#< not much!! we haven’t been very active!! at least. not for proper/important lore

[rwby-redux]

Deconstruction

Worldbuilding: Semblances I

Remember in the Worldbuilding: Overview when I called Semblances magical? Technically speaking, that’s not actually true. The fact that I have to even qualify that statement tells you just how much of a headache RWBY’s magic system—excuse me, pseudo-magic system—is in practice. Unlike the last topic (Aura) where I focused on just one critical flaw, today we’re going to cover as many of those flaws as we can. Given the huge number of talking points we’ll be discussing, Semblances is going to be split into two parts.

You might want to get comfortable; we’re going to be here for a while.

Let’s first start by establishing what, according to canon, a Semblance actually is. If Aura is the manifestation of the soul, then a Semblance is the form that manifestation takes. Broadly speaking, a Semblance is a skill or ability that transcends the normal biological limits of what a person is capable of—a superpower that’s uniquely-tailored to its user. Despite taking on a wide array of forms and functions, all Semblances share six basic traits:

A Semblance draws upon Aura as its source of power. When this fuel source is depleted, a person can no longer use their Semblance, and must wait for their Aura to regenerate before it can be used again.

The specific ability or nature of one’s Semblance is alleged to be an expression of the user’s personality/character/soul.

Overuse of a Semblance can adversely affect a person and cause physical side effects, such as fatigue [1], headaches [2], or fainting [3].

Semblances can interact with Dust in such a way that their skills are augmented, resulting in the temporary acquisition of new subskills or secondary characteristics.

Through training and regular usage, Semblances can gradually become stronger or more advanced.

The intensity of certain emotions, such as stress, panic, despair, or rage, can cause a person to subconsciously activate their Semblance.

Your first reaction when reading this list might’ve been, “Oh, you mean like the Quirks in My Hero Academia.” Now, I’ve never personally watched the show or read the manga, but after briefly consulting the Wiki page I can safely confirm that yes, Semblances are very similar to Quirks. However, given my lack of familiarity with My Hero Academia, I’m going to avoid drawing too many comparisons between the two. This is partly because I don’t want to provide incorrect commentary on a franchise I know little about. The other reason? The longer I read the Wiki page on Quirks, the more embittered I become toward Semblances and the wasted potential they have by comparison. I’m already biased; I don’t need any help in that arena, thanks.

I think the best way to discuss all of the various flaws with Semblances is to break this topic into two parts, and deal with the meta and in-lore aspects separately.

Meta, Production, and Development

When I started doing research for this topic I went on the RWBY Wiki to track down sources and dates, as one typically does when preparing to excavate a salt mine. I knew what a Semblance was, but I decided that, for the sake of empirical evidence, that I needed to have a reference for that definition. (And a good line of defense against potential critics. It’s hard to argue with primary sources.) Fans can give a definition when prompted, but I’m willing to bet most of them couldn’t name the episode where we first got that information. That’s all right; I couldn’t either. In fact, the more I thought about it, the weirder it seemed that I couldn’t pinpoint the exact episode, let alone the volume, where Semblances are first explained. So I did some digging.

Here’s what I found:

The first time Aura is explained on-screen is Volume 1, Episode 06: “The Emerald Forest - Part 1.” This exposition is delivered to us by Pyrrha, whose explanation serves as a learning moment for us, the viewers, and Jaune, the audience-surrogate character.

The first time the word Semblance is mentioned (not explained, mentioned) is Volume 1, Episode 14: “Forever Fall - Part 2.” Take a moment to let that sink in: we’re fourteen episodes into the series, and despite seeing multiple characters use their Semblances on-screen, we still haven’t been told what these powers are. I think some viewers were able to extrapolate what our cast was doing based on a sense of genre-savviness, but that’s really bad. As a writer, your job is to find a way to organically explain the core aspects of your story. I know that CRWBY tried to use Jaune to fulfill this role (but why that ultimately failed to work is a discussion for another day), but even then, it shouldn’t take fourteen episodes to start addressing major worldbuilding elements.

