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gambol definition

gambol definition - win

At 75, my mother decided to play through "Red Dead Redemption 2" and I am so pleased to share her essay about the experience with all of you. Please enjoy: "Unsung heroes: Reconceptualizing a video game as a work of art." by Jessica Hoffmann Davis, EdD **SPOILER ALERT**

Unsung heroes: Reconceptualizing a video game as a work of art.

Jessica Hoffmann Davis, EdD (jessicahoffmanndavis.com)
​
The doorbell rang just as the doctor at St. Denis (a fictive town in the video game Red Dead Redemption 2) was telling Arthur, (my playable character in the 80+ hour game) that he had incurable tuberculosis. Devastated, I raced to the door, explained quickly to the technician that I couldn’t sign anything for the moment, and rushed back to finish watching that cinematic cut into the regular action of the game.
As I returned to the door, I could hear the technician stifling a laugh. Clearly, he found it amusing that a woman of my advanced age was immersed in a video game. “Which one?” he asked pleasantly.
“Red Dead Redemption 2,” I replied, and his mouth fell open. “You know it?” I asked. “Who doesn’t?” he exclaimed. And of course, he did.
Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2) was one of the hottest games of 2018. The New York Times reported it making $725 million in the first three days it opened, making it the “highest grossing opening weekend of any entertainment product—ever” (Suderman, NYT, 11/25/18, p. 8). “I tried it,” he said, “but I don’t really have time to stay with the story with two young children climbing all over me.” Yes, that would be hard. For me, at this stage in my life, my only regular interruption was my little dog who thought the horses, dogs, and other animals so realistically portrayed in Red Dead Redemption 2 were in the room with us. Lucky was also frightened by the sound of shooting guns that admittedly happened frequently throughout the game.
“How’d you get into it?” the technician asked. “My son is Dutch van der Linde.” Dutch is the sophisticated enchanting evil manipulative philosophic idealistic intellectual outlaw whose charisma and treachery are at the center of the game.
“You mean the character in the game is like your son?” “No”, I replied, “the character in the game is my son.” He was baffled. “The actor who plays Dutch van der Linde is my son.” “Oh. you mean, he gave the voice to the animated figure?” Apparently, this guy had never heard of performance capture and how the game’s animation is framed by digital recordings of the actual actions and expressions of the actors. “Performance capture.” I explained, “you know they wear the leotards with electric ping pong balls all over them?” “Oh yeah,” the technician nodded, clearly impressed, unsure by what. “Well, good luck with it,” the young man said, “Hope you win.”
Win? Proof positive that he had never played Red Dead Redemption 2, a game that has no winners or losers and a course of action determined by individual players. For most of the time, as the only playable character Arthur Morgan, (a misguided big-hearted gunslinger), you’re an actor in the theater of the game, riding your horse, tackling missions as directed, trying to do your best. For the rest of the time, you’re the director, deciding what comes next in the narrative, making choices that range from virtuous vs. damnable courses of action to what outfit your character will wear.
Fully within the shape and direction of the narrative, you are co-constructor of a story…or is it a movie? Now and then, with filmed action cut-scenes, it definitely is. Either way, the New York Times calls the game a “work of art” (ibid, p.8); an online fan calls it an “experience”; I call it an “adventure.” No, a “story.” No, a movie in which I am the protagonist and the director. A reader of lines; a writer of outcomes. I agree. “A work of Art.”

Origins

My son, actor Benjamin Byron Davis, worked on the Red Dead Redemption 2 project for five years. Five years of flying back and forth between Los Angeles and New York, memorizing countless lines (the script was 2000 pages long), rehearsing in locations on either coast, performing in black spandex “mo-cap” (motion capture) suits, gun belts at his side, riding a saw horse that would appear as a Tennessee Walker or an Arabian, imagining in a warehouse studio space, the vast landscape of the wild west.
Reportedly, the hardest part of it all was the non-disclosure agreement that the ensemble signed, assuring Rockstar Games that the actors would not reveal a minute of what they were doing prior to release, let alone that they had any knowledge that there would ever be a prequel to the earlier game, Red Dead Redemption.
When the game finally emerged, it was met with thunderous enthusiasm and commentary suggesting it had broken the boundaries between technology and art, exploring territory traditionally reserved for the arenas of dramatic or cinematic arts. Beautifully written, gorgeously acted, and outrageously picturesque, the game welcomes players into an imaginary world in which they can ride their horses all night, explore new directions as the sun rises, pause to camp under a shading tree or alongside a slippery river, feel a gentle rain, marvel at a star studded sky, and inter-relate with characters as close as fellow outlaws in the Van der Linde gang and as mysterious as strangers alongside an unknown road.
The terrain would become familiar, the dead tree marking the road to camp, the tree lined path to the Braithwaite Manor. the train tracks, water ways, and jagged narrow mountain paths. But I knew nothing of this when the Red Dead Redemption 2 ensemble of performance capture artists came to FanExpo Boston at the Boston Convention Center in August, 2019.

The Fans

I had never attended a fan expo or comic-con before. These conventions famously provide a venue where literally thousands of comic book/video game fans can gather. Walking about as if it was another day at the mall, are life sized superheroes, video game characters, and other creative inventions of comic book types. The costumes are pristine and professional looking and even the youngest children look as if they’ve just emerged from their movie trailers down the street.
Walking through galleries of booths selling such collectible objects as original artwork and vintage comic books or giving away trinkets that promote an upcoming game, I was struck by the creativity with which the atmosphere was infused. And when I reached the designated area in which fans could actually meet their favorite video game actors and get an autograph or a selfie, I was astonished by the length of the lines. I knew this happened around the world; Benjamin had already taken part in conventions in Hawaii, Philadelphia, Texas, and Kuwait. But what impressed me greatly, moved some chord within that is devoted to the arts in education, was that practically all of the fans waiting on line to meet the real Dutch van der Linde, had a gift in hand. The gifts were drawings of Dutch from various scenes in the game, or “wanted” posters of the artist’s design-an artistic response to the work of art that was the game; and the artwork itself was first rate. Surely some were more crudely drawn than others, but all the work presented had clearly been crafted with care and affection.

Reflection

Later, Dutch van der Linde (Benjamin) and Arthur Morgan (Roger Clark) sat on a panel and talked about the experience of working on Red Dead Redemption 2, the challenge of learning masses of lines in short periods of time, developing a role over time, working in those spandex suits, and especially the non-disclosure agreement that kept them from telling anyone what they were up to until release. It made the ensemble closer, only being allowed to talk about it all with each other. And then the questions came from the audience. I was sitting between Captain Marvel and I think the Joker, in a room filled with costumed articulate adults framing the most sophisticated questions, reflecting their knowledge of the narrative of the game, the process of production, and its place in the greater context of video game play, culture, and history.
“What other artistic arena was it most like?” “Literature.” The actors replied. “When did Arthur discover Dutch wasn’t all he had thought he was?” and among this interesting back and forth, an occasional fan would ask Arthur to call his horse or Dutch to say out loud the resonant phrase, “I have a plan.” The fans waxed rhapsodic about the performances and I realized two things: 1) the attachment these players felt with the actors from the game was more intimate and profound than the connection audiences have with actors in plays and movies: and 2) the only way I would get to experience my son’s celebrated performance was to learn to play Red Dead Redemption 2.

The Challenge

It was then that I bought a copy of the game (RDR2) and a Play Station 4 (PS4), the video console that enables game play. Installing the PS4 was not complicated but it took me a few days to find the courage to think that I was capable. The console came with a controller with which the player enters and navigates the game and learning how to use that smooth hand-held device took me the better part of two weeks. That was not just because of lack of confidence, not just because I believed that such a device belonged to another generation, but also because the controller is a pretty complicated device. There are so many options for control that I quickly ordered the Red Dead Redemption 2 guidebook which fearsomely is 385 pages long. The print is small. Enter my hand-held large red magnifying glass.
I practiced and practiced but mastery came slowly. My ineptitude with the controller prevented me from keeping my horse on a steady keel and caused me to make awful mistakes. I would unintentionally punch my horse or jump off it when I meant to jump on. I speak in the first person, but “I” in the game is the character of Arthur Morgan, a lovable gun slinger who has made some poor life choices but basically seeks to do good (when he is not shooting and looting bad guys).
Arthur and I are connected by that controller; we decide where he will move, what he will wear, if he will shave his beard, give money to the collection pot for Dutch’s gang, go into a saloon and play poker or check into a train station and pay the bounty on our head for some or another murderous mistake. Consider the intimacy of the relationship when you and he are the lead character in the game. The controller allows that connection.
With each week of game play (1-3 hours a day; occasionally a decadent lot more), my facility with the controller increased and remarkably, as I got more facile, the game gave me more things to do-there seemed a reciprocity of skills and tasks. I felt scaffolded by the game (and that incredibly detailed guidebook) and that allowed me to invest fully in the experience of this alternate world where gangs were disappearing but still shooting it up and revenge was disparaged but still motivating bloodshed.
As we moved from the cold snowy opening scenes of the game throughout seasons of flowering and abundance, with animals (reportedly 200 species) gamboling through meadows and towns, the environment became more detailed and complex. There were entries in Arthur’s journal (drawings and words) to read and interpret, books on shelves that you could open and study, abandoned interiors to explore and loot, Native American lore to inspire, the chill of a wave of industrialization meticulously portrayed as a backdrop to the development and deterioration of characters to whom we grow unreasonably attached.
“Let’s ride.” Is a refrain you hear in the game that informed my play every time I returned to it. My designated chair; the open guidebook and the magnifying glass; my coffee on the table; a few post-its stuck to the mug—reminders about which is a punch which a repel; the smooth feel of the ps4 controller in my hand, and I was ready to play. “Let’s ride.” And ride we did, through a landscape of images and words and music that sustained and engaged. A story line filled with excitement and nuance, chapter to chapter; through decisions that had consequence and proved our autonomy and effectiveness; attending to detail, collecting herbs, horses, weapons—so much to encounter and learn. I came to be unsurprised this game took 8 years to create. It would seem to require more.

The Journey

Meanwhile, my son had announced to his fans that his 75 year old mother was attempting to play Red Dead Redemption 2 and they responded with wonderful comments of support. They were moved I’d taken such trouble to see what my son had done, moved that an “older” person would make the effort to experience “their art.” I was buoyed by their support; they called my efforts “wholesome.” They made me feel welcome and proud of my novice exploration of the world they knew so well. And what did others know of the magic I was discovering in an area the uninformed consider a “waste of time”?
Perusing the topics of some of the very many academic articles on the subject, I noted that while there is persistent concern for the effects of violence in games, scholars in the field recognize a variety of positive aspects. Of interest to me, they acknowledge what I felt first-hand: the experience of “presence” as in actually being there within the game as well as a sense of personal efficacy as I moved along (Vorderer, Bryant, 2006). So much to learn from historical content to usable skills such as manual dexterity, spatial awareness, and the attention to detail inherent to aesthetic education.
As I came to the end of the RDR2 story, final scenes brought me to tears. The characters found the ways they were meant to find but not always what I would have wished for them. Since my son is a veteran actor, I have seen him in many roles, but never as an animated version of himself—a version that visually walked his walk and audibly exploited the dark and playful regions of his wonderful voice. My journey had allowed this encounter with an extraordinary performance of an extraordinary role. And I had also had the extraordinary experience of playing a role; well, sharing a role with the character Roger Clark so marvelously brought to life. I became facile with a venue I had previously only seen from a distance—a grandson ignoring me, attending somehow to this mysterious arena for play. I entered that world, became absorbed, and didn’t hear when I was called for dinner.

