#not even team sdc remembers this fight

[cyphyree]

Listen i totally understand but this is also the only fight kakyoin solos and wins we can't take that away from him 💔

dio really went out there and employed a bird, a sword, a 10-year-old, and a gamer huh

[howi99]

Project ARC remake 14

Ozpin: So, how was his first day?

Glynda: *sigh* He didn't want to hurt his adversary and dodged for the entire fight. His aura control is perfect but...

Ozpin: *sigh* No sign of his aura coming back?

Glynda: ... His physical wounds are healing. For now, that's what matters most...

Qrow: *sitting next to her* Amber is still recovering at the hospital, once she wakes up, we will finally know who attacked them. Maybe that could give us a clue on how to fix- i mean, how to heal him?

Glynda: *sigh* i hope so... *Looking at her scroll* Beside that, he seems to be adjusting correctly to his team. *Looking back at Ozpin* Him being partnered up with Mss Schnee wasn't just a hazard, was it?

Ozpin: In all honesty? It was. I know how the SDC and the Project ARC are both linked, but believe me when i said giving him more visibility wasn't my intention. I personally would prefer if James didn't know about Jaune. At least, not until the festival.

Qrow : I have to say, giving him Arc as his last name wasn't really the best idea to hide him from Atlas.

Glynda: *sigh* He only accepted this one... And mine, though that would have been an even worse giveaway... *Small smile* I'm just happy he thought of our real name first.

Qrow: It does mean that deep down, he's still your brother.

________

Nora: *looking at Jaune from afar* Hey Ru, don't you think Jaune looks a lot like Professor Goodwitch?

Ruby: *eating cookies* Mh?

Nora: Like, beside the hair color, they kinda have the same... I guess aura? And the way she acted with him-

Yang: What, you think they are secretly siblings? Why would they hide it?

Blake: *looking up from her book* ... Maybe it's not a choice? Or maybe we are reading in too deep? Besides, it's not really what's the weirdest about him.

Yang: Oh oh~ already sizing him up are ya?

Blake: *slightly Blushing* Not in that sense! I meant his Aura. And not only that, but the way he speaks.

Ruby: *gulping down the cookies* Ah~. Couldn't that just be him being a bit... Uh... *Look at Nora*

Nora: ... What?

Ruby: N-nothing!

Nora: You meant autistic?

Ruby: D-didn't want to assume!

Nora: *shrug* It's fine, but i don't have it. Or at least, i never got a diagnostic. *Point to Ren* He does.

Yang: But the way you act-

Nora: I've been living in the street for as long as i can remember. Social norm aren't really something i could learn.

Yang: Oh shit, i'm so sorry, i-

Nora: *shrug* Eh, not the first gal to make that mistake. And certainly not the last.

Ruby: S-so, what do you think for Jaune?

Nora: I don't think it's that.

Blake: Really?

Nora: He still understands most social queues and even apologized for his actions during the match. I don't really want to assume anything, but... It's more like he is broken.

Yang: What? Like mind break like in the book Blake's reading?

Blake: Hey!

Nora: No, more like... A part of him is missing? He did say he lost his memory, so it might be that.

Ruby: *sigh* i hope he gets better...

___________

Jaune: *looking at the dino nuggies in his plate* ... What are those?

Pyrrha: *awkwardly laughing* I uh... Didn't know what you'd like so i just took the first thing that grabbed my attention. Eh eh...

Jaune: ... (Glynda did tell me i should eat even though i do not require it. Something about fitting in and being able to use the energy to better heal). *Look at the t-rex looking one* I guess i can try them.

Ren: *drinking tea with Weiss* If you want, i could try making some food i learned to make during my travel?

Jaune: That would be nice.

Weiss: *looking at Ren* Do you perhaps know how to bake cakes?

Ren: I sadly only learned to make outdoor cuisine, but i'm more than willing to try.

[rwbyuser24]

I would have liked that Team RWBY had a talk with Ironwood, individually

Yeah... some time I don't talk specifically about Ironwood. I think that if the characters have interacted more with him, things like the team splitting would end up being more painful. But well, let's do this.

1.-Ruby

Remember what Ironwood said back then?

"Ruby, I feel it's appropriate to let you know that I think what you did last night is exactly what being a Huntress is all about. You recognized a threat. You took action. And you did the very best you could."

They could have a conversation about what being a leader means. Ironwood would give some advices.

Also they would talk about how they don't agree with Ozpin's methods. Of course, Ruby would not reveal what happened with Ozpin. But still.

And about reuniting the world. About how they must do their things and such.

They could also talk about the duty of a Huntsman. Which would make more tragic when Ironwood decides to not help Mantle.

2.-Weiss

Something I would like would be for Ironwood to transmit certain idea to Weiss. Both are atlesians elites. Yet Ironwood doesn't see himself, the rest of the military nor Weiss like the rest of the atlesian elites. For him, they are actually doing something good.

Basically would be like "Weiss, I'm glad that you are on our side. We are different from Jacques. On us depends the future of the kingdom, and we must do our best to say Atlas and Mantle".

You know, Ironwood with Atlas complex. Thinking that he must carry the weight of the world himself. But he would try to share somewhat of that mentality to Weiss.

They would discuss somewhat of the decisions of the kingdom and what would be the best for it. For example. Remember this?

"It's just… Our kingdom isn't supposed to be like this. Fearful, and withdrawn. We should be opening our borders to help the world, not closing them down."

Weiss could say those things to Ironwood, and he would give his arguments.

All of this, to make more dramatic when Ironwood decides to not make their dream come true of a better Atlas. Since he would lift the city in the air and would leave Mantle to die.

3.-Blake

This is the most interesting.

Blake would talk to Ironwood about the kingdom oppression over the faunus. She would tell him that he should change the legislation for the faunus to not be oppressed.

She would also confront him about him not arresting Jacques or not stopping the SDC from exploiting faunus.

You could say "We all know why Ironwood is not stopping Jacques", but even so, I would have liked that we received an official answer.

Also they could talk on the fact that Blake left the White fang. That means that both were on different sides of the conflict. And yet, they are allies now. It could be very interesting, think about it, Ironwood decided to forgive and not arrest a former criminal, why? We could see his motivations.

