Well Semblances being a lesser form of magic isn't necessarily a new concept. Ever since their conception people had been thinking Semblances counted as Magic until Word of God that it wasn't, precisely because there were real magic users like Salem and Ozma, the last of the Old Humans, and the Maidens and the Branwen Twins, people imbued with magic by Ozma.
Then of course there being the textbook definition of "Semblance": the outward appearance or apparent form of something, especially when the reality is different. In other words, it looks like something, but it isn't that thing. So Semblances looking like Magic could be wholly intentional, since what Nu!Humanity can do pales in comparison to Old!Humanity, and it in turn makes it easier for magic users to disguise their abilities as a Semblance, as Wyld is partially suggesting.
For all we know, the first semblances could have came about because of Ozma. He could of used whatever magic he had and passed it off as a Semblance, and then trained others to control their aura and partially replicate what he's shown them, to the point it not only becomes commonplace, but also more varied based on how one's aura shapes it.
Edited by RebelFalcon on Oct 19th 2019 at 6:48:52 AM
Vegeta: I'm back bitches!
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Yes, the first two paragraphs pretty much sums up my approach to the concept of Semblances as well.
Edited by Wyldchyld on Oct 20th 2019 at 4:10:26 PM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Oh, I forgot we got Jacques' maiden name. Yeah, in a world that uses Meaningful Name so utterly shamelessly, there's no way that's not intentional. Not sure about the shadow control Semblance thing, but at the very least he is thematically controlling several powerful women.
I know it was before volume 3, where it was confirmed in-text that Weiss had a hereditary Semblance. Other than that, I can't recall.
Yeah... sometimes it looks like Ruby's power is "Super-Speed and she sheds rose petals," other times it looks like "turn into rose petals and then move really fast." I don't think we even have an official name for her Semblance, or anyone else on Team RWBY, when we've got official names for basically every other known Semblance.
No one has indicated that Semblances are learned. They just pop up one day. I do think Ozma is the source of unlocked Aura, though. The guy he saved when he first reincarnated looked very surprised that he was able to do what, in modern Remnant, would be considered a rather basic Aura-strengthened attack.
I know we've seen very little of how real magic works, and even less of how people used magic pre-cataclysm, but I do have a theory on magic and Semblances. It's pretty much entirely supposition, though.
So, first, Semblances are, narratively, superpowers. One Person, One Power, Personality Powers, a bunch of other stuff you'd expect out of a comic book. My assumption from there is that magic is not simply "Semblances, but more powerful," but more along the lines of a science or an art. If you want to be a magic archer, you don't have to cross your fingers and hope you get a power that will be useful—you find a magic archer, and they'll teach you how to use magic in such a way that will be useful. We saw a bunch of archers shoot magic at the God of Darkness, so that's a thing. People might have natural inclinations, like how someone might be better at math, but in theory anyone can learn anything.
Then comes the apocalypse, and reborn humanity has just the barest dregs of magic. So now, instead of their magic just kinda generically floating around waiting to be used, it has to be concentrated into a single, specific form in order to be at all useful. And that's a Semblance, the best their soul can do with the power they have available.
Also not entirely sure where Aura fits into all this.
You cant used your semblance with no aura.
It said magic was a gift of god of darkness, so I will said is a conection with their soul, is clear for me this is just a pale imitation of true magic which it seen it can do faaaaaaar more than just one power.
What is intersting is that silver eyes power IS not magic because it come from god of light.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
Barb(Its a thread joke you wouldn't get it)
You know one complaint I have about the show? Oddly from what's probably my favorite episode?
The implication The Pool of Darkness impacted Salems agency.
It feels...cheap. The episode mostly did a great job at Showing Salems descent into Villainy and made her a very complex charachter. So saying "The Pool made her evil" comes off as unneeded, especially with a Charachter who's defined by her her Never My Fault complex.
Things are really about to get Fun around here
She went from "f-ck the police" to "we live in a society." That was the pool's doing. I'm okay with the evil pool of angsty darkness making her that way.
