dopamineadderall

[dopamineadderall]

I'M CALLING IT

Blake will have a semblance upgrade where she splits herself into at least two separate beings that can function perfectly sosnsbsjsjslanskaajns

[dopamineadderall]

There's something so poetic about the fact that Yang, the girl that everyone just left behind since she was a kid. The one whose biological mom left her when she was just born. The one that doesn't look or is remotely like her mom.

Being the heart of the team and being what her mom was for her own team.

She's doesn't have any Summer feature, but she surely does have Summer courage and presence of those close to her.

[dopamineadderall]

Neptune is a boring piece of cardboard who sucks screentime out of characters I like, I hope he gets thrown in the chipper.

[dopamineadderall]

When Weiss shows her Ruby-ism… the best. Something about how Weiss acts more freely like such a lovable goof the more time she spends with RWBY, it’s like… Ruby and Weiss don’t seem like opposites then at all.

[dopamineadderall]

Winter: Blooming in the Cold

I liked Winter’s development in the latest episode and I think it is in line with what I had written in this meta:

Winter simply runs away from her problems instead. This is why she is unable to face Jacques and why she can’t accept Ironwood’s negative traits. It is because it would mean that she has to face also her own fragility and unsolved issues.

Winter’s struggle in the Atlas volumes has been about facing her feelings for her two parental figures (Jacques and Ironwood) in a healthy way.

In the last volume she hid behind her loyalty to Ironwood to avoid thinking with her own head:

Winter: Penny. The general is making hard choices so we don’t have to. For the good of all, not just a few.

This also made it easy for her to avoid aknowledging her feelings for her father. This is why she is unsucessful at properly confronting him.

However, in the most recent episode Winter finally chooses to face Ironwood and once she makes this decision, she starts overcoming all her other flaws.

She contacts her sister and (symbolically) reaches out to her family, when she had tried to avoid it in the previous volume:

Winter: Whatever the case, I am glad to see you’ve moved on. Distancing myself from the Schnee name is the most beneficial thing I’ve ever done.

She uses her Glyphs by mixing them with Dust, when she had been mostly only using the basic glyph and summons in the previous seasons:

This is also shown by her fighting style which centers mostly on summoning. As stated above, summoning is linked to individuality and personal struggle. Winter sees herself as the result of those challenges and refuses to see how much her environment and her family have actually shaped her. This refusal can be seen also in how she combines her Glyphs with Dust way less than her sister. It is as if she is not using her own semblance to its full potential precisely because she is refusing a part of herself.

Finally, once she defeats Ironwood, she is finally able to confront Jacques aka the true root of her trauma.

She tells him they are going to save him, but also makes clear she is not doing it out of love or care for him.

She is expressing her feelings of anger to him, but is also making clear they won’t stop her from doing the right thing. She is aknowledging she was hurt, but is also making clear she won’t let this hurt control her.

At the same time, she is probably the one who truly manages to make Jacques understand how much he has wronged his children. After all, he has mistreated them to the point that his oldest daughter is not happy about saving him from certain death.

[dopamineadderall]

“I thought the idea of falling through Remnant into a new world was exciting. I never understood why she was so sad when she made it back home. But now it makes sense…”

“She wasn’t the same girl anymore.”

Since we all seem to be in agreement that ‘The Girl Who Fell Through the World’ is alluding/foreshadowing to Team RWBY, and likely Cinder, falling into the void outside reality at the end of the volume, I thought it would be interesting to go over this conversation where the story is first brought up.

In particular, I think this conversation hints that there will be some form of ‘time alteration’ between Team RWBY falling into the void and their eventual return, relative to the rest of Remnant and their friends, family and allies. Specifically, the ‘Year Inside, Hour Outside’ variety where very little time will have passed on Remnant compared to Team RWBY spending much more time in the place that I am theorizing to be Remnant’s Afterlife (more on that detail in a future post).

Obviously, when we heard the name ‘The Girl Who Fell Through the World’, many of us immediately thought of ‘Alice in Wonderland’, a story in which a girl goes on a grand adventure in a magical world, only to return to find her home exactly as she left it as if no time had past at all. Of course, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ is far from the only story to use this format, even The Wizard of Oz of course. And one aspect that most of these stories share is the protagonist returning from their magical adventure to find their home unchanged, as if no time had passed at all.

Now of course, the reverse of this trope is also quite common in stories and folk-tales. Where a person takes what seems��like a short trip to a magical world, only to return to find that months, years or even centuries have passed in the comparatively short time they were away. However, I don’t think this version is going to be the one we see. The common thread among these ‘Hour Inside, Year Outside’ stories is that protagonist’s time in the magical place seems rather brief and mundane. They don’t go on some grand, life-changing magical adventure. That’s what makes the time jump when they return all the more shocking.

Team RWBY’s time in this ‘other world’ is going to be a huge, Life-Changing deal. As Ozpin foreshadows in the episode quote: “They won’t be the same girls anymore.” They will have experienced massive, Earth-Shattering revelations that they’ll need to convey to their friends and allies, a task that will be made all the more challenging if, to them, Team RWBY will have been gone for almost no time at all.

And that’s not even touching on the fact that Team RWBY will in all likelihood be bringing Cinder, who is probably a good chunk through her redemption arc, back with them. Something that’s going to be rather… difficult to sell to their friends.

Long story short, I’m personally betting on Team RWBY’s grand magical underworld adventure through Volume 9 to take a long time from their perspective, but only about five or so minutes from the viewpoint of their friends back on Remnant.

Also, Team RWBY being gone a long time from their perspective presents a perfect opportunity for some classic anime time-skip changes and powerups.

