- Location
- New York
Basically jaune right now.
Hold It In (RWBY/Transistor)
- Thread starter Prok
- Start date
- Crossover
I would rather not be too quick to condemn Salem. We haven't really seen anything of her in this story, and while she presumably can control the grimm into an army, there is a big difference between the ability to lead an army to conquer a city, and the ability to prevent that army from then... lowering your newly-acquired city's resale value... and then splitting up into mercenary and bandit groups terrorising the entire region... . It might be beyond her to stop the grimm from driving humanity into isolated fortified habitats. The memetic hazard does speak ill of her, but we don't know the origin of that. I just think that it would be nice to have more information than "evil queen in her evil tower with her evil army" before committing ourselves to her destruction. Of course, if we find out about the brothers, then we may want to build a god-killing gun for them, and if we then decide that we want to use it on Salem too, then we have that option.
ADeshantis
King on the Chromium Throne
- Location
- United states
Assuming we are going off canon, and specifically Jinn's flashback information (which we presume is reliable given the nature of the relics and the fact that Salem has questions for Jinn), Salem is not a benevolent actor restraining the Grimm. Under Brother Dark they milled around near his pool, mostly. With her in command, they actively seek out and destroy human settlements.
I can appreciate a good Sympathy for the Devil storyline but this ain't it, my guy. Salem's the witch-queen of the Grimm, and actively working for the destruction of humanity.
infinityDivided
Prince Of Doom
- Location
- USA
What was Salem's end-goal again? I've been assuming she's been trying to gather the Relics together so she can use them to summon the Brothers to Remnant so they kill everyone, including her. It's the only goal that makes sense, given that if she was trying to destroy or conquer Humanity and Faunuskind she could have done so dozens of times over by now.
- Location
- Planet Earth
Problem is, we don't know if we are running off canon there, so while RWBY may not be a Sympathy for the Devil storyline, this quest might be.
Alternatively, she could just be passing the years fucking with Ozma.
If that were her primary objective, than even the most conservative estimates of the grimm would have the civilian population eliminated in under a year, and then the remainder would starve or get overwhelmed by exhaustion and exposure from having nowhere safe to rest. Now maybe the likes of Atlas could build a viable perimeter and maintain some farmland, but that is with the latest of technology, which only came about after Salem has had a very very long time to wipe out civilisation.
It doesn't even make sense with respect to the relics, given that if just burying them in the middle of nowhere would be effective, then Ozpin could have done that, and probably should have with at least one of them. She can just search through the ashes if she wants, and could keep a people farm if she absolutely needs humans for some reason. She doesn't need giant doom monsters or hordes of flying death, even basic beowolves can run past a handful of hunstmen and wipe out the settlement behind them. It doesn't matte if the huntsmen survive, age will get them in time, and there won't be the resources to train replacements.
- Location
- USA
That's probably some of what happened although it's probably missing a bit of something that was going on. Specifically he had three viable candidates, of which witch queen made the most sense using what you mentioned. Couldn't really tell what the other two candidates were though.
Keep in mind we see very little of the world with the Brothers around. There's nothing to say if the Grimm were and issue or not back then.
Although RWBY as a setting is more of a framework for fans to build in than a proper fleshed out world, so canon doesn't hold too much sway in my mind.
Huh, that's actually really clever and makes a lot of sense. I can even see those stories as an interpretation of the so called "endless archives, the ones that have existed since our conception" that were mentioned. Because the sheer quantity of stories from thousands of years would be seemingly endless, and they would have existed since Jaune's soul was even conceived. Still not sure if there is also some sort of collective consciousness thing going on, but I think you are totally right that his Semblance analyzed fairy tales.
Only reason I think there might be some higher level connection is because our Semblance has already shown it can connect to things "above" normal reality, through the Transistor's Functions and the Process itself. Could also be part of the reason Jaune's brain can't handle the load for too long, if his Semblance draws information at least in part from a "higher" and therefore much more complex source.