At this point you must be wondering, okay, so if Aura didn’t get its first proper introduction until episode six, and Semblances were only namedropped at episode fourteen, then when were they properly explained? At least somewhere in Volume 1, right?

Would you like to know the answer?

The first time Semblances were formally explained was in World of Remnant, Episode 4: “Aura.” The fourth episode of this spin-off series debuted on November 14th, 2014. The fourth World of Remnant episode aired a month after Volume 2 ended. To give you some context, the very first episode of the main series aired on July 18, 2013, and the first episode of Volume 3 was released on October 24, 2015.

It took twenty-eight episodes, a runtime of 04:26:04, and a full year before we finally had an answer. An answer that was delivered in a spin-off series meant exclusively to supplement crucial worldbuilding and lore.

Do you see how fucking insane that is? How badly do you have to fail at writing to not explain to your audience one of the fundamental aspects of your story? Not only does this not make sense from a writing perspective, but it makes no sense from a development or production standpoint, either. At the time, Kerry Shawcross was an editor for Red vs. Blue Season 9, while Miles Luna was the writer for the Red vs. Blue miniseries Where There's a Will, There's a Wall, and co-writer for Red vs. Blue Season 10. While Monty Oum himself wasn’t necessarily a writer, he was part of a three-man team that together did have a background in writing and editing. (Mind you, neither of them are necessarily good writers, but it’s still better than nothing.)

To reiterate: There were three creative leads working on this project. Three. How is it that none of them, at any point during production, noticed this massive flaw with their story?

I don’t work for Rooster Teeth (obviously), and I’m therefore not privy to any of the decisions that were made behind the scenes. Whether the focus was more on animating RWBY than emphasizing the worldbuilding, whether the lighthearted tone made the team think that exposition wasn’t as important as being entertaining, whether there were deadline crunches and budgeting constraints that limited the quality of the final product.

While we can’t decisively say why this is the case, we can see how these choices had major consequences for RWBY’s plot—not just in retrospect, but going forward as well. Next time in Part 2, we’ll cover topics that focus more on the lore of Semblances than the storytelling nitpicks, and discuss how those oversights impacted the series.

-

[1] Volume 3, Episode 12: “End of the Beginning.” During Salem’s monologue, Glynda can be seen using her Semblance to try and reassemble a storefront in Vale’s shopping district. Eventually, she tires from overuse of her Semblance, and the building collapses back into debris while Glynda hunches over gasping.

[2] Volume 3, Episode 7: “Beginning of the End.” Immediately after Yang is framed for attacking Mercury, Emerald complains about a headache from casting her Semblance on two people simultaneously.

[3] Volume 5, Episode 14: “Haven’s Fate.” When Yang claims the Relic of Knowledge and returns from the Vault, Emerald conjures an illusion of Salem. Performing her Semblance on nine different people at the same time consumes what little energy she had left, and causes her to pass out. Hazel has to carry her while he and Mercury flee from the battle.

[zydrateacademy]

Current Activities - Conan Exiles #4

So I just posted my latest story “Assassination at the Summit”, and while I am proud of its contents, it has some background information. Basically starting at  "Her outside clanmates had been navigating..." was practically written in a blind fury. I’ve calmed down now but this is my blog and I feel like ranting. First off, the character depicted in that story, Dey Yin, is an actual player. She’s an excellent writer and I strive to reach to her level of para-posting, as they give excellent opportunities to reply and react and I want to offer the same to other players when they interact with me. Also, she loves the story.

I am happy with the results as there was some effort put into it. Even in my blind fury, the last few parts turned out well. I’ve also been trying to work on my verb tense. Either I missed that class in school or over a decade of roleplaying has completely rewritten how my brain perceives verb tense. You might notice that my tenses swap between past and present, sometimes within the same line. This is why writers have editors, people. Anyway it was mostly a background plot, like many of my stories are. Basically I like to lay some groundwork before I claim things. I do not simply want to claim to be a whiskey baroness, I want to actually show it. I want people to see, through a narrative, the effort put in importing a whiskey from the outside world. The server is too small for specific events to surround these kinds of things, so I compensate by writing short stories instead. Quick aside; I actually did host an RP event with my character announcing the existence of her clan. It went very well with around ~9 attendees.

