#char study.

[argentisms]

❝ i felt utterly weak. like i needed someone to come and rescue me. i hate that feeling. i want to feel stronger than that. i want to feel powerful. ❞

[maidenfall]

cinder as a cain allusion.

this is tentative because it isn’t an exact allusion, obviously, and i’d need to do some more research on it and different interpretations of the story.

i’m going to use cinder killing one of their step siblings pre - salem as the sort of... event that made the gods frown upon cinder, but they don’t face scarring consequences for it until after their later kills. they kill one of their step siblings out of self - defense in an incident where they were being abused physically for failing to complete a ridiculous list of chores ( but also lowkey they were jealous of their sibling’s semblance ). after their outburst, cinder lies to their father and step mother about the truth of their actions despite being caught after the act, and is severely beaten for it, nearly to death by their stepmother. their father is complicit and merely watches, and their stepmother convinces their father that it was cinder’s own doing.

in the sense that the god of light directly left his powers to silver eyed warriors that can wipe out grimm, ruby eye-ing cinder was the gods striking them down / leaving them a curse mark, just at a later date.

the curse mark god gave cane could then be seen as cinder’s scarring across their body, as well as the grimm / grimm emblem that went on their back when they sucked up half of amber’s maiden powers. in a figurative sense, this curse mark that god gives cain is also god’s promise to cain that he shall never be killed outside of natural causes. and as we’ve seen in the show, try as people may, cinder has been pretty much unkillable. and i’m willing to bet that they’ll die by their own hand, be it their impulse or the grimm’s natural course in eating them alive.

[becomestorm]

i’m usually extremely careful when wording things surrounding ren regarding their team. they’re incredibly careful not to speak for any of them, especially when it comes to situations like someone asking what pyrrha would have wanted, would have thought. in the same vein, my ren is never going to imply that they know what nora is thinking to a third party, especially after this volume. while the symbiosis of two people that have known each other most of their lives is prevalent, i, personally, am very very tired of the both of them lacking their own sense of individuality - and the way that this volume keeps teasing at it and then ultimately grouping them back together is tiring.

this is one of the reasons i portray ren as more individualistic than their canon counterpart. some in their tags are of the belief that ren wouldn’t have been able to survive without nora, but i am of the believe that even without her, they would not have let their parent’s sacrifice go to waste. she had a great role in making sure ren didn’t spiral into a crippling depression, but to say ren is nothing without her has rubbed me the wrong way multiple times. sometimes, i even find myself in dialogue accidentally catching myself because ren does know how nora thinks, sometimes the situation calls for unity and for ren to say something like ‘we don’t want to lose you too’ to jaune in front of pyrrha’s statue makes sense / but i’m putting more of an effort to make sure ren’s emotions and thoughts and feelings are separate from hers.

ren has a tendency to dissociate due to their semblance, leading to them having identity issues, as well as habit of “not including themselves in the picture” and as such has been content to be so closely aligned with nora in the past. but they’re recovering from that now, slowly, and their bonds and interactions with other characters is helping with that. ren’s going to be saying “i” more, rather than speaking from a metaphorical vantage point like they did in volume five with everyone at the table. i feel like that’s an important arc for their character.

[valianse]

wolf faunus ramblings.

i thought i should eventually make a post on why i made jaune a wolf faunus, this draft has been sitting in my folder for a few days now, and i’ve been steadily adding onto it bit by bit. there’s no coherency, as a warning. it’s more of thought dump.

i’m not going to lie, a huge part of it has been because of my slight obsession with beastars. the character legosi heavily reminds me of jaune. it’s the whole gentle giant mindset, the idea that someone can be sweet and and kind, while also go feral in an attempt to protect what is precious to them. he’s also really weird and awkward. that’s jaune to me.

of course i considered lion faunus first, because that seems to be a popular interpretation of jaune if he had an animal association. i’ve seen multiple versions of lion faunus jaune in my time writing in this rpc but i personally don’t much associate jaune with feline qualities?