All of this so when he abandon Mantle, she would feel like they lost a valuable ally.

4.-Yang

This is easy. She thanking him for the new arm.

"When you're out on the battlefield, your judgment can become clouded in an instant. Sometimes you see things that simply aren't there. Even after the fight is past..."

They would talk about the PTSD. Maybe even Ironwood could reveal how he lost part of his body.

Yang would tell about how she was affected by Adam cutting her arm. And would tell about how her friends are helping her deal with the PTSD.

They would even talk about the people close to them. About how they have to stop Salem to not only save the future, but also protect the ones they love.

5.-Conclusions

I think that these could have been interesting moments that would add to each character and make more dramatic the division that was going to come.

[oddlyhale]

The few things I remember from V9 was the weed smoke scene where Team RWBY are confronting their past selves.

I remember it because it was so incoherent. Seeing it again months later, you can feel how much the writers struggled to convince the viewers that Team RWBY had substantial growth throughout the series and how these topics their past selves confront them with don't have any weight.

Ruby's moment felt like it had something to it, however, and it did carry throughout the volume until the end. But Blake, Yang and Weiss have nothing to burden themselves with.

Weiss and her Schnee family lineage? It doesn't matter because Team RWBY sunk Atlas and Mantle, which was also the biggest distribution center for Dust, so her lineage is gone and she has nothing - neither do the rest of her surviving family members.

Yang is fine with her arm and didn't doubt it after Blake held her hand while confronting Adam. Yang has not let that part of herself burden her anymore, so this scene of her past self trying to convince her to "become whole again" was stupid.

Blake has, by all means, already taken the biggest step to fixing the White Fang and the Faunus movement. After stopping the bombing in V5 and killing Adam, there have been no threats of White Fang after that. The slavery (that she basically ignored for a long time) that was happening with SDC is gone now, so again, she has nothing more to worry about because the biggest slaver (Jacques) is gone.

They even lost a well-loved and highly important General of the Atlas Army, so if there were any soldiers left, they couldn't do anything because they lost their power once Atlas was gone and Ironwood dead.

The kids have nothing much to fight for, and you could say "they still have to face Salem," but I would say Salem is the least of their problems. Even Cinder isn't that important to them, and Cinder has slowly stopped caring about Ruby over time. She just wants the Maiden Powers now and Salem just wants the Relics.

Salem seems to have stopped caring about Ruby being a SEW, which is pretty big because she made it a huge deal back in V4, but as the years have passed, Salem has changed trajectory and wants the Relics to quicken her and Remnant's end. Perhaps Salem is becoming aware of how uninvolved Team RWBY are.

What she really needs to look out for is every RWBY fans' favourite white boy, Jaune.

Okay, this is me being petty, but I am curious to know if CRWBY will perpetuate this "Jaune is the main character" act some more, just to stick it to people who don't like him. Well, I say: please do it, it'll just help prove that he's far more important to prove himself to the vast majority than Team RWBY.

So, RWBY has lost much of its identity and V9 really shows it. It feels lost, and not in an Alice in Wonderland way. It feels like a colleague of newspaper clippings being glued together to try and create a narrative, but it's all just nonsense that would be tossed in the bin later because the ending didn't let all of the events matter.

But I am totally looking forward to Team RWBY destroying Vacuo!

[deadbeatbirdmom]

Personally I don’t expect team rwby to solve all bigotry, but I’d like to see them make any sort of attempt to at least begin to change something? Even relatively small scale?

The SDC seemed like the perfect opportunity but nope,

And maybe don’t kill,of characters like sienna and have characters like Robyn hill who are actively trying to combat class inequality get competed into fighting Salem instead

Movies like nimona manage it I don’t see why rwby can’t

This is the last time I'll be answering an ask to do with these issues in RWBY. I don't feel that there's a satisfactory answer, and certainly not one that I can provide. I've mentioned something along those lines before, but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're not the same anon and didn't see my posted answer.

I recently reblogged a post about these issues, but that doesn't mean my answer has changed. That post basically said there is no simple fix, and that means it isn't possible to do in RWBY, unless it was a fictional fix that wouldn't work in reality, which would be disrespectful.

I'm not sure what you expect four teenagers to be able to do, even small scale. They're good at fighting Grimm, but that doesn't mean anyone's going to pay attention to them about anything else.

Ruby's lucky at least some people listened to her broadcast about Salem, but that's connected with Grimm.

Weiss was the SDC heiress but ended up having that taken away before she could do anything good with it, and actually doing anything would have had to wait until her father was no longer in control.

Blake persuaded Menagerie's faunus to form a militia and help save Haven from Adam's corrupted White Fang, but that took a serendipitous attack on her parents and their house partly burning down. She can't command that militia to do anything else.

Yang would struggle to persuade anyone to do anything. The last time Remnant at large saw her was during the Vytal tournament broadcast, apparently breaking Mercury's leg unprovoked. The CCT is still down, so chances are most people have no idea she was set up. I dunno, maybe she could intimidate some sense into people?

I'm not sure when team RWBY would have had time to do anything while in Atlas. Ironwood kept them busy. Were they supposed to take down or reform the SDC with the one night off they had? If they'd tried they might well have found themselves arrested, the SDC and its Dust is rather important to the Atlas military. And then where would they be with their goal of getting the second Relic from the Atlas vault?

As for after things fell apart with Ironwood... As important as these issues are, avoiding arrest and doing their part to help get word out about Salem, or helping Mantle and then rescuing Oscar had priority.

It's not the reason they've done it, they just happened to fall in love, but I guess it could be argued that Blake and Yang's romance is some sort of proof that faunus and humans are equal.

After Salem is eventually somehow defeated, I can imagine at least Blake working with or even leading the reformed White Fang and campaigning for faunus rights. I'm sure the rest of her team would help her if there's anything they can do.

But survival against Salem has to come first. So a huntress like Robyn Hill doesn't really have any choice. There won't be any world to improve if Salem isn't stopped.

As for Sienna, take that up with Adam. I'd much rather she hadn't been killed off too, but there was no other way that was going to end between them.

That's the best I can do, anon. I'm well aware it's not a great answer. I can't provide one. I don't think there is one.

