#like Ruby not being there just makes her mom a way more depressed person and the grandma is way more depressed...like cmon guys | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

foressfaction · 1 year ago

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:Ticci Toby:{A Rewrite}

WARNING:: This story contains EXTREMELY triggering topics such as Domestic/Child/Substance abuse, Death, harsh language, GORE and dissociation triggers.

This story mentions mental illnesses and disorders such as Depression, PTSD, ADHD, and Tourette's Syndrome.

!!TICS MAY BE TRIGGERING!!

Prologue

So it begins. The boy tugged on the skirt of a middle aged woman. She was his mom. Her hair was short, cut into a nice layered bob, though it had grown over time, it at one point was a pixie cut. She had diamond shaped ruby earrings on, in an attempt to look formal. Her name, it rolled off the tongue very smoothly, Connie Rogers.

"Why are there so many old people here?" The brunette boy asked. Connie's son, who's name also seemed pretty vague. Tobias Rogers.

The woman was quick to correct him, shushing him loudly while murmuring under her breath with a hint of embarrassment on her face. "Toby! Haha, I'm so sorry about him," she yearned off the stares she got from her son's odd choice of a question. And a rather rude one too. Toby had always been quite the weird kid. He said what was on his mind, whatever it was, and when he wanted to say it. Maybe the question would've been better at a funeral, or a grandma's birthday party. Do grandma's have birthday parties? Toby wouldn't know honestly. He never did meet his mom's mom. That's a funny way to put it.

The two were currently at a 'meet the teacher' day. Y'know, the day about a week before the first day of school. For Toby, he will be starting the 6th grade. To him, school has always been a joke. He barely passed 5th grade and was one point away from having to be stuck doing summer school. He had never been a people person either, especially with other kids his age.

"Are any of these people actually going to be important?" Toby asked, earning a glance from his mom. Her dark circles are more visible than ever.

"I'm sure they will be, look, that's your principal, you should probably go say hi, or....something. I have a lot of paperwork to fill out. Go have a look around, stretch your legs, we've been walking all day."

Toby made a spitting noise as if he thought that was one of the most boring things she could've said. He bared his braced teeth. Meet his principal? He didn't realize going to a different school would be so tiring. Toby eventually left her side, wandering out into the empty halls. Oh so that's why there was a big sign on the door that read 'staff only.' Not like that mattered to him, no one saw, no one had to know. Despite it being a day for his entire grade to be here, it was almost like the halls were abandoned. His mind was always a little trickster, it would make him believe something when that 'something' isn't in existence. Toby took some steps forward, then found himself walking further away from the chattering of the people from the room he was just in. His entire body felt cold, chills running up and down his broken nerves.

It was kind of eerie, not gonna lie. The only thing Toby could hear was the pitter patter on his own shoes, the same old shoes he's had for years. Honestly surprised the souls haven't torn off yet. The boy found himself turning multiple corners and met with endless hallways of lockers. He's never seen a locker before. There were thousands of them, atleast, that's what his mind was showing him. 'Did I take my medicine?' was the first thing he thought to himself as he continued down these narrow halls. He was over thinking the reason why his mom shooed him away, probably because he was a distraction, or knew he needed one. As uncanny as this felt, Toby found himself quite occupied. He had started counting the lockers, every one of them, and remembered the exact number of lockers on the 8th hallway.

That's suddenly when he saw that one part of the hallway's lights were off. It was right smack in the middle of the hallway, so why did those lights not work? Toby grew curious so he started to inch towards the area. That's when he noticed they weren't just off, but flickering a little.

He knew this feeling a little too well. That feeling of being watched, judged. He couldn't quite put his finger on it. He felt the air grow thick around him, as if gross, slimy water had just been poured onto him, soaking him to the heavy weight of being drenched. This of course actually didn't happen, but it felt like it did.

Toby turned around quickly, hearing something behind him, then again in front of him. He thought he was going to give himself whiplash from all of the darting of his head. Nothing was there though, nothing of sight, atleast. When Toby looked back to the hallway where the lights were supposedly off, he noticed they were working now. This caught him a little off guard, but as he looked closer, he could see that even further down than before, lights were off.

It was leading him further down the hallway?

Toby shook his head. "No that's not real." He whispered. "That's not r-real," he once again whispered with a little more voice. He felt that if the longer he looked, the more that feeling of tightness would increase.

Toby turned his back to the suffering lights, inching his way back to the room he was in not too long ago, with his mom. He turned the corner, only to nearly run into the frantic woman. "There you are, goodness, I thought you left this building." She spoke in a rather worried tone, taking his hand into hers, her rings were cold against his fingers. "You're really warm, are you okay? Are you sweating?"

Toby looked at her quickly, confusion sweeping him. "Am i?" He asked out while taking his free arm and wiping his forehead. Behold, bits of what felt like condensation rubbed off his skin. "Well we can forget meeting your teachers, I have your schedule here. I don't want you overheating again in all those layers, you know you can't feel temperatures to an extreme, you know this." She slightly scolded. Toby was just confused. He didn't feel too hot, he didn't know he was sweating. He does struggle with a certain disorder where he could technically place his hand on a lit stove and not feel a thing, despite his flesh melting off and severely damaging his hand. If anything it would just feel warm.

It was sad to be reminded he wasn't like the other normal kids in his grade, and certainly wasn't looking forward to another year of the constant reminders either. "I will be more aware next time." He stated, tone sounding a bit degraded.

It wasn't long before the two brunettes were on their way home. Toby was gazing out of the window, sitting in the backseat with his legs pulled up into a hug. The ride was silent, but his mom had never been too talkative after the last few months. Things weren't too good at home. Though he was going to go to a different school, they still lived in this dump of a house. Denver was a nice city, but in winters it was hard to stay warm, and in summers it was hard to stay cool. The house overall just about had it.

And the family knew that.

Toby finally broke the silence as the car hit a few road bumps. "There's exactly 286 lockers in the school." There was a moment of silence, but when he expected an answer there was nothing. "Mom?" He called out, not moving from his position but did lean his head over to try to peek into the rear view mirror that hung on the roof of the car.

He could see makeup running down her face, hands clenched onto the steering wheel tightly. If he listened closely, he could hear sniffling.

Toby knew better than to barge into questions but this time he knew the answer. He would have the same reason to cry, but lately he hadn't been able to feel much emotion at all. He, again, only saw life as a joke, nothing was real, no matter how hard he pushed away the reality. A 20 minute drive full of sniffles and awkward silence finally ended as the brown Subaru pulled into the cracked driveway to an old two story house.

The thing looked as if it was gonna fall in at any given moment. On the inside it was pretty big, still had carpet though it was old and stained, very stained.

A couple of whistles left Toby, followed by a few uncomfortable popping sounds from his neck. He had something called Tourette's Syndrome which caused the boy to jerk and tic uncontrollably. It was very uncomfortable for both him and those having to witness it. If he wasn't careful, he could accidentally hit someone, or himself. Which he does occasionally. Toby stepped out of the car to see the man standing on the porch, cigarette in hand. Seemed like he didn't see them pull into the driveway. Toby knew he did.

Toby noticed his mom left the folder of his school rules and other stuff in the car on the dashboard. He opened the door to reach in and grab it, his hand slipping with a slight tic, accidentally honking the horn, making the woman jump.

"Fuck- sorry, fuck! Sorry!" The boy jumped to coo out as he held the folder up. "Got it-"

Toby quickly closed the door to head inside, hearing the man spur something up. "Fuckin' boy." He muttered in a southern accent.

Toby paid no mind as it was something he was used to, rushing into the house and sitting the folder onto the counter, opening it and looking at all the papers. "Oh there were 287 lockers..I was off by one." He had his finger on where it stated the fact. He didn't understand why he was so fixated on the locker count. Gave him a distraction probably.

Toby moved the papers just enough to peer at his schedule, something he didn't have at his old school. "Wait mom? Why did you sign me up for public classes?"

The folder was snagged away from his hands, probably giving him a paper cut. "Stop complainin' and suck it up, it's about time you learn with other kids." The man scolded. Toby could see the vein popping from his forehead. The same shaggy blond buzz cut blanketed the man's head. His dad; he carried a name that would make anyone grimace just hearing it, Jacob Rogers. "Dad!" Toby tried to take the folder back but that only earned him a smack on the hand with the rather hard plastic outsides of the yellow folder.

Toby glared slightly as he took a deep breath.

The brunette woman strolled in, setting her bag down on the small island counter as she rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Look, Toby, I tried to suggest special education, but they said that it was time for you to get to know your grade better, plus wouldn't it be great to hang around people who...Actually respond when you talk to them?" She spoke out, slightly raising her voice.

"But they were nice to me," Toby added, narrowing his eyebrows, taking glances at the folder in his dad's hands. "Can i atleast see it closer? Again?" He eyed the man after asking.

"Your sister takes public classes, so can you. It's time we stop babying you, you're 13 years old for fucks sake. Act like it."

"Jacob!" Connie shouted with an offended tone. She knew the man was an asshole but she usually tried to defend her kid's opinions. Their marriage hadn't been the best lately, especially after her husband started to waste their money and abuse alcoholic substances. Speaking of which, the blonde man held a dark green bottle in his hand that wasn't clinging to Toby's school information.

The second Toby noticed that his mom saw the bottle, he knew they were about to bicker.

He just didn't want to be in the middle of that, excusing himself from where he took a seat.

Toby disappeared upstairs to one of the rooms he called his own. It wasn't much, just a carpeted floor, a dark blue rug with matching bed sheets. Completely unintentional. His shelves consisted of vintage toys he never touched, books, a lamp, and other nick nacks. He only ever kept one thing out, a stuffed cow. Why? He honestly grew an attachment to it. The poor thing was ripped up in many places, had patches on the stomach and left side of the head. It looked derpy as hell but he loved it to death.

Sometimes though when he holds it, he can't help but remember the time he 'played tug-o-war' with his dad who eventually ripped the head completely off while trying to take it from him. His only reason was because 'he was too old.' No one is too old for a comfort item.

Toby crawled onto the bed and took the cow plush into his hands and stared down at it. He gently gnawed at the inside of his cheek, a habit he developed a while ago. "Today isn't the best day, Mr. Cowbells, will you make it better? At least until Lyra gets home.." He hugged the stuffie to his chest and stared down at his sheets. It wasn't long before what he assumed would happen started up. He heard their loud voices downstairs. He knew it wasn't going to be too long until he heard thrashes and door slams.

It was like this all day, everyday.

All day, everyday.

••••••I

#creepypasta #slenderverse #foressfaction #ticci toby #toby rogers #ticci toby creepypasta #ticcitobyrewrite #creepypastarewrite #fanfiction

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lambilegs · 3 days ago

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I was at the bus stop and started to think about the end of the movie and the thought of Lee being haunted by the devil jumped my mind,like,how would she be like after the movie?

Would she try to find other ways to end the whole doll cycle thing,Or If Satan would change her memories like in the whole movie,or would she resist Satan's manipulation until she became like Ruth.

What are your thoughts on Lee after the movie?

