question: do you think Salem's immortality having an end condition is true? that is, when she was made immortal, it was so that she would 'understand the balance of life and death.' some people are treating it like a typical fairy tale virtue curse- i.e, she will die when she fulfills the condition of "understanding the balance of life and death." i personally believe that it's bullshit. she's just going to be alive, forever, and that's that. your interpretation of things seems to lend itself to this conclusion, cuz I'm pretty sure you've said something about how the gods made her immortal in a way they couldn't take back. as always, sending this just to hear your thoughts! (p.s - do you think she's capable of Ascension? I think she might be, but whether she would do it or not is another question entirely)

yeah i don’t think it’s really a curse in the typical sense. light threw her into the fountain of creation, she drowned, the water’s power revived her and bound to her forever. and then he got sanctimonious about how she needed to learn a lesson.

these two things are connected emotionally but not, i think, mechanically; if light ever intended to make her mortal again i’m certain that the end condition he has in mind was “salem learns her lesson and comes to him to grovel for forgiveness so he can judge whether she deserves to finally die.” look at the way he sets up the ultimatum for humankind! light very much sees himself as an adjudicator. he wants his judgment to be sought and obeyed.

likewise i don’t think “as long as this world turns, you shall walk its face” is a literally true statement (in the sense that salem cannot leave remnant)—first because if this were a truly literal curse then she wouldn’t be able to fly, and second because the verbiage is repeated later when light says that humankind will rise to “walk [the world’s] face” once more, so narratively this is tying salem to the resurrection of humanity itself and tying the ultimatum to salem because it’s ultimately about punishing her continued defiance. “as long as this world turns, you shall walk its face” is a poetic description meant to emphasize the weight of “you cannot die.”

it’s “you will outlive this planet and there is nothing you can do to escape that fate.”

and yeah i have major doubts that the brothers can take it back. like i said, it’s not a curse per se—the fountain of life and creation transformed her just as the pool of grimm did—and the god of light does it to her in a fit of pique. the god of darkness vaporizes her along with everyone else in the end and she just reconstitutes. at this point the god of light is either inventing whole new levels of sunk cost fallacy (it has been MILLIONS OF YEARS and she’s sworn to her defiance!) or he just can’t remove this thorn from his side.

pre-v9 my only real reservation about this line of thinking was that i’m quite sure that part of the narrative resolution will involve salem becoming mortal again, and if not the brothers then…? but as v9 delivered a cosmic force of change deeper and older than the brothers, the brothers being unable to undo it no longer poses a mechanical problem whatsoever.

which is to say that yes, i think if salem found the tree she would be just as capable of ascension as anyone else, and the more salient question is if she would choose to change and how.

as long as the ultimatum is in place, salem has a pressing reason to STAY IMMORTAL, because her immortality is what prevents ozma from immanentizing the eschaton (in which the best case scenario for her realistically is “everybody else is dead and the gods leave again”) and being immortal is the best—really, the only—weapon she has against the brothers. ozma projects his own suicidality onto her; whether salem actually IS suicidal is an open question.

though tbh i think, given the option of ascending, the real dilemma for salem would turn on her isolation and exile rather than her immortality. i’ve touched on this before but one of the main reasons i think she isn’t going to (and shouldn’t) be ‘purified’ as part of her villain -> hero arc is it’s been established pretty overtly that being grimm isn’t what made her evil, rejection and isolation made her desperate enough to embrace being the evil witch in the wilderness. so she needs to be treated like a person before she can be good, and if she has to be ‘purified’ before she can be treated like a person then it means her humanity is contingent on her looking a certain way.

(there’s uhm. a reason the story keeps using the grimm as a symbol for faunus persecution!)

and salem is old enough—and undoubtedly experienced enough persecution when she lived on the fringes of civilization—to grasp that as long as she looks grimm, people are going to see her as a grimm no matter what she does, and if she wants to be treated like a person she’s going to have to bend over backwards to prove her humanity and even that might not be enough. ozma—OZMA, who knew her and loved her before any of this nightmare began, who came back for her and chose to be with her and had children with her—even ozma would not see her as a person; he lied to her and manipulated her throughout their entire marriage and has since decided to pin the blame for all the evils in the world solely on her. is it any wonder that she’s given up?

but, like, the tree could fix that. the tree could take that away. she could be only human again. wouldn’t that be so much easier? to look like a person so she can be treated like one.

only that also really, really sucks for her, because if the only way to get even the possibility of being treated like a person is to ascend, then salem—who she is now, what she is now—fundamentally never had a chance at all and the best she can hope for is that the essence of her will find a new form that other people will judge to be deserving of kindness.

like this is what sets salem (& to an only slightly lesser extent, cinder) apart from most of the villainous cast; to a certain extent her monstrosity is socially enforced by the way other people perceive her, reinforced by thousands of years of ozma’s shadow campaign against her very existence. it’s not that she won’t change—it’s that she can’t change. she can’t make people believe that she’s a person. she can’t make them listen to her. she can’t make anyone care about her. and when she tried she was manipulated into serving the god who did this to her.

it’s blake’s “you could just be a human, or just a cat” trial with the volume dialed up to eleven. it’s “maybe you could be accepted as a person if you shed who you are now to become someone else.” is that an idea salem would ever accept? that she needs to sacrifice who she is in order to mold herself into something other people wouldn’t hate and fear on sight?

(and is that really an idea the tree, universally and unconditionally kind as it is, would let her accept?)

does hornet like herrah

"Like" is probably the best way to put it, she does respect her as her mother, there is some love in there as well, but her memories of her are so distant that it's not a very close bond.

She moved to the White Palace very soon after hatching from her egg, so her interactions with Herrah were limited. She was too young to fully comprehend what was going on, though thankfully Vyrm was an active participant in her raising (well, as active as he could, he still had his duties and the infection problem to solve), so the actual process of moving wasn't as stressful as it could be.

She did start wondering about her mother once she grew a little older, and would ask her father questions. What was she like? Would she get along with him? Could they be a family if things were different? She never blamed Vyrm for Herrah becoming a dreamer, even if she was young she understood the gravity of the situation, and that Herrah agreed to it. But deep down she really wanted to have a complete family. WL was there for a while, before she and Vyrm separated, but she was always a distant being, she never showed Hornet motherly love, if anything, she would push her own ideas of what a princess should dress and behave like onto her, which only led to their relationship souring even further. So the lack of a mother figure, or at the very least a second parent, made Hornet feel like her family was missing something.