Whiskey and fun were had by all. Anyway.  I spoke of this plot in-character with others and another player on the server, someone I’ve been trying to arrange RP with for... years, I think, across a few MMO’s. We’ve met on an ERP gathering website (ya’ll know the one) but our interactions could never quite get sexual. They’re a good writer and roleplayer and they definitely value quality over fluff. I can respect that. We had some meetups in GW2 but maybe we just don’t make characters that gel well because we just couldn’t quite get to the fluffy stuff. Anyway she happens to follow me on CE. Fair enough. No prompting, she just saw that I was playing a lot and figured she’d hop on the ship. She’s doing well on the server, has a whole clan, etc. Good for her. But upon hearing about this plot of mine, her character offers some... assistance. Instead of being a simple assassination, she wants it to be poison. She insists, having an IC personal stake against Khitan generals. Fair enough, but then she hands Livia an actual quest. Get three specific items. The items in question are in fact part of the several artifacts you need to remove your bracelet and “win” the game (which deletes your save file by the way). Not the whole thing, just three of them. The scourgestone was probably the easiest, and I had some IC help from a guy. It was all great fun. Admittedly I was salty at first, adding extra steps to a straightforward plotline. Then I got to writing it out and I enjoyed the idea of dungeon delving being written into it. It started to feel like an actual epic on the likes of Beowulf, Clash of the Titans, and indeed, actual Conan books and lore. Sword and sorcery. I’m not claiming to write as well as any of those (though I’m pretty sure the Conan movies didn’t have any writers, holy shit), but it started to FEEL like an epic RPG story. I didn’t have it completely written out but it had about three full paragraphs worth. Might have eked out an extra two before... bullshit happens. The salt starts to come back when the player drags their feet about getting the last item for the poison crafting. They are focusing on their clan base and that looks fine and all, but a boss hunt only needed to be asked in global “anyone want to help?”, 3-4 people would have done fine and we had 3 at any given moment, each of us with powerful weapons and armor. We could have gotten it at any time. Again, fair on them to a certain extent. I’m sure they have a job and when they were online, she was likely wrangling her clanmates and building assignments. I get that, but... again, we could have had this wrapped up in 15 minutes at any given point. Eventually my character tries to meet with another newbie on the server (as she does) but finds them already at this person’s clan base. Figure it’d be a good time for Livia to check in on the poison and see when we can go hunting but... Well. Let me give you quick context on this person’s character. John Mulaney has a comedy set talking about his father and how straight-laced he tends to be. He recalls a story (true or not, who can tell?) where John himself and some siblings (I think? Other kids?) were screaming for McDonalds. The father pulls into the drive through, orders a single black coffee, and drives away. John states something to the effect of “in retrospect, that was the funniest thing I’ve seen in my entire life”. Well, this person’s character is basically that guy. But a woman. Livia already has stated that she’s got quite the stick up her ass. Anyway they’ve traded barbs as you might expect, Livia being more of a carefree roll-with-punches and make-money kind of woman. Livia drops an offhanded line about “Maybe I’ll just get my people to slit the general’s throat and save me a headache [in dealing with this character]”. All we get in response is “So be it” and are then soon banned from her stronghold. That’s when I lowkey lose it. I don’t explode, I don’t rant, I don’t PM them. In fact, there’s almost no OOC communication between me and this person and I think it worked against us. She never once asked me permission to force a poison subplot in my story. The character just “strongly insisted” and Livia was like “fine, let’s make the thing” and I went off to get two of the three items THAT DAY. A week goes by, then that bullshit happens. What a waste of my time. I keep thinking back to a roleplaying guide I posted on this server’s website. It’s the same one I’ve copied and pasted across many MMO’s I’ve roleplayed on. There’s a section in there that talks about IC drama having no affect on OOC, or it shouldn’t. I’ve spent many years separating IC and OOC, often times whispering people after an OOC argument of like “That was fun, thanks for the RP!” That kind of thing.  Unfortunately, this whole thing did have OOC consequences. The entire plot and story was essentially a gift to the player for being active, friendly, fun to interact with and being a good writer. I wanted to give the player and character something they would appreciate, but instead was delayed by a player insisting on adding a step. And then never stepped forward. It wasted my time and theirs and got in the way of that RP. Thus, I feel like my anger while perhaps not entirely justified, still makes sense in this context. My time was wasted, and now I’m possibly barred from RP with that person and their clan, or at least by going to their base. Not a single word OOCly was spoken between us throughout this. I remember PMing them the paragraph that featured them, asking if there was anything that needed to be changed. They said no, it was fine for the context and remaining an enigma. Fair enough.  That was it. She never asked me permission to bullrush into our plot, nor did I outwardly refuse it. I thought nothing of it, and indeed as I mentioned earlier I did have some fun writing out dungeon adventures and Livia’s general hatred of the jungle biome. There was fun stuff there, class adventuring that I don’t write nearly enough about. Then it was all just negated because the other character absolutely refused to meet mine halfway in terms of diplomacy. Livia tried. I tried. So starting from “Her outside clanmates had been navigating the unknown country...” in that story, it was actually a rush job in fuming rage, so much rage my chest actually hurt for a few minutes. I do think it turned out well but I do believe I could have padded more with describing the architecture, culture, the nuances of Livia’s clan navigating the cities, dodging police and bribing informants. There’s a lot I could have done there but the story could have been done a week ago and instead I was left hanging because one player bullrushed into my plot and didn’t want to go kill a boss. I’m angry. I’m annoyed. Heavy sigh. Now, I still have two more stories to write. I have asked and received a new patron item (you can get some cosmetics if you donate to the server), a glowing polearm.