-👹

thoughts on lee post-longlegs

note: thank you SO much for this request!! it's such an interesting idea to explore, and I definitely felt it was the right timing to do it today, since I just finished rewatching it. just to warn, it's pretty sad and quite dark ;-; contains: mentions of anxiety, depression, trauma, survivor's guilt, the murders. also, wanna disclaim that I am, by no means, a professional or expert in mental health, so these explorations of what lee's psyche and social behaviours would be like are purely speculation, and I can't say they accurately or for sure reflect what a person in her situation would actually go through post-traumatic event

okay, so from what oz has said, it seems like the devil was done with his work after lee's mom died. like, the devil just wanted to push lee to do something SO fucked up like kill her own mother, and that was kind of the last thing that had to happen to satisfy me (the devil's an asshole tbh)

I think with her doll being destroyed, and her mom being dead, lee would no longer be plagued by the devil in the sense that her memories and senses are altered with certain pieces being hidden away from her. nor would she have her psychic abilities anymore, since the devil is essentially "done" with messing with her

but, in every other sense, I think she would be entirely haunted by him. she spent twenty years of her life not even knowing a third person lived in her basement, because she was that intensely manipulated in what she saw, heard and detected. even though she knows it's not happening anymore, I think she'd be constantly caught in a web of self-doubt. what if there's someone in her cottage, and she doesn't know? what if in a moment of weakness, the devil returns and seizes her life? what if there's someone watching her from outside, but she just can't see because of a higher power? thoughts like this would always be poisoning her mind, shattering any chance at peace and keeping her, at least psychologically, haunted

while destroying the doll would, of course, make ruby aware of all that occurred with her family, lee knows how much worse it is to live in that perpetual state of blocked memories and entrapped trauma. her mother hiding what happened did nothing but destroy herself, lee and their home. lee's torn between the decision at first, overcome with pained sympathy for ruby, ruby who is so much like herself. does she choose blissful ignorance where ruby lives her life detached from her own memories? or horrific self-awareness that it might take years, her entire life, to move on from? lee almost, just almost, leans for the first option, but no. the cycle has to end. she can't dictate ruby to the same fate she herself lived, she can't sequester ruby to a life of feeling lost

if upon arrival, her coworkers are able to destroy the doll, and ruby becomes aware of all that happened, lee, just as traumatized, would be far from being considered suitable enough to look after the girl. lee isn't even sure if she'd want to do that. she's completely shattered, devastated, enraged and filled with nauseating panic all the time now. she can't look after ruby, ruby who deserves so much better. but, at the same time, her and ruby now understand each other more than anyone. two people who were forced to passively exist amongst the horrors their families went through.

ruby would probably now live with relatives of anna or carter's, and at first, lee and her aren't allowed to see each other, the family worried that it would only cause memories of that day to resurface for ruby. but, ruby is just as insistent. lee saved her, and now that more details of the case have been exposed, she's aware that lee and her are two sides of the same coin. and so, lee starts visiting ruby once a month, and the two of them catch up in their awkward little way, go on a walk, sit in the living room and watch television. ruby sometimes asks lee about the cases, what happened to lee and her mom, and despite the way her throat tightens, lee forces herself to answer

however, if ruby's doll wasn't able to get destroyed, and the devil still had a hold on her, it would probably be harder for lee to visit. seeing ruby in the haze, not even aware of what's happened to her family, haunts lee, and she can't bear to see the girl in that state. one of the worst things is the immense guilt she feels -- for having woken up too late, for having reached carter's house too late, for having attempted to shoot the doll too late. she'd feel this guilt no matter what, but I feel it'd be even worsened by the mental image of ruby's blank face continuously flashing in her mind

she'd feel a pit of guilt about her mom, too. all of this was because ruth wanted to protect lee. if lee hadn't gone outside to search for kobble on jaunary thirteenth, maybe none of this would've happened. if she hadn't been so reckless to interact with him, maybe none of this would've happened. if her mom hadn't loved her so much, maybe none of this would've happened

for months, she's off from work. she's always either in a state of panic or numbness. she can't sleep, she can barely look after herself or be responsible for anything regarding. she's constantly on edge, plagued by visions of kobble, her mom, the carters, the case, and even when she's distracted, they're always there, at the back of her mind, following her. in addition to that, there've been rumours and talk about her at the bureau since she claimed that the longlegs' case was involved with the supernatural. to her, there was no use in lying. she held hope that someone, anyone would believe her, and after what happened with her mom, she no longer had it in her to lie. for any reason. so, yeah, because of all this, she self-isolates, takes a long period of time off from work, and heads into intensive therapy. honestly, after all this, she might resign from law enforcement completely, for I could definitely see her too traumatized by what happened to deal with more violence, more cases, more terrorized families

honestly her life post-longlegs is filled with trauma and the remnants of what happened, but I'd like to think she eventually heals, because lee really deserves it after everything :/

#writing this made me so sad for lee :((#not your fault ofc dear 👹 anon!!#I just get sad thinking of her life post-longlegs :(#lee harker fanfiction #lee harker #longlegs #longlegs fanfiction #longlegs 2024

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itsclydebitches · 2 years ago

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Hey so I don't wanna obsess over tiny details in RWBY but like. what was the point of having Penny call out to Ruby at the beginning of episode 1? We never SEE Penny, we only see Neo's illusions of her that were used to emotionally and mentally torture Ruby. Why was that a detail they included if there wasn't going to be any payoff for it?

For me personally, this is made worse by the fact that I didn't even know it was Penny. I wasn't able to identify the voice - I think I originally leaned towards Yang, or hearing Summer for the first time - and I didn't realize it was Penny until another poster mentioned her name being there in the script. Which, you know, could 100% just be a me problem, but there's definitely no payoff if you don't even know what character is meant to be haunting our protagonist.

Looking at Volume 9 as a whole, that detail feels like a miniature version of the sword issue: they introduced this reference to Penny (call out/finding sword), had Ruby get emotional about it (gasp/crying), and then tossed it aside without ever looking back (Ruby never brings up hearing Penny/the Prince trashes the sword and Ruby doesn't care enough to take action). There are so many ways that both of these ideas could have actually led to something. What if the Ever After was aligned with the afterlife, rather than Neo getting an over-powered semblance? What if Penny's sword was an option from the Blacksmith that Ruby chose? What if she heard Penny talking to her throughout the whole Volume, a kind of psychological haunting? What if Penny was the only one Neo crafted, making Ruby's grief over her death the undeniable cornerstone of drinking the tea? As it stands, both ideas just... peter out. Actually no, "peter out" is a gradual end whereas here nothing ever comes of these ideas in the first place, or they're bluntly abandoned. Honestly, stuff like this is included with no payoff because RT doesn't know what they want out of their story and, when they do know, they don't understand how to bring that to fruition. Is Ruby grieving over Penny? Their loss in Atlas? Freaking out over how she can't beat Salem? Does she want to be in charge? Does she also hate being "forced" to be in charge? Is she missing her mom? Does she even remember her mom? Is she frustrated with her team? With Jaune? Does she know Jaune killed Penny? Does she have thoughts on her sister starting to date? Are we exploring her relationship with Neo? Or with Ironwood? Ozpin? The 4+ other characters in that scene? Herself?

RWBY throws out idea after idea after idea after idea and none of them amount to anything because this show is the storytelling equivalent of Whac-a-Mole: a cool concept pops out and the writers immediate whack it back down into the void. Penny is not a part of the finale. The girls don't unpack their loss in Atlas. Conversation about Salem is dismissed. We don't acknowledge that Ruby demanded this power for herself. She doesn't want to be leader, but comes out of the tree a perfect leader once more. She's angry with Summer for lying and then that's instantly pushed aside. Magic gives her the most generic 'I love you' memory ever and that cures her deep depression. We don't need to work through Ruby's team failing her because, again, magic tree and mom memories somehow fix everything. We don't know if she ever learned the truth about Jaune. There's no reflection on all the people who have died. "I don't want to be Ruby Rose anymore" is just a dramatic, narrative clickbait that was never going anywhere.

Why did a phantom Penny cry out for Ruby at the start of the Volume? Because the writers knew that would catch the attention of a lot of viewers and, frankly, that's all they need. Most of the fanbase isn't interested in a cohesive story, just a revolving door of fan favorites and sandbox ideas. So for the record, I personally don't think that's just a "tiny detail," with the implication that it's also insignificant. Moments like that are representative of how RWBY's writing has continually failed since Volume 5.

#rwde #rwby #mymetas

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kitkatopinions · 2 years ago

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I think that V9 really just made me convinced that the friendship between Team RWBY is pretty out of obligation and that their friendships and relationships will not last with the possible exception of Ruby and Weiss. Like, the writers might continue on to make them 'bffs forever' with relationships we're supposed to think are perfect, but I really just think they barely even like each other.

Trigger warning for discussions of attempted suicide.

Ruby spends the entire volume going through a terrible depression and grieving over the loss of her friend and struggling with trauma and very clearly not okay, and meanwhile only one of her friends really seem to care and only when she's not distracted. Ruby then blows up that she doesn't want to be the leader anymore, doesn't want to be treated like she's perfect, doesn't want to be the one who provides answers, and basically admits that she feels like no one cares what she goes through. Then her friends don't do anything when a forty year old man screams in her face that she's responsible for all bad things, don't do anything but watch as she basically tries to kill herself after being tortured, don't care much after the fact, and then when she comes back, they all basically says she's perfect and would never be weak and announce they're still looking to her as a leader for all their answers.

Blake and Yang have never addressed any of their actual past issues and Blake became a completely different person and the doylist reason might be that the writers just changed her character but in universe it feels like she did that for Yang, but then in V9 Yang is pretty much just blowing off all of Blake's concerns while Blake tries to control Yang's temper for her by coaxing Yang like a mom with a toddler, they were forced into confessing their feelings for each other and what Yang said to Blake basically amounted to 'I think it's cute that you're a minority, also here's some incorrect things that indicate that I don't pay attention to you or your past as an abuse victim,' and then the little sister that Yang supposedly cares about killed herself after implying that Yang was ignoring her for Blake's sake.

As for Weiss's relationship with Blake and Yang, did they even talk outside of Weiss telling them that Ruby was going through too much and sharing eye-rolls about how exasperating the Ever After was? Weiss put way more work into her friendship with Jaune than them and basically acted like they were just her co-workers and she was Angela in the first season of the Office.

And you know what, let's include Jaune in this too, because despite the fact that Jaune was closer to Ruby than almost anyone for the majority of the show... This whole thing made me not believe in them as friends from here on in. Jaune screamed in her face victim blaming her for stuff that wasn't her fault while basically saying she has no right to feel anything bad, after Ruby dismissed the Paper Pleasers as imaginary, and Jaune is now young again but has spent like twenty years apart from her and it would only make sense for Jaune to care way more about a lot of different things and it seems like he has a lot of resentment towards her built up. And meanwhile, I have no choice but to think they're trying to set up White Knight but he's??? Forty in his head??? And also Weiss was one of the people dismissing him as an unreliable crazy person. Which Blake and Yang also did, and he'd barely talked to Blake and Yang EVER before falling into the Ever After, especially Blake. Their little group hug meant next to nothing when half of them had no real relationship anyway and if there's a romance between Jaune and Weiss I cannot and will not believe that it'd ever work out especially now that's he's like mentally twenty years older than her.