She eventually saw that second parent in Grimm, who began visiting the palace more and more often after WL moved out. He always treated her with kindness and affection. He'd carry her and show her fire tricks, he'd tuck her in and tell her bedtime stories if Vyrm was too exhausted to do it (which would sadly happen more and more often, his poor physical condition started to really affect his life). And above all, he was close with her father, not as close at the time as she once assumed, but it was still a comforting sight. Deep down, she saw Grimm as a parent figure, as her second father, so it's not surprising she assumed they were already partners back then.

(This is offtopic but I haven't talked about her relationship with Grimm for a while. She used to see him as a father figure when she was a child, but these days she struggles to fully accept that thought and call him "father" or "dad". Years of being of her own made her afraid of getting attached, and her anger issues make it difficult for her to not get irritated and push away the thought, especially since Grimm likes to tease her about it. So even if she does view him that way, she never articulates it and refuses to admit it whenever that idea is brought up. Grimm absolutely sees her as his daughter, which only pisses her off even more if he refers to her as such. They are otherwise on very good terms, but this aspect is still quite complicated.)

Over time, she stopped asking about Herrah as often. She was too young at the time to truly miss her now, and as she grew older, the memories became distant. She never forgot about Herrah, life simply got in the way, besides, she never expected to see her again, so why cling onto the memories?

Vyrm's disappearance changed things, she was left by herself and so started reminiscing about the past, trying to find some comfort in the memories. Instead, the memories only brought her pain. Everyone she loved was gone. Herrah was as good as dead, her father disappeared without a trace, and she hasn't seen Grimm even once afterwards. Part of her was angry at all of them for leaving her, but the anger would quickly turn into sadness. And after some time, it made her numb, believing that familiar connections would only bring her pain. A mindset that's still there in the back of her mind whenever she looks at her family members. What if one day they disappear? What if she's left all alone, again?

She did return to Deepnest to visit Herrah's resting place after Ghost ended her life, though it was clearly done out of respect more than anything. And yet, she felt sadness. Herrah was her mother, at the end of the day. Even if they never got the chance to build a close bond, she did the best she could to raise her, and for that Hornet was grateful. Although her mourning was short, and she simply moved on with her life, she never forgot about Herrah, even if it often brought her pain. She was hurting, and yet the memory was the only thing she had left.

Even now, having found her father and Grimm again, she remembers her from time to time. Would Herrah want to be a part of this family? Hornet finds it unlikely, but she chooses to believe that Herrah wouldn't disapprove of this, that she would be glad that Hornet is happy. And she is happy, happier than she's ever been. She finally got what she wanted her entire life - a complete family. Her trauma makes it complicated sometimes, but she still loves them more than anything. She only wishes that Herrah could see this, that she knew that despite the hardships, her little spider got a happy ending. Even if it turned out differently than she had hoped.

yuo guys i'm going to sound insane for saying this but doctor bartholomew oobleck from rwby is one of the best professors i've seen in a fantasy anime .

he cares about his students. not just about their ability to fight, but who they are as people and who they will become. he's trying to set them on the right path (asking them why they chose to become huntresses). he might push them a little bit, but he knows that field experience can do wonders. he focuses on the humanitarian side of the huntsman world as an anthropologist, historian, and professor. and he makes sure to acknowledge the failures of his generation and the ones that came before him ("i see lives that could have been saved").

he understands grimm (to an extent) and how they move/live, making him a step above other huntsman. he knows that attacking grimm without reason will only cause more problems. he understands that not all grimm are mindless.

in the final battle for beacon he would rather see his students live than stay and fight (which, despite ironwood telling them that no one will fault them if they leave, he still has a militaristic mindset and would prefer to fight until the end), and he's a talented fighter in his own right due to his intelligence.

and to top it off, he's one of the only adults at beacon shown in v1-3 who cares about faunus rights. we don't see anything from glynda, ironwood or port, ozpin is a mandatory reporter concerning blake, but oobleck teaches an entire class about the lesser known history of a minority group -- specifically civil rights movements. i dont know where else in the show any human has cared enough to do that. hes an ally!

charles and the wildbow protagonist

It is a known truth amongs the fandom that charles is what happens when you see a wildbow protagonist from the outside. charles fulfills all the requrements of the archetype to a T.

scrappy survivor with a never say die attitude, who will not stop no matter what. ruthlessly utilitarian mindset where whatever can be done in order to win has to be done, all other considerations be damned. the lowest kind of underdog where he is (literally in this case) hated by the universe. surpisingly resourceful and capable of wrenching a solution to any problem even when starting with every handicap and disadvantage possible. and most important of all: a cause. an all consuming goal. an almost fervent belief that they are doing what HAS to be done and that it is the CORRECT thing to do.

so with all that in mind is interesting that charles IS very much, an evil person. not just misunderstood. i dont think his villany is merely a product of what side of the narrative he was placed in. i dont think this is just protagonist bias. i think charles was unequivocally a monster, in a way that the other wildbow protagonists (with perhaps the exception of sy/simon??????? arguably???????) are not.

and what is it that sets him apart?

why is taylor going khepri and mindcontrolling the multiverse in order to defeat scieon still not something that sets taylor as an evil person in the same way that charles creating the crucible and trying to forswear the kennet girls in order to defeat the seal of solomon is

(quick aside to acknoledge that this is not a clean topic and is not as easy as to say that all wildbow protags are unquestionable good people or fighting for a good cause necessarily. blake is a preety cool guy but he does go boogieman and decides to just murder a bunch of guys, bad people for sure but he just kind of goes and does it all the same. vicky did contribute to the prison planet and a bunch of other stuff during ward and sylvester... is sylvester)

before i try to answer that question i do want to double back on the whole villany by narrative framing. wildbow, for as dark and grimm and bleak as his stories get, he always always always tells stories about good triumphing against evil. he has not told a story yet where the bad guys are not defeated and the good guys dont accomplish their goal. and so in the end the thing that sets charles apart from a wildbow protagonist. the thing that truly marks him as a villain, is not just the horrors that he commited, or the suffering he is gulty of or his evil deeds. is most of all the fact that he loses at the end what ultimatly proves him wrong.

because that is another thing wildbow has going on in his stories, his stories are ultimatly incredibly idealistic because there is a sense once you read them over and over, and its subtle and easy to miss but there all the same, that evil ultimatly always ends up losing. that evil is on some level self sabotaging, that goodness is the winning strategy. wildbow heroes win because they are scrappy and smart and tenacious and never give up, but most of all they win because they were kind, true and righteous, or at the least they had these qualities in enough quantities as to matter. that being a good person matters both in a fundamental sense but also in a strategic sense.

taylor could not have gotten to where she got if she hadnt been, fundamentally, ultimatly, a Good Person. someone who truly cared for others, who was capable of helping and nurturing and building. this is proven most starkly when her efforts to rebuild the city and to create a safe heaven for the citizens of brockton bay reward her with everyone siding with her on the caffeteria scene against dragon and defiant. (and then later when dragon and defiant get on her side after she kills alexandria).