In Closing

As I came into the finish line, I texted some reflections to my son:
…the “game” was somewhere between my recollections as a child of playing dolls that I dressed and placed in imaginary scenes and playing cowboys and Indians with those plastic figures whose legs were bowed so they could ride securely on their little plastic horses. But beyond the imaginary part of it all; it was so real. As if I was living in another time when folks travelled over roads that were narrow paths that led over wooden bridges and through rushing streams. And when the weather changed- my first worry was whether Arthur needed a coat or a bigger hat…and we kept going along beautiful trails, rowing wooden boats, jumping on wagons-noting all along stars in a changing sky, old houses that seemed familiar-as if they were from history and not an artist’s pen.…and my attention to detail throughout spilled over into the real world beyond. I would hear voices in the supermarket that sounded like the background voices in RDR2.
How glorious the moment (the last time) when we saw the whole gang (fractured at that point but going off together) following Dutch on his white horse “Let’s ride.” Words cannot recreate for someone who has not entered this world what it contains and inspires. Such a range of emotions and encounters and I have yet to do anything with the watches and rings in my satchel, the playing cards, the dominoes …the letters we received. The world that was created here is rich with possibilities that I have still to explore, but it has taken me months to come from front to back, from ignorant thoughts of “just a video game” to real admiration of a “work of art.”
Like other works of art, we never capture it all in one encounter, we can return and find new things over and over and the questions the work asks us are never fully answered, fraught with possibilities for interpretation. For me, this time, my question is: “where was redemption among these murderous heroes, these virtuous criminals, these friends to the end or not?” These outlaws, dealing death left and right, but so moved by the losses of each other. Evil and goodness all around, no clear lines between. Arthur’s dream, a triumph against the winds and tides of the rest. And my triumph by the way, learning something new for which I had no experience or ability, awakened by the challenges and delight of this extraordinary creation.
What a privilege to play.
References
Suderman, P. (2018), New York Times Nov. 25,p.8/
Vorder, P. & Bryant, J. (2006) Playing Video Games: Motives, Responses, and Consequences. NY: Routledge.
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Cinder vs Penny/Winter: A step in the right direction of how the fights should handle cuts.

Okay so as we all tend to agree, the V6-V7 fights and the newly formed CRWBY style is pretty neato to witness on screen.
High Octane fights that while many many debates about the new choreography style persist to today for reasons we are all well aware of, I think we can all agree that at the very least by themselves without any comparisons to other works; these fights are pretty dam cool.
However, despite this things can always be improved, and despite the improvements we have gotten there are definitely some things about the animation and the show as a whole that many people have had grievances about and seem to still persist.
In regards to the action, one of these things is definitely the exact fighting styles of characters such as Weiss' fencing and Blake's duel wielding, which while something we still haven't gotten much communication on, I think I'll save that for another time.
For this post however, I really want to talk about the cuts.
A quick disclaimer, I'm not an animator nor have I really animated anything before, this post is mostly from the perspective of being a viewer and how I feel seeing the cuts, as well as knowledge I've gained from video essays and discussion about action scenes in general. But mostly its me mainly expressing my thoughts as a viewer.
So despite the improvements in choreography, one thing that many people tend to have a problem with in the modern fights are definitely how the fights have a lot of cuts whether it be after hits and impacts or literal a cut for every individual movements.
I think one of the worst offenders of this would be [this sequence at 1:56](where Elm has a small scuffle with Blake and Yang) where there area a bunch of cuts happen with every single movement Elm makes when it could have been just one smooth shot. I think the only cut that was really necessary was when Elm dodges Gambol Shroud, outside of that it felt like there was a lack of focus and my vision was being thrown allover the place. This actually goes for most of the Aceops fights where many moves and sequences could have been a singular cut instead of constantly zooming in on limbs.
That is not to say all the shots were bad, for example Marrows tail getting almost singed by Weiss was a nice close up. However most of the cuts in the Aesop fight felt mostly unnecessary, when instead these kinds of close ups and cuts should have been used more sparingly.
There are many fights like this throughout the Maya era... that is all except one fight.
Cinder vs Penny and Winter:
Okay, this fight honestly gets pretty slept on and is severely underrated. The clash of blades between three dual weilders, the satisfying dance of Penny's blades, the fips and acrobatics, it was honestly all topnotch. However, the best thing had to be the cuts.
A lot of people have criticized the fights for not utilizing combos and combos clashes ala Mercury vs Yang, but I think Cinder vs Penny and Winter has so far been the closest to getting combos and combo clashes that we have gotten since a while. (technically BY vs Adam had them too, and they were great but didn't really have great transitions between different combos)
Starting from 1:24 After Cinders starving line, we see several sequences that actually contain not just combo clashes between the combatants, but more importantly allow those sequences to breath before cutting.
This isn't perfect of course, as a couple seconds after the first sequence we get some unnecessary hard cuts from Winter grabbing her second sword, then a hard cut to her face, then a third final cut to her running forward. This is actually a huge problem with a lot of RWBY's fights, another example being almost every maneuver Elm does where we get a triple cut between her face, feet, and hammer. However at 1:31 we get a beautiful sequence where Cinder clashes blades with both fighters and there is not even a single cut throughout this section until the clashes finish.
I believe what we've seen from the indoor portion of the Cinder vs PW fight is a big step in the right direction for cutting the fights. I would say what would make these cuts better is if not only one combo, but multiple combos and clashes happen before cuts, while cuts and heavy closeups are used sparingly for big moments or "oh shit!" moments.
In the end I think that is kind of the issue with the way most of the fights are cut, it tries to make every single body movement an "oh shit look at this!" moment, when in reality we really just need the camera to stay in a steady position (ala fighting games) for most of the clashes, while dynamic camera angles are reserved for the actual "oh shit!" moments (ala Marrow's tail almost getting singed or Yang stopping Mecha Roman's fist back in V2).
So all in all, despite this fight being pretty dam underrated, ironically I think this fight (at least the indoor portion) is a really good example of the fights heading in the right direction when it comes to cuts.
PS: Combo Clashes is a term I kinda just made up on the fly, but it's essentially supposed to be how it sounds, two fighter's attacks clashing. Kinga like in kung-fu movies, or like the majority of Yang vs Mercury.
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After Volume 3 bladed weapons almost never actually hit anyone in combat.

Apologies in advance, this post is pretty long and there's not much to tl;dr. This also obviously spoils the fights from Volumes 4-7. I have no idea how many people actually realize just how rare hits from bladed weapons actually are in RWBY, I just found it interesting so I made this.
At one point I suddenly realized how rarely blades seem to make contact in RWBY, at least during combat when the fighters still have aura. Blades do of course make contact pretty often once aura is broken and people need to get wounded, like when Qrow gets sliced with Tyrian's stinger or Weiss is impaled by Cinder's spear. But in actual combat other kinds of attacks hit way more often than blades. Characters get punched, kicked, shot, or sometimes smashed with big hammers or other blunt weapons.
So I started going through the show and making notes on how often blades actually make contact. I also had to set some rules on what I considered a "valid hit" for the sake of this post. I actually started taking these notes like two months ago but stopped before Battle of Haven because I had better stuff to do. As it says in the title, this weirdness only seems to appear in Volumes 4-7. In the earlier Volumes characters like Weiss and Pyrrha could land multiple hits with their weapons in a single fight. I started to take more detailed notes at Battle of Haven, so the stuff before that is pretty brief. I included hits from other types of attacks to make it clear just how often those kinds of attacks land hits compared to blades. All direct hit descriptions should be bolded to make them stand out, since the lists got pretty long. Each fight should also have a bolded mention of how many valid hits landed in that fight.
So in order for an attack to count as a "valid hit" as I called them, it must follow the three rules/guidelines I came up with. Sometimes it was also hard to tell if a hit landed or not, even when watching the fight slowed down or frame by frame.
  1. The fight must be between named human/faunus characters, mooks and Grimm do not count.
  2. In combat while the fighters still have aura and are protected by that aura.
  3. Only direct hits with blades count, other parts of bladed weapons such as pommels do not count. Unarmed parries are a grey area and not counted as valid hits. No bullets or energy attacks.
​

Volume 4

RNJR vs Tyrian (V4:E6 - Tipping Point)
Qrow & RNJR vs Tyrian (V4:E7 - Punished)
Blake & Sun vs Ilia (V4:E9 - Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back)
​

Volume 5

Menagerie fights (V5:E9 - A Perfect Storm & V5:E10 - True Colors)
Ghira, Sun and Blake vs Albains
Blake vs Ilia
Ghira, Blake and Sun vs Albains & Ilia
Battle of Haven fights (V5:C11 - V5:C14)
Entrance and courtyard
Raven vs Cinder
​

Volume 6

Cinder vs Neo (V6C5: The Coming Storm)
Maria vs Tock + goons (V6C7: The Grimm Reaper)
​
Blake & Yang vs Adam (V6:C10 - V6:C12)
Chapter 10 - Stealing from the Elderly
Chapter 11 - The Lady in the Shoe
Chapter 12 - Seeing Red
​

Volume 7

Blake and Yang vs Robyn (V7C7: Worst Case Scenario)
V7:C11 - Gravity
Ironwood vs Watts
Qrow, Clover and Robyn vs Tyrian
V7:C12 - With Friends Like These
Qrow and Robyn vs Clover
RWBY vs The Ace-Ops
Qrow vs Clover vs Tyrian
V7:C13 - The Enemy of Trust
JNR and Oscar vs Neo
Winter and Penny vs Cinder
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Upgrades and Myrtenaster's "perfection": It's not needed, but could be useful

Hello friends!
​
Its been a while since I've made an opinion/theory post, but for far from the first time a certain idea has been brought up to me, one that I wholeheartedly disagree with. So, I would like to here make a rebuttal to it.
In Volume 7 some of the weapons of our cast were upgraded with new abilities and functions. Crescent Rose can spin a new way, Ember Celica can now attach sticky bombs, Crosea Mors can now use different types of dust for a number of effects, and Storm Flower got grapnel hooks.
Some however were left out. Such as how Gambol Shroud only got repaired without any real difference from before, and Magnhild doesn't seem to have had anything done to it as well.
But the focus of this post is Weiss's Multi-Action Dust Rapier; Myrtenaster.
Just like with the two last aforementioned weapons, there doesn't appear to be anything done by Pietro at the beginning of Volume 7 to have improved or upgraded the sword in any way. The model itself has not changed (as all of the upgraded weapons and the repaired Gambol Shroud have) and Weiss does nothing with it we haven't seen before.
Some might believe that in the fight with the centinals in "Ace Operatives", when we do see Ruby's and Yang's new abilities, that we see one for Weiss as well; when she shoots what appears to be an ice shard at of the Grimm to kill it. We have indeed never seen this specifically before, however there have been several comparable time Weiss has shot dust from her weapon before: Several times including in "The Emerald Forest" she blasts a wave of fire from her blade, against Flynt in the Vytal Tournament she fires wind, and in "Battle of Beacon" she makes what appears to be a hardlight shield that repels some White Fang grunts. So while it might be theoretically possible that this specific ability, as unseen before, is new: the most logical conclusion is that it is just a slight variation on what we've seen before. Thus; Myrtenaster has gotten no upgrade
For many, this is fine. Weiss already has the most versatile/adaptable abilities, so she doesn't need an upgrade. Personally, I think its unfair and unfun if only some of the team get upgrades, but this is a completely reasonable viewpoint. Weiss doesn't need an upgrade.
However; where I have issue is the argument that Myrtenaster doesn't need an upgrade because it is "perfect" already.
Firstly, this implies that the weapons that were upgraded already weren't perfect or at least not as much as Myrtenaster. Sure, one can definitely argue the weakness of Crosea Mors and Storm Flower. The former lacks nearly any utility and was the weakest weapon of any of them, the latter likewise lacked utility (though IMO it's being relativity weak has always been more of an issue). Myrtenaster however fits Weiss quite well and has proven incredibly useful.
But I don't think one can reasonably say it's always been more perfect than Crescent Rose and Ember Celica. Ruby and Yang have both used their weapons to great effect in the past, and have both gotten added utility out of them by using the firing to propel themselves and/or the weapon itself. Ruby can fire different types of ammunition and snipe, where as Yang's robotic arm has proven itself a good shield.
I don't think that Myrtenaster can be said to be more "perfect" than these.
Then comes the next part of any of such debate; that is as to what could be done to upgrade Myrtenaster in the first place. Indeed; being the non-transforming weapon of the group as well as a light and elegant one it is more of an issue to upgrade, but I don't think this task near insurmountable. And to see some potential, let us look at ways that Myrtenaster is possibly not so perfect in the first place.
The first of which is that, uniquely for the weapons of the main 4, Myrtenaster very well might not have a ranged ability that doesn't require (as it isn't quite a gun). Using raw dust and the manner we see these glyphless attacks; it is probable that Weiss has to put her aura into the dust to do these; a disadvantage from the cartridge firearms of others. Now this might not seem such a disadvantage; Weiss has numerous ranged abilities, what need does she have for a gun? Well, Weiss is also the character who has run out of aura the most. So if that were to happen again, which is very probable, it leaves her with only a pointy metal stick.
Second isn't as much a failing but simply something that could be improved upon; Myrtenaster appears to only be able to use one type of dust at a time. While not in and of itself an issue; it is something that could be upgraded.
Thirdly; when summoning Myrtenaster is in the ground and unavailable. While of course the best case scenario is that Weiss needn't worry about having another option when summoning, and her fight against Marrow shows she has learned how to better cover her weakness while summoning, she could still have another option. And on this, do note that Weiss can be seen being able to divert at least some attention from her summoning and still able to keep it active; specifically an example is in "Our Way" when she keeps her lancer up for Ruby but has her attention drawn to the still living leviathan.
Now, some potential upgrades:
The least invasive (only a minor visual change on the guard would suffice) and easiest would be to solve the second one; if a second port is added to the weapon then it could potentially fire two type of dust at a time. This could give the ability to more quickly make different types of glyph. Or a combination attack like firing water and lightning dust at the same time. Or, potentially, since we know that certain types of dust are simply combinations of others, she could use more types than she has chambers (like firing fire and water at the same time to make steam dust; which could be used even more quickly to make a smoke screen to hide her summoning like used against Marrow).
Another that could upgrade could solve the third issue, and maybe the second; add a secondary blade like Winter's. It's already been stated that Weiss based her weapon on Winter's, so why not take it just a step farther? Visually the only change might be a slightly extended hilt to the sword, and then it could be pulled out to reveal another blade (like Winter's sword or Hush) or maybe it's even part gun (it would quite small, but better than nothing). I think it could work within her fighting style too.
These are the two that I can think of, but more creative people could probably think of others as well.
As I said at the beginning; Weiss doesn't need an upgrade. She is a very capable fighter as she is. The main reason I want her to have one is mostly that it would be most fun for all the characters to have them at once. It's perfectly reasonable to say that.
But: I will always assert that Myrtenaster isn't more perfect than the weapons that got upgrades, and there is the potential there for upgrades to be made in a logical and reasonable manner.
Honestly, I don't really think I'll convince any of you of anything, but I hope we can have a good discussion none the less :)
Thank you for reading,
Rune
(I apologize for any mistakes)
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Essay: Analyzing the Godric’s Hollow Graveyard Scene and Hermione’s Christmas Roses

