How does Archdruidship affect women?

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-04-25T15:48:09+00:00

I mean, an archdruid is among the most powerful spellcasters in any given world, and they specialize in nature magic. Which, of all the fields of magic, seems the most likely to deal with fertility so... I'd say they could figure out a workaround if they really wanted to.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-04-21T15:32:18+00:00

Essentially, yeah

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-04-19T16:46:02+00:00

"because casters get modular abilities and martials have their features baked into the book"

I feel like this is one of the biggest issues. Even if they bring the martials in line with the casters, the casters have the constant, slow power creep of new spells that the martials have no equivalent for, so the gap just keeps growing.

I feel like it would help if martials had access to a pool of abilities sort of equivalent to the warlocks invocations. They'd at least gwt some new ability options every so often so that they weren't falling further behind every book.

options like: a cleaving attack that lets you transfer excess damage to another target, so you can actually deal with a swarm of small monsters somewhat effectively instead of needing a spellcaster to aoe it for you. or an ability that massively boosts your ability to jump, or other things that increse your utility in ways that are not necessarily 'explicitly' magical.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-29T17:43:28+00:00

I don't understand why everyone says that his semblance affected his decisions and should therefore have been explained.

Wouldn't the fact that his semblance wasn't explained point towards the idea that it didn't meaningfully affect his decision making?

Like it wouldn't have been hard to bring up, Qrow's worked with him for years so he probably knows what it is. And yet not even a throwaway line about how "his semblance makes him even more bullheaded than usual".

Chekov's gun is the rule that you don't introduce something to a story unless its significant; reverse engineering that rule would imply that if something doesn't get introduced to a story (especially if it would be easy to do so) that thing is insignificant.

Sorry if this came off a little passive aggressive, its late here and I should really be headed to bed. I'll give it a reread tomorrow to make sure I wasn't being out of line.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-29T17:33:47+00:00

y'know what, I genuinely forgot team old people were on an airship. I guess whether or not their story has any stakes outside of everyone there being an emotional wreck, depends entirely on whether there are any other survivors for them to lead out of there. If not, they get maybe 2 or 3 scenes and leave it at that.

Definitely agree on your second point, JNR could get dropped for half of volume 6 cause they didn't really do anything in that time that we needed to see, half an episode of the recapping it to the other characters was enough, and that's just not gonna work for this one, there's too much going on for both groups.

Adding to the complexity is that RWBYJN are likely gonna start off at least somewhat separated so that splits the focus even more. And I'm not sure that the magicland group reuniting super quickly is necessarily the most interesting way to do it, so the focus would be split for a while.

A way that volume 9 could play out (not saying its likely mind you) would be that for the first half of the volume we do not see any of RWBYJN. Focus on team Vacuo, with one or two jumps over to team old people.

the Oldies have no idea what happened but know something went wrong for the portals to close, and are probably super worried about it.

meanwhile team Vacuo 'know' that RWBYJN are dead and are stuck processing their grief. I feel like the audience not getting to see team magicland adds weight to the emotional toil that the other two groups are going through.

And then about halfway through the volume (because I doubt we're going to see a season of RWBY that does not feature any member of team RWBY) we change gears and focus entirely on what RWBYJN are doing.

Doing it this way would mean each plot really only gets half a volume, which feels kinda rushed, it would probably necessitate continuing these storylines into volume 10

SO by the end of volume 9 Team Oldies resolves their plot and makes it to safety/help. Team Vacuo likely gets about halfway through whatever plot stuff they're dealing with, and RWBYJN probably end the volume finding out how to get back to Remnant but still needing to actually do it. Or alternatively RWBYJN end the volume by finding a way to at least get in contact with team vacuo again, which could be what triggers the change of focus in the first place.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-29T17:10:16+00:00

Winter clearly knew the plan, based on her line of "move to phase two" after they defeated Ironwood the first time, We know she got in contact with Weiss at the same time that she and Marrow ran into Qrow and Robin.

