Re: 'Wildseed' Phifer twins [spoilers?]
#51 by Draxynnic - Feb 23 2022
randomprojects:
Yeah, the personality types are broad enough that it's likely a person could fit into more than one Hall at a time. If it got too unbalanced prior to the school year, it wouldn't be hard for the faculty to nudge things a little, and I think the school probably doesn't want it to get too uneven because of the... problem... that might pop up halfway through the year. (Related to this, I wonder what the ratio is for wildseeds:mage-born? And since the ratio of female wildseeds are always higher (at least for recent years), does it mean on average it's more likely for the female halls to lose students than male halls? In Wolf Hall I think we lost 1 male 1st year and 1 female 1st year over break, so it seems pretty even, but if there are more female wildseeds and the school wants to reduce wildseed population, there might be a higher ratio of female students who flunk out of Iris?)
It's possible that this does set the gender balance out, although if there isn't a gender imbalance with mageborn children to balance the increased number of female wildseeds as we were speculating earlier, it might actually be partially resetting the balance.
How much of an effect it would have depends, I think, on just how big the ratio is. Outside of the PC, for instance, there are four known female wildseeds (Ellen plus three in Snake Hall), and three known male wildseeds. Meanwhile, of the characters that we know well enough to know if they're mageborn in the freshman year, there are four girls and four boys.
If that ratio carries across the rest of the student body, that implies that the ratio of female wildseeds to male probably isn't so high that
attrition is going to significantly imbalance genders in later years.
Interestingly, it also suggests that wildseeds more or less match mageborn in number. This could be because we disproportionately interact with wildseeds, but even if we assume that all of the less-known freshies are mageborn, that sets the ratio at 1:3. Given that wildseeds are supposed to be something like one in a million, this also says something about just how few mageborn there are compared to non-mages. It might also explain why the authorities want to cull wildseeds, since if 25-50% of each generation is wildseed, that's going to mean that wildseeds and children of wildseeds
(like Minnie) would outnumber established families within a few generations. Mind you, it's also possible that wildseeds are more likely to go to Iris than the others (Sacred Smoke, at least, seems to be pretty exclusive).
To touch on one of the other discussions, we might also see evidence of how effective the culling is. How many wildseed seniors do we know?
randomprojects:
Ooh yeah, great observation. I guess with the magical community outnumbered by the non-mages, you have to be careful to not encourage too much inter-hall rivalry during school days to prevent too much community in-fighting in their adult lives? But at the same time, Iris at least seems to encourage individuality/finding your own way etc, and it's noted that a lot of mages choose to live full-time in the Otherworld upon reaching adulthood -- so like, what is the jurisdiction of the mage council? Do they have 'authority' in both realms, or only the human one? (Or both, but the amount of power they wield may be more limited in the Otherworld due to deals/contracts with Otherworld inhabitants?)
Yeah, could well be part of maintaining a general community spirit that will keep people from fighting one another while also keeping them tribal enough that they don't truly unite either. It is interesting, though, that while Potsdam prefers nonviolent solutions, Iris focuses a
lot more on combat than any mundane school.
Jurisdiction over the Otherworld is an interesting question. The Otherworld as a whole is probably too big, and too dangerous, to effectively govern. The old families, however, seem to at least have some influence - as seen by the bargains that the old European families have, and I recall part of the duties of the Mantle of the Woods were related to managing their portion of the Otherworld. In America, it's likely that the native families have a similar relationship.
Overall, I suspect they have influence but not total control. An individual or couple that decides they just want to abandon magical society altogether can probably go deep enough into the Otherworld that they'll be left alone. But the more they do interact, the more they'll be expected to follow the rules, and there are probably some rules viewed as important enough that they'll hunt down anyone who breaks them regardless of where they are.
randomprojects:
True... Actually I wonder if there are more chances to interact with the students of other magic school the further you get into your schooling? Since the mage community is small, you probably do need to network with other magic users that don't necessarily share your academic background but can still perform -- unfamiliar -- magic nonetheless. And, given the prejudice against wildseed students that the mage community seems to have -- setting them up to fail during their school years to cut them off from the magical world -- it's likely deemed beneficial for the mage community to remain small. There's mention of keeping power limited to the 'right' people (with the story about American mages fleeing from Europe to learn magic + gain power there, and how a similar thing is going on at Iris from playing Minnie's route), so it might be a combination of 1) preserving a sense of superiority over non-mages and 2) a smaller community is easier to oversee/rule over by the council?
Wouldn't surprise me. Higher years do seem to have more privileges when it comes to travel, probably because they've either demonstrated trustworthiness or been expelled. That could well include excursions to other institutions.
