The gang's all here! note
"May dust be brought to dust but not bring despair, for there is no futility even in death."
SLVR (pronounced "silver") is a fan-made series created by YouTuber Mark Zhang
. It is based off of RoosterTeeth's Animesque series RWBY.
With the exception of the Charcoal Trailer, each trailer focuses on the members of Team SLVR.
- "Charcoal" Trailer
- SLVR "Silver" Trailer
- SLVR "Linen" Trailer
- SLVR "Viridian" Trailer
- SLVR "Regalia" Trailer
On May 19, 2023, Mark Zhang and various other RWBY content creators came together to make the Odyssey Club Tournament, a four-part mini web series where their characters duke it off in Beacon's amphitheater and framed as practice for actual upcoming tournaments like the Vytal Festival. Team SLVR represents Mark's group in the web series.
Contains examples of:
- Action Girl: To be expected of a fan series based on RWBY, where virtually any female character has a weapon that's also a gun and can kick ass. Vella, Ragora, and Lysette all qualify.
- Aerith and Bob: Brandon's is the only normal name out of the entire cast (appropriately, since he is not a part of the titular team). The others have names like Lycan, Simin, and Ragora.
- All There in the Manual: Details like the character names, weapons and Semblances are revealed in the descriptions of the YouTube videos.
- Ambiguous Situation: The Charcoal Trailer offers little in the way of information, even after The Reveal of Brandon having some kind of connection towards Pandora. What was inside the container he stole from the Jade Ninjas, and why was he targeting it?
- An Ice Person: Lysette's Semblance lets her drop the temperature of anything she touches. Combined with Ice Dust, she can create structures of ice, and freezes Ragora solid at one point in the Regalia trailer. Also to a lesser extent, Simin, he channels a variety of Dust through his jacket, but seems to somewhat favor Ice the most.
- Animal Motif: Wolves for Lycan (he's a Faunus) and swans for Lysette.
- Art Evolution: The animation in the trailers get progressively better to the point that you would be forgiven for thinking it's an official spinoff of RWBY.
- Ascended Fanboy: Meta-wise, Mark Zhang created the Charcoal Trailer sometime before Monty's passing. It garnered overwhelming praise and even caught the attention of RoosterTeeth. Though he's not a member of their staff, Zhang was hired to work on fight animations for ScrewAttack's DEATH BATTLE!.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: When Team SLVR is finally gathered in the latter half of the Regalia Trailer, this trope is invoked to the max, as Lycan rushes in and takes down Armors left and right like it's going out of fashion alongside Simin before Vella appears and provides support.
- Big Bad:
- The White Fang and a Expy of the White Fang Lieutenant from Volume 2 are the antagonists of the Silver Trailer, apparently looting a warehouse that Simin is staking out.
- The "sword and shield" androids in the Viridian Trailer, which are chasing after Vella for unknown reasons.
- The Grimm are natural antagonists in the Linen Trailer, inhabiting a ruined city that Lycan is exploring, though his final opponent is a Grimm-possessed Armor.
- Lysette Atratus, a member of Pandora, is the antagonist of the Regalia Trailer, leading a platoon of Armors and demanding Ragora to surrender before engaging her.
- Blood Knight: Lycan. His Establishing Character Moment has him jump head-first at a bunch of Grimm. And when it looks like he's about to face off against the Omega Beowolf, he cracks a grin and cracks his knuckles. And then there's his appearance in Regalia...Lycan: I'M GONNA SMASH YOUR STUPID FACES IN!
- Blow You Away: Simin's wind dust generates a lance that creates a large tornado upon impact, sucking in his enemies and tossing them around.
- Book Ends: The first trailer in the series, Charcoal, ended with Brandon obtaining the Jade Ninjas' cargo and leaving the bridge by ship. At the end of the Regalia Trailer, Team SLVR is all gathered and watches that same ship descend in front of them. This serves as an excellent way to bring all the trailers together in full circle, especially with the possibility of Team SLVR and Brandon about to engage.
- Call-Back: In RWBY Volume 2, it was mentioned that infusing clothes with Dust was an age-old technique. Simin's weapon of choice? A Dust-infused jacket that lets him make weapons out of the stuff, ranging from swords, shields, and spears.
- The Cameo: The White Fang and the Grimm appear in the Silver and Linen Trailers respectively, serving as the main antagonists to the trailer's respective hero.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Much like in RWBY, each character's name and overall attire is themed after a color, reflected by the trailers they appear in; Charcoal for Brandon, Silver for Simin, Linen for Lycan, Viridian for Vella and Regalia for Ragora.
- Deadpan Snarker: Ragora, full-stop. Her response to Lysette asking her to surrender?Ragora: Hm... I'll consider it if you hand over the Radiant.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: In the Charcoal Trailer, none of the characters of Team SLVR were introduced, likely because they were not conceptualized at that point. It also probably helped to keep Brandon's own character and affiliations a mystery, given his connection to the antagonists of the Regalia Trailer.
- Expy:
- Hm, Little Bit Beastly going for him, hot-headed and his weapon more or less gives him sharp claws... So what'cha doin' here, Logan?note
- An In-Universe example (fan-made series aside), Lysette to Winter Schnee. Lysette has similar features to her and Weiss to the point where she could almost be mistaken for a Schnee herself and has a rather strict personality.
