So I have a question: I was planning on introducing a character in my (eventual) RWBY fanfic that's based on Bladewolf. Now the issue isn't the Robot Dog part (Atlas has Mecha Mooks out the whazoo and it's made by an Atlasian company), I was wondering this:
If Penny's ability to produce Aura is because she's a sentient being, and nothing related to the tech that makes her up, would another truly sentient Artificial Intelligence be able to do the same, even if its not a Ridiculously Human Robot like her?
If you are going with that, then yes. Though it relies a bit on how it is viewed.
Until if/when Volume 4 has information on Penny (likely), we're still basically 
'ing how Penny has an Aura. And going by Pyrrha's comments about how Aura is a manifestation of one's soul...
"Do these units have a soul?"*
Also, knowing Ruby's love of weapons/tech, and the fact that she was super happy with her dad sending them Zwei, I'm having a feeling she'd have a case of I'm Taking Her Home with Me! upon seeing him. ![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
The image of Ruby Squeeing over an almost seven-foot long robot dog that's four-and-a-half feet tall at the shoulder is quite amusing
Prior to the reveal in Volume 3 the best guess to me was that Penny was powered by something remarkably close to an Aura, and her A.I. was meant to capitalize on that.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Well, it's been pretty heavily implied that the aura transfer device the Ozluminati wanted to use on Pyrrha was involved in Penny's creation (unless the fandom has been reading too much into that particular plot point).
That's the FNDM reading too into it. There was never any implication that the Aura Transfer Device was used in Penny's creation, at all
Wait, what reveal? That she's fully synthetic or?
That's the obvious answer when Ironwood says the technology has been proven, although they still weren't quite sure what would happen and if there would be side effects, which suggests maybe not, or at least they'd never transfered a living person's aura before, meaning Penny's was artifically created. Otherwise you'd think they'd just give Amber's aura to Penny, or to another robot, rather than fret over which student to throw into the potential blender.
But really we have no idea how Penny works beyond having an aura and Ruby thinking (thinking being the key word here) she has a soul.
The Aura Transfer Device, with the addition of the research Atlas was doing and Ozpin apparently not knowing. Honestly, the transfer device is a potentially disturbing plot bunny.
Perhaps that's what he was referring to, but unless it's explained, we don't know. Honestly, I think the way he says it is more along the lines of "It's been tested and likely works as we intended", IE: They've done simulations and number crunching, but never used it until that point, meaning the Aura Transfer machine was somewhat Unfinished, Untested, Used Anyway.
Well, it's not so much thinking as Pyrrha's explanation of Aura stated it's a manifestation of one's soul and that everything alive, even animals, have one. And clearly, we do know that she shuts down if she's bisected and that she's affected by magnetism.
Also, by the way, that's honestly one of the first things I'd make a robot that's supposed to be able to pass as human be immune to. Like, seriously. Non-magnetic metals and alloys are a thing people Hell, if I'm recalling this correctly, the strongest metal alloys we can produce are already non-magnetic.
Agreed on the potentially disturbing implications of that thing's existence.
edited 27th Jun '16 8:18:40 PM by BlackSunNocturne
Rough draft of a Jojo/RWBY crossover fusion fic.
Some hours later, a phone call was made. Nobody would even go near her. No one dared to ask her what was going on, how she did the things she did. Every single misfortune she’d dealt the officers, physical wounds and wounded pride, she’d done just by looking at them, not moving an inch, standing perfectly still inside her cell, not a finger or an eyebrow raised. She’d kept her hands in her pockets while she tormented them, every officer claimed. They wanted her gone, so they did a quick game where the shortest straw lost. The officer who’d lost made a big gulp, and they ultimately had to shove him back into the hallway with the jail cells.
“Um, m-miss? We, we’d like to contact your family members, or any g, guardians you might have. Could you please t, tell us your name?”
The girl, lying down on her cot with her head resting on her arm, her back facing him, didn’t respond at first. The officer considered walking back out when she didn’t answer, though he knew his colleagues would chew him out and probably force him back in there if he didn’t get a name. Then the girl shifted so she laid on her back, keeping one leg bent and the other one straight. And a name flickered from her lips. “Ruby Rose.”
He almost didn’t even hear it, her voice was so low. But he thanked her and hurried out, not stopping for a breath, his hands lunging for the exit door.
It took some digging and some actual detective work. But they did manage to find a family name listed in the council’s registry, except it wasn’t a family that lived in the city of Vale. Ruby Rose, father Taiyang Rose-Xiao Long, sister Yang Xiao Long, mother unlisted. They lived in a house on an island just off the shore of Vale, a dingy marshland called Patch.
As soon as they’d made the call and spoke with the father, Taiyang couldn’t have sounded anymore displeased. He asked if she was alright and to hold on, he would make the trip into Vale immediately.
The officers on duty at the Vale Police Department sat on pins and needles that afternoon. Some played Solitaire to keep their minds off of the haunted teenage girl locked in one of the cells. Others made excuses to go home early, citing that their children had suffered some kind of injury and needed their parents. No one, not even the station’s chief, called them out on what were patently obvious lies.