I haven't seen Nimona, I don't have a Netflix subscription. Maybe I'll watch it the next time I want to rewatch She-Ra. I've read the Nimona graphic novel years ago, but I don't remember bigotry being solved in there. Unless you meant an attempt being made? I need to reread it.

Edit: this got long and I forgot about a read more cut until now. Apologies!

[saltedsnails]

listen i will always be forever salty and bitter that they didnt use adam's corpse to turn it into the hound.

because imagine how terrifying it would have been for everyone in the schnee manor if the one guy that's been terrorizing her for years STILL came back as a giant grimm monster

and then weiss being forced to see the SDC mark on some random faunus (idk if weiss or ruby have ever met/talked about adam so im just assuming she doesn't know who adam is)

like i get it why they needed it to be a silver eyed person (to spin the whole 'that must be what happened to mom' convo), but it's a missed opportunity to turn the guy who looked human into the Beast he was based on

Now this, this is what RWBY deserved. The world of Remnant is a twist on fairytales, so make it fucking dark and depraved since RT wanted to be mature so damn badly. Also, from what I remember RW never talked about Adam, let alone knowing his scarring. Even his color pallet matches Grimm to a tee, even though we have Ruby, Summer, and Qrow (too an extent) with those colors as well. I’m just, maaan.

But may I also propose a Silver-Eyed Adam?

You get:

A) A foil to Ruby as a huntress for “good and justice” who hasn’t been discriminated against her entire life and is ignorant to the true tragedy of the world she lives in, versus Adam. A member of a minority race who is a fierce combatant because it’s the only way he’d survive, not because it’s “fun and heroic” like Ruby. He’d get away with being a SEW because he’s a Faunus, and a lot of idiots would think he couldn’t wield his eyes because “Faunus are lower beings”, so but of course he wouldn’t be able to, because Adam’s soooo dumb. /s Also, he has a mask to hide not only his scar he would get from SDC, but hide his eyes as he became higher ranked in the WF.

B) Foil to Yang. It’s really weird but I’m not sure I’ve seen a lot of people touch on this, at least recently. Yang genuinely has (or has had if it’s still an ongoing problem) anger issues. Her lack of thinking and forethought literally cost her her arm in her fight with Adam. It didn’t change much in Volume 4. What the writers could’ve done, instead of brushing it aside because for some reason overcoming trauma is “boring”, is focus more on Yang becoming less of a party girl and more of a planner like her mother.

C) Blake development, because good GOD after V5 she had nothing going for her besides Adam. Like, we never saw how she became so enamored with Adam in detail. Her development with Adam could reverse, between her being a more serious-yet-shy book lover and activist to actually playing a more intimate role within the change for the WF. Not just, “hey why did you guys burn my mansion down, this isn’t right”. Like, Blake is the most privileged Faunus in the show. Her struggles next to what we can glean from Adam is absolutely minimal. Can you imagine, after what Adam did to her new home and found family, what the confrontation could’ve been like? Adam tearing down everything Blake has and spitting in her face? Snarling that she’s always been a coward, never wanting to actually face danger because she’s a spoiled little rich girl, and that she could never be half of what he is. And you know what, she deserves to hear it.

D) WHY IN THE GOD DAMN HELLISH FUCK DID ADAM AND WEISS NOT HAVE A SINGULAR CONVERSATION. HE COORDINATED ATTACKS ON THE SCHNEE FAMILY. AND THEN YOUR EX GIRLFRIEND IS ON THE SAME TEAM AS THE FAMILY OF YOUR NUMBER ONE OPPRESSOR? HELLO?? IT’S LITERALLY RIGHT THERE.

- 🐌

[shinobirain24]

RWBY: Soldier of Ice

Plot: Winter Schnee, the first (later former) heiress of the Schnee Dust Company, is enrolled into Atlas Academy to not be defined by her family name and legacy. As her only desire to be remembered as a soldier for when she graduates. There, Winter is experiencing her life as a leader of Team WNND (pronounced: wind). And even making friends in the process. But also experiencing a rivalry with a student of Haven Academy, Jupiter Vasilias, rogue young man and a member of Team ZRVT (Pronounced: serpent), whom despises Winter because of who her father, Jacques Schnee was.

Characters:

Team WNND

Winter Schnee - An heiress of the SDC and the leader of Team WNND. Being made the leader of her team, she was shunned by her teammates due to her background as a Schnee. But remained patient with her teammates as it came to her understanding that they needed time to adjust to her as she has to do with them. Winter only enrolled into Atlas Academy to become a soldier and not be defined with her maternal grandfather, Nicholas's legacy. Though she takes her grandfather's advise to heart that she needs to bind her mind and soul to find herself a path.

Perseus Nire - an heir to Nire Industries. Like Winter, he was disgusted with how the rich disregard the lives of those unfortunate despite being born to a wealthy family that involves tinkering machines and weapons. He was disowned by his father after he forbade him from enrolling into Atlas Academy. He didn't trust Winter at first due to her father's shading dealings. But took his time to get to know her better and became her closest confidant. His weapon is a shield that also shifts into an arm blade, dubbed Arm-Protectus. His semblance is that his skin can transform into metal until his aura runs out to change back to normal. But it was weakened against heat. He is an allusion of the warrior, Perseus from Greek Mythology.

Natalie Andromeda - an heiress of Andromeda Cosmetics, and the love interest of Perseus Nire. Natalie was born a beautiful girl during her teen years. And her mother was jealous of her beauty that she once tried to sacrifice her to the oceans waves by chaining her to an iceberg. This unlocks her semblance of magnetic abilities that broke free from her captivity and saved herself from certain death. After this, her mother was arrested, and Natalie cuts ties from her father for failing to control her jealous behavior. Natalie enrolled Atlas Academy to not be defined by her beauty. There she met Perseus Nire, whom only interested in her for her for who she is. Her main weapons are the dual chains that her mother used for her sacrifice, and it was upgraded with spike gear attached on the ends. She is the allusion of Princess Andromeda from Greek Mythology.

