#also i can't believe i've written so much on this by now but bram set me off and i can't find my chill

[r0h1rr1m]

rambly inception thoughts p.3

bc it got too big in this post i’m gonna start another one of these, ostensibly about my unified theory on what will or won’t fly in dreamshare, tho i’m almost guaranteed to go a little off-topic

the movie says the tech was originally developed as a training tool for the armed forces, and i don’t want to pretend any real knowledge of the american military but i’ve always thought that there’s no way they were there from the beginning unless the very genesis of the idea was already intertwined w the notion of eventually using it to train soldiers. and the tech is so outlandish in premise and would take so much time (even by accelerated movie standards) to become viable and like, there’s an easier way. in the history of dreamshare that i js made up right now, there are 3 main eras. pre-military, where the scientists figured out how not to send ppl directly to limbo immediately upon putting them under (we’ll get there), military, where a lot of the roles/frameworks were discovered and solidified (i will explain what i mean by this, too), and post-military

the last thing i want to add before diving in is a disclaimer. the precise details of how exactly dreamshare works are almost entirely irrelevant to understanding the movie, and so they weren’t included! which means that the beginnings of this will be based in canon, but as i go on, the logic of my worldbuilding increasingly depends on context i js.... made up. so if u wanna go on, js buy into it and bear with me if u like worldbuilding i hope it’s worth it

so i said that before anyone had the genius idea of using dreamshare to let soldiers kill each other over and over and over, it had to exist. which like, duh, but the reason i bring this up is tied into my thoughts abt what limbo is, why it’s possible to go more than one level down in a dream, and why dying would wake u up. come yell at me for refusing to learn anything about lucid dreaming/sleep science, but i’m gonna say that limbo as dreamsharers kno it is the closest a pasiv will get u to natural dreams. “unconstructed dreamspace,” pure subconscious. and it seems like the movie was treating it as an actual place? that would be the same for every dreamer? and u could access it and alter it like a public minecraft server. here my thoughts diverge a little bit into 2 possible scenarios

scenario A) Minecraft Server Limbo: it is an actual, internally consistent entity and not dependent upon each dreamer. which means that the pasiv technology for accessing it isn’t even about shared or lucid dreaming at all, but accessing another sort of other plane/dimension beyond the physical. think cognitive realm a la cosmere, if that reference means anything to you (if not, i’d love to hear what ur analogy would be). this idea is a lot of fun, but doesn’t rly allow for the levels between waking and limbo, or explain why those have to be created new every time.

scenario B) Actually the Subconscious: the way i think about limbo kind of begins w the ideas in this fic, where limbo is unique to everyone. i’m gonna start here in era 1 of my history of dreamshare, by saying that the first experiments w whatever prototype eventually became the pasiv went v poorly bc scientists were js immediately chucking ppl into limbo. like, that’s the default state of dreams w the pasiv, and all the rest came later. so. in a natural dream, ur brain rationalizes anything, and u get the most vividly detailed backstories and explanations for stuff that makes so much sense until u wake up, which is all also true for limbo. this is the reason limbo is so dangerous, is because ur brain’s working overtime to make u forget u’re dreaming and dying to wake up doesn’t work unless u’re absolutely sure u’re dreaming. so the 1st major breakthrough in dreamshare was being able to remember that u were dreaming when u went under.

the first thing the scientists figured out how to do was hold a setting in their head as they were going under so that they could go there in the dream. at this point, they don’t distinguish between settings out of memory and completely original settings bc it hasn’t occurred to them yet. they just knew that trying to imagine a place instead of diving right under puts limits on the dream that help to keep u from getting dragged under and away by ur own subconscious.

to some ppl, the natural thing to do is access a memory. this does interesting things to the makeup of the dream, because memories of places, depending on the person, are constructed from a bunch of different combinations of sounds, smells, visuals, and indefinable ‘feel’ of the dream. to other ppl, the natural (most interesting) thing to do was invent an imaginary setting--mbe a place from a book/movie/tv show (if u don’t watch them closely u js get star trek all the time. so much star trek) if they’re a little creative, or a brand-new fantasyland if they’re a lot creative. these dreams tend to be mostly visual in makeup, since their inspiration is mostly visual. it takes a lot more effort to add details like sounds and smells bc those aren’t instinctively/automatically part of the way the dreamers are used to experiencing, say, the bridge of the enterprise. It’s harder to make imaginary settings feel real, and this is why it’s comparatively more dangerous to dream from memory. the problem is that the way ur brain interprets and stores select information about a place is more concerned with gathering a coherent narrative of the place than with retaining any objective details. recalling this narrative is a subconscious act/uses ur instinctive mental processes while building a new scenario requires ur higher functions. letting ur subconscious run the show instead of staying consciously in charge urself runs the risk of lapsing into natural-dreaming confusion and falling into limbo.

this is the early days of the technology, where scientists didn’t have the expertise to make dreams stable, and the somnacin formula was still crude enough that u could drop from a structured dream into limbo pretty easily, no sedation required. dying in a dream, for example, had about a 50/50 chance of waking u up or sending u to limbo. the brain has no frame of reference for how to experience dying, so it’s completely disruptive to the plot of the dream--it has to end. so depending on how much the subconscious--as opposed to active cognition--was in charge of the dream, either u wake up or ur subconscious takes over completely to smooth over the confusion and u’re lost in limbo. dying wasn’t the only thing disruptive enough to destabilize a dream in those days either, tho. shock--ranging from injury to just surprise at something bizarre--and high emotion could also do it. this happened a lot bc those early dreams were still p close to natural dreams and rly weird shit happened all the time.