In honor of a recent poll voting the Godric’s Hollow scene as the thing that makes people ship Harmony the most, I put together some further thoughts on that sequence. This essay will be more of a literary analysis than what I’ve posted here before, pointing to possible hidden meanings and examining potential symbolism, particularly around the wreath of Christmas roses. Much of what I’m going to discuss here is new and—as far as I know—never described before by anyone else in any depth.
A disclaimer at the outset: symbolic analysis in literature is not an exact science. For example, the hippogriff in some mythological interpretations is a symbol of (impossible) love, but the meaning of H/Hr’s ride on Buckbeak has been debated for decades among various shipping camps. I will offer some commentary here on likely connections and possible readings, but I can’t claim all of these were necessarily intended by JKR.
Another thing I will be assuming here is that JKR was conscious of the “charged moment” she was writing for H/Hr in Godric’s Hollow, and that she did feel a romantic “pull” between the characters, as she has admitted in several interviews. After looking at this further, I’m pretty convinced JKR deliberately introduced elements to heighten that connection and perhaps even hinted at a level of intimate desire that thoroughly undermines Harry’s later “like a sister” characterization of the H/Hr relationship. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Let’s begin with a review of the graveyard scene and some comments on possible symbolism and framing devices.

1. The Charged Moment

Then Hermione’s voice came out of the blackness for the third time, sharp and clear from a few yards away.
“Harry, they’re here… right here.”
And he knew by her tone that it was his mother and father this time: He moved toward her, feeling as if something heavy were pressing on his chest, the same sensation he had had right after Dumbledore had died, a grief that had actually weighed on his heart and lungs.
[…]
But they were not living, thought Harry: They were gone. The empty words could not disguise the fact that his parents’ moldering remains lay beneath snow and stone, indifferent, unknowing. And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending? He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick snow hiding from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them.
Hermione had taken his hand again and was gripping it tightly. He could not look at her, but returned the pressure, now taking deep, sharp gulps of the night air, trying to steady himself, trying to regain control. He should have brought something to give them, and he had not thought of it, and every plant in the graveyard was leafless and frozen. But Hermione raised her wand, moved it in a circle through the air, and a wreath of Christmas roses blossomed before them. Harry caught it and laid it on his parents’ grave.
As soon as he stood up he wanted to leave: He did not think he could stand another moment there. He put his arm around Hermione’s shoulders, and she put hers around his waist, and they turned in silence and walked away through the snow, past Dumbledore’s mother and sister, back toward the dark church and the out-of-sight kissing gate.
---
There are so many powerful elements within this passage, and I’ve discussed the context leading up to this in a previous essay about the H/Hr time alone in the tent. This is the first time Harry cries openly in front of anyone in the books, and the first time he reaches out and embraces Hermione in this intimate fashion. Even on a surface level reading, it is the most profound encounter between any two characters in the entire book series. And yet there’s much more to this scene happening in the background. We know JKR’s favorite author is Jane Austen, and, while JKR may not always live up to the Austen standard for writing, she really outdoes herself in crafting the Godric’s Hollow sequence around this moment.

2. Beyond the Kissing Gate

Contrary to what you may read online, there’s nothing inherently romantic about a “kissing gate.” Its name is derived from the fact that the gate swings only enough to “kiss” (i.e., touch) the inside of the enclosure. They’re common in rural areas to keep livestock from passing, in this case to keep them out of the graveyard.
But that doesn’t mean the gate in Godric’s Hollow is insignificant. H/Hr could have simply “entered the graveyard,” and we would assume they made it through whatever fence or gate may have been around. The very fact that JKR includes this detail and the specific name of a “kissing gate” (a somewhat obscure term) hints that there’s a reason for the description. In this case, the reason is obviously tone.
I repeat, there’s nothing romantic about a kissing gate. Yet notably, the gate isn’t even in view at the end of the “charged moment” quoted above. It’s literally “out-of-sight” and still JKR writes it again, because she wanted to put the word “kissing” into a charged romantic moment between two characters. In case we weren’t already clued into the symbolism going on in this passage when H/Hr polyjuice into a married couple before arriving at Godric’s Hollow, in case we didn’t get a hint when H/Hr arrive and stand “hand in hand” looking at the romantic setting of a snowy Christmas Eve with “glimmering” stars and Christmas decorations “twinkling” and “golden streetlights,” JKR beats us over the head with romance with this “out-of-sight kissing gate.”
And what of this gate? Gates are well-known sources of layered meaning in literature, one prominent example occurring in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. Given JKR’s admiration of Austen, she’s undoubtedly familiar with one of the most well-known symbolic uses of gates, where Maria Bertram and Henry Crawford confront a locked gate that functions as a (moral) boundary. Rather than waiting for someone who went to get the key, Maria and Henry eventually dodge their way around the fence, despite Fanny Price’s warning that Maria may hurt herself against (phallic) “spikes” and will “tear her gown.”
We know Austen is writing symbolically here, as Maria herself clues us into the world of double entendres in text, asking Henry whether he means something “literally or figuratively.” Maria navigates the gate crossing with Henry, her (hymeneal) gown still “alive and well,” only to go beyond where they had promised Fanny and to disappear around a knoll. Fanny stays behind, not traversing the locked gate, and is later shocked to find that the couple had been “spending their time pleasantly” sitting down under the trees. The act of going beyond the locked gate and out of sight foreshadows the later moral transgressions of Maria and Henry, who end up having an affair and bringing shame to their families.
Like Maria’s explicit entreaty to consider words “literally or figuratively,” so JKR has Hermione invite us into the symbolic elements at play in Godric’s Hollow as she sees a biblical quotation on the Potter headstone and gently assures Harry that it isn’t a “Death Eater idea,” despite its apparent surface-level meaning. She knows it’s an allusion, as so many things around them carry hidden meanings that night. The graveyard scene is obviously quite different from the Mansfield Park one (and this gate is not locked), but I bring up the Austen scene to note the importance of gate imagery in JKR’s influences. When two characters enter a gated area alone, there is likely to be some transformation between them before they depart.
Indeed, the choreography and characterization of some elements of the graveyard scene somewhat parallel the excitement and gambits of a classic tryst sequence. Harry hasn’t even revealed his true aim for coming to Godric’s Hollow—to see his parents—and yet Hermione knows precisely what he wants, spotting the graveyard before he does. Harry’s mixture of anticipation and fear is overcome by her eagerness:
Harry felt a thrill of something that was beyond excitement, more like fear. Now that he was so near, he wondered whether he wanted to see after all. Perhaps Hermione knew how he was feeling, because she reached for his hand and took the lead for the first time, pulling him forward.
And when they pass beyond the kissing gate, once again they encounter a barrage of beautiful imagery (a “blanket of pale blue” snow flecked with dazzling colors from the stained glass in the church) as they create their own paths through the deep snow.
Harry then talks too loudly, and Hermione begs him to be more quiet as they head out into the darkness together. Yes, she’s looking out for their safety, but it adds a degree of secrecy and intimacy to the whole endeavor. She then breaks off by herself, only to call out, and for Harry to seek her with “his heart positively banging in his chest.” He takes off on his own, maintaining “excited trepidation,” only to be called back to her once more. Finally, the lights go off in the church, leaving the two of them in utter darkness alone together, when “Hermione’s voice came out of the blackness for the third time,” and he joins her.
Of course, H/Hr are definitely not going for a flirtatious Victorian gambol in the hedges here, but Harry’s excitement to approach Hermione again and again makes for a notable device to build anticipation. After all, Harry has actually gone beyond the gate into this dark graveyard in search of love—the lost love of his parents. Instead, all he finds is disappointment. First, he encounters Dumbledore’s sister’s grave and is appalled that Dumbledore never told him about anything or even thought to bring him there. Feeling rejected by Dumbledore, he still seeks his parents, only to realize that their decaying bodies can also offer him no comfort.
Yet Harry does find love in the graveyard that night, in the form of his best friend, who takes his hand and grips it tightly, who reads his mind yet again and produces a wreath to lay upon the grave. And Harry reaches out to this girl, and holds her intimately as they walk together through the darkness, the gate so far away that it is no longer in sight, yet its “kissing” still framing the closing of the chapter.
Notably, the next chapter picks up a bit later when they have returned near the entrance of the graveyard, still holding on to each other. If this were a Jane Austen novel, with two characters left alone in the darkness in an intimate embrace out of sight beyond a gate, we know precisely what they would have been doing with all the time during the chapter break. I don’t mean to imply that H/Hr were actually kissing here, only that the staging suggests great intimacy and lapsed time while they retain that intimacy. What may have gone on is left to the reader’s imagination, as Austen would leave it.
JKR in fact adopts this Austen-like hinting several times, as she’s writing a children’s book and can’t actually describe explicit romance. For example, when Harry earlier in DH8 thinks “back to afternoons spent alone with Ginny in lonely parts of the school grounds,” we’re surely meant to understand that more happened than a simple walk around the lake with Ginny or something. Of course, it’s a much taller order to read something into this time gap in the H/Hr moment in the darkness. Frankly, I don’t think they kissed here; but JKR’s framing and word choices are intended to make the reader think that they had the opportunity and at least might want to.
All of this potential meaning, though, is heightened quite a bit by the details of that wreath Hermione conjures for Harry, to which we’ll now turn. I’ll offer five different levels of potential interpretation, each one hinting at even greater intimacy within the H/Hr relationship. Not all of these meanings are likely intended, but all are possible given the context. And we know from a Pottermore article that JKR paid close attention to her choices of flowers and plants (and she elsewhere has discussed doing research in treatises on this topic).

