10. If they had a choice, would they prefer a subway or a bus for public transportation?
Both of them are actually very attached to becak as their main mode of public transportation, even though you can only fit two or three people into one at a time. Not only are they ubiquitous, they’re actually a big part of both cities’ economies, and the people who operate them would be pretty screwed if some other mass transit took over. Neither Darman nor Ardiyanti would want to see that happen to some of their citizens!
That said, if push came to shove, they’d both pick the bus over the subway. Buses do exist in both cities; Solo has some particularly nice new ones. Part of that would just be preference to see the city as one travels through it. But Darman in particular would also be extra skeptical of traveling underground, seeing as the earth has tried to kill him (by way of volcanoes and earthquakes) repeatedly.
12. Describe 5 unusual characteristics your muse has.
Her speaking voice is of a pretty moderate register, so the incredibly high notes she can sing come as a complete surprise in comparison.
While she is generally calm and composed in her person to person interactions, put her on a motorcycle, and all bets are off. While she is not ad hominem aggressive, she also has absolutely no qualms about weaving around and making close turns. She is fearless about navigating tough traffic. Which is, to be fair, pretty typical for her residents, but surely likely to freak out people from places with more organized traffic laws. Even Los Angeles would be skeptical!
When she gets stressed out, she relieves it by cooking.
Though you’d never be able to tell from her expression, it is hard for her to resist from offering suggestions and tutoring in artistic fields when she is not explicitly in a position of teacher. But this is because she genuinely wants to help people get better at things no matter their level, not because she thinks people suck at things.
She is one of those people who, when concentrating on something, will completely lose track of her sense of time and also of any possible physical discomfort.
He really doesn’t need very much sleep. He manages to conserve enough of his naturally high energy level by keeping relatively composed that he can keep going for hours.
He is totally fine with simply not sharing details he doesn’t want people to know, but when it comes down to overtly lying about things, he feels deeply guilty. Not to mention, he’s bad at it - if he actually does try to lie, it’s something that can crack through the rest of his expression. So, he’ll stick to just not sharing things if he doesn’t want someone to know.
He is absolutely an heir of the Mataram kingdom and an immortal not-quite-human thing, but when he dances, he’s less inclined toward the royal and sophisticated roles. He actually has more fun dancing the parts of the clowns or ogres.
Though it could easily be argued that the Sultan serves him, as he is the city and is older than any one ruler, Darman doesn’t see it that way. If the Sultan says hop, he hops, no question.
He makes Ardi look like a good driver.
Whoops, I guess this was less unusual characteristics and more random facts, but OH WELL.
16. What are their best school subjects? What are their worst? List five of each.
This is actually a really tricky one, since neither of them were raised in a situation where they went to a standardized school with specific subjects taught by different teachers over multiple class periods. That just wasn’t so much of a thing in the era when they were of school age, and especially not given their heirs-to-the-kingdom status. Soooo, I’m going to punt on the list of five best and worst aspect, and just be more general.
In general, both of them would do very well in pretty much every creativity-based class you could think of. They’d both be at the top of their music and dance classes. Jogja’s better in the creative writing/storytelling class and Solo’s better in the visual art class, but they’d both still do very well in both of these. Given that both of them were raised with a clear sense of their background as cities, they would also both do well in history classes.
Yogyakarta is known as a city of students nowadays. It’s home to many universities with many strengths. This has absolutely influenced Darman; his natural curiosity feeds into this as well. He likes learning things in general, and won’t brush any subject aside. That said, he does particularly well at writing and public speaking, in addition to all of the arts and history classes. He does less well, however, at government/civics classes, because he basically goes by whatever the Sultan says, and would zone out in a class that goes into the nitty gritty. He also wishes he could do well at earth science, since his region is so threatened by natural hazards, but his superstitions and beliefs about the hazardous personalities of local volcanoes and faults and tsunami-laden oceans make him incredibly nervous and on-edge about the whole topic, to the point where he wouldn’t do well on any test he might have to take.
The most prominent university in Surakarta is an arts institute; this reinforces the fact that Ardi’s best subjects would all fall into that area. She really devotes herself to studying and teaching the arts, but would likely be the kind of student who was more lukewarm to the other stuff. She is smart and would not necessarily do badly, but would get the kinds of grades that reflect the fact that she’d rather be singing than discussing economics, for example. Aside from those arts classes, Ardi would do well in literature and in classes about teaching itself. As for her weakest points, that would be the kind of more abstract math that has no immediately apparent application to the real world. She’s quite good at geometry and trigonometry and math with visuals, but she gets bored at the stuff that’s really just numbers.
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