Kindred Spirits (Stargate/RWBY)

[Lyxi]

Says every human being with any decent education in sociology, psychology, evolutionary biology, or any number of other fields. Simply looking at the differences in real societies that had different pressures makes it inarguable.

The notion that alien cultures would still end up remarkably similiar to that most familiar to the writer is as much of a sign of laziness as the "all aliens are monocultures" nonsense.

Of course I'm hardly likely to do it proper justice but that's no reason not to try.



I wrote a rather confrontational reply of my own, then realised it would just devolve things and deleted it.

Put more politely, this is a serious stretch. You're ignoring so much that I don't even know where to start.

Remnant has school dances, clothing boutiques, cars, sports tournaments, board games, comic books, sponsorships, advertisements, movies, concerts, magazines, music players...and all of that's just stuff.

We see a focus on competition in their schooling. We see news much like our own. We see a thousand and one things that I'm guessing are so normal to you that you never stopped to consider that they're just the product of a culture and in no way innate to sentient life.

Fuck, we even see manual labour despite robots being so common.

Things would be more different than that. Even just having the "getting too upset or angry will summon monsters" part should change...so so much.



I don't follow the argument you're making here.



No. I asked if people would be okay with me breaking away from the canon. I asked that because, as several posts have shown, not everyone is. I'm not particularly interested in writing to an empty room, since I can enjoy the idea myself without it ever leaving my head. So no I don't think there's anything ridiculous about checking interest before devoting another couple hundred hours of my life to brainstorming and writing the thing.



Sure, but it's not a small list.

Starting off:

• Salem's stuff is going out the window. May or may not keep her and her merry band, but she's not the Grimm origin or ruler, just an old Grimm. So I mean no relics, no dark and light god (holy shit could they have gone more cliche?) and generally no ripping the villains directly from power rangers.
• Culture is different. Still hashing this out in a lot of ways, but the core is that if yelling at someone could get you both killed, the cultural pressure would make yelling at someone a serious taboo. Much like the cultural pressures in the real world have discouraged behaviour that had some historical risk to it. This is a hefty topic, but examples would include that people get upset over their team losing yet Remnant has the Vytal Festival and Tournament. Or that Nora was being bullied by a bunch of kids, despite their village being out where Grimm are a particularly big danger. I mean if seeing someone get killed is enough to cause the Fall of Beacon I think tormenting dirty orphans is a bit...
• Huntsmen and Huntresses are superheroes. They get treated like normal people. This makes no fucking sense. Nor does the Silver Eyes lineages being some hidden legend.
• Remnant medical tech can give us Ironwood, and Jaune survived initiation (which should definitely have a death toll) without a scratch so why the fuck is getting hit by a car meant to be bad for Penny?
• Ruby has Grimm models on her shelf. That's like the daughter of a serial killer's victim keeping models of said killer on their shelf. I bring this up not as an important thing to change, but simply to demonstrate how little thought seems to have been put into any of this shit.

This is not exhaustive in the slightest. I'm also not even going to pretend that I'll get close to what I'm aiming to do, not without the time investment I put into my serious world building stuff, and that's way more than is going into this fic.

As such, if anyone has any other such things to point out, now's the time.

Click to shrink...

All of this can be explained away by Remnantians being cheerful psychopaths. If everyone who experiences strong negative emotions winds up dead then everyone left will have that side of their emotions dampened over the years. So with everyone unable to really feel guilt or fear..... Yup, they evolved into complete psychos.

EDIT: How are you going to handle the Branwen weirdness? Of the three people who have that particular bloodline, 2 have multiple unrelated powers (strength from hits and fire, bad luck and birdyness) and one has shown signs of possible multiple powers (portals and knowing when her daughter was about to die).
On top of that they show the most negative emotion in the show:
-Yang's anger, while not as bad as fanon is still visibly present.
-Qrow seems very depressed.
-Raven is quite possibly the most menacing person we've seen thus far. Her talk with Qrow practically dripped with "I'm going to laugh while I kill you". Sadism counts as negative, I think.