Going from "angry, immortal woman who thinks her gods are unfair" to "will smite her husband and children for not wanting to take over the world with her" is a pretty big change.
It also explains her skin bleach and her jet black eyes better than "being evil in RWBY means you gradually become evil-looking."
Infamous did that with Cole Mcgrath, having his skin become discolored and his electricity become red for no explainable reason than to point out his karmic alignment. And I just... hate that trope. In the first game you can Hand Wave that Cole is becoming dirtier because he commits more gruesome actions, but in the second he just starts looking sickly and evil just 'cause.
If Salem had gone from fairy tale MILF to Kaguya Otsutsuki without going into the evil pool of angsty darkness I'd be sitting here wondering why she chose that look. Because I am certain one of the rules of being an Evil Overlord is that 'do not dress yourself up like an Evil Overlord''.
Edited by Soble on Oct 19th 2019 at 8:36:55 AM
I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!
Barb(Its a thread joke you wouldn't get it)
My issue isn't that she fell into the pool. Its the "Made her obsessed with destruction" sentance Wich implied it turned her evil. They could have just explained it's how she got her powers over the Grimm and made her look like that.
And while it's a pretty big change, it isn't necessarily a jarring one. Her motives, hypocritical and monsterous as they are, actually make sense with her past.
She wants to gain her own "Freedom" at the expense of everyone else's, she wants to be free from the gods by, in her eyes becoming a godess herself.
Things are really about to get Fun around here
Face me now, Bitch!
looking at her now, Salem kinda reminds me of Messiah
from GARO (Mildly NSFW for Noods).
Musician/Composer
Anyway, with November approaching fast, aside from that inevitable final confrontation Weiss will probably have with Jacques at some point in Volume 7 (which might include a moment where Jacques undergoes a Break the Haughty moment and Weiss officially breaks her ties with him for good in front of her friends; but as with some of my predictions; I could be wrong), what are your predictions on how this volume will turn out (such as the storylines)?
Edited by gjjones on Oct 19th 2019 at 1:00:56 PM
He/His/Him. No matter who you are, always Be Yourself.
Salem showing up in person and wrecking everyone.
I think Semblances are a fractured remnant of the magic humanity once possessed. That part of the magic that linked to the deepest part of a person's soul, the very core of who they are. The bit that cannot be broken away from the life of a person. And that's the bit that manifests as what Humanity Revised calls 'Semblance'.
However, given that Ozma is responsible for the creation of the Huntsmen, and the Huntsmen Academies, and therefore the entire modern system of training people to master their Aura and Semblances, it certainly does suggest that Ozma may have a history of teaching humanity how best to develop their Auras and Semblances.
That said, given how Ozma came into the 'new' world and live with Humanity Revised, it stands to reason that he actually had to learn about Aura and Semblance as he went along. So, even if he is responsible for the modern system of mastering Aura and Semblance, he must have been forced to learn this knowledge over time from scratch.
After all, the stumbling block I always hit was the actual name 'Semblance'. My theory that Semblances were a remnant of magic suffered from the idea that people don't believe in magic and don't know magic exists. If they don't know magic exists, they can't call their innate powers 'Semblance' in the sense of being a 'semblance' of magic because they know nothing about magic and don't regard Semblances as magic.
So, that required someone who was familiar with magic and the relationship between magic and Semblances to actually give Semblances that name. And that's Ozma.
What I'm saying is that I don't think Ozma created Semblances. Did he first unlock Humanity Revised's Auras? He might well have done so. But I don't think he created Semblances, so much as he figured out how to train them and get the most out of them once they'd been discovered. And, of course, he's had far more time than any of Humanity Revised to explore the human potential of Aura and Semblances.
That does mean that I think he may have a deeper understanding of Aura and Semblance than Salem. Salem isn't Humanity Revised. She's Humanity Prime and uses magic. I don't believe she has a Semblance for that reason. Ozma, however, constantly reincarnates into Humanity Revised, so his host will have a Semblance even if he can bring the magic. That means he's had a vested interest in developing the knowledge of Aura and Semblance in way Salem doesn't.