3. Herbological Interpretation

When many readers see the wreath of “Christmas roses,” they probably assume they are just some variety of rose that would look good on a Christmas wreath. And if the flowers symbolize anything, it’s likely just love, as most roses do.
Yet Christmas roses aren’t actually roses, but rather an evergreen known as a hellebore that is botanically related to the buttercup. They bloom in winter and sometimes even in the snow, so they would be an appropriate flower for the setting, a traditional choice that had been cultivated for the holidays in Victorian times. Harry actually encountered the hellebore earlier in OotP12 in Snape’s potions class, where it was an ingredient in the Draught of Peace, meant “to calm anxiety and soothe agitation.”
On the most superficial level, the Christmas roses could be seen as a symbol of calming Harry’s anxiety at the moment, as well as perhaps metaphorically as a peaceful flower to place on a grave. (Snape also notes that the potion can induce an “irreversible sleep” if not brewed correctly.)

4. Legendary Interpretation

But something deeper is going on with these flowers. The Christmas rose gets its name from a medieval legend about a shepherd girl named Madelon, who was present at the Nativity of Jesus but was poor and had no gift to bring to him. She wept in sorrow and, like Harry, in some versions of the tale looked about wishing there was a flower among the frozen landscape to offer to Jesus. Depending on the version of the tale, her tears either miraculously bloomed into Christmas roses as they hit the ground due to her devotion to Jesus, or the angel Gabriel came and struck the frozen ground to grow them in the middle of winter. Either way, Madelon gathers the flowers and presents them as a gift to the baby Jesus.
After independently discovering this legend myself, I happened upon Beatrice Groves’s interpretation of the graveyard scene, which relies heavily on the Madelon story. (Groves is the author of the book Literary Allusion in Harry Potter.) While I agree with Groves that there are certainly parallels, I think she fails to go far enough and doesn’t fully unpack the roles here, merely pointing toward an interpretation of Harry as the weeping Madelon and Hermione as the angel who brings forth the roses.
While that’s possible, it overlooks the pervasive religious imagery surrounding the Godric’s Hollow scene, with its multiple biblical quotations (and Harry’s later vision from Voldemort about the attack on his parents, with its crucifixion-like overtones). These begin to point to Harry as a Christ-like child figure, a savior of the wizarding world who will ultimately come back from the “dead” to fight the final battle. As the focus of this essay is on the H/Hr relationship, I won’t delve into the deep religious symbolism (which JKR has alluded to in interviews). But we should note that it is Hermione—the young non-noble “mudblood” girl, like the lowly shepardess—who brings forth the flowers to offer to Harry, the Christ-like child of the House of Potter in this Christmas Eve “family gathering,” as a symbol of her boundless devotion and connection to him. (The roles are made clear here not only by Harry’s Jesus parallels, but also by the common association of the lily—Harry’s mother’s name—with the Virgin Mary.)
In any case, the Madelon legend is all about deep devotion and how it allows someone to conjure flowers from nothing in the dead of winter. At a minimum, these flowers therefore likely represent Hermione’s profound commitment and dedication to Harry.
But we’re only just getting started….

5. Floriographical Interpretation

We know JKR was rather obsessed with flower names and meanings, as referenced in the Pottermore article linked above. In Victorian times, this was known as the “language of flowers” or floriography. While a gift of a lily represented purity and sweetness, a gift of a petunia signaled resentment and anger. (Get it? Lily vs. Petunia!) Given how JKR apparently looked up other flowers and plants, it’s hard to believe she didn’t happen upon the meaning of the Christmas rose when given from one person to another. And 19th-century floriographical manuals are nearly unanimous in the message of the Christmas rose, which is “relieve my anxiety.” (Yes, that specific phrase.)
But this isn’t about relieving Harry’s anxiety and sadness. The traditional meaning of Christmas roses is roughly akin to a modern “we need to define our relationship” conversation. The sender wants to know whether the recipient returns affection and love. While ultimately these flowers are going on a grave, they are first produced by Hermione as a wreath for Harry.
Consider what has occurred between Harry and Hermione in the past weeks. Ron left, accusing Hermione of “choosing” Harry, and the H/Hr friendship suddenly becomes fraught with tension. Hermione avoids Harry the first day, deliberately dropping his hand, only to walk away from him and cry. She needs to place distance between them, lest Ron’s accusation be seen to be true. And Harry maintains that distance too, wanting to comfort her but unable to, again likely because of Ron’s accusation.
As I discussed in another essay, Harry and Hermione’s hand-holding is a profound symbol of their connection throughout DH. For Hermione to drop Harry’s hand is to demonstrate that something has become deeply broken between them. Although they continue to work well together by day in the tent, some tension remains for weeks until Harry finally approached Hermione with great trepidation to propose this trip to Godric’s Hollow.
While things seem to be going better between them now, it is a rather recent development, and they still have never discussed Ron or their relationship. And although Harry was the one to start the discussion about Godric’s Hollow, Hermione has been the one pushing for everything since then—getting him to train to apparate under the Invisibility Cloak, arranging the polyjuice potion, then taking his hand to lead him forward as they walk through the village. She’s been the one driving their renewed relationship so far.
When Hermione reaches out and grips Harry’s hand in the graveyard, she is again clearly signaling her commitment to their friendship, their bond symbolized through tightly entwined hands that recur again and again in DH. But are they still merely friends? When Hermione has abandoned everyone in her world—including her parents and letting her love interest walk away into the rain—because of her devotion to Harry, she knows she’s revealed all to him. Perhaps Ron’s accusation finally raised the question for her about Harry—”What are we to each other?” Could he possibly love her as dearly as she loves him?
A bunch of Christmas roses then bursts forth from her wand, proffering something Harry needs, a desire she somehow instinctively is able to know and satisfy, but also carrying the encoded Victorian message: “Relieve my anxiety.”
And Harry does. He immediately puts his arm around her shoulder, and she puts her arm around his waist, and they walk together in the darkness as lovers do, their relationship newly defined.
(To be clear, I am not suggesting Hermione or Harry are aware of the message encoded in these flowers, only that JKR likely was, given her interest in treatises on herbology and floriography.)
But wait… there’s more.

6. Hagiographical Interpretation

Christmas roses are traditionally known by another name: the Saint Agnes’s Rose, an association from medieval times and commonly referenced in floral literature. There are several associations for Saint Agnes, but of all the saints, she is the one most commonly affiliated as a patron saint of betrothed couples. The Eve of Saint Agnes (which falls on the 20th of January) in folklore is when girls could supposedly perform a ritual to see their future husband in a dream or vision.
While H/Hr visit Godric’s Hollow on Christmas Eve (not in January), it still seems rather poor news then for Ron/Hermione fans in this scene, when a symbol of Saint Agnes is shared in those flowers. I hope no one has forgotten that Hermione used polyjuice so that H/Hr now appear as a married couple in this scene—is this a vision of Hermione’s future?—and that they are here on Christmas Eve to satisfy Harry’s “dearest wish” to visit his parents. I’ve speculated in my tent arc essay that Harry’s initial approach in the tent to Hermione about this trip—preparing her a satisfying dinner, leaving off the Horcrux so they would both be clear-minded, then approaching her with great care and trepidation while she seems to be oblivious to his advances, until he finally manages to get the question out, after which they’re both happy with excitement and planning—seems to oddly parallel the tension and dynamics of a kind of proposal scene.
Again, I’m not claiming that it was a literal proposal, only that the dialogue is perhaps somewhat staged to resemble one, just as the Godric’s Hollow graveyard sequence is choreographed as two potential lovers first rushing in through a gate with excitement and anxiety, only to separate a few times and then finally rejoin to be together alone in the darkness as Harry ultimately realizes where his true love lies.
Consider the dark place that Harry visits in his mind in the graveyard, contemplating whether he might be better off under the ground with his parents. What pulls him back from this morbid fantasy? Hermione’s hand. The hand that grips him tightly and pulls him again and again through darkness in battle, even apparating him repeatedly in midair to save him. The hand that he will ultimately grab onto repeatedly in the final battle, drawing on her strength, her love, and her devotion for him. And tonight, in Godric’s Hollow, when the tears fall freely for the first time, it is Hermione who brings his mind back from death. It is Hermione who will ultimately pull him away from Voldemort’s mind at Malfoy Manor. It is Hermione who will be the first name on his list of those he loves when he wishes he could see them for one last time before marching to his death.
At Bill and Fleur’s wedding, it is her face he sees, turning around with tears flowing when the vows are said. They may not be literally betrothed, but they might as well be. Hermione may have sealed her fate with his in tears that wedding day, but Harry is now able to break out of his death obsession as his own tears fall in Godric’s Hollow: taking her in his arm, choosing the warmth of his best friend and her beating, loving heart over the coldness of the graves surrounding him. After all the anticipation and longing to finally come to that graveyard, he can’t stand another moment there, only wanting to walk away with Hermione in his embrace.
But the potential connection to Saint Agnes doesn’t just end with marriage symbolism. Agnes suffered a horrific martyrdom: first threatened with rape, then tortured horrifically for her devotion to Christ, and (according to some stories) ultimately killed by being stabbed in the throat. As an oft-quoted passage in Victorian times about the Christmas rose notes:
Even as the Flower of St. Agnes is whiter than other blossoms, so was the purity of St. Agnes fairer than most virgins; as the Flower bloometh in the season of winter, when there are few others, so did the saintly virgin flourish in the winter of adversity, and brave the storms of persecution, with few companions in excellency.
Hermione has always been a formidable partner at Harry’s side, but in DH her powers do indeed blossom in this “winter of adversity,” as her quick thinking and encyclopedic knowledge of magic save Harry again and again. It becomes a thematic element after Godric’s Hollow for Harry to praise her with superlatives. After she apparates them away in mid-air after the encounter with Nagini later that night, even though Harry is upset about his wand, he calls her “incredible” as she smiles at him. After the encounter with Xenophilius, where she comes up with a truly incredible plan on the spur of the moment and Harry places his complete trust in her, he “fervently” tells her that he doesn’t know what he’d do without her as she “beams” in reply.
And then, like Saint Agnes, after Hermione is threatened with rape by Greyback, after she is tortured for her association with Harry at Malfoy Manor, after Bellatrix was ready to kill her by stabbing her in the throat, Harry again is astounded by her ability to come up with a lie in the midst of torture, praising her as “amazing” as again she smiles in reply. Hermione is and will always be his closest companion, the one who saves him, his anchor, someone who can turn his mind from death, someone worth living for….