So, yeah. One possibility has them sort of being not quite Grimm but sort of registering as such to Grimm senses, hence why the Ursas got confused when they fought Yang. You could have them be humans affected by whatever originally created the Grimm, which would explain the extra powers and the ability to not attract Grimm despite their disposition. It could also explain the way Raven's tribe operates, if they have a sort of low-key killer instinct that makes them predisposed to preying on humans.
Another possibility is that they evolved to draw power from negative emotions, with a sort of secondary semblance being power by such. The fight response as opposed to most of remnant's flight preference. I'm not overly fond of this one but w/e.
A third possibility is that it's just magic. Silver eyes, maidens and now sorcerers. This one is supported by the link to the eyes (Yang's eyes turn red when she uses her fire) and is my personal favourite but might not fit into your story depending on how you want to handle magic.

 

[firefossil]

And again I think there is some underestimation of the human character. As I noted before, there are plenty of examples of societies which are both developed 1st world comfortable, yet remain under serious or existential threat. Cold War Americans didn't spend all day quivering in a fallout shelter waiting for the end to come while eating canned beans. Yet they weren't cheerful psychopaths or something either.

My impression is that the Grimm are like natural disasters. Yes the threat is always out there, and even the best of efforts can't prevent it, but sensible actions and preparedness mean that it only rarely hits hard, while hard hits like Katrina or Galveston (or abroad, like India and the Phillippines) are rare. In fact one could draw a comparison between a place like Galveston or New Orleans and Mountain Glenn, in that they were built in an area deeply vulnerable to some form of disaster, until one day that disaster finally came and trashed them hard.

Its kind of amazing how much we take for granted that all sorts of random shit could snuff us out in an instant, and often does do that to people or even whole communities, yet we still walk out the door every day nevertheless.

 

[Lyxi]

And again I think there is some underestimation of the human character. As I noted before, there are plenty of examples of societies which are both developed 1st world comfortable, yet remain under serious or existential threat. Cold War Americans didn't spend all day quivering in a fallout shelter waiting for the end to come while eating canned beans. Yet they weren't cheerful psychopaths or something either.

My impression is that the Grimm are like natural disasters. Yes the threat is always out there, and even the best of efforts can't prevent it, but sensible actions and preparedness mean that it only rarely hits hard, while hard hits like Katrina or Galveston (or abroad, like India and the Phillippines) are rare. In fact one could draw a comparison between a place like Galveston or New Orleans and Mountain Glenn, in that they were built in an area deeply vulnerable to some form of disaster, until one day that disaster finally came and trashed them hard.

Its kind of amazing how much we take for granted that all sorts of random shit could snuff us out in an instant, and often does do that to people or even whole communities, yet we still walk out the door every day nevertheless.

Click to shrink...

The difference is that with grimm negative emotion actually draws in the disaster. Being happy and not really caring about things are positive survival traits.

 

[firefossil]

The difference is that with grimm negative emotion actually draws in the disaster. Being happy and not really caring about things are positive survival traits.

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Big walls, lots of guns, and emergency shelters are also positive survival traits. The idea of the villages outside the walls are basically the Eloi straight out of Verne, while the people inside the walls are like Dai Li-controlled Ba Sing Se from AtlA, the problem with that is the existence of hunters and dust based weaponry makes it clear they take a more proactive role than "ignore it and hope it goes away". Moreover looking at history there is no indication that you need to have a wildly distorted and alien mindset in order to live in conditions where existential threats hang over you like the sword of damocles... developed modern civilizations have survived just fine. It'd no doubt have a major effect on the cultural psyche, as was the case in Cold War era America, and that should be developed, but Cold War era Americans aren't wildly alien in mindset to us or something.

Also like the attitude I'm getting from some people here is that every time someone stubs their toe it aggros Grimm which incites more aggro and a horde of rampaging killbeasts levels everything. Whereas in canon, the only grimm attacks that happen during the time of the show are either deliberately incited if not outright transported by Cinder's gang (end of S2 and S3) or caused by Raven's band of murderhobos (S4 E2). Note in particular that in the end of S2 despite blowing a hole into Vale through which a large number of Grimm swarm through and attack civilians whatever negative emotions result do not incite further assault by other grimm a la S3. Or the fact that numerous wars have happened, and while its indicated that such did incite all kinds of devastating Grimm attacks that took advantage of the strife and disorder, it didn't result in civilization getting wiped out or knocked back to the stone age or anything like that. And its still unclear how much of a direct role negative emotion plays. Its been stated that the real dangerous grimm are old and smart, and simply might refuse to be aggro'd, while its quite possible that Salem herself might be ordered some of the more successful village-decimating attacks.