Blake ultimatly won because he was honorable and true, because even though the universe was against him he tried to leave the world a better place wherever he went, because he made an effort to save evan from the hyena, and green eyes from the abyss, and get rid of Ur, and because he was fighting against deontological evil which meant that he was going to get help and support form others.

vicky won because of the goodness that she spread, because of the ways in which he made her team stronger, because of how she saved kenzie from a terrible family situation and how she made a good impression on that girl on the train and because of how she helped ashley get to a better place and by how she sent all those people to the prison planet, wait, no hold on, forget that last one. because her and every hero made a true effort of goodwill for the non powered people.

sylvester... again, was sylvester.

most important of all, they cared for others, they loved and were loved by others. taylor did have lisa, and bitch, and Imp and dragon and many others who truly believed in her by the very end, no matter how monstrous she got. blake had evan and green eyes. sy had the lambs, and the beetle students, and the experiments, etc. vicky had breakthrough.

who the fuck did charles have? the aurum? the st victor kids and teachers? maricia??? fucking the kim famly???¿'¿¿?¿??? wildbow made a clear point of how these people barely tolerated one another and how it was misserable to be among them.

charles had noone that cared for him, because he didnt bother to truly care about anyone. he was never kind, he never had a moment of tenderness, he never built or made anyone stronger in anyway that truly mattered. or if he had they werent enough to matter and they were all corrupted by everything else he did.

the one thing that keeps him from being a true wildbow protagonist is that, ultimatly, he was kind of a piece shit.

ooooooh ok juicy sfc posts happening !! i rly honestly truly love to see it. here's my unasked for two cents, as someone who did find the story really hopeful. im posting this not to like, discourse or disagree or discount what im seeing, but to just maybe offer a different pov for ppl who might be trying to file this story away in a less devastating way.

i, of course, think baz deserves better than what he gets from his family. we all deserve to have families that love us unconditionally, and so many of us DONT have that -- including baz. that hurts !! i also think simon didn't deserve to lose his magic, and penny didn't deserve to take on the sole responsibility for keeping simon safe, and agatha didnt deserve to be shoved into every princess/damsel role ppl cast on her, etc etc. 

what i like so much abt this series is that ppl dont get what they deserve, but theyre still okay. its why i also love the end of awtwb -- simons LICH ER ALL Y crying lol. he got a whole mega-bucket of extra trauma dumped on his plate that he hasnt even started to process. but its still so clear that he's got the support he needs to live a good life alongside this terrible knowledge. the mage fucked him over even more than he knew, but he doesnt have to define himself by these terms anymore -- we've seen his growth in this regard.

bazs main arc in the series is about how he sees himself -- in crudely simple terms, he rly wants to be a Good Guy (you know, not a vampire, straight, a good pitch etc etc) but sees himself as cursed with that impossibility. this continues as his idealized Good Guy self develops over the course of the books into something that actually feels more achievable to him and is less reliant on the shit his family put on him growing up. 

the cool thing about snow for christmas is that -- just like when simon finds out abt the mage at the end of awtwb -- we get to see baz's new sense of self tested. we get to see what he's using to draw the lines of morality. and we get to see that while of course he still cares about what his family thinks, and it still causes him anxiety and trauma and all the shitty things that he doesnt deserve -- he has grown from that place where their value system can make him hate himself.

and moreso on the hope part -- the grimms value, above all, the ability to fit into the roles they think theyre supposed to hold. its bullshit, and they've both caused themselves problems and absolutely are fucking up their children. daphne fully had to be saved by a cult bc of it and shes still not over that mindset -- these ppl need therapy lol. so it's def sick n twisted that they're celebrating baz being able to hide better rather than celebrating who baz is, but is this not the utmost sign of love that they're capable of? baz gets to fit in better -- that's all they've ever wanted for him, whether we agree with that or not. baz seems to recognize the balance of this in the story. he narrates the rest of the dinner with a sort of dry, relieved, disbelieving tone. it’s like hes huffing a laugh, shaking his head, thinking, “did i really used to pin so much of myself on this stuff? how silly.” he is not distressed bc he understands his parents, and he has, again, divorced his sense of self from their expectations. so much so tht he says fuck it and gives simon the lil kissy at the end, because THIS is his new value system: he ALWAYS kisses simon goodbye!

so, is this a step forward for the grimms being more supportive parents? yeah, maybe not. maybe it never gets better than baz hiding his fangs at dinner and everyone doing the bare minimum to accept simon's role in baz’s life. that's not what baz and simon deserve. but it could be enough, because simon and baz have different ways that they measure their happiness by. they have each other and penny and shep and ruth and agatha and niamh and every other person they'll meet in the many, many years ahead of them whose opinions they can choose to make important to them, or reject. i love this for them! the true queer hope story imo. thats what i want for myself and for the people i love. 

to be clear: this story made me sob so hard i scared my cats. (im not rly a crier, they did not know what to do). i had to put it down in the middle because i couldnt see the page. any queer person who has Family Shit is bound to get whammied lol. but! i personally find comfort in the idea that we can coexist with people who are important to us but also very difficult to be around, even if its not totally what we deserve. its a very quiet, somber hope -- but that only makes it feel more real to me. 

RWBY AU Workshop: The One as Three and the Three are One.