The reason why I think that Ruby and Weiss have a chance for their friendship to survive is because they both still act like they care and would be willing to admit when they've been wrong. I honest to god feel like if Ruby tried to sit Yang down and have a conversation about feeling like Yang's past actions hurt her, Yang would get defensive or just be like 'what are you talking about of course I love you' and then go on doing the same stuff she was doing in volume 9. Of course I don't think the writers are actually going to act like anything is wrong or that anyone in the team needs to change and adjust and especially not anyone but Ruby (who somehow managed to get partially thrown under the bus this season for the power couple and the fandom's best girl and best boy 🙄) But I really just feel like no matter how much longer they writers try to make us think they're close friends, I'm still gonna feel like a year down the road Yang and Ruby will have very little contact, Blake and Yang will have broken up, Jaune and Ruby will be fighting, Weiss will have fallen out with Yang and Blake, and Ruby and Blake will have an incredibly awkward 'let's hang out some time,' small talk infused conversation like once every two or three months, and that's it.

#rwde #tw; discussion of suicide #trigger warning; suicide #tw; suicide

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aspiringwarriorlibrarian · 2 years ago

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this ask i’m about to send gets into fairly personal territory regarding ruby’s suicide attempt, so just delete this right now if it’s something you’d rather not have to deal with from a stranger (it okay, it’s been a long while and i’m doing pretty good in the present 👍)

something that’s frustrating me a little more than i’d like is the amount of people bringing up yang’s abandonment issues and how that might come into play. on one hand, yes, that is something that i thought about and would be interesting to see in the future, but as of the more immediate situation…

it brings up this old memory about me asking my own sister what she thinks about suicide, and her replying that she thinks it’s selfish. i love my sister, and i know she was well-intentioned, but it hadn’t helped at the time and there’s a reason why i go to my brother first instead.

the thing about suicide is that it can be selfish, but when a person is in that kind of pain they just want it to stop hurting, and even think it’s better for everyone else that way. on top of that, this response has the side effect of making the pain of the person affected, their own struggles, about other people instead - ‘you should think about how others would feel, if you did it’. it doesn’t stop a person from feeling depressed or suicidal, it just makes them feel invalidated. it makes them feel like their feelings don’t matter in the long run. and when they feel they don’t matter, well… yeah.

this is something that ruby has been struggling with all this while. she’s hurting, and she feels (particularly after that episode) that she’ll only make things worse if she sticks around.

ultimately, fans should be allowed to focus on the characters they connect to more, so they shouldn’t stop contemplating just because people (me, in this specific instance) is getting butthurt about it. i just, personally. keep seeing multiple people hoping for the story to focus on yang’s feelings about being abandoned in the next few episodes and. something about that just frustrates me, a little, because to me ruby’s pain has been building up for a while now, and the narrative should get to focus on how she hurts, without the idea of how that affects others from interrupting the narrative. because she’s always been keeping her pain quiet for the benefit of others, and now she can’t do it anymore.

given how rwby9 has thus far been making good development on ruby as a character, i doubt they’ll cut away from the focus on it now. i’m trusting crwby on this, at least. i’m just a bit miffed at seeing people want to shift the focus onto how it affects yang right away. it’s not a bad idea, but right now isn’t the time; ruby is hurt in a way that’s beyond what wby had all expected and she deserves to have the time to let herself feel. let the spotlight sit on her woes, for the moment. that’s what i hope for, at least.

Yeah I'm thinking that Yang's abandonment issues and how she was hurt by this are going way in the back seat and probably won't be addressed this volume. We've got to get Ruby back on her feet and the rest of them will be focused on rescuing her, and any fallout from watching her die will not be addressed until she's out of the Ever After.

And yeah, when you're in that much pain your brain will do anything to make it worse. My mom once had a friend's son commit suicide and she tearfully asked me "Please don't do that to me", and my brain interpreted that as "Don't kill yourself because it would make me unhappy.". But outright saying that someone's selfish for having suicidal thoughts is just unbearably careless and I'm sorry you had to go through that.

#rwby spoilers #rwby analysis #rwby ruby rose #suicide tw

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lecterthewhale · 2 years ago

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Alright, so Oshi no Ko? Episodes 6 and 7?

Let me start by saying that I’m probably not going to continue making a post for every episode like I have been(and this one is probably gonna be short). I still absolutely love this show, but man have I come to the realization that I’m not big on making posts 😂😅 Part of me does enjoy the likes and shares and all that I’ve been getting for the posts I’ve been making, but if I’m gonna post I don’t want it to feel like a chore and part of me worries that’s what this is slowly turning into for me. There’s a possibility I might decide to keep posting with every episode, but I just don’t know and I’ll warn you all not to expect it. With that being said, there are a few things about the past two episodes that I’m gonna post for what might be my final post on this show for a while!

Episode 6 in many ways brought back that heavy-hitting theme of how the entertainment industry has a dark side, and man did they do it well. My heart absolutely broke for Akane and holy cow I don’t think I’ve ever loved Aqua more than at the end of this show when he pulled her back from the ledge. This poor girl has a heart of gold and tries so dang hard and everything came back and hit her in the gut in what might just be the worst way possible.

I need to say it, because it’s important, but if you or somebody you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or depression, please reach out for help. The suicide hotline number(at least in America) is 988. Everyone deserves the chance to live and be happy.

Now, the most recent episode? First of all, despite all of Aqua’s posing you know this kid’s got his heart in the right place. The way he figured out a way to help restore Akane’s image is so sweet and I am so happy he did that!!! My one problem with him was the moment where he described Ai as his type. Like, yes, I know, he was her fan. Thing is, she was also his Mom? I wish his emotions for her could be qualified as more clearly platonic so that we wouldn’t have to deal with a possible Oedipus Complex with him. And oh, it’s about to get bad for him because of Akane coming in and acting just like Ai!

We all were out here saying that Aqua’s obsession is something else, but did you all see Akane’s wall? The way she figured out so much about Ai???? Honestly, I’m surprised that she didn’t figure out that Aqua and Ruby are Ai’s kids(by the way, do you all think it’s psycho dad or Aqua and Ruby who helped bring Ai stability? I personally am inclined to believe Aqua and Ruby, but who knows)! Anyway, Aqua’s gonna be struggling hardcore around her in her Ai persona and I am so excited to see how all of that goes down!

#anime #oshi no ko #anime spoilers #anime spring 2023 #hoshino aquamarine #oshi no ko anime #oshi no ko aqua #oshi no ko spoilers #aqua hoshino #anime only #suicide #Oshi no Ko episode 6 #Oshi no Ko episode 7

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ayoalex · 2 years ago

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I don't like talking about this topic anymore cuz of the lack of media literacy some have but a Twitter post reminded me of it and since I never dissected V9 with my Xiao Long-Rose glasses, I'm doing that today.

V9 was beautiful and I enjoyed it really much, I have problems with it but the majority of problems I have with RWBY in general is because of the lack of time or budget they have so I will not go in details about it.

We got to see Ruby going through an emotional and mental journey to be able to heal a part of her and learn from the death. With this comes her childhood trauma and her more recent traumas, with Penny being an important figure within it.

Ruby this time doesn't confined to Yang, she doesn't talk to her sister and neither opens a bit of her mind to her which causes confusion and frustration to Yang.

I know people took it as Yang hates when people aren't honest and how she always has her heart on her sleeves and while that's a way to read it (and it's not wrong either) I see it more of how Yang is Ruby's mom and sister. She's the person Ruby talk to about her insecurities, her triumphs, her emotions, etc.

A good example is exactly when they finally find Yang at the beginning of V9 and Ruby confirms the audience that her sister was indeed the one that raised her. So, what Yang said in V2 and V5 wasn't totally wrong; as I'm seeing people starting to claim; Yang did have to be a parent and a sister to Ruby during many years while Taiyang got eaten by his depression and Qrow was still an alcoholic. In this point Yang is not an unreliable narrator, Ruby is confirming this to us.

This makes Yang feel uncertain about her sister and at the same time it makes a fracture in their relationship by accident. Ruby did not meant it but at the time it was a necessity, if you have read my other post about the sisters you will see how I've talk about Ruby codependency on her sister and how she needed to be more independent emotionally.

This helps Yang confront that fear she has about Ruby and what it means losing her sister or at least growing apart from her, which it tragically reminds me of the fears a lot of parents has when their kids grow up; and I mean tragically because Yang is only 2y older, she shouldn't be a parent to her 2y younger sister.

Funny enough, this has been a fear Ruby has been harboring since at least the end of V3. As she sees Yang getting eaten away by the different mental illness she suffers, Ruby decides to leave with team JNR, that scene is a trigger, Ruby may be young but it was exactly how her dad was years ago and at the same Yang was so far away from her.

Ruby needed her sister at that moment the same way Yang needed someone, anyone (specifically Blake) for her at that moment. But they were so far away of each other, both emotionally and mentally.

This fear goes away momentarily in V5 thanks to the team going back together and Yang being back again to be her mom and sister. But it kinda comebacks in V7 and V8 as Yang criticizes her and leaves, yes Ruby knows Yang loves her and this fight means nothing but Yang is not just a teammate, she's the person that raised her.

Ruby can take Weiss or even Blake criticizing her, but Yang is a different story. This starts a distance between them that we finally see it exploding in V9; by accident, mind you.

Again, Ruby did not meant it and everything she says is insecurities that come from her own mental illnesses; her rage from episode 7 made her say things to her teammates, she didn't point fingers to Yang directly but indirectly.

"Gotta stay positive! Right?!" "Smiles all around! Maybe even finally get our feelings sorted out! Good for you, by the way. We’re all so happy for you!"

While Ruby was indeed codependent of Yang, the same was the other way around.

Yang needs to see her sister well, if Ruby is ok, if she's smiling, if she's happy then Yang is ok, then she can relax, then she's doing something right.

This comes back to Yang having to be a parent at such a young age and to Ruby having to see her sister struggling to raise her.

If Ruby is ok then Yang is ok and if Yang is ok then Ruby is ok, that's how their codependency works.

But this time Yang head wasn't about Ruby, while we as the audience know Yang tried a lot of times to help Ruby, little wolf woof didn't felt that way, she saw was Yang flirting with Blake, them finally being together.

Ruby starts feeling left behind, not only by the bees but by Weiss as well. She doubts herself, who she is, her purpose, what she wants and all that finally explodes which that's how Ep8 happens.

A life without Yang is a life without love for Ruby and a life without Ruby is a life without hope for Yang.

Yang is the one that loved her not matter what, the person that was always there for her during her 17y of life, she read her stories at night, she comforts her when she cries, she plays with her, etc.

Ruby is the one that made her keep going, everytime she had a dark cloud in her head then Ruby would be the one helping her clear it.

There's something so beautiful and poetic about how Yang was the one that raised Ruby and the youngest ended up being a beacon of hope for the world.

Which is why Yang understanding and accepting Ruby ascension and just waiting for her to comeback no matter what is so important.

Ruby finally found herself and fought with ther traumas, their relationship is not going to be the same but it's a start for both of them to finally create a more healthy relationship between them.

And it's really important that Weiss was the one helping Yang come to that conclusion and Blake being the one comforting her.

The xiao long rose sisters are slowly learning and growing, and we love to see it.

