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strqyr · 4 hours
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pretty much all we know about gretchen is what ozpin told oscar: that she enrolled at beacon academy despite her brother's wishes to become a huntress, and that she tragically lost her life on a training mission.
if ozpin knows something more about gretchen that he isn't telling, the show hasn't given much of a reason to suspect anything outside of a general "well, ozpin keeps secrets, so... who knows?" everything about gretchen seems to be rooted in becoming a huntress, whether she was ready for it or not—that is what oscar focuses on and asks hazel about after ozpin's explanation: "did she know the risk of being a huntress?" "she was only a child! she wasn't ready!"—, and thus hazel's desire to see a new world where the academies are no more.
now, ozpin's explanation is vague in a sense that he never states the cause of death. gretchen being a huntress-in-training who lost her life during a training mission implies grimm, but it's never actually stated so; if he is hiding something re: gretchen's death, that's what i'd be focusing on, since if he's blatantly lying, why didn't jinn bring it up? why didn't ozpin come clean later on during their captivity inside monstra, where hazel also played a major role? if hazel knows more, explaining why he blames ozpin so strongly, why never bring it up?
is ozpin hiding the whole truth of what happened to gretchen, or is he hiding a small part of it by omitting a detail or two, and if so, why? is he taking the blame to protect someone else? a question of greater good? the same as lying about lionheart's role in the attack on haven?
and that's why i'm now questioning if gretchen was a maiden. it would neatly explain why she was, supposedly, allowed to attend beacon when she "wasn't ready"—nothing new for ozpin there, and gretchen could be a combination of ruby & jaune in that way—but if that's the case... why never bring it up? they wouldn't need to specify which maiden she was if that's considered to give too much away (i.e. if she was the spring maiden), but any explanation from ozpin akin to "gretchen was a maiden and that's why i allowed her to attend beacon even if she wasn't ready, bc the risk of her being hunted down was too high and beacon was the safest place for her" surely couldn't hurt?
it also has a chance to make "no more gretchens, boy" ring a bit hollow, especially if gretchen was the spring maiden and involved in summer's mission, bc of what happened to penny afterwards; how is anyone supposed to prevent it from happening again, when no one knows what exactly happened to gretchen in the first place?
so. the academies. oscar asks hazel if gretchen knew the risk of being a huntress, to which hazel—who desired to see a world with no huntsmen academies—replies: "she was only a child! she wasn't ready!"
"they're supposed to be the defenders of the world," says glynda. "and they will be," says ozpin, "but right now they're still children. so why not let them play the part?" and it's a nice statement... if they weren't a part of system created by oz that encourages children as young as thirteen to pick up a weapon, and to learn how to fight.
why start training your "defenders of the world" when they're still children? what's the rush, why not wait when they're older?
is there more depth to what happened to gretchen, or is it exactly what it says on the tin: that the system is broken, and it needs fixing?
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strqyr · 5 hours
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it's a grimm mask. if its only purpose was to hide her identity as the spring maiden, any mask would do; maria is a proof of that.
"the masks are a symbol. humanity wanted to make monsters out of us, so we chose to don the faces of monsters."
to wear a grimm mask is to wear a symbol; hiding of one's identity with one is almost a secondary function—and the question whether raven wore one to hide her identity as a spring maiden was considered too spoilery to answer after the reveal had already happened.
if that was the sole, even just a main purpose of her grimm mask, by all means the answer should have been a simple "yes".
so really the main question i have at this point is if the 'monster' aspect of it is internal—something raven thinks of herself—or external like with the white fang—something someone else said / thinks of her, and she took it to heart.
something about heroes and monsters. the silver eyes of legendary warriors, the burning red eyes of grimm. the power stories hold. death symbolism and axes; the judge, the jury, and the executioner.
just... raven doesn't have the mask during the flashback.
and she throws it away to reveal she is the spring maiden, as if that's not why it's grimm, that as far as its relation to being spring maiden is concerned, it's purely practical; it hides her identity.
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strqyr · 17 hours
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what ship are you referring to, if you don’t mind sharing? is it freezerburn? sunmerc???
(assuming this is about the notp post) neither of those lmao they're so safe in my head i think it's impossible for fandom to ruin them for me.
it's st/rq related, i haven't shipped it in a while actually (never talked about it here either... i think, or posted art (what little i have drawn for it)) but i didn't mind it... until people started talking about it (and related... things) in a way that basically turned it into another st/rq notp i have lol
sorry for being vague about it, i just don't want my tired venting finding its way to tags or searches where people might enjoy any ships and what not ^^;
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strqyr · 19 hours
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does anyone have a source for the writers saying the V2 post-credit scene is a dream (or even just a vague idea where / what time frame it might be from), or is this one of those "random person on internet gave their opinion / headcanon about it or misinterpreted what was said and people took it as a fact" situations? cos i've never seen it backed with a source and i don't even know where to start looking.
