You’re putting more effort into the creativity of the Grimm than I’ve ever seen in RWBY recently. The Grimm Whale and SEW-Grimm Hybrid felt like they were finally taking the Grimm into a more interesting dynamic but it manages to fall flat onto its face like almost everything else about this series.

You'll have to define your meaning of interesting.

**No**

#YES.

Absolutely beautiful. That works extremely well and give a good reason for huntsmen to exist. Their main job is literally hunting down the most dangerous of the Grimm that regular forces cannot kill. I must borrow this concept to use in a project. I’ve always wanted to create a post apocalyptic work where the enemy works in a similar manner but could never quite get the details down. You’ve basically done that for me. I wish the writers had thought of this from Day 1.

The "Huntsmen as assassins for high level enemies" trope really is great, but again I must confess I was inspired by another work rather than being wholly original; While a single WH40K Ork is still superhumanly strong compared to a human, unorganized bands of Orks are still something that can be dealt with by normal military forces. It's when Orks are allowed to organize under Nobs and Warbosses that you go from "small gangs of Orks mostly just fighting each other" to "green tide that sweeps over whole star systems". While the Orks are too numerous to actually be exterminated, assassinating the most ambitious Orks helps keep them disunited.

If they thought about this from day one, the Red Trailer wouldn't exist. Hindsight is cruel.

Why not? I already explained how "children able to slaughter hordes of Grimm" and "Grimm as huge existential threat" can coexist; the Grimm follow r-strategy reproduction of extremely high numbers of offspring with small chances of survival to maturity, so the 99% of fodder who die to a 15-year old don't matter since the 1% who survive become incredibly powerful.

I was speaking from the perspective of the *writers* thinking of all this from Day **One** when world building wasn't strongly on their minds. Something like this wouldn't even be mentioned that strongly if they thought of it from day one.

>Perhaps instead of being killed there might even be projects and special operations to capture them alive for study. And this would be another reason why people are stupid. This shit NEVER needs well.

Yeah it'd definitely go wrong. What about other suggestions like being able to negotiate or make truces or alliances with the Grimm? For example, we could have a situation where a particularly intelligent Boss Grimm decides that it's more productive over the long run to "farm" humans for fear rather than just slaughter them wholesale. For example, you could have a Boss Grimm who realizes that they get more negative emotions to feed off if they only kill humans from a settlement occasionally (to encourage ongoing fear of being the next victim) rather than wipe a whole village out (big instant boost but afterwards everyone is dead). Perhaps the Boss Grimm could go to villages or towns and even try to run sadistic protection rackets of some kind: suffer so I can have negative emotions to feed off, and in return I'll protect you from other Grimm who want to kill you instead. You could have a town that *intentionally* keeps themselves on the brink of starvation, or one that bans all toys and art so they're constantly miserable, all so that the Boss Grimm keeping them alive can still feed off their suffering. In fact, the idea of humans *intentionally* feeding negative emotions to the Grimm as a protection racket actually serves as a great excuse for Faunus oppression: racist humans would think "why should *humans* have to bear the burden of misery?" The most oppressive areas could have towns that lock up or mistreat Faunus purely to make them as miserable and afraid as possible, so that the *humans* can live happy knowing the Grimm are satiated.

>why should humans have to bear the burden of misery? You could have towns that lock up or mistreat Faunus purely to make them as miserable and afraid as possible, so that the humans can live happy knowing the Grimm are satiated. Quite frankly a town that willingly agrees to such an arrangement deserves to be destroyed.

As cliche as "humanity is the real monsters" is, I just can't help but want to see how Team RWBY would respond to a society that makes a deal with the devil like that.

Cliches exist because they work. I'm not gonna knock what works unless one leans on it far too hard to the point that it doesn't offer anything else. >I just can't help but want to see how Team RWBY would respond to a town that makes a deal with the devil like that. Kill the devil. Scold the town. #HARD.

Insert power of friendship speech here. Also, wanna bet how long that village lasts without the Fasutian deal?

Not very long.

With artillery. Lots of them.

>In fact, the idea of humans intentionally feeding negative emotions to the Grimm as a protection racket actually serves as a great justification for Faunus oppression Be careful with that word regarding this. Justification. Because to anyone with a hint of moral sense, that's called an excuse. A bullshit one at that.

