#just don't disrupt the delicate biosphere

[yokowan]

i get so irrationally upset when people draw rinnosuke genderbend fanart. gensokyo's he/hims are a protected species you fucking idiot do have any idea the kind of ecological ruin you're causing

[darthkvznblogs]

In Refusal of the Call, you mentioned that the Wizarding race will most likely go extinct. Does the failure of the Mist and overall reveal of the magical world at large change that? For all the charms and spells that they have, I can't imagine it'll help once every other magical society reveals itself.

It's a whole littany of factors. It's a natural consequence of their isolation, coupled with their longstanding tradition of preserving their precious bloodlines - even if they aren't a zealot about it, chances are that witches and wizards will date and have children within their own community. It's the fact that they don't really worship or even know about the sources of their power anymore. It's also the result of having just gone through, like, their equivalent of a World War and a couple civil wars in just a few decades - a lot of people died, were grievously wounded or cursed, or got incarcerated in the aftermath.

Opening up to the mortal world might actually give them a reprieve on that front - they'd have a wider, healthier gene pool, for one. But I think they're teetering on the edge of the threshold needed to have a viable "population" - not to survive as a group of people, they have the numbers for that, but as a group of magic users, since their offspring is never guaranteed to be able to actually wield magic.

Coupled with their biological constraints, their society is built around isolated communities and small numbers. The magical flora and fauna that they depend on to maintain their way of life simply doesn't have the numbers to sustain a larger population, and it's only been in decline in recent centuries. Any significant overtaxing on the magical biosphere would disrupt the delicate balance, and that's not the kind of disaster their rigid, traditionalist society could recover from (even if they're on a somewhat more progressive path now).