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strqyr · 20 hours
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more au stuff, but taking away the team aspect of the academies (on top of changing the function of said academies) was the best decision i could have done. coming up with roles for characters to play, using their backgrounds (if there's any lol poor sage dw i have plans for you) and at times allusions to figure out where they'd be and what they're doing has been so much fun that i'm almost mad at myself for not doing it sooner.
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strqyr · 1 day
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okay i actually went through the transcript—should have done that first lol—and ironwood's plan is to tell the truth to atlas first, then the world once the panic in atlas has settled...
it still doesn't explain the wait like... what's the hold up? rebuilding defenses? the materials for the destroyed wall were heading towards amity, so by the time the wall would be fixed, the world-wide communication system is back online already, so it can't really be that...?
this might sound nitpicky but... where's the efficiency? where's the reason to wait? bc currently i can't find a convincing one and it's bothering me.
the more i think about it... was there a reason not to tell the citizen of atlas & mantle about salem the moment atlas forces were back on home soil? like, the plan was to repurpose amity into communication satellite to reveal everything to the whole world anyway, atlas included, so there isn't exactly a reason to hold off from that?
the only issue would be proof, but that's the same issue telling all of remnant has, so it's hardly a meaningful one, so... why wait? have everyone on same page, making things like the dust embargo and closing the borders slightly easier pills to swallow. continue the amity project in secret if a must to ensure its safety, but everything else? the military was called back for a reason, there's no reason to hold back information at that point; just rip the bandage and get it out of the way.
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strqyr · 1 day
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the more i think about it... was there a reason not to tell the citizen of atlas & mantle about salem the moment atlas forces were back on home soil? like, the plan was to repurpose amity into communication satellite to reveal everything to the whole world anyway, atlas included, so there isn't exactly a reason to hold off from that?
the only issue would be proof, but that's the same issue telling all of remnant has, so it's hardly a meaningful one, so... why wait? have everyone on same page, making things like the dust embargo and closing the borders slightly easier pills to swallow. continue the amity project in secret if a must to ensure its safety, but everything else? the military was called back for a reason, there's no reason to hold back information at that point; just rip the bandage and get it out of the way.
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strqyr · 1 day
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it's amazing how quickly fandom can make something you used to ship into a notp 🙃
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strqyr · 2 days
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the biggest problem i have is that i'm too much of a visual person that no matter how i write a scene, it won't be like i imagined it.
the second biggest problem i have is that i imagine things in movie format, so translating them into a comic form won't provide a satisfactory result either.
the third biggest problem i have is that to animate what i have in my head and for it to fulfill my vision as close to perfect as possible, it would have to be animated in 3D, and that means i'd have to learn how to make 3D models, before even thinking about animating them.
and that's before getting into the atmosphere and soundscape i have in my head, perfectly imagined, ready to go if only i had the time and the know-how—
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strqyr · 2 days
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love it when after struggling with one part of a story and almost throwing it to trash, it all comes together by figuring out one, completely unrelated to the Problem™ character's role in the story and now i can have everything i wanted from the Problem™ part but even better 😌
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strqyr · 2 days
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yang's character could be summed up with three words: brawn, brain, and heart; and her arc as a journey to find balance between them.
at the start, yang let her emotions get a better of her, namely her anger taking the lead, and she relied on the strength of her semblance to get her out of tough spots—all before her training session with tai, during which she got valuable feedback on keeping a cool head and finding alternative solutions to problems, as well as her talk with raven, which got her to ask questions instead of just blindly believing everything she's told.
which is why i like it very, very much that during the auction scene in V9, yang uses her smarts to figure out which item on sale is actually her arm. oh, she does head into the auction with a plan to punch her problems to solve them (before weiss puts a stop to it with a well placed "isn't he adorable?") and blake does try to get her to follow her heart like alyx did (it did not work), but it's her looking at the disguised items present, finding the one that looks "roughly arm-sized...ish", which actually proves her right.
...sure, the scene eventually revolved into chaos for yang to get her arm back, but she didn't follow her heart or punch anyone to get it, so i'm still counting it lol
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strqyr · 3 days
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while i was staring at the strq photo (as one does), thinking what a shame it is these young models of strq never got any use outside of this photo (okay they're not that different and summer is probably just ruby-copy beneath the cloak but raven's face is def different compared to V2. so.) it sorta hit me out of nowhere how... easily summer fades into the background, in a way?
probably a mix of her being separated from the rest by the tree and being covered by her white cloak against a fairly light background, but if i don't specifically focus on her, it's like she's not even there; tai, raven, and qrow with their more stark contrast with the background and more noticeable colors draw the attention, and just like that... poof. summer might as well be gone.