#rwby #yang xiao long #ruby rose #team rwby #xiao long rose family #weiss schnee #blake belladonna

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daxwritesstories · 2 years ago

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Jordan's Fate - Book 1: Chapter 3

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events in this story are completely made up.

Warnings: None for this chapter, but other chapters may have some.

Chapter 3 - You're So Cool

Mondays are the worst. Jordan always hated them, but this particular Monday was more stressful than usual. Her mom had dropped her off at school early so she could go to the office and pick up her brand new schedule. She had a sinking feeling that it was going to be like the first day of school all over again. The only difference was this time she was exhausted from the previous week.

With the new schedule now in her binder, Jordan made her way to her usual morning classes. Those two hadn’t changed since there was no arts program version of either of them. It made sense, you couldn’t really combine the arts with gym and IT. It still made Jordan depressed though. She hated both of those classes. Luckily, she had found a group to join in gym class but she was still having no luck making friends in IT. Oh well, she thought. You can’t win all of them. Sometimes life just sucks and that’s okay.

The classes went by slowly. The anticipation of who would be in Jordan’s new afternoon classes was killing her. She hoped she had at least one class with her friends. That would make up for the morning of being alone.

Finally, the lunch bell rang. Jordan navigated to the cafeteria and found the table her friends usually sat at.

Alice was already there but Zoe and Ruby had not arrived yet. Jordan sat down and greeted her.

“Did you get your new schedule?” Alice asked.

“Mhm,” Jordan nodded and pulled the binder out of her bag. She placed it on the table and slid it over to Alice who examined it.

“Oh nice! We have English together after this,” she concluded.

Jordan smiled as she felt the tension in her muscles subside a bit. This was great. She now had at least one class with an amazing friend. For a moment, things seemed to be looking up.

Zoe and Ruby showed up soon and Jordan showed them her schedule too. They still didn’t have any classes with her, but they wished her luck with the new classes. Now Jordan just had to worry about math class, which fortunately was a subject that she actually liked. She hoped there was at least one person she could talk to though.

After lunch, Alice and Jordan made their way to English class. Thankfully Alice knew the way to the room so they didn’t have to worry about getting lost and being late. It actually ended up being the other way around. They arrived to find their classmates waiting in the hall for the teacher to unlock the door.

“Is he always late?” Jordan whispered to Alice.

“Yes,” Alice responded frankly.

Jordan looked around at the other students in the hall. She recognized a few faces, namely Kaylie, Seth, and Buck. She had a class with each of them at least once in middle school. Kaylie noticed Jordan looking at her and walked over to her.

“Hi, Jordan,” she greeted. “Did you transfer to our class?”

Jordan was happy to see her. Kaylie was always nice to her in middle school. She was the type of person who was kind to everyone no matter who they were.

“Sorta,” Jordan answered. “They gave me the wrong schedule on the first week.”

“What? That’s so dumb,” Kaylie said empathetically.

Soon the teacher, Mr. Li, arrived and unlocked the door. He was exactly what you would expect an English teacher to look like. He was fairly young and had a small stature. He wore thick-framed, nerdy glasses and carried a small leather briefcase. He kind of reminded Jordan of those Tumblr posts about cute English teachers. The thought weirded her out a bit.

Alice showed Jordan a vacant desk in front of the one she usually sat in and Jordan set her bag down beside it. She noticed the girl sitting in front of her was doodling something in her notebook but Jordan couldn’t tell what it was. She was excited to see another art kid though. She took a closer look at her after she sat down, since the girl wouldn’t be able to see her staring. She had long brown hair and wore a very real-looking leather jacket. Jordan couldn’t see much else since she was hunched over drawing.

Class started soon and Jordan tried to focus on her work, but it was difficult since she was so excited to finally be in a class with her friend. It didn’t help that Alice kept leaning forward to tell her stupid jokes. It was difficult for Jordan to concentrate on the lesson when she was busy trying not to laugh.

After the lecture was done, Jordan turned around to talk to Alice.

“Stop being funny, I missed like half of that,” she scolded.

“I didn’t understand any of it,” Alice said in her usual ditzy voice. Jordan giggled in response.

Suddenly the girl sitting behind Alice dropped her bag on the floor. A few items slid out of the bag, keys, a pen, and a couple condoms.

“Shit!” the girl exclaimed. “Sorry, guys, I dropped my condoms,” she said in a funny voice, clearly making fun of herself.

“Why do you even need condoms?” asked Kaylie, who was sitting in the row next to them. She leaned forward to get closer to Alice and Jordan and pointed at the girl who dropped her bag. “Lesbian,” she whispered. Alice smiled and shook her head at Kaylie.

“Ladies,” the teacher interrupted. “Let’s get to work.” His tone was stern but he was smiling, probably trying not to laugh at what just happened.

Jordan tried to get back to her assignment but Alice leaned forward to talk to her again.

“Let’s say something really weird so the teacher doesn’t want to talk to us anymore,” Alice suggested.

“Like what?”

“Um… vagina!” Alice whispered excitedly.

“That’s not weird enough,” Jordan argued.

“You think of something then.”

Jordan thought about it for a second. Nothing was really coming to mind though. “Hm.. what something that’s really fucked up,” she said, thinking out loud.

Suddenly, the girl sitting in front of Jordan turned around in her seat.

“Dead babies,” she said flatly.

Jordans eyes widened in shock before she burst into laughter. What a strange thing to say to someone you’ve never met. Now Jordan was even more intrigued by her. She had to become friends with this girl.

“You’re right,” Jordan said. “That’s very fucked up.”

“I know,” the mysterious girl replied matter-of-factly. “Do you guys understand this assignment?” she asked, changing the subject.

“I kind of do,” Jordan said. The girl’s face brightened up a bit and she turned to grab her notebook before dropping it onto Jordan’s desk. Jordan got a better look at what she was drawing earlier now that it was in front of her. It looked like some sort of dragon.

“Can you help me with the first part?” the girl asked.

Jordan nodded and pulled the notebook closer to read what she had written down so far. The girl stared down at the floor while Jordan read.

“Thanks,” she said, sounding a little nervous. “I’m Arabella by the way.”

Jordan looked back up at her and the two made eye contact. Jordan froze. There was something about her that felt familiar. She had a fire in her eyes that reminded Jordan of someone…

“Uh.. I’m Jordan,” she replied, shaking off the strange feeling. “I like your jacket.”

“Thanks.”

“Is it real?”

“Yeah, it’s the most expensive thing I own.” Arabella looked down at her jacket and ran her hand down one of the arms affectionately. “Well, this and my shoes,” she added. She stuck a foot out beside her chair, stomping it on the ground.

Jordan smiled, amused by her boldness.

“They have steel in the toes,” Arabella explained.

“Why?” Jordan questioned.

“So I can stomp on people’s feet if they get out of line,” Arabella said. She might have been joking but it was hard to tell.

Jordan giggled gleefully. She had a feeling she was going to get along well with this girl.

The rest of the class went by quickly. Jordan spent most of it helping Arabella with her assignment, neglecting her own work for the sake of making a friend.

When the bell rang, Jordan said goodbye to Alice and bravely trekked to find her next class. She thought she had seen the room number in this one particular hallway so she went in that direction. As she looked around for the classroom, she kept thinking about Arabella. For some reason she felt drawn to her. She didn’t know why but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had met her before. She didn’t look familiar, but her strange demeanor was.

Arabella had an air of effortless confidence about her and she had no problem saying outlandish things during normal conversation. She was undoubtedly the type to go against the grain, challenging the norm just for the fun of it. There was a sense of chaos in the way she spoke and Jordan found it comforting. In a strange way it made her feel safe.

Jordan was startled from her thoughts by someone calling her name. She looked around the hallway and saw a short girl approaching her. She realized who it was. Eileen, a girl she hadn’t spoken to in a while, but a familiar face nonetheless. Jordan was delighted to see her.

“Eileen!” she said cheerfully. “I didn’t know you went to this school.”

“I didn’t know you went here either,” Eileen replied.

The shorter girl walked with Jordan for a minute or so as the pair tried to catch up on the last couple years. They asked each other how they had been and talked about how the first week of high school went. It sounded like Eileen also had a terrible week. Despite feeling bad for her friend, hearing that made Jordan feel slightly better knowing she wasn’t alone. They soon realized that they both had a math class for the last period of the day. Jordan explained to Eileen about her schedule change and they stopped to check Jordan’s timetable.

“There it is, room 203,” Jordan said, pointing to her final class on the sheet. Eileen smiled when she saw it.

“That’s my math class,” she said.

Jordan jumped a couple times in excitement. Now she had a friend in her other afternoon class too. This semester might actually be fun.

Jordan suggested that the two sit together for the class. Eileen agreed and showed her where the classroom was. They found a couple of empty desks near the back of the room and sat down.

Looking around the classroom, Jordan recognized quite a few people from middle school. Jonathan, Hillary’s boyfriend, was there as well as Ashton and a couple other people she didn’t know the names of.

Jordan chatted with Eileen for a bit before the teacher got up from behind her desk and started the class. She called attendance and Jordan felt a bit nervous waiting for her name. Attendance always gave her anxiety although she wasn’t entirely sure why. Maybe it was hearing her name called by a teacher, an authority figure, or maybe it was the fact that the entire class was listening when she had to respond. Either way, it was nerve-wracking.

“Jordan?” the teacher called.

“Uh.. here,” Jordan responded, her voice shaking a little.

“You must have just transferred to this class, welcome,” the teacher greeted kindly.

Jordan just smiled and nodded. This teacher seemed nice.

“Max?” she called next. There was no response. The teacher waited a few seconds before trying again. “Max?”

“Here!” someone said from the hallway. Everyone looked towards the door and in walked a… boy? Maybe? Jordan couldn’t actually tell. Either way, they were cute. They wore rolled up cargo pants and a striped shirt. They had a single strap bag hanging across their chest and they appeared to be wearing a short brown wig.

“Sorry I’m late,” Max apologized. They sat in an empty desk in front of Eileen and quickly got their notebook out.

Jordan gulped nervously. This person was… hot. She didn’t know what it was exactly, but they had this air about them that Jordan found attractive.

“It’s Max right?” the teacher asked. “That’s your preferred name?”

Preferred name. Jordan had heard of those on Tumblr before. They were usually used by transgender or nonbinary people. That was cool. Jordan had never met a trans person before, it was kind of exciting. She wondered if she could muster up the courage to talk to them.

“Yes, please call me Max,” they said. The teacher nodded and wrote something down on her attendance sheet.

Class started right after attendance was done. They were doing individual work that day so Jordan didn’t get a chance to talk to Max. However, Eileen asked her for help a couple of times and each time Max was staring at them. Jordan wondered if they needed help too. Unfortunately she wasn’t feeling brave enough to offer.

When class was over, Jordan packed up her belongings and checked her phone. There were two messages, one from Hillary and one from Jordan’s mom.

[Image ID:

A text conversation with Hillary at 3:31 pm. The text reads as follows.

From Hillary: We’re meeting at 1:30 on Saturday. Xia wants to know if you’re still coming.

/.End ID]

[Image ID:

A text conversation with mom at 3:31 pm. The text reads as follows.