It looks very badass, especially at night. Actually hurts if you look at it too long. It’s great. I have it named “Imbued Polearm” and I have no idea why or how Livia would be in possession of it. I just saw someone having glowing purple daggers and thought “...I still haven’t requested a weapon decal for my patron perks. I want that a lot.” Was thinking of a Ymir ritual but white and blue is his motif so I’m not sure that’d work. Derketo is the goddess of sex, not weapons, and would sooner imbue Livia was a penis to properly spread seed long before she’d give her followers a badass weapon. Next story will be a little easier to write. I discovered with some proper dying the reptile armor does not look half bad at all. The aforementioned guy friend says it looks better on females than males, and I believe it;

Not sure why Tumblr blows that way the fuck up but there you go. Due to quality loss, it does look decent in-game. Definitely a “demon dragon slayer” type story to be had there. Was brainstorming that an alpha got tired of some adventurer killing all their babies at the spawning grounds... Next time Livia goes hunting she’d be in for quite the surprise.

All that and I didn’t even get into my clan growing and even having someone build me a proper stronghold.

Currently can house 6 clanmates with a master bedroom for myself. I plan on adding another floor to make way for 4 more rooms as I tend to get members when Livia goes save newly exiled players from the river. It’s actually in that building the above party screenshot took place. (There’s currently two spare rooms, I believe. Hint hint, come join us.)

[thetygre]

Dark Souls Lore Ramblings #1

So before I go on, I guess I should make it clear that I haven’t played DS3 or DS2. So, if there’s any information that contradicts or explains something, I probably don’t know about it. I’ve just got what I absorbed through pop cultural osmosis. 

I don’t really have any particular order or priority in mind for what I’ve got to say, so this could be kind of all over the place. If you want to know my opinions on something in particular, you should probably drop me a message or a leave a comment or something. With that said, let’s start at the very beginning. I understand that it’s a very good place to start.

Dragons in Dark Souls

So, the Everlasting Dragons. I guess they’re the start of Dark Souls. In the beginning, it was all stone and mist and arch-trees and dragons. Everybody and their mother knows from the interviews with Miyazaki that the dragons are more like elementals than flesh and blood creatures. Their scales are made of stone, the same way the arch-trees are made of stone. So the dragons, the trees, and the earth are essentially all one in the same, to some degree. At the very least, the dragons are part of the landscape and the trees might be their own separate things, what with being the pillars of worlds and all.