Or, alternatively: How Aura Amp, if it turns out to actually be Soul Amp, would potentially be the single most disgustingly broken Semblance to ever be conceived of in RWBY and also the most dangerous. Especially, if it is also an inheritable Semblance. Mind, Body, and Soul. These three are as interconnected as any link in a chain. The Soul projects its properties into the Body, which in turn influences the Mind, which in turn influences the Soul, which in turn projects its properties into the Body and so on so forth. However, it also works in reverse as well in a process that is in tandem with the one above. The Body projects its properties into the Soul, which in turn influences the Mind, which in turn influences the Body, which in turn projects its properties onto the Soul, and so on so forth. ....I bring this into attention, because this was alluded to by Dr. Merlot in Grimm Eclipse, as a discovery on his studies of Grimm. There is also the implication of this via the way some Semblances are stated to be inherited, as well as to how the Silver Eyes were inherited from those descended by Ozma's incarnations even when his vessels originally had no Silver-Eyed Warriors on their bloodline. Because if Aura Amp is actually Soul Amp, that means that every use of it Amps the properties of the Soul, some of those properties were ones that were inherited from the Body (of which include recessive bloodlines; like the Silver Eyes from the God of Light and/or the Black Blood from the God of Darkness), properties which are amplified and will be transferred to the Body; permanently boosting the presence of those recessive genes. Continuous use of the Soul Amp will continually boost the presence of those recessive genes until suddenly, with proper stimulus, the eyes (blue, green, brown; does not matter) explode in massive wave of silver-white light, and they have permanently been changed into silver and their skin has darkened to a dark brown to better resemble the bloodline's originator. Similarly, if there was Black Blood genes as well, then best get used to living with black sclera as well as pale white hair to better resemble this bloodline's originator. The problem is, that if the Bloodline comes from the God of Light and/or God of Darkness; then your Mind will also be affected as a result in a manner not all that distinct from Mettle's effects. Silver Eyes makes you akin to a templar who seeks Order and Preservation at all costs, and Black Blood seeks Chaos and Change at all costs. Having both would mean having a coldly detached yet fervently zealous mindset of "The End Justifies the Means". So, yeah; I posit that any Soul Boosting Semblance, on account of this relation, would also technically have a Bloodline Improvement effect, but might also have a dangerous Mind Modification effects as well.

"A Mystery of Blood and Bone. Bound by Spirit, Aura and Lore"

12, 17, 18, and/or 38 for you know who

I know who I know who :> the babies

12. Do they have a difficult time when separated from each other, or are they fairly independent?

As Dreams Hollow put it, "do you miss me every second of every day we spend apart? must be pretty awful." They miss each other quite a bit, especially in the earlier phases of their relationship. They, however, never restrict one another in time alone or travelling. Their first assumption is always "oh, [the other one]'s not here? i guess there's something he/they want/s to do that doesn't involve me at the moment." They do sometomes interrupt each other and just come for comfort and such. Dreams Hollow/Shatter Grimm both especially like their partners to just be there beside them, no matter the stuff they're doing, and they will not hesitate to ask for that. Picture Hollow practicing and writing down their score while Grimm lies in their lap and stares at them with big big cat eyes. Or Grimm working on his translations and Hollow coming from behind and putting their head on top of his. That type of stuff.

17. How well do they communicate? Are they open with their feelings/thoughts or more reserved? Why?

Oh boy, Hollow's a disaster in this department. Shatter Hollow likes to assume. Since they know why they might be upset, he must know as well! Since they'd done something that might upset him, he must be upset and just hiding it for whatever reason! It takes them quite a while to really step away from that mindset and learn to Say Things Out Loud. Dreams Hollow likes to bottle. If they ignore the problem, it will go away. Why would they even have a problem in the first place, when everything's going so well and they love him so much? That also takes a while to break down and have them stop doing that, recognising that upset =/= lack of love and that not every little thing they do wrong is groundbreaking or even noticeable to him.

18. How do they care for each other when one of them is wounded/sick?

(Oh you just want me to tell you that there's a reverse of that Shatter Grollow h/c scene, don't you.) Staying close. Talking to distract. Bringing tea and sweets and blankets, cuddling (if possible), letting the other cry and complain. Neither of them gets sick, not really: the exception to that would be Grimm's few Very Unpeasant pre-Ritual weeks and when that happens, they're the first one to stay near him and stand between him and the world. No one's allowed close means no one's allowed close. Your matters can wait for a few weeks. They can't, you say? Well that isn't my problem.

38. Who’s got a quicker temper?

Shatter: definitely Hollow. They have an, in general, long fuse to actually get mad, but they get annoyed fairly easily and their irritation isn't limited to people. They get frustrated with things like cutlery, instruments, pens, paper, books, the list goes on and on. He sometimes finds it "cute", to which they promptly remind him that he argues with inanimate objects on the daily as well. Dreams: Grimm. He's the one far likelier to show anger, out of the two, and he needs far less to actually get angry. Hollow in that au has almost infinite patience; on the flipside, when they snap, oh do they snap.

The remake is not the problem dude. The original is.

You literally have a character called SNOW WHITE because her skin was white as snow. The remake is attempting to rectify that mistake by casting a POC actress to play Snow White so it’s not about her skin. The problem is the entire story revolves around this. They shouldn’t be remaking it at all. Hell, they shouldn’t have even made it in the first place. Disney is just cashing in on diversity points and figures that if it worked so well with The Little Mermaid, it will work with Snow White. Snow White and The Huntsman is the only version of Snow White that should be allowed to be live action because that was about more than the colour of the main character’s skin. Snow White was always a racist film driven by a racist concept. Of cause Walt would turn in his grave. Walt was racist. The remake is not “woke”. The remake is something that should have been how it should have always been. There’s nothing “woke” about treating all people with respect regardless of their skin colour. Calling it “woke” and perceiving that as a bad thing only proves that people still have a racist mindset and they don’t want things to change because they’re happy with their white privilege and domination.

The right thing to do would be not to remake the animated film at all because this was one that never should have been made to begin with because the original story for it by The Brothers Grimm, which was taken and was severely adapted by Walt to suit his “vision”, is a lot darker and violent than Walt’s adaptation. ‘Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs’ is a racist animation adaptation attempting to whitewash everything and psychologically condition a child to believe that the “fairest of them all” is a person with white skin only. I’m not being “woke” by saying any of this. I am just being honest. A lot of the early Disney animations are racist films because discluding any race from “white caucasian” automatically makes it so. Is that a harsh take? Yes and no. Yes, because this was “the way it was” and no because the way it was never should have been. So the real answer to rectifying this mistake is to not try to. To leave it be in the time and place it existed not to “preserve” and “honour” it but to discard it completely. To make it irrelevant. A thing of the past as a reminder that our past was always severely racist among many other things that perpetuated discrimination and segregation of the entire human race as a whole.

