RWBY General Discussion

. But we'll be arguing about Who Was To Blame For Atlas' for a long time.

undeniably RWBY as if they hadn't used the Lamp to pry into Ozpin's history he wouldn't have retreated into Oscar and Ironwood would've had someone he could've begged to take charge.

Edited by doineedaname on Aug 4th 2021 at 5:28:02 AM

https://youtu.be/P8u8md-NiHM

This but with Rhodes

Can’t believe Rhodes was a secret agent for Salem that trained Cinder to be the perfect host for the Maidens power.

Rhodes taught the God of Darkness how to make the Grimm.

Okay, how long can we keep up the "Everything was Rhodes' fault" joke before it gets stale?

I don't know. How many lives has Rhodes consumed in his madness from behind the scenes?

Edited by FOFD on Aug 4th 2021 at 6:58:31 AM

Up until it’s revealed that Rhodes was the one to kill Summer Rose and founded the Branwen Tribe

I remembered this one idea I had where James had Rhodes place, and he was training her specifically because she was his first maiden candidate before winter. And instead of dying he succeeds at arresting her.

And Before James turns evil they have a fight like this

https://youtu.be/dtQqeBLslpg

(Specifically, 1:19)

See, even in an alternate non-canon universe, Rhodes phucks up and makes somebody evil just due to his absence.'

Speaking seriously for a moment Rhodes really is a tragic figure in the story and I like how they included him in Cinder's backstory.

Edited by FOFD on Aug 4th 2021 at 5:54:27 AM

Agreed, I really liked the last fight where he pat her head even after being stabbed and she gasped when he did so and shed a tear after it was over.

That they both still cared about eachother makes how things turned out even more tragic.

And Before James turns evil they have a fight like this (Specifically, 1:19)

Cinder: I rotted in jail for 20 years because of YOUR weakness!

Ironwood: Obeying your master is not weakness!

Cinder: You knew I was the Winter Maiden! You always knew! But when Ozpin said otherwise, what did you do? What did you do? NOTHING!

Ironwood: You were not meant to be the Winter Maiden! That was not my fault!

Cinder: Not your fault? Who filled my head with dreams? Who drove me to train until my bones cracked? Who denied me my destiny?!

Yeah, I can see it.

Edited by Guy01 on Aug 4th 2021 at 3:33:48 AM

Blaming Rhodes for everything means that Rhodes was the Old God, whose decision to split himself in half is what led to the creation of Remnant in the first place.

On a serious note, Cinder had a legal guardian. That was the problem. The whole point about training her to be a Huntress was about exploiting the limits of Madame's legal control over her: The law would free Cinder when she turned 17, allowing her to apply to the Academy even if Madame disapproved. Passing the entrance exam would then set her up for life.

Atlas had a broken system that's designed to benefit only the people at the top. We hear a character in the Volume 4 charity benefit observing that the problem was the way the entire system functioned. Marrow reiterates that point in Volume 7. The WoR epsodes indicate that's the case as well.

This is almost certainly why the Kingdom of Atlas has been destroyed, but the people survived as refugees together. It breaks down the kingdom's highly stratified society and forces them to rebuild from scratch... as equals.

It also reflects the sinking of Atlantis, which is its most obvious inspiration: One of the legends for why it sank was because of hubris, and the Kingdom of Atlas has been portrayed as suffering that same problem: Atlesians did it to the entire world; Mantle citizens did it to the Faunus and the rest of the world. Only the Faunus in the slums showed no sign of hubris... now the rest of the kingdom has been brought down to that level, it's time for them to learn humility, empathy, compassion and unity. That'll lead them to build a better, integrated kingdom in future.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Aug 4th 2021 at 11:18:24 AM

I do wonder how exactly Atlas-the-kingdom will recover given that Atlas-the-city got colony dropped. Surely there's massive infrastructure damage, damage to things like water or electricity distribution, et cetera, not to mention the improbability of a majority of former residents actually making it back to the kingdom to do reconstruction. And it's not like the city getting destroyed will automatically make former Atlesians let go of their pretensions of being high-society and all that means, especially if it's a matter of pride.

I'm not disagreeing with you, exactly, I just doubt that the kingdom's rebuilding will be that easy.

