the most wizards per hundred children in the world."

"I mean, there could be lots of causes for that! You might also have, um, more money to pay teachers, or something?" 

"I think we do! But still, it's a reasonable starting point, that the best schools in the world use a teaching method that is at least reasonably good."

"Mmm, I guess." 

"In most countries I'd be lucky if anyone taught me to read, and then married at twenty to a friend of my father's. Also people'd shun my mother for being divorced. Also even if I somehow managed to be a wizard I would never get funded to go to the Worldwound."

"I agree that's bad! It just - seems like a different unrelated dimension, to me." 

"I don't think it's unrelated. I think being a decent place to live requires being willing to do what works."

"...I mean, to me a place being somewhere you get hurt for being rubbish at a particular subject in school is - that just makes it a less decent place to live? I guess it could be worth it, maybe, but - I don't feel like Cheliax actually tested it both ways, right? Because Asmodeus - likes people better when they're scared and traumatized. And cares about what's good for Him, not what's good for them." 

"- I agree that he cares about what's good for Him. I don't think that actually cashes out to liking people - traumatized? Devils aren't, like, scared of their own shadow, they're just very - clear-minded, and not squeamish, and not naive or impulsive..."

"...Huh. That - all right, my first thought is that description sounds like Leareth. But - I don't think Asmodeus would even want a Leareth in Hell, so, I don't know, I think I'm - still missing something." 

"I think He'd want a Leareth who worked for Him. Leareth's very used to working for himself, though. I think maybe even his own god will be a nasty surprise - not because it'll be secretly terrible, but because he's not accustomed to belonging to anyone at all."

Shrug. "Or he might be relieved? Needing to figure it out all by himself for centuries on end sounds so tiring."