Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1.40.59.59-20160717064827/@comment-25936766-20171108235239

ChishioKunrin wrote: 1. That's because it immediately went into "Everything is a silhouette" art style because of Adam's Semblance.

2. Ruby's instance is literally the only inconsistency.

3. All other times that we've seen Aura shimmers, it was because their Aura hit 0%, considering that A.) When it happened to Mercury, the scoreboard clearly showed he had 0 Aura left and he later implied that his prosthetic was damaged by Yang's attack, and B.) When it happened to Amber, Pyrrha, Qrow, and Tyrian, they all got injured soon afterward. In Pyrrha, Qrow, and Tyrian's case, they were still in battle and should reasonably have still been keeping their Aura active. 1-It's not like everything becomes monochrome however. Some sparks would've still been visible. In fact, IIRC, the "Aura bits" pouring out of her remaining arm were slightly visible during the "Seeing Red" part, just not in yellow color.

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2-It's the only time that it was used super liberally. Not really the "only inconsistency" regarding the Sparkles, but the most notable in terms of whether they truly mean "hit 0%" or not.

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3-With Merc though.......there's the fact that Cinder had hacked into the system. Could've manipulated that in a way. And Merc could've deliberately dropped the Aura Guard on his prosthetic legs to make it more believable that Yang broke his legs for real.

With Pyrrha there's the fact that when the arrow hit her chest and pierced it, tons of powder-like bits that looked like her Aura in terms of color poured out. But if her Aura had hit 0% for real already, then what were those things doing there? To make it more conspicuous it was exactly the same with Yang and her arm.

For comparison, this did not happen with Amber at all, when she got hit in the back by the arrow.

And regarding Amber, the sparkles appeared when she got blasted with fire by Cinder, and while she did look hurt, she didn't look truly injured or burned, and the thing that "took her down for real" was an arrow Cinder shot at her back without Amber noticing.

Now, we know that Aura only becomes "second nature" later on. We have no real idea of Amber's level of training or experience. And Aura Guard can still be dropped if one loses focus. It's likely that it doesn't even shield against attacks that one did not expect in the slightest.

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Another thing that needs to be mentioned regarding Amber's fight, is that it doesn't really prove my idea wrong nor does it really prove it right.

The idea I proposed is, basically, that one's Aura can only block so much damage at a time without breaking it's guard for at least a moment, and the sparks show up when one receives significant damage, IOW damage that one's Aura Guard could barely block.

It doesn't necesarily mean that one hit 0% Aura, but simply that their Aura took a big hit and it might stop protecting them for a bit as it recovers. They might still have enough Aura to use their Semblance or Dust.

Of course, such a big hit could also be enough to take their Aura down to 0% for real. My point is, that the sparkles don't necesarily mean that.

With Qrow and Tyrian, fair enough, they're pros at what they do. Qrow's Semblance activating after the sparkles appeared is explained by my proposed theory, but if he had enough Aura left after the sparkles, the only real explanation for how he got cut afterwards is:

1) Aura takes much longer than I thought when it comes to recovering from big hits.

2) He lost focus and dropped his guard when he was focused looking at Ruby instead of turning to face the psycho right in front of them.

3) Tyrian was going to sting Qrow for real but Qrow had enough Aura to turn the sting into a grazing cut.

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Of course, the key fact of all this is that GMK are inconsistent and can't even follow up on the things they themselves established, creating tons of inconsistencies in the process. Aura Sparkles aren't even the only one.

I'm just trying to provide an alternate explanation to solve this question for the moment.