It dawned on said chief that they’d left a teenage girl in a dimly-lit prison cell without supervision. She hadn’t exactly given them any choice. She’d just walked in, told them to arrest her for assaulting six to eight people in public, and walked to the jail cells without further comment. They weren’t hurting for funds from the city; the building had a decent camera system and the proper amenities. But it wasn’t equipped with male and female-only cells.
If memory served, they already had three or four prior arrests sitting in that cell, and a bunch of low-lifes at that, at least two of them sex offenders. One of them was a member of that Red Axe Gang, brutal bastards who’d organized in a nightclub downtown. The Red Axes had drug trafficking, violence, robberies, arson, and certainly some assault charges on their ledger.
When the guilt finally struck, the police chief checked the cameras.
Moments later, the chief yelled and told six officers to get in there. They bolted through the door afraid of what they would find. They hadn’t given any thought to sending the scary little girl in there. Abandoning a minor in a prison, not paying any of the other prisoners any mind. Fear had jeopardized their sense of reason. Their moral codes wouldn’t go unscathed. Some would certainly lose their jobs for allowing this to happen.
“Help me, agggghh!”
Crash. Someone yelled as they were thrown against their will. Thud. Panicked breathes, their shoulders heaved as hands grabbed and pulled at their clothes.
“Oh goddraah-achhk!”
The jail sang with another thud, a forehead banging the steel bars. Hair was tugged, limbs bent at awkward angles against their will. Another rattle of clothes as someone was forced to the ground, bending at the knees while a dark shape loomed over them.
“What are you assholes doing over there? Let us out of here right now!” the lucky one screamed.
Six officers watched the spectacle. There were five grown men in the cell, and three had been knocked unconscious, stripped to their boxers, and appeared to bleeding from different orifices. The fourth cried as his head repeatedly smacked the surface of the jail cell. His arms twisted behind him, it was as if he were being held in place while something punched him in the head.
“She’s crazy, she’s actually got an evil spirit!” the lucky one pleaded, hands fastened around the bars. “Please, let me out of here, I’ll do anything! Throw me in solitary for the love of god!”
While the officers stared, they didn’t see the police chief waddle through their ranks. But it was the same reaction, the haste to rescue the newest inmate from a horrible end, and then the frozen silence when they saw her. Standing right where she’d been before, perhaps a little closer to the bed, hands in her pockets. The same pissed-off look on her face, heavy eyebrows over silver daggers pointed at the enemy. The same dark hair swept coolly to one side of her face, the same callousness.
“Wh, what... happened here?” asked the police chief.
She gazed over at the chief and the officers. Closing her eyes and turning around, she said, “Those two over there, the one with the broken face and the one with the arm I yanked out of the socket.” She pointed at them. ”Told me to take off my clothes or else I was going to get hurt. So I took their clothes off instead and hurt them. If you need something else to keep me in here, add sex offender to the list.”
Finished, she tugged the front of her hat down, dragging the emblem, a silver rose, over her eyes. Four of her cellmates bled out on the floor. The scary girl calmly went to lie down, sighing as she rested her head on her arm and promptly went back to sleep.
The police chief and the six officers mulled over their options. They unanimously agreed to walk out of the room and lock the door behind them.
-
“She did what?”
Taiyang tried to listen to what the police chief was saying, but the events didn’t make any sense.
The police chief’s fingers were knotted over the desk. Uneasiness settled into the experienced police officer’s face. “I wish I were exaggerating. She told us to add ‘sex offender’ to the list of charges, which was nonexistent to begin with at least according to our records, and-“
“Why?” Taiyang burst, livid.
The chief gulped, eyes closed. “One of the inmates her, her evil spirit attacked is going to need diapers for the rest of his life, however long that is.”
“Hmph.” Taiyang folded his arms, restraining himself from a long whistle. He glanced behind him, seeing the nod that Qrow and the woman in white, apparently an associate of Qrow’s, gave him. Taiyang turned his head back to the police chief. “All right, I think the huntsmen and the huntress should take it from here.”
The police station had requested assistance from nearby huntsmen and huntresses right away. The sooner the got Taiyang's violent daughter off the police's hands, the better.
Taiyang sighed as they entered the cell area. At least he’d had one daughter who wanted to make something of her life. Yang wanted to be a huntress. They’d received her acceptance letter to Beacon last week and he’d never seen her more excited. That was what Summer wanted. In some respect, he supposed Raven might see Yang’s development into a powerful huntress as a good thing also.
But then, Raven wouldn't lift a finger to help Yang, and would have thought the world of Ruby at this age.
edited 22nd Jul '16 2:33:28 PM by Soble
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The Cat Knows Where It's At
I love it so much. I need more of it in my life. Please keep writing more.
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So as I mentioned in the main RWBY thread, I'm currently working on one member of two OC teams who'll be featured in a series of fics.
