#rixia mao

[dummy-dot-exe]

Rixia by JackBoo@JackBoo_

[3amsoda]

rixia mao

[trails-inthe-sky]

[dailyfigures]

Rixia Mao ; The Legend of Heroes ☆ Kotobukiya

[enbusenbu]

Rixia for the Trails through Daybreak release!

[morgenstern16]

I just played through the Crossbell section of Trails of Cold Steel 2 and I love how the change of perspective flips how you see Rean. For most of the series, you've mostly seen him as a skilled but kind swordsman with a dark past, but mostly a good guy. To an outsider, he's fucking terrifying. Not only is he a skilled user of the Eight Leaves One Blade style, he also has an additional super mode AND he can call in a giant robot to wreck your shit at any time he wants.

And yet now that you're no longer in control of him, he's begun to follow Osborne's orders as part of the Imperial warmachine. His whole life Rean has defined himself by how useful he can make himself to others, but up until now he was surrounded by good and decent people who put him on the right path. Now he's taking orders from Osborne, the most sinister man in Zemuria, because Rean, aren't you a good little Erebonian soldier? Aren't you a patriot? Are you willing to let good Erebonian men and women die even though you have an ancient war mech that could save them? And Rean has no mechanisms to say no to that. And he fucking hates it. The only thing he can do is let Lloyd and Rixia go because he wasn't explicitly ordered to capture them. Lloyd isn't a super special awesome OC like Rean is, but he has the one thing Rean has wanted all his life: clarity of purpose.

It's a shame Cold Steel 2 has so many weak moments because when it gets good, it's very good.

[incorrect-trails]

Rixia: Can you keep a secret?

Wazy: Do you know anything about my life?

Rixia: No, I don't. Good point

[raichana-artblog]

Happy Reverie day!

I mean... these chibis have nothing to do with that but... some of the characters show up so it's fine!

[rankotendo]

Rixia Mao is a lesbian.

[fauldfauld]

[allykakamatsu]

Okay yeah I officially have a problem-

Yes I drew Trails Roleswap art

Yes I may or may not be working on lore for it that I'll elaborate on later-

Yes I love and hate my brain SO much rn

Also I'm broke off my ass rn so if you have the time please consider buying me a €5 Ko-Fi and I'll draw whatever the heck you request so I can at least feel like this is somewhat worth it-

[iwonn-arts]

Rixia commission for @/Obsidian4412~!

——— ✦ commissions ✦ Twitter: @iwonn_arts Redbubble & Teepublic: Iwonn    

[italk2chie]

My haul from Anime Boston this year! Found some pretty nice stuff, got closer to finishing my Trails figure collection and found some sick rare boomer figures! That Haruhi was calling my name 😤��� got a couple sweet autographs too

[akiizayoi4869]

What are your favourite Trails ships/pairings?

Yay, a Legend of Heroes ask! Well if you couldn’t guess by my header image, my number 1 favorite ship for this series is Rean/Alisa lol. Absolutely love those two. I love the way how the relationship between them progresses across all 4 Trails of Cold Steel games. It didn’t seem forced (to me), it felt very natural and you can clearly tell that they both like each other. Definitely loved how in the 4th game, if you chose Alisa in Trails Of Cold Steel 3 and carried over your save data, she actually breaks up with you because of everything that's going on. Even if you didn't choose her, she still confesses to you anyway but immediately takes it back because of the situation. The look on Rean's face was soooo well done, like that boy just looked so crushed😭. And then outside of the main plot, when you do Alisa's bonding events after that, Rean is always thinking about their relationship and hoping that they can get back together. I just really loved how Falcom made him chase after her this time around. It makes the relationship feel that much more earned and realistic when they finally have a chance to talk the night before the final battle. As you can see I am totally normal about these two lmao. Will definitely be writing more fics about those two in the future. Estelle/Joshua is another favorite of mine. I started playing Trails from Zero a few weeks ago so I’m not sold on any ships from those games yet, but I do know that the close to canon pairing for that game is Lloyd/Elie. Which, if I’m being honest? Really not feeling that one yet😅. And that may change, who knows! But so far I like Lloyd more with Rixia, which probably has a lot to do with me playing Trails of Cold Steel first before the other Trails games.