Deshiro Kaze - am heir to the Kaze clan that served the Atlas Military for generations. And was next in line to lead his clan. His family was from a long line of samurais form his Mistralese ancestry. His grandmother was from Atlas descent, while his grandfather was born from Mistral. Making Deshiro's grandparents are the first interracial couple to reside in Atlas after marriage. His weapon was his katana. But for mysterious reasons, he wears a blindfold, even though he is not blind. His semblance creates waves of the wind every time he uses his sword. He is the allusion of the Japanese god of the wind, Fujin.

Team ZRVT

Zerena Slithers - The leader of Team ZRVT and the only female in the group from Haven Academy. Zerena was held captive as a slave to the aristocracies in Atlas as a young girl due to her being a snake-tailed faunus. Only for her to rally her fellow captives and fight back. Unlocking her semblance to turn people into stone. She wields a scythe/whip due to being taught by Qrow Branwen, making her one of Qrow's first student to have used a scythe besides before Ruby Rose. When it was turned into an electric whip, it was infused with electric dusts. Zerena is an allusion to Medusa from Greek Mythology.

Roth Mandle - A young man with a semblance to control the vegetation around the environment. He is a herbalist-in-training studying plants since his mother's flower shop came into a close. His main weapon is a battle axe that also serves as a minigun. Roth is silent, but he means well for his teammates. With his herbology skills, Roth can establish a remedy needed for healing, or a weapon for poison to use on his enemies. Though enemies with Team WNND, he respected them for their way of working together. He is an allusion to Jack and the Beanstalk.

Jupiter Vasilias - A blue-haired teenage boy who is rebellious and filled with anger issues. He is a student under Qrow Branwen (whom Jupiter idolized). He came from a rare bloodline of warriors that used aquatic-based semblances. Jupiter is well-known to be a heartbreaker and dating multiple girls, only to cheat the next. He has a grudge against the Schnee Family due to his mother's cases against CEO Jacques Schnee, and he retaliated with shutting the law firm down. And he hated his daughter, Winter for that, and would prefer to her as "Ice Demon." And hated the wealth and Atlas as a result. His main weapon is a spear that also serves as a saber naginata and a sniper gun. His semblance allows Jupiter to convert water into mist.

Tyler Shepard - A wolf-eared faunus and a thief. Tyler was raised by a tribe of bandits sometime after he somewhat ended up orphaned. Tyler has a skills for thievery and was long time friends with Jupiter, whom they formed a connection through business of revenge against the aristocracies. His friendship with Jupiter is similar to Sun's friendship with Neptune. Only he mostly followed for whatever Jupiter says and taught him how to steal. His main weapons are dual tomahawks that also shifts into pistols, dubbed Alpha and Beta. His semblance allows Tyler to steal other people's semblances by physical contact to use until their aura runs out.

[eiiskonigin]

it's a million degrees and I made myself sad so you know what? fuck it, I'm going to finally write out the Kai headcanon / lore / whatever you want to call this nonsense. I kept putting it off because I was never happy with it but fuck it.

When Winter joined Atlas Academy, she was assigned to a team with three other people. Among those three was her partner, a young man by the name of Kai Troldenglas. The pair quickly proved a force to be reckoned with in their year, their fighting styles blending together almost seamlessly.

Despite the fact that Winter could be cold and standoffish even back then, Kai insisted on growing closer to her -- doing little things to break down her walls. Remembering the things she preferred to eat in the mess hall and saving her the last of them should she be running late. Taking an interest on the rare occasions that she did open up about herself, her home life.

If you had asked Winter, she would have said that Kai was a reliable partner. Someone she was growing to trust, someone she would begin to call a friend.

Over their first year at the Academy, their friendship blossomed into something more. Truthfully, Winter had never put much thought into romantic relationships: she knew that her father was insistent that marriage in a family like theirs was a tool to be used to move up in the world, so she had tried to never consider that sort of thing, had closed her heart off to avoid being hurt in the way her mother had been.

Kai had changed that. Kai, though his presence and patience, had wormed his way into her heart.

Winter had fallen in love, or at least whatever a teenager believed to be love.

So, when he asked her to be his girlfriend, she accepted. When he took her to his bed, she let him.

And when he proposed to her during the summer break, she thought that this was how things were supposed to happen. Weren't they? When two people found one another, this was the natural next step. Winter's own ignorance to how relationships were meant to work worked against her, accepting his proposal. She would marry him, and be happy, and that was how things would play out.

Happily ever after.

She'd never liked those stories.

It was during her engagement party that the cracks in Kai's facade began to show. It was as if a switch had been flipped: the calm and sweet boy she'd met at school replaced with a haughty, snobbish young man. Snapping at the staff working the event, acting as if he were above them. Talking to her as if he were someone completely different.

The truth revealed itself behind closed doors, a conversation she was never meant to hear. When stepping away from the party in an attempt to clear her head, Winter found her father in his office having a conversation with Mr. Troldenglas -- her father-in-law to be -- about how their business arrangement had worked out perfectly.

It was a lie. Everything she had believed about Kai. He had paid his way into Atlas Academy, buying out another student for their place. While being placed on a team with Winter was purely by chance, his getting close to her had not been.

He wasn't marrying Winter. He was marrying the SDC heiress.

Furious, Winter stormed back into the party and shut it down. Mortified at being so foolish as to believe he could have actually liked her, could have loved her. The ring was thrown back in the Troldenglas's faces, and she screamed for them to get out of her home, out of her life.

Sure enough, when the semester started in the fall, Kai was no longer enrolled in Atlas Academy.

Winter went through the rest of her schooling with no partner -- her own request, honored by Headmaster Ironwood -- and held the rest of her team at arms length. Over the years, it simply became an accepted fact that Winter Schnee was a cold, heartless person who wanted nothing to do with other people.

The wounds from her first love still show, now and then. That fear at being fooled again, the hatred of her own heart. Still desperately trying to heal.

[rwbyazre]

Are you cool with expanding on the next generation of Team RWBY/AKA on their children?

Hell yeah, I love these lil' gremlins.

Just for this ask, obviously it's the kids that are from specifically Team RWBY, but that means one of the main team isn't included since he's just Adam/Zanthus' kid.

Obviously we have Sun Guiying, who's arguably the main protagonist of the sequel and is the Strawbana child!