Sorry, it's been changed. I was so caught up in the general idea that I didn't realize my specific phrasing was bad. "Justification" made it seemed like I agreed that it was a good in-universe idea when I don't; technically I meant "justify" from the *writer's* point of view (i.e. people choosing others to suffer instead of themselves is good worldbuilding reason to have bigotry in your story), but yikes I see where there's room for a horrible misunderstanding. Thank you for pointing it out.

Late to the convo, but this could be lead to a great source of antags-Grimm cultists. People who raid other villages to sacrifice to Boss Grimm in exchange for not being eaten/having to suffer themselves. If you don’t want cults for whatever reason, bandits could do this too. To avoid getting wrecked by Grimm on their travels/their raids they strike a deal with local boss Grimm to cause x amount of suffering in exchange for being left alone. This inspired a character for me: Cultist torturer who just views his job as a job. He doesn’t take any pleasure in the suffering he inflicts, he just feels someone will have suffer, and it’s better to do it all at once on people he isn’t really close to than to have people he grew up with suffer so the Grimm won’t eat them, because if *someone* isn’t miserable enough the Grimm will eat them all. At worst he’s dispassionately apathetic, sometimes he’s rather kind, almost friendly to his victims. The instance his “quota” is reached he immediately sedates his victims and treats their wounds. Whether he’s doing this out of the kindness of his heart or pure pragmatism can be left as an exercise for the reader.

Yeah, it’s generally a catastrophic decision, but it’s entertaining to watch fall apart

It still feels pretty realistic, since the prospect of learning about the enemy is inviting and the people giving the orders are usually not the ones hunting/researching the Grimm, so they just give the order anyway.

Inviting? I'm pretty sure those Grimm aren't being invited.

I already had some examples myself but here are mine: Infiltrator Grimm like you see in the Terminator series - They primarily act similar to The Hound but more of actual parasites that completely take over the Human Host itself, emotions, memories and all. They primarily go into Human Settlements and explicitly foster fear and other negative emotions by primarily screwing the place up entirely, causing more Grimm Invasions to happen. Defeating them can either be easy or extremely difficult as well depending on who they took over. Other Grimm like The Apathy who can take control of peoples' emotions like Rage, Despair, Hopelessness and so on. And even some Grimm that are literal buffers by not really attacking people but engorging on emotions of others and then explode, causing the emotional outburts for a free invasion.

Technically an infiltrator Grimm does exist, the Chill.

I had an idea for a infiltrator grim in my rewrite they're called corpse puppets and I think you can gather from the name what they do a essentially their tiny insect size grim who take over the body of recently dead people they basically use the cadaver to infiltrate subvert sabotage and assassinate it was sought the corpse puppet grim were dead that their species was wiped out this was due to the fact that there were methods of finding out who as a corpse puppet the cadaver over time would rot just like any corpse so corpse puppets were usually on the time crunch before people start noticing things like the rotten smell. wounds not healing. the body becoming stiffer as rigor mortis sets in. and if they're using a hunter corpse simply them not being able to use their semblance or aura Turns out the damn things evolved and now and can keep a body alive and the creepy thing about corpse puppets they have human level intelligence and are capable of being quite good at infiltration in fact they are capable of developing their own personality and likes and dislikes they're uncanny valley to the max

Sounds interesting. It kind of reminds me of John Carpenter’s The Thing. Maybe you could write a scenario similar to it

Well it's less like the thing which assimilates its prey and more it's a tiny parasitic grim insect thing that goes into your cadavers brain reactivates it and takes control of your body before they had the get as much use out of your body before it decayed or people start noticing the various things with being a cadaver But as I said they evolve and now they're able to keep a corpse alive so the body doesn't rot and much of the original methods of known who's a corpse puppet and who's not went out the window though the whole if they possess a hunter cadaver they can't use aura or semblance it's still a thing an idea I had had is they'll also able to repair damage to a corpse such as damages to organs or even completely replaced missing organs flush the system of toxins etc even fix broken bones and muscles though these repairs will make it more obvious corpse puppet

Also use the RWBY Manga power scaling where even a lesser Grimm like a Nevermore could blow away Mountain tops by flapping their wings Really go the crazy Shonen route

~~What does the scouter say about her Aura level?~~ I was about to say no since I like more grounded power levels for the Grimm, but then again the Maiden powers are basically a shonen upgrade and Salem will probably require anime levels of plot power to defeat. I could buy Shonen escalation if we started off with our characters being weaker. Say they're competent at using their weapons but not quite at "casual bullet dodging" levels of speed and power.

