prancingintheshadows

[prancingintheshadows]

you've all forgotten your roots anyway here's bulma waking up surrounded by garbage and then immediately chugging a warm beer she picked up off the floor

[prancingintheshadows]

[prancingintheshadows]

I turn to Ares.

Thanks to Tyler Miles Lockett who allowed me to draw inspiration from his ARES piece for page 2! Look at his etsy page it's SICK

⚔️ If you want to read some queer retelling of arturian legends have a look at my webtoon

[prancingintheshadows]

[prancingintheshadows]

[prancingintheshadows]

Update Harvard students are walking out in solidarity with Columbia’s students

These are billion dollar for profit institutions that directly impact financial backing of Israel’s apartheid regime

[prancingintheshadows]

Don't stop talking about Palestine 🇵🇸

Don't stop talking about Palestine 🇵🇸

Don't stop talking about Palestine 🇵🇸

Don't stop talking about Palestine 🇵🇸

Don't stop talking about Palestine 🇵🇸

[prancingintheshadows]

I'm willing to believe JL X RWBY underperformed, but it takes more than one thing underperforming to justify shutting everything down.

RT's shut down wasn't surprising to a lot of people. They've gone through a number of controversies and layoffs within recent times, on top of things like Achievement Hunter officially ending. Volume 9 is known to have had it's budget cut very late into production, so there've been signs of money being lost somewhere in RT before the cross over movies could even come out to underperform.

Am I the only one who believes that Justice League x RWBY not being mega hits was what made Warner shut down RT due to them funding them?

Ehhhhhhhhh...

According to Kerry, CRWBY asked to do it. So, I dunno.

It would be like the petty, money-grubbing assholes though.

[prancingintheshadows]

[prancingintheshadows]

[prancingintheshadows]

how to draw arms ? ? 

#art tutorial

[prancingintheshadows]

I've just finished FFVII Rebirth and RWBY's back with new content, so obviously those two things are the only thing on my mind right now. So of course with my brainrot I have to imagine and conceptualize what the RWBY characters would play like in FF7 rebirth. Especially since Monty was a fan of Final Fantasy.

For people playing Rebirth, there's not going to be any story spoilers, but this will go into gameplay and talk about certain abilities in the game as comparison.

This is mostly just 'how would these characters be designed in this gameplay?', so I'm not really making any big changes to Rebirth's systems to account for RWBY's in-universe mechanics. While Dust is similar to materia, there's some notable differences but I'm ignoring those differences for the sake of this. So these characters will all use Dust/Materia the way the game does, using mp or something rather than having dust be like ammo. And speaking of MP, same case. Aura is both HP and MP in RWBY, but for the sake of this, everyone's having separate bars for those.

My plan is to generally talk about the overall gameplay identity of each character, along with specific details like if they have attacks after dodging worth mentioning or holding square produces a unique attack or such. I will not be talking about synergy, at least, not in this post. Maybe in a future one if I have the attention span.

For the first of these posts I'm tackling everyone's favorite blonde brawler

Yang

Basic Idea

I'm starting with Yang because... she was the easiest. But not too easy. It's not like we can slap on Tifa's moveset and stats and call it a day. Tifa's combo focused gameplan is fun and fitting for a martial artist, but it lacks the defining features of Yang's semblance. Yang's the toughest member of her team by a long shot and her semblance builds up as she takes damage, so it's instead easier to take inspiration from Red XIII's Vengeance Mode. However, not everything of Red's is usable. Red features a lot of supportive moves that apply buffs or healing and that's not really in line with Yang's straightforward, frontline fighting style, so I'd ideally take a mix of Red's ability to turn defense into resources as well as Tifa's explosive damage potential.

In keeping in line with this mix of tank and damage dealer, ideally Yang would have comparatively high health and defenses, though I can see magic defense being noticeably lower, along with good attack and low 'magic' or whatever the dust equivalent would be. Controversially though, I'd put her speed rather low. Yang's not slow, but everything's relative, especially in video games and video game balance. Comparing to everyone else on Team RWBY, Yang's slow. I'm not too sure on luck, but I'm leaning more towards low. Yang strikes me as doing a lot of damage raw rather than relying on situational damage like crits.

