CW: Tame R34 jump scares.
Pretty funny video but also a lot of hot takes and good analysis on the show.
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Oh, I’ve been meaning to get to this. It’s been showing up in my feed but I usually only have enough time for 1 youtube video a day. Gonna have to make time to watch it and come back for some actual discussion.
It’s an hour long video, I don’t blame you. Just be warned, I wouldn’t watch it at work or anything. It’s not like super obscene but there are flashes of questionable artwork.
Okay, I’ve watched the video now and can say a few things about it:
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He points out that if Aura has regenerative capabilities then Weiss shouldn’t have a scar, which I somehow never put together myself. Like, even if we’re being generous and taking Aura less as full magical regeneration and more just the body’s natural healing at a more rapid pace, then any wound deep enough to leave a scar like that across her eye would probably have left her blind in that eye – which, I’ve seen some art and fic that do that, but it is very clear that’s not what was intended with her design.
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With as much as he goes on about Jaune, I’d recommend checking out FatManFalling’s videos on the volumes. They’re each rather long (the V5 video is like 5½ hours) but if you enjoy a bit of critical analysis they’re pretty good. FatManFalling goes fairly in-depth on Jaune in the V1 video, IIRC. He’s also a friend of Critter’s, I’m pretty sure. They’re both connected through CelticPhoenix, at the least.
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I’ve been wanting to address the “Grimm are attracted to negativity” the way he does for a long while, but I have so many thoughts about it it’s hard to put into words.
Re: 1. The scar thing I’m willing to discount if only because lots of media have characters with a similarly deep scar over the eye that still retain their eyesight. Anakin Skywalker, to name one example. Regardless, aura should have caused the scar to fade much faster than in real life. Then again I’m not a medical person, so idfk shit about the human body’s regenerative capacity.
Re: 2. I’ll have to check them out!
Re: 3. That’s fair. IMO I think he has a misunderstanding over how Grimm work. The way I interpreted it is that Grimm can sense and are attracted to negativity, but the negative “output” per person is actually incredibly small, but taken in aggregate can be quite large when there’s a large collection of people. In addition, it sounds like he thinks Grimm just kind of spawn from negativity. I think it’s more that nearby Grimm will detect your negativity, so if a massive population center has a huge burst of negativity, if there are no nearby Grimm, they won’t detect it. Then again that’s not really what we see in V3, unless the negativity from Penny’s death was so abnormally strong that Grimm from across the continent heard it and all gathered. Or they were pre-gathered nearby thanks to Salem/Cinder, which makes more sense.
Well, it’s been pointed out by a LOT of people that Grimm being attracted to negativity, even if it were something as local as visual (as opposed to a lingering effect like scent or heat) would consequently create a positive feedback loop after any natural disaster (as he points out) where the panic and grief attracts more Grimm who kill more people and wipe out entire civilizations.
Even canonically, Mistral’s and Atlas’s governments were shaped by this issue. Mistral chose to try getting people to focus on art and celebrating human life to directly counteract negative emotions; Atlas tried flattening the curve and practically making emotionlessness a government mandate to try and make it so no one had any extreme emotions in either direction.
Like, Grimm being attracted to negative emotions at all is the kind of wide-reaching worldbuilding element that should shape the entire setting, like how alchemy influences most every aspect of FMA’s world or how so much of the society in AoT revolves around the fact that titans exist. Back in the day (because I have been an on-again-off-again fan of the series since the Red Trailer) I fully thought Yang’s anger-mode would be important because of this and the fact that her eyes turned red would play into it. Nowadays I still think that’s an interesting way you could take the character, that her Semblence itself is a liability because it runs on an emotion that attracts Grimm (or at least, should. It’s really inconsistent whether anger triggers Grimm or not).
One of the thoughts I’ve had on the subject has been bubbling in the back of my mind lately is that hunters should probably be trained to suppress their emotions (like suppressing power levels in DBZ/Bleach/other battle shounen) and then follow that thread to see how that would affect them psychologically (
Madoka spoilers
like how witches come from magical girls who have become overcome with negative emotions
). That’s fanfic idea, though.
…hunters should probably be trained to suppress their emotions…
That’s a really good point, that I think I’m going to use in an unexpected way in Hydrangeas in Bloom.
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