You don’t “remake” racist material in the human image. You ignore it because it was never worth the attention to begin with. Much of Walt’s work is beloved and people say “he’d turn in his grave” if he saw his vision being “ruined” by the live-action remakes because of how “woke” they are in comparison. There’s nothing “woke” about being non-racist or non-homophobic or non-transphobic. Referring to it as “woke” in a negative sense implies that you have a problem with the changes made to the original material when the original material was racist. And you can sit and argue with this fact until the cows come fucking home if you wish. It is the fucking truth!

Just look at the uproar there was over The Little Mermaid live-action adaptation. So many people had a problem with a POC actress cast as the main character when the colour of Ariel’s skin was irrelevant in the story. This time it is very relevant and so many WHITE people will have much more of a problem with a POC actress cast as Snow WHITE. The answer is to NOT remake it at all to make a statement that it never should have been made at all in the first place! And in fact a lot of Walt’s “original” material should never see the light of day again in any kind of “human” image.

I was that whitewashed child. Many of us were. And there is nothing “woke” about realizing it and admitting that a lot of material we were brought up on was the designed way to attempt to do this to us. There is nothing “woke” about understanding that we were taught and told harmful lies right from our birth. If you view it as “woke”, you view what was done to us as right rather than wrong. You view it “as it should be” when “as it should be” should have never been! ‘Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs’ belongs in the past. The RIGHT thing would be to keep it that way unless we’re truly ready to address why it should be.

And believe me,… DISNEY are not ready for that.

I have long since given up on r/RWBYcritics when it comes to thinking they have analytical integrity. Somebody made a post claiming that it’s bad writing to call them huntsmen and huntresses because they usually don’t go out of their way to hunt Grimm. They got 200+ upvotes and multiple awards, even though that logic also makes it bad writing to call Geralt from The Witcher a Witcher because he’s a man, and therefore clearly not a witch. This is one of many double standards they have.

Once I reach 300 followers, which is actually less than 10 away, I've got a giant document prepared that will be discussing them, their mindset, and their flaws. I will most likely be called a misandrist by the R/RWBYCritics, a "woke" individual, or perhaps an SJW. But THAT is the problem, you cannot defend RWBY on R/RWBY without getting harassed by R/RWBYCritics, and the admins of R/RWBY will hold the hand of anyone hating the show. Its sad that "legit criticism" and "criticizing from a place of love" have become code for the sheer hatred people have for RWBY. Youtube is part of the problem. People love to blindly hate and support any lies against something, or hypocrisy.

I dealt with a person on instagram who was literally upset that CRWBY would not support her theory. Because I would not support her hatred of CRWBY for not giving her what she wanted, she accused the RWBY Fandom of being toxic.

R/RWBYCritics can there be considered the safe haven for conservatives, adam apologists, ironwood apologists, blacksun obsessors, and the like. Call them out, and cyberbullying under the name of "calling out toxic positivity" is sure to follow.

RWBY should be criticized...but not by people who deliberately ignore half of what goes on in the show while lying about the rest.

Ruby was given so much by Irondaddy she came to expect being given everything. The moment she was told no, she had a tantrum, like the child she very much is. In other news, have there been any sightings of the Atlesian civilians that were (from what I understand, Correct me if I'm wrong) also thrown into the void?

LOLZ you are not wrong at all. Seriously though, she is a spoiled brat who has a “My way or the highway” mindset with absolutely no nuance to it. She see’s in a very black and white way and that leads to a lot of problems the show refuses to acknowledge. And yes people did fall into the void we do see that when Cinder first attacks.

However from what has been released so far no one has shown any concern for these people that have fallen nor have they even been mentioned. I have a very bad feeling that the show will pretend that RWBY managed to keep absolutely everyone from falling and also pretend somehow no one died in the desert when a bunch of grimm attacked what the show pretended was thousands upon thousands of people protected by a grand total of like 4 hunters. 

Hello 👋

I am happy you liked the idea. But now I am wondering, how do you think Blake and Weiss would react after killing Adam? Killing for the first time is something that should cause grief.

I imagine Blake feeling upset at herself for involve Weiss in her problems, maybe questioning her father's ideals again (defending people, saving the world is something that can be done without spilling blood?), maybe she tries to talk with Ozpin, Weiss trying to keep her compusure. But after some time confessing to her sister, maybe this way, she can inquire into Winter and Iroonwood's mindet.

In theory they've already killed many people, the show just glossed over it.

Killing specifically Adam - and having to do it themselves, without environmental factors like a train barrelling down a tunnel or Grimm to shoulder some of the blame - would justify having them do more introspection.

For Weiss, I can see it being a very conflicting moment. On the one hand, she's saved her friend. On the other, she's just murdered a Faunus who appears by all rights to have been radicalized by something her company did. This would be much more of a wake-up call than anything Blake could say or do. I can see her seeking comfort and reassurance from Winter (especially about the whole "I'm summoning the sentient soul of my best friend's abusive former partner and none of us is okay with it") but I don't really see how killing Adam would play into her inquiring into Winter and Ironwood's mindsets in Atlas.

For Blake, yes, she does seem the type to not want to involve others in her problems, like with the whole Torchwick+WF situation. I honestly think she'd feel little besides regret and grief in the moment as she reassures herself that she had no choice, that he made her do it; questioning her father's ideals could come later, when she has the time to look back and overthink everything she did, trying to find some way out, some ending that didn't involve Adam's death. Thinking that maybe, if at any point, she or her father or Sienna or anyone had compromised instead of sticking to an extreme. Conversations with Adam's summoned soul could be on way to help her find her own compromise (and closure).

I can absolutely see them, after Winter doesn't have an answer, approaching Ozpin first about the Adam soul situation. I don't know for sure how it would play out but Ozpin would help them find some comfort.

anyway. the god of light went out of his way to ensure that humans wouldn’t/couldn’t reincarnate + the jabberwalker, animated by light’s breath, ends the cycle of rebirth for afterans + light’s first two creations are both ageless and cut off from the tree until they die + ‘let him rest’ + ‘you will reincarnate, but in a manner that ensures you are never alone’ and what that means is ozma keeps his memories and overwrites somebody else.

what the fuck kind of problem does the god of light have with ascension.

he and his brother are emanations of the tree, meant to cultivate the wilderness into a paradise. (squints at the lost fable.) the smith remarks that balance can’t be made by force or calculation—this is a remark on light’s understanding of balance, specifically. light is very hung up on maintaining ‘the rules we agreed upon’ by whatever means necessary, no matter how horrifically cruel, and continually pushes his brother to do the same until dark relents and kills everybody.

and for some reason light sees ascension as antithetical to his purpose. to balance as he conceives of it. i wonder if it’s because he views it as a destructive process? while jaune is in ozpin mode he says the tree is death, it erases you—and while that’s not true, it’s a mindset the god of light very plausibly might hold. he is trying to design a perfect order that will never, ever need to change. he puts great emphasis on ‘learning from mistakes’ (not that he’s ever truly managed to learn from his own) and makes a point of ensuring that his reincarnating champion never forgets anything. the tree is change and growth, but change and growth require destruction. you have to be reborn new (unless you’re a living human when you go to the tree, in which case you can return spiritually changed if you so choose.)