She's the only child between Sun and Ruby, and was raised in Vale City with Sun, since Sun as Ozpin's next host had to be near Beacon to help Glynda with the Academy. But Ruby as a Huntress takes her job very seriously, it's something she''s always wanted to do since she was a kid, but that desire does sometimes eclipse her duties as Guiying's mother.

Ruby is by no means a BAD mother, she's actually good when she's there, she just needs to remember to actually be there. The issue is that this is part of what feeds into Guiying's inferiority issues.

Because silver eyes becomes more common knowledge in the RWBY future, and when you hear so many stories of how your mum, nan and uncle and aunts, and even one of her cousins all had these cool eyes, and you don't, it's a little hard not to feel sensitive about it.

Which is why Guiying is represented by the blue rose. She's copying Ruby's path, becoming a Huntress, always ready to jump into the fight, because she's partially fueled by the desire to be like them. She wants to be special without really understanding just how much trauma the silver eyes have brought Ruby.

Her allusion is the Vermillion Bird, or the Monkey Zodiac for a minor one. As well as that, her Semblance is Solarflare, the ability to teleport through ports of light similar to Ruby's Petal Burst, while keeping Sun's Via Sun light theme.

Then we have the Monochrome triplets, starting with:

Chandra Schnee, the main Monochrome child and Guiying's team leader for Team CSYN (Cyan).

Now I made Chandra to almost be a foil for Guiying. She's everything Guiying wanted. She's smart, she's had the familial attention, she has the Schnee Semblance, and Chandra is very much the girl who doesn't think twice about it. She's worked for it, so she got it.

Very much an opinionated person who's a self-admitted perfectionist. Weiss and Blake learned from their own past mistakes and tried to raise Chandra to not repeat them, but that ego is pretty much a family genetic trait at this point.

Her love for fighting and showing her skills does have some downsides besides alienating her teammate, and that's because while training when she was younger, she accidentily scarred her sister, Merrill. It was a sobering moment for her, which pushed Chandra to take her work very seriously because she knows just what she's capable of.

So because Chandra is so grounded in reality, she does butt heads with Guiying and her more idealised view of becoming a Huntsman.

She's also the White Tiger for her team's Four Gods allusions. As mentioned before, she has the Schnee Glyph Semblance like Weiss and Whitley, but the Schnee Semblance has a glyph unique to each weilder.

Chandra's is Ice Clones. Her glyph allows her to summon up to three ice clones of herself to fight with her. They don't have aura and are fragile, but the extra numbers helps her for support or allow Chandra a distraction to retreat or retaliate.

Wisteria is technically the oldest triplet, as much as you can be, and she's the one who decided to go into business and continue the downscaled SDC after Weiss and Whitley, since Whitley himself doesn't have any kids.

All three of the triplets were taught combat for self defense, but while Chandra went to the Huntsmen Academies and Merrill went into the military, Wisteria didn't and went into business instead.

But while she's not the strongest, she's the smartest, and they know it. Not only from an analytical way, as she's a wizz with numbers and economics, but she's very much a people's person with a sharp eye for spotting out behaviours. Chandra is too egotistical and Merrill is too blunt.

So her design takes more after Weiss' when she was home in Atlas, but redesigned to suit both Wisteria's colour pallete and the bow motif that was canon Blake's.

Her allusion is the wisteria tree in Japanese culture, symbolising longevity and love, as her love and desire to see her family continue is a major part of her character. Her Semblance has been unlocked through her trainin, but she doesn't have the Schnee Semblance like her two sisters.

Instead, her Semblance is Hysteria. By releasing small purple petals around her, the pheromones that they emit will induce drowsiness, nausea and even cause some people to hallucinate. The pheromones are odorless, so an enemy won’t discover it through smell until they’ve already inhaled it.

Merrill is the last Monochrome triplet who decided to go into the military, so her design went more into the formal military wear that Atlas operatives commonly wear. She's not old enough to go further up the ranks, since she's seventeen at the start of the story, but she has some promising abilities that could propel her.

She's also the only triplet that inherited Blake's ears. As the most apparent Faunus, even with the other two triplets being known for their Faunus mother, Merrill gets the worst for her ears, especially since she stayed in Atlas with her mothers and Wisteria, while Chandra went to Menagerie.

After her incident with Chandra that left her blind in her left eye, Merrill does anything to hide away any reminder of the accident on her face, with her styled fringe and abversion to anything that might bring it up. She doesn't hate Chandra for it, but she very much blames her and the two aren't as close as they were as kids.

Other than that, she very much plays up the disciplined solider persona to try and hide away anything that would be seen as outside the norm. She wants to be left alone to fit in with everyone else, but underneath the strict stoicness, she has a very volatile temper.

Her allusion is the Matagot, the French cat that is either evil or good, and brings wealth to your home if fed.

Like Chandra, Merrill inherited the Schnee Semblance and can summon Glyphs, with her unique glyph being Void. She creates a glyph with a black hole in the middle, allowing Merrill to absorb any attack, or even push people in, and neutralise them. Obviously if you fall into it, you kinda die.

The last one of the Team RWBY kids is Eirian and Yang's two kids, starting with:

Xiaolong Yinyue, their son and the third member of Team CSYN. He's also Guiying's cousin.

A very laidback type of guy, he's great when with the more childish Guiying and arrogant Chandra, but that laidback nature came because he was trained from a very young age to remmeber to keep his emotions in check, knowing the true story behind how Yang lost her arm.

Those lessons stuck with him, making him almost a mediator type who is very hard to push. He does have his own struggles, of course, he struggles knowing what his place in the world is. Yinyue went to the Huntsmen Acadmies because he doesn't know what else to do, rather mirroring Yang's own struggles when she was youger.

He just does what Guiying does. So long as she's happy, then he's happy, but spending your entire life making sure everyone else in comfortable left him floundering on what to do when he isn't needed anymore.

His allusion is the Azure Dragon, he very much keeps Yang's dragon motif while having Eirian's cool blue colouring. His semblance is Yin Release. With his own Aura, he can make phantom creatures, though he seems to prefer making dragons.

The last child of Golen Fleece and this ask is Eluhlaza Esna, Yinyue's older sister.