From mom: We’re parked in the usual spot.

/.End ID]

The text from her mom didn’t need a response since it was what she usually sent at the end of each school day. She was nice enough to pick Jordan and her sister, Riley, up from school every day since it was faster than taking the bus. Jordan’s parents wanted them to have lots of time to do their homework and since her mom didn’t work, picking them up wasn’t a problem.

Jordan needed to respond to Hillary’s text as soon as possible, but she still needed to ask her mom if she could go.

After saying goodbye to Eileen, Jordan quickly left the school, making her way to the parking lot that her mom always parked in. Thankfully, the lights at the crosswalk changed quickly and she was able to get to the car in under ten minutes.

“Hi,” Jordan said, stepping into the backseat.

“How was school?” Mom asked.

“It was okay.”

“Do you have friends in your new classes?”

“Yeah, I have English with Alice and Eileen is in my math class,” Jordan answered.

“Eileen?” Mom started backing the car out of the parking lot. She probably didn’t remember Eileen since she had never been over to Jordan’s house.

“She went to Willow Creek,” Jordan explained. She left out who their mutual friend was, so as not to start an argument.

Mom nodded approvingly. Over the past week, Jordan’s mom seemed especially worried about her. She knew that Jordan would become extremely depressed and anxious if she didn’t have any friends in her classes, so she was obviously concerned. Sometimes Jordan wished she didn’t make her mom fret so much about her. But she couldn’t think about that right now, she had more important things to take care of.

“Can I go shopping with Hillary on Saturday?” she blurted out.

“Sure, that’s a great idea,” her mom said. That was a relief. Jordan was terrible at lying so she was really hoping her mom wouldn’t ask her any follow up questions. That way she technically wasn’t lying, she was just leaving out the part about Xia being there. Besides, nothing bad was going to happen, she was just going to catch up with a friend who she hadn’t seen in a while. It was no big deal.

She quickly texted Hillary back, thankful that she was alone in the backseat so no one could see the previous text.

[Image ID:

A text conversation with Hillary. The texts read as follows.

From Hillary: We’re meeting at 1:30 on Saturday. Xia wants to know if you’re still coming.

From Jordan: Yes, I’ll be there.

From Hillary: Great!

/.End ID]

The car ride home was filled with the usual conversation. Jordan and Riley talked about what happened at school and their mom asked them if they had homework. Jordan ended up having a lot of homework since she spent most of her afternoon classes helping other people. Plus she still had to catch up on the work from the previous week.

When they got home, Jordan started on her work right away. She wasn’t usually the type to start homework immediately but she needed to make sure that everything was done before the weekend. She did not want to be worrying about homework when she was with Hillary and Xia.

Thankfully most of the work was still middle school review so it was all concepts that Jordan was already familiar with. She worked fairly quickly but she found herself frequently getting distracted by butterflies in her stomach. The excitement about Saturday was already getting to her and it was still only Monday. She wondered what the three of them would talk about. She wondered how her friends were dealing with the stress of high school so far. She hoped it was going well for both of them. Hillary always did fairly well in school, but Xia seemed to dislike school a lot. She was a clever and intelligent person but the daily six hour grind of school never meshed well with her personality. She was the type of person who needed to be outside a lot and have time to be creative. School satisfied neither of those needs and even though Willow Creek was an arts school, that fact didn’t help much.

Jordan felt lucky that she was school-smart. Getting good grades was always easy for her. The only problem she had with school was how anxious it made her. That was something she envied about Xia. It was like that girl had no fear at all, she was always willing to try new things. Always challenging and defying authority. She never listened to her parents or her teachers and if she wanted to do something, she would just do it without asking for permission from anyone.

Jordan wished she could be more like Xia but instead she was always the “good kid”. The kid who never stepped out of line, always did what she was told, never questioned anything. She wasn’t perfect but she always tried her best. Her parents and teachers thought it was because she was good-natured and respected authority. But the truth was that Jordan was just terrified. She was so scared of what would happen if she ever misbehaved, and the way her parents talked about people like Xia made that fear even worse.

Jordan put her pencil down and sat back in her chair. She needed to stop thinking about this. It was making her chest feel tight and her throat felt like it was going to close, a feeling that had become much more familiar over the last couple years. She didn’t know what it was or why it happened. All she knew was that it felt bad and scary.

She jumped a little when someone knocked on her door. She looked over and saw her mom opening the door.

“Dinner’s ready,” she said. Jordan nodded and got out of her chair.

“How was school?” Jordan’s dad asked at dinner.

“It was okay,” Jordan answered, toying with her food. It was getting so hard to eat. She had lost five pounds since school started last week. Normally that wouldn’t be much of an issue but Jordan was still teetering around 100 pounds which was unhealthy for someone of her age and height.

“Do you have homework?” Dad pried.

“Well yeah,” Jordan said. “I missed a whole week of my afternoon classes and I had to help my friends with their work too.”

Dad raised an eyebrow in disapproval.

“You should do your own work before you help your friends, Jordan,” he scolded.

“No, it’s good that she helps other people out,” Mom argued.

“But she doesn’t get graded on how well her friends do,” Dad argued back.

“You learn best by teaching others,” Mom pointed out, sounding annoyed.

“That doesn’t matter if she doesn’t get her work done.”

“She’s just being a good friend.”

“Oh so now I’m the bad guy!”

“Just admit that you’re wrong!”

“You’re the one who can’t admit when she’s wrong!”

Jordan and Riley looked at each other. Both of them were used to this bickering, but that didn’t make it okay. They couldn’t even get five minutes into dinner anymore without the conversation turning sour. It was frustrating.

“I made a friend at school today,” Riley said, interrupting their parents. They both stopped arguing and looked at Riley.

“That’s great, what’s their name?” Mom asked.

Jordan watched as Dad started eating again, checked out of the conversation. She knew what would happen next, it was the same every night. Her dad wouldn’t talk for the rest of dinner and then he would go hide out in the basement once he finished eating. Jordan and Riley wouldn’t see him for the rest of the night.

Jordan went to bed early that night. She just wanted to sleep. She didn’t want to think about school, or her family, or herself. She didn’t want to think at all. Luckily, sleep came to her quickly and she drifted off into peaceful unconsciousness.

#jordans fate #creative writing #queer writers #queer story #chapter #Jordan's Fate is not dead I've just been too lazy to edit #when Celeste read this chapter she said it had a garfield-ass opening line #which is hilarious

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swagcoolcat · 11 months ago

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Hey, friends! I made a post saying I was considering making a bmc fan-kid post, because I have three different sets with my close friend, Moth! (They’re not on tumblr, unfortunately, or I’d tag them). For the sake of simplicity, I made them all on the same picrew to see them in the same style. (Picrew will be linked at the end of the post).

(This spans across five and a half years, so half of these kids are boyf riends kids and half are pins and patches kids)

Fan Kids below the cut!

EDIT TO ADD FOR PEOPLE THAT GO PAST THE CUT: Let me know if I’ve made any mistakes in any of the Alt Text! I’m trying to improve at it so I can start adding Alt Text to my art! Thank you!

**PICREWS WILL DEPICT THE KIDS AS PRETEENS/TEENS, MEANING YOUNGER KIDS WILL BE OLDER IN THE PICREWS THAN THEY ARE IN CANON**

The Mell-Heere Kids (TW for brief mentions of physical abuse in Ruby’s section):

Marcus Daniel Mell-Heere: Marcus doesn’t have much information about him regarding his upbringing before he came to be adopted by Michael and Jeremy. What feels correct to me though, is that Marcus’s parents passed away around the time he turned 5, close to a year before he meets Michael and Jeremy, which also explains why he starts kindergarten at 6 instead of 5- because due to the trauma and grief of losing his parents, he’s not ready to start school when it starts a month later. He’s incredibly outgoing and social, and he absolutely loves sugar.

Ruby Maye Mell-Heere: Ruby came from an abusive household before she was adopted by Michael and Jeremy. When we first meet Ruby, she’s shy and reserved. She hardly wants to speak with anyone, and takes some time to trust Michael or Jeremy, or anyone really. She comes out of her shell more the more time she spends with them, and grows an especially close bond with Marcus. She’s fiercely protective of him, and he’s the same way with her. She gains an especially close bond with Jeremy, as he had a similar upbringing to her after his mom left, and finally talking about it and having someone that understands the pain she went through really helps her in healing.

Robin Miracle Mell-Heere: Robin is the youngest member of the Mell-Heere family and their only biological child, born about 8 years after the events of the musical on Halloween. He’s a very happy baby who loves to explore. Robin has some weirdness going on due to the SQUIP. We didn’t end up exploring this too much, but what we did have was that his freckles would glow when his emotions got intense, and this would give Jeremy and people who connected with Jeremy’s SQUIP migraines. Robin also is growing a lot faster than most babies, which we explained as being due to the SQUIP as well (but really it’s because we were 14 and didn’t know how babies worked).

Jeremy’s Cousin (TW for mentions of Death)

Nate/Rain (last name unknown- but likely Heere): For simplicity, I’ll just refer to him as Nate. We changed his name to Rain partway through because we got attached to him more so than we thought and he was named after a real person. At the beginning of his story, Nate has been recently adopted by his older cousin, Jeremy, after his parents passed away in a plane crash. Due to the sudden trauma of losing both of his parents, a once happy Nate was suddenly thrown into a depression. He starts learning how to heal and starts making some friends after Jeremy meets and hires Michael, who specializes in helping kids. We ended his story going on a date with a boy in his class, Aidan/Hudson (same name situation as Nate).

Dillinger-Mell Kids:

Tao Dillinger-Mell: Tao is the oldest of Michael and Jake’s adopted kids at 15 years old. We made him and his sisters less than a week ago, so we don’t have Lore for them yet, we just have their designs, names, and ages. I do however know that Tao plays soccer.

Viviana Dillinger-Mell: Viviana is the second oldest of Michael and Jake’s adopted kids at 10 years old. We don’t really have anything established about her yet.

Sybil Dillinger-Mell: Sybil is the second youngest of Michael and Jake’s adopted kids, at 5 years old. The only one younger is Gaïana, her twin sister. Her left arm ends at the elbow, and that’s where her prosthetic attaches. Aside from that we don’t have any established lore yet.

Gaïana Dillinger-Mell: Gaïana is the youngest of Michael and Jake’s adopted kids at 5 years old. She’s the younger twin sister of Sybil, and she really likes cats. Aside from that, we don’t have any established lore for her yet.

Body type A Picrew

Body type B Picrew

If you have any questions about any of these guys please do ask, I’d love to hear them!

#long post #boyf riends #pins and patches #mellinger #meremy #bmc #bmc fan kids #bmc ocs

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tequiilasunriise · 1 year ago

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Summer has been haunting the narrative so hard since the very first trailer of the show, where her daughter who felt so abandoned by her death is fighting monsters by her grave. It’s not just Ruby who is so throughly haunted by the lingering ghost of her mom- but Yang??? Tai??? BOTH the Branwen twins?? The entire family family unit is so haunted by Summer’s death.