I don't think they'll recover the old site. The old kingdom is lost forever, sunk between the waves. The end of Volume 8 was a case of us witnessing Remnant's newest fairy tale coming into existence: The Lost Kingdom. The Kingdom That Sank Beneath the Waves.

It'll be a new kingdom, at a new site. Built from scratch.

Throughout the entire Atlas Arc, the background characters were telling stories of their own, which was fascinating to follow. Every time the villains escalated their plans, we'd see the heroes despairing and counter-acting in the foreground while, in the background, we saw background characters coming together, overcoming their prejudice, and making new friendships. I've been calling it 'little seeds of hope' — Salem's push to divide people is the first thing everyone sees, but in every act of division and destruction, we see people coming together as well.

This is what Ozma used to see, but it's what he's started to forget to notice as the pressure of the years has ground him down. The heroes haven't noticed it yet, but they will. It's from those seeds that the new kingdom will eventually grow.

Salem is effectively the God of Darkness's force of adversity: the challenge humanity must keep overcoming in order to grow beyond what it used to be. The Two Brothers (Fairy Tales version) specifies that's what the God of Darkness believes: to thrive, humanity must be constantly challenged. It's why he kept making the Grimm stronger threats or sent disasters to plague humanity. He enjoyed watching how they overcome the challenges, and believed the God of Light was stifling and stagnating humanity's potential.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Aug 4th 2021 at 11:46:14 AM

https://youtu.be/WoXKA3oTS50

Really would love to see a Remake on this with Volume 8

Great points, Wyld. In all the chaos and despair, it's easy to miss the small things that are happening in the background. The people of the lost kingdom must figure out how to rebuild, having lost everything but each other.

Vacuo is uniquely suited to those lessons, being a kingdom defined by having to constantly rebuild and move on from loss. Atlas the Kingdom of Creation was like the God of Light, controlled and growing stagnate from decades of prosperity. We saw that in the dinner part of V4, where they figured what happened at Beacon was because Ha Ha they don't have a military! It's their fault for not following our lead!

In comparison, Vacuo is Destruction as the God of Darkness is portrayed in the fairy tale. A force of adversity, that makes room for growth and new potential. It's interesting how the story, as written by Qrow for the book, portrays Darkness as loving humanity even though that seems like a very counter-intuitive idea for a world where Grimm = Bad and darkness = evil.

Back to the main question, I do think that Solitas will be resettled eventually. It's resources make it an extremely tempting but dangerous gamble, a frontier for another generation to take up. Just like it was originally settled by brave, ambitious people there will eventually be people willing to go back there to explore the ruins of the legendary Lost Kingdom or to reclaim the Dust mines.

Because the thing the heroes got, that Ironwood missed, is that saving the city doesn't matter. Even with a major loss of existing resources and equipment, the people are the ones that maintain the KNOWLEDGE. They can rebuild machines and buildings, but if the people that actually did the work are gone then you're screwed.

So the lesson here is Watchmen was right?

That's not quite accurate for Darkness in that tale? He kinda treats Humanity like Toys, almost let's them get wiped out to fight light and then proposed destroying everything.

Yes, it is. The one thing Vacuo has that the rest of the world desperately needs to learn from it is resilience — the ability to come out of a disaster with a determination to not just survive, but thrive. The rest of the world (and especially the city of Atlas) are in a reversal of Vacuo's situation back when it was a paradise. Back then, Vacuo was the one living the comfortable, complacent lifestyle, and therefore ill-suited to handle the threats that were suddenly being thrown at it. Now it's the other way around: the other kingdoms had their comfortable kingdom lifestyles, while Vacuo was overcoming terrible odds to keep going.

Vacuo is uniquely positioned to lead the world in overcoming adversity and rebuilding after terrible loss. While they first need to learn how to embrace other kingdoms, they'll be the "indomitable" kingdom — the place that sees the real fight back against Salem begin. They'll probably lead the way back to Beacon, which will be the location of the final battle.

