Cure SymphoPug

The Malachite twins are unchanged in Yang's trailer and Volume 2. Volume 5 onwards is where the changes happen

Miltia died during the Fall of Beacon, completely off screen. We don't even see the twins during Volume 3 making this come completely out of nowhere. Keep in mind this is a rewrite that had some of the speechless VYTAL tournament members dying on screen

Due to Miltia's death, Melanie has gone completely insane from grief. She constantly hallucinates that Miltia is still around, and simultaneously identifies as both of them at the same time

She takes her sister's claws in addition to her boots to fight with, and wears combinations of both their canon fits. Her semblance is that she can copy the appearance outfit and voice of other people, although she can't change her height

In Volume 5's first episode she tries to kill Roman due to his involvement with the Fall of Beacon being public knowledge, something she's fully justified in because COME ON. Of course, she fails and Roman escapes on a boat because Oz is in his head now locking him into that main character slot. This is her only involvement in Volume 5 by the way

At the tail end of Volume 6 she fights Cinder, doing worse than Neo in canon. Keep in mind that Cinder is also on like five nerfs between her injuries from Raven and being starving, among other things. Cinder's about to kill her but Arslan interrupts it so she can have a crack at Cinder, only to die in less than twenty seconds of narration. Ms Malchite gives Cinder the info she wants on where the main cast are going, and Melanie joins Cinder still wanting to kill Roman. Their final scene is them killing an Atlas officer so Melanie can disguise herself as him

In Volume 7 she helps Cinder with her plans and they meet up with Watts and Tyrian, although since that's more of a Cinder thing, saving that for her dedicated post. Believe me I got some shit to say about her in this rewrite

Toward the end of the volume Melanie meets up with Roman and Neo who are "allying" themselves with Salem's faction. She tries to kill Roman on sight but gets restrained by Cinder. Roman lies to her face that maybe getting all the relics could bring back the dead, giving her a longshot hope at Miltia coming back so she settles down for a bit

Come the volume's climax and she gets into a confrontation with Neo where they're both disguised as the same waitress. They're both unarmed and somehow Melanie loses to Neo despite Melnie's weapons more closely incorporating her bare limbs. So much for "realism" I guess. After Roman and Neo take the lamp from Atlas' vault Melanie tries to kill them. We proceed to get a comedy chase fight where JNR also try to get involved only to get KO'd. Reminder that this is the volume's climax. Melanie pins down Neo and is about to kill her but she uses her semblance to turn into Miltia, causing Melanie to freeze up letting her escape. Seems to be going the direction that Melanie isn't processing her grief, but man

Throughout Volume 7 Melanie makes several flirty remarks with Cinder, seeming to have a thing for her. Considering she's taking over Neo's canon role in the story, and with how poorly the rest of the sapphic women are treated in this rewrite, not a good sign. Wouldn't be surprised if the Curious Cat rips her in half

There's been a decent bit of discourse on how fiction portrays "insane" villains. I'll admit I'm nowhere near educated enough on this topic to make an informed call, but here's my stance. I go with a "three strikes you're out" system with a given type of "problematic" writing. Any more than two and it raises an eyebrow because that's becoming a pattern

FRWBY has three overtly insane villains. Tyrian is obvious and mostly unchanged from canon, Adam is schizophrenic to the point that he argues with his hallucinations, and Melanie's mind is so broken that she hallucinates Miltia at all times and identifies as both of them

Fixing RWBY though has a genuine cast bloat problem, for different reasons than detractors say of canon. Instead, so MUCH time is spent dedicated on these side characters that were NEVER supposed to be very important that it ACTUALLY takes away from the people who should be important

Cardin went from a racist bully who was only important to Volume 1, to a man who has a full redemption arc during the Beacon arc and gets so much more focus that he's the first thing we see in Volume 4

Arslan went from speechless tournament fodder to someone with a dedicated "failure to arc" as Celtic put it where she dies by throwing herself at Cinder in V6

Melanie went from a body for Yang to fight in her debut trailer, to someone that takes over Neo's canon role as a woman out for revenge for the death of a loved one, in her case her twin sister

Dee and Dudley went from loser huntsmen that only existed for one to die, as well as show the impacts of Lionheart betraying his nation, to heroes that save the day in Argus

SHAY D MANN went from a punching bag that only served to bring Yang to Raven, to Vernal's dad and the next leader of the Branwen tribe after they abandon Raven

Flynt, Neon, and Ciel become a stand-in for the Ace-Ops. This is an entire can of worms getting its own post

These next ones aren't quite the same as the rest given that they're more important to the canon story but the sentiment remains

Roman went from a villain who dies in the Beacon era, into the next Ozpin that drags Neo around as his accessory after they reunite and join the main cast

Neo herself went from a woman out for revenge that joins the villains into part of the main cast

And Vernal went from a meat shield that existed to protect Raven with the fake maiden plot, to in addition to that, being Raven's daughter and gets a friendship with Weiss over Volume 5's runtime

At least according to the old continuity, the Wookiees were skilled explorers, and their Clatuuvac Guild had the secrets to a number of hyperspace routes, especially through the Core (it's why the Separatists were so keen to take the planet in Revenge of the Sith)... And Chewbacca was one of the people who knew these hyperspace routes.

"If someone breaks in dude, you beat the ever-loving shit out of them real hard dude, you beat the shit out of them, Chancho, you hear me?"

"You just beat the shit out of anyone who breaks in!"

translation notes:

Fucking handsome-ass Bizarro.

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

This torches everything. And I do mean everything.

A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):

ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives

allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason

preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies

requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.

What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.

Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:

"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"

Don't let fear or feeling doomed stop you. If you're overwhelmed that's okay, but take a break, take a breath, talk to someone about how you're feeling, and continue.

I know what I am doing is wrong

I know there is an activity that looks similar that is not wrong