On a Pale Horse (Umamusume/Youjo Senki)

Xenoxn said:

Off the top of my head Dober won two of the triple tiara races, so did Scarlet. Waaaaaaay into the future we'll get Mejiro Ramonu, Almond Eye, Gentildonna and Still in Love who have won the Triple Tiara. All of them are scary motherfuckers but it is extremely unlikely that Shirogane will race against any of them, the timeline just doesn't fit.

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I do love the theme of all the IRL Triple Crown and Triple Tiara winners having Uma counterparts with something DEEPLY wrong with them.

Triple Crown:

Shinzan - Unknown.
St. Lite - detached from reality.
Mr. C.B - a state of Zen so deep that nothing phases her.
Rudolf - Active Career Rudolf was scary as hell and the Rudolf we see is her consciously doing everything she can to distance herself them that part of herself.
Narita Brian - (as shown in Star Blossom) her triple crown run is a cosmic tantrum of her being pissed about not being able to race her big sister. Traumatized several opponents, and probably the closest well get to Active Career Rudolf.
Deep Impact - unknown.
Orfevre - Might actually just be Autism, somehow the least crazy of the Triple Crowns unless Gentildonna is around. Borderline Non-verbal, only opens her mouth to trash talk.
Contrail - we don't know yet.

Triple Tiara:

Ramonu - Wants Rudolf to drop the silliness and go back to Active Career Rudolf because she wants a Deathmatch on the Turf, settles for intentionally hitting every one of Still in Loves insecurities to provoke her into a frenzy just to feel something. May come out of retirement to fight Shirogane for the same reason.
Still in Love - Represses the parts of herself she considers unfitting of her family image to the point where they developed into an entirely separate personality. "Forget the Race Ramonu, LETS JUST KILL EACHOTHER!".
Apapane - Unknown.
Gentilldonna - So strong that Physics DO NOT APPLY, scale her like a Super Saiyan.
Almond Eye - So salty about the IDEA of losing at anything ever that the very idea of someone telling her she can't do something drives her to prove that made up version of something wrong by mastering it at the cost of her own physical health, such as acing a test that she'll spend days without eating or sleeping just to study.
Daring Tact - Surprisingly normal if you ignore the Bears.
Liberty Island - Unknown.


Autumn Triple Crown:

T.M. Opera O - no notes.

Zenno Rob Roy - Seems pretty normal actually. Horse Counterpart had the "Temperment of a Mob Boss" and was so intimidating he could get other horses (excluding Symboli Kris S.) to cower with a single shout.



Speaking of the Autumn Tenno Sho, does Shirogane recognize she can also run the Autumn Triple Crown in her Classic Year? Or has the thought not crossed her mind that it's the week between the Shuka Sho and the Kikuka Sho?


(Pay no attention to the fact that the Autumn Tenna Sho would also be her only chance to run against Silence Suzuka, as that's the race where she gets Injured in Umamusume/dies IRL.)

Argious said:

Speaking of the Autumn Tenno Sho, does Shirogane recognize she can also run the Autumn Triple Crown in her Classic Year? Or has the thought not crossed her mind that it's the week between the Shuka Sho and the Kikuka Sho?

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...see, now I wanna see the havoc that her winning a Triple Triple Crown would cause. Like Imagine how much that would warp the entire nation.
One person who is super none standard winning 3 crowns would fucking destroy Japanese Racing for generations because all the girl's try to match it and break their bodies.

SB0D said:

You think the great Freud would stop at merely crack?
No, he was on mixtures beyond our current understanding of science.
Probably included human milk and "milk", being sick fucker he was.

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Look, my psych textbook only mentioned the cocaine.

Umamusume Special Event: Shirogane Orzel Mode! No matter what race you run, Shirogane is in it! This of course would release during MANT for maximum pain.

Shirogane Extreme Mode sets your Trainee's mood to Awful if you roll a gate directly next to her.

Dopplerdee said:

...see, now I wanna see the havoc that her winning a Triple Triple Crown would cause. Like Imagine how much that would warp the entire nation.
One person who is super none standard winning 3 crowns would fucking destroy Japanese Racing for generations because all the girl's try to match it and break their bodies.

