#i think i got possessed by the relic of knowledge

[chirpthingz]

my "essay" on why I don't think kian's plan would amount to anything:

with sources!

spoilers for desconjuracao ep. 20 & calamidade below

my problem with kian's plan isn't that i think it wouldn't work, i just don't think he's capable of achieving it. now, just as a refresher:

kian's plan is referred to as the calamity. his goal is to sever the connection between reality and the other side, destroying it. to achieve this, he must kill anyone with knowledge of the paranormal and destroy the relics. (source)

this is a perfectly reasonable plan that, based on how the other side functions, could work. (source). if i remember correctly, cellbit even confirmed it would work (i can't remember where i heard this, so i may be wrong). and on that note, kian is insanely powerful. he is:

immortal, can move shit with his mind (to an extent), can teleport pretty much anywhere he wants, has a decent amount of followers, can weaken rituals in an area, and has two rituals that essentially insta-kill someone (as far as we are aware), is scarily clever, knows everything about the other side, is 4000+ years old (technically), cannot be caught by surprise, and possesses superhuman strength + agility. (source)

at a first glance, he seems more than capable. he has the highest marcado (player) kill count (5) in the series, and is referred to as the damn god of knowledge by his followers. (source).

but he is not a god, he is not a relic, and there are factors i feel he has not considered.

The amount of people he would have to kill is too high.

kian intends to kill everyone with knowledge of the paranormal. of known living characters, this includes 18 player characters, 4 relics, 25 ordem agentes (not including pcs), 5 members of the leone family (excluding carina), 8 hell hunters, 17 members of the obscurite (excluding yuki & dominic), 1 escripta (not including gal), 6 known ordem prisoners, 1 colosseum employee, cassiano/hugo/eduarda/tim, the 15 surviving members of tipora (excluding amelie & oliver), 2 panacea employees, emilia, donisvaldo (don), mandy/vicente, and a number of npcs whose whereabouts are unknown. this adds up to at least 109 relevant characters. (source). of course, this is not counting the amount of people we don't know about. think about all the other organizations & governments out there. think about how many odd groups like os cinco are out there. think about the mask sect, the host production, the luzidios. furthermore, it is not unreasonable to assume the population of the world that ordem is set in is similar to ours. currently, we are sitting at nearly 8 billion. any amount of those 8 billion could have some knowledge about the paranormal. without a doubt, those people amount to at least a couple hundred thousands. even if we were to even out the playing field and pretend that kian's escriptas were still alive, the ratio of escriptas to people he needs to kill is maddening.

2. Kian is not all-knowing.

"kian sabe, kian sabe-" no he doesn't. he knows about the other side, but that only gets him so far. he could not locate the order base (source) (it is important to note that the order had the help of a relic in hiding themselves) nor stop them when they arrived in italy, he had to rely on clarissa. (source). furthermore, he had no idea about god's diary- the one thing that could stop him. (source). the world is enormous. to be as brief as possible: there is too much ground for him to cover. he can also not account for recorded information. there is no feasible way he can look through every archive, every website, every library, etc. information about the paranormal will survive and he might never know about it. on that note, he cannot possible know where all of his targets are at once, and he cannot get to all of them fast enough before some of them realize they need to hide. this brings me to my next point.

3. It would take him too long to accomplish his goal.

kian is currently immortal. (source). he has all the time in the world. no rush, right? wrong. thinking back to the insanely large amount of people he needs to kill, which assumedly totals up to at least hundreds of thousands of people. it would take him ages to kill them all. even if he did have escriptas helping him, it would take multiple decades at a minimum. the longer he takes, the more time someone else has to stumble upon the paranormal. the number of people he needs to kill is not a fixed rate, it is constantly increasing. if we take into account the rapid spread of news and information because of digital spaces, it's not unreasonable to think that it's increasingly rapidly. this also gives other people more time to figure out how to stop him, which is obviously dangerous to his cause. he cannot reasonable kill people at a fast enough rate to make rapid progress, at least not if he wants to prevent my next point from becoming true

4. Enacting his plan would weaken the membrane.

the membrane that separates reality from the other side can be weakened by fear. entities from the other side use this fear as a bride to physically manifest in reality. (source). kian does not have the time (as explained above), nor the money, nor the resources to ensure every death is untraceable. the amount of people he needs to kill will draw attention, especially when it isn't unreasonable to think that government officials are aware of the paranormal to an extent (for example, verissimo himself comments that the order is partially supported by political allies). it's also important to note the sheer amount of people that will die. to an outside perspective, large amounts of people globally will die or go missing with little public explanations or connections. this will undoubtedly cause mass panic. panicked people become paranoid, and then scared, and then the membrane begins to weaken. this means more opportunities for the other side to manifest into reality, therefore making more people aware of the paranormal. it is completely unavoidable, and (from his perspective) frustratingly counter-active to his plan.

naturally, we do not know the true extent of kian's strength. up to this point, he really has not made any attempts of truly trying to enact his plan; instead he focuses on stopping the people in his way (which, if he continues to focus on such matters, he will never get around to actually bringing about the calamity).

there is also the argument that he may have access to relics. this is addressed by the magistrate in calamity episode 8:

the magistrate informs equipe abutres that if the mask of despair (relic of knowledge) were to be destroyed, kian would possibly control destiny itself. (source).

it can only be assumed that similar consequences would occur should the other relics be destroyed. however, for him to actually destroy the relics, he would have to acquire them first. this is where I believe he meets a significant wall.

the relics do not appear to get along. or at the very least, their differences drive them apart. (source). this does not mean they cannot make agreements. the devil and the host appeared to have no problems with each other in the ordo calamitas base, and the host and magistrate let equipe abutres decide who to side with even though they knew it would end in one of their "deaths" (even if they argued about it the entire time).

most importantly, they all desired to stop kian. this is because, very obviously, they do not want to be barred from reality. and even more importantly, they are very, very powerful.

but the relics of knowledge and energy do not have wielders, leaving it up to the god of death and the devil (unless someone decides to become the new magistrate or host), which brings me to my final topic.

the devil and the god of death are not going to help kian. the strongest counter-argument to this entire essay is that with the help of the devil, kian could easily realize the calamity. with the devil appearing to offer a pact to an imprisoned kian, this reality doesn't seem to far away. yet, there is no logical sense behind this idea. the devil can only lose if kian accomplishes his goal, and kian will not stop until he has destroyed all the relics. they may temporarily work together, but it is a fragile alliance. at some point, the devil must try to stop him. the god of death has only appeared twice, both under circumstances in which his domains were threatened. even if he chooses to ignore the calamity, eventually kian is going to encroach on his territory. the god of death will be forced to intervene.

i, chirp, assume the two would not get along super well, but the magistrate and host have shown us that relics can come together for a cause they both believe in. it is impossible to know if they will both be able to come together in such a way, but the chance is not zero!

in summary: under all that power and immortality, kian is flesh and bone like the rest of us. 4000 years has not softened his pride, and it will probably take 4000 more for his plan to amount to anything.

----

you made it to end!! sorry i am such a yapper lmao, but i've been thinking about this for like two days straight. this essay isn't meant to start any heated arguments, it's all very lighthearted, but i do want to hear your opinions. if i got some information wrong, please forgive me; youtube auto-translated subtitles can only get me so far, and i've only seen calamidade once.

KIAN BROXA.

[mangoboogaloo2]

what's your hollow knight au... woah i;m so interested already

WOWOWOW hello :) I'm so glad u asked! Forgive me for the long post friend

1) Lost Kin Food Adventures/Also Hallownest Restored AU:

Part of me wants to keep it brief since I've story boarded a whole chapter of this I've kept but I got to edit it first (if I ever do ;-;)

- Lost Kin being a student and having an informal child/father type relationship Nail master Oro

- Lost kin learns that it's Nailmaster Oro's Hatchling day coming up soon, and they are invited by Sheo and the Nail Smith! Both teach them about birthdays/Hatchling day traditions

- They intend to make a cake! But learns that not many people in Hallownest don't know how to

- Although Lemm is a Relic-Seeker, Lost Kin learns that Lemm had heard of knowledge of adventurers cooking and baking, so they venture out to find the ingredients themselves together

Sideplot skirmishes/Character Moments:

- Hallownest is being rebuilt, and more bugs are flooding in! Hornet makes Quirrel an informal advisor to The Hollow Knight to help organize the kingdom a bit much to Lemm's chagrin

- Lemm × Quirrel: Lemm worries that Quirrel is not thinking about himself after seeing him devote more time to restoring to kingdom. This leaves Quirrel kind of hurt and they fight over it sometimes.

- Lost Kin figuring out themselves battling trauma between the Radiance and Pale King, trapped between void and light.

- Canon Drama: There's still tension between Oro and Mato and the Nailmaster family is tryna fix that

- Minor Drabble: Quirrel and the Hollow Knight reminiscing over their trauma and how they heal to being scared about rebuilding the corpse that is Hallownest

**(I'd imagine Quirrel here thinking fondly of Lemm when he says "it's okay to be useless" from the Stag Beetles and Broken Legs fanfic and somehow paralleling that to the Hollow Knight's new responsibility as king to not have as much pressure. That fic by Aryashi and relationshipcrimes on Ao3 is amazing, go go go)

Notes:

- I'D ASSUME Sheo, Mato, and Oro are all triplets since they're practically identical but for that AU they've hatched on different days

- After installing Tumblr, I've seen SO MUCH food AU Stuff and I'm excited I'm not alone :_) I can't remember the exact creators that I've seen tho sadge

- Its funny since with this AU it assumes that Hallownest's gastronomy (at least in the baking department) being underwhelming as heck. I mean most people in Hallownest are warriors so I don't expect them too kek.

- Battling the fine line betwixt reality and fiction because I've done baking research on what Lemm and Lost kin CAN cook realistically but then like can bugs digest milk? Can bugs make a human cake and eat it too? Or do I have to use realistic substitutes? (Help I learned cockroaches can make milk, now you can know about it too HAH but yea no don't want that)

- Finally, definitely wanna flesh out Lemm and Lost Kin's relationship but I'm not sure how they would bond over in story. Maybe over Lemm's curiosity over the Pale family history and why these bugs look all the same and Lost Kin wanting to just experience life suffering from possession from radiance and such.

^pg 1 storyboard (also I just realized, I don't know really if vessels are born ? So that's kind of sad)

This my most beefiest au that I will probably not fully write out (maybe)? Since writing is not my strength at all but thinking of character interactions is so fun. I have more different AU stuff but saving them for other days yes

[liltaz-asatreat]

Anyone up for Grand Relic Analysis?

I think the power and destructive capabilities of each Relic corresponds to each person's understanding of magic and the Light of Creation really well. Like, in order of least destructive and powerful to most destructive and powerful, we have the Animus Bell, the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet, the Philosopher's Stone, the Oculus, the Gaia Sash, and the Temporal Chalice, which may seem like a weird order considering I put the Animus Bell first and the Philosopher's Stone third, but let me explain.*

*I'll get to Lucretia's at the end and why it wasn't listed above.

The Animus Bell, while it's horrific and powerful enough to knock someone's soul out of their body and allows the person wielding it to take over the victim's body and live in it themself, it only targets one person at a time. All of the advanced magic and everything else that happened in Wonderland, the Wonderland twins were already doing themselves before the Starblaster crew got there and made the Relics, so that was the only thing that we know of that the Bell was capable of doing. So all in all, not a super powerful destructive force in regards to destruction on a large scale, and because it only did one very specific thing, it couldn't be used for other purposes to do further damage.

The Phoenix Fire Gauntlet also only had one thing that it did, and it was just to produce fire and be used as essentially a very powerful flamethrower. As Taako said, it couldn't be used to do anything else like the other Relics could, and it did actually mitigate a lot of potential damage by just being an effective flamethrower because even when the wielder lost control, it only destroyed the area in a half mile diameter circle.

It was Barry and Lup's job to study the Light and know everything about it and to study magic and science, and they were both basically the best ever at that. They're also the ones who came up with the plan in the first place, so they knew the most of what they were doing and how to use the Light in a way to dampen its effects and curtail the damage it would be capable of causing. They also knew the best on how to make sure to focus their artifact into doing only one thing because of their extensive background in magic knowledge and because they knew if they made their power too broad, it could be used in a number of ways that would spiral out of control.

The Philosopher's Stone, while it did have the capability of doing a lot of damage (re: the threat of turning the whole world to crystal in the Crystal Kingdom), it really only had one power too. Sure, that power was a bit broad in being able to transmute anything into literally anything else, but that was the end of it. And honestly, it could be argued that the threat of turning the whole world into crystal was a fluke because it was basically just constantly turned on during that arc because Maureen's mind was gone and she had a bunch of different spirits also possessing her in a way, so there was really no one controlling the Stone except to channel it like if you were to turn on a light switch. Most of the time though, it couldn't have been that much of a threat to the entire world because during the war and while people were still going after them, even the girl we heard about losing control of it only turned a town into peppermint. And whoever else had the Stone obviously also didn't destroy the whole world with it.

Also, Lucas and Maureen were pretty lucid while they were in possession of the Stone. They had to be for them to have had it for that long and had only used it to make planar mirrors and nothing else. So the general thrall of that Relic couldn't have been as strong as the other ones, or at the very least, even if it was, it would take a really long time for the wielder to be completely taken over and might have only happened if they felt like they were threatened, whereas with most of the other Relics, it didn't really take as much for them to take over their wielder.

Taako is also basically the best magician ever, and he'd know and understand how to make magic items and how to control how powerful they are in general and to narrow down the range of that power, but he didn't work with the Light as much as Lup and Barry did. He probably a little less prepared for how powerful the Light really was and didn't know how to work with it in a way to mitigate it as much as Barry and Lup did, but he still knew what he was doing more or less.

The Oculus and the Gaia Sash could honestly be probably tied for second most powerful and destructive because their powers are so broad in very similar ways.

The Oculus could literally make anything the wielder could imagine without any limit, and it was able to destroy whole towns and let loose monsters across the continent. With the power to make anything, it could and was used to bring the impossible to life, and honestly, things probably could have gotten so much worse if it kept landing in the hands of warlord after warlord who had the kind of imagination to bring a black hole to reality and a willingness to use it. Or literally anything else just as, if not more destructive. Imagination is a very powerful thing.

The Gaia Sash had a broad power over all of nature, which you could say at least it was narrowed down to just nature, but that's still a very broad domain. It sank an entire island chain in minutes, and if it was possible to survive wielding it for a long time while completely taken over, it could have destroyed the entire continent within the week at least.

Davenport and Merle knew magic, obviously, but they had very little to do with actually studying the Light hands on at all. They knew enough about magic to make magic items and to make them cool, but they had no way of knowing how powerful the Light was going to make them because all of the information about it they would have gotten second hand and probably only the amount of information Lup and Barry felt was necessary to share for the mission in general, not every single detail of the inner workings of the Light. Davenport was a pilot and engineer and Merle was a biologist and healer. They both weren't astro-arcane-physicists. So they probably just focused on what would be a cool thing to do if their artifacts were used right. Like, with the Gaia Sash, you could fix droughts and help crops grow and with the Oculus, you could fix poverty or create fun, harmless things or even advance science and arcane studies like how the IPRE used the Light to build the Starblaster in the first place. The broader their powers, the more good they had the potential of doing.