The crux of Ruby’s character is the way she holds herself to impossible standards she set based on how she perceived her ‘Super Mom’ Miss Summer Rose and this led to a metric fuckton of issues revolving around imposter syndrome and feeling so worthless as a child soldier leading teams of also children soldiers burdened with saving the whole world. This isn’t even touching Ruby’s mega complicated trauma regarding her mom suddenly disappearing into the night and dying. I shit you at one point the Big Bad of the show, Salem, casually mentioned Summer (and thus implying she was the one who killed her) and Ruby ended up falling to her fucken knees, circled up in her protective’s sister lap on the floor, and started absolutely bawling like. LIKE. Godamnnnnn!!! Summer’s death sparked not one not two but THREE different songs about Ruby’s anguish, anger, and eventual resolve (Red Like Roses III isn’t fully released yet so we’ll see how true ‘resolve’ holds). How exactly she perished is still huge mystery to everyone ten years into the show, and it still holds such significant weight on more than one daughter.

To quote Yang’s exact words when Salem had her captured, “Everything I’ve lost, every person I’ve lost, is because of you!” When Salem asks her who she has taken from her, Yang angrily sobs back, “Summer Rose, my mom!” Yang is a character known fer her abandonment issues from her biological mom Raven ditching her, but Summer, her real mom, also left in her own way that still hurts Yang so deeply to this day. Just like how Ruby still holds so much grief about her late mother, Yang too grieves in her own ways. She doesn’t hold herself to a standard based on examples Summer set, but that doesn’t make her aching abandonment issues any less significant. Like Summer, the mom who was supposed to love her when Raven couldn’t, eventually ALSO disappeared into the middle of the night with zero explanation. Double abandonment mommy issues?? That shit fucken hurts, but six year old Yang (oh yeah Summer died when they were like six and four),didn’t even have the opportunity to process her feelings because she had to take care of a young Ruby.

‘But OP, why did Yang have to take on that responsibility?’ because her dad completely shut down on everyone after Summer’s death. Tai’s first love, Raven, willingly run away from their family and now his second love Summer is gone without a trace? Bro shut down so hard that Yang had to step up and be the one to look after Ruby so like damnnnnn not only did Summer’s ass haunt Tai so hard he completely broke she’s also responsible fer Yang’s double dose of abandonment mommy issues AND parentification trauma??? This isn’t to excuse Tai fer failing his daughters so significantly, who in present day is trying to make up fer being a neglectful father and be there fer his girls however he can, but y’all see what I’m saying here about how so many people are haunted by this milf?? Like, I’m aware Summer didn’t chose to die but she DID chose leaving in the middle of the night on a secret mission.

AND OH BOY. THAT SECRET MISSION. We dunno what went down aside from a small clip of Summer secretly meeting up with Raven and running away to some unknown location but holy shit y’all. Qrow, who was already a drunkard, sunk deeper into his alcoholism and raging depression and self-loathing after Summer died so add him to the list of people Summer haunts, but Raven??? It’s implied she wasn’t always the bitter, cynical as fuck bitchass we see in V5 prior to this small clip revealed in V9. Back then Raven was actually more open and shit?? Woah?? But then The Mission™️ happened, and Raven came out losing all hope fer the world and became a spiteful, jaded as fuck woman who couldn’t care less about Salem trying to end the world so long as she gets gets away from the crossfire. When Summer died, so did any light she gave the gruff Branwen, and even after all of this time (over a decade) Raven still remains so self-serving and cruel.

In conclusion Mara is cool, but she doesn’t hold a candle to the ghost of Summer Rose. Her death still haunts the main characters so profoundly even years upon years after her disappearance and I can only hope V10, should it he greenlit, gives us more details on that fateful night because we’ve barely scratched the surface on this shit.

Haunting the Narrative Round 1

Haunting the narrative means that the character’s absence heavily impacts the plot. They’re not present when their influence is most strongly felt, whether they’re alive or dead!

#no one haunts the narrative like summer shes rlly out here like ‘okay but what if i gave MY ENTIRE FAMILY UNIT significant trauma??’#shes a damn empress at haunting the narrative and i stand by this #rwby #summer rose

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mollrat101 · 3 years ago

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I will be talking more about Ava and Ruby in a separate essay in more full detail, but there’s an interesting detail I’ve noticed about how Ava interacts with her.

On the whole, I would say the biggest obstacle I see between the two of them is Ava’s unwillingness to be vulnerable with her.

And this shows up in two ways: she doesn’t like discussing anything too sad or painful and she doesn’t like discussing anything too joyful.

“Well, that must be hard on you. How’s your dad doing?”

“He’s...alive. Okay, back to what’s actually important. So, I’m hearing that you didn’t like the nude? Is that possible?”

When Ruby asks about her dad, Ava avoids that offer to confide in her despite Ava earlier saying how lonely she felt. She changes to the subject to sex, something she feels more comfortable with. She even goes as far as to lie and suggest that her dad’s health is “not actually important” when we know very well it is. (Also side not, this foreshadowing line was really painful once I noticed it.) Ava loves her father very much and it’s clear his illness has been taking a toll on her for a while. But even to the person she’s was supposedly the closest to in L.A., she can’t talk about it with her.

“There’s something different about you.”... “You’re not spiraling or making me spiral”

“I think I’m maybe, like, happy? [laughs] Oh god, I sound like you after you did mushrooms with that witch in Idyllwild”

When Ruby comments about how Ava looks different, Ava is a little startled to find out she feels happy. Now, in of itself, it’s already telling that Ruby can’t even describe what Ava looks like when she’s happy implying she’s never seen it. Ava is so in disbelief that she could feel happy that she compares it to a time Ruby was on drugs.

This may seem counterintuitive, but joy can actually be quite a terrifying emotion for people to feel. It leaves people feeling vulnerable, like something will take their joy away if they let themselves feel it so it’s better to avoid it. Also, someone seeing your genuine enjoyment of something can leave you open to ridicule (relatable experience for me). Plus, as someone who’s dealt with a lot of depression, it’s easy to be a little suspicious about happiness especially when you’re used to feeling crappy. There’s also a weird widespread belief (I feel) that being cynical and unhappy somehow makes you more intelligent or able to “see the world clearer” or some such bullshit. I could imagine all of these reasons might make Ava suspicious of the concept of happiness or even be nervous about showing it in front of others, especially when it’s not based in obvious pleasures like sex or drugs.

Ava seems to only be comfortable showing Ruby a limited range of emotion from her. If it gets into the territory of too vulnerable, she deflects and pushes them back into more comfortable territory. She reverts back to things that make her feel a temporary amount of pleasure but don’t really let her feel emotionally whole just by themselves: partying, sex and drugs.

Now, I actually think the whole spiraling comment could imply as to why. If Ava is “spiraling” meaning like freaking out or having a depressive episode and Ruby responds by freaking out or going into depression herself, that’s not going to make Ava feel like she can tell her stuff. That probably reminds her too much of Nina. As a person with an anxious and depressed mom as a kid, I had to hide a lot of my anxiety and sadness from her because I worried she couldn’t handle it. It makes you hide stuff more as an adult. I’m not blaming Ruby because clearly she’s got her own stuff going on but it certainly means she’s not the person to help calm Ava down. You know me that I’m filth, so obviously you know who I do think is good at calming Ava down.

In contrast, Ava’s happiness stems from being around Deborah, her not even knowing the changes at first until Ruby points it out to her. Ava is emotionally vulnerable with Deborah in episode 6 and especially episode 10. And I cannot emphasize this enough, that sweet, intimate sex-ish dream Ava has in episode 7 is not of Ruby, a person she supposedly missed a few episodes ago and seems like a nice person who cares about her (even if not completely in the way she wants) and she’s had sex with before.

No, it’s with Deborah. And that whole dream just oozes light, happiness, bliss, and intimacy.

If Ava worked through emotional problems, there’s a good chance she could be vulnerable with Ruby.

But the part that makes me doubt it is that Ava only made that progress when she was away from Ruby and around Deborah.

Not at all saying Ruby is the problem, but she definitely isn’t the solution either.

#hacks hbo #hbo hacks #hacks #ava daniels #ava x deborah #hacks thoughts

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queenofwhimsicaldaydreams · 4 years ago

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Ok so I just found out about this video today & I wanna talk about. Who's ready for a ramble?!!!!

The questioner thinks that Ruby's & Oscar relationship is like yang & ruby.

Yang/Ruby=supportive, proud mom, silly sister vibe

Oscar/Ruby= supportive, awkward, respect vibe.

Yang has always been shown to be very proud of Ruby. "I'm so proud of you" is one of her 1st lines in the show." Even in vol 8, after she questions Ruby's leadership she shows pride in Ruby part in taking down the hound. The most important thing to yang is ruby. Her biggest regret is putting Ruby in danger to learn more about her mother. Which is why it makes perfect sense for Yang to care more about getting to Ruby than her questions about/for her mother. We also know that Yang did her best to shield Ruby from their dad's bad depression when they were young. But we know that Ruby's very aware of her dad's issues with the one simple line in ch1 of vol 3. "He's ...you know ..Dad." We also see that Ruby's very excited about him possibly taken on mission. The context given in the show tells us that Tai hasn't gone on a mission likely sense his kids were born or summer death. With his kids out of the house that seemed to be about to change. Ruby seems to see this as her dad finally being able to go on crazy adventurers without the grief of summer waying him down. This makes her super happy. While Yang has some resentment tour Tai for shutting down & leaving her to have to look out for Ruby. This is why Ruby is more Optimistic than Yang. It's also why their sister dynamic is also a motherly dynamic. And why the two often class when shit hits the fan. It comes from their prospective of their childhoods.

We know next to nothing on Oscar childhood. But we do know that they both looked up to heros from fairytales. We know that Ruby's always been supportive of Oscar, doing her best to make him feel part of the group in volume 5&6 and cheering him up in ch1 of vol8. She also respects him has his own person & how he handles his role as the next protector of remnant. Like......how do I word this, Ruby role is team leader. Cinder is Salem Queen & Ruby is Oscars. That's how they are on the chess board ok. And the more that Oscar steps into his role as the protector of remnant, the more Ruby will like ask for his opinion on shit. ......... I screw that up. Ok so in vol 7, Ruby as the leader makes the choice to keep shit from Ironwood, Oscar apporces Ruby about this 1 on 1 and voices his thoughts on the matter. Oscar than spends the whole volume trying to get Ironwood to overcome his internal issues that cause Ruby to be unsure about trusting him in the first place. And when it look like that Oscar had succeed, Ruby very awarkely ran up to Oscar & we got our cute little RG moment.

Really I think Oscar understands how Ruby thinks more than Yang. Which might seem odd to some. But it really not uncommon for siblings to have a very different outlook on shit. Which was Ruby & Yangs conflict in vol8.

Also I love that miles said that Ruby chose adventure but adventure choose Oscar. I would like to add that Yang go's with the flow & Ruby always wanting to be a huntress & it being the fastest & easiest way to find Raven is probably why she's here.

I feel like I have more I could ramble about this more but the thoughts aren't really coming together, so can we make this a discussion please. Reblog, comments, ask box, idc just someone add their 2 cents & pick my brain.