7. Freudian Interpretation

At this point, some readers may be wondering if we’ve put too much emphasis on this wreath in the graveyard scene, but its symbolic importance is signaled when it appears again in Harry’s dreams on the following night:
Harry’s dreams were confused and disturbing: Nagini wove in and out of them, first through a gigantic, cracked ring, then through a wreath of Christmas roses. He woke repeatedly, panicky, convinced that somebody had called out to him in the distance, imagining that the wind whipping around the tent was footsteps or voices.
Like the repeated reference to the kissing gate, JKR draws our attention back to this wreath. This dream is not a vision of Voldemort’s (as many of Harry’s “dreams” have been in the books), but his own subconscious. While there have been many analyses of Harry’s dreams, few have commented on this one, and no one quite seems to know what to do with the wreath. The two analysts I’ve seen who have mentioned it postulate that it’s merely a symbol of Harry missing out on family holidays (a rather odd reading) or that it was a hint that Nagini in the guise of Bathilda Bagshot may have observed them in the graveyard.
I suppose the latter is possible, but it’s hard then to see what that has to do with the imagery of the ring in the dream. Some have argued that the “gigantic, cracked ring” is emblematic of Marvolo Gaunt’s ring, though it was not the ring itself that was cracked but rather the resurrection stone upon it. And Harry has had dreams of Horcruxes before, but yet again, we are left with no rationale for the wreath. Given that Harry laid it upon his parents’ grave, it’s possible that it’s connected to Harry’s vision of his parents when they were threatened and killed.
But we’ve seen so many different possible symbolic links between the wreath and Hermione that it’s difficult not to associate its appearance in a dream with her, as she was the one who created it. And maybe Harry’s subconscious is again feeling her threatened by Nagini: perhaps the “gigantic, cracked ring” parallels Bathilda Bagshot’s broken body, where the snake emerges from her dead neck only to come after Hermione. The previous night he had repeatedly grabbed onto Hermione desperately to shield her from the snake’s attacks:
Everything was chaos: [The snake] smashed shelves from the wall, and splintered china flew everywhere as Harry jumped over the bed and seized the dark shape he knew to be Hermione—
She shrieked with pain as he pulled her back across the bed: The snake reared again, but Harry knew that worse than the snake was coming, was perhaps already at the gate, his head was going to split open with the pain from his scar—
The snake lunged as he took a running leap, dragging Hermione with him; as it struck, Hermione screamed, “Confringo!” and her spell flew around the room, exploding the wardrobe mirror and ricocheting back at them, bouncing from floor to ceiling; Harry felt the heat of it sear the back of his hand. Glass cut his cheek as, pulling Hermione with him, he leapt from bed to broken dressing table and then straight out of the smashed window into nothingness, her scream reverberating through the night as they twisted in midair….
So perhaps Harry’s dream is merely one of concern for Hermione. But there’s one more parallel that Hermione has to Saint Agnes that we haven’t yet remarked on. Aside from her association with betrothed couples, Agnes is also one of the primary patron saints of female virgins. (In the past, of course, betrothed women were assumed to be virgins, so these are related.) The purity of color for her white Christmas rose was also considered to be a symbol of chastity.
With that in mind, it now bears remarking that Harry’s dream is a textbook example of Freudian symbolism. Snakes in dreams are regarded as phallic symbols, but Harry’s dream goes so much further that its most straightforward interpretation is shockingly explicit. In his dream, the snake is weaving “in and out” of first a cracked ring, and then the (intact and unbroken) ring-like wreath of Christmas roses, a wreath associated with Hermione, a wreath composed of flowers symbolizing virginity.
I truly don’t it would be possible for JKR to sneak into a children’s book a more overt Freudian symbol of literal defloration, of an initial sexual encounter. This image bubbles up from Harry’s subconscious only hours after that second “charged moment” JKR identified when Harry closes his eyes as Hermione touches his hair, and on the same day that he gazed so deeply into her eyes that he registers their color for the first time while he looks at her. What then pulls him from that dream is the feeling that someone was calling out from the distance, footsteps that we later find out to have been Ron’s.
Harry and Hermione then agree in the middle of the night to flee from those footsteps. And JKR seems so pleased with her Freudian dream imagery that she runs a little sexual innuendo victory lap in the ensuing passage. Before you accuse me of reading too much into this, recall that JKR is someone who has Ron crack a Uranus joke not just once but twice (GoF13, OotP25) and has recurring gags about Aberforth Dumbledore’s inappropriate relations with goats (GoF24, too many to count in DH). She also learned her trade from reading Jane Austen, whose spikes and gown tearing were remarked on earlier as a sexual symbolism in Mansfield Park and who goes so far in that novel as to joke about sodomy in the British navy, when Mary Crawford declared: “Certainly, my home at my uncle’s brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of Rears and Vices, I saw enough. Now do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat.”
What then do we make of the paragraphs immediately after Harry’s dream?
Half an hour later, with the tent packed, Harry wearing the Horcrux, and Hermione clutching the beaded bag, they Disapparated. The usual tightness engulfed them; Harry’s feet parted company with the snowy ground, then slammed hard onto what felt like frozen earth covered with leaves.
“Where are we?” he asked, peering around at a fresh mass of trees as Hermione opened the beaded bag and began tugging out tent poles.
While Harry previously experienced a sense of compression during apparition, there’s nothing typical about the phrasing here. “Tightness” is not a common word for JKR, appearing only once elsewhere in the book series. (I can give statistics, but just trust me that this is an unusual choice for JKR. I compared her word usage to the British National Corpus and Google Ngrams, and while she overuses the adverb “tightly” compared to typical written British English, she elsewhere appears to avoid “tightness,” preferring other words and phrasing.)
And despite the fact that they’ve spent months in the tent, this is the only time anyone handles the tent poles. (They are only referenced once elsewhere in DH14 as even being present as part of the tent.) Certainly this is the only time in canon that we see Hermione handling any poles—tent or otherwise—much less “tugging” on them. It truly should make the reader wonder, “Why now, JKR?” Like the earlier appearance of the repeated “kissing gate” phrase, it begins to strain credibility to believe this is all unintentional coincidence.
And what happens next, when they successfully flee from Ron, the one person who could disrupt the intimacy that has emerged since Godric’s Hollow? After Harry has a textbook Freudian dream about a snake moving “in and out” of a ringed object decorated with flowers that are connected with Hermione and symbolize virginity, and after they spend the night with Hermione “tugging” on poles and having “tightness engulf them,” they seemingly forego their usual watches to simply spend the day inside the tent huddled up in (post-coital?) bliss as Hermione takes care of Harry:
Here too snow lay on the trees all around and it was bitterly cold, but they were at least protected from the wind. They spent most of the day inside the tent, huddled for warmth around the useful bright blue flames that Hermione was so adept at producing, and which could be scooped up and carried around in a jar. Harry felt as though he was recuperating from some brief but severe illness, an impression reinforced by Hermione’s solicitousness. That afternoon fresh flakes drifted down upon them, so that even their sheltered clearing had a fresh dusting of powdery snow.
Note that the “wind” they are now “protected from” was what carried the voices and footsteps Harry wanted to get away from, the symbol of Ron’s return. What one chooses to see in the imagery and symbolism and likely double entendres is up to the individual reader. (For those H/Hr shippers who wish to claim “tent sex is canon,” this is the best I can do, and these references are my gift to you.)
My personal reading is that these are likely deliberate but meant to be part of the tone that hints at something that was imminent (not actual) between H/Hr, something only disrupted when Ron returned. But the snake imagery in the dream was obviously disturbing to Harry, a symbol of Voldemort and evil carrying into this sexualized context. As I argued in a previous essay, the Horcrux vision seen by Ron and Harry then repeats this snakelike imagery around Riddle-Hermione, creating an even more unsettling and distorted version of her that Harry witnesses.
The Horcrux has recently seen into Harry’s heart, so much so that Hermione had to magically cut it away from his chest after the Bagshot encounter. Moreover, the Horcrux knows what Harry feels about Hermione, knows how the powerful love between them is a threat, and again chooses to show Harry a sinister sexualized image of Hermione becoming snakelike, the temptation of lust now associated again with evil.
And Harry recoils, the “like a sister” excuse dropping from his lips as he soothes Ron, the subconscious murmurings and cravings for physical closeness to Hermione (at least temporarily) reined in.

8. The Purity of Heroic Love

At this point, I’m sure many readers of this essay are asking, “How much of this is really there? And if JKR really wanted to convey this much about H/Hr, why not just tell us outright that Harry’s feelings about Hermione were changing?”
To the first question, as I mentioned at the outset, literary symbolism is difficult to evaluate. I certainly think it’s unlikely that JKR could have intended all of the meanings for the Christmas roses I mentioned. But given their recurrence, there has to be more to those flowers than a mere graveside decoration conjured by Hermione. There are too many obvious symbolic elements like the kissing gate and the polyjuiced appearance for it all to be mere coincidence.
My main reason for arguing that at least a significant portion of this symbolism was intentional is partly because JKR seemed to really want to talk about this passage, again and again in interviews. Barely a year had passed after DH came out before she brought up the “charged moments” in an interview, stating “it could have gone that way” with H/Hr, knowing the stir it would cause. It’s almost as if she wanted readers to be drawn back to these passages, to read them again and see something they missed. And then in the Emma Watson interview, where JKR claimed she wanted to talk about Hermione as a character with Watson, she instead questioned the relationship with Ron and then steered the conversation immediately to H/Hr moments.
As to why she chose to bury all of this in symbolism rather than simply tell us that Harry is in danger of falling (or already is) in love with Hermione, JKR has spoken elsewhere of her instinct that a true love triangle would overburden the narrative. The Harry Potter books at heart are not romances. They are epic mystery and adventure stories surrounding a Trio of characters.
Any further digression into a love triangle would have drawn focus away from the War and likely destroyed the Trio irrevocably. If Ron found out, he would never be able to be feel secure around them again or in his relationship with Hermione. And if they didn’t tell Ron, readers would be left focusing on the fact that Harry carried feelings for his best friend yet hid them from his other best friend. That’s not what we expect of the heroic characters JKR is setting up in Harry and Hermione. We’d be left wondering about infidelity when Harry reached out for Hermione’s hand later, rather than seeing their bond as a symbol of strength.
Harry and Hermione are the epitome of a love that is so pure and deep that it can drive out Voldemort, with a devotion that knows no bounds. Harry is so worried about Hermione in the encounter with Nagini that he spends all the time protecting her, rather than fighting or defending himself. Later, Hermione submitted to torture rather than reveal anything about Harry. They have the hearts of heroes: two characters who always instinctively reach for each other. As much as I wish for H/Hr to be together, I personally would not want a canonical love triangle unless H/Hr would be endgame, as it would undermine the nobility of their connection within the greater narrative. That’s just my opinion, but I assume it went into the calculus of JKR’s decision to write in Austen-like symbolism and hints rather than expressing overt feelings in Harry’s internal monologue or even having a true romance between them. I am of course deeply saddened that she stuck with the canon pairings, but after looking into this further, I’m ever more convinced that she did feel strongly about the H/Hr connection and wanted to find a way to showcase it, most powerfully in the greatest passage from the entire series in Godric’s Hollow.
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[The Dark Knight] What is Joker’s origin story?

Joker tells two different stories to both Gambol and Racheal Dawes about how he acquired those oh-so beautiful scars of his and eventually became the Joker. However, they both contradict each other.
Does he have a definitive origin or is he just an insane man?
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Characters' Weaknesses as Fighters

Just wanted to do this for fun. Let me know if I missed any weaknesses!
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Flamed by my friends for this line

Hey guys, hope everyone is staying safe and well. Quick HH here, one which my friends said was played poorly on my part but I personally thought it was okay. Came here to see your thoughts.
Hero in BB with AdTc $180 eff, V1 in SB covers, V2 on BU covers. $0.50/1. V1 is loose aggro player, knows the game but likes to gambol and we’ve all played a lot together.
V2 opens $2 from BU, V1 3bets to $6, H flats (I generally wouldn’t do this against most players, but he’s 3bet like 50% tonight so I’m okay flatting this hand here), V2 flats.
(18) Flop AK6cc, V1 bets $10.80, H flats. Put him on a range of flush draws, Ax hands, Kx hands, 6x hands and obvs sets and two pair. V2 folds
(39.60) Turn AK6cc 7d, V1 checks. H leads for $15.84 and V1 calls. Thought process was that he’s betting all two pair and flush draw combos on this turn (67, A6/7 etc). He’s definitely raising turn with sets and will also sometimes raise with two pair hands that he’s checked turn with. It felt better to bet here rather than X.
(71.28) River AK67Qh. No flush draws get there. H has $148~ behind. V1 checks and H bets $42.01. V1 goes into the tank for a while before making his decision.
This is the bet that my friends said was terrible, but I couldn’t see too many hands that he’d be ahead with as played besides A6 or KQ and he’d likely raise with A6 at some point. I felt my sizing allowed me to fold if he jammed. If I sized smaller then he’d be able to jam wider imo, but this size made me feel he’d mostly be jamming his value hands.
I’ll post results in about 12 hours when I wake up. Let me know your thoughts! Please be honest as I’m trying to improve and will be grateful for any advice or criticism. Thanks in advance!
EDIT: thank you all so much for the replies! Some of you wrote some amazing in depth replies, so I really appreciate the time you took. In the end V1 called and I won the pot, he didn’t show so I never found out what he had.
Looking back and at what everyone has said, I’ll probably adjust my pre flop play by tightening up a bit and looking to 4bet stronger hands rather than flatting mediocre hands like this. V1 is honestly just a crazy gambler, has no problem jamming $150 with 57o. Bc of that I felt I played my hand well against specifically him, in saying that I can totally see how he can have me beat a decent amount of the time and even tho it worked out this time it’s -EV. To give some perspective here’s a quick run down of another hand: V2 opens 4, V2 3bets to 7, H with AhQd 4bets to 28, both call. Flop (84) J42hh, V1 x, H bets 56, V2 folds and V1 calls. We check it down to the river and it bricks out (I pussied out and didn’t bet) - he showed 45o and won the hand.
Either way, thanks for everyone’s help! Has really helped me looking back
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RWBY vs. Cinder

