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RWBY Thread III: Time To Say Goodbye

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Stop: So gotta few things that need to be said real quick.
  • Staff Post
    • so gotta few things that need to be said real quick.
    We get a lot of reports from this thread. A lot of it is just a series of people yelling at each other over arguments that have been rehashed hundreds of times since the end of the recent Volume. And I get that the last Volume - and RWBY in general, really - has some controversial moments that people will want to discuss, argue about, debate, etc.

    That's fine. We're not going to stop people from doing that, because that's literally what the point of the thread is. However, there's just a point where it gets to be a bit too much, and arguments about whether or not Ironwood was morally justified in his actions in the recent Volume, or if RWBY and her team were in the right for withholding information from Ironwood out of distrust, or whatever flavor of argument of the day descend into insulting other posters, expressing a demeaning attitude towards other's opinions, and just being overall unpleasant. That tends to happen a lot in this thread. We want it to stop happening in this thread.

    So! As of now the thread is in a higher state of moderation. What that means is that any future infractions will result in a weeklong boot from the thread, and repeated offenders will likely be permanently removed. So please, everyone endeavor to actually respect the other's arguments, and even if you strongly disagree with them please stay civil and mindful when it comes to responding to others.

    In addition, users should refrain from talking about off-site users in the thread. Bear in mind that this does not mean that you cannot continue to post tumblr posts, for example, that add onto the discussion in the thread, with the caveat that it's related to RWBY of course. But any objections to offsite users in the thread should be handled via PM, or they'll be treated as thread violations and infracted as such.
     
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  • Staff Post
    • Mook said:
    Another example is Surtur from Norse Mythology. He only appears in a single story and his only purpose is to basically show up when everything is going to shit, kill Freyr because Freyr gave away his sword like a dumbass (and for the purpose of coercing a giantess to marry him to boot) and then set the entire world on fire as the final act of Ragnarok. Then he just quietly fucks off to who knows where and the world is reborn with the surviving humans and gods taking their place in the new world.
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    Yep. And even aside from destructive ones, there's plenty who are like, 'this one is Love. He does his job except that one time he made himself fall in love. This is death, he ferries spirits except that one time he got captured.' Even some of the more major gods pretty much just repeat the same types of action in each story.

    God of Darkness and Light are in the more nuanced category of gods. Plenty have only one major story and are much more one note in them.
     
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    Q99 said:
    Yep. And even aside from destructive ones, there's plenty who are like, 'this one is Love. He does his job except that one time he made himself fall in love. This is death, he ferries spirits except that one time he got captured.' Even some of the more major gods pretty much just repeat the same types of action in each story.

    God of Darkness and Light are in the more nuanced category of gods. Plenty have only one major story and are much more one note in them.
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    I don't know if I'd go that far. Lots of mythical figures have a lot of different aspects--even contradictory aspects--and act in a variety of different roles. But a big part of the reason for that is because they were stories created by humans, not actual facts. As society changed, it rewrote the myths to suit the new zeitgeist. Dionysus was originally a god of madness worshiped by wine cults in which the oppressed would party in defiance of the established social order, and was suppressed by the ruling classes. But when the nobles got rich and decadent and started wanting to throw hedonistic parties of their own, they rewrote Dionysus to be more about the wine and partying and less about the madness and disruption of the social order and added him to the mainstream pantheon. Virgil wrote (really derivative) Illiad fanfic that was decidedly pro-Trojan because it was commissioned by the Roman emperor and Rome considered themselves the descendants of Troy. Ovid wrote all the Greek gods just a little bit more petty than usual in his versions of the myths because he was in a bad mood about being exiled. The Romans mashed up their deities with those of the peoples they conquered to try and absorb those cultures into their own. Mythology was propaganda and people changed it to suit the message they wanted to spread.
     
    So how are these gods any more nuanced than the one note gods y'all are bringing up?

    Qrow: "There were two gods, one good and one bad. The good god was good and made good things. The bad god was bad and destroyed things. Then together they made humans who can be both good and bad."

    Yep, A+ storytelling, very nuanced.
     
    Found this on Reddit



    Someone noticed that Ruby has little markings in her eyes, and then they went and looked at Oz's silver-eyed kids


    No other character has those in their eyes.

    IDK if there is enough evidence to say this means something yet, but it does show how different silver eyes are from regular eyes.
     
    Mre said:
    Found this on Reddit



    Someone noticed that Ruby has little markings in her eyes, and then they went and looked at Oz's silver-eyed kids


    No other character has those in their eyes.

    IDK if there is enough evidence to say this means something yet, but it does show how different silver eyes are from regular eyes.
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    You got that pic of that background character in Volume 5's eyes? Or Mercury's?
     
    thesevenwielder said:
    So how are these gods any more nuanced than the one note gods y'all are bringing up?