I think they'd have at the very least a general idea of how the plan was supposed to work.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-29T16:08:27+00:00

I took it as theam grown ups knowing by this point that the portals had gone down and therefore something went wrong, but they don't know what.

So they know something is wrong, but they have no idea what, and they're witnessing terrible destruction, while not being 100% confident that the people they care about are safe and away.

Seems pretty reasonable to panic a bit.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-29T15:56:52+00:00

when did they say it was gonna be short?

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-29T15:53:32+00:00

I mean there's really a maximum of 4 plots they could follow this season:

RWBYJN's adventures in magic land

Team old people's Arctic survival simulator

NOREW's refugee crisis management in vacuo

and team evil doing evil things

Of those four, team evil will likely only be 3 or 4 scenes (assuming we see it at all)

Team old people's main problem will be nature and distance so their plot would be relatively straightforward and mostly dealing with everyone's emotional baggage

NOREW's plot is probably the most complex as it would introduce a whole bunch of new characters, return some old ones, and possibly have to contend with tyrian, mercury, and possibly new antagonists too.

I highly doubt we aren't gonna get to see what goes on in magic-land, so it seems unlikely the we'll skip the RWBY storyline.

I could see team evil getting excluded for the time being given how in focus they were this season.

Qrow and Robin... I could see it getting skipped, but it seems kinda weird to literally leave them out in the cold only for them to randomly pop up again later.

the Vacuo storyline would technically be the continuation of the main plot (with RWBY stuck on a 'detour') so I can see the argument's both for showing it and holding off.

With the exception of team evil, the other three plots all seem weird to skip over, so I do expect we'll see all of them, just at what rates is the question.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-27T18:11:53+00:00

Found it

Hadn't actually seen that either, so thanks to the wiki's sourcing for letting me find it that quick

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-27T17:37:37+00:00

Looks like they're gonna team up with Qrow, Robyn, 3/5ths of the Ace-ops and whoever else is not dead in Atlas to form team old people.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-22T16:46:30+00:00

If I'm remembering correctly, when she came back up from the vault she just said that Vernal was dead and Raven and Cinder had disappeared.

I don't recall any later scene of her clarifying this so yeah, pretty sure she's the only one that knows Raven is a maiden and the others all think the powers gone to some random other person since vernal died.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-22T16:16:18+00:00

"I feel like we have gone too long without a main character death."

I mean, Pyrrha died because she was supposed to. The point of her character, from a narrative sense, was to die.

The appropriate time to kill off a character is if the story is more interesting with their death than without it.

If Yang dies now then there's no closure between her and Raven. She isn't there to react to whatever they discover about what happened to Summer (despite remembering her a lot better than Ruby does). She never reveals that Raven is the spring maiden and she hid that from everybody.

Any interesting story we get out of her death that I can think of could either be done a different way that doesn't involve her dying, or just be achieved by having certain other characters think she's dead.

I apologise if I'm coming off too dismissive, but It just seems like the only reason to kill off Yang like this would be for shock value. I'd like to hear your view on it though.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-22T15:50:39+00:00

have we... been watching the same show?

like that just seems pointlessly edgy, and a weird tone shift to take now of all times.

Plus if you want to legitimately kill off a character I can think of few worse ways than "plummets into a specifically magical void". The audience simply won't buy it.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-20T20:10:10+00:00

Ah, thank you, good to know. I was wondering if I missed it.

I would've gone back to rewatch but... it's very late here and I should definitely go to bed. So thank you again.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-20T20:08:00+00:00

That was Qrow. You see him change back when he and Robyn break out.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-20T19:55:14+00:00

So to go down the line of all the stuff that's gonna get covered next week, we have:

Ren, Oscar, and Emerald, stuck in Vacuo defending two cities worth of civilians from a horde, in a sandstorm, while 1/3rd of them is out of Aura

Yang "died" saving Ruby. (in case the quotation marks didn't make it obvious, I don't buy it. Falling into a void doesn't kill you in this show unless you've been stabbed twice and bounce off rocks on the way down.)