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My Review of HardRock Hollywood's Poker Room

Was just down in Ft. Lauderdale this weekend and got a chance to visit Seminole Hollywood HardRock. Overall, a fantastic room and would definitely go back. However, I'll break it down into specific segments because some aspects were better than others.
** The Room **
The poker room itself is gorgeous. It looks like something out of Casino Royale. Very nice lighting, (marble?) floors and walls, non-smoking (but with a patio for smokers), smells nice, clean bathrooms. You can tell they put a lot of attention to detail. The reason I mention these things is because not everywhere is like that. Seminole HardRock in Tampa has a darker kind of lighting and theme. The casinos I go to here in Michigan are usually very smoky.
One thing I will say is the room is a little tucked away. I would have preferred if it was closer to the table games. Although, it is in the mall part of the hotel. There are tons of nice shops, bars, and even a dance club right next the poker room. So the room gets an AA rating from me.
** Dealers, Floor and Service **
The dealers were a mix of competent and incompetent. I'd say half of them were perfectly professional, the other half needed some improvement. I played 3 sessions for a total of 7 hours, and had something like 6 misdeals. A few times the dealers did a very bad job of keeping the action in order. I was playing Holdem the 2nd night, and the guy to my right kept acting out of turn. I raised his river donk lead and he insta-folded even though there was another player left in the hand (obviously he wants the other guy to call to see if I was bluffing). After the hand was over I asked the dealer, "you gonna do anyting about this?" because it was the 5th time he'd acted out of turn. The dealer literally shrugged. And that wasn't the only session where players were acting out of turn and the dealers weren't doing much proactively about it. Dealers get a JJ rating. Good enough, but wouldn't place too much faith in them.
The floor got involved twice when I was there, and I think they handled it perfectly. First time was on holdem. Guy posts his small blind, gets dealt in, gets up to go get food, and the dealer folds him since he wasn't at the table. Guy gets mad, floor comes over, calmly explains that you will get mucked if you're not at the table, and moved on. Second time was at PLO. Guy opens, I 3bet KKds, a guy who limped starts pushing forward calling chips and the opener immediately says "POT". The guy was going to call pulls his chips back trying to save himself 60 bucks. The dealer says no, that stays in. Cue argument. Floor is called, and says, you have complete your action. Flustered, the guy decides to repot instead lmao. But yeah they handled it very well. Floor gets an AK rating: very slick.
I gotta say, the drinks were expensive. Like $18 for a vodka-redbull (can not included). $10 for a beer. Maybe that's normal price down there, but seems like a scam. The waitress staff were all thicc, and were wearing push-up dresses and mini skirts. Which was distracting in a good way. The service staff gets a 69s rating from me: pretty to look at, not much value.
** The Players **
The players are action action action. Not as good as some of the home games I go to, but fuck do these fucks like to gambol. However, a lot of them have little to no manners. I got slow rolled twice in marginal pots for no apparent reason. One guy shoves a king high flush draw on the turn, binks the river, and then gets up and starts gloating to the other player. He sits down and says to the dealer, "I knew there was a reason why you good looking" and the dealer just looked uncomfortable lol. A lot of aggressive table talk too. That, along with how people drive, leads me to believe being assholish is just a part of the culture. So the players get a T9s rating: love to play 'em, but don't take 'em seriously.
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Explaining the RWBY Crossover Skins in SMITE to People Who Don't Play SMITE

So, ok, the official unveiling will be on the October 30, definitely gonna be watching that later. But we know what characters will be getting the skins.
So for fun and to temper expectations, I will explain what we can deduce from the representation of team RWBY in SMITE (and why the selections were met with some criticism.)
Ruby as Thanatos. So, in SMITE, Thanatos is the Greek God of Death, he has a Scythe. That's pretty much where the similarities end. For his abilities he floats/hovers over the ground. He throws his scythe. He does a wide slash with his scythe. In his ultimate he flies up way above the battlefield and descends on low-health players to execute them.
Like, either Ruby is gonna float...or they will alter the animation. Ruby will now possibly throw Crescent Rose, how reckless of her. And I imagine the ultimate will be her flying up to shattered Moon and dropping down with her semblance.
Weiss as Freya. Freya, Queen of the Valkyries. She has a sword... she hits things with the sword, but like 99.7% of the time she is shooting magic orbs out of the sword. She also conjures up a magic circle that hoists enemies up into the air. She also flies into the air to shoot more blasts for her ultimate. She does NOT however do anything related to summoning.
So... I'm guessing this Weiss will be all about shooting ice shards. Like... spamming them. The Glyph will probably be the magic circle that pulls enemies up. For her ultimate... she summons some hornets to help her fly? Or she sits on the shoulder of a knight... it's hard to tell.
Blake as Amaterasu. The Japanese Sun Goddess. She also hovers above the ground. She also has a magic mirror floating next to her. She has a magic aura that is shown as glyph under your feet (Weiss?), absorbs damage and fires it back (Yang?), dashes. For her ultimate, she does three wide slashes. She does NOT have clones of any kind (some SMITE characters do, but this one does not)
Blake will... probably not float, probably not have a magic mirror. Like, I guess she will still dash and the wide slashes for the ultimate will be her swinging Gambol Shroud by the ribbon.
Yang as Terra. Roman Earth Goddess. So... yeah, Terra summons healing monoliths, grows rock armour, summons walls which she can then command to collapse. For her ultimate she gives her friends a protective aura and her enemies like...a debuff.
So... Yang. She's now a healer! She will still punch things, but she now also summons walls and monoliths. Right... I'm guessing she might get the red eyes during the buffs. But no idea what the walls and monoliths will be. Maybe she calls in Bumblebee? (Funny thing is though, there is a god in Smite called Ravana and he was like a near perfect fit for Yang... but he's a dude... and they couldn't change the rig of the model or something other.)
That rounds that up. Hope this helped those of you who have not played SMITE but were thinking or dropping in for the collab or were just curious.
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[V7E3 Spoilers] Volume 7 Episode 3 Review

Hello RWBY Fans! Welcome to another weekly episode review! I plan to have the Jaune Analysis completely planned out by Sunday, so look forward to that release in the next week or two. Character analyses are big undertakings, but I want to get the Jaune Retrospective out before we get too deep into Volume 7, so it's full steam ahead there. With updates out of the way, lets get to work.
​

Point of Order

Before we talk about Episode 3, there are a few points I'd like to address about Episode 2 that were unfortunately left out of last week's review. The problem with taking so many notes is that you sometimes loose track of your ideas. Still, I really wanted to talk about these points before they became any less relevant.