In other words, I think Ozma's journey through Humanity Revised is one where his magic decreases over time while his Aura and Semblance(s?) increase over time. Meanwhile, Salem stagnates at the level she's always been: if she keeps her magic, then it'll never decrease — but it'll never increase either. The only way she can get more magic is by stealing Ozma's magic (starting with the four Maidens). As to whether it's possible her magic has decreased over time... it depends if what she's doing to create new varieties of Grimm is her equivalent of what Ozma has done to create shapeshifters (I suspect her creation of the Winged Beringals is more akin to turning the twins into shapeshifters than it is to Ozma creating Maidens — because she's taking Beringals and giving them wings, so it might be a sacrifice of magic, but it's a small amount... it just depends on how many 'small amounts' she's stacked up over the centuries).
On the subject of whether Ozma has one or many Semblances. He's either got every single Semblance his hosts have ever had, or his hosts all have the same Semblance, so that Semblance stacks and stacks with every reincarnation so that it becomes insanely versatile and powerful.
Personally, I prefer the idea that his hosts have the same Semblance — and that's the reincarnation link to why he ends up in certain people: they have the special soul — a soul linked to Time, and so every single host produces a Time Semblance and that Oscar's mastery of that Semblance will be greater than Ozpin's, who was greater than his own predecessor, and so on. Yes, I do think his Semblance is Time.
Whatever his Semblance, we know from both interviews and the Aura WoR that Ozpin's Semblance is absolutely broken. We have no idea what he's capable of, which is why he's now trapped in the body of a fourteen-year-old boy. It's so that when we finally learn the truth about what Oscar's capable of, it'll create the visual effect of that much ability sitting inside the body and soul of a child.
That's not entirely true. It is the case that the Semblance is triggered into activating one day (that's the 'pop up one day' bit). However, after that, the person is expected to learn how to master their Semblance. That was the point of Ozpin's speech in response to Jaune's frustration at not being able to uncover his Semblance. He said discovering what your Semblance is, is not the end of the journey. They can then grow that Semblance by constantly working on it, and that if they do keep pushing forward, their Semblance can often develop in unexpected ways.
Ozpin actually isn't the first person to have given this speech — Winter said the same thing to Weiss in V3 when discussing Weiss's frustration over her inability to summon. So, Winter's very much a product of the Ozpin school of thought: never stop learning how to use and develop your Semblance.
It's one of the reasons why I think there's more to Qrow's Semblance than simply 'bad luck'. From the things he's said and implied about himself and his Semblance, he gave up on his Semblance a long time ago. There's that saying, isn't there: you make your own luck. And I think that's what Qrow needs to learn.
Well, that's actually not what the episode said. The show has never associated the Pools of Annihilation with evil. The God of Darkness has been portrayed as destructive, petty and jealous, but not evil. Even the Grimm haven't been portrayed as evil: soulless, forces of darkness and anonymity, yes, but not evil.
The episode itself didn't say the fall into the Pool made her evil. It said it made her a being of 'pure destruction'. However, the episode also showed us that Salem's most problematic traits already existed within her long before she stepped into the Pool — indeed, we could even argue that, had she not had those negative personality traits to begin with, she'd have never stepped into the Pool at all.
Here are the events from before the Pool dive:
- Unable to accept the death of her lover, she tried to manipulate two gods into doing what she wanted, refusing to take no for an answer, and blaming them when they became angry at her for being manipulated.
- To spite the gods, she decided to manipulate entire kingdoms of humanity to create an army to attack the gods.
- Despite seeing that army wiped out before her very eyes, she decides she's going to destroy the rest of humanity by repeating the even.
- Upon learning the the God of Darkness basically decided to skip the rerun and destroy humanity there and then, she continues attempting to dictate terms to the gods until they've left Remnant entirely.