They just didn't think about how opening up that freedom also gave them even more potential to go horribly wrong.

And then the Temporal Chalice, well. It has such a broad dominion over time that on the less effective end of the scale, it can put up its own brand of protection bubble and rewind time over and over again until the wielder shrivels up and dies. But its main power of being able to rewrite time completely is absolutely terrifying. The fact that it can play with the strings holding together reality itself, because if you think about it, if someone were to have taken up the Chalice's offer and use it for its intended purpose: to fix a mistake in the past with the expectation that you have to want everything to happen after that to keep the new timeline intact, they would have eventually experienced something in the new timeline that they would also want to fix. And they already have the Chalice, so they just go back and fix it and rewrite the timeline again.

And then they do it again.

And again.

And again.

The Relics eventually take over their wielders outright, so if the Chalice completely took over someone's will, it would just completely break timeline after timeline until time got so broken that it would be unfixable. There wouldn't be any way to come back from that. Istus certainly can't fix it because she would have stopped existing by that point according to what she told the boys herself during the Eleventh Hour, so reality itself would be lost.

Magnus knew fuck all about magic in general. Sure, he was surrounded by wizards for a hundred years, but there's a difference between being able to define what a spell slot is and recognizing what his family's individual styles of magic looks like and actually being able to work with magic himself. He probably also didn't do a whole lot of studying magical theory by himself, so literally the only things he knew about magic going into this was what he passively picked up from his fellow crew members and the one year they spent at the Hanging Arcaneum. The one year of study he did there, seven years prior to actually making the Chalice. Did he keep up with practicing artificing during those seven years? Maybe, but I sincerely doubt dedicating an at least decent amount of time studying and practicing artificing during those seven years was something he would have decided to take up.

And on top of basically not knowing what he was doing, he probably was really focused on what would be really cool to do and didn't spend a single second to stop and think about should he do this. At least, not until it was too late, and he saw the power the Light had inside the artifacts made by the people who actually did know what they were doing way more than he did.

As for the yet to be mentioned Bulwark Staff, we don't really know if it was destructive at all because Griffin never described it being circulated, and it isn't 100% clear what its general capabilities were supposed to be. We know it must have some general magic capabilities like a wand because she used it to put the tres horny bois asleep before the Test of Initiation and to channel the pieces of the Light of Creation out of the other Relics. She mostly did save it though for casting protection bubbles, and as abjuration is her specialty, it's safe to assume that that was the main focus for the Relic in general. She honestly, might have made it solely for the purpose of eventually enacting her plan and refrained from making it explicitly with the intention of making people want to use it, so it had less of a thrall effect, which made it stay hidden during the war and unused by anyone. That's why she was able to find it so quickly and easily and without any trouble.

[adventuresinclientservice]

In a world on the cusp of A.I. domination, do relationships still matter?

Hardly a day goes by without a story -- in print, on-air, online -- about Artificial Intelligence and how it is going to take over the world, including our world, the world of advertising and marketing.  The consequential question for many of us is, “Will I lose my job?”

You might think being in a technical field – an engineer, an analyst, a digital expert – would insulate you from becoming a vestigial, soon-to-be-extinct relic.  I certainly thought as much, but then I read a recent New York Times story where the authors take exception, pointing out there are several skills that trump technical ones:

“Our abilities to effectively communicate, develop empathy and think critically have allowed humans to collaborate, innovate and adapt for millenniums. Those skills are ones we all possess and can improve, yet they have never been properly valued in our economy or prioritized in our education and training. That needs to change.”

Reading this, I took stock of my qualifications:

I have a graduate degree, but it’s not an MBA; it’s a master’s in literature.  My undergrad degree?  In American Studies, a landing pad for undecided, I’m-still-making-up-my-mind-about what-I-want-to-do students, which ultimately led me to become an account person, a perfect haven for generalists.  All of which is to say: 

An engineer I am not.

Analyst maybe?  Forget about it.

Math skills?  Not me.  Please.

Digital expert?  I might talk it (sort of), but I sure as hell can’t be it.

Nearly a dozen years ago, I railed at the investor and misguided, short-sighted billionaire Peter Thiel, who advocated not attending college, in a post where I claimed: 

“I went to school not so much to learn, but rather how to think, how to be disciplined, how to solve problems.  I learned how to write, how to research, how to collaborate with others, and most of all, how to forge relationships, all of which sustained me in my as I pursued my professional ambitions.”

According to the New York Times article, these are the very skills you need – how to think, write, collaborate, and forge relationships – in a world being over-run with A.I.  In fact the authors assert,

“Communication is already the most in-demand skill across jobs on LinkedIn today.”  Further claiming, “soft skills were more important to their organizations than highly technical A.I. skills.” 

Got that?  Let me repeat it for you:  “soft skills were more important to their organizations than highly technical A.I. skills.” 

If you were to check the first chapter of The Art of Client Service, “What Makes a Great Account Person?” you’d find this:

“Now, what about skills?  Communication is at the top of the list, both written and oral.  You’ve got to be good on paper.  An agency might teach you to write a conference report, a creative brief, a point-of-view letter, a strategy deck, or at least show you examples you could use as ‘go-bys.’  What the agency won’t teach, shouldn’t have to teach, is concision and clarity, style and organization. “You also have to be good on your feet – in meetings, on the phone, in presentations, over dinner, or wherever you connect with clients and colleagues.”

So if someone were to ask me, “What’s the book’s core virtue?,” I would reply, 

“Lots of books tell you ‘What.’  A few tell you ‘Why.’  Almost none tell you ‘How.’  The Art of Client Service is clear on the ‘what’ but doesn’t dwell on the ‘why,’ preferring to focus instead on the ‘How,’ as in how to build and sustain enduring client relationships with clients and colleagues.”

It’s a good thing too, assuming you agree with the Times story, which says,

“Today the knowledge economy is giving way to a relationship economy, in which people skills and social abilities are going to become even more core to success than ever before.” 

Do I believe we are living in a “relationship economy?”  You bet, and to prove it have a book that has endured for 20-plus years through three editions, this blog, and a raft of workshops, all demonstrating just how serious I am about this.

The long arm of A.I. is touching many aspects of work, ideally (I hope and pray) changing it for the better, but the one thing it cannot touch is the one thing that matters most to people invested in better serving clients and colleagues:  relationships.

If you too want to get better at the art and science of relationship-building, but need help, reach out.  I’m always happy to connect at robert@solomonstrategic.com .

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Fairy Tales Recaps: “The Girl in the Tower”

Hello, everyone! It’s been a long time since I added to this collection. My bad 😬

That’s because—as I mentioned in passing a couple of times while answering asks—I got pretty stuck on recapping this fairy tale. I realized (several weeks after I’d first started) that this was because I wasn’t actually recapping “The Girl in the Tower.” Rather, my thoughts regarding Salem and the implications attached to this short spiraled into a much broader dive into RWBY’s handling of sympathetic villains, particularly the women. Though everything I wrote is relevant to the tale, it got to the point where I was trying to do far too much in an otherwise narrowly defined post, spinning in writing circles until it felt like I didn’t know what I was trying to accomplish anymore.

Eventually I made the painful, but necessary move of scraping everything and starting over. Now, here we are!

Much of what I originally had to say still colors this recap, but let’s actually stick to the fairy tale this time, yeah? In addition, though in the past I’ve done a detailed comparison to Myers’ original story, this time there was so much to cover I didn’t want to get sidetracked again. Outside of a quote or two towards the end, we’re keeping to the adaptation.

Let’s get started!

Ozpin begins the story by summarizing that “a beautiful girl was locked in a tower by her cruel father” and right off the bat we hit one of my biggest problems with this fairy tale as a part of the RWBY-verse: there’s no subversion. There’s no twist, no surprise, not spark of originality here. RWBY markets itself as a fairy tale that plays with other fairy tales and though yes, we’ve discussed as a community how those changes can mean almost anything nowadays (there’s no unifying intention, let alone one that actually functions as a subversion most of the time), but something usually exists to spark viewer interest. Little Red Riding Hood now hunts the wolves herself. In this universe the Tin Man already had, but lost, his heart. Pinocchio still becomes human, but then gives her life less than an hour after achieving that (never established) dream. You get the idea. Even when RWBY is playing with fairy tales in a manner that arguably hurts the story as a whole, it’s still some kind of innovation that might keep the viewer interested, at least for a time. Yet here, “The Girl in the Tower” is as straightforward as any Golden Era Disney film which, while not inherently bad, doesn’t exactly fit RWBY’s marketed appeal. There is a “beautiful girl,” a “cruel father,” the terrible fate of being locked away, and eventually the handsome knight come to save her. There’s admittedly agency in Salem sending her notes (we’ll get to that) and the ways in which this story is colored by our knowledge that she’ll become a villain past her Happy Ending... but the actual fairy tale on its own? It’s as bland and straightforward as they come, made all the worse by giving Salem the means to do something compelling—powerful magic at her fingertips—and simply... not using that. 

As is the trend in this collection, a lackluster tale is made better by the stylistic presentation, particularly when it comes to the backgrounds. We get to see the ruin of Salem’s castle moving backwards to its initial glory—and, notably, looking a whole lot like Beacon Academy. Crush my heart why don’t you—and all the animated gears work like a puppet display, cranking individual pieces into a unified whole. I don’t need to explain to anyone reading this why the gears themselves are significant.

We’re introduced to the King who, in true king fashion, wears a crown. Now, question: is it the same as the Crown of Choice?

I’m honestly not sure. (Bear with me. I promise I don’t need to get my eyes checked.) One would think not given that they’re made of different materials and have different gem stones too. The King’s is silver with some kind of blue jewel, whereas the king from “The Indecisive King”—whom we know did possess the Relic—is copper-y with... emeralds? I’m not going to pretend that I can identify gems in real life, let alone through RT’s animation. The point is that they’re even shaped differently, which should imply that no, there’s no connection between the two.

However, RWBY is also the show that gave us this:

I’ll get into the problems of erasing the SEW’s race in my recap of “The Warrior in the Woods,” but for now it’s just important to note that RT didn’t bother to keep their character consistent between their show and the book that it’s based on, even when this visual connection is the one thing that ties two different mediums together. RWBY is also the webseries that gave us this symbol

alongside this one

yet has now, apparently, insisted that there’s no connection between them. As far as I can tell, this was confirmed during a Reddit AMA back in December of 2021 with Kerry saying, “in hindsight we probably shouldn’t have let some elements be so similar, but no, Jaune and Salem aren’t related” (Lucifer_Crowe). AKA, all us “Jaune is a descendant of Salem with the emblem becoming simplified over the generations” theorists should pack up that idea and move onto something else. A part of me is very revealed by this announcement, mostly because I wasn’t interested in dealing with the fallout of Jaune getting (another) major contribution to the plot. That relief aside though, this admission that “we probably shouldn’t have let some elements be so similar” reinforces the idea that we really can’t trust what we see on screen in RWBY. Very similar emblems (and hair color, eye color, a powerful lineage, to say nothing of Tyrian’s comment) apparently mean nothing. And this is by no means a one-off mistake. There’s no effort made to adapt a canonical illustration. The animators had to scramble to distinguish silver eyes after the writers didn’t consider that gray eyes would look identical. Our last arc gave Ironwood a semblance that provided no noticeable difference in how he was animated once his aura was broken, despite that being a core way for the audience to determine what abilities are or are not influencing the story. In short, as a visual medium the RWBY franchise should encourage a wealth of analysis about the animation itself, but the story is so inconsistent we simply cannot trust that anything we visually pick up on is actually significant. Or, in turn, that a difference means that there’s truly no connection here. Is the crown that adorns Salem’s father’s head the same Relic that caused a previous king so much grief, perhaps providing an explanation for his similarly gaunt appearance and his strange choice to keep his daughter locked away, convinced she will perish if set free?

Or is there no connection between the two images, leaving the King as a generic, motiveless bad guy in a tale already struggling to live up to RWBY’s attempts to innovate, the visual parallels pure coincidence?

It’s most likely the latter, but we can’t be sure because RT has a long history of visual mistakes. They really are the studio that might animate two totally different crowns and then unexpectedly go, “Actually yeah, they are the same. Why don’t they look alike? Uh… because they’re shown in different stories! Yeah, or something like that. It’s a smart stylistic choice, trust us ;)” Fans should be able to theorize about a story with confidence, knowing the authors will either validate the details they caught, or surprise us by going in a new direction that is, crucially, still supported by what we see and hear on screen. Yet RWBY continues to fail on both fronts, forgetting to include significant details in their show while simultaneously positioning others as only existing in meta-commentary.

That tangent aside, let’s get to the plot proper. We’re introduced to this King whose wife (also unnamed) dies while delivering Salem (another tired choice imo). He’s so consumed by grief that he can’t even hold his daughter when the nurse presents her to him and initially, I took this to mean that the King locked Salem away out of a warped sense of danger. Hence, theories about how the Crown of Choice might be influencing him. Apparently though, from what else we can gather, he’s just an abusive asshole. That it. It’s originally implied that Salem is locked up because the King feared losing her as he did his wife, but then that’s shown to be an excuse for his far more generic cruelty. He claims to keep her in the tower so that Salem may be safe from the evils of the world, but the understanding for the audience is that in reality he just sees her as another of his possessions, a living treasure to keep secure in an overly-large chest. Frankly, it feels like too many motivations for what amounts to a character with literal seconds of screen time. RWBY as a franchise has a habit of introducing various concepts in an effort the make characters complex, but then the failure to follow up on any of those ideas results in minor confusion at best, outright contradictions at worst. The King is by no means the most overt example of this, but I find it notable that even for what is ultimately meant to be a cardboard cutout dude functioning as a plot devise, RWBY feels the need to introduce “nuance” that inevitably falls flat when nothing is done with it.

“You are my most precious possession,” he tells a very young Salem, just in case there was any lingering confusion about whether he considers her a person or not. Why make the King interesting with an internal life of his own when you can just make him another bad man doing bad things for... reasons.

The strangeness of the King’s characterization aside, something I do love about this moment is his hand reaching out towards Salem, overly large and looming… only to settle kindly on the top of her head. It’s a great visual for an abuser, where we as the audience know he means Salem harm, is currently enacting that harm, the implications of the shot are not inaccurate—and yet the end result of the gesture is just a pat on the head. This shot neatly summarizes how abusers can hide behind perceived intentions, enacting choices that appear kind if you don’t know the whole situation. We see similar work with the teddy bear he gives to Salem. Is a father giving his daughter a toy in-and-of-itself a wonderful, wholesome gesture? Yes. Is a father giving his daughter a toy in an attempt to compensate for keeping her perpetually locked in a tower wonderful and wholesome? I sure hope we all know the answer to that… Every once in a while, RWBY manages something really nice and I’m forcibly reminded of the potential this series isn’t capitalizing on.