Anyway, this is all to get around that whole disparity of existence thing. Rocks don’t die; they’re not alive, but they don’t die, or become undead, or whatever. They still succumb to entropy, but that’s real-world science being applied to a very broadly painted mythic portrait. The way I figure it, the dragons just sat around for millennia, fusing with the ground, coming out of the ground, going back to the ground, all in an endless cycle with no actual beginning or end. Seems appropriate.

Now here’s where things get tricky; did the Everlasting Dragons know about the First Flame and the Lord Souls? Were they trying to keep them down? If they didn’t, then the war against the dragons was perpetuated solely by the Lords; they began a fight with creatures completely beyond their comprehension and perspective. But then, why have a fight? The Lords didn’t even want the place that the dragons had; that would become Ash Lake. The Lords wanted the luxury suite in the arch-tree’s branches. (Whether that refers to exclusively Anor Londo or reality as a whole, I don’t know. We’ll get there when we get there.)

The way I see it, the Dragons did have some agency in this conflict. They didn’t just happen to be there. They were guarding the arch-trees, trying to stop the Lords from establishing reality. They actively opposed the First Flame and the cycle it brought. But why exactly? Well, the obvious, existential answer is that they wanted to avoid the pain and chaos of being. Why go through life and death and all that humdrum when you can be an Everlasting Dragon? Then I thought that it might be to avoid The Dark, or Death, or whatever else; something so horrible that the high point isn’t worth it, that an eternal purgatory is better than having to live with the worst. But then I started noticing details about the dragons;

Stone Dragon. Last of the OG Everlasting Dragons. Hatched in secret or hid away somewhere. Possibly also a Bonfire Maiden, but that doesn’t make any sense (or does it?). Offers Nirvana by offering an escape from the cycle of Light and Dark by becoming somebody’s scale-sona. Anyway, count the limbs on this guy and the dragons from the opening cut scene; four legs, four wings. That’s eight limbs in total.

The Gaping Dragon. Coolest dragon in dark fantasy. Succumbs to the pleasures of the flesh and grows a giant ass mouth to feed its gluttony, because Soulsborne runs on that kind of fairy tale logic. Locked up in Blighttown for a long while until its jailers were too weak to contain it or feed it; probably both. Got hungry, escapes, rampage. I like to think it was worshiped as some kind of sewer god for a while, but that’s pure fancy. On topic; four wings, and... well, eight legs. Twelve limbs in total, but I think we can make an exception given the whole freakish mutation thing.

Now Seath? Seath’s another horrible, freakish mutant. He’s got two arms, six wings, and a whole bunch of tentacles/tails. So that’s eight limbs plus whatever’s going on down south. I’ll be honest, I was going to cover Seath as his own separate business later. But Seath is important; Seath is described as being born. Not fissioning out of the stone, but being born. Birth is tied to death, implying that Seat, unlike the Everlasting Dragons, is tied to the cycle of existence. The whole point that I’m making over these last three is that the original Everlasting Dragons come with eight limbs.

Cut to Kalameet. So called by Gough as the ‘last of the great dragons’. Big boy. (That gemstone in his head might be a nifty callback to draconic lore; in both the East and the West, dragons were described as having magical glowing gems that they stored in their head. In the East, these were the pearls that lung used for flight and to control the sea, while in the West, these gems were the dragon’s actual brain, and had fantastic divinatory and alchemical properties.) I imagine he started rampaging around Oolacile after the Dark hit and the Four Knights fell to shit. But count his limbs; two wings, four legs. Six limbs. If Kalameet is the ‘last’ of the great dragons, then that means he is well after the Lords won against the Everlasting Dragons. He may even have been born in the last days of the war proper. But in any case, Kalameet is literally lesser than the Everlasting Dragons.

Similarly, we don’t know a lot about the undead dragons, but they follow the same basic rules. Four legs, two wings; less than the Everlasting Dragons. What’s more, they’re actually well and proper dead. I mean as much as anything that’s undead (and not an Undead) is dead. They’re corpses animated by some kind of magic or willpower, that’s all. But the cycle of life and death has absolutely affected them.