Overall, throughout the whole show, the Grimm on their own have not been especially credible threats even to friggin student trainees. The way I see it, they're like natural disasters, which only become critical problems for isolated or poorly planned villages, war breaking apart society or terrorism causing strife and bringing Grimm in, that kind of thing. The idea that they are always 5 seconds away from getting their faces eaten off by grimm in an avalanche of negative emotions just doesn't match canon, which by no means presents a happy or idealized picture of things, just not so hair trigger. Like they might be a little weird, but it'd be something like Cold War America weird. Something which ironically might make them more relatable to the SG1 team, remember that the SG movie takes place in 1994 and SG1 began release in 1997, so the Cold War is in their recent and living memory, especially for Jack.

 

[Lyxi]

Big walls, lots of guns, and emergency shelters are also positive survival traits. The idea of the villages outside the walls are basically the Eloi straight out of Verne, while the people inside the walls are like Dai Li-controlled Ba Sing Se from AtlA, the problem with that is the existence of hunters and dust based weaponry makes it clear they take a more proactive role than "ignore it and hope it goes away". Moreover looking at history there is no indication that you need to have a wildly distorted and alien mindset in order to live in conditions where existential threats hang over you like the sword of damocles... developed modern civilizations have survived just fine. It'd no doubt have a major effect on the cultural psyche, as was the case in Cold War era America, and that should be developed, but Cold War era Americans aren't wildly alien in mindset to us or something.

Also like the attitude I'm getting from some people here is that every time someone stubs their toe it aggros Grimm which incites more aggro and a horde of rampaging killbeasts levels everything. Whereas in canon, the only grimm attacks that happen during the time of the show are either deliberately incited if not outright transported by Cinder's gang (end of S2 and S3) or caused by Raven's band of murderhobos (S4 E2). Note in particular that in the end of S2 despite blowing a hole into Vale through which a large number of Grimm swarm through and attack civilians whatever negative emotions result do not incite further assault by other grimm a la S3. Or the fact that numerous wars have happened, and while its indicated that such did incite all kinds of devastating Grimm attacks that took advantage of the strife and disorder, it didn't result in civilization getting wiped out or knocked back to the stone age or anything like that. And its still unclear how much of a direct role negative emotion plays. Its been stated that the real dangerous grimm are old and smart, and simply might refuse to be aggro'd, while its quite possible that Salem herself might be ordered some of the more successful village-decimating attacks.

Overall, throughout the whole show, the Grimm on their own have not been especially credible threats even to friggin student trainees. The way I see it, they're like natural disasters, which only become critical problems for isolated or poorly planned villages, war breaking apart society or terrorism causing strife and bringing Grimm in, that kind of thing. The idea that they are always 5 seconds away from getting their faces eaten off by grimm in an avalanche of negative emotions just doesn't match canon, which by no means presents a happy or idealized picture of things, just not so hair trigger. Like they might be a little weird, but it'd be something like Cold War America weird. Something which ironically might make them more relatable to the SG1 team, remember that the SG movie takes place in 1994 and SG1 began release in 1997, so the Cold War is in their recent and living memory, especially for Jack.

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I'm starting to think you don't understand how evolution works. I'll tell you a little story.
Waaaay back in the time before the kingdoms there were two boys. We'll call them Jimmy and Carl. Jimmy was a nice little boy, always smiling. He didn't really care about much though. Didn't cry when his uncle just didn't come back from a hunting trip, didn't mind it when he stubbed his toe... Something was a bit off about him, all in all. Carl on the other hand was pretty darn normal. Bit of a bastard but then most kids are.
Jimmy and Carl were out playing in the woods one day. Because kids are idiots who will wander into demon infested hell forests, don't bother denying it. Along comes a grimm and the boys hide in the trees on opposite ends of a clearing. Jimmy is just sitting there, not really minding the grimm but knowing he should probably stay out of site. Carl is hiding too. He's also radiating so much fear that the grimm charges straight at him and tears his little kiddy head off.
Jimmy goes home, Carl's parents go into mourning and get eaten by another grimm three days later. Jimmy grows up and eventually winds up banging the blonde girl that Carl had a crush on before he got brutally murdered. They had kids who were a little off too.
The moral of this story? When having a normal emotional range is potentially lethal then the people with normal emotional range will be more likely to be killed off before they can breed. This will eventually result in people with difficulty feeling negative emotions making up the majority of the populace. Since negative emotions like grief for a lost loved one and fear for their safety are a large part of what we would describe as "caring for someone", it stands to reason that they would really give a damn about anyone or anything. Hence why I call them "cheerful psychopaths".