This is Salem’s norm all throughout her childhood, asking to be let out and instead being given additional treasures to pass the time. Later, when she’s much older—sometime in her teens—we see her attempt to pass through the barrier that surrounds the tower and keeps her from escaping out the window. Frankly, I would have given the audience this moment when she was still a kid because as it stands, the action reads like this is Salem’s first time trying to leave the confines of her room. And that’s not just because it’s our first time seeing the attempt: Salem deliberately touches the barrier and then cradles her hand against her chest as if it has hurt her and like yeah, sure, maybe she prods the equivalent of an electrical shock because she’s that bored, but it’s just strange to show an action she would have learned to avoid by now, especially when you’ve already modeled her as a child. It’s one of those choices that doesn’t mean much on its own, but considering that one of my primary questions is how much Salem has tested the limits of her freedom prior to calling on strangers to die in her name… yeah, I’d like to know why an acknowledgement of the barrier doesn’t come until years after it was erected.

Unable to go outside, Salem asks her father for books instead, so that she might at least experience things second-hand. “The world in these books,” Salem says. “What a marvelous place!” This series has certainly played with the concept of storytelling itself—seen most notably in the faunus fairy tales and Ozpin’s meta-comments on each story — and though “The Girl in the Tower” doesn’t capitalize on the implication, I’m intrigued by Salem’s use of the singular here: “world” and “place.” It’s like she’s conceptualized all these different stories into a single vision of what the world is. Again, it’s not something RWBY is interested in exploring (and there certainly isn’t time for it), but does Salem think that everything she’s been given is non-fiction? Is she able to distinguish between a story, a history, and the bias that influences both? The answer is likely “no” given that she has, canonically, never set foot outside this room. For those fans who are interested in exploring Salem’s character in fic, it’s worth unpacking what she thought Remnant might look like vs. what she actually ended up with — death, cruel gods, a curse she’s maybe incapable of breaking depending on whether the grimm pool left her with the ability to grow and come to understand the (supposed) importance of death...

Basically, there’s a contrast here between the bright-eyed Salem in love with the world of her books and the abusive, monstrous Salem we get later in the series. It’s a change that’s  ripe for some introspective consideration.

In time though, Salem finishes all the books in the castle and, for obvious reasons, still finds herself unsatisfied. “Tomorrow I’ll be sixteen and I’ve never even stepped outside!” It’s in her anger that Salem throws the book she’s just finished and it sails out the window, right through the barrier. Again, not to nitpick the five minute fairy tale, but it really took Salem sixteen years to realize that objects could leave the tower? Honestly, no wonder the heroes are winning so easily. Salem has always been a little slow on the uptake, huh?

Okay, okay, jokes aside, I am serious about this. Wouldn’t it have been better to have kid!Salem throw a temper tantrum and discover this loophole earlier? Give us a childhood and early teenage years of her trying various ways to escape, only to eventually succumb to what she sees as a horrible necessity? Honestly, I have a lot of feelings about this “Salem did nothing for sixteen years and then jumped straight to murder” plot-line. Because to skip ahead just a tad, Salem decides to call on all the nearby knights to kill her father.

Here then, we get to the part of the recap where I feel the need to explain that I’m not trying to victim blame Salem here, but rather I’m commenting on RT’s inability to craft a situation where the extreme nature of Salem’s solution feels justified. Because for me, justification is tied not just to the horrific nature of what she’s trying to escape, but also her duty as a human being. If Salem is going to settle on allowing others to fight this battle on her behalf, under arguably false pretenses, and with all but one of those volunteers dying in the process… I want to be convinced by the story that Salem tried every better option first; that this is indeed the last possible resort. Has she tried to sneak past her father? Get the maid to help her? Fight him herself given that, as said, she’s a very powerful magic wielder who does eventually fight her way out of the castle?

That’s probably my biggest sticking point with this story: what was the point of taking a character already established as individually powerful and having them sit around for someone else to come save them? Especially when they’re a woman who the audience will be reading through a decades-long history of passively written characters. Double especially in a franchise that’s supposedly built around both emphasizing women’s agency and undermining our expectations for fairy tales. Yes, Salem’s story here needs to match up with what we were shown in The Lost Fable (not that RWBY has a good track record of keeping things consistent…) yet that just showcases how badly thought out this was in the larger scheme of the RWBY universe. Who looked at our series’ Big Bad, an unfathomably powerful obstacle living in a world at least somewhat interested in turning fairy tale expectations on their head, someone who, based on the writing of “The Lost Fable” and Ozpin’s established character since Episode One, was always conceived of as having personal power, even before she got tangled up with the Gods…

…and then decided to stick her in a tower to wait around for the knight’s rescue?

Contrary to what some critics might claim—and what many of my own metas might imply—the RWBY characters are not actually cardboard cutouts who exist solely to forward a plot, or even impart some moral message. They’re meant to have personalities, goals, and above all motivation, which makes “The Girl in the Tower” flounder considering this isn’t even a generic side-character, but Salem herself. She’s arguably the character next to Ruby. Yet Salem feels so flat to me here, largely due to that lack of agency and the equal lack of creativity that inevitably lumps her in with every other sanitized fairy tale. Why give us a determined woman pushing the limits of her father’s imprisonment when Salem could just sit there for the whole story? Again, I want to stress that there’s nothing inherently wrong with these character traits in any real-life situation we might equate this to. Yes, I know enough to understand that most abuse victims are going to accommodate their abusers out of a need to keep themselves safe, alongside being conditioned—in this case since childhood—to see this as normal, thereby making Salem’s passiveness at least semi-realistic. I also understand that not every character needs to be a kick-ass taker of what they want (I actually have a great deal of dislike for the Strong Female Character) and that Salem’s love of reading is just as valid a characterization as someone who, I don’t know, encourages the maid to do more on her behalf. We can even make the case that this quiet, bookish Salem makes for a wonderful contrast to the power-hungry threat she’d become, or that she’s perfectly in character given the still unexplained thousand years she spent just sitting around, not going after her goals until the heroes were conveniently in combat school. All of this is true!

But Salem isn’t a real person undergoing real abuse. If we’ve learned anything from RWBY’s handling of Blake’s faunus heritage and Yang’s disability—both of which were dropped after introducing the bare bones of nuance—it’s that RT is very willing to throw respect for those subjects aside in an effort to craft an exciting tale. No one (according to canon implications and a few Word of God comments) wants to watch Yang working through a depression at home, or Ruby grappling with nightmares, or Blake overcoming systemic racism… despite the fact that they chose to introduce those plot-lines in the first place. The show would much prefer to put emphasis on the fun, exciting aspects that RWBY was originally built on. This conflict is obviously a problem, but the flip-side is that Salem’s story is, arguably, one place where RT could have emphasized the Rule of Cool over real world allegories without any issues… and they didn’t. I can obviously only speak for myself, but I don’t need a fairy tale that tries to unpack the complexities of a woman held prisoner, especially when that character will go on to become both a domestic abuser herself, as well as the series’ Big Bad. Outside of a very generalize takeaway of “Abuse is cyclical” that the viewer might come to in their own time, there’s simply too much there to unpack. Don’t even try. However, you know what the story could use? That sort of simplicity used as a springboard for a kickass plot where a woman saves herself from captivity.

As it stands, Salem apparently thought little of her imprisonment for sixteen years, suddenly got mad about it, decided on a manipulative murder scheme as the only solution, and yet continued to stand around while others carried that out. It’s... not a great combination.

She has this light-bulb moment about the book going through the barrier and the next day, when the King visits to gift Salem with all the jewels and clothes befitting a captive princess on her birthday, she asks him for pen and paper (quill and paper? When did the word “pen” come into use?) so that she can write stories of her own. The tone of the conversation is notable in that the King appears rather taken with her request — he asks that Salem read him her stories when she’s finished — but Salem clearly sounds like she’s plotting something. Specifically, she writes a story about herself, folds numerous copies into paper... birds, since airplanes don’t exist yet, and throws them out her window for others to find.

Now, ignoring both that Salem writes this cry for help as a story rather than a first-person note that people would be much more likely to take seriously, and that her little folding technique would only fly a few feet before plummeting to the ground (unless she’s using magic?) here’s my problem with this whole plan:

“Once there was a beautiful maiden locked in a tower by her cruel, lord father. She longed to experience the world outside, but she was his prisoner. If only some brave, strong warrior would defeat the evil lord and free her at last, they would marry, inherit all of the father’s riches, and live happily ever after.”

This is so manipulative. The fandom gives Ozpin shit for not being forthcoming about Salem’s immortality, but at least he never presented the war itself as some sunny quest with a big reward at the end. Here, Salem is leading strangers to their deaths by a) promising them things that, at this point in the story, we don’t know whether she intends to uphold (does she really mean to marry whoever saves her? Sure, she fell for Ozpin, but what if it hadn’t been him? Will she give up her inheritance if she’s no longer marrying the guy she promised it to?) and b) failing to warn anyone that her father is a crazy powerful sorcerer who will obliterate anyone who tries to take his daughter away. “Lord” doesn’t cover any of that! Note how cushy she makes this all sound. I’m beautiful! I’m a maiden! You, person I’ve never laid eyes on, are so brave and strong ;) Come murder my father and we can totally get married, you’ll get all my dad’s shit, and we’ll definitely be happy for ever and ever and ever.

There’s just so much of this that I can’t get behind which, yes, includes Salem wanting to kill her dad. Look, I’m not defending the rat bastard. Locking your kid up in a tower — whether that’s due to seeing her as a possession, or a learned fear that loved ones will perish if not kept perfectly safe, both of which the narrative implies — is really fucked up. Salem deserves her freedom. But it’s also fucked up to do a fantasy equivalent of a Craigslist call for a hit on your dad when, as far as we’ve seen, Salem never tried any other means of escape. She just realized that objects can pass through his barrier — which to me says she hasn’t tried very hard to test the limits of her imprisonment. — and then jumped straight to not only getting someone else to kill the King, but doing so in a way that puts those volunteers in the most dangerous position possible: lusting after her, desiring riches, and having no real idea what they’re about to face.

Namely, this:

How many people did Salem get killed?? Okay, yes, in some respects this is similar to Ozpin’s situation with his students in that regardless of how much information these warriors had to work from, they all ultimately decided for themselves to take the risk. There’s even a line that implies that many of them did it because saving her was the right thing to do, not because they were after the rewards: “the story of the girls’ tragic circumstances spread far and wide.” Salem didn’t put a fantasy gun to their head and force them here. But unlike Ozpin’s rock and hard place problem (you really can’t fight an army of endless grimm without an army of your own), Salem didn’t try anything before her “Let other people die for me” plan. Then when she realizes these guys are dying for her, she looks real upset about it...

...but doesn’t try to put a stop to what she’s started.

That was the tipping point for me. If this was the story of an abused, isolated sixteen-year-old who made an impulsive decision, only to realize with horror the unintended consequences of that and try desperately to fix it... that would be different. But Salem doesn’t seem to care that all these guys are dying for her, not enough to try and stop it, anyway. We know that her notes spread “far and wide,” that “one warrior after another” came, and that “many tried,” but “just as many fell to the lord’s powerful, evil magic.” It’s only “one day” that Ozpin himself showed up, meaning we have this undetermined stretch of time where Salem just watched from her tower as all these knights were obliterated, apparently coming to the conclusion, “Alright, that’s sad and all, but my freedom is totally worth it. What I want trumps others’ lives.”

“Why is this a problem, Clyde?” you might ask. “Salem is the villain. Surely you’ve got nothing against villains doing questionable things, right?” I sure don’t! Rather, the problem here is that Salem wasn’t supposed to be a villain just yet and yes, I know that for a fact due to “The Lost Fable.” This isn’t a case of fans being upset because a backstory didn’t meet their specific preferences or expectations, this is a case of the backstory undermining the emotional core of events that we’ve already seen. Regardless of where you fall on the Salem vs. the Gods debate — how much was she a victim of their cruelty, how much was their curse deserved based on her choices, etc. — we nevertheless start with the story of a victim whose traditional Happy Ending was blown to pieces when the True Love Protagonist (Ozpin) dies. Hell, that debate hinges on agreeing that Salem was a good person and then did questionable things. Yet now, thanks to “The Girl in the Tower,” I’m no longer able to read “The Lost Fable” as a tragic tale of grief taken to an extreme, I’m just like, “Oh, Salem was always a budding sociopath, huh?”

(“Someone is here to murder Dad and whatever staff and guards get in the way! Woohoo! I’ll wait up here until they’ve done the majority of the work. I’ll just kill a few people on my way out. As a treat.”)

Which yeah, is a story. No matter what version of Salem we get, or what else RT might add that changes our reading of her arc, every version possible is always going to resonate with someone. I have no doubt that plenty of fans adore the reveal that Salem was always toying with the manipulation and callous dismissal of others’ lives that would later become staples of her villainy. For me though, it’s just another way that RT has muddied the waters of their abuse themes, reiterating that they don’t know what they’re trying to say about such complex topics and unintentionally ruining what good writing we originally had. Salem was a generic Big Bad. Then she was made sympathetic. Then we debated how much. Then she became Ozpin’s abuser. Then the fandom dismissed that. Then she underwent a journey that twisted her into who she is today. Then we were told that journey isn’t actually important because she was flirting with those horrors from the get-go. She’s the victim. She’s the manipulator. She’s the puppet-master. She’s going to wait around for someone to save her. She doesn’t care how many die in her name, She’s the classic princess walking off into the sunset with her knight... This isn’t character complexity, this is RWBY flip-flopping every other scene until I no longer know what to think of Salem’s character, let alone what messages the story might be trying to impart.

By the end of the episode, Ozpin says that “Stories hold great power over their audiences. The girl in the tower used her power and led many warriors to their deaths,” so I’m like okay, at least the writers are aware of how fucked up that scenario is, but THEN:

“We must read with some skepticism and decide the truth for ourselves.”

Oh, now the fucked-up-ness is suddenly up for debate? What’s the point of acknowledging it then? Besides, Ozpin, you lived this. Salem would have told him the first half of this story long before her fall into the grimm pool, meaning before she became someone who was overtly keeping secrets and/or lying to him. What do he mean we need to “read with some skepticism.” About what? Which part? What truth is Ozpin doubting here? Because from the audience’s perspective, this is the one fairy tale that we know for a fact is not a fairy tale at all. It’s history and sure, even lived history is remembered with bias, but that’s a far cry from the black and white “truth” that the episode seems to be peddling.

RWBY has no idea what it’s trying to say and I will die on that hill.

Meanwhile, I’m watching this animation of a whole line of warriors arriving to face down the King + his army and I’m going, “Damn, if it’s a one vs. many situation regardless, how about Salem give it a go? At least she has magic of her own, unlike these guys with just sword and shield. She could blast her dad the second he opens the door to her room. If you want him dead so badly just kill him yourself!”

But no, Salem waits, which both keeps her in the passive princess position and makes her at least somewhat responsible for these deaths — or at least fairly indifferent towards her hand in setting everything in motion. So what exactly does RT want me to get out of this story? Because my takeaway is that Salem was always a villain in the making, prone to jumping to the most violent solution first and uncaring that others are dying in her stead, despite the fact that she too has the tools — arguably better tools — to secure her own freedom, but we always need to wait for the man heroically open the door, right? (I’m sorry, Ozpin, I love you, you’re just been put into a shitty, archetypal position here.) Again, ignoring the potential, realistic behavior of an abuse victim that simply doesn’t exist within RWBY, the implication is that Salem prefers to be the puppet master literally standing on high as others do her dirty work for her, but she didn’t come into that through the journey we’ve seen throughout the rest of the franchise, it was just always there?