Vacuo's first step to embracing other kingdoms is already happening with the refugee crisis they've got. They've had two waves: students from other kingdoms and now the civilians of an entire kingdom. Not only do they have a lot of fully trained Huntsmen, they've also got three schools worth of trainee Huntsmen (they're about to get the survivors of the fourth), which is just as well because they're about to become two kingdoms (for now) instead of one.

Yes, he's a big example of Blue-and-Orange Morality. His behaviour (from a human's point of view) would look terrible, but he loves humanity and wants humanity to thrive. The problem is that he's a being of destruction, and therefore sees existence in terms of that. Once he spotted how strong humanity can become as a result of a crisis, there was no stopping him: now he's determined to see humanity achieve its full potential by placing them in a permanent state of adversity.

The book's version of the fairy tale adds to what we saw in Jinn's flashback. The God of Light was universally beloved by the people and the God of Darkness was universally feared. This was shown as being extremely upsetting for the God of Darkness, who just wanted humanity to realise how much he loved them and to love him in return.

Put the two stories together and you get Blue-and-Orange Morality: he cannot comprehend humanity because he's looking at their big picture, and therefore loses the detail. Meanwhile, humanity cannot see the big picture, so all they can see is his destruction of the detail — their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

I really liked the fact that he broke the Dark God stereotype the fandom was expecting — when Salem turned up, he didn't make devil's bargains or string her over a barrel. Instead, he was so delighted that a human had faith in his ability to help that he reacted like a puppy — desperate to please.

I remember a lot of the fandom reacting with surprise over that. While I'm not massively into reaction videos, I did watch several reaction videos for that episode, and all the reactors that I saw were surprised that he just did it for her without manipulation. Instead, she was the one manipulating him.

Agreed. When I say they'll build a new kingdom in a new location, I mean a new location in Solitas, not elsewhere in the world.

And it is possible that many of the Dust mines will be salvageable. It was the two cities that were flooded, not the locations of the Dust mines, which were out in the tundra. While I'm sure some of the Dust mines will be flooded, not all of them will be.

The appropriate word here is incomplete, not "accurate". My statement, harostar's statement, and your statement here are all incomplete.

The sole difference between Dark and Light in the tale (as far as Remnant's existence is concerned) is that Light only develops empathy for his toys because his essence being plugged into living beings with emotions causes him to experience those feelings and their pain. He is therefore forced to see them as more than toys. Both of them created Remnant as a sandbox to play in, and both of them regarded everything they made as their toys. It's just that Light discovered a consequence of using his power that he hadn't expected - a consequence that Dark's power doesn't have.

Dark doesn't develop empathy because he's a different kind of being to his brother, so he doesn't possess the very ability that forced Light to bond with his own toys. He cannot create living beings with feelings and pain. The reason why Light suggests they create humanity together is because he is hoping this will teach Dark the same lesson he was forced to learn.

The problem for Light is that his plan succeeded. Dark became incredibly invested in humanity. Unfortunately, this was a Gone Horribly Right scenario because Dark is not a being of creation and life. He's a being of destruction, and therefore has no choice but to view existence through that lens. So, he became invested in humanity just as Light wanted him to — but through the lens of the creature he was — a force of destruction. Once he realised his creations became so much more after a crisis, he became determined to see them achieve their potential. As a being of destruction, however, the only way he can understand this process of reaching one's potential is through inflicting adversity on others.

Even despite that empathy, once Light learns that he is trapped by his creations and can never leave, he is completely willing to entertain the destruction of Remnant to reclaim his essence so that he can travel somewhere else in the Void and start again. By the same token, while Dark is the one who suggests destroying Remnant to reclaim their essence, he's willing to entertain giving humanity a chance to prove itself, and does so. Neither god is willing to give humanity more than one chance — and neither god bothers telling humanity that it's on trial and what it needs to do to save itself.

In this tale, Light isn't good and Dark isn't evil. They're alien beings who struggle to comprehend the other's true nature, and this inability to understand each other turns Remnant into both a playground and a war zone for both gods that they're willing to abandon if their creations cannot meet their impossible (and secret) test. Even though Light develops some degree of empathy for his creations, it doesn't enable him to truly comprehend them (on their scale rather than his own), and it doesn't stop him from being willing to throw his toys out the pram when things get too inconvenient for him.