as somnacin got more sophisticated, it got better at suppressing the rampant subconscious and putting the rational mind in charge. constructed dreams left some of the psychedelic weirdness behind and started playing by logical rules, but that was still the given value of ‘logical’ that meant whatever the dreamers understood to be true, regardless of how that matched up w real-world physics. also, dying became the only thing disruptive enough to throw u out of a dream, because the somnacin, by reassigning the lion’s share of the mental processing work to the slower, more effortful systems of reasoning, dampened emotional responses a little. it forced the mind to extrapolate how the situation--usually an injury or smth--would play out instead of js panicking and slamming the eject button. the last major effect of the new somnacin was that waking up was now almost the guaranteed effect of dying, and u only went into limbo if waking up wasn’t an option. almost guaranteed, bc it wasn’t perfect yet, and how could it ever be when it comes to messing around w brain chemistry. but almost was enough for the military and they offered funding and soldiers as test subjects in return for use of the technology as a training tool.

this is the end of era 1! and the post is getting big enough and it’s been in my drafts long enough that i want to end this here. i’ll finish later, probably by reblogging this instead of making a new p.4 post, so check the notes!

[silverswanqueen]

I mostly disliked RWBY since V3 because the dark turn and how they went about it I just subjectively didn't like(I was expecting it to be more akin to Harry Potter or Avatar The Last Airbender) and now its seems like its going through the same song and dance I've seen with Fate: Zero, Akame Ga Kill, Madoka Magica and Gen Urobuchi's other works. I get the points of those works, being righteous, moral, and noble in the face of tragedy, but I've just grown tired of it. But so many stans have built their ego and identity around these works that they can't allow anyone to openly and subjectively not like something anymore. And holy shit have I never felt the brunt of that than from the RWBY loyalists.

idk I'm not pretending I am speaking objectively here, but I feel like the very fact RWBY seems to becoming this kind of dark is what's drawing blind fanatics who hold it up as one of their secular religious texts and Monty as one of their patron saints, with the other works and writers being their other texts and prophets respectively

"It's awesome because its tragic and well-earned happy endings are bad"

One wonders how Inuyasha, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, Harry Potter, The Star Wars Original Trilogy, or even Bram Stoker’s Dracula or Hammer's "The Devil Rides Out" would be received if they were made today and not back in the day.

Thanks for the ask and I hope my rambling isn’t confusing!

I definitely get where you’re coming from, and while I’m not familiar with Gen Urobuchi’s works I’ve seen the name enough to know there’s definitely a correlation there. I for one wasn’t necessarily upset with V3’s conclusion, but I was also much younger, didn’t have an attachment to Penny or Pyrrha like many did, and thought more would be done with the characters than what was accomplished. However, I recently did some research for my academics similar to this phenomena which I believe I can apply! However, I cannot say my explanation of it is the be all end all, because I cannot account for every RWBY fan who exhibits this behavior, so take it as you will haha.

There’s a certain pocket of literature/media that focuses on what’s referred to as the “Grimmdark,” I believe, and I’ve seen shows fall back into this phenomena of “everything must be hopeless and tragic, every victory must be pyrrhic,” and while that’s definitely a narrative you can go with, it’s spread to multiple fan bases and media over recent years. This narrative is an “infection,” since lots of social phenomena can be synonymous with an infecting trait. I compare it to Teresa Brennan’s “Transmission of Affect,” a huge study on social phenomena and how (and this is me paraphrasing) humans respond physically to social situations, meaning while the “process” is social and origin, its effects are “biological and physical,” which we can see with RWBY loyalists. They respond to the Grimmdark social infection and alter themselves (i.e. identification and physical response) to require this sort of social engagement. This altering of self is done unconsciously, and while I don’t want to get into the agency of self, the self is affected by environment, and the environment of the Grimmdark, as a result, directly influences the self. They are “infected” with the Grimmdark, and thus must engage with it. Now this isn’t bad, since the transmission of affect exists and works on all of us in many ways, but it can breed some negative results, and I think the RWBY fandom is one of them.

Now, to preface here, I’m not bashing Monty. I was still an avid fan when he passed, and I still look up to Monty to this day because of his talent and passion as an animator. But Monty… he wasn’t what I would call the best storyteller, because he was very impulsive. He would think of something, hot potato it to Miles and Kerry, and sometimes the additions would break canon a bit. Add this in with the transmission of affect which has already been in the works with the Grimmdark storytelling for some time, and it eventually attracts those “infected” by it, and as a result, breeds a toxic environment. It’s completely fine to like the Grimmdark and be, as I say, “infected” by it, but to allow this fascination with it to declare a subjective view of how storytelling should be as objective is the exact issue the fan base of RWBY has.

RWBY has fundamental writing flaws and thrown in ideas that aren’t implemented in such a way to flow coherently with the rest of the currently set narrative and world-building, and often breaks the canon that leaves the loyalists scrambling to pick up the splinters and create headcanons that allow the world-building to remain untarnished for them. This is what causes the disconnect, because those that cling to the Grimmdark as the objectively correct way to tell a story are not only trying to say it must be dark, but also the way it was written, aka the method in which we’ve gotten to this dark conclusion, is the way it must be. This is where the issue is, because they see criticism as an attack on the Grimmdark and not a critique of the writing mechanics utilized within the Grimmdark.

Subjective criticism is suddenly viewed as attacks on things that are objective. And this is one of the huge problems that many fanatics won’t understand they’re perpetuating, or simply don’t care that they are perpetuating this issue. The Grimmdark is fine, but the Grimmdark is not the be all end all of storytelling.

I could ramble more, but this is getting a bit lengthy. Essentially, yes, you’re right, they cannot allow someone to subjectively dislike it, because to them, there’s nothing subjective about it.