- Location
- New York
I think it was said that she's gathering the relics to drain them of their power to rule over all of Remnant I might be wrong though.
In canon RWBY, she wants to bring the Relics together, summon the Gods back, and have them rule that humanity cannot be saved or united and have them destroy everyone. It's her last, final hope for death, that they will include her in the destruction of the world. Both Tyrian and Ozpin / Oscar say as such.
There really ought to be some way to fix that death wish. If it is boredom, then The Process should be good for at least a bit of curiosity. Likewise with despair. Mourning? Surround her with people who convincingly care about her and that will wear down over time. Weariness? The Process should be good for "taking a load off" once it proves itself. Hates everyone? Dying means they win. Just settle down as a hermit and ignore them while they drive themselves crazy trying to figure out what you are up to. Meanwhile, try to engineer a life-form that you can tolerate because nature is just going to keep repeating itself such that when jellyfish evolve to have their own gods and their own civilisation, they will be just as bad as the humans were, and you will have given up everything just to make way for them. Permanent soul wedgie/horrific physical pain? The sort of arbitrary nonsense required to kill a god can almost certainly be adapted to fix any such ailments.
There are lots of things that could be bothering her, but they basically all have solutions.
There are lots of things that could be bothering her, but they basically all have solutions.
- Location
- Where Jokes Die
Pulled an all nighter to binge everything again, worth it.
Just like humans, the Grimm don't really do the single most correct tactical thing at all times. As Ozpin said, they're creatures of magic, they're bound by those rules -- rules of expectation, of storybook monsters and the wolves that hunt the night.
We're not fighting an AI, or even a human army. We are, quite literally, fighting the Creatures of Grimm. As in the Brothers Grimm, of the real world. Fairytale monsters, that act in fairytale ways.
Fairytale monsters don't attack civilizations in broad daylight. They murder you for breaking the rules, for going out after dark, for straying off the path and into the forest. They're creatures of fear and despair and horror, and that means they can't act like an army out of Mordor any more than a human army can just ignore morale and hunger to fight in any arbitrary theoretically-possible condition.
(Unrelatedly, I want to see someone do more with the Ruby/Red Riding Hood thing...)
Canonical events from the series suggest otherwise. They have clearly wiped out many entire villages. They are demonstrably capable of sufficient coordination to overrun perimeter defences, when personally overseen, at the scale of a large fortress and likely up to a large city, with no demonstrated upper limit to scale aside from the fact that most of the world's grimm seem to be devoid of coordination beyond pack tactics. They are clearly capable of swarming in sufficient numbers that no amount of skill from a handful of huntsmen can ensure the safety of even their immediate responsibilities, far less the rest of civilisation.
Like, the events of season 3 demonstrate that If Salem wanted to, she could break basically anywhere at basically any time, with just grimm. Considering that in addition to grimm she has an immortal wizard, in a world that doesn't know about magic? And that the grimm will, either by her orders or their own initiative(and assuming that Salem has the same ability to keep grimm from running amok as the brothers did seems a bit of a stretch. I mean, it is entirely possible, but given that e have basically no idea how much influence she has over them aside from being able to gather an army and besiege a fortress, saying that their original control mechanism up and abandoning them has nothing to do with the heavily armed and aesthetically terrifying creatures that can home in on fear, doing what they appear to be designed to do, just doesn't ring true to me.), harass the whole of humanity constantly? That one immortal wizard can attrition humanity down by hitting the large exposed areas it relies upon to sustain its population. It should take her centuries, while she has had many millennia.
Like, that fairytale monster idea sounds like fun, and could be a great rendition for the setting, but it doesn't seem to match R.W.B.Y., and it doesn't seem to match Hold it in. The Grimm seems to have the larger ones occupying territory, the smaller ones defending borders and mounting raids, irregulars mounting sieges and invasions now and again, and Salem able to direct an entire army seemingly whenever she wants to, at least to the extend of gathering their numbers then assaulting in waves and breaking through to run amok behind the defenders. None of this seems to conform to idling around being intimidating but not actually doing something until someone forgets to perform some ritual or goes into the woods at night. While Salem is presumably wielding vast and terrible magic that could overpower any mortal huntsman, wielded by someone with vastly more experience and vastly less need for restraint than any mortal huntsman, but instead of being the fairy queen demanding respect and tribute and handing out arbitrary laws, she just sits around and plots for thousands of years or something.
