the inherent intimacy of repairing your best friend’s prosthetic limbs… the inherent importance of your best friend also being the person who gave you a leg to stand on and a hand to use…. the inherent familiarity of your very hand being their handiwork, your foot their own design…the utter tragedy of using that same hand your best friend gave you to pry a gun out of their hands as you count all the ways they give life and creation instead of death and destruction
Roy lost his eyesight because he had a vision for the future of the country, but he could still fight while blind because his vision wasn’t for him, it was for the people around him, so the people around him (Riza) could lend him their eyes!
This seems like such a calm post please know internally I am hyperventilating and bleeding out in an alley about this fact
“Levi is teaming up with Annie to kill Eren…he truly forgot about his squad” if you think Petra Ral would not slap Eren Jaeger directly across the face for the pain he’s caused you’re dead wrong bud
I sometimes wonder how people recommend RWBY to others, because the premise of the show is one of the most changeable I’ve ever seen.
Even when a show goes through massive changes, there’s still some continuity of premise. Like even after Agents of SHIELD went through the downfall of SHIELD, it was still a show about a group of people protecting the world from the shadows. Game of Thrones was about political machinations in a low-fantasy world, no matter how shocking Ned Stark’s death/the Red Wedding was.
But there’s such a stark divide between Beacon-era RWBY’s premise, and post-Beacon RWBY’s premise.
Before the Fall, it’s a show about teenagers going to monster-hunting school while evildoers scheme in the background and the teachers talk of an oncoming threat.
Afterwards, it’s a show about young adults overcoming their traumas and unraveling the mysteries of their world as they travel it, trying to make sure the people that destroyed their school won’t succeed elsewhere.
Stories don’t usually burn down their original premise like that until they enter the final act of the story. The Fall of Beacon is basically the equivalent to Adora destroying the Sword or the death of Dumbledore, but at the end of the First Act.
I can’t think of any other story like it, despite it wearing it’s influences on it’s sleeve.
Reading the replies to this is fascinating because I grew up devouring stories like RWBY. Not anime or cartoons though; fantasy fiction, especially the older stuff like by Mercedes Lackey, MZB, Elizabeth Moon, Tamora Pierce etc. These chosen one narratives are pretty different from modern urban fantasy versions about young women, which bear a closer resemblance to those featuring boys.
Those old high fantasy stories usually span a decade or more, which makes them a poor fit for simple movies or even an extended live action series. Because the lead character is a girl, without a love interest… Well, we all know film biases and genre assumptions.
We start with a tween girl. Maybe she’s magical, inclined toward combat, an orphan, wealthy and privileged, etc. It doesn’t matter. She leaves home because: she’s escaping an unwanted marriage, being sent to combat or mage school, chosen by an animal companion, her home is attacked by bandits and she escapes, secretly a princess and doesn’t want to deal with it. You name it; she leave home to learn stuff or achieve a relatively small goal, with or without her family’s support.
She spends years accomplishing that goal and gains a friend group of supporting characters. They do fun teen stuff with some serious adventure(s) on the side. These adventures are framed as very challenging and significant events, within the narrow context of her world. Everything looks like it’s going well but then:
Tragedy strikes. The mage school is attacked. The city is invaded by a marauding army. Demi gods awake and demand sacrifices. The local government proves corrupt and someone is assassinated. There’s a feud between the talking animals. Whatever injustice happens, the older teen girl’s planned goal is suddenly derailed and she accepts a greater challenge.
More time passes During this quest her barely honed magic/combat/political skills are further developed as she faces obstacles that force her to make leaps in both skill and courage. She might lose a friend or that animal companion dies. She discovers that the incredible adventure she had during her apprenticeship was only a tiny piece of a much larger struggle, conspiracy or other plot. She probably bargains with a god or goddess at some point and her quest might take on the tone of a holy mission.
She is no longer on her original trajectory at all now. She must save the kingdom, world, universe from an army, raging demi-gods, the disintegration of reality. She must become fully realized as the chosen one. She must choose between personal love and altruism. Perhaps the final battle is with magic, a sword, or out-witting an all powerful entity by reframing the issue. Perhaps she even realizes that she and her friends were the villains all along in the process. She becomes a champion and then… the world goes on as a better place.
RWBY is if the entire friend group were a collection of chosen ones in a high fantasy aimed at teenage girls of the 80’s/90’s that later readers sneered at for being overblown because the heroine had too much agency and miraculous success.