And that, my dear person, is a little tale of evolution on Remnant.

 

[Storyteller]

And that, my dear person, is a little tale of evolution on Remnant.

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I think you are ignoring the negative pressures that being a psychopath would cause. Humanity's progress is built on a lot of cooperation and trust. I have difficulty believing that a society that doesn't have a reason to try and prevent deaths would be functional.

Also you are probably ignoring how humanity as a general whole can easily be vindictive bastards. Someone that just doesn't care- they are scary for a reason. As they don't care, if people notice that one person doesn't try to help save a hunting partner or just repeatedly survives when others don't - well Jimmy could easily be killed by the rest of the community for being bad luck, strange or being blamed for not dying.

 

[Lyxi]

I think you are ignoring the negative pressures that being a psychopath would cause. Humanity's progress is built on a lot of cooperation and trust. I have difficulty believing that a society that doesn't have a reason to try and prevent deaths would be functional.

Also you are probably ignoring how humanity as a general whole can easily be vindictive bastards. Someone that just doesn't care- they are scary for a reason. As they don't care, if people notice that one person doesn't try to help save a hunting partner or just repeatedly survives when others don't - well Jimmy could easily be killed by the rest of the community for being bad luck, strange or being blamed for not dying.

Click to shrink...

Being smart enough to know that you should cooperate with someone doesn't require trust. Plenty of people who don't give a damn about anyone else will help them if it makes their survival more likely. The basic urge to fulfill one's purpose (have babies) is present in all life forms, even those too simple for emotions.
And you'll note that my situation did not involve a hunting party. It involved two kids playing in the woods. A hunting party would be armed and fighting the things so this would confer no advantages or disadvantages. Unless everyone in the hunting party had reduced negative emotions, in which case they would be less likely to run into grimm, increasing survival rate overall. Whatever social disadvantages incurred pale in comparison to the survival advantages.
And a community distrustful and murderous enough to kill one of their own like that would draw in the grimm, making their survival less likely. They would be supplanted by the people who aren't paranoid wrecks of human beings.

 

[Anzer'ke]

where existential threats hang over you like the sword of damocles

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I think you're conflating the Grimm with vastly less threatening things.

 

[Storyteller]

Being smart enough to know that you should cooperate with someone doesn't require trust.

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Hmm, and when should one cooperate? If someone isn't going to recover from a leg injury due to maiming should one give them food? It isn't going to be beneficial to the survival.

Children with men. Is it actually beneficial for the man to help raise the child? Unlike the mother he can walk away before the baby is born. It's at least 6 years before the "investment" shows possibly any returns, is likely to die and for what purpose?

As a general rule people are better at short term consequences than long.

Why spend effort researching medical care when one yourself is never going to need it? Why bother rescuing your child when you can have another one?

In this society firefighters would only put out/contain fires and not go inside to rescue.

No use calling for help in an attack as it would be most beneficial for the person to not risk themselves. If the person is dangerous hopefully they'll be more injured after the fight is over. And if they aren't injured the person attacked likely wouldn't have been of help in the fight anyway.

Relief efforts are likely non existent as there's not much logical reason to do so. The chances of relief efforts being returned are near nil.

Sure maybe a society could arise from this but don't pretend that it'd be close at all to the human norm. Every culture has some funeral practice, and not just in getting rid of disease causing corpses.

 

[Liquid Ink]

Psychopathy is not something that should be romanticised.

Edit: Yes, I know there are non-violent psychopaths and there is in fact a spectrum, but it's still romanticising a mental health disorder.

 

[Anzer'ke]

Psychopathy is not something that should be romanticised.

Edit: Yes, I know there are non-violent psychopaths and there is in fact a spectrum, but it's still romanticising a mental health disorder.

Click to shrink...

To be clear, Remnans aren't human and there's no reason to automatically throw in every aspect of a mental illness just because some aspects might crop up.

 

[Storyteller]

While we are in the topic of survival - there are reasons that people have a fear response instinct. If someone's afraid of something they are more likely to avoid it. There's also the fact that the amygdla (emotional center of brain) finishes development apparently a full decade or more before the prefrontal cortex (logic center). Which is why teenagers are so erratic as logic isn't really kicking in till about 25 years of age.