Episode 3: Ace Operatives

The episode opens In Media Res, or "in the middle of things". Three Mantas approach the SDC dust mine as we flash back to the mission briefing. Clover tells Jaune, Ruby, and Qrow that their objective is to secure the mine, which will act as the future launch site for Amnity Stadium. Atlas military and lesser Hunters are securing the surrounding territory, but an old, smart Geist has hidden from the military in the mine, requiring a smaller elite team. RWBY, JNR, and AceOps will be intermixed into three teams that will corner and eliminate the Geist. Clover mentions that he trusts Ironwood with his life, and since Ironwood has vouched for the gang, he is extending that trust to the heroes. Perhaps it's foreshadowing and perhaps it's harmless, but once again the theme of Trust pops up in a big way.
Several things are going on during this briefing that merit attention. First, the scene cuts back to the present, showing Atlas personnel fighting Sabertooths on the Tundra while Clover mentions their role. This is a great example of show-don't-tell, and reenforces both the scope of the world and the stakes of the mission. Everything feels more real when we can see the logistics of the mission for ourselves. Plus, it's a big advantage of a visual medium.
We also see another viewscreen, and since I'm contractually obligated to pause and read everything, you all get the benefit of a few extra details. On the mission screen, we see that RWBY, JNR, and AceOps are all listed next to their License statuses. RWBY and JNR are listed as "License Status: Active" while AceOps are listed as "License Status: Military". This tells use two things. First, the formal distinction lets us know that there are Hunters in Atlas that don't serve the military. Ironwood likely just scoops up as much as he can with competitive job offers. Second, we see that officially, RWBY and JNR are operating as licensed Hunters. Whether this is a provisional condition or Ironwood granted them their licenses in recognition of their journey so far is uncertain, but it does open up some interesting creative possibilties. I'd especially like to see the heroes, who's education has been as far from conventional as possible, interact with Atlas students on the more traditional track.
In the final flashback before the mission starts, we get what I was most excited for this week, gear upgrades. The montage is fairly brief, but we see Pietro has given everyone a visual and practical upgrade. He also implies that there are further upgrades he'd like to propose, but is satisfied with his current work for the mission ahead. We get a few quick glimpses of individual characters reacting to their changes; Yang attaches her newer, beefier arm with a pleased look, while Blake looks at her reflection, brushing her hair in contemplation. Given that it's the last time we'll see long-haired Blake for now, I'd venture that the CRWBY went the extra mile to make her locks look especially photogenic.
We also get a brief scene with Jaune on his bunk, rubbing at Pyrrha's sash and growing frustrated at his blonde mop. I may be biased, since I just took a TON of notes on Jaune, but I think this scene is his own reflection on how much he's changed. In Volume 4, Jaune had similar reservations when donning his new armor. I'd imagine that every time he's confronted with a physical representation of his growth, he's reminded of who helped him get there.
We cut back to the present as the Manta's bay door opens, and we get a superbly cinematic reveal of team RWBY's new looks. Seriously though, I think the blocking on that reveal is super creative and great to look at. It's like every member of the team gets their own personal curtain drop in succession, building up to a crescendo as the mission starts.
The team bails out and we get Landing Strategies 2.0, now with character development. Their descents tells us a little something about how each member of RWBY has grown from their Beacon days. Ruby still uses Recoil to descend, but it's a more relaxed motion; she's been team leader for a while now and doesn't have anything to prove to anyone. Yang shows similar restraint, and uses only a single, wisely timed shotgun blast to kill her velocity instead of soaring over treetops, hollering to the wind. Weiss shows off a more practical development by using her Summoning to create a path down. By only summoning Arma Gigas' sword arm, we can see Weiss has a much finer degree of control over her powers than she could have dreamed of at Beacon. Blake's landing shows off the repair to Gambol Shroud, and while the maneuver is nothing special, we should talk about the new accent on her blade.
I'm far from the first to point it out, but Blake's use of gold to repair her sword draws a strong comparison to the Japanese art of Kintsugi, which uses gold and other high-contrast precious metals to repair broken pottery. The technique highlights, rather than masks, the item's flaws, as the practicing artists believe that the break is as much a part of the piece's history as it's original design. Blake herself has accepted her past mistakes and decided to live with them rather than run away from them. Through this lens, her weapon is a great visual representation of her journey and what she's overcome.
As RWBY lands, we see that they are joined by Marrow and Hare. Indeed, the rest of AceOps is split up amongst the other groups of main characters, with Clover joining Qrow and JNR accompanying Elm and Vine. JNR's Manta flies overhead, and we see their own dismount. In a great character moment, Elm and Vine show off their personalities as they leap from the airship. Vine calmly exits, like a diver stepping off a boat. Elm, meanwhile, proclaims that "this is her favorite part" (mine too, Elm) and back flips into the open sky. The camera pulls back through the other open door (another fantastic shot) and we see JNR revealed. Continuing the display, each team member exits in an appropriate manner. Ren is calm like Vine, while Nora makes a cannonball. Jaune looks apprehensive, but psychs himself up and swan dives out majestically, followed closely by the camera. During the free fall, Jaune shows off his own upgrade. He deploys the hard-light extensions of his shield like a glider, before rolling at the last moment, using a pulse of gravity dust to kill his momentum. My boy lands on his feet, ready to fight; a far cry from being nailed to a tree.
Elm reacts positively, positing that JNR "may not get themselves killed after all!" Vine tells JNR that her remark was intended to be a compliment, but Jaune looks deflated and Nora can't help but pout. No one likes being demeaned, even if it was unintentional. We get some more dialogue before the mission starts proper, and Clover informs everyone to stay in contact using their new scrolls. Initially, I thought this might be a big focus of the post-episode discussion, as those who don't trust Ironwood might suspect the new scrolls are bugged. However, the following exchange has completely eclipsed the implications of any technology upgrade.
Blake notices Yang staring at her, which Yang attributes to Blake's new hair cut. The two go back and fourth a little, fumbling over words in that adorable, newly awkward kind of way. That said, you'd be forgiven for thinking the exchange was a tad saccharine, as Marrow expresses his own frustration with the girls' banter. Harriet takes the wind right out of his sails, however, with a comeback of her own. The whole landing scene in general is a great lead-in to this episode's purpose; exploring the AceOps Team.
From the little bit of dialogue and expression we get from AceOps, we can already start to see their personalities come through. Harriet is tolerant if not patient, and more than a tad competitive. Marrow means well, but acts boastful and aloof sometimes. Vine is calm and collected, but also very distant, even from his teammates. Elm is friendly and boisterous, but her bluntness can rub people the wrong way. Clover is a special case, but we'll get to him in the Predictions section.
We see several establishing shots as RWBY/HM approaches the main mine entrance, and what stands out to me the most is the level of detail. The industrial park outside the mine is filled with railings, stairs, dented containers, and all kinds of detritus that shows the place has been abandoned for a long time. The environmental effects are also impressive, with the same attention to footprints and snow physics we saw early in Volume 6. The long hours of work that certainly went into this environment have paid off in spades. The level of detail also makes me think that we'll be returning to the mine before the Volume is over. We know that Amnity will launch from here, and it would be a great excuse to reuse assets and get more mileage out of the CRWBY's work.
Ruby comments on the cold, and we're treated to a little bit of worldbuilding. Weiss tells Ruby that without heating or a projected Aura, the cold of Solitas can kill in hours. I like this exchange, both because it clarifies that Aura protects against one's environment (thus hand-waiving the practicality of several outfits), and because the two having the conversation naturally fit. Ruby grew up far away from Atlas, and wouldn't be used to the cold, while Weiss would be very knowledgeable as both an Atlas native and Aura user. This is how you drop your worldbuilding nuggets.
Ruby's mention of the cold brings up Oscar's absence from the mission, as well as the secrets she chose to keep from Ironwood. A brief flashback to Oscar's talk with Ruby points out how similar her choice was to Ozpin's and questions the justification of that decision. Ruby doesn't give a quick answer, but her team supports her decision, citing the state of Mantle as reason enough to take their time getting to know Ironwood.
As Alpha team enters the mine, Clover asks Qrow if he's ever worked with a team before. I, like many, assumed this was leading to more information about Team STRQ, but instead Qrow subtly implies it's better for him to be separate from people. Clover disagrees, and given what we find out about his Semblance later, it's easy to understand his position. Clover calls for an update, and the scene shifts to follow JNR, Elm, and Vine. I really dig the use of the radio as a means of transition. Moving between scenes feels more natural when it's part of an ongoing conversation.
Nora is excited to be on her first mission, and tells her teammates that it feels like "they're a real Huntsmen Team". Given that JNPR's V2 field assignment was interrupted by the Breach, I wonder if this is the first formal mission JNR's been on. I'm also interested in how Nora puts emphasis on the word "Team", rather than say she feels like a real Huntress. Nora tries to strike up a conversation with Ren and compliments his outfit, but Ren pushes her to focus on the mission. Nora, like me, is frustrated by this response, though I could maybe cut Ren some slack if I thought he just wanted Nora to be safe and alert. Jaune doesn't help things when he returns Nora's compliment with a well-intentioned but misplaced remark of his own.
Moving back to Harriet, Marrow, and RWBY, we find that the Mine's main entrance was blocked by some past accident. Blake elaborates, and we learn that this is likely the mine where Ilia's parents were killed. Weiss adds her own perspective of the accident, relaying how Jacques reacted to the tragedy. The conversation shifts to the treatment of Faunus and Weiss apologizes for her inaction and complacency. Marrow interjects, offering a rather philosophical outlook of his own, before bringing the group's attention back to the task at hand. Blake is sent in to recce the mine shaft, and we get our first encounter with the target Geist. Blake reacts and Harriet charges to her rescue, smashing through the rubble with her own weapon; an exoskeleton frame for her arms.
With the hornet's nest kicked, Grimm start pouring out of the walls. We're introduced to the Centinal, a new centipede-themed Grimm, in a cool spiraling Camera movement that tracks the drilling motion of one of the creatures. More weapon upgrades are seen as the Grimm attack all three teams. Yang uses explosives in her ammunition to create manually triggered cascades, while Crescent Rose's new swivel-head lets Ruby re-position for strikes faster than ever. Marrow and Harriet show off their own weapons and skills, including Harriet's flash-like Semblance and Marrow's power to apparently freeze creatures in stasis.
We cut back to JNR, via Radio again, and see the rest of AceOps in action. The group leaps down an ice slide (or is pushed by Nora, in Ren's case), and Centinals appear at the bottom in ambush. Elm literally roots herself to the ground, and Vine releases glowing extensions of his hands to catch himself, but JNR charges ahead. In a brilliant tactical display, Jaune brakes with his sword while covering his approach with his shield, disrupting the ambush with a Gravity Dust pulse and clearing a landing zone for his teammates. Ren leaps into combat as well, closing the distance with newly integrated grappling hooks. Still, Nora's not one to be left out, and she saves Ren from an unseen Grimm.
Vine comments on the directness of JNR's approach to combat. Elm flashes Ren a thumbs up and a smile, but otherwise the AceOps don't really acknowledge JNR or their explanation. The young team sighs together, likely exasperated by both the pressure to prove themselves and AceOps' lack of feedback.
While the teams fight the Centinals, Clover and Qrow encounter the Geist itself. The Geist begins drawing ice to itself to form a body, and Qrow spots a support beam coming loose above Clover. He shouts a warning, but when the dust clears, it appears the warning was unnecessary; the beam missed clover by a wide margin. Qrow blames the near-miss on his Semblance, but Clover tells him not to worry. See, Clover's Semblance turns out to be "Good Fortune", which explains all the symbolism he's been carrying around since the premiere.
The group convenes in the mine's central chamber, and we're treated to a neat bit of visual storytelling. We already know from Ruby that the environment is very cold, so when we see Jaune visibly sweat, and that sweat evaporate in moments, we know something has changed. We can already guess the room is hot before Vine says anything about highly active dust and the volatility of their surroundings. This is another great example of show-don't-tell, and shows the CRWBY trusts their audience to put two and two together before a character explains it all.
Ironically, there's not many specifics to talk about once the final fight starts. The combat is entirely handled by the AceOps team, and exact difference between a coordinated team, and a coordinated experienced team is laid bare. Using a flawless combination of their abilities and weapons, the AceOps team quickly disassembles and destroys the large Petra Gigas. I suspect the triumphant music that mixes with the rock of the fight is the AceOps theme, which bares strong similarities to both the Atlas and Ironwood themes. It's all very fitting, seeing as this fight celebrates AceOps, not RWBY.
However, the spotlight is not only for AceOps, as Ruby manages to save the day with a clutch catch at the end of the fight. Harriet notices Ruby's semblance, and implies that her "Scatter" is more than just super speed. Given how unique Ruby's semblance has always appeared, I'm betting that there's an undiscovered ability that's been overshadowed by the more obvious speed power.
Once again, the final scene of the episode is reserved for our villains. We see Forrest, post-incarceration, being dropped off in Mantle by the cops. I won't lie, the second I saw the flickering alley light, I yelled "This is where you gonna die, son!" I'm not sure anyone could miss the scene's tone, but that didn't make Tyrion's reveal and the accompanying musical sting any less impactful (if anything, what we know about Tyrion should make us more concerned). When Forrest asks Tyrion who he is, the Scorpion-Faunus replies that he, like Forrest, wants to mix things up in Mantle. As Tyrion lunges at Forrest, his eyes turn from gold to purple, possibly giving us the sixth new semblance this episode. I'm not sure I can make a guess at what the ability is, but given that the glow's color is closer to Tyrion's Aura than the purple of his tail, I suspect this the killer's natural power, rather than a cybernetic contact lens or something like that.

Thoughts

This was not a RWBY episode. This episode was clearly focused on introducing the audience to the Ace Operatives, both individually and as a whole. One one hand, I think this episode was very necessary and accomplishes it's objective. Five new secondary characters at once would be a lot to handle, even in a show with half the roster that RWBY does. Episode 3 introduces AceOps' weapons, semblances, personalities, and flaws in a succinct and quickly paced manner. The episode is also fairly self-contained due to the nature of the mission, meaning our introductory look at AceOps won't spill over into the rest of the volume. Sure, we'll get more character interactions, and the team is sure to play a heavy role in the "Trust"-conflict being set up early, but most of the heavy lifting is already out of the way. We can spend the rest of our time with our main heroes.
Of course, that also means that we don't get as much RWBY or JNR this episode as we might like. Given that the gang just got re-outfitted, I was really hoping for a slower moment for everyone to react to the new clothing and equipment, maybe talk about how far they've come. The first three episodes of this volume have formed a very combat-heavy and plot-heavy arc compared to Volume 6, so here's hoping the next episode kicks off a break for the gang.
Now, a slower middle to the Volume is a tough thing to manage, as we saw with Volume 5, but given the plethora of opportunities for character interaction in Atlas, I'm confident that we can keep up a satisfying pace of development without letting the mid-season droop. In this episode alone, we have three possible character arcs that have been seeded:
Without taking the election plotline, the Schnee family conflict, or the ongoing secrets kept from Ironwood, we have lots to address while the characters are in Mantle. Now we just have to wait and see which comes up first.
Before we dive into predictions, I'd like to once again highlight the camera work and cinematography. Whether it was moving the camera through screens and doors to emphasize the characters, or holding the long shot at the end of the Geist fight, the filmcraft has been consistently and noticeably effective. This is another episode that just looks and feels great.

Predictions

Since Episode 3 is the bookend to Volume 7's opening arc, I don't have many specific details to base my predictions off of. I was hilariously wrong about the "Dust Mine arc" lasting to episode 6, but I'm very satisfied with this episode's pacing, and after listing off the other plot threads and larger conflicts we have to get to, I'm glad we didn't linger. Besides, Clover's own dialogue suggested that the mines will be plot-critical later, so we might still have a few more episodes left to spend in the now-familiar caves. I've already addressed that there are several plot threads we could shift focus to next, but which gets priority is little more than speculation.
I do think Episode 4 will be a breather, it almost has to be after the pace of the first three episodes. RWBY has done a little talking amongst themselves, but JNR has only really had moments as part of the larger group. Perhaps as things settle down, the teams can break apart and have their own moments adjusting to the big city after fighting for so long. I would really like to see a character arc for Nora before things ratchet up near the finale. We saw a little of her past during Ren's arc in Volume 4, but for the most part Nora has always been half of a pair. Relationship troubles would not only make her connection to Ren feel more realistic, but would also give Nora a chance to define who she is, absent of everyone else. Samantha Ireland, Nora's voice actress, has already hinted via a Q&A panel that we may explore Nora's past in Atlas, so here's hoping our favorite thunder goddess gets some time in the spotlight.
I'm very happy we've had an economical exposure to our villains this season. Only catching glimpses of their actions after the episode's main plot wraps makes it feel like they are constantly active in the shadows, working away while the gang is none the wiser. Surprisingly, Forrest's death may give us the insight we need to start piecing together their plan. We know that journalists have been dying, and now we see that Tyrion targeted someone who was incarcerated by Atlas and vocal against Ironwood. I suspect Salem's plan for Atlas is to discredit Ironwood by making it look like he's gone full autocrat, and is killing anyone critical of him. If Watts and Tyrion succeed, then Ironwood's announcement could be misconstrued as an excuse to grab power. Oh sure, citizens of Mantle, there's definitely a big evil baddie out their controlling the Grimm, and only I, Ironwood, have the power to protect you all. So just tolerate my little police state, it's the only way you'll survive. The General's apathy towards his own personal image may be exactly what undermines his plan.
My other big prediction concerns Qrow and Clover. Based on their interactions this episode, I think we're ramping up to a full argument between the man who was cast out for his luck and the man who is celebrated for it. Ever since his semblance was confirmed in Volume 4, and especially as he's become more open in recent volumes, Qrow has made it very clear his semblance made life hard. He was shunned from his tribe, he feels forced to go on missions alone, and he blames himself for any harm or inconvenience that those around him befall. Because of his "curse", his victories have come from quick thinking, clever placement, and raw skill. Qrow's worked hard to become the pro he is today.
Clover is similarly skilled, as this episode demonstrates, but has seemingly had a fair amount of help. His comment after catching the dust crystal, "what would you guys do without me?", could be seen as friendly banter, or perhaps as snark colored by a touch of arrogance. Qrow calls the catch "lucky" after the fight, but Clover is assured that he succeeded on talent. I don't doubt that Clover has worked hard to become Ironwood's point-man. He may even be insecure about his victories, if enough people blame his semblance and ignore his skill. However, he does have an inherent advantage in life, and the people around him do benefit from his presence. He seems to know this too, if his "lucky you" comment to Qrow is any indication. Seeing as Clover is literally the antithesis to Qrow, I wouldn't be surprised if the young man's arrogance leads to a much larger, "you-don't-know-how-good-you've-got-it" kind of outrage. This argument may even be a contributing factor to the larger fallout between Ironwood and the gang, once their secrets come out. Though, even if the larger plot wasn't involved, I would like to see Qrow confront his obvious opposite and grapple with how their semblances have affected their lives.