Interesting. So RWBY is harkening back to an older era of female-focused fantasy? That’s genuinely fascinating.
I rewatched Ironwood vs Watts and realized, once again, that James sacrificing his arm was in fact completely avoidable, pointless, and more of a misguided show of strength than any kind of intelligent decision.
And I’m not talking about the fight as a whole (although that’s also true). I’m not talking about the fact he went in alone, even though there were so many people who could have provided backup. Even though one sniper from the entire Atlas Military was all it would have taken to tip the scales.
I’m talking about one very small decision on James’s part that hurt no one but himself at that moment.
When Watts traps James with the hard light display from his rings, the rings are still completely exposed.
James literally could have just crushed or damaged one of the rings to free himself, taking maybe twenty seconds longer with absolutely no maiming necessary.
If James had done anything other than what the bad guy wanted him to, nothing needed to be lost.
the Layers in Ruby and Harriet’s little exchange tho.
“We’re the best Huntsmen in Atlas.” “You were.”
Because yeah, a second later Ruby smirks and turns it into pre-beatdown smack talk, but like…
Maybe you used to be the best Huntsmen in Atlas, Harriet. Maybe you were. But that stopped being true the moment you abandoned Mantle to die. You were good…and then you forgot what the job is.
Whatever the AceOps are now, they’re no longer Huntsmen.
Looking back over Volumes 6 and 7, something I feel is pretty interesting is how Ozpin and Ironwood are effectively painted as two sides of the same coin by the narrative when it comes to their strengths and flaws.
For Ozpin, no matter how much insight he had on the human condition and how his humanist ideologies of compassion, understanding and empathy, and how much he wanted to help all of humanity, I think it’s pretty clear that his actual idea of how to deal with Salem was very much the WRONG one. His plan was to effectively delay Salem indefinitely, with an ingrained, unshakable assumption that Salem cannot be fought directly. Also, Ozpin’s idea of fighting Salem in the shadows only seems to have backfired, with Ozpin and his followers keeping untold secrets from the rest of the world, all while Ozpin keeps more secrets from even his closest allies. This gradually erodes and destroys the trust those allies have in him as we saw in Volume 6, and also keeps humanity unaware of the threat to them and makes it all the easy for Salem to keep humanity divided and turn them against each other.
In short, Ozpin has the right philosophy, but the wrong idea of how to deal with Salem.
And in Volume 7, we see that Ironwood is the flipside to that coin.
By all rights, Ironwood has the right idea. He wants to take the fight to Salem directly and put an end to her once and for all. Not only that, Ironwood wants to reveal her existence to the world, shine a spotlight on her as the true enemy of mankind and unite humanity against the common enemy to all. But at the same time, Ironwood’s ideology is horribly flawed. In contrast to Ozpin’s humanist ideologies, Ironwood’s beliefs are entirely militant. He believes that simple military might will win the day, and also believes whole-heartedly that ‘the ends justify the means’ and ‘any sacrifice is worth it’. We see in Ironwoods conversations with Oscar that he considers his own humanity to be a weakness that can be exploited. He pretty much views Mantle as dead weight and is ready to cut the whole city loose as a sacrifice to what he believes is the ‘greater good’.
Basically, Ozpin had the Wrong Idea, but the Right Ideology. And Ironwood has the Right Idea, but the Wrong Ideology.
And it is between these two sides that I believe Team RWBY falls, and in particular Ruby herself.
I think it’s clear that Ruby is the one that has the Right Idea and the Right Ideology. Like Ironwood, she is staunchly determined to battle the evil that Salem represents and end the threat she poses to humanity. But like Ozpin, Ruby is an equally firm believer in the importance of keeping hold of our humanity and all that entails. I think we can see this most clearly in how Ruby has come into conflict with both men, with Ozpin in Volume 6 and Ironwood in Volume 7.
Finally, I think there is one specific quality Ruby possesses that sets her apart from both Ironwood and Ozpin and allows her to be this: Her Defiant Optimism.
Both Ozpin and Ironwood both seem to possess these cynical assumptions about the conflict against Salem: Ozpin believes that Salem cannot be destroyed and Ironwood seems to believe that great sacrifices must be made to ensure victory.