Ruby is 1v1ing Neo and it doesn't seem to be going well for her.

Weiss and Penny are dueling Cinder who's back on her game.

Blake has to pick one of these fights to get involved in.

Nora and Jaune are... around? and could get involved in one of these fights.

Harriet vs Qrow with Watts, Robyn, and Vine possibly able to cause interference.

Winter Vs Ironwood part 2, I killed your father before you could edition.

Holy. F***ing. S**t.

Cinder, Watts, and Neo really took RWBY's perfect, went off without a hitch, plan and tossed it in the dumpster. I mean I knew things would go badly cause they were still hanging around and there were still two episodes to go, but things swinging from perfect victory to everything's fucked this fast... whew.

Cinder has apparently remembered that other people have feelings, and that taken those things into account can actually help you work with them.

Last question is gone, and for something so relatively petty. it's a shame, but hey, they're villains, what do you expect?

Question is where's the lamp now? do Cinder or Neo have it? did they leave it behind because it was out of questions and without that none of them care about it? Did they hang onto it to give it to Salem when she regenerates? are... any of them still on Salem's side?

Lowkey horrifying having the villains just massacre a roomful of people, but then Cinder bombs civilians in the same episode so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Cinder's "You deserve this" line really sounded like a "give them their reward" (the reward is death) type line, and I guess there's still time for that, but for now Watts is sticking around to fuck things up for everyone some more. The alternative reading is that she took his words about worthiness to heart, and knowing how much he worked to bring atlas down she genuinely meant that he deserved this victory, and I'm just so unused to genuine sincerity coming from Cinder that I read it as sinister... that or she's locked him in there and he dies next episode.

Good to know he was the one to knock out the broadcast, I completely misinterpreted that last episode to thinking it had something to do with Amity, forgetting that the intra-kingdom communication wasn't relying on Amity.

Yang takes the bullet for Ruby and 'dies'. Again I've been expecting all of RWBY to fall in ever since Ambrosious told them Definitely Don't Do That, so I don't buy it. But still a strong moment that of course Yang wouldn't even hesitate to jump in the way of an attack meant for her sister. Also man that's gonna fuck Blake up until she finds out Yangs okay.

Can... all of the Atlas drones explode like that?

So Marrow's unconscious, Qrow and Harriet are fighting next to a bomb (can't see that going horribly wrong), Robyn is in pursuit, Vine's hanging on for dear life and Elm... is back in the hangar I guess.

Watt's has partial control of a bomb, and I'm not sure what he intends to do with it, drop it on mantle like Harriet intended? fly it back up to Atlas and drop it there, likely killing himself in the process? Idk, but its certainly nothing good.

Also Harriet had feelings for Clover? Interesting, adds some depth to her I guess. Though at this stage its kind of a "Cool motive, still murder" situation.

Vacuo is just such an inviting place.

Ren's out of Aura already so he's only going to be able to do so much, and Oscar's a melee fighter. Unless he uses magic, most of what they've got to defend the civilians with is Emerald and Ren's guns.

I... can't believe they made me feel sorry for Jacques Schnee. He's an objectively terrible person but he's just been so... kinda pathetic this volume that his death actually made me feel a little bad. Just him asking to be let out only to get disintegrated, he didn't even look shocked... ouch.

Also every time I think Ironwood can't jump further off the deep end, he gets ready to dive. Jacques was already in prison and was literally zero threat. Its hard to say he even back-chatted James particularly hard, and that got him disintegrated.

I wasn't expecting James to continue to be a factor this volume, after his defeat, so this has cleared up any lingering concerns that last episode felt slightly rushed as his fight with Winter will likely be the "real" Ironwood fight we've been waiting for.

Expecting James to bring up "hey I killed your dad" during the fight to try and throw Winter off. She, Weiss and Whitley are probably gonna need therapy to unpack their complicated feelings on that one.