i can only assume that some inspiration involving that choice comes from the motif of the cowardly lion, since that had been jaune’s character in the first volume, but not only do we now have a character that with the official cowardly lion motif but he’s a traitor, which leads me onto my next point.

although there’s no saying a lion isn’t, they aren’t particularly associated with the idea of loyalty. but you know what is? canines. following the end of the jaundice arc onwards, loyalty is one of the defining traits of jaune’s character and there is nothing you can say to tell me otherwise. this is one of the reasons why i thought that a dog motif would suit my interpretation more.

it changes the jaundice arc in that it makes cardin target jaune less because he’s an obvious weakling, but more because he’s a faunus. while it’s somewhat clear jaune’s picked on because of his diminutive self esteem and lack of combat skills, i couldn’t really see cardin initiating the harassment without a clear reason.

it definitely made jaune’s worry over not only velvet’s treatment but the white fang events happening during the first volumes more apparent, or i mean, y’know, existent.

jaune’s family are mixed canines and humans, and have actually developed from the notion of medieval hunting dogs. knights and noblemen often used these kinds of dogs in order to assist them with hunting game. dogs are also a closely aligned allusion to soldiers, which is what joan of arc was.

although ! i thought wolf was more appropriate than a normal canine precisely because jaune doesn’t do everything by the book. he cheated his way into beacon, and he’s the one who suggested they sneak into atlas via airship. wolves are often depicted as being manipulative, and intelligent. it’s clear he’s quite chaotic when it comes to his moral spectrum. wolves in christian folklore are often symbols of greed and destruction. this is accurate to my version of jaune when it comes to his initial volume one arc, as he makes many selfish decisions to save himself and as for destruction, his cemented rage issues first take root. jaune still has unchecked rage which hasn’t really been addressed yet.

the malleus maleficarum, which is a doctrine of sorts? on the extermination of witches ( eyyy another joan reference ) states that wolves are either agents of god sent to punish sinners ( saint motif !!! ), or advocates of the devil sent to punish true believers and test their faith. i feel like that’s a good metaphor for jaune’s fluctuating moral codes, and how they’ve been altered by continuous trauma.

wolves in other pieces of christian folklore including dante’s inferno are often depicted as misunderstood, protectors, and representatives of sins like wrath. the she-wolf in dante’s inferno was specifically representative of greed and fraud !! which were initial goals when it came to jaune’s fake enrolment into beacon. there’s even an account by blessed sebastian de aparicio of a wolf who licked his wounds and healed him of the plague, similar in a way to how jaune heals wounds ?

plus to me, there are just more elements to jaune’s personality and the way i want to portray it that reflect a stereotypically canine element, including wolves being known for their suitability in big game hunting, their social nature, and their advanced expressive behaviour.

added note: jaune’s trait is a tail, it’s platinum blond in colour but white towards the end where the underfluff is. it has some scarring at the base where anti faunus assailants have tugged on it, unfortunate because that part of him is particularly sensitive.

[vulpesd]

another thing i’m going to redact from atf is a bit minor, but it irks me because of the sheer inconsistency of it. there’s a paragraph prior to the taijitu vs. fox and velvet fight where fox makes it clear that he understands why velvet is striking out on her own, how adamant she was to make sure coco wasn’t notified just so that she could prove she didn’t need help for seemingly small problems. fox relates that to his blindness, how everyone except copper treated fox as this weak little thing that was too fragile to take care of himself. it’s clear that fox understood the plight of being underestimated.

then not even a few pages later, there’s a line after velvet assists fox that says “that was the last time he would underestimate her.” like? why would you put an entire paragraph of fox understanding her plights and then write something like that. i’m switching the context of it. fox is reckless, and he completely intended to climb a wall crevice while the taijitu was still latched onto him. he thought he had it under control, he was by no means underestimating velvet’s abilities. it’s not in his character to underestimate his allies, and it seems like lazy writing to place such contradictory lines right next to each other.