The Ironwood Fixers: Parallels in Ruby’s and Oscar’s Actions in V3 and V7
It’s striking how Oscar’s actions at the end of V7 parallel Ruby’s actions at the start of the Battle of Beacon in V3. Both incidents begin with the exact same pincer manuever on the part of Salem’s forces, a ground attack by the Grimm occurring simultaneously with the reveal that Cinder has corrupted a crucial system of Ironwood’s defenses; at the Vytal Festival the compromised system is Ironwood’s computers, in Atlas it’s Ironwood’s brain.
In the ensuing panic at Amity Arena Ruby and Team JNPR flee to a shuttle. In the ensuing panic at Atlas Academy Oscar and Team JNR flee to a shuttle.
But at the last minute Ruby/Oscar turn back into the teeth of danger to try to fix Ironwood’s problem.
They go to the heart of Ironwood’s power. At Beacon it’s his flagship; at Atlas, it’s the Vault of the Winter Maiden. Here, Ruby tries to save the ship, and Oscar tries to save the man. Both antagonists first express disbelief at the hero’s mission.
“Little Red, little Red, you are just determined to be the hero of Vale, aren'tcha?”
“Do you intend to fight me?”
(It doesn’t quite come through in these screenshots, but the strong vertical line pattern on the top of the ship is the same as the strong vertical line pattern on the floor of the Vault. I wondered why the Vault floor looked like a landing strip.)
Then both heroes are informed by their antagonists that they have greatly underestimated the scope of the problem.
“You’re asking the wrong questions, Red! It’s not what I have to gain, it’s that I can’t afford to lose!”
“You still think I’m afraid?”
Both Torchwick and Ironwood are terrified of Salem, and consequently both men feel trapped. Because they feel trapped, both men lash out.
“Like it or not, the people that hired me are going to change the world! You can’t stop ‘em, I can’t stop 'em!”
“You can label me whatever you’d like, but the fact of the matter is I was right! The minute I softened, let my guard down, that’s when Salem had her opening.”
Both men accuse our heroes of not understanding how “the real world” drives them to the actions they have taken, thus trying to deny responsibility for their part in the deeds going down at that moment.
“You got spirit, Red. But this is the real world! The real world is cold! The real world doesn't care about spirit!”
“All excellent philosophical points that won’t matter if Salem wins.”
Then both men proceed to state their goal.
“You wanna be a hero? Then play the part and die like every other Huntsman in history! As for me, I’ll do what I do best: lie, steal, cheat, and SURVIVE!”
“I am done letting others’ inability to see the big picture get in the way of doing what’s right. Robyn, the council, this kingdom… even you.”
(When I started this essay I thought I was going to have to gloss over the actual confrontations, but when I looked at the quotes I realized that in his more upper-class speech mannerisms Ironwood echoed Torchwick point for point.)
Shortly thereafter, both our heroes fall, only to be saved by their weapon-based landing strategies. And about the same time, both our antagonists are thwarted in their goals by a supernatural force, Torchwick by a Nevermore and Ironwood by the Winter Maiden.
Oscar failed in his reason for turning back. But in the chaos of the Battle of Beacon, it’s possible to overlook that Ruby also failed in her primary reason for turning back. She wasn’t able to liberate the flagship, but it’s destruction freed the robots from Watts’ virus. Likewise, while Oscar is unable to liberate Ironwood from the General’s crippling terror, his actions free Ozpin from his self-imposed exile.
And in both cases those are well-timed moves, because the very next thing that happens is that the third arm of Salem’s pincer manuever shows up, her air support.
Oscar’s confrontation with Ironwood also parallels Ruby’s confrontation with Raven at the Battle of Haven, so I’ll discuss that in my next post. But let me make one last point. In Ruby’s confrontation with Torchwick he reveals that his actions are based on his conclusion that Salem will win no matter what he does. If Ironwood also concludes that Salem will win no matter what he does and acts accordingly, events will take a very dark turn.
Note: This post has been edited to comply with Tumblr’s photo limit. To see all the pics, go here: http://aminoapps.com/p/kicxzq
Wait, the Vale Council has three seats, plus the Headmaster.
The Atlas Council has three elected seats, the head of their military, and the Headmaster.
I’m guessing that, rather than each seat corresponding to a city (since Vale has SEVERAL coastal cities), each seat PROBABLY corresponds to a different function of the government, with Atlas having an extra seat for their military.