So, prior to falling into the pool she has displayed: selfishness, arrogance, willingness to manipulate and destroy both people and gods to get what she wants, lack of guilt, lack of self-awareness, lack of personal responsibility.
While the Pools gave her a supernatural imperative for destruction, they don't change the destructive personality she was prior to enter the Pools. Curing her of the Pool's influence won't, by itself, address the type of person she was beforehand.
It's not the fall into the Pool that made her evil. She made herself destructive and evil. The Pool just purified and amplified what she had already become.
I say 'just' but the purification of a person's ill into something that is 'pure destruction' is going to be a very big deal.
I like to look at the whole thing as a fairy tale in its own right, and my head canon for the entire sorry mess is this:
Once upon a time, in a great and peaceful kingdom, there lived a stern but fair king and his beautiful wife. One day they learned that the Queen was with child and, when she gave birth to a beautiful princess, there was great joy within the kingdom. People travelled from far and wide to bring gifts to the happy couple and bestow their blessings.
But one did not come to bestow upon the princess a blessing. A crone, ancient and wizened, gazed long at the child and spoke words that filled the heart of the King with fear: though she bring much joy as a child, should the princess ever fall in love, she would be the ruin of the world.
Terrified, the King kept this knowledge to himself, lest the kingdom think his daughter cursed. As she grew, she brought joy to all who knew her. All except her father who, haunted by the seer's words, watched with growing despair at how beautiful she became, and how much attention she received from all the young men of the kingdom.
Determined to prevent the seer's words from coming true, the King secretly had built a fortress in an isolated land. In the highest tower of that lonely castle, he locked away his daughter, there to live without human contact and prevent the ruin of the world.
There she remained, passing into legend as a challenge to all heroes — a damsel to be rescued by any man who could overcome her terrible guardians. Yet each and every man who tried failed, unequal to the task, until the day it was that her plight came to the attention of the greatest hero in all the world; determined to undo great injustice, he set about her rescue.
And so it was that the seer's words came true.
And the moral of this story is: the next time a seer predicts your daughter's future, damn well ask for context!
Edited by Wyldchyld on Oct 20th 2019 at 6:53:19 PM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
I will expect Blake to find the other faunus with brans in their face and confront thr shitty practice of the scheee company, after all you dont establish Adam with a brand in his face is you arent gonig to use it.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
Musician/Composer
Given that, I think Qrow and Team RWBY (especially Weiss and Blake) will see Jacques's actions as monstrous. When the SDC's practices are exposed, karma might catch up to Jacques; he'll probably have a Break the Haughty moment leading to the scenario where Weiss, his daughter whom he often abused for years, might officially renounce him for good.
Edited by gjjones on Oct 20th 2019 at 5:30:32 AM
He/His/Him. No matter who you are, always Be Yourself.
I don't think Ozma's magic is "dwindling" in the way of a leaky pipe, but more in the way of "I keep giving away all my money and now I have a lot less money." If he stops giving away his power, he'll be able to carry what he's got left forever.
And I highly doubt that Salem is sacrificing her magic in any permanent way, even for small things. She's immortal, she can be patient; giving up even a small amount of power to save herself some time is a bad gamble. Her magic is limited (even though she has far more than anyone else on the planet), her time is not.
We still don't know precisely how the Pools of Annihilation spawn Grimm, but my guess is that Salem just used her connection to the Pools to manipulate them and force the Beringals to grow Nevermore wings, not that she actively sacrificed magic for them. Especially since there's nothing about winged Beringals that makes them a huge game-changer that would be worth sacrificing her power for. I mean, they are a game-changer, but in a "oh, that's clever" way, not a "well, she's won" way.
I agree that Oscar is going to have the same Semblance as Ozpin, and every other incarnation. I suppose when the teams were discussing Semblances with Oscar Ozma could have just been like "I know exactly what your Semblance is, it's this this and this," but Ozma holds things close to the vest in general. There are plenty of reasons not to mention it.
That's definitely true, but my point about them "popping up" is that they would still be popping up if Ozma wasn't teaching anyone anything. So calling him the source of Semblances felt a step too far, to me.