While she is the oldest, she's not very mature and very much struggles with her anxiety, pretty much willingly letting Yinyue handle things whenever she can. She'll do it if pushed, but things can easily go wrong and push her back into her shell.

But her lack of courage is replaced with a deep love and pride in her younger brother. Eluhlaza is Yinyue's biggest cheerleader and encouraged him to try and find his place in the Huntsman Academies, since she knew he had been struggling with his self identity for a long time.

Like Yinyue, Eluhlaza was given some training when she was younger, but she very much is not a fighter like the rest of her family. She hates it.

Her allusion is the Lightning Bird from Zulu mythology, and had managed to unlock her Semblance; Overcharge. By converting energy, she is able to charge up to the point of generating sparks, inflicting electrical damage. A side effect of this is her body overheats so much that her hair starts burning like Yang's.

That's all the kids for Team RWBY either way, though!

[scipiosmith]

“This is the Vytal Tournament, and the fact that it’s really happening doesn’t mean that we don’t tell stories about it,” Rainbow replied. “Or else, why do people root for underdogs?” She paused, and then continued on more quietly. “Who is the hero, who is the villain, who is the underdog?”

To be honest I think it was a good thing that cardin didn’t talk to sky star: knowing her family I am worried that they would use weiss, cardin, flash etc past actions to make themselves look good. (Not sky star fault but she really shouldn’t let other’s influence her decisions)

Granted what they did in the past wasn’t right but letting this fester until it gets out of control is just wrong.

I guess what I am trying to say in a way sky star became no different then cardin in a sense: instead of giving a speech of peace she let hate fester for petty nonsense.

Maybe I am overthinking it but it is starting to look like how vol 3 endgame is shaping up.

I think you're being kind of harsh on Skystar's family here, they don't really care about 'making themselves look good'.

Okay, having thought about that for a second more, Novo certainly cared about making herself look good, but she's a politician so that's to be expected (and even then you have to moderate it, remembering that she could have spilled Sunset's secret about the Breach but didn't). But Silverstream and Terramar don't seem much bothered by that kind of thing.

A better reason for Cardin not to talk to Skystar is that he doesn't have any right to ask her for favours.

What Cardin did was not as bad as it was made enough, he's not actually a genocidal racist like Sunset made him out to be in that recording (or, as it might be said, the way he willingly made himself out to be in a misguided attempt to goad Blake into doing something she'd regret later) but he still lied to Skystar, he still pretended to be somebody and something that he wasn't, and that means that he doesn't get to play the victim and he doesn't get to ask her for favours like helping Weiss out of a tricky spot.

And all that is without the question of what Skystar could realistically do. The role of Amity Princess is, on the one had, kind of political, since it represents a festival that has an innately political dimension, but on the other hand it's also just a glorified announcer role, she's there to look pretty and tell everyone whose fighting in the tournament, her main actual jobs went on behind the scenes during Volume 2 when she was organising everything. So, and this is one of the reasons they didn't pursue the idea, I'm not sure how much Skystar coming out and asking everyone to give peace a chance would have really helped.

Not to mention, while Weiss herself is blameless and didn't deserve for Sabine to get up on her high horse 'I'm here for all the faunus' as though Weiss is her father, the fact is that Sabine, and Team SABR, and everyone else do have valid things to be angry about. An executive of the SDC was running a faunus trafficking operation, holding faunus against their will and stealing their wages while she was at it, all under Jaques Schnee's nose. That's something that Sabine has a right to be angry about it, even if the ways in which she chooses to express that anger, at Rainbow Dash, at Weiss, are unhelpful.

All of which being said, and without any spoilers, you're not wrong about the end of the volume, or at least I don't think you are, if I'm understanding you right. But you'll just have to wait and see whether or not you are actually right.

[greatwyrmgold]

Caught up on Ice Queendom (again), and...is it just me, or is Nega-Blake mostly winning her argument with Nega-Weiss? Nega-Blake keeps explaining all the reasons the faunus have to distrust/hate humanity in general and Weiss in specific, but all Weiss can say is "I didn't personally do any of that, don't take it out on me!"

I kinda wish Blake actually countered that point, though. There are lots of options, from "You're still benefiting from the continued exploitation of faunus!" to "What else are we supposed to do? Nobody else is going to fight for us!" to "Do you expect me to dig up the corpse of Big Nicholas to punish him for his crimes?"

But even without that...I love how Ice Queendom is focusing less on the White Fang's terrorism than on the genuine injustices that it's a reaction towards. You could argue that that's just because it's Weiss's story, but...no? Both sides of that conflict are equally part of Weiss's story. The only reason that the injustices faunus face are given more focus than their terrorism is that the narrative considers a few wrecked trains less important than the oppression of an entire ethnic group.

There are quite a few reasons I hope Toshimasa Suzuki, Kenjirou Okada, Tow Ubukata, and everyone on the Ice Queendom team that Wikipedia doesn't mention in the sidebar keep remaking RWBY under the guise of telling side stories. Their treatment of the White Fang is a big one! I could see it falling into the same traps Original RWBY did with regard to the White Fang, but things are looking promising so far!

(I also like the detail that faunus were forced to fight Grimm to defend the human upper class. I don't recall anything like that being mentioned in Original RWBY, but it's a neat idea.)

Other random thoughts:

The use of splitscreen shots is a neat aesthetic touch. It would be weird if just one episode or some scattered scenes were like that, but Ice Queendom uses them enough that it feels like a deliberate artistic choice.

Not sure how to feel about Grandpa Nick's presentation. On one hand, it makes sense that Weiss remembers him as a kindly old philanthropist. On the other hand, he built a company renowned for its exploitation of faunus workers, and that's not something that just springs out of nowhere. I don't feel like the Big Nicholas looming over the story gets enough focus to say anything as nuanced as "He was nice to his family but callous towards others"; it kinda comes off as suggesting that Jacques was a bad apple, and the SDC just needs the right Schnee plutocrat in charge. I feel like the best solution to this would have been to let Nicholas fade into the background. (For instance, cutting that dream-flashback-thing where Weiss talks with her grandpa, and replacing it with a conversation she has with some present-tense character. Maybe she could cover some of those points in that conversation she has with Ruby?)

