#y'all have no idea how badly i want to talk about ozma and his hosts

[rwby-redux]

Are there any characters who have different semblances than in canon? Or those who have unknown semblances actually shown?

A few characters, yeah!

Last year, when I talked about how Semblances were adjusted in the Redux, I sorted characters according to the degree to which their Semblance was modified. They got placed under one of five headings:

Characters who had their Semblances slightly adjusted.

Characters who had their Semblances completely overhauled.

Characters who had their Semblances removed and replaced with something else.

Characters with no Semblances.

Characters who previously lacked a Semblance, and were given one.

While plenty of characters (Yang, Sun, Pyrrha, etc) had their Semblances left intact, some needed to be modified to fit the new parameters that I created for the Semblance category system. Others had to be adjusted because of the out-of-context/meta issues surrounding them (like James’ Semblance being tied to ableism).

The rest of this post is going under a readmore. Potential spoilers ahead.

Ruby’s Semblance was the first one to get revamped. Instead of that weird quantum mechanics thing where she can disassemble and reassemble herself on a molecular level, she gets plain ol’ superspeed. No more transforming into clusters of petals and passing through narrow gaps. Ruby now has to work within the limitations and constraints imposed by superspeed: turning on a dime, braking and stopping abruptly, and weaving between obstacles without losing velocity. When she arrives at Beacon, she actually ends up becoming rather chummy with Oobleck because he offers to give her some pointers. The two of them share the same Semblance, and Oobleck is painfully familiar with learning how to not run headlong into things.

The Schnee Semblance (Weiss et al) got changed from being a grab bag of miscellaneous powers, to a single, definitive ability: summoning the thralls of defeated Grimm. I talk about the issues surrounding Weiss’ glyphs in greater depth here and here, so I won’t waste too much time rehashing those points. Basically, I wanted to decrease Weiss’ reliance on her Semblance, and force her to have a much more agile fighting style reminiscent of Winter’s fencing (as seen in V3.E3). It also means that when Weiss arrives at Beacon, she effectively hasn’t unlocked her Semblance yet. The fact that her family’s Semblance is publicly known makes Weiss extremely self-conscious. There’s a degree of expectation that she’s held to because everyone knows what it’s going to be eventually. The pressure that puts on Weiss frequently leaves her frustrated and insecure, in addition to overly self-critical. (It would be the difference between some random person unlocking their Semblance and getting told, “Hey, good job,” whereas Weiss unlocks it and everyone goes, “Well it’s about time. Took you long enough.”)

Ren’s Semblance is more or less the same as it was pre-V7/8, in that it allows him to cloak his emotions (along with the emotions of whoever he comes into contact with). It no longer enables him to see those multi-colored petal-things that float around people. Semblances that conceal one’s emotions from Grimm are direct responses to a sense that Grimm have, called algeaception (the detection of negatively-valenced emotions).

Raven’s Semblance, while it does enable her to teleport, isn’t tied to people that she shares an emotional link with. Instead, it allows her to move between two locations, but only if they’re places that she’s physically been to beforehand. If, for example, Raven wanted to teleport to the City of Mistral, she would have to concentrate on a specific location within the city (like a bar, or a hotel) and recall it with near-perfect clarity. Her Semblance requires a good deal of concentration in order to pull off. There were a few reasons why I ditched the emotional link component of her canon Semblance, which I’ll discuss on a later date. For now, the short version was that I wanted her Semblance to be something that she had direct control over, in the sense that Raven could choose what places she wanted to visit, in order to have the ability to teleport to them later on. That, and I was never fond of the show using Raven’s Semblance as “proof” that she still had an emotional connection to the daughter that she abandoned.

Cinder’s Semblance allows her to modify temperature and superheat things that she comes into contact with. Where it differs from the canon is that she can’t manipulate the things that she superheats (so she can’t heat sand particles into glass and then kinetically levitate them like she does in the show). By limiting her Semblance to just one specific thing, it forces Cinder to be a lot more creative—a lot more cunning—with how she goes about using it.

