sailor; she/her; 33yo /// trash blog ; mostly rottmnt/tmnt, star wars/the bad batch and RWBY /// arts and doodles can be found on sailorb00.tumblr.com /// asks are always welcome âď¸
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
So badly coping with RWBY hiatus already that I doodled my dream RWBY Beyond episode about a cheeky monkey faunus and his tired older cousin as they make the journey across the desert to Vacuo â¨ď¸đđđĽşâ¨ď¸
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
i'm conducting an experiment. everyone who's from an english speaking country state your country, regional area and what you call the following images. i need to see something
if summerâs childhood is narratively important, feels like a coin flip whether sheâs from vacuo or mountain glenn
i keep gnawing on malik the sunderer -> sundered rose and mumble mumble the man who stared at the sun being a fable that originated in vacuo placed after the warrior in the woods (do what you can to help others / nothing worthwhile comes without sacrifice / if i get this rightâŚ)
i also keep gnawing on the echo of mountain glenn in the razing of vale and how quick yang and ruby are on the uptake about mountain glenn and⌠we donât know how long ago that happened, but if it was ~30 years ago summer would have been like. a child. ten or so. the inner circle knew the wyvern was there; rubyâs most powerful glare coincided with pyrrhaâs death; if witnessing death empowers the glare, and summer was a child orphaned during the fall of mountain glenn, and the wyvern was petrified for decades⌠question mark.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
do you have theories about how the aura transfer machine is going to inevitably come into play
this is timely, because iâve been chewing on it quite a lot lately.
letâs talk about the rule of threes!
the basic idea is that important things in stories often come in threes. narrative triads are a staple of fairytale/folklore in particular, which makes it very salient to the rwby narrative. often, youâll see the rule of three described as a pattern where a thing happens a certain way twice, and then once more differently (aab); there are other configurations. abc/cba or abc/abc is pretty common in fairytalesâthink the âquesting hero does a kindness to three entities and each repays with a favor later onâ structureâand simple repetitions (aaa) or progressive triplets (a-A-A!) arenât uncommon either.
the rule of threes gets cited a lot in discussions on the maidens and the ATMs in particular. this is a little thorny because maidens come in fours, not threes; i think rwby is taking advantage of this mathematical problem to develop multiple interlocking triads. weâll call this the Fourth Maiden Exclusion Principle.Â
our first set of triads occur within each season. the seasonal triads, if you will. all of themâso farâfollow this basic pattern:
fragile -> false -> freed
where the first maiden is introduced in a vulnerable state, the second maiden is either literally false (not really a maiden) or perceived as illegitimate, and the seasonal arc ends with third maiden removed from ozpinâs hierarchy and separated from her vault. thus:
amber -> pyrrha -> cinder
(spring) -> vernal -> raven
fria -> penny -> winter
the last spring maiden is unusual in that sheâs a posthumous character, but sheâs described as having been âa childâ who ran away because the responsibility was âtoo much for herâ and raven says she was âweakâ and âscared.â we also know that raven mercy-killed her.
so the question to ask here is whether the summer maiden will repeat this pattern. if iâm correct about the Fourth Maiden Exclusion Principle, the answer is âno.â our triad is [fall-spring-winter] and our excluded fourth, in this case, is summer.Â
[SIDEBAR: the maiden arcs are following the gifts in reverse order (choice -> knowledge -> creation -> destruction). the seasons being âwrongâ is a misdirection. thank u.]
our second set of triads interlace the maiden arcs. weâll call them the perennial triads (laugh!). there are three Big Ones.Â
the first is the presumptive ATM triad, which might be drawn in two ways:Â
[amber-fria-(summer)] + (spring)Â
or
[pyrrha-winter-(summer)] + raven.
the former being three maidens fed to the machines, the latter recipients of machine transfers. the triad is [fall-winter-summer] and the excluded fourth is spring.
the second is the triad of maidens cinder tries to Get. i will discuss my reasoning for bracketing it like this in a bit, bear with me:
[amber-raven-penny] + (summer)
and finally, the third is the triad of maidens who got eaten by the fairytale, as it were:
[pyrrha-(spring)-penny] + (summer)
note that these last two match the seasonal triad-of-triads: [fall-spring-winter] + summer. This Is Important.