As for why everything is run so much through the amygdla during this time period - my guess is that the brain has to use something to weigh choices and fear is usable to keep the body alive.

So I'm not sure that Jimmy would always survive to sexual reproductive age. The logic portion of his brain wouldn't be there and fear also wouldn't.

Also studies are showing human reasoning being only 10% logic and 90% emotion. I severely doubt that a society of no emotion would be recognizable as human on any level.

 

[Lyxi]

Hmm, and when should one cooperate? If someone isn't going to recover from a leg injury due to maiming should one give them food? It isn't going to be beneficial to the survival.

Children with men. Is it actually beneficial for the man to help raise the child? Unlike the mother he can walk away before the baby is born. It's at least 6 years before the "investment" shows possibly any returns, is likely to die and for what purpose?

As a general rule people are better at short term consequences than long.

Why spend effort researching medical care when one yourself is never going to need it? Why bother rescuing your child when you can have another one?

In this society firefighters would only put out/contain fires and not go inside to rescue.

No use calling for help in an attack as it would be most beneficial for the person to not risk themselves. If the person is dangerous hopefully they'll be more injured after the fight is over. And if they aren't injured the person attacked likely wouldn't have been of help in the fight anyway.

Relief efforts are likely non existent as there's not much logical reason to do so. The chances of relief efforts being returned are near nil.

Sure maybe a society could arise from this but don't pretend that it'd be close at all to the human norm. Every culture has some funeral practice, and not just in getting rid of disease causing corpses.

Click to shrink...

That entire post only works if we assume there are no observable benefits to having a group, which is just plain false. Splitting labour, for one. Having a lessened ability to feel negative emotion doesn't preclude one from thinking logically, it just makes people care less about things.

Psychopathy is not something that should be romanticised.

Edit: Yes, I know there are non-violent psychopaths and there is in fact a spectrum, but it's still romanticising a mental health disorder.

Click to shrink...

I'm not romanticizing it, I'm just saying that the people of Remnant have similarities with psychopaths.

While we are in the topic of survival - there are reasons that people have a fear response instinct. If someone's afraid of something they are more likely to avoid it. There's also the fact that the amygdla (emotional center of brain) finishes development apparently a full decade or more before the prefrontal cortex (logic center). Which is why teenagers are so erratic as logic isn't really kicking in till about 25 years of age.

As for why everything is run so much through the amygdla during this time period - my guess is that the brain has to use something to weigh choices and fear is usable to keep the body alive.

So I'm not sure that Jimmy would always survive to sexual reproductive age. The logic portion of his brain wouldn't be there and fear also wouldn't.

Also studies are showing human reasoning being only 10% logic and 90% emotion. I severely doubt that a society of no emotion would be recognizable as human on any level.

Click to shrink...

Which means the logic centers develop at a slightly faster pace. Also what studies show the 10/90 split? That sounds like bullshit. You wouldn't get such a clean split in most studies and human reasoning isn't quite that easy to puzzle out so I doubt we actually could make a study like that.

 

[firefossil]

I'm starting to think you don't understand how evolution works. I'll tell you a little story.
Waaaay back in the time before the kingdoms there were two boys. We'll call them Jimmy and Carl. Jimmy was a nice little boy, always smiling. He didn't really care about much though. Didn't cry when his uncle just didn't come back from a hunting trip, didn't mind it when he stubbed his toe... Something was a bit off about him, all in all. Carl on the other hand was pretty darn normal. Bit of a bastard but then most kids are.
Jimmy and Carl were out playing in the woods one day. Because kids are idiots who will wander into demon infested hell forests, don't bother denying it. Along comes a grimm and the boys hide in the trees on opposite ends of a clearing. Jimmy is just sitting there, not really minding the grimm but knowing he should probably stay out of site. Carl is hiding too. He's also radiating so much fear that the grimm charges straight at him and tears his little kiddy head off.
Jimmy goes home, Carl's parents go into mourning and get eaten by another grimm three days later. Jimmy grows up and eventually winds up banging the blonde girl that Carl had a crush on before he got brutally murdered. They had kids who were a little off too.
The moral of this story? When having a normal emotional range is potentially lethal then the people with normal emotional range will be more likely to be killed off before they can breed. This will eventually result in people with difficulty feeling negative emotions making up the majority of the populace. Since negative emotions like grief for a lost loved one and fear for their safety are a large part of what we would describe as "caring for someone", it stands to reason that they would really give a damn about anyone or anything. Hence why I call them "cheerful psychopaths".