& he hates that so much he has millions of human souls dreaming in a cosmic morgue somewhere, rather than let them flow through the tree and become something he cannot control.

…grimm are reverse-jabberwalkers, maybe. if the jabberwalker eats an afteran, his prey is cut off from the cycle of rebirth. humans are cut off from the cycle of rebirth, so if a grimm eats a human… stares at all the faunus-grimm connections and the faunus myth about transformative liberation. well okay then.

So how exactly did Zote get into this AU? I feel like I see him in quite a bit of the artwork. I feel like none of the pale family wouldn't want to be around him, so is he just there and they can't get rid of him or is he like the one family member they all like to bully?

Well, if there's anything that brings together the family, it's trauma and emotional damage. And yes, Zote is extremely unpleasant, but I do believe there are things in his past that made him push everyone away and act like a jerk. And deep down, he's just as hurt as everyone else in the AU.

This might be a long one cause I also want to get into how each family member sees him, as I rarely get the chance to talk about Zote.

I guess I'll start with his past. I'm aware that he's 100% meant to be a joke character in the game, that much is clear from his portrayal, dialogue and his role in the game. But I think if you read into some of his precepts, they paint a pretty interesting picture. And yes, I'm also aware that he lies about himself all the time, but some of those are way too specific in my opinion. I'll start in the order of the precepts since that's how I wrote them down.

"Laughter spreads like a disease, and soon everyone is laughing at you." - sounds to me like he has some experience with being bullied. Looking at his fighting skills, or lack thereof, I don't think it's that unreasonable to think he would be a laughing stock for his peers.

"The past is painful, and thinking about your past can only bring you misery." - this one is a lot more vague, but it's clear that he doesn't have fond memories of his past.

"You can rely on nobody, and nobody will always be loyal." - if this is his mindset, it would explain why he's so unpleasant to everyone. He doesn't trust them, perhaps out of fear that they'll bully and make fun of him?

"Mothers Will Always Betray You" and "Fathers believe that because they created us we must serve them and never exceed their capabilities." - these two are, in my view, the heart of the problem. The way I interpret it, he was seen as a disappointment by his father, who wanted to control his life, and his mother did nothing to defend him. If you feel like not even your own parents value you, it's only reasonable that you'd grow bitter towards everyone. And in his case, he also deluded himself into thinking that he's better than what he's perceived as. Not the most healthy coping habit, for sure.

"Do not linger in the nest. There is nothing for you there." - and it's not surprising that you'd get the hell out of your home as soon as you could.

"If someone asks forgiveness of you, for instance a brother of yours, always deny it." - yeah, makes sense that he wouldn't want to forgive them. The brother here is most likely just an example, but maybe there's more to it than that?

I may be looking too hard into a meme character, but I really like the idea of him being an outcast that decided to cope with his trauma by being incredibly unpleasant and pushing everyone away. And it only makes sense that he'd find family in another group of outcasts that all cope with their own issues.

Now, I also want to mention that I don't see him as an old man like a lot of people call him. To me, he's probably in his species' equivalent of 20s. So still quite young, and thus with a lot of potential to heal and become a better person, which is an arc he goes through in the au. Albeit slowly, i mean, it's Zote after all.

---

As for how the rest of the family sees him:

Holly is their closest friend, so i'll start with them. Before Vyrm moved to Dirtmouth, they didn't have any familiar face that would talk to them. They desperately wanted someone to acknowledge their presence, and being talked to was, to them, exactly what they needed. Hornet was still very distant, she didn't really speak a lot, and in general it felt like she ignored them. Grimm, while much more open to conversations, was busy - at that point, he and the Troupe were still slowly preparing to go elsewhere to finish the interrupted ritual. So Holly had to find what they were looking for elsewhere - and it just so happens that a very talkative bug was right there, in the town. Of course, he was only talking about himself and lying through his teeth, but Holly didn't mind that. plus, they related to his wish to love up to his father's expectations. And over time, the pair became good friends, to the point that even Zote began to act a bit less unpleasant towards them. He wasn't used to having friends, so it was definitely a struggle for him.

Hornet hated him at first. He was irritating, simply put. She responded to him with mean things, which would often end in arguments between the two. But as time passed, and Zote became a honorary part of the family, her attitude changed a little - makes sense, she does soften a bit over the course of the AU. Their current dynamic is a bit sibling like. Well, the kind where one bullies the other, but is equally as defensive if anyone else tries to do the same. They still bicker all the time, it's inevitable as their personalities clash with each other, but there is a degree of understanding between them. Hornet can see through his lies easily, and relates to his wish to push everyone away as a response to trauma.

Vyrm, similarly, can also relate to some parts of Zote's past, mainly the desire to live up to his parents' expectations and to prove himself. But at the same time, he does find Zote's rambling to be a bit much. He tolerates his presence and even acts friendly towards him, and he definitely sees him as a member of the family, but they're not very close. Zote is a bit afraid of him since he was the one who first found him in Greenpath, and he can't get rid of the mental image of Vyrm covered in blood, ripping an animal to shreds. Especially since he's right about the size of what Vyrm usually hunts.

Grimm sees Zote as entertaining. He doesn't exactly bully him, that's not his style and he does feel pity towards him, but he enjoys hearing him make stuff up about various things. His tales from his travels are particularly amusing to Grimm, as they're almost always completely made up. Grimm likes to "fact-check" him, which usually ends in Zote struggling to keep his narrative and giving up. But since he's part of the family, it means Grimm is still protective of him. Even if Zote himself finds him unsettling and is afraid of being left alone with him hahaha

I love the idea of Zote finally accepting that there might still be family he could belong to, he spent all those years thinking he's better than that, but deep down he really needed to be a part of one. It just so happens that he got "adopted" by a bunch of traumatized freaks, but maybe that's exactly the kind of family he needed

Elm vs. Houndy?