Bad people are innately bad, I guess? God knows we’ve acknowledged RWBY’s messy double-standard when it comes to redemption on this blog. 

After all this, Ozpin’s arrival is barely a blip on my radar. He wins against the King because he has his own “powerful magic,” but then we watch Salem escaping with him, blasting through guards with an orange magic beam equal to his green one. It’s another example of how the visuals in RWBY are meaningless because although they’re animated as identical, we have to assume Ozpin is stronger because otherwise why wouldn’t Salem free herself?

“You have rescued me from this castle,” the girl said.

“You have rescued yourself.”

He and Salem hold hands as they walk off into the woods together, Ozpin saying that Salem will decide where they go since she has yet to see the world. We pull out from the fairy tale and back into Ozpin’s office where he says that, “This fairy tale is unique on Remnant in that the protagonist writes her own story... and her ending.”

Setting aside my continued frustration over Salem’s agency in this — the references to writing stories as a metaphor for carving your own path just aren’t working for me here, not when the story is so unclear about what any of that amounts to in this world. It’s just a bunch of wise-sounding mumbo-jumbo — on a plot level Salem told Ozpin all this first-hand. What he didn’t experience for himself, of course. Salem’s ending is in reference to her turning into a grimm queen hell-bent on destroying everyone in an effort to die.

Or, to put it another way, Salem’s ending is being willing to sacrifice whoever is necessary to get what she personally wants.

Except that’s no longer a trait instilled in her from the grimm pool, or developed over years of torturous immortality thanks to the Gods’ actions, (did she really write her own ending, or was that forced on her by two all-powerful beings?), or even something Salem embraced sometime during the start of the series. It is, apparently, a perspective she’s been willing to entertain since she was sixteen-years-old while being almost entirely untouched by the world outside. It’s who she is.

So Salem didn’t write her story, her story was already written within her from the get-go. For a franchise supposedly about choice, RWBY keeps pushing predeterminism a lot.

Ozpin finally ends with, “Because in real life... there is no happily ever after” and I likewise end this recap with a (mental) scream of rage because Ozpin would never say that. Literally! I can prove it! Here’s the original ending:

“If you look far enough ahead, even a story with a happy ending may reveal itself a tragedy, and heroes may turn out to be villains. Hopefully, the reverse is also true.”

That’s WAY more optimistic. Yeah, the guy who has been through hell and back would be grappling with how the Happy Ending isn’t all it’s cracked up to be (something introduced at the very beginning of the series via Ruby and Blake’s conversation), but Ozpin also has enough faith to realize — and teach — that things can always circle back around. It’s always darkest before the dawn and all that. Who is this super pessimistic guy who writes off happiness as a whole? That’s not Ozpin. Ozpin has been fighting for over a thousand years, buoyed by his belief that people are inherently good and a better future is always achievable. Ozpin thinks back on the horrors he’s experienced, all the terrible mistakes he’s made, and still manages to muster up a smile for his students. Ozpin was betrayed, dragged through his trauma, assaulted, dismissed, and still arrived to save his friends because he cares, even when no one else does. Miss me with this shadowed, nihilist wannabe ending on a sour note. To me, that line alone is proof that there’s little thought going into these shorts... which is a damn shame considering that Myers’ book already did it better.

Yeah, this recap took me forever and that’s largely due to the hard-to-explain problems throughout: frustrating enough to warrant inclusion, but messy enough that they’re not easily picked apart. Hopefully most of this made sense and if not? I can still happily hang this recap on the meta wall and never look at it again. Cheers to that🥂

***

Lucifer_Crowe. “We are E.C. Myers, Eddy Rivas, and Kerry Shawcross...” Reddit, 15 Dec. 2021. https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBY/comments/rh2c8w/we_are_e_c_myers_eddy_rivas_and_kerry_shawcross/hoowvzv/?context=3.

[mossolantern]

Miraculous Warrior Cats AU

i have a few ideas for how a ML Warrior Cats AU could work, so im just gonna share them because it’s 4am and I’ve not slept (it’s pretty canon-divergent but i really tried my best to make it seem like it could work within the warriors universe!) 

this is going to be a kind of long-ish post!

First things first, i feel like the miraculouses could be one of a few things:

A) The miraculouses could be shards of the once full Moonstone that got left behind so many years ago in the forest territories, since the Moonstone used to be the clans’ main connection to StarClan 

B) They could be similar to the StarClan-given powers that The Three got in POT and OOTS, villains instead receiving their powers from the Dark Forest

C) They could be a type of ancient relic, much like The Stick™️ that Jayfeather used to travel back in time and become Jay’s Wing, however, each different relic would hold a different power

I’m a bit iffy on option B, but with A or C the relics or shards would give the holders the benifit of a different appearance and different scent to avoid being found out too easily

I feel like Hawkmoth, no matter the what option is used, would manage to draw his powers from the Dark Forest with the help of the evil cats and angry lost souls that reside there. Perhaps instead of an akumatization, it’s a possession? (which are pretty similar already, i suppose) 

and if it isn’t a possession, it technically could still work as an akumatization, with butterflies/moths that come from the Dark Forest, full of corrupted energy.

most of the abilities are a bit difficult to translate into warriors, but also this is my ideas post and i get to make the rules! (though, for the sake of not just making overpowered battlecats, once their powers are used they would still have a time-limit before they de-transform

Cataclysm could still easily work, perhaps instead of absolutely destroying everything it touches through rusting it/turning it to rubble, it works more like uncontrollably brutal strength, a single swipe could take down a tree when activated or a rock could be cracked in half with just a pounce.

Lucky Charm and Miraculous ladybug are a bit harder to conceptualize, seeing as it involves creating something out of nothing/ fixing what was destroyed. While Lucky Charm could still work, it’s a bitch of a stretch, but maybe rather than creating something that will help the problem be solves, it causes a vague sign from StarClan, that way you’d still have to be creative to solve your issue. I feel like Kwamis would also be interesting in this AU. They could spirits bound to whatever relic or shard the holder has, or if you’re going with the StarClan-given powers angle, maybe it’s like a Cinderheart scenario, where she was a reincarnation of Cinderpelt and at times seemed to have extensive knowledge of herbs despite never training as a medicine cat as Cinderheart (she had her spirit inside of her i THINK? but was also still her own cat- it’s a bit foggy, i haven’t read that arc in a while) What i’m thinking of is basically a mentor that’s a spirit cat. it’s now almost 5am so i’m going to end this here thank you for reading this haha

any of these ideas are free to use! just tag me if you do (i’d love to see it :D)

i’m going to list a few possible names for Marinette/Ladybug and Adrien/CatNoir, some mirror eachother, some don’t :] Also yes, much like Heatherpaw and Lionpaw in POT, their superhero names are warrior names they made up themselves

Adrien - Sunpaw (Sunshine), Goldenpaw (Goldensky), Honeypaw (Honeylight) 

Cat Noir- Blackmask, Crowstrike, Darkwhisker, Ravenshade

Marinette - Moonpaw (Moonlight), Stormpaw (Stormheart), Slippaw (Slipstep) Ladybug - Specklebug, Beetlespot, Redclover, Spottedwish

[beautifulterriblequeen]

I keep thinking about Silmarillion, and I was wondering : what do you think of Fëanor ?

I don’t know exactly how it should be seen...

Ooh, Fëanor. Gosh, okay, let me change the channel in my brain.

Fëanor is, at heart, a Capitalist Inventor. He's Dark Tony Stark. He creates endless things for the world to use, but what truly drives him is the bone-deep belief that he and his chosen ones deserve his most prized possessions more than anyone else. And he's willing to kill anyone on both sides to get them back. He swears an oath to fight until he gets what he wants, and thus seals the doom of untold thousands he'll never even meet.

That's an antagonist. Which is not the same thing as a villain. But Fëanor is very much an experience to be survived - or not - rather than any kind of ally. Much of what he does in the Silmarillion is imbalanced, driven by emotions he doesn't seem willing or able to control. And because he's an elf among elves, and they all live a very very long time, the effects of his choices carry forward for thousands of years. This one dude got a lot of people killed, directly and indirectly, including his whole family. For an elf was supposed to love the stars, he wasn't very stellar. Our Man in Valinor was way more into fire.

The part that bothers me about his character - and this is a modern take looking back at JRR Tolkien and his world in the last millennium - is that Fëanor is born this way. He is flawed from birth, and he's just Like That, forever. No chance to change, no encouragement to be different, to be softer, to be better, to corral his spirit of fire into something more light than heat. He's just dangerous chaos from start to finish. He comes into the world sucking his mother's spirit dry so she dies, he lives his life disagreeing with everyone around him except his sons, and he goes out encouraging those sons to hold to their unholy oath to retrieve the Silmarils or die trying. Which they do - the "die trying" part, anyway.

He's a piece of work.

He was also a brilliant, god-tier craftsman. I guess that's what happens when you study under the Vala Aulë himself, who literally shaped the physical world into existence.

He created the Silmarils, capturing the combined light of the Two Trees into three brilliant gemstones in a way no one ever did before or since.

He crafted the palantíri, which not even Sauron could replicate later.

He invented Tengwar script, which is the swirly elven writing we all associate with Middle-Earth.

He crafted the mysterious Feanorian lamps, which are crystals that emit blue light and cannot be doused.

He was constantly thinking up new ideas and crafting them. Eru only knows what he made that has been lost. You'll notice none of these things he made are swords. Yet he led an attack against the Teleri on his way out of Valinor, and the Teleri defended themselves, so I kind of assume he was also a weaponsmith, trying out new ideas in metal form if nothing else.

Brilliant and misguided, a flawed juggernaut, destined to drag the entire world and countless lives off course. The earlier these characters show up in the timeline, the more destructive chaos they end up causing.

I do not like Fëanor. He's a White Guy, doing as he pleases with no thought for the consequences, to himself, to those of his family he actually likes, or to anyone else. He holds enough privilege and power that people keep following him into disaster, and then he just goes and does it again, without learning a damn thing from his imbalanced approach. He even dies thinking he did nothing wrong ever in his life. Like... Bitch.

Having power is no guarantee that you deserve power, and Fëanor is a prime example of why.

This has nothing to do with the objects he made. Those are just tools, free to be taken and used for good or evil, as the palantíri were, and as every message ever written in Tengwar was. Would the world have been better off without the Silmarils at all, or the palantíri? Would a different language script have somehow altered the world for the better? Since it's fiction, we could just decide that Yes, Yes It Would, or No Actually Not.

What's not fictional is my distaste for presumptuous assholes with a bit of power but no self-awareness, because I've already met too many of them who weren't fictional, either.

You want my unvarnished opinion of Fëanor? He's a billionaire. And I'm glad he got eaten. It wasn't nearly soon enough.

Eat your billionaires before they get all crusty, kids. They taste best fresh and plump. Nom nom.

Still here? Oh, then it's time to compare Fëanor to TDP! Because as much as I despise him, he makes for excellent storytelling angst and conflict, and vicarious conflict is how we learn to avoid it in our real lives - if we're paying attention.

I've said before that I'd like to see some kind of Oath of Fëanor effect in TDP. The absolute horror at seeing good characters get yoinked into bad deeds just because they promised? Ahahaha, horrible, thank you, I'll have some more. If the Moonshadow assassins have something like that behind those creepy binding ribbons, I'm gonna be cackling in between my tears, fam.

But Fëanor himself? Oh, do you see, that's Aaravos! He's even got that craftsman side, since he made the relic staff, and boy is it swirly.

(Does that make Ethari a Celebrimbor type, separating himself from the dark deeds of his forebears yet still massively talented, creating amazing magical devices?)

Aaravos is the main villain of TDP, as far as we've been told. He's crafty, in both senses of the word. Did he have some angsty complex family life with half-siblings and a mother who died because she birthed him? Maybe. Stars can be born from the detritus of other stars that exploded and died, so there's a sciencey metaphor there already.

Of interest: Fëanor had seven sons, and the world of TDP has seven kinds of magic. Aaravos created at least one of them. Did he create primal magics too, from the deep magic that came before? Might there be some kind of oath involved there, with the first elves to wield differentiated magic?

How about those primal stones that look like palantíri? How many of those did Aaravos craft? Can he use one from his library to spy on people who have them or something? That would mean he could already know a ton about Viren even before he came to the Storm Spire and stole the mirror. Woah.

What about a Silmaril equivalent? Are there especially glorious magical gemstones in Xadia? Did Aaravos wear them in his crown and now he's mister Grumpy Glam without them?

Did he create the original runes that diverged into all the elven languages? With his sloppy handwriting? Heh, the other elves must've been very patient.

You know... Aaravos has been called a Promethean figure, gifting humans with knowledge and skill they didn't have. But that gift was the gift of fire. A tool. A tool employed by craftsmen.

Fëanor literally means "Spirit of Fire."

In the end, Fëanor was consumed by his own spirit. He never learned to vibe with it, and it destroyed him and many others. Sounds a lot like dark magic.

Maybe the real Oath of Fëanor in TDP is one you have to speak backwards.

[mimble-sparklepudding]

For the FF ask game. 7, 13, 27, 31

I think this is for the Deity Questions? :)

7) When it comes to formal education does your character have any goals?

Mimble is quite fond of books and learning, but his education was largely home-learning and what he could glean from the Echo. His powers are inherited and innate, rather than tutored (although his family attempted to guide him in their approach to White Magic, this was a mixed experience for all concerned). He does possess quite a lot of information on topics like history and cultural practices, mostly because of his interest in listening to people talk and absorbing their knowledge like a small and cheerful sponge.

He also enjoys learning for fun (with the exception of mathematics, which he cannot be doing with).

As such he has a general interest in extending his learning, whether by reading or by listening to others talk about their passions, but he is slightly ambivalent about formal study, as he suspects he would find it too restrictive and serious.

13) Is there a place they haven't seen that they wish to see before they die?

Meracydia or the New World definitely, although Mimble is little bit worried they might be rather too warm.

27) Describe a situation where curiosity got them into trouble.

Probably the occasion when he was very young and first taken along on one of his family's clandestine visits to Amdapor in search of relics. Left by the crates and feeling somewhat bored, little Mimble picked up a sealed urn and was startled to hear a thin, but friendly voice coming from within. Whilst the voice made a convincing case for being a trapped fairy who would grant him a wish if he broke the seal, to nobody's surprise except poor little Mimble's, it turned out to be a minor voidsent; which would have attempted to rip him apart if his mother hadn't happened to return at that moment and vapourised it in a nimbus of burning white light. Needless to say he was in disgrace for touching urns he wasn't supposed to and, even worse, engaging them in conversation.

31) How connected is your character to nature?

Nominally Mimble's patron deity is Nophica and he is quite fond of natural vistas - if he can admire them from a comfortable chair with a nice cup of tea. Similarly he very much enjoys plants and flowers - ideally in nice neat rows or a vase. So he likes to be connected, but not intimate with nature, which (in his experience) tends to be very untidy and full of unpleasant things like mud, poisonous berries and unexpected hedgehogs.