[indestiny]

rewatching pyrrha v cinder for graphics purposes but honestly, it’s help me come up w a few things.

pyrrha’s aura must be massive, and her semblance is extremely powerful (as we know),  but more powerful than you may think.  save for the maidens, it’s safe to say she’s one of the strongest characters in the series.

even if penny was a robot, she was a person with an aura, however synthetic.  and pyrrha’s exertion of her semblance quite literally ripped through penny’s body.  had that been a human, it would have been horrifically gory.  i also think it’s safe to say that even pyrrha doesn’t know the full extent of her semblance — when she did that to penny, it appeared to be an act of panic (obviously with the illusions she was seeing).  

consider that — having the ability to tear someone apart, directly through their strongest line of defense, and doing it out of a moment of fear, without even thinking about it.  given the chance to practice with her semblance on an even larger scale, pyrrha’s semblance could have been an enormous force to be reckoned with had she not died canonically and been able to focus more on her training.

pyrrha not only ripped through aura with the power of her semblance in one blow, but then lifted an entire elevator up the cct to get herself to cinder.  and still, she fought a good fight with cinder after using all that energy.  also, pyrrha’s strength in general?  that she could, after all of that, keep cinder in a chokehold is astounding, and the thing that breaks it is cinder snapping pyrrha’s weapon into pieces.

pyrrha isn’t used to fighting people on the same level as or stronger than her.

i doubt she’s ever dealt much with people outside of a classroom and tournament setting though, to be fair, but in the beginning of the fight pyrrha is seemingly surprised at how quickly cinder counters and grabs milō.  and yet— for the rest of the fight after this, she doesn’t allow it to faze her, and that says so much about her composure and ability to think and act under pressure.

[aurahype]

list of canon divergencies that may change over time.

1. coco’s semblance.  in after the fall, coco’s semblance is described as allowing her to use her aura to increase the effects and power of dust, which in turn she uses to amplify her bullets.  essentially, it’s dust amplification.  i, however, will be modifying this, because for coco who doesn’t use any dust in battle save for her bullets ( which constantly run out during battles in the book ), i think this semblance is kind of stupid imo.  SO it will be similar, but not quite the same.  

the way my coco’s semblance works is that it’s kind of an impact - amplifier ( via her aura, which in the book, is described as “abundant” ) rather than amplifying dust.  she can amplify her bullets’ damage with her aura as she does canonically and in the book, but she can ALSO amplify / concentrate her aura into: punches, kicks, landings from great heights ( so as to force her enemies away from her when: entering a battle from an airship, jumping down onto something, or escaping an enemy ), and the swings of her handbag ( which is named gianduja in after the fall uwu ).  the greater the natural impact (i.e., what it'd be without her enhancement) the more she can enhance it.  so she can enhance a punch to greater damage than say, a slap, and that works into her being able to enhance her bullets to dangerously lethal levels of damage in canon.  this being said, since her aura is so abundant, she can outlast most people’s strength in battle, but she will eventually tire ( especially after amplifying bullets for long periods of time ).

also, coco’s purse is fucking heavy ( none of this 'it’s lighter as a purse' garbage because they confirmed w/ jaune's shield it weighs the same when smaller ), so her swings and punches with the purse, if landed, can fuckin hurt and this explains why she can take down such big grimm with gianduja so easily ( also YEAH her arms are ripped from the weight of gianduja ok glad that’s out of the way ).

2. the other divergence is literally just.  there’s a part in after the fall where coco tells velvet that she’s thinner than her and we don’t acknowledge that shit here.  coco would never say anything like that to velvet, she’s very protective of her and despite her outbursts and the arguably mean things she says on occasion in the book, that’s not something she’d ever say to a teammate or anyone else.  coco knows that ( especially in fashion where she’s worked before ) people of varying body types have a hard time.  so no, she’d never say this to velvet, even if it were true.

[ephmrele]

the origin of the aswang is sociological, and derived from the belief that ‘those who will not conform, are aswangs’ / ‘those who are outcasts, are aswangs’ / ‘those who refuse to be ruled, are aswangs’ and i think that’s metal as fuck. they are the witch ghouls and were - creatures that hide in plain sight. there is no doubt that they are there, you just wonder where you might have seen them before.