but before we get into the weeds of the Machine Question, we first need to sketch out why i donât think cinder is going to go after the summer maiden. for the benefit of newcomers and in case this breaks containment, Mainly. it boils down to:
salemâs going to beacon next.
it is established in V4 that a) the crown is still in its vault, b) salem believes the vault is at beacon, c) the vault is Hidden, and d) salem has someone [summer rose] stationed at beacon to search for it. in V8, salem notes that The Situation Has Not Changed; she is preoccupied with gaining access to the lamp so that she can use it to discover the crownâs location. (<- the first thing she asks oscar is where ozma hid the crown; she asks for the password to the lamp only after confirming that oscar doesnât know.) having been frustrated in her effort to wring the location out of oscar and with the lamp now out of questions, her obvious next move is to go to beacon.
she is also two for two on relics swiped after someone elseânot cinderâopened the vault, and two for two on cinder Almost Fucking Dying at the hands of other maidens. sheâs realizing that her opponents will open those vaults if she squeezes them hard enough, and the sword presents an obvious temptation for vacuoâs defenders; she also wonât be able to access the crown at all if cinder dies. the skeleton-key plan is a wash.
and, with the coalition in vacuo galvanized by the imminent existential threat of another massive attack, the strongest next move for salem is to do nothing: quietly go to beacon, search for the crown, and run out the clock while her opponents wait. the longer she can draw this out, the shakier that coalition is going to get as people get complacent or start to doubt that an attack is coming at all.Â
(it is also something of a toss-up whether salem plans to launch another assault; she hit beacon and atlas with overwhelming force to take ozpin off the board, but for haven she planned a covert infiltration.)
so salem has a lot of compelling reasons for going to beacon, and none for rushing to vacuo. further, the end of V9, the epilogue storyboard, and the second rwby x jl film collectively indicate that at a minimum, salem will not be in vacuo at the top of V10. a V7ish scenario where salem doesnât arrive until the end of the volume is not out of the question (although i do think sheâll be in V10, just at beacon).Â
and she will, of course, want to keep cinder close, both for the purpose of opening the beacon vault and because she will need to manage cinderâs ongoing rebellion very carefully. cinder may not Like This, but a) she she swanned away from the winter maiden without a backwards glance because she Doesnât Care About The Power That Much, she just wants to Win The Power Struggle With Salem, and b) the vault and the relic of choice and being The Only One Who Can Do This are going to appeal to her too, again for power struggle reasons.
and since the skeleton key plan is a wash, itâs likely that salem will try to ease cinder off the idea of Getting the summer maiden so as to avoid risking a repeat of what happened in atlas. that, plus the nascent villain->hero arc developments involved in returning to the choice arc, taper cinder off the maiden hunting such that i do not think sheâs going to be a central player in the summer maiden arc. (or obsessed with winter, for that matter.)
the summer maiden arc, sans cinder
okay. here we go!
in order for the ATM triad to eventuate, as i believe it will, someone in vacuo is going to need a reason to pull that trigger. at beacon and in atlas, the reason was cinder. cinder is also the reason both of those transfers failed. because cinder is probably Not In Vacuo, the ATM triad is almost certainly the a-a-b pattern; the negated pair both failed because cinder deliberately provoked them for the purpose of gaining access to the maiden, so i think the likely reversal here is that a machine transfer initiated in a non-crisis situation will succeed.Â
this is a puzzle, because the ATMs are unequivocally Not Good. every single character in the story is on the same page about this; even ironwood regards it as a necessary evil. there is an asterisk here for pietro because the only person harmed by his use of the machines is himself and he made the choice freely. but in any other circumstance, using the ATM is wrong, because Thatâs Murder. so the decision to use an ATM in vacuo to transfer a maiden is not one that can be made lightly.
thus we have to consider what circumstances could lead to that decision, and to do that we need to zoom out a little.
letâs assume the CFVY novels are both canonical and relevant to the narrative of the show proper, as RH was to V9.
i submit that there are two (2) possible summer maidens hinted at in before the dawn. one of them is sunâs cousin, starr sanzang, who appears briefly at the end of the book and has an âuncanny senseâ for the weather.
the other is gillian asturias.