I mean, it matches up with RWBY’s arc number: Four Kingdoms, Four Maidens, Four Members to a Team, and Four Seats on the Council.
aight it’s been building up for a while but today something i saw on twitter was the straw that broke this camel’s back so i’m here to rant about why the way a lot of the nabari fandom treats yoite makes me angry and a little disgusted
note before i start that i am not intersex (i’ve heard different words for this, could someone tell me whether dyadic or endosex is the more accepted one?) nor am i the victim of child abuse. also, trigger warnings for #death ( #character death ), #child abuse
ok so a while ago i talked about yoite’s gender with tumblr user lokh, and you can see my thoughtsandtheir thoughts on our individual posts. to sum it up: we both feel really uncomfortable with people insisting yoite is not, cannot be, a boy, due to his character development through the series and especially right before his death. like, we’re fine with headcanons, but to say that the interpretation of him as a boy is bad is flat out wrong. but i also have some thoughts i never addressed in that post so strap in buddies ‘cause here we go
so one of the other reasons i’m personally suspicious of people insisting that yoite is nb is that 99% of the time people only do this because he is intersex. if they were just misinterpreting kazuho’s line, then i could maybe understand it, but i’ve seen a lot of people who say “well they’re intersex, so they must be nb” or “i hc them as nb bc of course i do, they’re intersex” which just……… no. yes, nb intersex people exist. but so do intersex people whose gender is well within the binary. when you say that this intersex character - one of the few intersex characters in any sort of media, much less manga alone - must be nb due to his sex, you are reducing him - and real life intersex people - to their genitals or organs or hormones or chromosomes or whatever else contributed to their intersex status. just like you wouldn’t assume the gender of someone based on non-intersex genitals, you can’t assume that every intersex person is also nb. and stop thinking about their genitals!
(and again, this isn’t to say that nb intersex ppl don’t exist, because of course they do, but saying that being intersex comes only as a combo with being nb is the problem here)
and the other reason deals with his abuse. yoite was abused since he was born until just a few days, really, before he died (i’m counting hattori’s controlling of him as abuse). it’s unclear in the story whether yoite was cafab or caxab (that is, coercively assigned no gender at birth; please tell me if there is a better term for this), since it appears that “sora,” a feminine name, was the one his mother would have given him “in case [he] had [been] a girl,” and is probably the name on yoite’s birth certificate. but yoite’s mother died in childbirth, and his father and stepmother do not call him sora, they call him “that child.” so idk, but it’s not really the point whether he is cafab or caxab. what matters is that yoite’s abusive biological father and abusive stepmother treated him as having no gender (”that child,” “it”), directly in correlation with his intersex status and not due to any obvious agender feelings yoite was actually having at the time. their treatment of him as subhuman and subsequent attempted murder of him were based not just on the idea that he had killed his own mother in childbirth, but also that yoite was, to them, inhuman for being intersex.
and when fandom decides that forcing an nb identity on him is right and using his birth name to refer to him is ok, i am quickly reminded of his abuse. he himself says that “sora was never there,” so why do his fans still call him that on occasion? as if it is “more real” of a name than yoite? what is it about yoite that makes people feel like they can use his birth name, a name he has never connected with and cast away long before his death, to refer to him when they would never do that for real people?
i’m just obsessed with the fact that the three of them still work so many years later. from what i’ve gotten textually from the show, yes, hardison and parker are dating, but the family unit is hardison/parker/eliot.
hardison and parker are shown to be physically affectionate, but there’s an electric and stable type of connectedness between all of them showing how in each other’s lives they have been:
eliot and hardison pointing where the stolen art belong,
parker and eliot always ending up together,
parker and hardison getting excited together,
the inside jokes,
the big decision making.
parker highlights his emotional connection to this specific team and eliot brings out his sense of duty. the other couldn’t provide the emotional support the other can, but as a unit, there’s help at every corner. parker still has eliot who has been her partner in (undoing) crime for years. eliot has parker, his partner that keeps him sharp. and both of them rest easy knowing hardison is using his big heart for good.
however, while canon has established that they have thoroughly,
thoroughly,
thoroughly
been in each other’s lives, it has not been explicitly stated it’s a polyamorous thing. canon, for me, would be them saying in no uncertain terms that eliot has also lived with them, or something like that. or perhaps, they would establish it in the middle of the second half of the season.
that being said, i have an enormous amount of fun with the show, and for whatever reason we haven’t been able to get our canon ot3, i’m so happy we see them as a family first and foremost, because it would have been so easy to let that disappear between the years.