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My mind is now jumping back to "Eclipse first, the rest nowhere."

"Orzel first, the rest broken." Or something like that. She sets her own impossible standard, and all shall fall chasing her, in the race and in her legacy.

More than a few will destroy themselves, as discussed in-thread, and all that'll be left by race… 4? Will be the durable stamina freaks.

Shirogane will definitely serve as a clear example of the benefits of knowing your limits...to those who know how she works anyway.

I've had a thought

What if Shiro manages to snowball the Triple Crown races, assuming she races all of them?

As in, each victory results in her opponents starting the next race with a bigger debuff. Shiro's intimidating habits and performance resulting in her opponents being more wary, more nervous

Yes, her developing a reputation has been discussed before, but I'm imagining that, with each win, she becomes a little more grim, a little more serious- and with the biggest race events in Japan, the utter look of terror on her opponents' faces will be magnified for all to see.

Her own buffs carry between races, as debuffs on her opponents do the same- while new ones get hit with high starting debuffs before they even get out of the gate

KenjiApex said:

Such as that one where a dirt gets into the Umamusume's eye, where they either drop down in pain or stops to wipe it off their glasses if they wore one that protected their eye.

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Shirogane just blinks and keeps running. She still gains some stats on failures, but it takes more energy.

eager slacker said:

I like to imagine that Shirogane's win poses look perfectly calm and reasonable to the point even she doesn't notice her desires but if you look carefully in the non-G1 victories she's tapping her foot eager for another race and in her G1 victory pose her tail is wagging back and forth.

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Her win animations would be similar to Symboli Kris S. For non-G1 she raises a fist then walks off, for a G1 she salutes with her sword, then walks off.

TheSmallSauce said:

"I refuse to let you go to Tracen looking like a wandering vagrant, people are going to wonder if you're homeless."

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Funny enough, at one point Shiro went to a shoe shop by Tracen looking for glue but the shopkeep gave her a new pair of shoes instead.

TheSmallSauce said:

Maybe in real life Shiro would make for a track or lead pony like Fenomeno, guiding horses into the starting gates and leading the younger colts and fillies on training runs in the fields, the only difference being that for some reason she manages to get draft horses following her too.

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IRL Shirogane would be a very good lead horse. And the foals she trains tend to understand a lot more things than a horse normally should.

Though she'd be a funny mom horse to watch, maybe a bit like that video of Almond Eye racing her own foal.

TheSmallSauce said:

She would be like Haru Urara in that regard. No visible difference in reaction after winning or losing the race during the cutscene that happens immediately after you cross the post.

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I think there would be some difference, where she has the fist pump animation for coming in first, and the neutral reaction to any other result, though if she's less than third her eye twitches angrily.

FluffyVoid said:

Potential omake of some rich Uma thinking Shiro is homeless and decides to do something about it.

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This is sort of what happened with Air Groove, lol.

Ace98 said:

Though, I don't know what the official procedure is for race 'accidents' and such are and whether such races count or have to be redone later.

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Presumably they get a 'Did not finish' if they are injured enough they cannot complete the race.

xbox432 said:

It's only a race.

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"There will be more races. They only have two legs."

Dopplerdee said:

...see, now I wanna see the havoc that her winning a Triple Triple Crown would cause.

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That would be a legendary mare, lol.

TheSmallSauce said:

And one more drawing before work slaughters my free time.

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Very nice! Rare disappointed Shirogane.

Also where is her hat?!

WrandmWaffles said:

Also where is her hat?!

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She's got to get her skull crushing gloves sorted first.

KenjiApex said:

Out of curiosity, what would be her training failure animations be like? Such as that one where a dirt gets into the Umamusume's eye, where they either drop down in pain or stops to wipe it off their glasses if they wore one that protected their eye.

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WrandmWaffles said:

Shirogane just blinks and keeps running. She still gains some stats on failures, but it takes more energy.

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Shirogane's training failure animation: Shirogane finishes a lap and pulls out a stopwatch. The stopwatch indicates she was 0.16s slower than her target time. Shirogane frowns slightly before putting the stopwatch away and starting another lap.