This is a point of some debate between Mimble and his friends in Gridania, usually good-natured, although he did nearly get thrown out of the Botanists guild after arguing with Fufucha about the ethics of topiary.

[ahopelessromanticwritersworld]

This is my extremely late fic for the Secret Santa exchange for @flightlessangelwings!!!

I’m excited for you to read this, and I really hope you like it!! I have a second part planned for this, so that is in the works!

This was inspired by @softpedropascal’s own pirate!Pero! AU, and I highly recommend everyone go check it and all of her work out! Everything she writes is *chef’s kiss* magnificent!!

Thank you so much for your patience! 💙💙💙

Pairing: Pero Tovar x Fem!Reader

Warnings: blood, violence, maritime action, lack of maritime knowledge, lots of Spanish in places

Ángel de la Muerte

As Pero felt the warm blood of his blade’s latest victim, he closed his eyes for a brief second. In that time, he prayed that perhaps today, of all days, would be the day that he finds the answers he was searching for. The man that he had just struck down had also been the last man that had taken part in taking you aboard a rival captain’s ship.

Pero had discovered your kidnapping when he stopped at your home city’s harbor and went to call upon you. When he arrived, what he found was utter destruction. Your door had marks in it as though someone had tried to axe their way through. All your furniture was overturned and thrown about the room. It was obvious that someone had either broken in recently, and you hadn’t had a chance to clean up yet, or…

Pero still shudders when he remembers his reaction to the second, more likely scenario as to why your home was in such disarray. He roared with a primal rage so unlike anything he had ever felt; not even the overwhelming adrenaline of a raging battle upon the sea got him this worked up.

After quickly interrogating your neighbors and learning some of the men’s names who had stolen you away as well as the name of the capitán they served under and the ship they had sailed away upon. He also learned that at least a week had passed since you had been taken, which felt as though someone had driven their sword through Pero’s chest, making his heart stutter and his breathing falter.

Now knowing that he was already working with a disadvantage for catching up to you and the dead men currently awaiting their visit from La Parca, Pero quickly made his way back to the docks and his ship, Ángel de la Muerte.

Pero was proud of his crew that they were able to mobilize so quickly; he couldn’t care less if it was because they feared him and his reputation, or if it was due to the fact that you took such good care of their capitán and they feared for what might happen to them if you were not around him any more. He was able to quickly set a course based on reports given to him by other seamen he trusted in the harbor who saw the rival pirates set off with you.

Pero was loath to admit it, but this rival capitán knew how to make it difficult to track himself down. Pero and his men were still searching for you, and it had been about two months since you had been taken.

At each port they stopped in, they gleaned another vital clue, whether it was a direction of travel or the name of one the men that had taken you. But it seemed as though each clue was smoke in the air: helpful right when he got it, but utterly useless when he began tracking again. The longer they searched, the more desperate Pero became because he refused to consider a world without you in it.

So whenever he or his men tracked down a lead, Pero had his second in command, William, write it down in a book to return to when plotting the next leg of their journey. That way, La Parca would have a ledger of all the men that had had any part to play in daring to steal away his tesoro and strike them down.

Finally, after four months of searching, he and his men were able to catch up to this rival’s ship. Pero was unable to stop the crooked smile emerging on his lips as he thought with glee of how he would cut these men down before coming to you with the blood from the dead men still warm on his face.

He was able to send a cabin boy to deliver his personal message to the capitán.

It read: “You have something that I want. You may think you have an idea of what you have in your possession aboard your ship, but I assure you that you do not. She will soon be back with me. She means more to me than you will ever know. You will not live long enough to rue the day that you crossed La Parca because I will kill you and every single man who touched a hair on her head. You may think you can flee, but know this: no man can escape La Parca.”

At first, Pero was sure that his reputation would ensure that the crew surrendered to him, but the longer they took to respond, the more his hackles rose. Then, the man on lookout called out because he saw them preparing to sail off as well as preparing their cannons. This made Pero and William share a quick glance. They both had no doubts that Ángel de la Muerte would emerge triumphant, but if they were forced to engage in cannonfire, there was no way to ensure your safety.

And this made the two men extremely uneasy.

Pero barked out the order to go after the ship, with his blood beginning to boil the longer he gave chase with you so close yet so far away from him. However, before Pero could engage in battle with this cobarde, the ship was pulled into a scuffle with a British Navy vessel.

Pero could only watch in horror as his rival’s ship was battered beyond belief by cannonfire, and his hope that you would escape unscathed dwindled to a quiet flame burning in his chest. Before his eyes, he watched as the ship was scuttled, and the victors began to sail away.

As Ángel de la Muerte made its way to the wreckage, Pero scanned his eyes among the flotsam for any signs of you. The longer he searched, the more he realized that you might not be alive. That didn’t stop him from desperately calling out for you as he and his crew continued searching for any sign of you. But when he came to that wrenching conclusion, Pero began to feel desperation and disbelief warring within himself.

There couldn’t exist a world where you did not live. Absolutely not! If you, his tesoro, had passed into the next realm without La Parca at your side, he would drag himself to the depths of el infierno and demand that you be returned to his side. And if he couldn’t bring you back to the living, he would demand from whatever immortal being he had to to strike him down. If only so that he could then join you in the after life.

Then, he could once again pull you into his arms, breathe in your sweet scent that was ambrosia to him, and reassure his sweet princesa and himself that you were really there, that you were safe and that there was nothing that he wouldn’t do to ensure your safety.

But right now, as William gave him a look and a subtle shake of his head, he had to come to terms with the fact that all souls were lost on this ship.

Now Pero gasped for air as his grief drove into him and made him feel as though his worst enemy had driven their sword through his chest. How was he to go on without his tesoro? You were the best thing that had ever happened to him, and now he was to accept that you were gone? NEVER!! He would never, in a hundred years, accept that you were gone.

Pero Tovar, capitán of Ángel de la Muerte vowed to all the gods listening that he would scour the ends of the earth and all the seas to find anything to bring you back to him, or he would die trying. And at the moment, he didn’t have a preference for either outcome. All he knew was both ways would eventually lead him to be reunited with you. Whether in this realm or the next, he didn’t care.

Pero glared up at the heavens, where he knew that his tesoro would be temporarily residing, if you had indeed left this mortal coil. He knew what he now had to do. He would track down a relic that he had heard only whispers about, a stone that was said to return the dead to life. And if it worked as it was rumored to, the stone would restore you so that it would be as if you had never left this world at all.

The groans from the man wounded at his feet brought Pero out of his reminiscing. For three years now, Pero had been searching for this stone that could revive his princesa, his tesoro and return her from muerte’s icy clutch. Before his personal quest began, he would have scoffed at such talk surrounding a mystical object; however, now he prayed that all the stories about this resurrection stone were true so that he could be reunited with his estrella, his North Star that served as a beacon to bring him home, no matter how far apart they were.

He barely spared a glance at the man lower than a barnacle in his eyes as William came up to him.

“My friend, look what he had in his cabin.” He opened up a journal, which had maps and scribbling in it.

“From his writing, it looks as though he and his crew lost something or someone valuable three years ago in Port Royal.”

Pero’s eyes slowly rose from the pitiful bottom-feeder to William.

“That could possibly be your beloved, amigo.”

Yes, Pero thought, I’m not an idiot. As soon as he realized that he might have gotten the biggest possible lead in his quest to be reunited with you, Pero crouched down so that he could be eye level to the scum.

“You will tell me what I want to know, then I will decide whether or not I should kill you. But if you dare to play me for a fool, I will take great pleasure in killing you so slowly that you shall be begging La Parca and Ángel de la Muerte to come visit you.”

The man whimpered, but did little else.

“What exactly did you lose at Port Royal?”

It seemed to take a great effort out of him, but the man finally wheezed out “a woman.

The captain wanted her, so we stole her away.”

“Where did you steal this poor, unfortunate woman away from?” Pero had to fight to keep his stoic composure in place when the man breathed out the name of the port city you used to call home.

“And did any one of your men or even you yourself touch her after stealing her away?”

“Never! I swear to God!”

Pero now felt that small, flickering flame of hope he had been nursing within himself for three years begin to grow warmer. However, before he could indulge in the heat emanating from this renewed sense of hope, he had to deal with the situation at hand.

Now that he had no use for the man, he quickly drew his dagger.

“Thank you for being so helpful.”

At first, the cobarde relaxed as though he honestly thought that Pero would allow him to live after admitting to such crimes against the capitán’s woman.

“But you see, you dared to harm mi princesa, mi preciosa tesoro.”

The man tried to move away, his eyes widened in fear. Pero’s hand coming down hard upon his shoulder prevented the scum from moving any further away.

“And for that, for touching what wasn’t yours, for stealing something away from La Parca, you must pay. For situations such as this, only one payment will satisfy this debt. A life for a life.”

Now this pathetic excuse of a man was begging for his life before Pero’s own eyes, and while he might have had some sympathy toward his fellow pirates since the harsher crackdowns by sanctioned ships in any other case, Pero was nowhere near ready to allow one of the brutes who stole away his tesoro to remain on this mortal shell.

Pero swiped his hand out and drew his dagger quickly across the scum’s throat. As the man began gurgling and choking on his own blood, Pero wiped the blood off on the man’s shirt and rose, keeping his eyes on the dying man in front of him.

It seemed an age, but the cobarde finally died and not a minute too soon. Perhaps that was only because Pero was so eager to see the demise of the man in front of him. As soon as he saw the light leave the man’s eyes, he turned to face William once more.

“Come, amigo, we must make our way to Port Royal.”

With that, the two comrades clasped their hands on each other’s shoulders before heading back to Ángel de la Muerte. Without another glance backward, Pero barked out orders to his men to throw the body overboard and feed it to the sharks.

As the ship changed course to begin making her way to Port Royal, Pero slowly climbed the stairs to the helm to overlook the crew working to ensure that they set sail as quickly as they could. He watched for a minute or two before he went to the railings and pulled out the chain that had resided around his neck for almost four years now.

A locket that had been caressed so many times by Pero’s fingers that he had worn the metal smooth over time hung at the bottom. Pero rubbed his fingers over it once more, knowing that a lock of your hair also resided inside but not daring to chance opening the locket for fear that a strong gust of wind would sweep the precious gift away from him.

Opposite your hair in the locket was a cameo as well, to aid the memory when he was away at sea, the shopkeeper had advertised. Pero had scoffed, as if he would ever require assistance to remember your stunning visage. But now that he hadn’t gazed upon your beauty for years, he was eternally grateful you had talked him into the luxurious purchase all those years ago.

Next to the locket hung the ring he had purchased with the hope of placing on your finger one day. And with this latest clue, Pero had renewed hope that this ring would soon make a home upon your hand. He raised the locket and ring to his lips and placed a reverent kiss on both before looking out at the sea once more.

“Te extraño, mi tesoro. Espero verte pronto. Te amo, mi amor.”

Translations:

1. capitán- captain

2. Ángel de la Muerte- Angel of Death

3. La Parca- the Grim Reaper

4. tesoro- treasure

5. cobarde- coward

6. el infierno- Hell

7. princesa- princess

8. muerte- death

9. estrella- star

10. amigo- friend

11. mi princesa- my princess

12. mi preciosa tesoro- my precious treasure

13. Te extraño, mi tesoro. Espero verte pronto. Te amo, mi amor.- I miss you, my treasure. I hope I will see you soon. I love you, my love.

Tagging people I think may be interested: @gamingaquarius @miraclemoreno @absurdthirst @scribbledghost @aerynwrites @storiesofthefandomlovers @f0rever15elf @cinewhore @softpedropascal @ithinkhesgaybutwesavedmufasa @agent-whiskeys-sweetheart @flightlessangelwings @hopelikethemoon @jawabear

[littlemisssquiggles]

Sooooo….about that one scene in the RWBY Volume 8 Trailer….

I’m actually not here to really discuss the whole trailer. I’m only here to gush about the one part about it that got me the most.

During the trailer, at the very end of it---Salem is seen brandishing the Relic of Knowledge infront of a new Grimm. Basically she instructs this Grimm to go find her the person who could help her unlock the secrets of lamp and we see the Grimm take a good whiff of the lamp to pick up the scent of that said person.

Why am I most interested in this part you might ask?

Well…as we know, the last person who had the Lamp of Knowledge in their possession prior to it being stolen was of course Oscar Pine. And let’s not forget that it was also Oscar who first told Ruby how to summon Jinn back in V6.

That being said….I think there is chance that Oscar may be in for some trouble next season (again). Salem may be out to get him so it seems like my longstanding Pinehead headcanon of Oscar becoming a prisoner of Salem is looking a wee bit more and more possible now.

It’s like I’ve been saying---in the Wizard of Oz series, Princess Ozma was kidnapped and it was her best friend and closest confidante: Dorothy Gale who lead a search party to rescue the captive princess of Oz.

So…coming off the trailer, does this mean that we’ll get to see Oscar be kidnapped by the Salem with Ruby, as his rose and closest confidant being the one to lead the charge to save her prince for the wicked witch?

Then again, I could be wrong about this but…nonetheless, that might be interesting. But who knows? I guess I’ll see November 7th.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2020)

[alkaria]

The Wielder of the Staff

Penny isn’t going to retrieve the staff from the Winter Maiden’s Vault. She’s going to open it, either this volume or next, that much is for certain - you can’t build up to a grand finale for RWBY without all four relics ending up in play. But it won’t be Penny walking out of that vault with a relic.

One of the key themes we’ve covered, in Penny’s character as well as in the Atlas arc more broadly, is about free will and choice - who you serve, why you serve, and what you do to serve. And ultimately, though Penny undoubtedly feels a debt and a responsibility to protect Mantle and Remnant more broadly - she never wanted this. She took on the mantle of Winter Maiden not because she was groomed to, like Winter, or because she wanted it, like Cinder - she took it because she had to.

We see her struggling to come to terms with the burden she’s placed on herself because of her selflessness in the first two chapters of Volume 8, but we don’t just see that. We see Penny’s central character flaw coming to a head - that even now, her destiny is being written not by her, but by the actions of General Ironwood.

(Hm. Two characters both starting with a P that ended up in contestation for Maiden powers, with a character arc of Destiny. That bodes well.)

Crucially, Penny is going to, over the course of this volume and the next, finally have a chance to carve out her own destiny - her ideals, her wishes, and most importantly, her limits. The points at which she learns it’s okay to say no to taking on more responsibility than you can handle.

And, as a result, she’s going to say no to taking the Staff of Creation out of the Vault.

But we know the staff will come into play, so who’s going to take it? 

I don’t know whether it’s too early in the story (and brothers, we’re 8 years in at this point) to say with any certainty whether who initially claims the relic will be ultimately relevant to the finale and whatever happens to the four relics, but it’s certainly clear from the Volume 5 finale that there’s a significant portion of symbolism allotted to it - even if just to mark the emergence of a relic as an important moment with no further connotation.

When Yang emerges with the Lamp from the Vault, she is raised up above the others - figuratively as well as literally. The first wielder of the Lamp since the Great War, held up by Jinn herself.