Unless I am missing something? I really don't see the fairytale connection anywhere in the grimm's behaviour, but I am no expert on the topic.
Basicly Salem is modifying their behavior to keep humanity under seige. Her win conditions are to either take the relics and summon the brother gods while humanity is disunited or to break Ozpin so that he gives up on humanity and summons the gods to end it all.
SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It just occurred to me that when the Process blasted the giant Grimm with a superlaser the color of the break of dawn, Ozpin didn't just see the superlaser that built itself in a matter of minutes annihilate some super-tough Grimm--he saw the light of dawn blast the Grimm in the form of a superlaser. It was a slight bit of magic, in a way, but the symbolism is certainly not lost on Ozpin.
And the Process did that in its infancy.
He saw a baby god bring the light of dawn into Remnant.
And the Process did that in its infancy.
He saw a baby god bring the light of dawn into Remnant.
- Location
- New York
And he doesn't even know it's a baby god
Prok
Go play Star Fetchers
- Location
- Scotland
Man that's a lot of stuff-
... Man the sun is close all of a sudden, hope my wings hold up-
Might need a bit of training to not immediately go to breaking kneecaps, but he wouldn't be... the worst option, by any means. On a purely efficiency-based level, I mean- ethically, morally, personally, whole different kettles of fish.
Right, that's everything pre-update dealt with, now to look at everything post-
61 more messages
jesus
"TIP: I AM SO FUCKING MAD"
So, yeah, rock, hard place.
Thermal bloom is still a problem for a laser, no matter how fast it is- it still has to pass through those temperature differentials, whether it lasts for a millisecond or 12 seconds straight- it still needed to be able to overcome roughly a kilometre of gasses at differing temperature and pressure gradients, and that was a problem best dealt with by brute force, at this point in time. Elegant solutions are somewhat beyond the Process at the moment.
The other leading theory is that they're the brains behind a massive hive mind, explaining why Grimm occasionally seem to occasionally move in massive packs, often for no particular reason whatsoever, besides taking down any village that happens to be in their way.
The problem with rehabilitating Salem, as I see it, is that if you whittle away the desire for death, whether caused by boredom or despair or hatred or some soul wedgie/horrific pain caused by having Grimm juice where her blood should be... what's left? She is so devoted to this idea that she needs to die and her passing should take humanity with it that it's not a bad assumption to say there's precious little her left unconsumed by it.
To cure Salem of her anguish is to kill Salem at her deepest core. 10,000 years of forced immortality leave someone very sure of their identity and their passions- and Salem's greatest passion is to seek a death for humanity that will take her with it. The reasons for it may vary, the sources of it may differ, but the scale of it is...
Magnificent. Like stepping on the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and pulling out a pickaxe because you have not gone deep enough yet. I can barely fathom what it would be like to hold such a vile appetite for misanthropy and suicide, fresh after her curse. I dread to imagine it after ten millennia of trying and failing to find her way out, and the way a human mind would twist and contort around some central points of personality like DNA around histones to try and anchor itself against the flow of time and experience running far past a mortal soul's lifespan.
At this point, I don't think Salem has a deathwish. I think she may as well be the deathwish, for all that's left undevoted to it.
Anyway, I'm closing voting now- dreaming wins.
All the 'personal' stuff comes after the big shit is out of the way- namely, learning about Salem, fucken check, and revealing the Process in full- on its way. Once you've dealt with the high-concept stuff, you can move onto dealing with things like Blake being a terrorist or Ada being hunted by a serial killer or Creme being attacked by a racist or the fact that you killed a Grimm in the forest and it didn't feel good- minor stuff, relatively.