#rwby #oscar pine #yang xiao long #ruby rose

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masterweaverx · 4 years ago

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RWBY Parents from Best to Worst

That’s right, everybody, I’m a-going to rank how terrible these people are to and for their kids! For the sake of covering as many parents as I can, I am defining ‘parent’ as either ‘legal guardian’ or ‘the one that gave birth to you’, and excluding relationships that are explicitly something else. That does mean that we’re going to miss out on some very important people, though, so before we begin, let’s have some Honorable Mentions!

Yang Xiao Long and Winter Schnee: Professional Momsisters

“That’s why big sisters come first, to protect the ones that come after.” I don’t know who said that to these two, if anybody actually did, but it’s a quote that most definitely applies to them. Not only would they take a bullet (or a sword, or a fireball) for their younger siblings, they took the time out to give them affection and training that they needed when their own parents weren’t quite doing the job. If I absolutely had to rank one of them as the better momsister, I’d say Yang, but that’s really only because Yang had less to deal with overall; a depressed single dad not being able to pull himself together just doesn’t stack up with an abusive powermonger, a self-loathing drunkard, and all the institutional bigotry and pressure of Atlas. Plus, you know, Winter went into the military for a bit. Still, pretty good track record considering!

Klein Sieben: Doing the work of seven good dads

Look, there is only one reason Klein wasn’t listed before the momsisters, and that reason is that he is technically the hired help (and could therefore become the fired help). He is, hands down, a better surrogate parent than Yang and Winter, providing guidance and care to all the Schneeblings and very effectively undoing the damage Jacques Gele (HE DOES NOT GET TO BE CALLED SCHNEE!) did to them. And he even helped out Willow! If he was allowed to do more, he would absolutely be My Real Dad of the year.

Qrow Branwen: “The only one that gets to be sad in this house is me!”

Qrow has a lot of flaws. Like, so so many flaws. As Yang said in a noncanon spinoff, he’s cool but not exactly a role model. Thing is, you don’t have to be a role model to be a good parent--you just have to make sure your kids (or nieces in this case) get good advice and the opportunity to grow into the best versions of themselves they can be. And when Qrow’s not beating himself up or drowning his sorrows, he’s actually very good at helping Yang and Ruby. Honestly the only reason he’s not on the actual list is because he’s technically not a parent.

Uncle Copper: Adopting a blind kid automatically makes you cool

So here we have a character that appeared in a single flashback in the novels, but from what we do know he was pretty likely to be a good guy. Like, raising a blind kid is hard enough; raising a blind kid in a desert after their actual parents got nommed by sand is so, so much more difficult. And yet, this guy said ‘If nobody else is going to adopt this kid I will!’ and by all measures he was a very caring and loving guy. Also, shout-out to the tribe, who took Fox in after Copper got killed by some maniac (and also killed said maniac). Fox has had a rough life, but it’s been filled with supportive people. Not everyone can say that.

Starr Sanzang: She put up with Sun

Sure, she’s only had one scene in one novel, but Starr showed patience and caring and... probably did a lot to make sure Sun stays as aggressively cheery and patient as he is. Plus she’s got a dojo in Vacuo now... okay, I’ll be honest, I don’t know nearly enough about her to really assess her. Still, as far as cousins go, Sun Wukong could do a lot worse. And there are the implications of their motifs to factor in...

Rhodes: If you’d done even just a little bit more--!

So, reasonably, what would you do when you see a little girl enslaved with a shock collar? Would you (A) get the girl out of there, (B) arrest the woman doing it, (C) try to get the girl therapy, or (D) all of the above? If you picked (E) secretly train the girl in swordplay so she can join a huntsman academy when she comes of age, then congratulations! You’ve given her hope! Good for you! And what if she snaps after five years of literal torture, kills her abuser, and then turns to you for comfort and/or approval? Welp, obviously she’s an irredeemable criminal and you have to bring her in, crushing all the faith she had in you and herself.

Seriously Rhodes, dropped the ball hard on that one. I’m only mentioning you because you had such a serious impact on Cinder’s development.

Brother Gods: Creating and destroying entire species

Like, okay. Look. These are the two that made humanity, so an argument could be made that they’re humanity’s parents. But, by the strict and arbitrary rules I have selected, they aren’t parents. And even if they were, they would be just the worst sort of parents possible. Darkbro is bad enough, what with viewing only strength as valuable and creating the Grimm and, you know, annihilating humanity that one time, but he’s at least honest and honorable. Not like the cryptic Lightbro, who doesn’t bother making sure people understand him, who doesn’t even keep his own promises to his brother... I get that they’re basically overpowered children. Yeah, they are. Still... kinda terrible.

So, now that that’s all done, let’s get to the actual list! After the break, so you don’t get stuck scrolling a lot. RWBY parents, from best to worst, are as follows:

23. Saphron and Terra Cotta-Arc: Two moms are better than none!

If I’m rating all the parents, and I am, then I have to acknowledge their flaws. And... these two don’t have any! Okay, fine, they used Adrian in a criminal scheme that one time (and that was literally just asking him to cry on command) and maybe Terra’s overworked and, to be fair, parenting a young kid is a lot different than parenting a teenager. But not only did they support their kid, they helped out all the kids that needed to room with them for a while! Saphron may also qualify as a momsister, depending on how well the Arcs managed their massive-numbered horde of kids. Look, the point is: Excellent parents. Bam.

22. Yatsuhashi's Parents: Their slipups weren’t their fault

When your kid can wipe your memories and you don’t know about it, you’re bound to get a few mistakes down the line. Luckily for everyone, after the whole incident with Hiyoko Yatsu came clean, and his parents made absolutely sure that he understood (A) that having such an ability was a big responsibility and (B) that even though he really screwed up he was NOT evil. Given the man that Yatsuhashi is now, I’m pretty confident in calling them great parents--even if they only appeared in a book flashback.

21. Coco's Dad: He exists!

That’s... honestly all I really know about him. He’s mentioned once in the books, and Coco has a few brothers. I’m kind of just assuming he’s a good parent from that, even if he didn’t figure out how to help Coco with her claustrophobia. So... yeah, shrug, Coco’s got a dad.

20: Ghira and Kali Belladonna: Actually marvelous people

Loving. Caring. Mentoring, protective. You may be asking why these two aren’t lower on the list, given that they are absolutely great for Blake, and I’ll have to admit that they only really made one slipup--letting Adam talk with Blake.

And okay, look. The thing about people like Adam is that they don’t start out showing their true colors. It’s always a slow, gentle broil. Blake was young and stupid, Adam was cute and edgy, and these parents want their daughter to be happy. So not twigging on what Adam really was--or at least not being able to properly convince Blake--that’s entirely understandable. And they did instill her with a strong enough moral code to leave when enough was enough, and they absolutely welcomed her back with open arms. Frankly, if the lower-listing parents didn’t exist, I would happily say they are the best parents in the show.

19. Pietro Polendina: He took Penny’s death flags

When you carve out part of your literal soul to bring your girl back from the dead, you get MAJOR parenting props. And even beyond that, Pietro is an absolutely caring and supportive father to everyone’s favorite bundle of sunshine. Even when she’s put in the rough position she was in, Pietro did his best to help her out. His one big flaw, though, is being overprotective and a bit presumptive. He does want Penny to live her best life, but he also can be just a touch too quick to say he knows what’s best for her. To his credit, when he’s called out on it, he does mend his ways. And he’s at least better then the GENERAL...

18. Salem and Ozma: Good parents, surprisingly!

Sure, Salem decided that world conquest was a good idea and wanted to put down anybody that wasn’t directly from her bloodline. Sure, she psychologically manipulated her husband when he had doubts. And, being fair, it’s highly likely that her four daughters were killed in the crossfire of her and Ozma’s little tuff. But! That was likely an accident, she’s been shown to still clearly mourn their passing, and before that point she absolutely loved and adored the girls. Ozma gets points for being a generally good person who fell in love with her before she became unstable and, honestly, was just trying to help his girls escape... and hey, he blames himself for their deaths. As does Salem.

Just because they’re kind of directly responsible for a LOT of Remnant’s woes doesn’t mean they aren’t good parents!

17. Will and Meg Scarlatina: Estranged but loving...

Yes, I know Rooster Teeth hasn’t officially confirmed that Bill is Will. I still believe though! Also it makes for a great picture, in any case.

Look, you can be the best and most loving parents ever--and from what we saw in the novels Will was definitely loving--but if you split up, your kid is going to get a little stressed. And hey, it’s not like these two were terrible people! Velvet’s just got a lot going on because of things entirely out of her control. Parents are people too, but sometimes the stress of one situation will leak out into another. Just... give people time to adapt.

16. Nicholas Schnee: The man, the legend, the titan!

Nicholas Schnee is the rockstar success story of Remnant. Some guy from Mantle put in all the work to make the SDC, and honestly from what little we know about him he was probably a great guy! But if we’re registering parental goodness, well... he wasn’t quite smart enough to warn Willow away from abusive gold diggers, and he’s not present when the story starts. So, yeah, even if he was a good parent otherwise--and I think he would be--he kinda... didn’t put in the work to prevent Willow breaking later. Still. Not deliberately terrible!

15. Li and An Ren: Don’t die in front of your kids, folks!

Seriously, it traumatizes them, especially if there’s a Grimm assault going on at the same time. Oh, double-especially if you reassure them that everything will be fine literally the second before the roof collapses on your head. And... well, okay, you couldn’t help your son and some random girl being the only survivors...

In all seriousness, that whole situation was absolutely out of their control. And before their deaths they were shown to be loving, wise, giving good advice to Lie Ren and helping him understand what the right thing to do was. Honestly, if they hadn’t died in front of him he’d be a lot better, mentally speaking. His trauma is not their fault. Plus Li went out distracting the big Grimm so Lie could run. No greater love hath man, indeed.

14. Summer Rose: Loving mother, ticking trauma bomb

When she was around, Summer Rose was probably the best mom Yang and Ruby could ask for. Sure, everyone could be exaggerating a little on how great a person she was--fond memories and grief can do that--but even taking that into account, she was probably a great and wonderful woman to be raised by. And hey, it turns out the reason she vanished was to go confront basically the Devil Herself so her kids wouldn’t have to live in a world where she existed! I can totally get the logic behind that.

And to be fair, “I’m going to do this on my own so nobody else suffers” is a pretty common character flaw among the RWBY cast. There are entire arcs where each character learns to overcome it. Still, wandering off on your lonesome without telling anyone was not the smartest move, Summer. Especially if you expected to die--which, you know, Devil Herself, high probability. And you know, if you had died, that would be bad enough, but now Ruby’s practically certain to have to fight your grimmified self. At least she figured out what happened to you before Salem decided to hammer in the trauma button, so she’ll be a little more ready, but... seriously.

13. The Arc Parents: Look, you try juggling eight kids!

To be fair, neither Arc parent has appeared on screen, but we can derive some of their traits from their kids. Jaune’s father said women like confident men. Jaune’s mother said strangers are friends you haven’t met yet. Jaune’s sister moved out of the house and (it’s implied) was happier for it. Jaune himself took his family’s ancestral weapon and ran off to Beacon to become a hero without any training whatsoever....

I get the impression that these two are not horrible parents, but they aren’t really stellar ones either. They slip up, don’t understand their children, give some really bad advice (as well as really good advice), and... look, it’s kind of middle of the road here. The Arcs could be wonderful people that just weren’t ready for the complexities of raising eight kids. I come from a big family myself, I know it can be stressful. And their kids turned out well anyway, so...