And that, my dear person, is a little tale of evolution on Remnant.

Click to shrink...

Let me tell you a little story. Jimmy was always concerned about safety. He made sure his house was built above sea level and inland, even it wasn't quite as scenic. He pushed the mayor to build a proper flood wall, and boarded up his house when the hurricane came. If it was really bad he traveled further inland with his family to wait the storm out. Carl didn't give a shit about those things, he never cared about the risk. He built his house near the beachfront, below sea level, and made no effort to prepare, just taking things as they come. The hurricane smashed his town, his house, and his body into unrecognizable chunks.

I'm going to go on a limb here and guess that the population of Remnant living inside the giant heavily fortified and walled cities guarded by hunters, robots, and airships is far higher than the population living in the unwalled villages who defend themselves entirely by thinking happy thoughts and getting a hunter loaned out to them now and then. Indeed, of the extent to which Grimm are shown to be threats, its overwhelmingly towards the poorly defended and exposed villages, rather than cities. Vale gets threatened in canon only because crazy terrorists with support of the leader of the Grimm go out of their way to send Grimm at them.

Like there is absolutely nothing in the Remnant setting to suggest that the inhabitants are psychopaths or that being psychopaths would be beneficial. I mean heck its all but stated that one of the big wars in Remnant's history was fought because a faction wanted to grind out emotion and individuality, likely because they wanted to mold people into the kind of emotionally off psychopaths you describe out of the belief it would stop the Grimm. Something they wouldn't need to do if everyone was already a cheerful Eloi oblivious to the Morlocks eating their friends. Instead the people of Remnant redoubled their emphasis on emotion and individuality, rather than suppressing it.

I think you're conflating the Grimm with vastly less threatening things.

Click to shrink...

Grimm are less threatening than your nation getting cluster bombed by nuclear tipped ICBMs?

Also to be frank the show has not made the Grimm seem very threatening. The primary threats in the show have consistently been people, not Grimm, and the Grimm are only shown to pose a serious threat when people specifically seek to incite them to attack while crippling the anti-Grimm defenses or taking them by surprise. There's definitely been no indication of some kind of runaway positive feedback loop wherein people must never show negative emotions or everything spirals out of control as they incite Grimm that incite negative emotions that incite more Grimm.

Like no doubt the Grimm are going to leave indelible scars on Remnant's culture and worldview, but not to the extent that they'd have wildly distorted mentalities or otherwise be incapable of resembling modern earth society. People don't break in response to these kinds of things, they adapt. People adapt to all sorts of crazy shit.

 

[Liquid Ink]

I'm not romanticizing it, I'm just saying that the people of Remnant have similarities with psychopaths.

Click to shrink...

So with everyone unable to really feel guilt or fear..... Yup, they evolved into complete psychos.

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This is where I got confused.

The idea that an entire successful civilisation comprised entirely of total psychopaths is just... ugh. Never mind, sorry if I'm seeming abrasive. Dropping the subject.

 

[Lyxi]

Let me tell you a little story. Jimmy was always concerned about safety. He made sure his house was built above sea level and inland, even it wasn't quite as scenic. He pushed the mayor to build a proper flood wall, and boarded up his house when the hurricane came. If it was really bad he traveled further inland with his family to wait the storm out. Carl didn't give a shit about those things, he never cared about the risk. He built his house near the beachfront, below sea level, and made no effort to prepare, just taking things as they come. The hurricane smashed his town, his house, and his body into unrecognizable chunks.

I'm going to go on a limb here and guess that the population of Remnant living inside the giant heavily fortified and walled cities guarded by hunters, robots, and airships is far higher than the population living in the unwalled villages who defend themselves entirely by thinking happy thoughts and getting a hunter loaned out to them now and then. Indeed, of the extent to which Grimm are shown to be threats, its overwhelmingly towards the poorly defended and exposed villages, rather than cities. Vale gets threatened in canon only because crazy terrorists with support of the leader of the Grimm go out of their way to send Grimm at them.