Revealing that Ruby has some special anti-Grimm power in her eyes before it's absolutely plot-critical is a good idea! The implementation is weird, though. Ruby has her epiphany, her moment of triumph; then the Nightmare suddenly restrains her after being shot a bunch; then Ruby's eyes give her a different moment of triumph, one that feels a bit less earned.

The Silver Eyes also prove that the IQ team is, on some level, preparing to do an Ice Queendom sequel if it's greenlit. There is no reason for that double-reversal-of-fortune ex machina unless it's establishing the Silver Eyes as something Important and Magic.

Jaune defeating Weiss's internal image of her abusive father feels like it's symbolically significant, but damned if I could say what it means! He did it with the help of Silly!Pyrrha and the Silly!Weisses, the latter of which definitely represent the childlike parts of Weiss that she locks away under her icy facade, but I'm still not sure what the former means, symbolically.

[itsclydebitches]

re: that ask you posted a couple days ago about the male and female representation in RWBY, part of what makes RWBY's whole 'girl power' thing ring exceptionally hollow to me is the fact that there are like... no women in positions of real power in remnant. like at all. except the big bad.

winter is second in command to james. glynda is second in command to ozpin. all of the headmasters are men (for no discernible reason, imo; why theodore and not dorothea?). the leader of the ace ops was a white man (and then winter seemed to take over clover's position instead of either of the women of color on the team, and she was still second to james). RWBY is an all girl team, but JNPR was led by a boy despite a girl arguably being far more qualified (pyrrha). the happy huntresses are all women, and robyn had no real power to speak of--she didn't even manage to win the election, because jacques rigged it, and then the council ceased to matter. there was one (1) woman on the council, but she was so inconsequential that i can't even remember her name. (i suppose we're lucky it was the guy and not her who james shot lol) jacques controls the SDC instead of willow, even though he's not even a schnee by blood and actually married into the family for power. (and we don't even know how he got it over his wife.)

and then there's the white fang, which ghira led and not kali--and it's ghira who leads menagerie itself, while kali seems to be a housewife. sienna had five minutes of screentime before being brutally killed and her position assumed by adam, a man. cordovin is basically a one off lackey we haven't even thought about before or since. neo was second to roman. you have cinder, sure, who is a second but to salem, a woman, and raven as the leader of the branwen tribe--but what does it really say about your 'girl power' narrative when the only women with genuine systemic power in your world are villains or antagonists with massive bodycounts??

atla has the same sort of problem--a couple great female characters, but all the leadership positions are men (except the kyoshi warriors, an all girls group, and even then the leader of their island is an old man) and the one female mentor figure also turns out to be evil--but it at least has some great writing to help overlook that fact, and it came out in the mid-00's and so has some sort of excuse of being a product of its time. but rwby didn't even start until 2013 and it's still going and still making these kinds of decisions well into 2021.

where is this supposed girl power, exactly? am i really supposed to overlook the very patriarchal worldbuilding just because the title characters are girls?

That's an excellent summary of the situation, anon, and as with so much in RWBY, it comes down to the full context. Any one of these examples isn't necessarily going to mean much on its own. It's when you look at the pattern that you can start making a case for those conclusions: Why is the show marketed on "girl power" set in a world where men hold the vast majority of that power? And, more importantly, why is that setup not the point? We could easily have a story where that lopsided gender dynamic is the problem that the girls are looking to fix, but... that story doesn't exist. Like the problems discussed with Jaune, the supposed point here exists only on the surface. Dig just the tinniest bit — the above — and you hit on a lot of structural problems with this "girl power" world.

To add just a few details to what you've already said:

Salem indeed has power, but she's never allowed to fully use it. Each volume the frustration with this grows as Salem accumulates more abilities and then just sits on them. From literally hiding out for a thousand years to worries that she won't use the Staff in Volumes 9-10, Salem really isn't allowed to be the threat she's presented as on the surface. And yes, this is absolutely due in part to the "She's too OP and the writers don't know how to let her be that powerful while still having the heroes win" issue, but again, context. That problem doesn't exclude others occurring simultaneously.

Same double explanation with Summer. Yes, dead moms are an incredibly common trauma to dump on a protagonist, but it still left Yang and Ruby with Tai as their primary influence. And Qrow. The uncle becomes the extended family influence while Raven is the absent one/eventual antagonist. It's personal power as opposed to political power, but Tai, Qrow, Ozpin, formerly James... most of the mentors are men. Maria, a key exception, has been ignored in that regard. The story announced that she was Qrow's inspiration, setup her being Ruby's new mentor, and then... nothing. Nothing has come of that. She disappeared for a volume and then went off to Amity and was literally forgotten by the story when evacuating everyone was the finale's whole point.

Like that Endgame moment I mentioned, the Happy Huntresses feel a little too forced to me. Yes, it's the same basic idea as in ATLA, but ATLA, as you say, has a lot more going for it. The Happy Huntresses feel... on the nose? Idk exactly how to explain it. Like, "Here they are! Another team of all women! Isn't this how progressive storytelling works? Just ignore how this is a one-off team of minor characters compared to the world building issues discussed above." And if you're not paying attention, you miss just how insignificant they are, with a side of Robyn being, well, Robyn. The Kyoshi Warriors, at least, are based off of Kyoshi. A woman avatar who is a significant part of their history. That is, presumably, why they're an all women warrior group (but who notably still teach Sokka). The Happy Huntresses are all huntresses because...? There's no reason except that meta "We want to look progressive" explanation. Just like having all the women superheroes team up for a hot second so people get excited and ignore the representation problems across, what? 21 films? Don't get me wrong, I love that May is among the Happy Huntresses. I think including her in the explicitly all-women group was one of the better things RWBY has done in a long time, but the rest is still a mess.