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like... if someone cut summer out of this photo, i wouldn't feel like something was obviously missing? if that makes more sense?
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strqyr · 4 days
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i honestly don't get the weird dislike towards yang making puns, let alone thinking it's fanon.
like.... she makes puns in the show. that's canon, baby, she didn't say robyn had a handy semblance as a fact lol. just because she's not making them left and right doesn't mean she doesn't make them at all; weiss even says "but you do it!" when she's met with yang's disapproval for her own pun, pretty damn heavily implying that it's a consistent thing for yang, and not a "once in a blue moon" thing.
and while not canon, both the smite and paladins crossovers include joke voicelines for yang that are all pretty much puns, so you'd think that it—yang liking puns—is an intended character trait since the whole point of these crossovers is to get people interested in these characters and to watch the show, and you don't do that by mischaracterizing them.
yes, she's not making them in every episode, let alone every volume, but that's because it's not necessarily the tone the show overall or just specific scenes are going for—though if it was up to me i would absolutely take yang making bad puns and jokes every other episode rather than another over-the-top "funny" bit... but that's just me.
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strqyr · 4 days
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you've got mantle (atlas) being the first kingdom to ban self-expression before the great war. you've got winter's "or you could continue to explore remnant, discovering more about the world and honestly, more about yourself." and wasting no time, in the very next episode you've got a rainbow behind weiss. and, if i may reach a little, you've even got weiss saying "i will happily represent team rwby."
weiss schnee the legend you could have been.
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strqyr · 5 days
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i've been debating for a while now whether to write this or not. it's a bit... a lot more personal than i'm used to, but with V9: Beyond being nearer and nearer, i'm finding myself to be lacking the spark and excitement for new RWBY content that i'm used to have. for that reason, i've been doing some thinking, trying to nail down where the difference lies, and i think i finally figured it out:
the ending of V9, specifically how they handled ruby's arc.
[tw: suicide, if you decide to continue reading]
before i get any further, i want to lay down some "backstory": about two weeks before V9 started airing, i lost my beloved dog to an illness after fighting for her life for two weeks. those two weeks were a roller coaster straight out of hell, thinking the medicine given were working, only for things to get worse; and through it all, all i could think of was that if she didn't make it through the year, neither would i.
but then, afterwards, in some weird twist of fate, when every part of me wanted to stay in bed and never get up, it was her, my dog, that kept me going, simply because through the last couple of years of her life, she had slept the mornings in my bed, with me, with 1pm being the time she'd force me out of bed if i ever stayed in that late... and that following morning—or more like day lol—after her death, i happened to look at my phone, see the clock be around 1pm, knowing i had a choice to make.
and i got up. have every single day, way before 1pm, to keep part of her alive and with me.
so, perhaps needless to say, but ruby's arc in V9 hit close. i had enough time in-between to not be in middle of the worst of it, but i suppose not as enough as i thought, as not only did i lose some of the spark i had for this show, but i'm also still crying now while writing this.
for the duration of the show, the burden on ruby had been growing stronger and stronger. from being called special due to her silver eyes, to all her friends placing their trust in her leadership, believing that somehow, she always knew what the right thing to do was, to never quite feeling she could be open about her own doubts as a leader, having no one to talk to... V9 started out great. i was excited, for the first time in a long while, for the direction they were taking ruby in.
and everything seemed to be going great. all the issues, trauma, et al that ruby was holding in were slowly seeping over, until it all burst open, explosively, and she ran away; and with all of this and more thrown against her by neo, ruby drank the tea, not wanting to be herself anymore.
...then came the aftermath of her ascension, and it's here, where the writers lost me.
"you're broken! you break everything you touch! i call humans... weak! confused! incomplete!" the cat says, and it's hard to say they're entirely wrong; ruby has been broken, she has had her weak moments, she has been confused, and that's okay.
but her teammates, her friends, her sister, don't seem to think so.
the cat is wrong. ruby has never been any of those things, and that's exactly why they follow her.
like it was more important to prove the antagonist of the volume wrong, rather than offer genuine support to ruby by saying that it is okay to be broken and confused, and for her to have her weak moments because that's why they're there; to support her in good and bad. to make it clear to ruby that she can come to them and air her doubts and concerns without a fear of being shutdown, that they, too, will work on themselves to be better friends in that regard.
but that's not what happened, and even without properly registering it at the time, it felt like a punch to the gut.
during the roundtable discussion of this episode, the writers talked about ruby's arc being about impostor syndrome and i just... can't see it. not with the way they build it up. it's like a switch was flicked, and when before the problem was the burden that was solely placed on ruby's shoulder and how it was too much for her to handle on her own, now ruby ever doubting herself in the first place was the problem, and all she needed to hear was that she was perfect just the way she was; "retrospective" is not a known word here.