Like there is absolutely nothing in the Remnant setting to suggest that the inhabitants are psychopaths or that being psychopaths would be beneficial. I mean heck its all but stated that one of the big wars in Remnant's history was fought because a faction wanted to grind out emotion and individuality, likely because they wanted to mold people into the kind of emotionally off psychopaths you describe out of the belief it would stop the Grimm. Something they wouldn't need to do if everyone was already a cheerful Eloi oblivious to the Morlocks eating their friends. Instead the people of Remnant redoubled their emphasis on emotion and individuality, rather than suppressing it.


Grimm are less threatening than your nation getting cluster bombed by nuclear tipped ICBMs?

Also to be frank the show has not made the Grimm seem very threatening. The primary threats in the show have consistently been people, not Grimm, and the Grimm are only shown to pose a serious threat when people specifically seek to incite them to attack while crippling the anti-Grimm defenses or taking them by surprise. There's definitely been no indication of some kind of runaway positive feedback loop wherein people must never show negative emotions or everything spirals out of control as they incite Grimm that incite negative emotions that incite more Grimm.

Like no doubt the Grimm are going to leave indelible scars on Remnant's culture and worldview, but not to the extent that they'd have wildly distorted mentalities or otherwise be incapable of resembling modern earth society. People don't break in response to these kinds of things, they adapt. People adapt to all sorts of crazy shit.

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Because Remnantis have had ICBMs for their entire existence. You really are an idiot, aren't you? There is a time before all of the tech you are mentioning. Remnites didn't start with 100 foot steel walls and machine guns.
Honestly, even if they had tech from the ancients to work off of (in this au) there would still have been a very large period of time where they would be vulnerable enough to evolve the traits I mentioned.

This is where I got confused.

The idea that an entire successful civilisation comprised entirely of total psychopaths is just... ugh. Never mind, sorry if I'm seeming abrasive. Dropping the subject.

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I was mostly exaggerating for effect. They would have suppressed negative emotions and likely seem slightly psychotic from our point of view but it wouldn't be quite as bad as a city full of horror movie villains.

 

[firefossil]

Because Remnantis have had ICBMs for their entire existence. You really are an idiot, aren't you? There is a time before all of the tech you are mentioning. Remnites didn't start with 100 foot steel walls and machine guns. Honestly, even if they had tech from the ancients to work off of (in this au) there would still have been a very large period of time where they would be vulnerable enough to evolve the traits I mentioned.

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1: The issue is that if people were like Carl not Jimmy then they would never have built those 100 foot steel walls and machine guns. Carl is an Eloi, unfeeling and uncaring even as his buddies get eaten by the Grimm because 'natural selection' means he must necessarily lack the negative emotions that would aggro the infinite unstoppable Grimm hordes in an inescapable positive feedback loop.

2: To be frank Remnant's backstory is fishy. If they need Dust just to survive and there was a time where they didn't have Dust, then Remantians should be extinct. It seems pretty obvious to me that as the name implies, Remnant was originally at a higher level, but then Bad Things (likely involving the shattered moon) happened and threw them back by a lot. By the point of Bad Things they might already have had Dust. Heck Dust might be directly tied to the Bad Things.

In any case "civilization comprised entirely of total psychopaths" would basically require the entire cast to be the RWBY characters in name only, because excepting a few of the villains, none of them can be described as total psychopaths, their characterization and history is similarly dependent on their friends and acquaintances not being total psychopaths. Nothing in the setting points towards people being like that. Ruby is probably the closest of the main cast, but its pretty clear that she just repressed and/or in denial of her negative feelings, not that they don't exist entirely. There is nothing in canon that supports you absurd theory, moreover there is nothing that suggests a need to. I've already gone over all kinds of examples of how people handle looming existential threats, and its not by becoming unfeeling psychopaths.

I was mostly exaggerating for effect. They would have suppressed negative emotions and likely seem slightly psychotic from our point of view but it wouldn't be quite as bad as a city full of horror movie villains.

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So basically you are doing a large backpedal such that when you said "civilization of total psychopaths" you meant things like Stiff Upper Lip... which is you know what I said.

 

[Lyxi]

1: The issue is that if people were like Carl not Jimmy then they would never have built those 100 foot steel walls and machine guns. Carl is an Eloi, unfeeling and uncaring even as his buddies get eaten by the Grimm because 'natural selection' means he must necessarily lack the negative emotions that would aggro the infinite unstoppable Grimm hordes in an inescapable positive feedback loop.