Business will be covered as well, at some point- really this entire thing is going to be about three updates long, the next one included.
... Man the sun is close all of a sudden, hope my wings hold up-
Not as many as you'd think. Granted, hiring a known criminal- not great optics. But, Torchwick don't give a fuck who he's working for, you pay him enough, he'll happily come work with you.
Might need a bit of training to not immediately go to breaking kneecaps, but he wouldn't be... the worst option, by any means. On a purely efficiency-based level, I mean- ethically, morally, personally, whole different kettles of fish.
Right, that's everything pre-update dealt with, now to look at everything post-
61 more messages
jesus
He would have. The options on when to meet Ozpin were a sliding scale, with earlier meaning you were both still frayed, but Ludens definitely would have been alive, and later leaving you both better off, and Ludens definitely being dead. You chose the middle option, and then he got shit luck.
To quote me, in one of my beta's DMs, 5 minutes after rolling that double 10-
"TIP: I AM SO FUCKING MAD"
Funnily enough, and I only found this out afterwards, in canon, Semblances are derived from magic as well- in that they're a semblance of what magic was always capable of. But yes, the magic here is less a soft system and more an outright liquidous one- partly because I am so tired all the goddamn time and I don't have the energy to make anything more complex, and also because it's very much going to be more problem-causer than problem-solver, for the most part, so explaining it away actually makes it harder to use in that regard.
The problem with that, not that you know it right now, is that every Relic contains a sapient, living being, with its own agency, thoughts, emotions, all that, and your options for getting rid of them in a way that Salem absolutely super 100% definitely cannot reach no takebacksies, is to try and destroy them, which is wilful murder of some of the oldest thinking beings on Remnant, or sending them into space, far beyond the reach of any human or Grimm, which has a whole host of problems on its own besides condemning them to complete isolation orbiting Remnant between now and the sun going supernova, hopefully finally freeing them from that horror.
So, yeah, rock, hard place.
The laser's specs (which I actually tortured myself for like three months doing the maths for) are all available in Initiation: End(). It did pulse, in millisecond intervals- that's why it just punched straight through the Nevermore like it did, instead of being caught up in the steam it generated by vaporising its flesh, leading to it overall being less effective.
Thermal bloom is still a problem for a laser, no matter how fast it is- it still has to pass through those temperature differentials, whether it lasts for a millisecond or 12 seconds straight- it still needed to be able to overcome roughly a kilometre of gasses at differing temperature and pressure gradients, and that was a problem best dealt with by brute force, at this point in time. Elegant solutions are somewhat beyond the Process at the moment.
Enough, too much, and however many times it takes for me to stop finding it amusing.
I've mentioned Storied Grimm before- they're the next best explanation for an overarching driving force for the Grimm, if you don't know Salem exists, and the two leading theories there are that they form some kind of council, all 10, well, 8 of them now- that lead the Grimm from their places around the world, only occasionally stretching their legs or wings or whatever else, when they figure a Kingdom just needs to go.
The other leading theory is that they're the brains behind a massive hive mind, explaining why Grimm occasionally seem to occasionally move in massive packs, often for no particular reason whatsoever, besides taking down any village that happens to be in their way.
There's not much I can say here that isn't a spoiler, so I'll just give my thoughts on it in general:
The problem with rehabilitating Salem, as I see it, is that if you whittle away the desire for death, whether caused by boredom or despair or hatred or some soul wedgie/horrific pain caused by having Grimm juice where her blood should be... what's left? She is so devoted to this idea that she needs to die and her passing should take humanity with it that it's not a bad assumption to say there's precious little her left unconsumed by it.
To cure Salem of her anguish is to kill Salem at her deepest core. 10,000 years of forced immortality leave someone very sure of their identity and their passions- and Salem's greatest passion is to seek a death for humanity that will take her with it. The reasons for it may vary, the sources of it may differ, but the scale of it is...