This is one of the reasons I'm so curious where Jacques will go. As I said before, he's ripe for Pragmatic Villainy, but he is still a villain. He ticks like a dozen different villain boxes at the same time. Even if the heroes do end up allying with him, I think it will be a Better the Devil You Know situation. Yeah he's a racist abusive asshole, but at least he's not trying to kill literally everyone.
Edited by Discar on Oct 20th 2019 at 3:04:43 AM
I will said Blake would be "there is something wrong" right until she see the full extent of waht branding does and that in a way, Adam is a creation for that.
As people said, is kinda weird how Adam never target Weiss, you would expect her to be in his top of is hit and shit list.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
I'm interested in seeing where they're going with this one. Back in V4, Jacques was talking about the Faunus complaint about wages but he was saying they don't have a valid complaint because they receive the same wages as the non-Faunus workers.
I got the impression then that Jacques may have absolutely no idea what the working conditions are in the mines. In every way, he's the opposite of what we've been told about Old Nick.
One of the defining aspects of Old Nick was that he threw himself into the same risks and the same dangers he expected his men to experience. He was also originally a miner, and a son of a miner. So he came from that background. He knew what that work was like.
To make the most of Jacques being the opposite of Nick, it makes sense for Jacques to have come entirely from a life of privilege. He hasn't come from a mining family. He hasn't thrown himself into the same risks and dangers as his men. He hasn't lived the life his workers are living.
And he probably never goes there in person — or, if he does, it's in well-planned events that the mining management carefully stage and sanitise for him.
I'm therefore thinking that Jacques biggest problem is ignorance. Ilia said that there are two types of human: those who hate and those who stand by and let the hate happen. Jacques may fall into both categories — he just doesn't know what he's doing to his workers, he doesn't have a clue and therefore, he really doesn't care.
Now, I'm not absolving him. What I'm saying is that his crime isn't malice, it's worse: it's negligence. The malice probably comes from those that manage the mines for him, who know exactly what they're doing to the workers, but who send sanitised reports up the chain.
Jacques could look into this if he wanted to, but he doesn't want to. He doesn't care enough to. So, other people get their hands dirty, and he keeps himself clean in his ivory tower of ignorance and blindness.
What I'm saying is that he probably doesn't have a clue this kind of branding is happening. But the reason things have become so bad that this kind of abuse can happen is because he didn't care. He left the dirty details to others. As long as they met his bottom line, he didn't ask questions. And the boss doesn't ask questions... anything goes.
So, I am going to be very interested to see what Jacques actually knows about worker conditions, and what his reaction will be if he doesn't know how bad they are.
But the creators have indicated that the heroes are going to find the allies they thought they had aren't, and the enemies they thought they had aren't. So, the obvious characters to be looking at here are Ironwood and Jacques. If that is the case, it's going to be very interesting to see how that comes about.
Yes, Ozpin directly stated that is what's going on with his magic. My post was made with that knowledge — there's no 'leaky pipe' aspect to my post.
I am also very cautious about what he means by 'dwindling' because we don't really know what his scale is. We know his magic was so great he could masquerade to Humanity Revised as a god. And we've seen some hints of the scale of magic the Maidens wield — yet each Maiden only wields a fifth of the magic Ozma was originally capable of. We also know that giving a person the ability to turn into a bird is a very big thing to other people — but to him it's 'miniscule'.
So, while we know his magic is 'dwindling', we don't know how much magic he has left and what the scale of that remaining magic is. The magic he has left could turn out to be phenomenal by the standards of the protagonists. He could turn out to have equal power to a single Maiden for all we know — which would be insane power from a Humanity Revised person's perspective. However, from the perspective of Humanity Prime, the power of a single Maiden is just a fraction of what Humanity Prime would be capable of.
One thing we do know, however, is that he can levitate. Ozpin and Cinder were definitely air-fighting for parts of that fight. I spotted that the first time I watched the fight (mainly because I was looking for it). I've watched that fight several times just to make sure it's not just 'floaty' animation, and judging by the shadows they cast, and the movements they make against each other, Ozpin is definitely in the air at times.