(Her success animation is identical, except the stopwatch shows 0.04s faster than target, and Shirogane nods instead of frowning.)

Interviewer: "So, what inspired you to create the league?"

Trainer: "Well, it all started in 2005, when Shirogane Orzeł retired."

Interviewer: "She had quite a long career, didn't she?"

Trainer: "Extremely so. Understand, most racehorses start racing when they're two or three years old, and retire after two or three seasons. Shirogane raced for eight years. Frankly, we didn't even want to retire her; she wasn't winning, but she was still showing or placing enough to be a money-maker, and the veterinarian swore she wasn't showing any signs of long-term damage."

Interviewer: "So then why not keep racing her?"

Trainer: *shrugs* "The insurance company categorically refused to cover a racehorse over the age of 10, and none of the major leagues would allow an uninsured competitor.*"

Interviewer: "Most unfortunate. Is that why you founded your own league?"

Trainer: "Not directly. Shirogane didn't take to retirement well. At first it was fine, but as time went on, she started to get depressed. She was barely eating, barely exercising. Nothing was physically wrong with her, according to our vet, but she seemed to have no energy - which, for a mare as tireless as Shirogane, was truly disturbing."

Interviewer: "So what did you do?"

Trainer: "Shirogane's jokey guessed that she was missing the races, so he tried something radical: he put her back on the training regimen she'd been on back when she was competing. And it worked: she came out of her funk almost immediately. It took a couple months for her to gain back the weight she'd lost, but by the end of the year, she was back in racing condition. But that left us with a new problem: Shirogane had always been very smart. Eventually she'd figure out that we weren't training her for anything, and then we'd be back to square one."

Interviewer: "Thus the beer league?"

Trainer: "Effectively, yes. I called up some of the other racing stables and made arrangements for some other retired horses - Still in Love and Haru Urara being the most famous - to meet up for a friendly race. Originally it was just going to be a private event, but the JRA caught wind of it and, since it was the off-season, offered to let us use the Hanshin Racecourse and make it an official no-prize demonstration race. It ended up being such a success that we founded the beer league to keep doing it, with that race retroactively becoming the new league's first event. Besides - we needed more races to keep Shirogane happy."

Interviewer: "And that explains some of the beer league's idiosyncratic rules, doesn't it?"

Trainer: "It's hard to overstate how much Shirogane's needs influenced the structure of the league. We were concerned that, if there were significant prizes, it would turn into just another standard racing league, just with older horses, thus pushing out anyone who, whether for reasons of health or money, couldn't maintain the sort of training schedule expected of an active career racehorse. (Admittedly, Shirogane was maintaining exactly such a schedule, but given she was over 13 years old by then, she was hardly dominating the event.) On the other hand, participating in a race is not cheap, so having no prizes would effectively exclude anyone but the larger stables or those with wealthy private backers. And on the third hand, Shirogane performed better when there was a clear reward for success. So the rule became that every participant got an equal share of the prize pool, except the 3rd-, 2nd-, and 1st-place finishers who got two, three, and four shares respectively, and we fiddled with the overall prize pool until each share was more or less enough to cover a given racer's costs. We also forbade on-track betting, and prohibited trainers and jockeys from betting on themselves to win, in order to limit the financial stakes. There are other things, too: we select our courses and race lengths to minimize the strain on the horses, and our rules on shoving and blocking are even more strict than the rest of Japan."

Interviewer: "Amazing. And all in the memory of Shirogane Orzeł?"

Trainer: "Memory?"

Interviewer: "Wait, are you saying Shirogane is still around?"

Trainer: "I'm saying she's standing right behind you."

Shirogane: *snorts*

Interviewer: "GAHHH!"

Trainer: "Ha! That one never gets old. Here, have a carrot, Shirogane. I'll figure out how you're so quiet one of these days."


* I have no idea if racehorses actually have insurance, let alone if they'd be barred from competing without it, but it seemed like a plausible reason to force a horse into retirement.

That's very Shiroalistic. Shiro would 100% do that in that situation. Thankfully her owners made certain to make her happy and be at peace.