Hard to call this one because we never see the Hound vs. a top tier opponent, but Elm is trained to work in a team over fighting as an individual and has the standard Dogmatic Atlesian problem. From what we see, Elm's got the physical tools to match the Hound, but I'm not sure she's got the mental flexibility to deal with a Grimm that represents such a departure from the norm. Atlas's mindset is characterized by a belief in its own superiority and difficulty adapting to new situations, so while I think Elm could potentially overcome the Hound in a purely physical battle, I think it would take her too long to wrap her head around what a Grimm capable of speech represents.

If she knows what it is beforehand, things get a little more interesting. Elm definitely has the raw power to take on the Hound and we mostly see it ambush already tired and weakened opponents (Oscar's group, the attack on the mansion) instead of straight-up brawling with someone, so I feel like this one could go either way if Elm has actual info and prep time on her opponent.

It's really hard to judge the Hound's actual threat level from the available data, but my best guess is that it's stronger than most of the Ace-Ops/protagonist group, but would struggle against truly elite fighters like Qrow or Clover or the group just below them (Winter, Neo, maybe Yang, etc).

Dire Situation

I don’t think I ever properly made a post about this but like…team RWBY and friends really messed up. The show and fandom talked about the moral dilemma Vol7-8 had and why people chose their side but taking a step away from that, let’s look at was avoided.

Saved countless lives

Kept winter maiden powers on the good side

To be fair, those are huge achievements. I’m not counting the broadcast because it’s really a matter of opinion if letting the world know like they did was a positive or negative. Also defacing Ironwood like they did in the broadcast didn’t help their situation and might cause worldwide unrest in their leadership; since they don’t know the facts. As far as negatives that they cared about:

Friends are lost/dead

They lost the relic and the question with it.

Now the reason I’m bringing this up and saying our protagonists messed up is quite simple. They made a plan where they’d lose Atlas and Mantle, and they were okay with that. We had no dialogue from anyone disagreeing about Atlas itself falling.

Saving all the people was great morally and I’m not saying I didn’t want them to not try and save a lot of lives, but RT has made Atlas from world building standpoint the major cog in how Remnant functions in most capacities.

The source of the world’s major Dust supplier is now gone. Dust as people know how to use it will gradually become finite or at very least production will be immensely slow which isn’t good

The land of leading science and cutting edge technology is gone so those fronts are also coming to a standstill.

Amity wasn’t fully completed and also drifted off course, so is quick global communication now entirely dead? Yeah they have short range towers but all of the CCT network was developed by Atlas, the central hub.

The world has no idea about Atlas’s evacuation and now there’s no reliable way to tell the world quickly enough. Many will only know an entire kingdom has now completely vanished off the map and that’s going to cause sheer panic.

The world is more crippled than it’s ever been and our protagonists aren’t even united to handle things on a kingdom scale, let alone the global problems. Meanwhile Salem has lost two people and the world still doesn’t have a good idea of who or what she can do. The world essentially heard “the devil is real but we can stop it!” Then a country disappeared. So yeah, I don’t think their plan was that great big picture wise. You can argue they saved people who knew about Atlas tech but that’s iffy at best. We saw a lot of military die, and any living people with expertise still won’t have all the tools and things they need to keep the world as they know it sustainable indefinitely.

Now I’m not and wasn’t ever expecting them to come up with a full proof plan that solves everything or for them to even think about all the different variables because they were on a time limit. Grimm invasion, bomb, Penny’s virus, Hound, etc. They had a lot on their plate. However, what I really want to see desperately is at least two people think about everything they’ve done since making it to Atlas, think about the state of the world after their plan, and then go, “Man….we didn’t handle that well at all.”

I don’t think that’s too much too much to ask for. Ren was getting to that point a little bit but this is much more grand. Believing in your actions is fine and all but there should be no way everyone is still on the “we’ve been handling this” mindset. “Maybe we were wrong” or “Things went absolutely wrong” should exist in some minds and I’m really hoping at lest one of those minds is Weiss’s. She didn’t like her home life but she never hated the country. Her homeland is gone. That should mean something. In many ways she’s lost the most through this experience, be it her own actions or her friend’s actions that she had no say in half the time.

Really hope RWBY sheds a light on this well. I don’t need Lord of the Flies level of breakdown amongst the group of friends but there’s a lot of reasons they should be upset about how Vol7-8 went and I hope they call each other out a little bit and not just go “We tried and things went wrong.”

Rewatching RWBY there's this chilling lack of empathy through the volumes that I used to just wave off. Yang has no empathy for Tai, Blake is just entirely about what Blake needs, Weiss almost kills a woman at a party and her takeaway is 'my dad is mean so I'm going to run away'. Qrow sinks hard into depression in vol. 6 and Ruby's reaction is to yell she's never needed him. No one has EVER helped a civilian. It's so prevelant. Knowing how 7&8 go really changes the earlier writing.

I think there was a great deal of well-written empathy in the early volumes — after all, this cast was designed as the kind, well-meaning heroes — but that care was expressed almost solely within the group itself. Ruby sits by Jaune in the hallway and says "Nope!" to his self doubt. Weiss offers Ruby a hand up after she fails to kill the death stalker. Yang seeks out Blake and gets her to open up about what's bothering her. Now, I want to emphasize that there's nothing inherently wrong with this. It actually makes perfect sense. These are our main characters and they're written as peers co-habiting the same space. Of course whatever emotional growth we get, which automatically includes moments of compassion, would be directed towards each other. Similarly, the dynamics originally introduced — that of teachers and parents — likewise (rightly) puts the burden on the adults to provide the comfort, not the other way around. Port snaps Weiss out of her arrogant mindset. Ozpin reassures Ruby about her leadership worries. Tai is there to support his daughter when she's recovering from a lost limb. That's the natural order of things, so to speak.

The problem, to my mind, begins to occur when the group exits those dynamics. They're no longer students, they're licensed huntsmen. They're no longer kids, but equals who never needed adults in the first place. They're no longer doing things for themselves and their friends on personal downtime, they're doing them for the community at large as a profession (to say nothing of the world-altering war they've insisted on shouldering responsibility for). That's what a huntsmen is meant to be, a defender of the people, not someone who uses that power for personal interests alone. All of this is a huge change from where we started out: cutesy kids going off on comparatively low-stakes adventures because one or more of their teammates are invested, only just beginning to realize that they're signing up for a job where their desires come second (that fireside conversation at Mountain Glenn).