Remember Blake’s little speech to Sun earlier in Volume 5:

“I remember getting to know Ruby and thinking, this girl is the embodiment of purity. After a while, I saw Weiss was defiance. And Yang was Strength.”

Yang claimed the relic not because she was the only one there, but because she was Strength. She had what Raven lacked, and Blake’s speech came full circle. Yang is elevated onto the central platform, in a way that only three others even experience - Raven, as the Spring Maiden, Leo, as Haven’s Headmaster, and Oscar (for fairly obvious reasons).

Now, you may wonder where I’m going with this. Salem has the Lamp; the Vault isn’t open. Even if Penny refuses to take it, what’s that got to do with what’s going on right now?

Well, the person who claimed the Relic of Knowledge? She’s on the ground. She’s separate from the events in Atlas, and she’s not going anywhere near the Staff. The symbolism in the intro couldn’t be more apparent:

Everyone else, on the other hand?

I already ruled Penny out, but everyone else here could be in contention to wield the Staff. Although, personally, I’m going to narrow it down to two:

Nora

A lot of people thought Nora was getting flags as a potential maiden last volume, from her resemblance to Fria to her possible Mantle origins to her vocal disagreement with Ironwood. It, obviously, didn’t pan out that way. But there’s still a couple things in her favour for her claiming the Staff of Creation:

“Always hoping that a lightning bolt is gonna save you from this gravity”

That’s the line from the V7 intro that perked a lot of people’s ears, and I still think it applies, possibly even more so. More than anyone, Nora represents lightning. Her main literary allusion is Thor, the Norse God of Thunder. Her semblance is powered by electricity, and her weapon generates it. In the history of Robyn calling highly amusing and accurate nicknames for our cast, Lightning Bolt could easily apply to Nora.

Gravity obviously applies to the weight of the severe situation our heroes find themselves in, but that’s not just all. It also, obviously, applies to the huge flags we’re getting that Atlas could plummet to the ground, destroying both it and Mantle and handing Salem a huge victory in her quest to ruin humanity.

That’s not guaranteed yet. If we expect volume 8 to go the way of volume 3, where there is a significant defeat for our heroes, that doesn’t automatically equal a complete and arbitrary annihilation. After all, Salem could crash Monstra into Atlas and achieve pretty much the same goal. The key thing that came out of volume 3 was that Beacon was destroyed - but not unreclaimable. There were slivers of hope, and the smaller soul remained.

And that’s where Nora could come in. She’s been a stalwart protector of the people, especially Mantle, and if she were wielding the relic, she’d definitely not want to doom them by using it - and, equally, not doom them by losing the relic. Nora was there when Neo took the lamp - she’s going to know that the same thing could happen, and so, she will save us from gravity - by using the staff to lower Atlas safely to the ground before taking it out of the vault.

Weiss

“After a while, I saw Weiss was defiance.”

This feeds more specifically into the possible theory that each relic will be claimed by a member of team RWBY. While Yang has maiden flags from Raven’s possible death, after Penny gaining the Winter powers and Ruby mastering her silver eyes, the RWBY maiden ending looks unlikely. But anyone can claim a relic.

Weiss has matured a great deal throughout the storyline of RWBY, but the ultimate character motivation for her has stayed consistent: she wants to reclaim her family’s legacy and restore it to one comparable to her grandfather’s, in opposition to the mismanagement of her parents. She is defiant towards them, to her brother and sister, towards Ruby, towards the general trend of history, and towards General Ironwood.

“NONE of this matters right now!”

”Not friends. Family.”

So why Weiss, and not Nora?

Well, going back to the theory with the relics being claimed each by one of the members of Team RWBY, Salem is their end villain:

It’s team RWBY who are together confronting Salem in Ironwood’s office, and it’s team RWBY who’ll be stood together confronting her at the very end of all this. To do that, you need the relics.

To be sure, Nora is a member of the main cast - she’ll have an end villain to face off against, just like the rest of our protagonists - but even though it seems Tyrian is shaping up to be Qrow’s, Salem is very clearly not Nora’s. Arguably, we saw in Volume 5 that Nora is the only person capable of going toe-to-toe with Hazel:

“I don’t need him to hurt. I just need him to GO DOWN.”

Nora makes sense as Hazel’s eventual final foe - his origin story is being driven to work for Salem by his grief and possessiveness over his sister, who died as a huntress-in-training. Nora lost her teammate - a huntress-in-training - precisely because of Salem. We know she’s an orphan, and homeless - she likely has lost a great deal of people to the grimm. Morally, she’s the polar opposite to Hazel - someone whose hardship and grief made her a protector of the people, rather than someone on a doomed quest for vengeance for someone who would never have wanted it.

So if we rule out Nora for that sake, why Weiss, and not Ruby or Blake? Well, for one, Weiss has far more personal investment in Atlas as a whole.

“This is my home. And I’m not giving it up without a fight.”

For Weiss’ own character arc to complete as we eventually move towards a resolution and a departure from Atlas, her family needs to survive. Jacques is fairly irrelevant, and his death would matter least - but Willow, Winter and Whitley need to survive, and the Schnee family needs to begin healing. That doesn’t square itself with Atlas falling to the ground and millions dying. But it could square itself with Atlas being lowered enough to survive without the Staff, and Salem still making off with it in order to attack Vacuo.

Weiss’ semblance also thematically fits with the relic of Creation - she has a mastery of dust, and her glyphs are used to create a range of different things. Her arc points now towards creating something new - a new future for her family, for the SDC, and for Atlas. It would make sense.

For their own relics, Ruby and Blake make more sense being involved with Vale and Vacuo. While Blake is from Menagerie, not Vacuo, the Sword of Destruction would resonate well with her character arc. It’s a symbol of how she, and the faunus, have grown - the power to destroy, but rather than used angrily and blindly like Adam would, used carefully, with great thought. As well as this, the symbolism of the sword - taking up arms and fighting, rather than running away.

And Ruby is just obviously choice. She’s the central character of the Vale arc, one of her most defining traits is determination - the choice to never give up and keep moving forward, that we’ve heard referenced more than once post-Vol 3. But, if you’re wanting a bit more in the way of arguable evidence - who’s younger than the rest of their team of four, is pure of heart, makes choices that fundamentally determine everyone’s paths, and ends up with a crown?

So that’s where I’m staking my claim. Yang, the Strong, giver of Knowledge. Weiss, the Defiant, guardian of Creation. Ruby, the Pure, defender of Choice. Blake, the ???, arbiter of Destruction.

The only thing we’re missing is what embodiment Blake actually is.

[valkyrieelysia18]

RWBY Rewrite: The Relics

Hello there everyone! I’m back with another post on my Rewrite series that hopefully will delight you.

Admittedly, this might be an odd topic after my last post. Well, that one was pretty big and I wanted something a bit smaller to tackle. I had thought about getting into the White Fang next, but that post is going to be a dozy and then I thought of the Relics. And I thought “Sure, that’ll work.”

The Relics, in my opinion, were handled poorly in the show. Items that can grant great power and when collected something amazing/terrible have been done before and done well (which is honestly true a lot of stuff in RWBY). In RWBY, we didn’t know the Relics existed until over halfway through Volume 4, reduced the Maidens to essentially gate keys in Volume 5, and even at the end of Volume 6 we only know what the lamp can do on its own. I mean come on, Dragon Ball took one episode to explain its titular item (granted they were a lot more simple, but still)! So we’re going to tackle these things.

Now before we get into the individual items, let’s address some things that about the Items as a whole.

The first thing to note about the Relics in this Rewrite is that gathering the four together won’t summon the Gods back to Remnant. The Brothers in this Rewrite are much more distant figures, preferring to observe their creations rather than directly interfering. 

So then, why does Salem want to collect them? The full reason will be in her and Ozpin’s backstory post, but to put it simply Salem has a more personal history with the Relics here and wishes to get them back. She views that leaving them in the hands of mortals will just lead to them abusing the items, causing more pain and suffering for the world. Not an entirely baseless viewpoint as we’ll get into soon enough.

The next thing to note is that before the Relics were under the care of the Academies and Ozpin’s group, each was possessed by a former Royal Family. Vale had Choice, Mistral had Knowledge, Vacuo had Destruction, and Mantle had Creation. Granted as time passed and certain things were failed to be passed on, by the time of the Great War only the Crown of Choice’s abilities were known and even then only to a select few.

Each Relic will have a have a spirit that will be involved with the item’s power. I’m not sure whether it was said in RWBY after I left that each Relic had a spirit or whether Jinn was an exception, but I’m going to roll with the first one. Also, each Spirit technically doesn’t have a biological sex, they choose how they want to look.

Also, only the Lamp will have the blue glow. The other Relics will associated with the color of their kingdom: the Staff having a White crystal, the Sword having an Orange gleaming blade, and a Green jewel in the center of the Crown. They can still have the gold, but this will make them more distinct from each other.

Finally, they are NOT the major Grimm magnets as presented in the original show. While they do give off a sort of a signature that Grimm can recognize, it’s a faint one. It would attract Grimm attention if it stayed out for too long in the wild or Grimm would be looking for it in an area if Salem directed them personally to it.

All right, now let’s get down to business!

Knowledge: Jinn

The Lamp of Knowledge is the only Relic we’ve gotten to know it’s full abilities as well as meet its spirit. Even then, I think that three questions every a hundred years is maybe a little too limited for something that is a power of the gods. So, I’m changing it.

Instead of granting three questions within a certain time frame, I like the idea of giving anyone who uses the lamp the ability to ask Jinn one question of the past and present. Everyone is entitled to knowledge after all and they should determine how they want to use it. I know, I kind of stole the idea from the scepter from the direct to video Aladdin King of Thieves, but I think it’s a good setup. It’s powerful, but it still has limitations. This will contrast with its opposite the Crown, which will be more exclusive and deal with the future.

Then there’s Jinn and am I the only who thought her design was lazy? I mean we get it, she’s a genie, but there’s nothing interesting or unique in her design. Pretty sure comparisons to Aladdin’s Genie and Magi’s Paimon have been made. I’d leave her redesign to someone who is fully capable of putting a new spin on it, but I would like the idea of her not having a consistent wardrobe. Maybe have her wear a top that was similar to something found in Central Mistral while wearing a hairpiece you would identify being at home in Eastern Mistral. Not only would this symbolize how multicultural Mistral is, but also how history is made of many different parts.

Now Jinn herself wouldn’t be that different of a character from canon. She would still be a rather pleasant, teasing spirit who is quite thrilled to finally be out of the Vault again. Amongst the Relic spirits, she’s probably the one who has the least regard for mortals, but that’s partly because of what people usually use her for. Most people would ask about power, riches, dark secrets; it got kind of boring and predictable for Jinn and it was less pleasant when they would get mad at her for telling them truths they didn’t want to hear. Let’s just say a few rulers of Mistral that used her Relic didn’t use it very wisely.

Jinn’s favorite type of petitioner would be someone like Oobleck: someone who would ask her about some part of history that doesn’t have much known about it and she doesn’t get to talk about nearly as much as she’d like to so she actually goes into more detail than necessary. She’d also respect someone who probably knows the answer she’s going to give them is not one they want to hear, but is resolved to face the truth whatever it is.

Creation: Eve/Ev

The Staff of Creation is a bit interesting in that works better for some than others. It uses what a person pictures in their mind to bring what they want to reality, within reason. So it really works best with someone very creative and has a clear vision of what they want to do. It can’t create something that’s alive (like a dog) or that had been living (like someone who has passed on). Also, the more detailed and involved an item is, the longer it will take for the Staff to recharge. For example, the little crystals (which are basically a crystallized form of the staff’s power) Ironwood has been creating as an alternative energy source would take a couple of hours to a day depending on how many were created at a time. Whereas a huge detailed palace would take decades to over a century, longer than it would have taken them to build in real time.

Eve is the Spirit of Creation and would have a rather androgynous appearance. I was also thinking that the Spirit could be called Eve or Ev depending on who’s addressing them. Their main color would be white, but their appearance would resemble that of artist. Perhaps having smudges of charcoal on their face or a splattering of color on an apron. I think it would be really ironic that the kingdom that banned the arts at one point would have a Spirit that is quintessentially an artist, heck Eve might have locked up during that time and forgotten about until after the war was over. Again, I’d leave the design to someone who is much better suited for it.

Now in this Rewrite, the Staff is no longer in the Vault because Ironwood took it out. He reasoned that having a powerful tool that could be used to in the fight against of Salem would be wasted simply being left in the Vault. Needless to say, Eve doesn’t like the way Ironwood is using them. It’s clear the power is just a means to an end to him, something he can use to make Atlas more secure. There is no love or passion for what he’s creating and he treats them with no courtesy or respect, not listening at all when they try to talk to him. When Watts eventually comes to retrieve the Staff, Eve is basically “Oh thank the Brothers! I could care less about your plans, just get me out of here!” It’s sort of a summary of what partly causes Ironwood’s fall: the inability to get that people aren’t purely logical beings that will do what they are told for the greater good, but emotional irrational people who will snap when pushed too far.

The best person Eve could work with is someone who specializes in the visual arts: painting, sculpture, architecture, etc. Someone who has a very clear vision and obviously very passionate about the things they want to create. Eve would also enjoy someone who is perfectly okay if they don’t get their creation exactly right on the first try  and is more than willing to take Eve’s advice/criticism. 

Destruction: Adamou

The Sword of Destruction is perhaps the easiest Relic to understand and use. Using the sword will increase your physical abilities and the sword can send out waves of power that can devastate a group of foes or alter the environment. However, using it takes quite a bit of energy. Best case scenario will involve a week of recovery. Worst case scenario you expend years of your life. Even the King of Vale with all his power, lost two or three years he should have had to live on that Final Battle of the Great War. This cost was so great to the old Vacuo Monarchs (and given that most of their past was peaceful) that it was hidden away and forgotten about until the Great War happened and the last King of Vale rediscovered it.

I’m still little unsure of how I would like Adamou, the Spirit of Destruction, to look like. The closest example that comes to mind is something like Nemesis from Fire Emblem Three Houses: a large older battle scarred man with light armor. Once again, I’m a writer and not a character designer so if anyone has ideas I’d be willing to see them. That being said, his name is actually a West Africa variation of the name Adam, putting him in contrast to Eve. Anyone who has a passing understanding of the Old Testament should probably understand what I’m doing here.

Adamou, despite his outward and intimidating appearance, is actually a pretty easy going spirit. He’s also somewhat disappointed in how he doesn’t get used as much compared to his brethren, but he does understand why and has great respect for the old rulers of Vacuo for doing what they did. He enjoys a good fight, but he also enjoys competitions of all kinds whether physical or mental. You could talk him into a little kiddie board game and he’d go at with as much glee as slaying a hoard of Grimm. As the Spirit of Destruction, he knows better than anyone that life is finite and it’s best to live and fight to the fullest until your time comes.

Adamou would gravitate to people like Yang or Pyrrha: those who enjoy combat and wish to live their life to the fullest. Those who’s spirits burn bright even if it means they burn out quicker. That said, he also respects those who fight to protect those they love and things they believe in (to an extent, he’s not fond of fanatics who would give their lives away without a second thought for something obviously sketchy).