Jupiter’s Semblance was described as being able to turn water into vapor, so presumably, converting it from a liquid to a gaseous state. Given how oddly specific this Semblance was, I decided to tweak it. In the Redux, Jupiter and Neptune both have hydrokinetic Semblances. Their Semblances, similar to Weiss’, are now hereditary.

Marcus’ Semblance doesn’t actually enable him to “steal” someone else’s. What it does is temporarily dampen or suppress a target’s Semblance, rendering them unable to use it for a certain amount of time. However, because Marcus has been using his Semblance on Mercury for years, it resulted in a medical condition called subapothymia. Mercury’s Semblance isn’t gone; it’s just been severely dampened from long-term, recurring exposure to his father’s Semblance, to the point where the effect is now semi-permanent. One of the reasons why Mercury works for Cinder (and by extension, Salem) is because it gives him access to medical treatment through Watts. Watts was one of the world’s foremost experts in Aura and Semblance research—as such, he has the know-how to try and cure (or at the least, improve) Mercury’s condition. Changing the way that Marcus’ Semblance works created a scenario in which Mercury has a motive to stick around and help Salem, apart from simply wanting to be “top dog” in her new world.

James had his Semblance axed for fairly obvious reasons. The same goes for Hazel. Instead of giving either of them new Semblances, I opted to leave them without, because I wanted to have characters who managed to be successful fighters despite lacking them. I always found it fascinating that characters like Roman were consistently portrayed as credible threats (similar to Mai and Ty Lee in A:TLA, who were both deadly fighters despite being nonbenders), and I wanted to continue that trend with other characters in the show.

Sienna no longer has a Semblance, partly because her canon Semblance no longer fits under the category system that I created for the Redux. The other reason why I nixed it is because Sienna is now a non-combatant.

While there wasn’t anything wrong with Coco’s Semblance, strictly speaking, I wanted to get rid of it in order to have more characters who manage to get by without them. Despite only being a Second Year student, Coco is widely regarded as one of Beacon’s strongest fighters. It’s a fact that gives Jaune and Weiss some comfort, since at the beginning of the story, neither of them has unlocked theirs yet. For them, Coco is proof that you don’t need a Semblance to be dangerous.

As I mentioned earlier, Oobleck now has a speed Semblance like Ruby and Harriet. Port was given an intangibility Semblance, a power which allows him to render himself (or things that he comes into contact with) temporarily untouchable. Saber was given a terrakinetic Semblance, while Joanna was given an absorption Semblance (like Yang and Adam). Russel now has an invisibility Semblance like May, Dove has a pyrokinetic Semblance, and Sky has an acoustic Semblance (which allows him to amplify or increase the intensity of sounds that he makes, or of the things that he comes into contact with).

Maria and Marrow are both getting new Semblances, but I haven’t decided on what these will be just yet. Maria, because her canon Semblance is nearly identical to the extrasensory perception that’s already a built-in feature of Aura (see: Pyrrha’s speech to Jaune during the Emerald Forest, where she describes a function of Aura as “[feeling] like you were being watched”). Marrow, because it makes me really uncomfortable that an in-universe minority—a literal dog Faunus—activates his Semblance by using a command given to pets.

There are a few characters (like Tai and Summer) who I haven’t changed because I’m waiting to see if the canon will eventually unveil what their Semblances are (or if they ever had one to begin with). For now, those characters are TBD.

The only characters whose Semblances I can’t talk about are Qrow, Clover, Pietro, Penny, Ozma, Ozpin, and Oscar.

In the case of Qrow and Clover (who both have probability Semblances), it’s because it would give away crucial aspects of Qrow’s character arc.

In the case of Pietro and Penny (who both lack Semblances), it’s because it would reveal the circumstances of Penny’s creation.

In the case of all of Ozma’s hosts (who all lack Semblances), it’s because it would give away major changes to how the Redux handles magic (and by extension, the effects of the curse).

Trust me; you don’t want to have those spoiled.