12. The Mother of Pyrrha Nikos: You taught your girl too well

Hero complexes are funny things. And Pyrrha Nikos... in retrospect, she was really hiding a lot of insecurities under that facade. Laying it all at this woman’s feet is unfair, I’ll admit, a lot of that came from being The Mistral Champion. But... with stories and fairy tales of heroes, it’s not hard to imagine a genuinely loving mother making sure her daughter knew right from wrong, always knew to act with mercy and protect the weak, and made her hardline into being a hero at the cost of her own... sense of self. It wouldn’t even be something either of them noticed, really. Good people can make bad choices sometimes.

11: Ilia's Parents: Oh god, can good people make bad choices...

So the idea of getting Ilia up to Atlas for a better life, that rocks (if you assume the propaganda to be true). And I’m certain her parents absolutely did what they did out of love. But what they did, you see, was tell Ilia to hide a very important part of herself from anybody who could find out, since it was likely she would be kicked out of the school she was in if people found out she was a faunus.

Which actually, did a lot of damage.

I mean look at Ilia now! She has trouble expressing herself until she explodes, she follows a crowd instead of her own morals, she broke down in tears when she finally did the right thing... Conceal Don’t Feel is never good advice, and these two went on and said ‘Honey, because of racism, you have to hide the fact you literally change color when you have emotions.’ Oh, and then they died offscreen--again, not their fault, but boy howdy did it give Ilia a complex.

10. Taiyang Xiao Long: Slumped at just the wrong time

Honestly, Tai as he is now is a wonderful dad. Supportive of his daughters in their time of need, able to lift their mood with a tasteless joke or two, frankly if we were assessing just how they were in the moment... I’d still be a little critical of his refusal to talk about the girls’ mothers, but hey, that’s minor. Compared to, you know...

Okay, so this needs serious addressing. Taiyang cannot be blamed for falling into a depressive slump. People can hurt, and need time to heal. That said, his depressive slump is at the root of Yang’s many issues, and frankly if she hadn’t had to pull herself together for Ruby she would be a major mess. It’s a bad situation all round, even if it’s not his fault.

9. Willow Schnee: “Kids, don’t wind up like me.”

Drowning her sorrows isn’t the best way to handle being stuck in an abusive marriage, but it was the best way Willow could think of. And, yeah, that really cut into her skills as a mom... but despite that, she did her darnedest to make sure her kids had what they needed to free themselves. Heck, once Jacques was out of the picture, she even pulled herself together and risked her life to save them! A broken women, to be sure, but not a shattered one.

8. Neptune's Mother: She exists!

Being fair, there’s not a lot to go on here. We know Neptune’s mother is a lawyer (insert evil lawyer joke), that their family are famous swimmers, and that his brother caused his hydrophobia by tossing him into the water. It does paint a bit of a picture, though, of everyone having expectations for Neptune that he was not able to live up to. Pretty poor parenting, if it’s true.

7. Nora Valkyrie's Mom: Come get your girl!

Literally the only factoid we have about Mama Valkyrie is that she abandoned her to the Grimm. We don’t know when this was, and it’s feasible it’s a case of ‘Oh No I Lost Track Of My Daughter In The Panic!’ But given we see young Nora scavenging for scraps of food... I’m not optimistic on her parenting skills.

6. Raven Branwen: "I wasn’t part of your life, how could I ruin it?”

Raven is just not a good mom at all. And, surprisingly, she seems to know it. Or that’s one interpretation of her character. The thing about Raven is that she plays her cards close to chest. We still don’t know why she left her daughter, and we only have inklings about the reasoning behind her behavior once they reunited. In the end, though... she did concede to Yang, she did apologize for something, and there’s a very deliberate indication that a lot of her behavior is a mask to both others and herself. So, terrible mother, for the moment, but self-aware.

5. Salem's Father: Explicitly noted as cruel

We get a bit more about Salem’s father from ‘Fairy Tales Of Remnant’, how he became possessive of the last remnant of his wife and locked her away in a tower. From what we know of him, that’s all he did--lock her away and not let her go. Still makes him a terrible dad. And with this, we transition firmly into the most definitively abusive parent figures. Everyone before this might have the excuse of not realizing what was going on or having their own damage, but now we’ve got parents actively deciding to make their kids’ lives worse.

4. Jacques Gelé: HE DOES NOT GET TO BE CALLED SCHNEE!

His children are property, to be manipulated and traded for the benefit of the company he married into, and any defiance is to be quelled instantly. He is manipulative, scheming, abusive, and frankly the worst sort of scumbag to ever wear a white suit. He does have the single redeeming quality of only leaning into the punishment if it benefits him; nobody would ever accuse the man of being needlessly cruel. His name is Jacques, and you will hate him... especially on the rare occasions he actually has a point.

3. The Marigolds: There’s no peppy tagline, they’re just mean

There’s not a picture of these jerks on the wiki, so you’ll have to make do with the woman that is no longer their daughter. See all that empty space around her? That’s about as close as they ever got. May spells out how much they hated her for having a heart, and how little they cared about her as a person, in one epic line. And even if they have other redeeming qualities (unlikely) we can tell they’d probably still be terrible parents because of how sleazy May’s cousin is. Honestly, for once I’m glad some characters don’t get pictures. They don’t deserve to be remembered. They aren’t even the cool kind of evil, they’re just... gross.

2. Marcus Black: Look if you train your kid to be a killer...

...you’re going to have to expect them to kill you. I mean, you basically ripped apart Mercury’s legs, man. He had to get cyberlegs. Also, you used your semblance to steal his. Which, given that semblances come from aura, and that aura is a manifestation of the soul, is kinda... that’s a deeply personal and intimate violation. Sure, you got your assassin kid. And can we talk about the fact that Marcus was an assassin? It’s not a pretty job. I guess I can see all the abuse--physical and mental--as a good way to train up another assassin, but... geeze, if that’s your goal, why did you use your own kid?! Why not hire some angsty teenager?! Yeah, no, Markus Black stood high on my list of parental monsters... and was only toppled by the arrival of one other.

1. Madame of the Glass Unicorn: She only appeared in one episode and she rocketed to the top of this list, that should tell you something

Let’s be clear here: What Madame did to Cinder is bad enough. It was literally slavery. Enforced by a shock collar. And because the collar looked like a necklace, she pulled it off in front of I don’t know how many clients. Granted, said clients were racists, why else would they be customers at a ‘We Do Not Serve Faunus’ hotel, but keeping her torture just out of the public eye very clearly shows both that she knew what she was doing was illegal and that she was clever enough to avoid detection.

Oh... and then there are her birth daughters.

With Cinder, she was abusive to a dangerous degree. With her daughters, she was permissive, not only allowing but encouraging them to bully their adoptive sister. The whole point of parenthood is to teach your children how to become the best version of themselves, but Madame didn’t even bother to instill a semblance of morality in these girls. She used them as extensions of her will, and they obliviously played along because that was all they knew.

You’d think the biggest monster on the show would be the Grimm woman, but no--it’s some random lady with a hotel.

#RWBY #Analysis #Ranking #I had the urge to make this #Feel free to disagree #Some of this is opinion-based

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itsclydebitches · 3 years ago

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I'm the empathy anon. Yang said when Summer disappeared Ruby wasn't talking yet. That's under 3, probably, making Yang 5 at most. A 5 year old can't take care of a toddler too young to talk, that's not how human development works. Since Tai's a decent parent in vol. 4, Yang's retelling as 'I was taking care of Ruby' instead of 'my father did his best, but I still naturally grieved' suggests that when Tai couldn't resolve her grief he became, in her mind, an absent parent.

Taking a look back at the scene and approaching it with fresh eyes, I think the fandom – and I very much include myself in this – read a little too far into Tai's depression. Does Yang say elsewhere that she actually raised Ruby in any capacity? Because "Burning the Candle" just mentions Tai "shutting down" for an undetermined length of time. Specifically, her speech covers:

That both her parents were huntsmen

Tai taught at Signal

Summer went on missions

She was "super mom" who baked cookies and slew monsters

She left on a mission one day and never came back

This was "tough"

Ruby was "really torn up" but was too young to "really get what was going on, y'know?"

Tai "shut down"

Yang quickly learned why: Summer was the second love Tai lost

He wouldn't tell her everything about Raven though, just that she was on his team, left her with Tai after she was born, and hadn't been seen since

To my mind, that speech is pretty emotionally neutral in regards to Tai, leaning towards sympathetic when it comes to acknowledging why he broke (it wasn't just Summer's death, but the grief of losing a second love). There are no facts here about how long Tai "shut down," what Yang might or might not have done to care for Ruby, and no anger directed at her dad for this period, just sadness regarding the circumstances. During the part about how tough things were and how hard Tai took it, Yang has this sad little smile on her face. A kind of, "Life is hard. What are you gonna do?" energy. Not a "Dad couldn't handle it so I picked up his slack" energy.

What stands out to me though is the second half of Yang's story which could very very easily have painted Tai as an absent parent. She doesn't say that she was able to sneak out into the woods because he was too drunk/absentminded/uncaring to keep track of them, Yang deliberately waited "for Dad to leave the house." This was planned to avoid his parenting. She also fully paints herself as in the wrong here, acknowledging how obsessed she'd become with finding out about Raven: "I was determined to find out. It was all I thought about. I would ask anyone I could about what they knew about her... I wasn't going to let anything stop me." Yang describes herself as a "stupid girl" who might as well have been served herself and Ruby on a "silver platter" to the grimm. "My stubbornness should've gotten us killed that night." Her stubbornness, not anything Tai had or had not done.

I don't think there's anything in this scene to imply that Yang considers herself a better parent than Tai, or even that she was actively taking care of Ruby outside of an older sister trying to provide/find comfort with her. If anything, the scene implies that she considers herself to have been a stupid, impulsive kid who only now recognizes the foolishness of her choices – as well as how difficult all of this must have been for their Dad.

Yeah, RWBY has truckloads of writing problems, including nonsensical or inconsistent characterization, but in this case I think it's more a matter of the fandom reading too far into a neutral, or even positive depiction. Many fans were upset with Tai's tough love approach to Yang's arm. Many fans are currently upset that he's not on a quest to find his daughters. Both of those writing choices have simplified into a "Tai is an unfit father" reading. Combine that with people (again, myself included) easily misremembering this scene/filling in blanks with headcanons – taking "shut down" and expanding it into an entire childhood where Tai was absent, resulting in Yang needing to raise Ruby herself – toss in Yang acting somewhat parent-ish as she comforts her younger sister in Volume 8, as well as Yang's general attitude that we've discussed... and you get the conclusion that she demeans Tai's parenting. But unpacking all that, I don't think there's much actual evidence to support Yang being that critical of Tai. Other people? Absolutely, as said, but their relationship – however much in need of that second editing pass in other ways – seems to be an exception.

Hell, I'd kill to get a speech like this from Yang again. Compassion for Tai, awe at Qrow's save, clear personal motivations, an acknowledgement that she's made mistakes with horrifying consequences? That Yang is gone now and I miss her A Whole Lot.

#rwby #mymetas #long post

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