    Qrow: "There were two gods, one good and one bad. The good god was good and made good things. The bad god was bad and destroyed things. Then together they made humans who can be both good and bad."

    Yep, A+ storytelling, very nuanced.
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    The last part is a pretty nuanced take considering how unlike other stories it is

    the bad god does good and the good god does bad in parts of V6E3, and it's revealed that their domains are an agreement rather than reflective of their capabilities

    Nuance.
     
    devilkingx2 said:
    The last part is a pretty nuanced take considering how unlike other stories it is

    the bad god does good and the good god does bad in parts of V6E3, and it's revealed that their domains are an agreement rather than reflective of their capabilities

    Nuance.
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    No it isn't. That's not how nuance works.

    Also, the good god doesn't do anything I would label as "bad" here.
     
    thesevenwielder said:
    So how are these gods any more nuanced than the one note gods y'all are bringing up?

    Qrow: "There were two gods, one good and one bad. The good god was good and made good things. The bad god was bad and destroyed things. Then together they made humans who can be both good and bad."

    Yep, A+ storytelling, very nuanced.
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    Other than the fact that the story makes a clear point that both gods were capable of good and bad.
     
    The Narrator said:
    Okay, yeah, you'd think people would want that. Although I'm confused why that would be his exclusive domain. Magic doesn't create things?
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    Well, we never see it do so, and while it's shown the ability to alter things like the Maidens and Qrow/Raven, alteration doesn't seem to be specific to either god given each of their respective pools altered Salem in a different way.
    And creation isn't something the younger god can't or doesn't do. Heck, he created the various destructive forces in the legend, and Grimm pop out of his pool.
     
    draconas said:
    Well, we never see it do so, and while it's shown the ability to alter things like the Maidens and Qrow/Raven, alteration doesn't seem to be specific to either god given each of their respective pools altered Salem in a different way.
    And creation isn't something the younger god can't or doesn't do. Heck, he created the various destructive forces in the legend, and Grimm pop out of his pool.
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    I'm not sure I quite buy the idea that magic doesn't create, because we've seen the Maidens use theirs to generate ice ex nihilo.
     
    Delphisage said:
    No it isn't. That's not how nuance works.

    Also, the good god doesn't do anything I would label as "bad" here.
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    The idea that humans are a combination of creation and destruction with the ability to choose is way more nuanced that the general depiction of humans being either inherently bastards or made in the image of the gods.

    eternally cursing one person to spite them for not following your arbitrary (see: both gods breaking it) rules is something you'd expect from the bad guy, but it was the god of light who did that.

    One can argue that there's nothing wrong with upholding the cosmic balance, which still means that the god of light did multiple bad things: making a person immortal, resurrecting ozma anyway, allowing the extinction of humanity, planning to kill them all again later on, etc. None of that is a cosmic balance of life and death where even a single person can throw it out of whack
     
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    The Narrator said:
    I'm not sure I quite buy the idea that magic doesn't create, because we've seen the Maidens use theirs to generate ice ex nihilo.
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    Well, there's the question of if Maiden powers are the same thing as the magic Ozpin and Salem wield. Plus, like I said, the younger god created all the destructive forces and outright says the older brother doesn't own the powers of creation.
    And calling out making ice blasts and weapons from as creation but not fire blasts or lightning from nowhere is kind of overly specific
     
    Delphisage said:
    No it isn't. That's not how nuance works.

    Also, the good god doesn't do anything I would label as "bad" here.
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    Aside from cursing Salem, he also shows up when Darkness resurrects Ozma to say 'knock it off, she asked me first and I said no,' convincing Darkness to re-kill Ozma. Lightness makes some poor decisions.


    thesevenwielder said:
    So how are these gods any more nuanced than the one note gods y'all are bringing up?

    Qrow: "There were two gods, one good and one bad. The good god was good and made good things. The bad god was bad and destroyed things. Then together they made humans who can be both good and bad."

    Yep, A+ storytelling, very nuanced.
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    Qrow's story certainly isn't. But I'd say Qrow's story is off.

    Darkness is the one willing to help, not Light. Light played the larger role in creating Salem, not Darkness. Darkness is more properly *destruction* than *evil*. Darkness is destructive, but not malicious.