Choice: Caesar

Whereas the Lamp reveals the past and present, the Crown of Choice is focused on the future. Those who wear it have the ability to see the possible outcomes of any choice they face. As such you can see what the cost and consequences of your options. That being said, it’s not a hundred percent as the future is always in motion and there’s no telling how other people’s actions and choices may affect what you decide. Still, the predictions do tend to be very accurate. There’s also the possibility that wielder may obsess over said choices or may become dependent on the Crown, but that has happened very rarely since Caesar usually stops their wielders before they go too far in this.  

The thing about the Crown is that unlike the Lamp, it can only be used by one person. When its user dies, the Crown is free to be taken up by another and once it has bonded to someone they are bound for life. Now the Crown can be lent to another person, but every wielder can only do so once in their lifetime and those who borrow it can only use it for three days. On the fourth day, the crown will tighten around the person’s head, giving great pain and hallucinations, and will only stop if that person takes it off at which they can no longer use it. 

Seeing the obvious issues of such a powerful item potentially falling into the wrong hands, the first King of Vale came to an agreement with the Spirit Caesar to set up a trap/test to anyone who would try to claim the Crown. The Crown would be placed in a special chamber when not in use with a multitude of different crowns and circlets in the room. It’s up to the person to choose the right crown with no outside input. Get it wrong and the crown will turn to ash and that person is forever barred from taking the Crown. The twist? The true crown’s appearance in the trial is in fact not a crown, but a wreath of laurels (which can be seen on Beacon’s symbol). And if you’re thinking this sounds quite a bit like the scenario from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, that’s cause it is as its kind of the sort of trial you’d find in a fable or fairy tale. It would take either a very thoughtful and self aware person to pass the trial as well as one not greedy. It’s also made a little more complicated as the Crown looks slightly different for each of it’s wielders, which will be noticed in an earlier scene with our group of heroes in a hall of portraits of the past monarchs of the Vale. Because that is what determined who would succeed to the throne of Vale.

And yes, we will learn a lot more on this when I do the King of Vale Rewrite Post.

As a result of the nature of Crown, Caesar is the spirit that is the most close to mortals as they build a strong personal relationship with their users. As part of this, when a new wielder is chosen, Caesar will take upon the appearance of their predecessor to guide the new one. I’m still a little torn over whether Caesar should appear as the old wielder when they first took up the Crown, in the peak of that person’s life, or how they looked when they died. 

Caesar, for the most part, acts as a sort of advisor to their wielder. That can come off as them acting very parental which given how often the Crown would pass from parent to child is quite fitting. They will give advice when asked for, but in general will advise against using the Crown’s power if its a situation their user can more than handle on their own. They are very much the type of person who would advocate that “It’s the journey, not the destination” and is more than willing to let their wielder fail if it meant they could learn something from it. That said, they do get very attached and is probably the only Spirit that would openly speak positively about Salem due to her history with them and also has issues with Ozpin. They and Jinn will be the ones to eventually give the more specific details to group about Ozpin and Salem’s history after they got the general outline elsewhere.

Caesar has worked with many different types of people, but the main thing they each had in common is that they were the type of people who were always concerned with the consequences of their actions for those around them and the kingdom of Vale as a whole. They generally work best with someone who is humble and empathetic. However, they generally don’t like someone if they put a singular goal above everything else without consideration of all the consequences (again, issues with Ozpin).

Well, that turned out longer than I was expecting it too. I guess I just got into the creative juices. Anyway, I think I’ll do a different post before coming back to do Cinder. And just as a reminder people, I dropped this show at the end of Volume 6 so don’t bring up anything after that to me in a comment.

See you soon!

[panlight]

submission

I wish we had more of the human Edward in Midnight Sun, instead there were little flashbacks, which I liked a lot, from the beginning of his vampire life with Carlisle and these I also caught myself wishing they would be more recurring and longer during the narrative. I understand that according to Meyer’s world building, vampires tend to remember very little of human memories, but Edward is built to mourn these losses, his sins, the eternal question “what if…? He is Hades (I’m rolling my eyes with this comparison, but it’s in the book), the god renegade by his brother (in this case his adoptive father, Carlisle) living and reigning over the dead forever, with no choice. Wouldn’t it be a rule that he was one of the most attached to his old life? That he struggled to keep the memory of his mother Elizabeth, to whom he was closest, alive in his mind? That he always took care of his properties? And this I’m just imagining: the house, the law office of his late and distant father, the cars and the furniture. The only mentions we have about her possessions during the saga are about the jewels and these are only used for Bella to live the cliché of having an old engagement ring, a family relic and nothing else. She didn’t even bother to honor her mother-in-law by putting her name on Renesmee, despite wearing her ring. In fact, it is described that Edward came from a wealthy family, it would also be normal for him to keep portraits of his relatives. He must have some picture of his human self with the family somewhere, no? Old newspapers kept that reported about the war, his ambition at the time. And diaries! It was common in those days to keep diaries, his parents certainly did. Stephenie Meyer, are you really denying me the pleasure of having this vampire boy, tortured by his monstrosity and said like mommy’s boy, reading and regretting the blurry pages of ink that his devoted mother used to write her thoughts, emotions and memories of her family life in the Edwardian era? What could she have recorded? The advances on the piano that her little prodigy made over time, her favorite toys, the games they played together, her first words, her recitals, development of reading and hobbies, her religion? By God, mainly, his religion! Where does this fervent idea of Edward’s that he is condemned to hell come from? Was religious interest born alone or was it stimulated by others when human? Was it Elizabeth who instructed him in religious terms? Did she know anything about vampires or did she think they were just scary stories? Anyway, I just wanted more of him as a character.

We only know Edward from two perspectives: the monster he believes to be and the perfection idealized by Bella, two extremes. The narrative leads us to believe that there is no more powerful love than these two teenagers feel for each other, but it also shows us, intentionally, that Isabella Swan doesn’t care to show the slightest interest in human Edward. Until the scene of the conversation with Carlisle in New Moon, a few months after the beginning of her courtship, she didn’t even know what the color of Cullen’s human eyes had been like and didn’t mention any time, if I’m remembering well, when would be his birthday. Her focus of interest is totally on her post-human life. Where are the insignificant questions, but makes us empathize with the character? I mean, Edward will always be stuck at his 17 years. His life as a human has shaped him to be what he is today. Did he have or wish to have any pets? Did he have any allergies? Did he like his tutors? Did he attend a private school, no? What was it like? The human mind is not an encyclopedia like that of vampires, so what subjects did he like and dislike? What moments of his life marked him the most? Did he always compose or did he become more confident with the passing of his vampire life? Where are the imperfections that make us human? Did he have scars, bruises? Was he an athletic boy and well disposed to sporting activities or in poor health? Was he easily ill? He was the fastest vampire. Did he like to run? What did he want to achieve with the war? Just the glory? The pride of his parents? Personal satisfaction for fighting for a cause he believed in? His mother was not so inclined to accept his life as a soldier, but what about his father? Did he encourage it? What about your friends? Did Edward have friends as a human? He is said to be the kindest and brightest of all the Cullens, but what did he do to deserve such a great distinction? Did he show more interest in the afflictions and thoughts of those around him when human? Did it qualify him as a sensitive boy? What kindnesses was he used to do? He always wanted Bella to make the most of human life, but why he didn’t care to show what he was like when vampirism destroyed everything? We could have Bella visiting Chicago, his old house. What a drama that would be! Instead we had long pages of a weird Edward who enters her room without her permission or knowledge. Stephenie can write whatever she wants, but I refuse to believe that the son of Elizabeth Masen, a woman I believe is a lady of high society who values etiquette and old habits above all, would have raised a son who did not respect the privacy of a woman, especially a beloved, because her Edward is a gentleman, after all. I don’t know, but it seems that Meyer, through Bella, is more interested in building him the basis of the epitome of perfection that vampirism has made him than he should really be as a human, with only a few more accentuated characteristics. I just want to know more about Edward before being Edward Cullen. Seven hundred and a few pages and Edward Masen rarely came to the surface of them. What do you think about that? Do you find it interesting that human memories tend to fail and disappear over time for vampires? Because forgetting what makes you what you are must be scary, it reminds a lot of Alzheimer. Or do you think it’s just an excuse to not develop their human part anymore? Because one of the most recurrent criticisms of books is that Meyer sinned in character building, Bella practically didn’t exist before arriving at Forks in Twilight (2005), many pieces of her life and tastes were missing, which she tries to patch up in Midnight Sun. I’m sorry if the text got confused to understand.

I too think it’s sad that Bella didn’t ask more questions about Edward’s human life, or really any of their humans lives. I think SM is also a bit inconsistent with how much it “fades” or not. It’s sort of implied that if you try to hold on to it, you can keep it to some degree. Rosalie, for example, has held on to her human memories so tightly. (It seems to me if vampires never forget anything, if they think about their human memories in their early days, before it fades, then they will have those memories forever, right? They might be imperfect or fuzzy but they’re there).

And I’m really curious about his religious upbringing, too. His obsession with being damned and doomed doesn’t sound like 1918 Chicago theology but something older. I suppose it could be influenced by hearing Carlisle’s thoughts, since he IS from the older, fire-and-brimstone, most-people-are-damned era, but Carlisle himself is more hopeful, hoping (foolishly perhaps) they might get some measure of credit for trying. Sometimes I think Edward would have been more coherent as a character if he came from an older time period. 1918 is not THAT long ago but SM writes him, at times, as if he were hundreds of years old. 

[aspoonofsugar]

How did Ozma learn Jinn's name?

Hello!

Tbh I do not know and your ask makes me wonder...

Is the password something linked to how the lamp itself works or something Ozma managed to add as a precautionary measure?

I had somehow always thought it was somethind Ozma added after using Jinn the first time, but tbh I am not sure why I got this idea. If it is something which is said in the series or something I “invented” precisely to explain what you are asking :’’’)

Anyway, I do not think it is specified, so it is probably a rule of the lamp... in this case... I do not know... Probably Ozma was given by the God of Light some more info about the relics than we are told in the flashback. After all, Jinn’s story does not cover everything for time reasons. For example, she does not explain the power of each relic even if we are shown Ozpin asked her.

It is also possible the God of Light left some hints that could help Ozma find the relics and use them.

I also wonder if the vaults were similarly created by the Gods. It would seem so considering what Ambrosius said. Still, if this is the case... how did it work exactly? I wonder if next volume we are gonna discover more.

On another note, it is cool that each relic so far works only for people who already possess some degree of what the relic itself represents.

If you crave knowledge, you must know the password.

If you crave creation, you must have already created a project of wha you want.

Thank you for the ask and I am sorry if I was not that useful!

[arasakas-ronin]

Takemura: Sit. (when V sits down) Takemura: You do not look so bad. Then, in the car, I doubted you would survive.

V: [optional: Is this about the biochip?] This about the biochip? That why I'm here? Takemura: Hm, I hear it is damaged beyond repair. Any attempt to extract it would be disastrous, fatal for you. V: Huh. Vik likes to talk, I gues... Takemura: Not many could do what he did. You should be thankful.

V: [optional: Why'd you help me?] Why'd you help me anyway? Takemura: I needed you to live. That hasn't changed.

V: [What do you want?] What's it you actually want from me? Takemura: To begin, you must tell me where to find Evelyn Parker. V: Evelyn... what's she to you? Takemura: She and Yorinobu Arasaka had intimate relations... she knows how to get to him. V: Been thinkin' I oughta have a word with her myself. She promised to help me get rid of the chip. Takemura: I would not count on that. She is likely gone, very far away.

(either) V: [Just answered your own question.] Just answered your own question 'bout where Evelyn is - long gone. Takemura: Why do you believe she could help you remove the chip? Does a corporation help her?

(or) V: [Been lookin' for her?] Why you figure she skipped town? Takemura: I tried to locate her but had no success. I suspect she covered her tracks. You said Parker could help you remove the Relic... does she work for a corporation?

(Either) V: [No idea.] Got no clue. V: [Think so, yeah] Suspect so, yeah. V: Evelyn was knowledgeable about the Relic, had a large chunk of classified info. An enimgma, to be sure, but she showed that slyness you get in corpo agents... you know the kind. Takemura: I, too, possess this "slyness" you speak of? V: You got tossed out, lumped with the outcasts, easily. Or have you forgotten?

(or) V: [Don't think so, no.] Don't think so, no. Takemura: Can you expand? V: Don't matter how much perfume a corpo sprays on mornings, by lunch that's replaced by the stench of skullduggery. Only thing I caught from Evelyn was determination. Takemura: And I, too, stink of "skullduggery"? V: You're startin' to stink, period. Takemura: Hmmm...

(or) V: [Askin' too many questions] You ask a looot of questions. Takemura: You have many interesting things to say. V: Might be your turn now to say something interesting.

Takemura: I intend to punish Yorinobu Arasaka severely for the crime he has committed. (either) V: [Stand - OK, got a life to save - my own, so...]  Sorry I couldn't be of any help. Don't have any time to lose, so... Takemura: (stands up, puts his right hand on their shoulder) V, wait. I need you.

(or) V: [Stand - Better be goin'] Is that all? Really should be goin'. Takemura: (stands up, puts his right hand on their shoulder) Wait.

Takemura: Yorinobu Arasaka must answer for this crime of patricide. V: Pff. Lookin' for justice? In Night City? Takemura: I seek revenge. Much more feasible here. I have allies prepared to bring Yorinobu to his knees. The only thing I need is proof. V: And you think they'll trust the word of a merc? Takemura: I have nothing better now. Also, I know no one here, and I am a fugitive, I am hunted.

V: [Optional] What if I say no? Takemura: Then I will tell you what rewards await if you help me.

V: [Want me to accuse Yorinobu in front of Arasaka execs?] So what, we stroll into Arasaka HQ and announce that Yorinobu's a kinkiller? That he murdered Saburo? Takemura: We will get a hearing before reasonable people, in a neutral location. Certain... procedures will be used to establish the truth. V: A lie-detector? Forget it. Takemura: In that case, another option. You are dying. You do not know how to save yourself. A chip, the Relic, is the culprit. Technology made by Arasaka, technology they alone know. This corporation can save you as easily as it can make you disapper. It is merely about getting the right people on your side. Politics.

V: [Optional - What kind of people we talkin' about?] Exactly what kind of people are we talkin' about? Takemura: People who hold Arasaka dear, are its heart. People interested in the corporation's table growth.

V: [Anders Hellman - mean those kinds of people?] Ya mean people like Anders Hellman? Takemura: You know this name how? V: Prepared for the heist, thoroughly. Relic is Hellman's design, his creation. Takemura: Untrue - he is a pawn. I was thinking of one much more powerful. Besides, Anders Hellman escaped Arasaka, betrayed it.