Presently, I have his semblance (Super-Speed) down, but not exactly how it looks. I'm thinking having it described as him just disappearing from the viewer's sight, then appearing somewhere else. His POV will be much more fun.
Also, I feel that Personality Powers will be in play, or at least his Semblance is hinted at by a major liking of sweets and sugary stuff.
The other member of his team who I've gotten the basic idea for his semblance is one of three OCs who are shapeshifters. The first one who's introduced is a full-blown shapeshifter, whereas the other two are single-form.
The team member of speedynote ... Well his first name is Rex, so that be a hint enough.
edited 25th Jul '16 9:34:29 PM by BlackSunNocturne
regarding the Doom crossover:
Yeah, i would avoid talking like that. If you really want the story to be set inside a video game, don't pretend it isn't a video game. If you want the story to be somewhat "realistic" then don't pause the story to tell people how it's just like a video game but not really a video game.
If the health monitor is actually important to the story, then change it enough to sound reasonable. I.e. make it some kind of heart rate/blood pressure/miscellaneous health monitoring system. Have it flash a little warning sign that says "seek medical attention!" or something reasonable like that.
not "hey dude your health is at 30." Narrative-wise, it's meaningless. Unless this is a comedy/parody where a guy can go from 100% killing machine at 1 health and then instantly die from getting poked.
Leave video game mechanics inside video games, and only incorporate them when they actually add to the narrative.
Also, from the get-go you say he will speak very little, but he speaks two lines out of the first five lines in the story. Most of that speech could be turned into narrative lines anyway.
edit: also something else I noticed. Verb tense consistency.
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/601/04/
basically, you seem to shift from past tense to present tense back and forth within a paragraph. Keep tenses consistent. It may not take away from the meaning but it tends to throw people off a little bit, making reading it feel "weird" and breaks up the flow.
edited 3rd Aug '16 4:03:44 PM by willyolio
The Cat Knows Where It's At
I'd like to point out that health bars are canonical to RWBY. They only appear in the context of student related activities but they exist.
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true, but they don't indicate health. They indicate aura, which as far as i can tell, is always evenly distributed across the whole body until it completely fails. Aura is basically a magical macguffin that can work any way you want it to, and it CAN be easily represented by a single number. Above 0 = active, below 0 = too bad.
30 health means nothing, and it isn't measuring aura. Are you missing an arm? Is there a bullet in your stomach? People are familiar with human bodies; i'm fairly certain the readers have been using one their entire lives. It further separates the reader from the character, while at the same time also REDUCING the amount of detail you could be giving to the reader about how the character is actually feeling.
again, it isn't inherently bad to have a health bar or other distinctly game-like mechanics in a story and i've seen it used to great comedic effect. But having the narrator try to reassure readers it isn't a video game while acting like it is a game is just bad.
edited 3rd Aug '16 4:32:16 PM by willyolio
Aura in RWBY is less health and more video game shielding (like say, Halo), as without any aura the character is, effectively, helpless.
It only is critical in controlled duels. Once aura gets to the danger level they lose, since they don't want anyone risking death.
Theorectically in an actual fight to the death you could get your aura depleted and still win so long as you avoid any further hits.
About the whole health bar thing in the Doom crossover, one way I think that could work is similar to Harry Potter and the Natural 20, in that the Doomguy's world runs on Doom game mechanics, and he still runs by said mechanics while in the RWBY-verse, so only he can see the game HUD and such.
edited 4th Aug '16 9:37:00 AM by MapleSamurai
Isn't the HUD from his Helmet?
but it's also more than that, the "game mechanics" and such are an actual plot point and matter to the story, and there's deeper analysis to it.
just having HP for the sake of having HP feels lazy to me. Forcibly incorporating game mechanics without "adapting" it to fit the story just sounds jarring to me.
heck, even *inside* a game with a story, the story moments almost never speak about HP or game mechanics and such unless it's satirizing the genre.
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
Say, has anyone here read Professor Arc?
The premise and the first few chapters most certainly intrigue me, but I'm not sure if I should keep on reading.
I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
Emissary of the Void
It's fairly interesting, but in time, you're going to see how something as being overqualified can put you in over your head fast.
[DATA LOST]
It's not game mechanics at all. They're only displayed at such during school duels, and that's more for the benefit of the audience that anything.
The actual reason for aura story aside was just so they could have fights between characters using ridiculously deadly weapons like Cresent Rose without limbs flying everywhere. As either the fights would be brutal and quick or they'd have to spend all of going out of their way to make sure nobody gets hit directly. Instead they created aura so characters could take a few giant scythe blows to the face without dying immediately.
The Cat Knows Where It's At
They didn't have to do either, though. They could have just gone by Final Fantasy rules and have had the blades do nothing except for when they do.
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Blake could also find her parents in their youth.
Hey, guys. Finished the second chapter for DOOM: Knee-deep in the Dust.
What do ya think?
A stranger is like the shadows.It is so common to the world everyone will just ignore them.