    The Narrator said:
    I don't know if I'd go that far. Lots of mythical figures have a lot of different aspects--even contradictory aspects--and act in a variety of different roles. But a big part of the reason for that is because they were stories created by humans, not actual facts. As society changed, it rewrote the myths to suit the new zeitgeist. Dionysus was originally a god of madness worshiped by wine cults in which the oppressed would party in defiance of the established social order, and was suppressed by the ruling classes. But when the nobles got rich and decadent and started wanting to throw hedonistic parties of their own, they rewrote Dionysus to be more about the wine and partying and less about the madness and disruption of the social order and added him to the mainstream pantheon. Virgil wrote (really derivative) Illiad fanfic that was decidedly pro-Trojan because it was commissioned by the Roman emperor and Rome considered themselves the descendants of Troy. Ovid wrote all the Greek gods just a little bit more petty than usual in his versions of the myths because he was in a bad mood about being exiled. The Romans mashed up their deities with those of the peoples they conquered to try and absorb those cultures into their own. Mythology was propaganda and people changed it to suit the message they wanted to spread.
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    Oh yes, there's a good number of gods with a lot more characterization and such, but they had many stories, Dionysus being one of the most nuanced. The Greeks and Romans, additionally, had a number of gods that were way more one-note. Thanatos, Eros, the Furies, the Fates? Not so nuanced.
     
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    draconas said:
    And calling out making ice blasts and weapons from as creation but not fire blasts or lightning from nowhere is kind of overly specific
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    Fire and lightning could be creating thermal energy and electrons from nothing, but I pointed out the ice in particular because it's unambiguously a case of creating matter out of nothing.

    Q99 said:
    the Furies
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    BTW, the Erinyes ("Furies") also underwent a re-branding under the Athenians when trial-by-jury became a thing (and also as propaganda to downplay the importance of motherhood because they'd changed from matriarchal families to an extremely repressive patriarchy), and changed their name to the Eumenides ("Kindly Ones"). And then Virgil had Hera Juno using one as an agent provocateur in The Aeneid even though that wasn't really their role at all (because the war between the ancestors of Rome and the native Italians couldn't have been the Romans' fault in a Roman story, of course, it had to be Hera's Juno's doing). If you include the Mycenaean era and the Romans, Greek mythology persisted as an active religion for more than two thousand years and got rewritten a lot.
     
    draconas said:
    Well, there's the question of if Maiden powers are the same thing as the magic Ozpin and Salem wield. Plus, like I said, the younger god created all the destructive forces and outright says the older brother doesn't own the powers of creation.
    And calling out making ice blasts and weapons from as creation but not fire blasts or lightning from nowhere is kind of overly specific
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    None of those are from nowhere though

    There's water in the air, electrons in everything, fire can be created anywhere that there is oxygen and fuel, energy is extremely abundant, etc.

    So you can't say for sure if someone using ice, lightning or fire is creating energy/matter any more than you can say that using wind is creating air as opposed to using the air already there.
     
    The Narrator said:
    Water vapor in the air only amounts to a few grams per cubic meter, and I'm not sure that's enough to account for all the huge chunks of ice that Raven was tossing around at the end of Volume 5. (Not that most writers don't handwave that anyway.)
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    But V6 reveals that the vault has a body of water in it, meaning much higher vapor, especially if they use fire which raises the overall temperature
     
    devilkingx2 said:
    But V6 reveals that the vault has a body of water in it, meaning much higher vapor, especially if they use fire which raises the overall temperature
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    A few grams per square meter was the amount of water vapor at 100% relative humidity, the maximum the air can hold, and will cause fog and clouds to form. Cranking up the temperature to ~100º F will roughly quadruple that limit.
     
    VolantRedX said:
    Other than the fact that the story makes a clear point that both gods were capable of good and bad.
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    Jinn's narrative presents the good god's actions as in the right. Yes your individual position as an audience member may differ, but plenty of people, yourself included, have treated her as 100% objective. And Jinn constantly repeats "it's all Salem's fault." I mean, it clearly isn't to anyone with half a brain, but that's what the narrative is trying to tell us. So no, they are not nuanced after all. The good god remains good and the bad god remains bad.

    Also it's hella creepy that Oz forcibly possessed four separate people for the express purpose of banging Salem. Fucking creep.
     
    thesevenwielder said:
    Jinn's narrative presents the good god's actions as in the right. Yes your individual position as an audience member may differ, but plenty of people, yourself included, have treated her as 100% objective. And Jinn constantly repeats "it's all Salem's fault." I mean, it clearly isn't to anyone with half a brain, but that's what the narrative is trying to tell us. So no, they are not nuanced after all. The good god remains good and the bad god remains bad.

    Also it's hella creepy that Oz forcibly possessed four separate people for the express purpose of banging Salem. Fucking creep.
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    And Jinn, being a "being created by the God of Light", clearly cannot be biased.

    Reliable, the narrator need not be.

    Also, what? He didn't 'possess four separate people for the express purpose of banging Salem'. That all happened in one life time - and given how they parted, I'm full willing to bet that there wasn't a fucking repeat!
     
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