Loose Ends

Now comes the part where I talk about all the little things that don't have a larger place in this writeup.
That's it for this week. A bit lighter on the analysis portion of the review, but that's inescapable now that the opening arc is winding down. Next week we'll likely see the start of a new arc, with probably a better idea of what the future immediately holds for the gang.
Edit: Since the initial writing of this review, we've gotten a title, description, and thumbnail for Episode 4. I won't spoil it here, but it looks like we are shifting gears to focus on the more social conflicts of Mantle and Atlas. Here's to more personal stories!
As always, if you enjoy my writing, you can check out more at the Masterpost HERE.
Until next week, be safe, be creative, and be excellent to each other!
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Character design details and improvements

I've seen a lot of people looking forward to seeing more outfit changes and weapon upgrades (RIP Gambol Shroud), but I'm also interested in seeing if CRWBY will be adding any more details or small improvements to the characters' designs themselves. E.g. Blake's ears post Volume 3, the stylised shimmer in Ruby's eyes when she uses her love lasers, and more recently, the newly improved animation of Yang's fiery hair.
I've seen a few flairs and hashtags etc. calling for more muscle definition (specifically Yang's abs), which would be pretty nice to see on any character really. I'd actually like to see this on Nora "I can bench five of me" Valkyrie.
Another one I heard mention after the Apathy arc was a wish for Blake's faunas eyes to reflect light in certain situations the way a cat's eyes would. I know that faunas are supposed to only have one animal trait, but many of them are also supposed to be able to see in the dark, and I'm pretty sure that glow effect is intrinsic to night vision in most creatures.
Any other small improvements you can think of that you'd like to see with the character models in the future?
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Blake is like the smartest fighter of the cast

This is something I've been thinking about for awhile now but this most recent episode really just illustrates it perfectly: Blake is highkey the most cerebral fighter of the cast. Ruby's no pushover either, and she and Jaune are both great at overarching strategy and shit, but Blake straight up outsmarts people.
Like, in terms of pure skill, she was keeping up with Adam mostly, but was also constantly on the back foot because he's just significantly physically stronger than her. That's why he moved to grapple her so much, because then he could overpower her. On the flip side, both times she got the advantage, it was because she outsmarted him:
And we can see this in-fight intelligence pervade in pretty much every prior 1v1 fight of hers:
And probably some other stuff as well. Point is, Blake's super quick thinking and resourceful, and while Blake is definitely capable so far as her sword-play goes, her most impressive strength is being so quick on her feet when it comes to fighting.
It's only when she gets overwhelmed with emotion that this intelligence doesn't show itself as clearly, like with Roman in V1 and Adam in V3.
So yeah Blake is a super smart fighter and while her strength may not be the best of the show, you should put some respect on her name.
P.S.: Way back right after V1, Monty told us we'd be getting a Gambol Shroud upgrade in "Season 3". Everyone assumed he meant V3 and was thus confused when that didn't happen... but Seasons ≠ Volumes, and this Volume is either the first of Season 3 or the last of Season 2 (depending on whether you consider V4-5 one Season or consider V6 a part of it too since it's still in Mistral). What I'm getting at is, Monty may've planned for this scenario all along.
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How would you say that RWBY characters weapons reflect their users' personnalities ?

I would say that Crescent Rose shows Ruby's originality and creativity, her using of speed and agility in battle but also the fact that she's a bit too specialized as a fighter for now, having troubles with CQC and without Crescent Rose.
Myrtnaster show Weiss' great use of Dust in battle, her great versatility and elegance as a fighter but also her fragility to an extent with her lack of resistance and being not a CQC fighter either.
Gambol Shroud shows Blake's agility and great versatility, being a melee and range weapon at the same time by being a sword, a whip and a riffle at the same time, it also shows Blake's use of stealth.
Ember Celica highlight Yang as a great melee fighter who relies heavely on raw strenght and her fiery personnality.
Crocea Mors shows how Jaune is a traditionnal fighter who isn't as creative or versatile as his friends but is still a solid support with a good defense.
Miló and Akoúo̱ showed Pyrrha being an ace of all jacks fighters, being very versatile and adaptable fighter good in all categories.
Magnhild shows Nora's main asset that is her strength while still being an agile fighter and also shows her creativity and excentricity.
StormFlower highlight Ren as the agile and practical ninja fighter he is but also demonstrate his lack of strength and fragility as a fighter.
Just a last detail I wanted to tell you : Cinder and Raven's use of Dust weapons which are powerful but also fragile weapons parallel them as persons who are powerful but who have a very shallow and superficial definition of strength and who are inside fragile persons despite their great powers.
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[HYPE] yungmorpheus - Flordaman

Link
He's got a project called Bag Talk with Pink Siifu and he's a member of Blackfist with VIK (who produced a bunch of LIL BIG MAN and has worked with other sLUmmers

Los Angeles Rapper YUNGMORPHEUS is a Name You Should Know

The March 1993 cover of High Times is pinned to the wall above YUNGMORPHEUS’s desk. On the front, the rapper Redman—prompted by the headline “GET BLUNTED!”—studiously lights a spliff. In his sparsely-decorated apartment, Morpheus is celebrating the release of he and VIK’s new collaborative album—Strapped 4 Survival, under their duo name Blackfist—with tightly-rolled, conical joints. His girlfriend, Sofya, sits on their bed, smoking and drawing in a sketch pad. Their black and tan dog, Booker, shyly gambols around the room. It’s a bright spring day in Los Angeles, their houseplants are flowering, and Morpheus’s career seems to be blooming in kind.
Morph hasn’t been in L.A. for long. Raised in the palm-tree-lined expanse between Miami and Ft. Lauderdale by parents of Caribbean descent, he began breakdancing in 9th grade, inspired by the area’s vibrant scene. Nearly a decade before he recorded his monotone rhymes or looped his first jazz sample, he was mean-mugging dancers in South Florida.
“That’s why I started: to fuck [people] up,” Morpheus says. “That shit is hard, to be battling someone and look them eye like, ‘The fuck you gonna do now?’”
After high school, eager for a change of scenery and enticed by the school’s financial aid package, Morpheus left Florida for Boston College. It was, from the moment he set foot in the shadow of the campus’s gothic spires, a mistake. Though he earned a BA in Sociology (and an acute awareness of Boston’s simmering racism), he doesn’t recall his four years in posh Chestnut Hill with much fondness. He got his degree and got out, but not before getting his rap moniker.
“I had those circular sunglasses on a lot during that period,” the rapper remembers, “and fools were just like, ‘This fool is like young Morpheus [from the Matrix trilogy], whenever we go to the function he’s smoked out, talking mad shit.”
Appropriately, it was a jar of particularly pungent marijuana that catalyzed the friendship between Morpheus and sometimes-musical partner Hann_11. One night in New York City, several miles from the land of Celtics Larry Bird jerseys, Morph met the Philadelphia-bred producer at a party. “I started rolling up, and he asks me what I’m smoking on, looks in the jar, [and] smells it. He was like, ‘Aight, this dude be smokin’, cool.’ We exchanged information after chatting for a bit, and that was it. That was homie I was smoking with. We chilled for a year before making shit.”
Their first project (and the first music Morpheus ever released), was an untitled, pleasant, and entirely low-stakes 20-minute beat tape uploaded to Bandcamp in February 2016. Their second, last October’s Drop That Wet, was one of 2017’s best underground rap releases. In the year and a half between the two, Morph released six lo-fi beat tapes and a rap album, 44 Laws of Mentalizm, but he admits Drop That Wet was “the marker where [he] began to decide what [he] wanted to talk about, rapping-wise.”
The album is distorted and caustic, radical without being paranoid. On “Uncle Sam Is A Bitch,” Morpheus raps, “Whitey wanna flee when black people start moving in / Gotta break their knees to bring a little truth to them.” Then on “Blu Klux Klan,” he mumbles, “They still want slaves, now they put us in prison / Wonder where all the tax dollars people be gettin’.” He’s not anti-white—that’d be a stretch—but he’s definitely white-skeptical. The irony: Drop That Wet was released by Hot Record Société, a boutique, white-owned label based in Oakland.
“I’m never gonna be like, ‘X that out because a white dude owns that label’—unless that white dude is a piece of shit, and there’s a myriad of them—therein I don’t fuck with a myriad of them,” he says, pausing to toke. “If I can sit down with the dude, and really get into it, and he’s not shaky, not uncomfortable, not riddled with white guilt—if you’re a real cat then let’s get it.”
Strapped 4 Survival—whose format mimics that of Madlib and J Dilla’s Champion Sound, with Morpheus rapping over VIK’s beats, and VIK, rapping for the first time on-record, rapping over Morpheus’s beats—feels like an affirmation. Morpheus now has two standout albums in six months with two different producers released on two cassettes. (He has four cassettes total, counting 44 Laws of Mentalizm and his April 2017 beat tape 10 Gram Plan, released on Blvnt Records.) Music is no longer an after-work hobby; at this point, he can’t imagine a future without it. “Now I think this is it,” Morpheus says. “Can’t stop. Definitely can’t stop.”
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gambol definition video

His inexhaustible gift of lightning repartee I saw illustrated on another occasion, when he presided at the midnight "gambol" of a Bohemian club, at which it needed the utmost tact and presence of mind to "ride the whirlwind and direct the storm."America To-day, Observations and Reflections Erfahren Sie mehr über englische Wort: gambol, einschließlich Aussprache, Antonym, Definition, Synonyme. In Middle French, the noun "gambade" referred to the frisky spring of a jumping horse. In the early 1500s, the English word gambol romped into print as both a verb and a noun. (The noun means "a skipping or leaping about in play.") The English word is not restricted to horses, but rather can be used of any frolicsome creature. Definition of gambol verb in Oxford Advanced American Dictionary. Meaning, pronunciation, picture, example sentences, grammar, usage notes, synonyms and more. Gambol definition: If animals or people gambol , they run or jump about in a playful way. Meaning, pronunciation, translations and examples What is the definition of gambol? What is the meaning of gambol? How do you use gambol in a sentence? What are synonyms for gambol? What does gambol mean? Gambol is defined as to jump and skip about playfully. (verb) An example of gambol is to light... jump to other results. (+ adv./prep.) to jump or run about in a lively way. lambs gambolling in the meadow. Oxford Collocations Dictionary. Gambol is used with these nouns as the subject: lamb. See full entry. Word Origin. Wiktionary (0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition: gambol (Noun) An instance of running or skipping about playfully. gambol (Verb) To move about playfully; to frolic. gambol (Verb) to do a forward roll. gambol meaning: 1. to run and jump in a happy way: 2. to run and jump in a happy way: . Learn more.

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gambol definition

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