- Faceless Mooks: The Armors are autonomous machine knights that serve as cannon fodder for Pandora. The only known instance of them being Elite Mooks is if they're infected by possession-type Grimm, as shown in the Linen Trailer.
- Great Bow: Vella's weapon of choice is a rifle-bow.
- Hijacked by Ganon: The Armor that Lycan faces in the Linen Trailer is noticeably more powerful than the ones in the Regalia Trailer. The video description for Regalia explains that the Armor was taken over by a possession-type Grimm similar to a Geist.
- Impossibly Cool Clothes: Simin's jacket is infused with Dust.
- Light Is Not Good: Lysette is dressed in a white military outfit, and she's certainly not an ally of SLVR.
- Little Bit Beastly: Lycan is a Faunus, though his animal features are rather hard to spot at first. His Faunus traits are slitted eyes and fang-shaped teeth.
- Meaningful Name:
- Brandon's name is an allusion to Nicholas Flammel, the French scribe reported being a legendary alchemist that discovered the secrets of immortality. His weapon, Magnum Opus, references the process used to create the Philosopher's Stone.
- Simin's last name, Megistus, is in reference to Hermes Trismegistus, the Greek name of the Egyptian god Thoth, who was affiliated with many things such as wisdom, mathematics, writing, magic, and the moon, neatly tying into SLVR's lunar theme.
- Lycan alludes to Lycaon, a king of the Greek nation Arcadia who, according to myths, killed his son and tried to feed his roasted remains to Zeus, the king of the gods, to test his divinity. As punishment, Zeus turned Lycaon and the rest of his children into wolves, becoming one of the first werewolves in ancient cultures, even lending his name to the alternative term "lycanthrope".
- Vella's name is a reference to Vellamo, the Finnish goddess of the waters and wife of fellow sea god Ahti. She is known mainly for having a tall and beautiful stature, giving blessings to fishermen, wearing a blue dress made of seafoam, and possessing powers over the winds, storms, and waves.
- Ragora Cinarum is a shortened derivative of Mandragora offcinarum , aka the purple-colored mandrake flower. It was used in witchcraft as a medium for spiritual familiars to reside in, due to the unique, man-shaped appearance of the root itself.
- Lysette comes from the Danish term Lyset, meaning "The Light", while her surname, Atratus refers to Cygnus atratus, the black swan. It's also implied that Lysette may be based on the Denmark fairy tale "The Ugly Duckling," given her swan motif.
- Mythology Gag: In the Viridian trailer, Vella twirling around in midair as she pulls out her weapon to shoot at the start of the fight after seemingly fleeing from the enemies as well as her later switching her weapon's configuration mode midfight are references to Ruby doing the same things in the Red trailer.
- Playing with Fire: Brandon's semblance lets him heat up anything he touches. He uses this with his weapon, heating up the blade to easily slice through his opponents and increasing the power of his weapon's gun form to shoot through three enemies at once. Simin's jacket is infused with Dust and lets him make weapons with the same attribute as the Dust he's currently using: when using Fire Dust, he uses a BFS made out of the fire.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Brandon has red-orange eyes, and he took down his attackers without taking any hits.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: While we don't know who's a partner is whom, Lycan is most definitely the Red Oni to his team's Blue Oni, easily being the most hot-blooded of the bunch.
- The Reveal: The Regalia Trailer opens up with the final member of Team SLVR, Ragora, infiltrating an occupied fortress protected by Armors. They were first seen in a still-shot at the end of the Charcoal Trailer and reappeared in Linen as a Grimm-possessed enemy. The Regalia Trailer establishes that they are the mooks of a group called Pandora, which brings the nature behind Brandon's affiliations into question.
- Shout-Out:
- Possibly an unintentional case, but the Charcoal Trailer has several to Gundam.
- Brandon physically resembles Shinn Asuka with his dark-colored hair and red-orange eyes.
- Brandon's use of a sword is also reminiscent of how Shinn favored using longswords in combat.
- Finally, the music for the trailer is an English cover of "Ash Like Snow".
- Also, Brandon's completely one-sided dispatching of both the ninjas and the samurais can be seen as reminiscent of how Gundam-type machines are typically able to single-handedly and effortlessly obliterate droves of Mecha-Mooks.
- Because of the hat, Ragora tends to remind many viewers of Megumin. Especially near the end of the Regalia Trailer when Simin arrives and Ragora appears sprawled with her face down, almost identical to the Crimson Demon after casting Explosion.
- Possibly an unintentional case, but the Charcoal Trailer has several to Gundam.
- Suddenly Voiced: From Charcoal to Viridian, the characters didn't so much as even let out a grunt. Linen was the first known use of voice-acting in the series, though Lycan had no actual speaking lines and instead just let out battle cries, roars, and screams. Voice acting was officially used in Regalia.
- Summon Magic: Ragora's semblance, aptly named "familiar" ties into her witch theme as it lets her summon a purple draconic head that can shoot explosive blasts at her enemies, though it mostly just tries to take a bite out of you.
- Wolverine Claws: Lycan's weapon gives him four claw-like blades that extend from the back of each hand.
- Wolverine Wannabe: As mentioned above under Expy, Lycan is a Little Bit Beastly, Hot-Blooded berserker who fights with Wolverine Claws by stabbing and slashing with them.