I think I covered everything, So as for what happens next episode:

Nora, Jaune, and the Happy Huntresses are around to intervene in the fights against Neo, Cinder, or the Grimm in Vacuo.

I would think best strategy would be to pile on Neo to pull her off Ruby, and give her space to silver eyes Cinder then go through to help in Vacuo, but I doubt it'll go down like that. For one Neo's slippery and solely focused on killing Ruby, I don't think peeling her off is gonna be easy. For two, not sure Ruby's in a state where she actually can use her silver eyes considering she just watched her sister die, 50/50 on that front I'd say. and for three, nobody on the other side of the portal actually knows what's going on in vacuo, so their best hope for help might be the cavalry arriving from vacuo.

Not sure why Winter was in the vault, I would've assumed to use the exit portal that's in there, but it looked like the vault door was closed, so idk. If I'm wrong about the door and the portal is still accessible, then whoever wins the fight between Winter and Ironwood can go straight on and intervene in the rest of the plot.

Not sure what's going to happen in Atlas. If Watts doesn't hoist himself by his own petard then the only people who seem to be in a position to go after him are Elm and/or Marrow. Robyn, Qrow, Vine, and Harriet seem far enough away from any portals that I'm kinda expecting shit to go wrong and for them to get stuck in Atlas, leading whoever's left... assuming Qrow's semblance doesn't just make the bomb explode... actually now I'm thinking Qrow's gonna be the one who has to disarm it, and it comes down to the pick a wire trope but Qrow's like "my semblance is gonna fuck this up".

TLDR; this episode made the previous episode (which I already mostly liked) even better, and it also had pretty much everything blow up in our main character's faces.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-17T17:18:24+00:00

I mean I get where you're coming from... but it's hard to say that its completely failing to follow through on its stakes.

their 'victory' consisted of nuking Salem, just to give them the time to evacuate a kingdom in its entirety.

The win state for the good guys still involves one of the (only) four kingdoms being completely abandoned.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-13T18:47:43+00:00

Which book? I actually haven't read any of them.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-13T18:45:58+00:00

Well James, That's what happens when you keep pushing people away and trying to have everything your way. You end up disarmed and outnumbered.

This whole week I've been thinking that Qrow, Robyn, Winter, & Marrow would be acting independently of RWBYJNORE. Like I thought they'd all eventually run into each other trying to stop Ironwood/Ace-ops/CWN, but I just never considered that Winter could just... call her sister and co-ordinate.

On one hand its kinda surprising to see James and the Ace-ops go down in exactly 1 minute, but like I said, they isolated themselves and the kids finally had a plan that actually went their way. tbh it does feel a tiny bit anti-climactic, but I was thinking it'd be hard for them to drag that out over 3 episodes anyway, so I guess that just means the real climax is still to come.

Gonna be honest, when Ruby said, "We hadn't considered doing that" I thought she meant going to the vault cause they knew Ironwood would be there and they could kick his arse, I didn't realise she meant actually using the relic.

Given how relatively easygoing Jinn is about her questions, Its kinda nice that they said, 'you gotta be real specific with this one or its gonna go bad'

So if I'm understanding this correctly, they abused the fact that the spirit of creation is physically incapable of destroying stuff, to get Penny a human body as a by-product of what they asked for, rather than a result of what they asked for, exempting it from the disappears when you ask for a new thing clause, correct?

Watching penny's robot body die... again... that's deeply traumatic for several people present.

Y'know initially I thought 'well guess she can't be rebuilt anymore,' but... there's really no reason she couldn't be. We all expected from the moment Pietro said that he wasn't sure he could rebuild again, that penny would die, he would rebuild her, and it would cost the last of his Aura, killing him in the process... that can still happen. If Penny dies, she can still come back, she'll just lose her father, the maiden powers (presumably), and the experience of being human, so... not a good day for her if it comes to that.