she and her twin brother, jax, are the leaders of a virulently xenophobic nationalist movement called the crown; they believe themselves to be direct descendants of the defunct vacuan monarchy, all the way back to malik the sunderer, first king of vacuo. their âevidenceâ (such as it is) is a crown-shaped birthmark supposed to be had by every member of the royal lineage. gillâs, however, is actually a brand,implied to have been done to her by her father when she was an infant.
gill is the power behind the crown. her semblance siphons aura; in the novel, she uses captives as batteries to make herself virtually invincible. on the battlefield, she glows with a brilliant iridescent lightâbrighter than the moon.Â
their motherâluna asturiasâdeveloped some sort of sickness during pregnancy that caused her aura to rapidly deplete and gradually waste away; she died due to complications during an emergency c-section. jax was born with the same condition; gillianâs aura was âelevatedâ from birth. their father believes that her semblance manifested before she was even born and ate her motherâs and brotherâs auras.Â
right before the climactic battle, there is a brief skirmish with gill and her lieutenant, carmine, in an abandoned dust mine, which ends with the kids deliberately triggering a cave-in by blowing up a vein of dust. this is the result:
âDid it work?â she asked Octavia.
Octavia shook her head. âI think we got Carmine, but just before everything came down on our heads, Gill flew backward and out of the cave.â
âCarmineâs telekinesis,â Velvet said. âShe used it to save her friend at the last second.â
then, during the actual battle:
He heard gunfire and then Dust bullets exploded against Gill, amped by Cocoâs Semblance. Gill stepped back, swatting at her face as though the explosive rounds were no more annoying than bugs.
if you wanted to hide a maiden in plain sight in a canonical ancillary novel, this is how you to do it.Â
gillian is extraordinarily powerful. flying, being surrounded by visibly glowing haloes, and banishing bullets with the flick of a hand are all Maiden Thingsâand also Gillian Things carefully given plausible deniability through the eyes of POV characters who donât know about the maidens and interpret what they see as effects of a semblance.Â
gillian herself is stridently opposed to the use of dust for reasons; if she is a maiden, she has compelling political and ideological reasons not to use the dust-like elemental magic that comes with being a maiden. if she started lobbing fireballs, everyone would assume she was using dust to do it, and that would make her look like a raging hypocrite. but covertly using magic to augment what she can do with fifty peopleâs aura? sure.
and the summer maiden is the maiden of destruction. the asturias family identity revolves around descent from a man named malik the sunderer. her fanatic of a father BRANDED HER with the mark of this legacy as an infant. her dead mother who sickened and died in childbirth is named for the moon.Â
when ozma ended the great war, he did it in vacuo, the crown on his head and the sword in hand. jax asturias is the leader of the crown, the twin with the real birthmark, the mind of the operation. gill is the powerâvery literally the source of his strength, because she lends him some of her own aura, and metaphorically his shield and his sword.
and furthermore, the lesson taught by the summer maiden in the fairytale is âdonât view the world at a distance; take an active part in it and the events around you.â gillâs backstory very closely mirrors salemâs in one key wayâtheir mothers die in childbirth, and their fathers see them as the causeâBUT. where salemâs father locked her in a tower about it, finn asturias  chose differently:
â[Gillâs semblance] had caused us so much pain, but I couldnât blame her, an unborn baby, doing what we all do: trying to survive. Over the years, I taught her to control her Semblance, and over time we unlocked her true abilityâshe doesnât just sap Aura from others; she can transfer it, too. It turned out her power, which had seemed like such a curse, could be a force for good as well. She had a large reserve of Aura already, and so she shared some of it with her brother. And he began to thrive.â
throughout the novel there is also a recurring thread of other people (theodore, finn, rumpole) remarking on how much promise gill had and how she could have been a great huntressâif only she hadnât stuck with her brother. once jaxâs mind-control semblance is found out, everyone assumes that heâs using it to keep gill under his thumb⌠but he isnât. his semblance straight up does not work on her, possibly because her aura powers it.Â
so gillian embodies the summer maidenâs lesson in two different ways; her father made a Huge Point of making sure she could take part in the world (instead of isolating her as salemâs father did), and gill bucked everyoneâs assumptions about what she should do, actively following her own ambitions instead of passively accepting the expectation placed on her.Â
gill is alive and in custody at the end of the novel. (jax likewise, although his memory was at least temporarily wiped.) if sheâs the summer maiden, that ticks the box for summer being the excluded fourth in the seasonal triad-of-triads; she is not, in any sense except moral, fragile.