Yang, like Tifa, uses martial arts, so she has a short attack range that doesn't have much spread. As such, when coming out of a dodge, Yang will do a spinning kick. I get she's a punch girl, but she's not exclusively using punches. Holding square has her do a close range shot gun blast that can push enemies back. I'd also say Yang's dodge is only average. Again, relative speeds. She's got Ruby and Blake on her team, Yang has to be average at dodging at best by comparison.

Burn Mode

We gotta talk about Yang's unique mechanic. As stated earlier, I think elements from both Red XIII and Tifa work, so I'm trying to mesh them together. At the fundamental level, it works like Vengeance where blocking builds up a meter. However, this meter has several levels, much like Tifa's Chi or Cait Sith's moogle stuff. Obviously, building more levels increases the potency of the Burn Mode, which is functionally a super mode. I'm thinking maybe 3 levels? Like Red, Yang's attacks get a massive boost and increased range and the button used to transform is replaced with a new attack.

Unlike Red, this attack will drain the form's meter, similar to Tifa using up levels of Chi and falling to the lower level. Also, these levels drop quicker than Tifa's Chi or Red's Vengeance. This is just a byproduct of what I'm trying to achieve with Yang. While being a tank/dps hybrid can be a rather simple character, I want to give Yang's fighting game plan depth and complexity. Have her be able to fight smarter like in the show. It's why I want a healthy mix from both characters. Tifa's chi is cool, but you ultimately just spend all of it on a staggered enemy and there's no other uses for it as the buffs it gives you passively aren't enough to be worth considering, so Yang's Burn Mode needs to have passive benefits closer to Red's Vengeance than Tifa's Unbridled Strength. But it also needs to run out in a decent time frame to make spending Burn levels acceptable. I want that conflict of deciding whether or not using a level of burn for a potent attack is worth it. And similarly to Red, I want a lot of interplay between Yang's super mode and her abilities.

Abilities

I'm not going to make enough abilities to match the Rebirth characters. They have 10 abilities, which is an insane amount to be doing for 4 characters for a 'for fun' theory craft. There are certain requisite things Yang needs for abilities. For one, a rather standard damaging ability. You know, your Bravers, Divekicks, and Sidewinders. Likely some sort of punch. Easy enough.

Second thing, Yang's very block heavy, so like Cloud and Red, she gets an ability that puts her in a guard stance that builds up meter faster and is functionally a better guard. I call it Block Party, and no, I will not be using puns this entire section.

Most of Yang's abilities I want to play with Burn in some way to create that possibility for smart play while staying true to her fighting abilities. Dragon Throw is probably the ability that I've best made to fit this mold. In base, Yang grabs an enemy and chucks them at another enemy. In Burn, Yang instead grabs the enemy, and in true FF fashion, leaps into the air and comes crashing down on a different enemy. This gives Yang a repositioning tool without detracting from the brawler fantasy. I think this is also not out of the question as there's a few abilities in Rebirth that bring enemies closer, so I don't see any problem with just straight up manhandling them like this.

Meteor Impact is Yang's basic AoE attack where she slams the ground. It interacts with Burn the same way Dragon Throw does. While out of Burn, it's decent, but in Burn, it's range and power increases. It would be a simple and effective tool for people who like using Burn in a straightforward manner.

Bombshell is an ability that uses Burn meter the other way. You don't have to be in Burn mode to improve the move, the move will simply eat meter from Burn by default. Yang attaches sticky bombs to the enemy that go off the next time they're hit with an ability. The amount of stickies attached can be increased by holding down the command and spending meter. It's a move that has some thought that can be put in it. It doesn't deal immediate damage, so you have to either be willing to wait or have resources left over to set them off. You could attach bombs to an enemy and then Dragon Throw them to make them a living bomb. You can set them up when the enemies stagger is nearly complete so you can rebuild your ATB and resources and go for a truly devastating combo. You can go full throttle on the bombs or hold back so you can still enter Burn.