and for the first time, even if i do have some critiques over handling of certain storylines, i felt like what was delivered was not what was ordered. at all. and with the vague content warnings in front of episodes, it started to feel like suicide was used for the "shock value" it could provide, to get people talking on social media, rather than because the writers wanted to treat it with the seriousness it deserves.
maybe that's unfair to say; i certainly don't know their intentions. frankly i don't know the people who work on this show at all, and i've stayed far from forming any parasocial relationships to pretend otherwise. all i have is my own feelings about this, ones that i've gone over multiple times, going through episodes, seeing if there's something that i've missed that would make it make sense... i've done my due diligence, and this is the result.
this is not the end: i still love RWBY, the characters, the world and its lore... but some of the trust i had for the writers has definitely gone, as has of the spark that ensured the excitement i had for new episodes and content to the point that i'd be right here, on my seat, ready the moment a new episode dropped.
now if the birbs show up—
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strqyr · 5 days
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I know that this will probably be a bit dumb to ask, but does Yang have any Chinese allusions? (except the meaning of her name)
not that i'm aware of, and i don't think the writers have said / hinted at otherwise.
i'm also not knowledgeable about chinese mythology, folklore, or other stories outside of the ones i've stumbled across while looking information about... birds, so i very well might have missed something.
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strqyr · 6 days
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concepting around aura (and related) techniques below the cut. sorta mix of headcanons and stuff for an au.
okay. so: aura techniques can be put into four main categories: defensive, offensive, tactical (name pending), and healing.
// defensive: an aura shield that covers person's body as well as any additional things, like weapons, that they choose to extend their aura to cover. it only protects from outward threats—being most durable against blunt attacks, then slashing, and finally, piercing attacks—, not from illness or, say, twisting your ankle, though in latter's case it can somewhat ease the pain.
while an aura shield covers the entire body by default once aura is unlocked and no longer dormant, with enough training the shield can be focused to specific areas, creating a more durable shield that can repel stronger attacks. this tactic, however, is incredibly risky, with just one miscalculation being enough for severe consequences; henceforth most aura users focus on full-body shielding and strengthening their aura in other ways—mainly by training their focus to keep their aura shield up, and to avoid any lapses in that.
extending one's aura away from their body to act as a separate shield is the most common goal for those who wish to train their defensive techniques further; mainly due to the simple fact that with the aura shield further away from your body, you don't have to feel the dull (or not so dull) ache from the hit.
// offensive: offensive aura techniques are, frankly, a taboo. while anyone with an unlocked aura can certainly try, there's a great risk of injuring yourself trying to use your aura offensively; losing a part of your own aura is to be considered lucky, and there's potential for much, much worse.
but the main reason is a fairly simple one: it has no effect on grimm, who simply absorb any aura send their way. offensive aura is only effective against other people, and thus should not serve any purpose for those who hunt grimm. to even say it's 'effective' against people feels like an understatement: an offensive technique like an aura slash cuts through an aura shield like a hot knife through butter.
for all these reasons, offensive aura techniques are banned from any official tournaments to discourage people from learning them. and to their credit, this effort has been fairly successful: finding any information about offensive techniques has become more and more difficult over the years... though they still live on in criminal underworlds.
// tactical: this is were the greatest variety is, many believing that all sorts of 'tactical' aura techniques have not even been discovered yet.
the most popular, however, is a 'sonar'; the ability to sense other beings with aura—unlocked or dormant—no matter the situation you find yourself in. it cannot go through walls or solid objects to spot anyone (or anything), but it does show grimm as these 'voids', which makes it a great technique for those who are hunting grimm in thick forests or other such environment where visibility is low.
protection from temperature is another technique that falls into this category.
// healing: pretty straightforward: it's simply healing. by default, with an unlocked anyone can heal small injuries like scrapes and small cuts with relative ease; anything else requires more and more extensive training depending on the nature of the injury.
for aura healing techniques, healing another person using one's own aura is at the top. only few people manage to reach this level, hence why such aura healers are in great demand, being able to use their aura to heal even those whose aura is still dormant.
aura is part of a person's soul, which is why it has a chance of "expressing" itself in different ways, depending on the person; this can also be hereditary (think ruby's and summer's rose petals outside of semblance use).
for those who never quite got a hang of controlling their aura in ways they wanted, or whose aura have stayed dormant despite their best efforts, exists an aura blocking techniques; either temporarily, where person's aura eventually comes back on its own, or a bit more "permanent", where the person needs to work on unlocking their aura again, potentially even resetting their progress, depending on the effectiveness of the block.
there are rumors of aura blocking going to the extent of taking away aura permanently, but there has never been a recorded proof of this happening, hence why these rumors are often considered cautionary fairy tales at best.
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