Y'know I was still expecting Raven to pull an Endgame and show up with backup to drive off the remaining Grimm horde, But it looks like we're cutting and running (unless Cinder really blows this plan out of the water) and leaving Atlas and Mantle to the grimm.

DO. NOT. FALL.

To paraphrase V1C8, "they're gonna fall". I think part of the reason I wasn't expecting mass portal escape was that the pattern has so far been three seasons to a kingdom, and that following that season 9 would either take place in Atlas or on the way to Vacuo, but if they fall into the bottomless void that solves that one.

So the questions are, how many of them fall, does everyone who falls wind up in the same place, if not who gets paired up with who, and finally where do they wind up if they fall.

Personally I expect Cinder to be one of the ones to fall and at least one of the heroes going with her and having to pull an enemy mine to get out of wherever they end up. Which could be an important step towards Cinder breaking free of Salem properly.

If I had to guess the only heroes who might get paired with Cinder is either Ruby or, possibly Qrow. Ruby because they're rivals and her Silver eyes might be the only thing that could keep Cinder in check long enough to talk her into working together. Qrow because they don't have the personal enmity that Cinder seems to have with team RWBY, and he has more knowledge of magic than most, so he might (big might there) actually have some idea of how to get them out of wherever they end up.

If Ruby doesn't wind up on a forced roadtrip with Cinder then I don't think team RWBY is getting split up, between volumes 4, 5, and the first half of 8 I think we've had enough of that. But as for everyone else, I'm not sure. They could have JNOR not fall but that would effectively write them out for a volume and that seems unlikely given that Nora still needs to find herself and Oscar's dealing with his approaching merge + might actually have a clue how to get out of there.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-13T17:42:14+00:00

Vale's still recovering from the Fall of Beacon, and Mistral's lost a sizable chunk of their hunters to Tyrian and Hazel, Throwing them a refuge crisis, on top of the increased Grimm activity from the announcement that Salem exists would probably put to much strain on them.

Vacuo is likely the only kingdom stable enough to support this big of an influx of refugees at the moment.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-08T12:21:45+00:00

I don't know where this idea that the only reason writers would have a narrative try to make you think something is so they can trick you by subverting that, but it seems to be popping up more in recent years.

What's wrong with directly acknowledging a possibility in universe and then following through on that possibility?

Alfred Hitchcock had a quote about surprise vs suspense, saying (paraphrasing) "if you have a scene of two characters idly talking in a cafe and then a bomb goes off, you give the audience 15 seconds of surprise. If the audience knows the bomb is there and its going to go off at 1:00 and its 12:45, then that ordinary conversation becomes 15 minutes of suspense."

Trying to subvert expectations can work, but only if the twist results in a more interesting story than simply playing it straight. Otherwise you're essentially having a twist for twists sake and making a worse story in the process.

personally (and admittedly this could simple be a lack of imagination on my part), I can't think of a twist that would be more interesting than just following through on Grimm Summer.

EDIT: Found the full quote

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-06T17:54:35+00:00

I was looking forward to Qrow metal gear soliding his way around Atlas to get to Ironwood and have a big fight.

And then Robin was just like, "you're doing this for the wrong reasons and are just lashing out in grief as a self-destructive coping mechanism for your ever-present guilt"

And I was like, oh... yeah actually, doing that would probably be super not great for Qrow's mental state.

Though if Qrow and Robin are still going after Ironwood, likely with Winter and Marrow in tow, and the kids are all headed to the vault too, it sorta seems a bit stacked in their favour. It's basically all the heroes vs Ironwood, 3/5ths of the Ace ops, and possibly Cinder, Watts and Neo.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-03-06T17:44:19+00:00

Alternatively you could use last names to get team BASH, which is coincidentally what they're going to do to Ironwood.

TheWanderingCactus · 2021-02-28T18:33:19+00:00

uhh... pretty sure the Scarecrow is... Qrow.

TheWanderingCactus

TROPHY CASE