(Something about Arasaka on the TV catches Takemura's attention) Tom: Fuckin' 'Saka scum's everywhere. (Turns it off) Takemura: Hey! I was listening to that! Tom: Shut up. Nobody 'cept you wants to watch that shit about that corpo cunt. Takemura: What did you say? (he gets up and walks a few steps towards Tom)

(timed prompt) V: [[Calm Takemura] Chill] Let it go, Takemura. Tom: Hom. Least one of you's got some fuckin' sense. (Takemura sits back down)

(V stays silent) Tom: You heard me! Takemura: Listen... Tom: No, tough guy, you listen. It's people like you two that've brought this country to its knees. Taken our land, our jobs, our fucking dignity. But I own this place and here I decide. So finish your tea and get the fuck out. (Takemura sits back down)

V: [Optional - Streetkid - Tom's a good guy.] Tom's all right. Not afraid to speak his mind, that's all. Takemura: He reminds me of my father. He also worked in a kitchen all his life.

V: [Optional - Shouldn't draw attention to ourselves.] Last thing we wanna do is draw attention. Takemura: I'm sorry... A stupid reflex.

V: [Need time to think it over.] Thanks for the offer. Need to think about it, get back to you. Takemura: I need... time... to plan, organize. You stand to gain much if you help me. All I ask is that you do not leave the city. V: Leave? Why would I leave? Need help, best chance I'll find the right person here. Takemura: Someone other than Arasaka specialists? There is no one, no alternative. V: Actually, we just talked about some.

(the dialogue options are not exclusive)

V: [Try my luck with Evelyn Parker.] With a bit of luck, I'll track down Evelyn. Takemura: If she could not help you before, she will not manage to now. V: Honor among thieves - ever heard of it? Takemura: Yes, I thought it ironic, thieves have none. There is just honor, I believe. V: Yorinobu Arasaka'd agree, I'm sure. Takemura: The Parker woman will not help you. Were I you, I would think about a plan B.

V: [Relic's engineer knows more'n anybody else] Anders Hellman - he invented the Relic. If I wanna get rid of it, he's my man. And if that means picking another fight with Arasaka, so be it. Takemura: Hellman defected from the company. I myself spent many days looking for him. He - what's the expression - dropped off the face of the earth.

V: [Optional - You know more than I thought] Somebody's been busy the last few days. Takemura: I will not sit and do nothing when there is information to be found, things to prepare.

V: [Why were you looking for Hellman?] Why're you looking for Hellman? Takemura: He was the one to alert Saburo-san to Yorinobu's schemes. He knew both of them well and could be an important witness. V: Corpo rats squeal when hanging by their tails. Takemura: For several days, I collected information. All leads point to one place - the club called Afterlife. I was quickly... dismissed by the "Queen of Fixers" there. Rogue.

(either) V: [She spot the corpo in you?] She take you for a suit? Takemura: No, she saw me as Saburo-sama's killer.

(or) V: [No experience talkin' to people like that?] Mean to say you worked for Saburo yet got no idea how to talk to the high and mighty? Takemura: She wished to have nothing to day with the man accused of murdering Saburo Arasaka.

V: Rogue's well informed, gets wind of most things that happen in Night City. Might be worth asking her about Hellman. Takemura: I wish you luck. The woman is choosy, expensive and rude. (He gets up) Takemura: When my people in Arasaka are ready to listen, I will call you. V: Till then, I guess. Takemura: If by some miracle you find Hellman, please notify me. He and I have unfinished business.

[wu-sisyphus-gang]

Motion Sickness Chapter 42

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I tapped the ash of my pipe in an alley. The glass made a soft tong sound as I tapped it against the brick. Then I stepped out with a boot and quashed the still-burning greens.

I already felt like a pro with it.

My head clear of distractions like bugs or the sound of Mother's voice I could finally get to work. The slight spinning the greens caused was not unlike alcohol but it was minor. I felt like I could focus through it. I even felt like I could drive, or ride as the case may be.

Gods it was good to be off that stuffy train. There were 'no smoking' signs everywhere and fire alarms in every bathroom. I'd maybe checked a couple.

"Well Neo, let's buy some horses."

She held up one finger.

"One? One horse? For the both of us?"

She nodded.

"So what? You'll just ride bitch on mine?"

She frowned at my phrasing but still nodded again.

"Huh. And feminism marches on."

She kicked me in the shin. I deserved it too so I managed a muted, "ow. Alright. Alright. Fair cop."

I rubbed at one of my piercings, fondling the earlobe around the metallic diamond stud.

"You know I could probably teach you how to ride. It's easy enough for someone like me to figure out so you could probably do it."

She shook her head. Probably thinking something like 'why would I do that when I have you to ride me around?' To which I'd say, 'yeah, fair enough.'

I found a merchant and paid him. It came out to a few thousand Lien but it was no skin off my back. Just one aura-driven horse and we were good to go.

I saddled up. Putting my bag of loose possessions over the horse's back (spare clothes, toiletries, the bare necessities) along with Neo's own duffle. Then I mounted. The horse grunted slightly under the suddenly added weight of all my weapons and armor and me. I was something like two-hundred and thirty pounds by myself. Probably a little more.

I reached down to Neo. She looked away as I easily swung her onto the horse's back. The horse hardly stirred under the addition, she was smaller than Ruby or Weiss. Neo popped her pink parasol to shield us both from the Anima sun.

She rode side-saddle. And managed to look ever so lady-like on the horse's back but I knew the truth. I turned my head back to face forward. This thing was no lady. She was as much a beast as the horse we rode on.

Like that we were off, hooves beating a steady rhythmic clip-clop down a beaten trail. It had the marks of being a real road for cars with four wheels.

"You don't do tactile stuff do you? Just auditory and visual illusions right?"

I felt her nod her head against my back.

"And you haven't been hazing me, have you?" It would be convenient if all my hallucinations were caused by Neo messing with me. Convenient. Not likely or comforting or anything like that.

She shook her head.

"Then I think I'm a little fucked up."

She snorted a little, still managing to be lady-like still. It reminded me a little of Weiss.

"I didn't use to be like this. Mother got to me. Salem, that is. She haunts me like an evil spectre from the end of time. I'm not sure if you believe me about her but she's bad news. Has all kinds of magic besides being old as hell and probably basically unkillable."

She snorted again. I felt her wipe her pink and brown hair back. It brushed against my sleeveless arm. It tingled against my free skin there.

"That's what I'm saying. She's fucking bullshit. I didn't really believe it myself until I ran into her, or her shadow at least. It was almost enough to unmake me, that alone. She made me kill two of my friends. Made me. Like I was a puppet."

She just listened that time. She put an arm around me to hold on as we rode out of Shumi and on to Wutai. It was the first real touch another person had given me since everything went down.

Since I'd killed Ren and Nora.

Since I'd tried to kill myself.

It was oddly reassuring even if it was light and meaningless. Gentle against my arm. Just enough to hold on from where she sat in our double saddle.

I was choking something back as she did and got settled in a little more. I could feel her aura. The cruel cold was a mellow comfort to my own heat. Like I was burning up and hadn't noticed it. Like I had a fever and didn't know.

"That's why I have to go and find Merlot. Salem could make me kill you too, I'm not sure what will make me snap next. That would be bad, for both of us."

She tensed up a little at that. I wasn't sure she took it as a threat but it kinda was. Salem's reach was long and I wasn't sure what we'd find at the laboratory.

"Not right now. Captain of my own ship at the moment. Just… be careful around me. Be ready once we get to the lab. The report was all about modified Grimm. Not like me, maybe, depending on what the fuck I am. Salem mentioned that I do indeed have sisters. How could I forget that? Oh my gods she has my fucking sisters."

I stewed in that. Listening to the rhythmic beat of the horse.

"Depending on how false my memories are. Most of them are fake. Inconsistent when I really look at them. I have to save them, though. And myself of course. I won't get anywhere as her puppet. All the more reason to get to the lab and find Merlot."

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I set up the tent and tied the horse to a tree. Setting out the horse the graze. That was what was great about horses. It was a grass fed engine. They could go anywhere there was grass with excellent mobility. That was why they were a staple of mankind.

I didn't ask Neo for anything as I set up the camp. Which was fine. She sat on a fence looking at the road forlornly. Like she'd made a deal she wished she could go back on.

My legs were cramped from riding and I was sure hers were stiff, too.

"Let's fight." I said, standing up straight from the tent. I took a hit off my pipe at the same time and exhaled.

She gave me an odd look.

"What? Cinder is stronger than both of us. You think you'll reach her level by not sparring? By not practicing?"

She hopped off the fence and stalked towards me. She rubbed her chest as she looked at me.

"I'll take it easier on you than before but we really can't afford to get out of practice. We'll be out here for a week or so. That's two, back and forth to really get to know each other. Plus if we'll be working together it will help if we know the others' style."

She pulled her dolon on me and pranced closer with that otherworldly grace people who'd had their aura unlocked for a long time possessed.

"What's your weapon's name, by the way?"

She made a shushing gesture, a finger to her pink lips. A confident grin on her face.

"Uh, okay then."

She shook her head and pointed at her weapon.

"Oh the weapon's name is Shush."

She shook her head.

"Quiet? Silence?"

She pulled out her scroll and typed like she did when I was having trouble guessing. She didn't seem to use any real sign language and sometimes it was nearly impossible to determine what she meant. It was 'Hush' typed on the screen on a note word processor.

"So close! Well then it certainly suits you, Hush."

She rolled her eyes, exasperated that she'd had to pull her scroll.

I tapped out the ash from my pipe on a tree and squashed it. I put the pipe away in a bouch on my belt beside the relic. I wasn't sure how the damn thing worked and I hadn't really messed with it. I was willing to bet if I took the top off the lamp it would do something but I wasn't sure what it would do or even what for.

Sure something related to knowledge but that wasn't exactly a narrow topic. All of knowledge that is.

I still felt like my head was clear enough to fight despite the greens. I drew the longsword from my back. I held it with both hands on the long handle.

I rested my left beneath the right and breathed in. I activated my semblance with a little sigh. I felt good. I felt right.

Neo approached me and poked at the rising wisps of light.

"My semblance? It's called Limit Breaker. It makes me stronger and faster and there's a charge I can spend on an attack or movement."

She counted down with her fingers at a steady pace.

"How long does it last?"

Neo nodded.

"I'm not really sure. It used to only be fifteen seconds or so. Fifteen seconds to spend it or use the mobility and strength buffs. Now I can hold onto the charge for longer. Minutes, maybe." Fifteen seconds was short as fuck but minutes were long as Hell in a real fight.

It used to be a lot of pressure but now I had time to think and to trap my opponents with the superior speed and resilience.

"You ready?" I asked.

She shook her head, hiding a smile and I realized she was waiting for my semblance to evaporate away.

"Hey," I protested. "If you wanted to go without it you could have just said something."

She frowned at me. I threw the Limit away in the form of a blade-beam against a tree. It blended away against the bark, throwing out chips of wood and with a groan the tree fell.

"Fine. Alright? You ready?"

She grinned and vanished.

I stood still and listened. I watched carefully but couldn't see any indication of her movement. She reappeared on top of me. Bringing the sword-stick down on me, trying to breach my collar bone in what I was figuring was a favorite move of hers.

I had to raise Crocea Mors upwards to deflect the blow to the side. I tried to riposte but by the time I brought the weapon around and down in a counter attack she disappeared.

She reappeared behind me and kicked my right leg in the back of the knee. Now I don't care how strong you are and firm your balance is. You get kicked like that, you're dropping to at least one knee.

I did. I swept the sword around my body to ward her off and get back to my feet. As I tried to rise she came at me from the left and I struggled to bring the blade around in time to block the smaller, more lithe cane sword. I leaned on my blade like a knight as I rose to my feet.

I swiped at her and nicked her and sent her tumbling. She growled at me. She cartwheeled back to her feet and vanished.

She stabbed me in the chest, tearing out chunks of my aura as she did. I reached out with my left hand and grabbed her. Her eyes widened in surprise before I bounced her off the ground and tried to reach her by dancing my blade down in a large forward swipe.

I caught her and comboed her forward in four more strikes.

Once she was out of tumble she vanished and kicked me in the chest with both heels. I reeled backwards. She stabbed me from the right. Then reappeared on the left, further away from my sword.

I was sort of intentionally handicapping myself without the shield. I traded mobility for defense and I stepped back with her and tried to block, both hands on my long red hilt.

I caught her across the stomach with a touche and pushed her back with a tiny grimace from her. It activated my charge and I flew towards her. I jumped and brought the sword vertically around my body to deliver a punishing falling upwards swinging aerieal that launched her up in the air at a perfect middle height.

She broke the combo by teleporting in front of me. She jabbed at me with the umbrella and expanded it right in my face, pushing my sword to the side as a matter of course. She then flickered towards my throat with the thin blade. It caught me and I tried to grab her but my grab was slow and she twisted back away with a side flip.

I flew at her, holding my semblance, still. She dodged in place, leaning to the side. She jabbed at my face with her blade and it caught my aura and left a shallow cut on my cheek.

I grunted and in a flash spent my semblance I climbed her up in a massive upwards swing. The Limit Break attack made her aura flash and flicker in a tide of bright pink.

She rolled away from me. She slammed one arm in the dirt and vanished again. She reappeared with her legs around my head and used the momentum to try and slam me into a tree.

I jumped then backflipped off the tree instead of being rammed into it.

She still managed to bring me to the ground and tried to put me in an arm bar at the same time she stabbed down with her cane-sword. I dropped my blade and with pure main strength peeled her off of my arm and tossed her.

She landed neatly on her feet. Her eyes switched colors as she blinked at me.

She reappeared before me and stomped on my foot. I leaned forward unconsciously and she hooked me with her umbrella and used my momentum to throw me to the ground. I frontflipped in place to counter and whipped my sword around and knocked her off her feet.

She attacked me with an illusion. Making me see a flash of white before she went low and stabbed at me. I blindly swung downwards and she slid on her knees beneath the cut and stabbed up at my thigh. She pierced my aura and when I swung at her she vanished and shattered like a glass pane.

Our weapons clashed as I chased after her and she backed up. Three times they met with solid clanging noises as we did. Her blade was fast and it whipped through the air as I chased her.

I kicked out and our legs met. She rolled over it and kneed me in the face. I tried to grab her but she vanished.

I took a guess at where she would reappear and Cross-Slashed her. It was less serious without the broadsword. Even still, I tried to be light about it but she bounced off the ground and lay still.

"How you holding up?"

She frowned and tried to vanish but collapsed.

"Don't push yourself too hard, now. It's just training. To get better."

She glowered at me.

"Why don't we call it there. No reason to over extend until one of us is without aura. How does dinner sound, besides?"

My heart was racing and I could feel the high from my greens up top, really in my head.

She gave me a suspicious look.

"Don't worry. I'll cook."

She giggled a little. I walked over and pulled her to her feet. I rested my sword against my shoulder before I sheathed it.  

"Hey I can cook."

She snorted as though to say 'sure you can.'

"I can. You just watch. I'll whip something up. I mean it won't be five stars but it'll be edible." Eggs and rice? Eggs and rice.

I pulled out my pipe. "You want some?"

She sat and shook her head. She was giving me a hard to read, soft smile.

"Suit yourself. I'll get us a fire going and everything will be fine. It'll even be delicious, you'll see."

I wasn't Ren but I could put something together. Ren… nope bad thought. Didn't like that. I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to eat a breakfast burrito ever again.

He'd forgive you, Jaune. He would.

I reminded myself.

It was Salem. It was all her.

In the end, we sat back and ate in companionable silence.

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-WG