Yuionyx

Please reblog if you think that “they/them/theirs” is a valid set of pronouns.

this post must be reblogged by everyone

tangential to last rb (<- heroically resisting the impulse to ramble all over @sailorb00’s art post mrgdhej) ive always thought “maidens choose themselves” was an interesting turn of phrase for ozpin to use given 1. the inheritance rules as he and his proxies describe them and 2. the context of asking pyrrha to become the next fall maiden

specifically, can the presumptive heir say no?

i think “maidens choose themselves” does imply bidirectional agency: that is, a dying maiden may have an eligible candidate in mind, but that candidate too has a choice to accept the magic or not. will the magic cleave to an heir who rejects it?

in V3 team oz hypothesize that the partial magic of the fall maiden still attached to amber will seek its other half when it dies—unless they transfer amber’s aura into pyrrha. but then what happens is ozpin initiates the transfer and the aura+magic is actively combining with pyrrha’s aura when cinder kills amber, whereupon the magic reverses direction to reach cinder.

so we have this scenario where the dying maiden’s aura is being transferred into a new host and the magic, apparently, resists that artificial process. why? three possibilities:

it’s following the technical rule that it must go to whoever amber thought of last at the moment she died,

amber’s half broke away from her aura to rejoin cinder’s half, or

both cinder (the last person amber saw) and pyrrha (receiving amber’s aura) were available to inherit the magic, or at least amber’s piece of it, and the magic went to cinder because she actually wanted it whereas pyrrha felt duty-bound to accept it

and i think there is textual support for at least the possibility of number three, because in V7 what happens is: fria dies (marked by her eyes closing) but the transfer doesn’t begin until penny chooses to receive the magic and clasps fria’s hand. the aura that flows down fria’s arm doesn’t appear until penny is holding her hand! (and the scene gives quite a lot of attention to penny’s hesitance beforehand, underscoring that she makes a choice in this moment.)

and winter also makes a choice in that moment—there is a moment when she sees fria dying in penny’s arms and registers what’s about to happen, and rather than rush to trade places with penny (who is in fighting condition still, unlike winter!) winter instead focuses on cinder, which amounts to stepping back to leave the choice in fria’s hands.

then of course when the magic flows from penny to winter there’s a lot of emotional weight put on winter’s choice to accept it (“thank you for trusting me with this”/“you chose nothing; this was a gift”).

raven is a possible spanner in the works given how little we know of the circumstances and the open question of whether she wanted the spring maiden’s magic, but at a minimum raven must have mercy-killed her with the knowledge that doing so carried a significant possibility of probably gretchen bequeathing the magic to her, and certainly raven doesn’t hesitate to use it.

more importantly, every failed transfer we’ve seen thus far (grimm beetle, grimm arm, aura transfer) have one thing in common and that is an attempt to circumscribe the agency of the maidens themselves; and the situation with the grimm beetle is interesting because the grimm beetle does work. the magic doesn’t resist being split in half and cinder retains the half that she stole—whereas the magic does resist transfer into pyrrha.

in both scenarios amber was in distress and both the grimm siphoning and machine transfer seem to operate on the same principle of capturing the magic via aura, so… the difference between cinder (who wants this power badly) and pyrrha (who doesn’t want it but feels obligated to take it) is perhaps the key variable to explain the different behavior of the magic.

as always i wonder if those “convoluted and stupid rules” and the “random” heir if the dying maiden doesn’t have an eligible candidate in mind are maybe a lot less convoluted, stupid, or random than team oz believes. maidens don’t “choose their heirs,” maidens “choose themselves.”

(see also: cinder siphoned aura out of raven and penny without ripping away parts of the spring/winter maiden magic; cinder also spent all of V8 obsessively fixated on the winter maiden UNTIL salem gave her permission to go for it, whereupon she promptly snagged the relics and left the winter maiden on the table because her ongoing power struggle with salem is more important to her. cinder very badly wanted magic and now that she has it, her desire for more is merely a move in the deranged game she’s playing with salem and what she really wants is to WIN. this is why she’s not getting the summer maiden either.)

the only character i can draw with a mouse

Okay, you need to make sure you play this game at some point. Maybe not today or anything, because you’ll need about thirty minutes and a serious willingness to understand how it works, but - it’s so worth it. It’s basically an answer to our occasional frustration - why do assholes always come out on top? - and the beautiful thing about it is that not only does it explain how that happens, but also how we can change it.

“In the short run, the game defines the players. But in the long run, it’s us players who define the game.”

Ruby sighed. She reached towards her throat, Pulling the locket from around her neck. Inside was a picture of the girl who had become more than just a friend. Penny.

"Is that who you wish to be?" The blacksmith watched her.

"No" Ruby pulled a ring from the other side of the locket " I just wish she were still here."

"Who was she?"

"She's..." Ruby hesitated "she was my firefly."