Sometimes being a scientist is one of the most difficult professions you can be in this world. What you choose to specialize in makes so much of a difference in your quality of living, and if you choose wrong, life will never move easily for you. Sometimes you may not accomplish a damn thing with your brilliance and talents for a variety of reasons. Maybe you choose something that, in the minds of the majority, is pointless and irrelevant to study; I have met many people who think a field such as botany and zoology are pointless endeavours. It is difficult to achieve much in some fields of study without anyone to help fund your work.
On the note of funds, sometimes it is the difficulty in testing and studying your chosen field. Studying our world at an atomic level is no easy feat, and producing the necessary equipment to do so is costly to the point that even a Schnee might pale at the thought of doing so (not that they can really get much paler.)
Sometimes the life of a scientist is such a thankless job. The engineering and science into creating efficient and cost effective dust-based combustion engines was no easy task, and yet the brilliant Arya Westalin, a woman ahead of her time, is barely known by those outside of the field. Even other scientists know little of her, a tragedy truly.
The difficulty of testing is always a barrier as well with some subjects, and sometimes it is not just the difficulty of physically testing something that is an issue. Whereas trying to physically study a black hole is not something that will be accomplished anytime soon due to the obvious difficulties of doing so, studying microorganisms and their effect on larger organisms can almost be just as difficult. Ethics and morality can be a strong obstacle to overcome as well, as truly it is not difficult to infect a human or faunus with a virus and to observe what occurs; getting others to willingly allow such procedures is the hard part. Even finding individuals who were infected with such a virus due to simple bad luck can be hard to study, as now concern for their well being and rights such as privacy can get in the way. I think the dangers of working with such subjects also does not to be stated; danger being another hurdle for scientists to overcome.
I do not diminish the difficult and dangerous work of people like hunters or even the miners deep in Schnee dust mines, two groups I have closely worked with for a number of my long years, but science and its followers are so often forgotten in that they too face all of these issues.
I am one such person, lost to the annals of history and chosen mostly to be forgotten by the majority. My work suffers from all the issues listed above as people discount my ideas and my work as pointless, thus I have no one to fund my work, people also detest my methods for acquiring materials for my study, and as such I find myself facing the points of spears and swords, edge of axes and maces, and the barrels of countless firearms.
To those who may read this and may have not seen my thesis put forth so long ago, I want you to try and understand what I want to accomplish, what it is I wish to prove and expand upon. I know that if we truly follow my inquisition into the theory I am going to present, then our battles against the grimm will improve dramatically. I will not say that my ideas will lead to total victory, but I know that it will improve our odds greatly.
The controversial theory I present is that despite the magical appearance and effects auras and semblances display and do, I truly believe that they are still completely explainable through an understanding of how our physical world works. The hunter who forms fire in their hands has a semblance that simply combusts the matter floating just above their palms, or the huntress who can run along horizontal and vertical surfaces has a semblance that creates possibly a strong magnetic force between their feet and the surface, or maybe that semblance imparts some other kind of force to give the huntress that ability.
I believe this so adamantly, because I have learned through my many years on this planet how to replicate other semblances with my own. I can will matter to do my bidding, to solidify hydrogen in my very hand despite the warmth around it and melt titanium in the other hand and contain the liquid as if it was held by a container that you can not see. I do not mention the examples in the paragraph above as random ones, as I have replicated both.
Forcing the very molecules all around me to cease their motions we call "heat", directing all of it towards only a few above my hand to heat them up enough to combust the very air there. I walked along ceilings and walls through the very method I described above, causing objects that normally display extremely weak magnetic attractions to become strong enough to allow me to defy gravity.
I can replicate other semblances, not only because my semblance allow me to manipulate the very matter that makes up our world, but because I also understand just how our world works. It is my understanding of the physics and chemistry of our very world that grants me the ability to mimic other semblances through the use of my own. I in no way claim to understand what allows Semblances to do this level of manipulation of our physical world, that is a study I will surely look into once I can truly prove my current theory on them. The theory that the metaphysical is still bound to the physical world around us, that the actions of the metaphysical can still be explained by the rules of the physical world.
More importantly, the more we try to understand that semblances can be replicated, the more we can use such knowledge to our benefit. Some may be easy to replicate because the science behind them is easy to see and understand, but let me use the Schnee's as an example. Imagine if we were able to understand how the glyphs affected the physical world, and through that understanding replicate the process. If we were able to mimic their glyphs of speed to produce faster and more efficient travel methods, combined with their glyphs that allow them to cancel momentum, we could create an extremely fast, cheap, and safe transportation system. This is but a small example of what we could do, and the more semblances we understand, the more we could potentially replicate to strengthen ourselves as a whole.
It angers me to no end, to see the world shun me despite my attempts to improve, and ultimately save us all. I don't pretend to be a saint in any sense of the word, but surely people must see that what I present as a possible future is beautiful. Those very semblances used to combat the grimm could be mass-produced, so that all our guardians could be slinging fire and obtain extreme mobility to finally improve our standing in this ancient war against the shadows made real.
The actions I take, the criminal record I have developed, it was born from a world that ignored me. I do not want to hurt the world, but to further my studies I am forced to make such actions to get what is necessary to properly understand this complex science. That shade Salem is out there, she is busy, and I know for a fact that my theory, if proven true and put into use, will give us the edge we are going to need to fight her. An edge will desperately be needed, since I know I am only one of a few who are combating her machinations.