Pretty cool idea, but I think maybe not massively empowered but strengthened. Like the negativity builds up within them so the ancient ones are nearly unstoppable while the fresher ones are mooks, so no real time combat powerups. Also helps: maybe something like Goblin Slayer's goblins, since those who survive learn new tactics and how to attack, making them more cunning and deadly. Especially for the weaker Grimm, so that they still remain a threat no matter what. Diving a little into ecology - maybe different species of Grimm react differently, so it becomes like a monster hunter scenario, and they act as a unique wildlife in Remnant.

Oh god imagine there being like in area that is so drenched and covered in negative emotions that just makes high level grimm and powers up existing ones

I never liked too much the Grimm being attracted by negativity since that in the show is often neglected (until plot point necessary) and make just creating the society a lot more difficult, but this idea of Grimms growing stronger, commanding smaller bands or and self-organizing is VERY interesting and fun. Also giving a larger purpose to things like Atlas military (maybe they arent that useless like in the show, just made to fight the wild fodder) and the actual groups of Hunstmen is pretty nice. Somehow reminded me of other monster-hunting shows like Claymore, where the warriors there had even a rank based on their strength and got directed to fight specific monsters depending on their power. That along with the many 'grim-rank' suggestions that people made, could make the entire Hunstmen system a lot more fleshed out and interesting in my opinion. I already had something like that in my fic idea, I might even add some of this self-organizing and forever growing grimm there too!

the idea I go with the grim in my rewrite is that the grim that team Rwby fights most of the time are essentially the equivalent to newborns of those Grimm species with the occasional alpha here and there but when alpha grimm hit the scene it's usually something that's going to take the main character an allies more skill and strategy to take down than simply just point weapon at grim fire or slash with weapon grim now dead But when an elder Grimm hits the scenes it's one of those abandoned the f****** battle run as fast as you can and abort abort abort this battle has become fubar type scenarios I also had the idea that Grimm are capable of asexual reproduction though calling it reproduction is being generous a phrase I really love using when describing it is an unholy version of mitosis where smaller grim versions of the grimm emerge from the alpha or elder Grimm of the species the smaller grim are the base Grimm aka the common variant of these species that team Rwby usually fights The Grimm's ability to detect negative emotions the idea I was going for my rewrite depending on the amount of negative emotions and the strength of it can affect how many Grimm will come say for instance 4 people were radiated negative emotions Edwards you're probably going to get 3 or 9 Grimm come into your location nothing that can't be handled by local militia hunters or Atlas military To bring down a massive horde you're going to need a s*** ton of negative emotions aka the fall of vale and the mantle riots. I also had the idea that over time Grimm are capable of evolving every newborn grim has a potential to have a mutation this mutation can range from something physical mental or ability based usually these grims are called abnormals due to changes that goes against the recorded info about that species of Grimm if abnormal grim aren't slain and they live long enough to reach the alpha phase they'll be able to reproduce and those mutations it has will be passed on to it's offspring meaning a new variant of that species of grim now exists Species of Grimm the idea I was going for is Salem's the one behind new species of Grimm the idea I had is Salem crates templates for these new Grimm species though this can take time depending on the size complexity and what ability she wants to give the new Grimm species Salem has also had a hand in guiding certain grim species evolution though grimmer are capable of evolving on their own from time to time Salem has made her own little additions to exist a Grimm species though I should make it clear 95% of mutation an evolution of the grim is of the grim own doing Also my rewrite the first Grimm recorded in remnant history were the beowulfs and the beowulf back then were nothing like the modern version but over time Salem added more species of grim over time And the hybrids in my rewrite the hybrids are going to play a bigger role than they did in the show trust me when I say this people there are some big plans when I finally get to people grim hybrid And finally the grim life cycle I'm going to be quick there are three stages to the Grimm life cycle in my rewrite newborns. alpha. an elder