There's a reason why we have the Brothers troped as Jerkass Gods; the fairy tale reinforced that. From humanity's perspective, that's exactly what they are. From a meta perspective, however, they're Blue-and-Orange Morality. Their state of being isn't their fault. It's a consequence of the Old God deciding to split himself in two in an attempt to give himself company because of his lonely existence. Unfortunately for him, the consequence of him doing that wasn't exactly what he had in mind. Instead of creating a companion, he created two half-beings: two entirely new and different personalities that had been given entirely different traits — making them mirrors of each other, but neither alone was the Old God. The two Brothers don't even understand that — they each think they're the Old God and the other is the companion. They're both wrong.

So, from the equal and opposite natures they were created with, they somehow had to create their own morality based on their own natures, and then somehow find a balance between each other because the split ensured they don't comprehend each other's true nature. Their creation of humanity was their attempt to explore that balance, but their natures exist on a scale and singleness of nature that is incomprehensible to humanity — unfortunately for humanity, if they decide this exploration of balance is not working out for them, they're both more than willing to throw in the towel and set up a new sandbox somewhere else.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Aug 5th 2021 at 11:13:38 AM

So a preview of Roman Holiday is out.

https://www.kobo.com/fi/fi/ebook/rwby-ya-novel-3-an-afk-book-rwby-3

The biggest piece of information: Neo's real name is Trivia Vanille, and her current persona is based on her childhood imaginary friend. She's the daughter of a manager for the Vale City Council. He's clearly abusive, and a lot is made of her parents trying to force her to speak.

Is it safe to return to the thread?

I don't really view that as the case in the fairy tale, perhaps in the show itself. But I think the point in the fairy tale is to show a more black and white view of the gods. Where light is a more benevolent God Is Good while Darkness is an Angra Mainyu-esqe deity who is a cruel monster

It's not that darkness couldn't change, it's just that he didn't because He's evil and enjoys making others suffer, Light wanted to help Darkness change by making humanity with him but it didn't work because Darkness just didn't want to change.

Basically it's an In-Universe Everybody Hates Hades / Everybody Loves Zeus, with Darkness sympathetic aspects from the show removed and light made into a caring and good deity, with even the Judgment being potrayed as Light trying to give humanity a chance while Darkness just wanted to wipe them out.

EDIT:One of the last chapters is called 'Meeting the parents'

The climax is gonna be Neo getting kidnapped or something by her Father and Roman breaking into there mansion and killing Neos parents. Calling it now

It's even foreshadowed by Romans chapter, where he takes on a Mistrali aristocrat remarking that the good thing about taking on the Rich was 'They don't know how to fight'.

Edited by Snoketrope on Aug 5th 2021 at 2:43:33 AM

I think it's safe.

Chapter Titles:

• Imaginary Friends
• Lie
• Painting the Town Pink
• Steal
• Hard Lessons
• Cheat
• Falling Out
• Survive
• Arrival
• Rival
• Trivial Pursuit
• Double Trouble
• New Girl
• Tea for Two
• Fight and Flight
• Partners in Crime
• Brewing Trouble
• Panopti-con
• Torch Song
• Boss for a Day
• Fury Road
• Two for Tea
• Meeting the Parents
• Falling In
• Smoke and Mirrors
• Friends to the End

One chapter title that stands out to me is "Torch Song". Roman's chapter features a nightclub in Mistral called "Luck of the Mountains" with live music and an illegal gambling ring in the basement. The club's main attracting is a lounge singer named Honey Wine, an Enthralling Siren that makes the guests feel "intoxicated" with her voice. Roman describes it as a very powerful Semblance, almost like magic, that is strong enough to mess with his head even when he's lingering outside the club catching bits and pieces of the music.

My post was about the Fairy Tales version of the story.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Aug 5th 2021 at 4:05:36 PM

Mine was as well. I was saying that the Blue-and-Orange Morality stuff and darkness not being evil and light not being good works for how the show presents things, but I don't agree with that for the fairy tales version. And I don't think Darkness had agency issues either.

Basically, the fairy tales version is more straightforward then the show, The god of light being good and Darkness being evil. And I feel like that's the intention, showing how the people of Remmant viewed the gods.