and gill as the summer maiden throws an interesting curveball at the Machine Question: what to do with a maiden who can also absorb the auras of fifty people to turbo charge her abilities, when that maiden is a reactionary nationalist who led a violent insurgency a few weeks ago and the only thing keeping her in jail is that she loves her brother and heâll die without her? what do you do with her when you expect salem to rock up with another legion of grimm any day now?Â
maybe you look at a machine meant for ripping aura out of a person to put in somebody else, and then look at her brother who has almost no aura of his own, and see a way for everyone to win? it isnât like gillian asturias has any objection to transferring her own aura to her brother. sheâs spent most of their lives doing exactly that, because she loves him.
the only difference is that the ATM can make that transfer permanent.
it wonât kill her: partial transfers are possible, and sheâll still have her ability to siphon aura.Â
it might strip her of the maiden power, andâbecause the magic will only cleave to a womanâthere is at least a chance that something like what happened with amber, pyrrha, and cinder can be deliberately triggered with gillianâs willing cooperation. transfer half gillâs aura to jax while gill focuses on an eligible candidate (cough, starr, cough), and maybe you can convince the magic to separate from gillianâs aura, leave her and jax, and hop into the chosen heir instead, just as it would if gillian died.
the reasoning is sound. gill would probably agree to do it for her brotherâs sake; she and jax already share her aura, a permanent split between them would give them both an average amount of aura, and the transfer being partial would keep their consciousnesses separate, thus avoiding the Ozma Problem. all the thorny ethical problems involved in using the machines are avoided, and the magicâs rules are bent (gill lives) but not broken (the machine triggers an ordinary transfer), which reduces the risk that the magic will resist or break free.Â
and if it does go wrong, the most probable outcome is that the magic ends up split between the asturias twinsâwhich is not ideal, but youâve also earned some goodwill from both of them by helping jax and you can maybe pitch them on an enemy-of-my-enemy alliance to defend vacuo from salem because they sure as fuck arenât about to join her.
this is a) the only scenario where i can plausibly imagine RWBYJNOR et al deciding to use the ATM to transfer a maiden, and b) the only one i can imagine succeeding without having dire repercussions.Â
the other possibilityâone i think is all but guaranteed if gill isnât the summer maidenâis that a villain uses the ATM to steal the maiden power, with dire repercussions.Â
and in either case, as long as weâre prognosticating interminably on the summer maiden arc, we might as well think about what the shape of the V10 narrative arc might look like if salem isnât in vacuo.Â
the first point to address here is how inadequate tyrian is for the job of leading the operation in vacuo. he is extremely good at indiscriminate killing and quite bad at everything else; watts was in charge in V7 because watts is a competent strategist. tyrian lacks focus and discipline. in the short term, heâll start and spread fires; in the longer term, if salem intends to bide her time, she needs someone reliable.
summer rose has been holding beacon against valeâs huntsmen for the last year or so whilst searching for the vault. sheâs been with salem fourteen years. there is no question that salem both trusts and relies on her. even if it werenât a binary choice between her and cinder, sheâs the obvious pick. once salem arrives at beacon, she can take over the operation there, send summer ahead to handle vacuo, and keep cinder safely away from any other maidens.
the strategic end of salemâs operation in vacuo is to retrieve the sword from the vault under shade academy. she is undoubtedly prepared to deliver a siege and capture shade by force, but as with haven itâs more likely that Plan A is to do things quietly.
summer also has an immediate personal interest in accomplishing this goal without an open assault (her daughters are leading the defending coalition) and, given the level of autonomy implied by salem handing off beacon to her for a year+, probably broad latitude to make the tactical decisions she deems best.