The next ability is one I really wanted to make once I had the concept of Yang down as a fighter with a lot of variability. Golden Glow takes inspiration from Unfettered Fury being a side grade to Unbridled Strength. It's an alterative to Burn. While Burn quickly burns out and has potent offenses, Golden Glow is a mode that lasts longer but instead focuses on Yang's defenses. While Yang mostly uses her semblance to attack, she's also used it a few times to take hits. An ability like this has lots of synergy with Yang's abilities that want her to be in her super form, but doesn't play as well with moves like Bombshell that prefer having meter being quick to build and spend rather than something long lasting.

Limits

Limits aren't hard to do, but I should still talk about them anyways. A solid chunk of Rebirth's cast has a basic Level 1 Limit, a Level 2 that increases stagger a lot, and a Level 3 which just does tons more damage. That's not to say all of them are like that. Red notably gets healing from his LB1 and a longer lasting mode from his LB2.

LB1 I'd make a basic damaging limit. It'd be just one big strong punch, like the one used against Junior in the Yellow Trailer, to mirror how quick a lot of the other LB1s are.

LB2 would put Yang in Burn with 1 extra level. If used while you have level 3, this would put you in the otherwise unreachable level 4. Because of course there's 4, this a RWBY character, I can't not slap the number 4 on things. I'd probably use a scene from the JL movie part 2 actually. The one where Yang activates her semblance, jumps up, and starts peppering the battlefield with gunfire. I just think it's good to have a little bit of variety between all the melee combat.

LB3, due to being a whole process to get up to, would be huge stagger increase and huge damage. It's meant to help end the fight, regardless of how the enemy is currently looking. I actually think I'd like her to do something new for this attack honestly. LB1 already uses something from the early RWBY days and LB2 uses more recent stuff, so there's a good spread of representation.

#rwby #ffvii rebirth #yang xiao long #This has been living in my brain for like 3 weeks #I definitely put too much thought into this

[prancingintheshadows]

[prancingintheshadows]

RWBY Beyond is such a labour of love from the CRWBY, like, even before the shutdown it was being made as something to tide us over while we were waiting for someone to greenlight volume 10, and clearly not made with much of a budget, and now with the shutdown we're only getting what they were able to get finished

and the crew on this is tiny, the first episode only had about fourteen people working on it, and Kerry pulled quadruple duty, writing, directing, voice acting, and animating it

it's very bittersweet that with the uncertainty of the show's future, the last bit of content we're getting for a long time is being made on a shoestring budget like how it started

[prancingintheshadows]

Funnily, even Dion as Bahamut still only does this during the boss fight where he's drawing power from the Mothercrystal. So Bahamut still can't personally do Zettaflare unassisted.

Zettaflare appears in Bravely Default used by the penultimate boss Airy. It still lines up considering she’s drawing on power from a dark god Ouroboros, who at full power can destroy planets almost effortlessly.

yeah that was the first ever instance it was used before Donald used it, and the only other time after that as far as I've been able to dig up was Dion-as-Bahamut in XVI who is, well, Bahamut

so Donald maintains his position because he's the only person who's used that spell without some kind of divine assistance

[prancingintheshadows]

Chocolate potato cake - 1912

[prancingintheshadows]

Small aside, since this is clearly the least important thing: I'm glad that Sun just casually mentions that Raven is a maiden in RWBY Beyond. There's some people who call Yang a hypocrite for talking about no lies or half truths because she didn't explicitly tell the others about Raven being Spring. So Sun just saying Raven's a maiden makes it clear that the info wasn't some big secret considering it's somehow trickled down to the Junior Detectives of all people. Like, Vernal was dead and Cinder was defeated, the rest of the group can easily figure out who has the spring maiden powers after V5 without Yang spelling it out.

#rwby #rwby beyond #rwby spoilers