I just need to take a moment to appreciate Richeh's whole deal as a character and how sensitively it's handled. NOT to mention the autism-coding of it all!!! under a readmore cus I got wordy lol
Like. mild manga spoilers but. imagine you have grown up with very Specific expectations about ways to be Good And Useful. You love magic, which is good and expected of you, but every time you draw something that feels like Yours, an Actual Expression Of Self, no one (Ririphin excepted) else sees the value in it. (no one sees the value in You, it feels.) The only things others seem to care about is your ability to meet some arbitrary standard of doing Other People's Magic.
And the more you give into that, the less room there is for Your Magic. The less room there is for You, Richeh, the person.
And even after it seems like you've finally found an adult who will let you actually exist as yourself without punishing you about it, even he starts pushing you to cast Other People's Magic. Of course it's going to feel like a betrayal.
Even though we know it's because other magic isn't actually a contamination like Richeh fears, it's SO real to have her struggle with the tension of, 'no one's valued my way of doing things before, if I don't hold fast to it I'll lose the ability to Actually Express Myself so I HAVE to dig in'
the key being that Qifrey does value her way of doing things, and wants to push her to realize that other people's magic doesn't have to be a threat -- that it can be building blocks to incorporate into her own magic, exactly as much or as little as she chooses. That it's useful, to see how others do things
Whereas an adult who didn't value her way of doing things would push her to use the 'correct' spells for the situation, and stamp out variation.
The whole point is that we learn from that variation. Regardless of whether you're starting from a 'standard' position or an outside one, it's useful and good to be able to look at different ways of Doing A Thing, understanding how and why they work, and incorporating that understanding into how you do things.
It's about the difference between a system that rewards learning via rote memorization and vs. learning critical thinking skills. One rewards conformity, is inflexible, and results in direct harm to those who don't work/learn/express themselves the way they're 'supposed' to. It feeds back into the system that created it and reinforces it. The other rests on acknowledging and working to understand differences in order to build towards something new, with room for choice in what you want to be, who you want to become, and the sort of world you want to help create.