This change invites — demands, really — that the audience read them differently too. Qrow's spiral in Volume 6 is a good example of this. If Ruby is demanding to be treated not just as an equal in terms of maturity and experience, but also as the primary leader of this group, then the viewer expects her to treat her uncle as an equal too, not dismiss his hardship. I've seen numerous fans defend that arc with some version of, "He's her uncle. He's supposed to take care of her. He's failing" but that, according to the show, is no longer the dynamic. Qrow is now just a member of Ruby's team, someone she's responsible for as their leader. It's easiest to see the problem if we switch out Qrow for any of the other members. If Blake developed a drinking problem, do we think Ruby would just shout at her until she magically got over it? If Jaune endangered the group, do we think they'd all be angry about it, rather than trying to figure out the source of what caused the mistake? We don't even need to think hypothetically for that one because we saw it on screen. Jaune attacked Oscar and drove him off, not just threatening him, but arguably endangering the whole team by requiring a search party. Fans have long insisted they had to steal that airship right then because being in Argus was too much of a risk, but if we buy that reading (which I personally don't, but), then that means Jaune made things exponentially worse by forcing them out into that super dangerous city, rather than allowing everyone to stay hidden inside. He made a massive mistake which, according to the logic of Qrow's arc, should be met with frustration, disdain, and eventual demands to get over his anger at Ozpin or ship out. But, of course, he received nothing but concern. Yang was worried about him, not Oscar. The search becomes about his grief for Pyrrha and his team's willingness (as well as Pyrrha's family member) to provide more comfort. Suddenly, the tendency to express care solely towards those within the group becomes a flaw the story won't acknowledge.

And then it spirals. The thing to remember is that no single act here is bad on its own, especially when we consider that yes, we want flawed characters. Rather, it's about the pattern. Ruby is allowed to get mad at Qrow for his behavior and chuck her scroll in frustration. She's human. I'd be crazy frustrated too. However, if Ruby is meant to be written as a caring, sympathetic character, she should not only respond to the situation with frustration, yelling, a refusal to listen, and demands that he follow her lead, no questions asked. We can, and should, acknowledge that Weiss was the victim during that party. Her father was hurting her, the woman was beyond insensitive, Weiss was triggered in regards to a horrific event, and her power acted on its own. However, if we want to write Weiss as a compassionate, mature huntress to-be, she should acknowledge that she nearly killed someone — even an asshole someone — and vow to work on her control because she's not willing to put someone in danger like that ever again. Both of these moments have a "They could have been handled better" response attached to them — the former more-so than the latter imo — but these moments are made far, far worse due to later events in the show, events where the characters are cruel without any justification attached. Weiss didn't mean to attack that woman, but she did mean to ignore Whitely and threaten him with her weapon. So once we see that, it informs our understanding of what came before it. "Oh. The fact that Weiss never reacted to nearly killing someone isn't just a bit of missed potential, it's an early indicator that she... doesn't seem to care. If she endangers people, threatens people... that's fine with her." The group has a right to be frustrated with Qrow. The group did not have the right to magically steal Ozpin's entire life story, assault him, and blame him for the world's problems until he felt his only course of action was to run from them. So when we see that it becomes, "Oh. The fact that the group treated Qrow so poorly isn't just a one-time mistake born of a stressful situation and young adults being out of their depth in regards to alcoholism. They really will just abandon anyone the moment they start making mistakes." Anyone outside of their group, that is.

To say nothing of how all of these moments interconnect. Yang's recovery isn't just about getting used to not having an arm, it's about getting used to having a new one. Weiss' party isn't just about nearly killing someone, it's about not committing manslaughter because someone else stepped in. The Volume 6 arc isn't just about trying to escape with the Relic, it's about trying to get it somewhere safe. Fans frustrated with Ironwood's treatment don't harp on these details out of some desperate attempt to make him look good post-murder spree, rather, they recognize that he's a character that's been around since nearly the beginning, originally written as a good guy, and thus has accumulated a number of key connections with the cast. So when none of those connections are acknowledged during an arc about trust... that makes the group look very uncaring. Yang doesn't care that he gave her the arm, Weiss doesn't care that he saved her from hurting/potentially killing someone, Qrow doesn't care that he's trusted Ironwood for years (in a rival-bros way) and that they've been heading towards him this whole time. And when Ironwood begins to spiral, they don't do anything to try and help him, let alone acknowledge that their own choices, that lack of trust and empathy, had a hand in getting them here. "But it's not their responsibility to fix him!" Isn't it? Even a little? Just as human beings seeing an ally struggling under horrific decisions and circumstances? Sure, they don't have to try... but that doesn't make them look very heroic to my mind. And we can't even shrug that off by simplifying things with, "Well, Ironwood is evil now so who cares about him." They simultaneously don't care about finding Qrow who is missing, then captured. They don't do anything to try and find their missing teammates, with the exception of sending May to do it instead. They don't help the army fight off the grimm. Don't try to make sure Pietro and Maria had portals to escape through. Barely hesitate when the newly resurrected characters goes, "Kill me. That's the easiest thing for everyone." And these are just a few of the big ticket moments. It doesn't even begin to cover all the details we get that paint a picture of, "Wow okay. They just really don't care about people outside the group, huh? I mean, they say they do, in a life-or-death way, but they're not putting forth effort to show it on a daily basis."

And if you pick up on all that, if you acknowledge how much the group has changed based on where they started out, you might wonder when in the world that started. Surely we didn't just flip a switch around Volume 6. So you re-watch early stuff and, sure enough, there are moments that feel like setup for what's to come later. Not intentional setup (quite obviously), but a lack of care towards details across the series that, once the dynamic changed, became far, far more pronounced. Characters should be at least somewhat recognizable from start to finish, especially characters who have only experienced about two years of in-world time, so if we now get to see Ruby blandly commenting on all the people who are dying, or Weiss using her weapon as a means of coercing her little brother into doing what she wants, or Yang and Jaune dismissing Ren until he gives in to their point of view... we're going to look for the beginnings of that behavior early on. As you say, we were able to wave all those little details off due to a number of important factors. Now though? Now they feel like they hold a lot more weight, simply by virtue of that early material proceeding what we have now.