[progmanx]

What is your headcanon for Rixia/Ilya?

Oh, wow, never expected to get a Trails ship question. Especially not for my...third? Second favorite?

Certainly the second most written about for me.

Either way, a delightful surprise! Boy, there is no short answer to this one, even before Reverie made it WAY more ethically messy.

In the best way possible, to be clear.

If you're talking about their relationship as a whole, I think Zero/Azure and Reverie do a rather excellent job of showing us what that is and a pretty good idea of how that started and what keeps it going.

That said, I do think there was a decent chunk of time where Rixia and Ilya weren't involved at all after she arrived in Crossbell. Any variety of intimacy with who Rixia still perceived herself to be at the time would be rather hollow, and if Ilya was into Rixia initially as "yeah, we bang sometimes", i think that would look VERY different.

The more Rixia learns to love Arc en Ciel, and how art is an exponentially more powerful force for change than assassination/backroom regime manipulation ever could be, the more she de-dehumanizes herself, and the more like a person she feels.

I couldn't really say WHEN Ilya and Rixia actually took that first step, but I would think it was either shortly before Zero started, or shortly after. There is an argument to be made that Ilya knew Rixia was Yin since she started writing "Golden Sun, Silver Moon", considering how, uh, APT her casting is and her "What's Yin? Is that a name or something? Sounds stupid." reaction to getting a threatening letter.

Which means she either got together with Rixia BEFORE figuring that out, or AFTER. I think before makes a little more sense, as then she needs to sort of wrestle with the fact that "oh my girlfriend murders people for money..." Which would also mean, well, yeah, the letter is even LESS scary for Ilya.

You can take that as either "Ilya is fearless and doesn't care", which I think is totally true, considering she smacked Don Marconi for getting handsy. You can ALSO take this as "this is a fake letter; Rixia would never threaten me like this!" which she can't SAY because Rixia doesn't know she knows. I like the latter.

Which begs the larger question I posed above: why is Ilya okay with that? Why is she okay that her girlfriend and co-star murders people for money, very likely people who are political targets and non-combatants. Couple answers here that I think make sense, but my favorite one is that Ilya's a freakin' genius (as we are told and shown so many times)

If Ilya has heard of who Yin is, then she has likely heard that Yin has been around for a very, very long time. Since immortality, as far as Ilya knows, is not a thing, then the next conclusion would be "large organization of people calling themselves Yin" OR "lineage based position." Considering Rixia's age, and her physical conditioning, and her likely enigmatic or ambiguous past (however she tries to explain away what she does for a living or why she moved here), then the latter seems a reasonable deduction.

Which makes the whole thing tragic and kind of impossible to poke at. If Rixia mentions, even once, "oh, I never knew my other" or "my father passed recently", that's enough to realize this is a FAMILIAL legacy, and Rixia inherited this position VERY young. Combined with how much she seems to have changed since joining Arc en Ciel, if Ilya says a WORD, Rixia will probably vanish and throw it all away.

That and...Ilya could be wrong. She could be wrong. Maybe she's not Yin. Maybe it's exactly as Rixia said, and totally mundane. Wouldn't that be nice? Of course, it isn't, and the truth nearly kills Ilya, and almost cripples her, too. But...

Since Rixia has apparently not formally retired---Nadia seems to imply this---the legacy of Yin by Reverie, and since Daybreak, uhm, has her running around as Yin (I miss the old costume from Zero so much) then she must believe there is still something useful about this role she can use. Which is all kinds of fucked up.

If Ilya hadn't done what she did in Reverie---this is a whole other conversation regarding how much work that mask even DID for her to do any of that, because I think it was basically nothing---then I'd say Ilya is turning an almost disturbing blind eye to what Rixia is doing. But after that?

They're not on a level playing field with ethics. It's closer than it used to be, though. Which is also pretty dark, but I DO love that messiness and I do think, in the end, they work very well together.

[sandy-grains]

First time drawing Rixia