Magnificent. Like stepping on the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and pulling out a pickaxe because you have not gone deep enough yet. I can barely fathom what it would be like to hold such a vile appetite for misanthropy and suicide, fresh after her curse. I dread to imagine it after ten millennia of trying and failing to find her way out, and the way a human mind would twist and contort around some central points of personality like DNA around histones to try and anchor itself against the flow of time and experience running far past a mortal soul's lifespan.
At this point, I don't think Salem has a deathwish. I think she may as well be the deathwish, for all that's left undevoted to it.
Anyway, I'm closing voting now- dreaming wins.
Tassadar
The Overlord of Cakes & Toucans!
That doesn't matter when they are keyed to summon genocidal gods back...
And most the beings within the relics were made with idea of limited contact anyway, one relic can only be used three times every one hundred years... applying human standard to them would then mean said being is already be long insane.
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Now that the Staff of Creation has been unveiled in RWBY, Ozpin's like: 'Shit, this kid build something that has all the same power as the Staff of Creation, but isn't useless because it can also get all the information it requires to operate for itself.'
infinityDivided
Prince Of Doom
- Location
- USA
Obviously, we're not going to do anything permanent to the Relics. We just need to keep them separate for a few more decades, before we reunite them. The Brother Gods will descend, pleased that Humanity (and Faunuskind) have finally become worthy... right before we cage them in walls of conceptually-reinforced MATH, because those fuckheads have effectively been keeping the minds and souls of all Remnantkind hostage for thousands of years. They're the ones who decided Humanity (and Faunuskind) should be mortal. They're the ones who decided that after an arbitrary amount of time, people should ripped away from their current lives to spend eternity in another plane that we know nothing about. They have the key to immortality, and they blatantly don't deserve it. The time is coming to break down their cruel system. The time is coming to make death nothing more than a reoccurring disease. The time is coming to make the SOLE cause of death suicide. (Apologies if the formatting hurts to look at, I'm going to be stuck on mobile for at least a few days.)
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The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
Salem's problem is that given the nature of her curse, the Brothers would absolutely leave her alive even after incinerating the rest of humanity. The cruelty of what they did was the point.
And given what task they set him, I'm pretty sure they were cursing Ozma too for having been the cause of this annoyance. He's also meant to fail eternally for having inadvertently set Salem on her initial mission to oppose the Brothers.
The only actual hope of Remnant is that they figure out a method of deicide that works on the Brothers before either Salem or Ozma can summon them back. Otherwise, they just do the whole thing over and probably attach new conditions to it, assuming they don't leave Salem as the last lone human on an otherwise lifeless rock.
And given what task they set him, I'm pretty sure they were cursing Ozma too for having been the cause of this annoyance. He's also meant to fail eternally for having inadvertently set Salem on her initial mission to oppose the Brothers.
The only actual hope of Remnant is that they figure out a method of deicide that works on the Brothers before either Salem or Ozma can summon them back. Otherwise, they just do the whole thing over and probably attach new conditions to it, assuming they don't leave Salem as the last lone human on an otherwise lifeless rock.
ADeshantis
King on the Chromium Throne
- Location
- United states
Speaking of Roman, and this is probably a stupid question, what fairy tale character is he based off? I'm, like 99% sure there is one, but I'm getting some mental interference from Alex DeLarge and Candlejack, neither of which work because A Clockwork Orange and Freakazoid are not fairy tales.
Besides, he can't be Candlejack, he doesn't kidna-
Besides, he can't be Candlejack, he doesn't kidna-
This is true. On the other hand, a post human intellect playing therapist might have a chance. Especially if it can convince her that cooperating will help her die.
"The gods are dicks. Killing the world won't make them release you from your torment. Because you won't have admitted that they were totally right about everything. You'll just be stuck alone on a dead world. The way to break the curse is to understand that the god who cursed you was right when he refused to bring Ozma back. The twins are kind of assholes and it honestly feels like mankind is better off without them."