Keeping the population small probably does help keep it manageable, but I suspect culling wildseeds is more about trying to keep the population disconnected from the Low World and keeping out Low World ideas that might come from wildseeds - they don't want to have wildseeds and children of wildseeds outnumbering mageborn and becoming a dominant political faction. It's notable that they also seem to be fairly eager to encourage wildseeds to disconnect from their nonmagical friends and families, as a wildseed so isolated would likely be less inclined to be sympathetic towards Low World people and ideas.
Mind you, there probably is an element to which preventing the magical population from growing too rapidly helps to maintain the proportion of the voting base that is controlled by the 'right' people.
randomprojects:
Hm, yeah, makes sense for seniors to feature so much because of Initiation. I think the "am I a Lord or a Lady" bit was well done to show off Blaise's personality and a neat way to reveal their ability. I haven't romanced Corinna yet, but her position as May Queen seems significant, so if she wasn't a senior, the details of her route would have to change. Also, I agree that Nara might be a little too similar to Suki, at least at first glance.
Yeah, we probably get more of Blaise's personality from Initiation then through the Chorale sequences, since e is pretty much all business in Chorale, while Initiation shows more of er playful side.
randomprojects:
And about Kyo... Big Agree. Change takes time, and the idea of "someone changing a bad person through love" by themselves is quite unrealistic (especially since his problem stems from misogyny, and him getting a girlfriend in the game clearly didn't change his views on women, so.)
Well, in the case of the Kyo-Minnie relationship, it probably doesn't help that they'd be a terrible match even if you removed the misogyny, the abuse, and Minnie's
long-term plans and the likely disapproval of Kyo's parents. One of the other suggestions Gary can make to Kyo in that initial discussion is for him to help Minnie with her study group efforts. He responds by saying he's not a great student, Gary points out that as a sophomore he doesn't need to be top of his grade to be able to help freshmen. Kyo expresses apathy towards helping others and a hatred towards the library.
Now consider Minnie's interests and values. They're pushed to an extreme due to
her cause and the anxiety that comes from needing to make a deal to become President, but I'm pretty sure she was going to be studious, helpful, caring, and somewhat self-sacrificing regardless (in fact, it's likely these traits that
caused her to take up her cause as much as the other way around, although they reinforce one another). It also says something that
the book club is the one thing she makes time to join outside of her own study club. So how much is she really going to have in common with a jock who hates the library and has no interest in helping others?
Odds are that once the initial feeling of being flattered by Kyo's grand gestures wore off, the only things keeping them together is Minnie being too soft-hearted to dump someone she thinks loves her, and
Potsdam's bad (possibly malicious) advice. Both of them seem to be going in more out of the idea of being in a relationship rather than any true compatibility.
Which probably only reinforces Kyo's misapprehensions, because I suspect that Minnie
isn't being honest with him. Problem is that in Minnie's case, it's probably that she's pretending that she's happy with the relationship when she really isn't. He's picking up that she's not being entirely honest, but he's too self-absorbed to think that she's not happy with him, so he's interpreting it as her wanting more from him instead.
So it's... hypothetically possible that a healthier relationship would turn him around. But I wouldn't expect any woman to take up that job - it'd probably take a saint to put up with his toxicity without expressing frustrations, overtly or covertly, that would set him off, and even that isn't a guarantee. Ultimately, it's definitely a case whereby he should fix his attitude
before being suitable for a relationship, nobody owes him the time to fix him through a relationship, especially given the failure rate of women trying to fix bad boyfriends.
Though others are of course free to speculate!
. It's probably a more objective source than what's on the wiki, which I'm pretty sure came from Virginia in Horse Hall, since Gary has probably done the proper research before coming in. "Mysterious, introverted, and eccentric" is certainly a more polite way of putting it than "loners, weirdoes, and people who don't fit in elsewhere"... even if they do somewhat still come down to the same thing (and I say this as someone who probably would be a Toad). 
(I mean Logan is in Falcon Hall, so there's ease of access -- and his connection with Jacob might be a bonus too. Oh! Logan also keeps a lot of secrets/invents secrets to make himself look more interesting, which means he already distances/isolates himself from potential support network -- which is great for a predator.)
And if the mindwiping happened after giving birth, if the twins were babies they might? Just leave them be (babies usually can't remember much), unless it's a situation where "these people are traitors to the community, so who cares about their offspring—we gotta make absolutely sure our society is protected!" (by mindwiping all potential information leaks.) (On a related note, what happens to non-magical people who had to have their memories altered (seeing stuff they shouldn't have, etc)? Would the care to not do magic to babies extend to non-mage babies/embryos, or do mage society care less about enforcing that for non-magical babies? Though if the Phifers' parents were involved with the Aquarian Incident, I wonder if the school would be more obvious in monitoring the twins? (Or maybe the authorities 1) are so confident that there's no reason to keep an eye out, because the Aquarian Incident folks no longer matter to the magical community in any way, or 2) lost track of the Phifers, and so didn't necessarily know the twins have a connection with people involved in that Aquarian Incident... I think option 1 is more likely than option 2 though.)