so summerâs priority is finding the summer maiden and getting her to open the vault. she herself is probably not an eligible maiden candidateâsheâs in her fortiesâso maiden-killing is out. her options are to persuade the summer maiden, or capture her and steal the magic if she can get her hands on an ATM.Â
meanwhile, the crown is in shambles with the asturias twins in custody and the vacuo coalition holding strong in the face of the assumed-to-be-imminent threat, plus morale bolstered by team RWBY and jauneâs return. but the cracks still show. vacuans have always been hostile to outsiders, and the refugees are putting an enormous strain on the already-impoverished kingdom, even with aid pouring in from vale and mistral. the crownâs core supporters are people who believe that allowing refugees into vacuo will weaken its defenses, and the longer this drags on, the more they can capitalize on tensions to stoke dissent.Â
gill and jax are bound to escape or get broken out by their loyalists sooner or later. if gill is the summer maiden, and summer identifies her as such, then getting the vault open might be as simple as posing as a huntress disillusioned by the âweaknessâ of the powers that be and telling gillian about the sword.Â
the tricky part is getting the sword away from gillian, because a summer maiden who can drain aura and wields the sword of destruction is a walking nuke. summer might be able to pull it off if her semblance is along the same lines as rubyâs: have gill open the vault, rush the sword, cut her down before she can react. otherwise, cutting a dealâthe sword in exchange for salem leaving vacuo aloneâmight work, because salemâs stated motive in the broadcast is to destroy the huntsman academies and that is also what gill wants, so summer could make a credible argument here that salem is a potential ally to the crown.Â
if gill is not the summer maiden, then the crown is still potentially usefulâa nascent civil war will distract the coalition and if the crown rebels again and wins, theyâre probably going to be easier to persuade or manipulate into opening the vault (and jax can control the summer maiden, if it comes to that). also, adding the imminent threat of a civil war to the imminent threat of salem attacking puts more pressure on the coalition to risk using the sword.
the other thing summer might do is eschew the cloak-and-dagger routine altogether and take a gamble on approaching her daughters to open negotiations; this is, to put it mildly, a risk. but a very high-reward risk.
IN SUMMARY.
gillian asturias -> starr sanzang. probably.
summer rose is here and sheâs not going to, at any point, Be the summer maiden but she is going to Cause Problems On Purpose.
one of the ways the summer maiden arc will be Different is that summer rose has some things to unpack (what happened to the last spring maiden That Night)
the vacuo ATM is either for the asturias twins OR someone (summer or jax) is going to do a murder OR there is no ATM, thereâs just gill and her ability to (temporarily) steal the maiden power via aura, in which case itâs starr -> gillian -> starr and we might see magic-thieving conflicts between gill and winter or raven also.
if the ATM gets used for any other purpose than making gillâs and jaxâs aura-sharing deal permanent it is going to be Very Bad.Â
maybe the real crown was the reactionary insurgents we foiled along the way?
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
tangential to last rb (<- heroically resisting the impulse to ramble all over @sailorb00âs art post mrgdhej) ive always thought âmaidens choose themselvesâ 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 âmaidens choose themselvesâ 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 diesâunless they transfer amberâs aura into pyrrha. but then what happens is ozpin initiates the transfer and the aura+magic is actively combining with pyrrhaâs aura when cinder kills amber, whereupon the magic reverses direction to reach cinder.
so we have this scenario where the dying maidenâs aura is being transferred into a new host and the magic, apparently, resists that artificial process. why? three possibilities:
itâs following the technical rule that it must go to whoever amber thought of last at the moment she died,
amberâs half broke away from her aura to rejoin cinderâs half, or
both cinder (the last person amber saw) and pyrrha (receiving amberâs aura) were available to inherit the magic, or at least amberâs 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 doesnât begin until penny chooses to receive the magic and clasps friaâs hand. the aura that flows down friaâs arm doesnât appear until penny is holding her hand! (and the scene gives quite a lot of attention to pennyâs hesitance beforehand, underscoring that she makes a choice in this moment.)
and winter also makes a choice in that momentâthere is a moment when she sees fria dying in pennyâs arms and registers whatâs 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 friaâs hands.
then of course when the magic flows from penny to winter thereâs a lot of emotional weight put on winterâs choice to accept it (âthank you for trusting me with thisâ/âyou chose nothing; this was a giftâ).
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 maidenâs 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 doesnât hesitate to use it.
more importantly, every failed transfer weâve 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 doesnât resist being split in half and cinder retains the half that she stoleâwhereas 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 doesnât 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 âconvoluted and stupid rulesâ and the ârandomâ heir if the dying maiden doesnât have an eligible candidate in mind are maybe a lot less convoluted, stupid, or random than team oz believes. maidens donât âchoose their heirs,â maidens âchoose themselves.â
(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 sheâs playing with salem and what she really wants is to WIN. this is why sheâs not getting the summer maiden either.)