2: To be frank Remnant's backstory is fishy. If they need Dust just to survive and there was a time where they didn't have Dust, then Remantians should be extinct. It seems pretty obvious to me that as the name implies, Remnant was originally at a higher level, but then Bad Things (likely involving the shattered moon) happened and threw them back by a lot. By the point of Bad Things they might already have had Dust. Heck Dust might be directly tied to the Bad Things.

In any case "civilization comprised entirely of total psychopaths" would basically require the entire cast to be the RWBY characters in name only, because excepting a few of the villains, none of them can be described as total psychopaths, their characterization and history is similarly dependent on their friends and acquaintances not being total psychopaths. Nothing in the setting points towards people being like that. Ruby is probably the closest of the main cast, but its pretty clear that she just repressed and/or in denial of her negative feelings, not that they don't exist entirely. There is nothing in canon that supports you absurd theory, moreover there is nothing that suggests a need to. I've already gone over all kinds of examples of how people handle looming existential threats, and its not by becoming unfeeling psychopaths.


So basically you are doing a large backpedal such that when you said "civilization of total psychopaths" you meant things like Stiff Upper Lip... which is you know what I said.

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1) You got Carl and Jimmy backwards. I think you didn't actually read my history lesson. Logical thinking is also not emotion which means they would, in fact, have built those walls.
2) The implication given in the show and world of remnant vids is that dust was the turning point. It is what allowed them to progress beyond simple survival and into being an actual civilization. Before this comes natural selection.
In any case a reduced fear response actually explains a lot of the canon characters' decisions. Just watch it and see some of the stupid things they do, including launching kids into a forest filled with murderbeasts. Literally launching. Most importantly, though, is that REAL LIFE EXISTENTIAL THREATS AREN'T ACTUALLY DRAWN TOWARDS YOU BY NEGATIVE EMOTION, YOU DUMB FUCK!!!!! None of the shit you put forward actually applies because the situation is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT.

And I'm not backpedalling. I'm not implying a fucking stiff upper lip. I'm implying that they have a reduced ability to feel negative emotions, less than being outright insane but still being decidedly off. I said what I said as a form of hyperbole. Ever heard of that? Why don't you look it up, because I have no interest in talking to you until you start actually thinking.

 

[Phant0m5]

So is there actually a chapter in the works, or was all this worldbuilding just a thought exercise? Because I was really excited for this fic, but then it just kind of didn't happen.

 

[Spectral Waltz]

Hmm... Watched at least for now. Interesting idea, though I'm not sure how it'll play out?

 

[Anzer'ke]

So is there actually a chapter in the works, or was all this worldbuilding just a thought exercise? Because I was really excited for this fic, but then it just kind of didn't happen.

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The first. Have a little patience here. I have other fics and commissions in the works.

 

[Tekomandor]

To be honest, all of this world building strikes me as being rather pointless. You've talked a lot about making sense, but you seem to be thinking only on that level, rather than thinking about why you want to change things and what effect on the story that will have. Remnant's cities are very much like modern day America because they're supposed to feel safe and familiar, for example.

That, and it strikes me that you're taking this whole thing far too seriously, given the works involved. A story with the tone of this world building isn't going to ring true to either show.

 

[Wormageddon]

Still haven't watched canon RWBY yet but I love SG-1. I've picked up some of the basics from all the crossover fics though.

Watched. The bit about Charlie was quietly heartbreaking.

 

[chriswriter90]

That, and it strikes me that you're taking this whole thing far too seriously, given the works involved. A story with the tone of this world building isn't going to ring true to either show.

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You raise a good point.

Stargate and RWBY could be plenty serious when they needed to be. However, the drama and seriousness were used to drive the plot, not simply because the writers wanted to go grimdark.

 

[LancerisDead]

You raise a good point.

Stargate and RWBY could be plenty serious when they needed to be. However, the drama and seriousness were used to drive the plot, not simply because the writers wanted to go grimdark.

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The thing with RWBY is that a lot of people are still hanging on the pre-V3E9 tone, the previous fuckton of foreshadowing notwithstanding. They either think that the shift was too abrupt and want it to turn into lighthearted silliness or think that because everything went to hell in Volume 3 that the show needs to go full grimdark.

Yang put it best: "Sometimes bad things just happen". That the show has (because it was always there in the background, one only needs to look) some really dark stuff going on doesn't equal having no moments of reprieve, or healing or simply dumb fun. Which is kind of what V4 was all about.

Man, people can say what they want about Volume 4 but the writing was great.