So, like Cinder, Oscar should be capable levitation at the very least.
I didn't think she would be either. And then I saw what she was doing to the Grimm. It's possible that she doesn't need to 'give the magic away' to do what she's doing to the Grimm. I'm also not saying that's definitely what's happening. What I'm saying is that I'm factoring in the possibility of that into my thinking.
I do actually think it's sensible for Ozpin to not mention it to Oscar. Semblances do appear to be this 'tap into your inner self' sort of thing. And they do seem to require the hard work and effort to keep developing them after they've been triggered that first time.
It's probably beneficial for Oscar's future ability to develop his Semblance that Ozpin not interfere with Oscar's ability to tap into his powers for himself rather than relying on Ozpin instead.
Yes, I was agreeing that. I was most focussed on expanding the 'why Ozma wouldn't be the source but would still be useful for the development of Semblances' part.
Well, Adam originally didn't know Blake had gone to Beacon, and therefore he wouldn't have known anything about her team-mates and friends. Now, what he knew after the V2 finale, I'm not sure: Cinder, Emerald and Mercury were discussing what the kids did in Mountain Glenn, and Adam told them that he'd make sure the Faunus stay on board, but we don't know if he knew the identities of the kids who were involved in that incident.
What we do know is that he didn't really seem to know Yang or anything about her. He only noticed her because she was so loudly searching for Blake, and he only decided to target her when he noticed the horrified expression on Blake's face when she realised Yang was there.
So, if he did know Blake was in Beacon, it was the Mountain Glenn incident that informed him. But he didn't know anything about Blake's team-mates until the Battle of Beacon. So, he wouldn't have had any information on Blake and Weiss being involved.
Having said that, I've mentioned in the past that I would have much preferred the Adam/White Fang plot to have started with Weiss and Blake. Yang could still have been brought into it in exactly the same manner she was (searching for Blake, targeting Adam in a rage and getting her hand chopped off as he decides to start his 'lesson teaching' with Yang). Nothing about Yang needed to change, but it would have made so much more sense (to me) for Adam to be the villain Team RWBY cut their teeth on, and learned how to function as a team against, instead of Roman.
Edited by Wyldchyld on Oct 20th 2019 at 12:15:41 PM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Yang would like a word.
A thing Adam never even knew blake have a team, which is hilarious for a stalker like him.
...what did Ruby get for Yang from the gift shop.
I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!
The Arch-Douchebag
The scene in Yang's character short was confirmed to be an animation error. Not excusing that, since it ultimately does show Yang using her semblance after her aura breaks, but it's not what the writers wished to convey.
In Volume 5 Adam states that he spent a lot of time trying to find Blake, while all she did was go home. He just sucks as a stalker.
Know im thinking: Can weiss could beat Adhahahahahahahaha
Ok, sorry, that was a dumb question.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
The Head of the Hydra
I recall hearing that Weiss has never won a one on one fight that wasn't a Grim.
Is that true?
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
I haven't seen the Yang short sicne it came out, but from my recollection (and what the consensus was here) is that her Aura hadn't broken, it was just close to.
The Arch-Douchebag
I imagine it would be a draw. Weiss would ineffectually try to summon something, while Adam would fail to hit her with his sword and not remember his gun even exists. The only way one of them would win is if the other starved to death during the fight.
I think that's true, but then again, she didn't participate in that many 1v1 fights to begin with. Whenever team RWBY fights together, Weiss tends to perform fairly well.
The animation was identical to the one shown when Mercury, Pyrrha, Ruby, Qrow, Blake, Yang, Adam, Leo or Weiss lose their aura. It was a mistake and was confirmed as such.
Yeah if I remenber well, all semblence are unique as per world of remanent, then they kinda sort of retcon that with schnee family, making posible that is because winter maiden blood amoung them.
Also, I think semblance are magic which expalin why something about it when to Schee family.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"