At worst, Darius seems to be a villain with principles; Which compared to the genocidal Belos and his constant gaslighting and manipulations, is too much even for him! And again that’s at worst. So it stands to reason that the previous Golden Guard (whom we’ll refer to as such, while Hunter is simply Hunter) was along those lines, given how Darius fondly remembers him, and judges Hunter by the standards of his predecessor. And what alleviates Darius’ disapproval is Hunter learning to think for himself, even at the apparent cost of the coven; Something Darius believes would make the Golden Guard proud.
And as others have pointed out, Darius doesn’t necessarily know of Hunter’s abuse, or at least doesn’t know he goes through more than that of the typical covenscout. And Hunter being the Emperor’s nephew might be a VERY recent reveal in-universe, or not; Lilith didn’t know, but with what we know of Philip, it makes even more sense for Belos to keep her in the dark about a lot of things as just a figurehead who has a ‘destiny’ to fulfill. Regardless, it makes sense for the Coven Heads to know more than your typical covenscout, but after Hunting Palismen, Hunter seems to have revealed his face to prevent another situation like that.
So from Darius’ perspective, he grows up in a coven system that believes in order but is still reasonable and has SOME principles, because Belos hasn’t tightened his control yet. It helps that his Golden Guard is actually a principled dude by comparison, and seems to have actual magic to an extent. But after Darius becomes Coven Head and the Golden Guard is put out of commission for unknown circumstances, Belos starts to tighten his grip on the isles. More and more witches are forcibly bound, and nobody’s speaking out against him.
Darius isn’t actively spreading the coven at this point, but he will do his job of at least defending it against direct traitors and the like. Then this freaking teenager shows up, the barest minimum age to even join a coven; And he’s higher-ranked than everyone else?! He doesn’t even have magic, and seems to be a pitiful yes-man to the Emperor, who is his uncle... Ah. That explains why he keeps being given the time of day. If Darius doesn’t know of Hunter’s abuse, then he has more reason to be critical of the kid as an unthinking brat who has literally nothing to deserve this title except his uncle’s nepotism.
World Population: Where it’s thick and where it’s thin
-The growing population of the world, now estimated to be over 7 billion, marks a global milestone and presents obvious challenges for the planet. (41 photos total)
Over-populated or under-developed? The real story of population growth
The world population looks set to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, but what’s behind the big numbers? We look at the complex demographic shifts in play Global population hit 7.3 billion midway through 2015, an increase of 2 billion since 1990.
These colourful images show the heights and density of buildings in different cities around England. Taken from a new interactive map produced by Emu Analytics, they are created using Environment Agency LiDAR data, an airborne mapping technique. Data was only available for England
yknow what I’m still not done posting abt this bc this needs to be said. you dont HAVE to understand something in order to respect it, you know? just because a label doesnt make sense to you, that doesnt make it less valuable as an identity. you dont have to “get” the phrase “bi lesbian” or “bi gay” to respect ppl who ID that way.
moreover - there are a lot of reasons someone might identify that way, but Nobody owes you an explanation. if you want to know more about it, look it up, there are plenty of people willing to discuss their identities with people who are respectful and interested in learning. but demanding a justification from anyone whose identity doesnt make sense to you is the opposite of respectful. so, you know. dont be a dick.
Unless someone is threatening harm with their label (and by “threatening harm” I mean “saying they like preschoolers” or “advocating for excluding trans people”, not “being embarrassing” or “stealing resources from real LGBT people”), there’s no reason for you to ever demand explanations or try to tell them who they are. I don’t care if their identity makes no sense to you! I don’t care if you consider it the wrong use of words! I don’t even care if you think it’s literally impossible for humans to identify that way! You don’t know that person better than they know themselves, so only they get to decide who they are!
The Silmarillion in particular is very classist. Basically everyone we hear about is some form of nobility or royalty or at least a tribal leader. There are maybe a couple of dwarves who are commoners, and maybe some of the outlaws? But I can’t think of the names of any of them. I do wonder whether the first kings of the Elves were born to be kings or earned that title by choosing to go to Valinor, but nonetheless, once they’re kings, they don’t go back.
What really stands out to me is the patterns in marriage. High-ranked Elves seem to only marry other high-ranked people, whether Elf or Man. Yes, this is because we barely hear about people who aren’t high-ranked, but come on. There’s Thingol and Melian, Finwe and Indis, Earwen and Finarfin, Galadriel and Celeborn, Elrond and Celebrian, Aragorn and Arwen, Beren and Luthien, Idril and Tuor, Aegnor and Andreth, arguably Caranthir and Haleth, and so on.