Also, their asses are in Izalith. I have no idea what that’s about. It honestly kind of infuriates me. I feel like I could just put the word “IZALITH” in great big, bold letters over these things and anybody who actually played this game would understand. Maybe something cool happened. Maybe the Lords fought their last epic battle against the dragons at Izalith, and dragon butts are all that remain. Maybe the Witches tried to enslave or tame the dragons, and when the Flame of Chaos destroyed Izalith, it killed the dragons, and the demons and dragons fought in some Heavy Metal war of fire and claws! Yeah! But probably not. Because it’s Izalith. So the answer is ‘rushed development’.

And at the very bottom are the dragons of today. Interchangeably called ‘drakes’ or ‘wyverns’, they have two wings and two legs; a paltry four limbs compared to the Everlasting. The Hellkite is a dangerous enemy, but the Blues are easy pickings for the patient knight. Ornstein hunts them for sport. (Have to guess that he must have started slacking off if something as big as the Hellkite could grow up there.) Even their habitat doesn’t acknowledge them as dragons; it’s ‘Valley of the Drakes’, not ‘Valley of the Dragons’. In essence, the Everlasting Dragons devolved; over the generations, they became less and less until their current descendants are no better than animals. Could it get any lower than this?

The answer is yes. The hydra is barely even acknowledged as a pseudo-dragon. The only thing that even ties them to dragons is that they drop dragon scales and are in the vicinity of dragons or something that a dragon made. It has no limbs, unless you count its ray-like flippers, and a bunch of seemingly useless tendrils hanging off it. I’ll be honest, the hydras kind of piss me off; the one in Darkroot I can understand, but how the Hell did one get into Ash Lake? It’s one thing for basilisks and mushroom folk to be there; they came in through the arch-tree. But how did a sixty foot long aquatic reptile get there?

I don’t know; frankly, I don’t think there is an answer. The best I can come up with riffs from Norse mythology. If we assume that the arch-tree is Yggdrasil, then the Stone Dragon is Nidhoggr, the dragon at the bottom of the world. In some versions of the myth, Nidhoggr is surrounded by a nest of lesser serpents. So the hydra is the Stone Dragon’s guardian? Offspring?

I guess I’m not really talking about all the dragons of Dark Souls if I don’t talk about the Path of the Dragon covenant as well. It really is kind of analagous to Buddhism in a weird way; through the Stone Dragon, you can escape the cycle of life and death, becoming, like the Everlasting Dragons themselves, something beyond any of the Lord Souls. In a way, it’s perfect for Undead; as a being already outside the cycle of life and death, an Undead is closer to escaping it than almost any other creature in Lordran. All they would need would be that final push to make the transformation a permanent part of themselves.

Of course, there may be a more petty side to the covenant; given that the covenant operates on dragon scales, it might be that the Stone Dragon intends for its servants to hunt down lesser dragons like the drakes and hydras. There’s no evidence to that, however, and it frankly seems beneath the Stone Dragon. Remember, its motivations and mindset are unknowable to anything derived from the Lord Souls. Petty vengeance doesn’t seem like it’s M.O.

So what’s all this add up to? Nothing much, really. It’s just what motivated the Everlasting Dragons, the setup to the establishing conflict of the Dark Souls mythos. The Dragons weren’t afraid of dying or the Dark; they were afraid of watching their own devolution. Somehow, I think, they knew that the cycle would wear on them, generation after generation, until dragons were little more than animals. Time ruins all things; it’s one of the big recurring themes of the Souls series. Even Dark Souls 2 (which, as I understand it, is stuffed to the gills with dragons) understood that.

The Dragons’ fight was the fight against definition itself; not as simple as stagnation versus chaos, but against the very act of being in and of itself. And I guess that adds up to what’s valued as important in the Souls universe; ‘existence’ is synonymous with ‘definition’. The very act of perception and processing that perception is the heart of reality, a notion that goes all the way back to Demon’s Souls.

Ultimately, like I said, it doesn’t really matter. The dragons are dead, stupid, or in hiding. But they tell us about the tone of the universe, and I had to start somewhere. Thanks for reading this far! Anything to add or ask for the next rambling?