#( ARE GRIMM REVERSE JABBERWALKERS )

[bestworstcase]

“seize the powers of their creators and perfect their own design” that’s how the tree works. that’s what the tree does. continual self-directed refinement towards the you you want to be. the gods slaughtered humanity for demanding their birthright

does she know

[flightofaqrow]

/// You know, I’ve been with-a-grain-of-salt enjoying @bestworstcase ‘s analysis from the sidelines, but the vol 9 commentary has been particularly enjoyable. I caught up on most of those posts, thought about some of the commentary leading up to the volume from the trailers, keeping me up until 4am. I promptly then woke up just shy of four hours later with my eyes popped right open, everything having percolated in my sleep, because I’m calling it right now:

1) Something something you can’t make something from nothing, not everything is as it seems, time is wonky.  The denizens of the Ever After are grimm. The characters do not die, but “ascend” by falling through a hole in the ground which a grimm in the real world then crawls out of.

2) Something something the god of darkness is actually more benevolent (doesn’t insta-kill his creations when they fail) and the god of light can’t do shit on his own (Ambrosius’s creations were pulled from the same pool?). we saw the color schemes of god of light and god of darkness shift. We are in a god of darkness realm now where everything is in reverse, (they went through the looking glass. A mirror world.)

less certain, but makes sense:

3) Something something this is Salem’s Lost Fable, not one of Oz’s stories. Salem is the girl who fell through the world (a grimm pool) and manipulated her way back out of the Ever After and can now influence grimm. Alyx is Salem. Alyx is the protagonist (hero? anti-hero?). Salem gets her hero arc, though not entirely honorable.

4) Something something grimm are believed to have no souls, that’s why. They don’t die, they get sent back to the Ever After. Unless they get eaten by the Jabberwalker. Unless they get hit with the god of light’s Silver Eyes. Summer Rose was used as a prototype hound, (dipped in a grimm pool?). Summer Rose is the Jabberwalker. Trying to “fix” her little god-of-light-now-dark corner. Trying to find something. Something something the heart never forgets, she’s going to find her emblem and remember her promise.

5) Something something the pressing question to every citizen is “What are you?” This is the land of choice. 

6) Something something Cat Most Curious helps them along their way, but I haven’t slotted that piece yet. Is he the spirit of choice? Showing them possibilities through questions? Soothing their hurts here where the crown in the real world caused anguish? I’m not sold, but there’s... something.

7) The tree is the Beacon vault? It comes to you when you’ve made your choice? Can they open the door to get back home? How without a maiden? (Or will they have one? Or bc time is wonky will someone else open it from the other side?)

[bestworstcase]

anyway. the god of light went out of his way to ensure that humans wouldn’t/couldn’t reincarnate + the jabberwalker, animated by light’s breath, ends the cycle of rebirth for afterans + light’s first two creations are both ageless and cut off from the tree until they die + ‘let him rest’ + ‘you will reincarnate, but in a manner that ensures you are never alone’ and what that means is ozma keeps his memories and overwrites somebody else.

what the fuck kind of problem does the god of light have with ascension.

he and his brother are emanations of the tree, meant to cultivate the wilderness into a paradise. (squints at the lost fable.) the smith remarks that balance can’t be made by force or calculation—this is a remark on light’s understanding of balance, specifically. light is very hung up on maintaining ‘the rules we agreed upon’ by whatever means necessary, no matter how horrifically cruel, and continually pushes his brother to do the same until dark relents and kills everybody.

and for some reason light sees ascension as antithetical to his purpose. to balance as he conceives of it. i wonder if it’s because he views it as a destructive process? while jaune is in ozpin mode he says the tree is death, it erases you—and while that’s not true, it’s a mindset the god of light very plausibly might hold. he is trying to design a perfect order that will never, ever need to change. he puts great emphasis on ‘learning from mistakes’ (not that he’s ever truly managed to learn from his own) and makes a point of ensuring that his reincarnating champion never forgets anything. the tree is change and growth, but change and growth require destruction. you have to be reborn new (unless you’re a living human when you go to the tree, in which case you can return spiritually changed if you so choose.)

& he hates that so much he has millions of human souls dreaming in a cosmic morgue somewhere, rather than let them flow through the tree and become something he cannot control.

…grimm are reverse-jabberwalkers, maybe. if the jabberwalker eats an afteran, his prey is cut off from the cycle of rebirth. humans are cut off from the cycle of rebirth, so if a grimm eats a human… stares at all the faunus-grimm connections and the faunus myth about transformative liberation. well okay then.

[bestworstcase]

unrelated. “it’s not how it seems; well i suppose it is, but not the way you think, if you think like alyx… which it seems like you do!”

& “i gave him something new to do for the moment”

huntresses are heroes. we protect people who can’t protect themselves. eight volumes standing tall, bulwark between the grimm and the rest of the world. slaying monsters. keeping people safe

it’s not the real jabberwalker it’s neo. the first one walloped ruby pretty good but even doubled in size wby dusted it like it was nothing, and as soon as it shattered they recognized it as neo’s handiwork

go, the cat says. we’ll hold them off. run, says the rusted knight.

they run away and ruby looks over her shoulder and the hawker gets torn apart. they run away and the teapot lady sobs in terrified devastation and weiss whispers i am so tired of leaving places in ashes

the thing is they could have won this fight, easily. the real jabberwalker is a coward, neo’s constructs can only take a few hits each, and she only has so much aura.

but they’re so broken down. so scared. all this lacerating self-doubt lurking underneath.

there’s no shame in abstaining only in retreat

the cat tells them to go

the cat saved them from the red prince. the cat intervened to protect ruby during the herbalist’s trial. the cat gives them permission to retreat and they do because for all the “i am a huntress!” declarations they made an hour ago something broke in all of them when they lost the fight to save penny

something really critical happened here that’s getting lost in the wuh mind control noise—they just LEFT. weiss pulls ruby away and ruby watches the hawker die; weiss sees the rising smoke the terrified departures the teapot lady crying helplessly and ruby takes her by the hand and leads her silently away. these two blame themselves so much for letting atlas fall, for losing penny, for not knowing what happened next. and now jaune’s about to tell them exactly what happened next.

whether or not the cat ‘brainwashed’ the hawker (<- thoughts still cooking) i think the more salient concern for the kids, ruby and weiss in particular, will be that they ran away that they, within the ideological framework of the huntress system, let this happen something about the reversal of huntress-defends-civilian to civilian-dies-for-huntress here. like this is the locus of everything. the point of inflection. this is why they’re HERE