I don’t know about the origins of Anaire, Mireth, Eol, and others (though some people say Eol is related to Thingol, so there’s that). The only Elf-Man relationship I can think of where the two aren’t both leaders to their people or heirs to the leaders is the time the first prince of Dol Amroth married an elf-maiden – she was a handmaiden of Nimrodel, so not exactly poor, but not really a leader. Of course, he was minor nobility. Elves don’t marry ordinary Men.
What are the chances that this happens coincidentally? For the Elrond example, I, an elf-lord and probable heir to the kingship over the Noldor, just happen to fall madly in love with the daughter of Galadriel (who is Finwe’s granddaughter) and Celeborn (who is supposedly related to Thingol somehow)? That’s a heck of a coincidence. Is it all a bit exaggerated? Or do nobles only socialize with other nobles? Or is whoever is in charge of people falling in love (Eru, presumably, or in a meta way, Tolkien) is a bit classist?
But that’s how British society was back then, wasn’t it? A bit classist? Heck, it probably still is. Not to mention that Tolkien is writing about a fantasy medieval world. Medieval nobility didn’t marry commoners. They married other nobility. And the higher their status was, the higher the status of their spouses. This meant that nobility was very inbred. And Elrond is a distant cousin of Celebrian. Same for Aragorn and Arwen. If I knew the family trees better, I’d probably find more examples.
Anyway, Elves having more equality than Men? Not likely.
So - I’m seeing some activity on my dash that seems to indicate that Shiro isn’t the Black paladin anymore and I - don’t get where that’s coming from? I mean, I suppose if I squint I could see it but overall I just got a ‘finally set right’ feel for the end of the season. And what made me feel that way?
well - this.
That’s the lions all roaring once Shiro was back amoung them. The OG Shiro. Its a full-throated, full-hearted concert of affirmation and not just from Black but all the lions, all together at once, in unison.
And you know the last time they did that?
Also for Shiro and him taking his place as the rightful paladin of the Black lion, way back in season one, episode one.
They’d done that for no one else - and they’ve done it for Shiro twice now. Only for Shiro. And its not as if other paladins haven’t been lost and then found again (see: Keith)
but - Keith flew Black? Yes. And? That doesn’t make him the Black paladin any more than it makes my little sister me when she borrows my jeep. Keith has been Black’s pilot three times now. To save Shiro from the lizard monsters on pancake planet. To take over because Shiro wasn’t there. And to save Shiro from clone planet. There - might be a pattern there. Yes, I know, Keith was Black Paladin in all other incarnations and he might be End Game. But he might not. I still hold that the writers spent a lot of time bonding paladins and original lions in the first two seasons and Black even went so far as to save her own paladin from death and protect his soul for three seasons. I’m not seeing that Shiro isn’t still Black’s current paladin and I’m not even ready to do that on Shiro being End Game Black Paladin yet. Sure, its possible and oh yes, it’ll break my heart right in two if the writers end on a different note - but they haven’t yet and I’m not going to borrow heartache that might be unnecessary before its time.
but - Shiro doesn’t have an arm! He can’t fly without two arms.
Are you sure? Are you really really sure. So sure those sticks in the floor the paladins all use randomly and without any kind of actual purpose (because we’ve seen utterly no pattern to the way they use them and what happens at all) beyond its dramatic and they seem to need to use them mentally - are necessary to fly a lion? That the paladin that lived inside his lion for so long couldn’t mentally connect enough to fly it, ‘see through its eyes’ and become one with it in flight? You don’t need two arms to be a hero or a leader or a powerful force in life. But - that’s not very dramatic looking for a visual story, so sure - let’s say we want to give Shiro two arms to fly.
Have we seen Shiro use the Black Bayard yet? Even the clone only threw it - it never changed shape for him. We’ve never seen OG Shiro use the bayard beyond its key slot action. So - what would we give the guy on a team with pretty much every other kind of weapon already accounted for to use as a Black gifted, spiritually bonded weapon? Something that he could use easily, without difficulty? Something that suits him and seems to fit his fighting style? Something that could become a part of him? (something that matches leaked pictures?) Hmmm. Let’s see. Whatever could we give the Black Paladin, the Black Lion’s chosen representative, the one whose lion loves him enough to save his life and protect him, that would represent the way being a paladin makes him feel whole?