[dopamineadderall]

Weiss: Your existence is confusing.

Ruby: Why?

Weiss: Your presence is annoying, but the thought of anything bad happening to you upsets me.

[dopamineadderall]

seasons, vaults, and maidens

(spoilers for v8 ch12)

when RWBY and Penny arrive at the vault, i thought that it was odd that the vault for the Winter Maiden would be a flower field, which would probably be more suited for Spring.

then i remembered.

back in v5, the Spring vault had a desert inside, and, while not as heavily associated like the one above, a desert would surely be more associated with Summer than Spring.

even though we’ve only seen half of the vaults, it would seem the seasons shown inside are one season ahead, so to speak, of the season represented by the Maiden required to open it.

and then i realised something else.

while all the Maidens have control over all the elements, the ones we’ve seen use their powers the most appear to have a preferred element that they use. Cinder’s is (obviously) fire, Raven’s appears to be ice, and Penny’s seems to be air.

and again, their preferred elements don’t really seem to align with their representative season (especially Raven). like the vaults, the seasons their preferred elements represent are one out of sync, but unlike the vaults which are one season ahead, their elements are one season behind. fire (summer) for Fall, ice (winter) for Spring, and air (fall) for Winter.

no, i don’t know what this means, if it means anything. but i think it’s very cool to see how all the seasons are connected to each other and always linked together.

very neat, crwby. very neat indeed.

[dopamineadderall]

Can we talk about Weiss? How it's probably been fifteen minutes since Emerald joined their side and maybe ten minutes since Ironwood dropped his genocide livestream and she's already clearly explaining all the information they have and what they need to do. She quickly comes up with a plan using Emerald's semblance which I'm not even sure was ever clearly explained to the characters in showtime to take down IRONWOOD and his bomb. THE BIG POWERFUL ATLAS GENERAL WHO'S HOLDING A CITY HOSTAGE. Because who better than Weiss is used to taking down grown men drunk on power.

She's the one talking to Ambrosius in the vault too. She's got all the information and I'm betting that she played an important part in carefully crafting the words of their wish too. I love how time and time again Weiss shows that she's not only kind but she's also strong and smart too.

[dopamineadderall]

The Vault of the Relic of Creation:

What it’s trying to evoke:

What I saw (and gave me a heart attack):

[dopamineadderall]

MAJOR SPOILERS

Okay I keep seeing people being confused about what happened to Penny and then using their confusion to irresponsibly criticize/make theories so before I post about anything else, here’s Ruby’s actual request:

Ruby: We want you to make a new version of her, using her exact same robot parts. Ambrosius: That was… curiously-worded, girl. Ruby: An exact copy of her would include the virus. An exact copy of her without the virus would cease to exist the second you make something else […] We want you to create a new version of her, using her existing robotic parts, taking the virus with them […] You can’t destroy; it’s against the rules. But you wouldn’t be destroying her.

And here’s what Ambrosius says he’ll try (out loud, at least):

Ambrosius: Okay, but if I take the robot parts out of her, that would leave… Blake: Penny. The girl who’s always been there underneath it. Ambrosius: […] But a soul, without a complete body – what would be left? Ruby: I don’t know. I guess you just have to get creative.

And what he ends up making looks like this on the inside:

What I think Ambrosius did was separate everything that exists that makes up Penny into her Aura/soul/Maiden powers and her robotic body/the virus, in order to take the robotic body/virus out of Penny, rather than take Penny out of the robotic body. She already exists, so he’s not making anything new that will disappear – the Aura will manifests as a natural body, and the robotic body containing the virus is the “miracle,” hence why it dissolves after he creates the portals.

More importantly, I see people fretting about what this will do to Penny’s character arc. “She’s interesting because of her struggle with herself, but now that’s been resolved! She’s just a normal person now!” But that’s not what’s happened at all. Ambrosius is making something new, and he himself has no idea what she is or what the consequences will be. Is that not what Penny’s story has been about? She still is something different, and always will be – but she’s a person with a soul all the same. If anything, she’ll have to do more self-discovery in this new state.

So, TL;DR: Penny’s not a fully-flesh human, but she’s no longer a robot and does not contain the virus. This proposes new questions, and certainly does not mean her arc is over.

[dopamineadderall]

The thing I keep seeing people saying about this episode is "I have mixed feeling about the quick resolutions".

And I just feel the need to point out:

That's exactly what everyone was saying after As Above, So Below last Volume. And remember what happened?

Just give it another episode, guys, shit's about to fall apart again.

[dopamineadderall]

I’m not sure exactly how relevant this might be, but I just noticed that both Ruby and Weiss close their eyes when they summon Ambrosius. Considering that the Staff pointedly doesn’t require a password like the Lamp does, I wonder if this detail is significant?

[dopamineadderall]

One detail I think will be important to keep in mind going forward:

In the sequence that seems to strongly indicate that Team RWBY will be falling into the void in the pseudo-vault, Ruby reaches up towards the Staff of Creation floating far above her…

…which in turn is now being held by Penny, the Maiden of Creation.

Meaning that I think it’s a pretty safe bet that wherever Team RWBY might be going by the end of this volume, Penny will not be joining them.

[dopamineadderall]

Winter Schnee in Volume 8, Chapter 12  |  Creation ↳ Requested by Anonymous

[dopamineadderall]

Weiss just spun the relic like how Ruby spins Cresent Rose show me the arc where Ruby had to teach that move to Weiss and proceeded to get thwacked with her own weapon every five seconds

[dopamineadderall]

Weiss V8C12