RWBY is arguably about these smaller groups as opposed to systematic power (despite the writers trying to work that in with things like the White Fang and the election. Not to mention the implication that everything in Atlas is fine now that evil Ironwood has died and taken the symbol of wealth (the city) with him. We saw a human holding hands with a faunus after all. Racism and corruption solved, I guess.) So yes, our group is dominated by women... but Whitley is the one saving Nora, helping to defeat the Hound (plus Willow), thinking of the airships, and providing the blueprints they need to escape. Salem is our Big Bad, except Ironwood is the one the volume focuses on. Ruby is our leader, but Jaune is the one leading the group into the whale and getting praised for how heroic he is. Ren does more to shake things up, even if he's painted as the one in the wrong. Oscar gets to confront Salem and destroys the whale threat. Ozpin provides the information they need to evacuate. Meanwhile, when the girls do things in Volume 8 it's almost always followed by a long-stint of passiveness. Nora opens the door so she can be unconscious for most of the volume. Penny keeps Amity up so she can also be unconscious for a good chunk of time. Ruby sends her message and then sits in a mansion. Blake fights so she can tearfully beg Ruby to save her. Weiss, as said, takes a backseat to Whitley (and Klein). They forward the plot, absolutely, but comparatively it doesn't feel like enough.

It's that pattern then, no one specific example. More and more the personal power, not just the systematic power already built into Remnant, seems to be coming from the men. Not all the time, but enough that scenes like the tea drinking moment feel like a part of a much larger problem. Pietro taking control, Watts hacking, and Ambrosius literally remaking her when Penny is supposed to already be in control of herself and her fate. Winter being presented as the active mentor to Weiss, only to turn around and claim that Ironwood was actually responsible for everything. Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and May straight up commenting on how awful things are out there while Yang, Jaune, Ren, and Oscar lead the charge against Salem — with the latter three doing the most to forward that mission (no fear, semblance, cane). As others have only half-joked, Yang's supposedly badass moment was bringing up a mother she's ignored for six volumes and briefly blowing up the immortal woman for a couple of seconds (with Ironwood's bombs). Even Marrow is arguably the most significant Ace Op after Clover. Vine isn't actually a character, Elm slightly less so, Harriet is there to go crazy and try to drop a bomb (notably before admitting to never-before-existed feelings for Clover), but Marrow? He's the one who breaks out. Who is meant to heroically stand up against Ironwood. Who comments on how awful it is that teenagers are fighting and, regardless of how messed up the moral messages are, is supposedly pushing for active change while all the women in his group, including Winter, insist on maintaining the status quo. Look at all these choices as a whole, it makes throwaway worldbuilding choices like "All the Maidens are women" feel pretty hollow. Why does it matter if Amber is a Maiden if she dies in a flashback so Ozpin can struggle to pass on the power? If Pyrrha dies before becoming one so Jaune can angst about it? If Raven is one and then disappears from the story entirely? If Winter has enough power to break Ironwood's aura, but supposedly had no power throughout every other choice she made getting here? If Penny is one, but is continually controlled by men and then asks another man to help her die? It's just really unconvincing, once you look past the surface excitement of a woman looking cool with magic powers.

When you do consider the whole of the story — both in terms of our world building and who is forwarding the plot in the latter volumes, getting the emotional focus, being proactive, etc. — there are a lot of problems that undermine the presumed message RT wants to write. They say, "girl power" by marketing RWBY with these four women, but too many of the storytelling decisions thoroughly undermine that, revealing what's likely a deeply ingrained, subconscious bias.

[ironwoodprotectionsquad]

Penny being trans + autistic coded made me resonate with her as I am nonbinary and autistic myself. Her being a robot felt like me when I have to hide my neurodivergent traits. Her getting confirmation that she wasn't just a robot/machine but a real girl felt so validating. I don't have to look like everyone else to still be considered "real".

Ironwood's semblance being literal hyperfixiation, something I've dealt with since I have ADHD + autism would have made me feel better about myself. This is a man who, despite everything: his PTSD, being an amputee, still was a kind-hearted man. This is something rarely seen in media. I was happy.

Then they fucked up both Penny and Ironwood in ways that struck me. Penny is hacked into and forced to comply with basically forced suicide- she was to open the vault, then self-destruct.

Ironwood, oh dear god. They couldn't wait to fuck him over. He was so HAPPY to see team RWBYJNROQ. He told them everything about his plan, trusting them with literal GOVERNMENT secrets, giving them a place to stay, FREE weapon upgrades (Atlas is known for its advanced technology), hell even gave them their HUNTRESS LICENSES THREE-ISH YEARS EARLY (which Ruby later uses as a credibility source in her broadcast, which was eerily similar to Cinder's in Volume 3, when she says IRONWOOD CANNOT BE TRUSTED.)

Not to mention that she conveniently forgot she was calling for help from OTHER KINGDOMS. OF COURSE they wouldn't arrive soon enough. And no one had reason to trust her. She's a nobody. She was at the Vytal Festival and her team made it all the way to the singles? Cool. Ruby wasn't the final fighter, hell after the 4 vs 4 match she didn't compete further.

Blake would have obviously been a bad choice: she's a faunus and if anyone knows about the White Fang, they might recognize her.

Yang is more known than Ruby, but the world saw her kick an unarmed teen in the finals round. She doesn't have too good a reputation.

Weiss? She's well known as the Heiress, but also her singing. Having her give the speech is a mixed bag: on one hand, she's a recognizable face. On the other, that's a problem. Her father, the CEO of the SDC, is known for his cruelty. Blake said it herself way back in Volume 1: questionable business practices and partners.

So... How about no broadcast at all? What did her broadcast accomplish?

Nothing. Help didn't arrive and likely caused more panic. Plus, people still had a negative view of Atlas, as the last thing the world saw was Atlesian soldiers turning against civilians.

The last broadcast was before Beacon fell. So likely another hacker giving a message would be met with fear.

And what attracts Grimm? Negativity.

Ruby's broadcast could have been a DEATH SENTENCE to so many. But no, this is treated as the... Right course of action?

Ruby and co. hates Ironwood's plan, yet it's clear they don't have one. RWB spends a lot of time moping around the manor drinking tea. Team YOJR (Yang, Oscar, Jaune and Ren) actually DO SOMETHING. Oscar gets kidnapped and they chase after him. Ren rightfully points out that NONE OF THEM SHOULD BE DOING THIS. But that goes against the Hivemind™, so he must apologize and agree to whatever the fuck Ruby decides to do.

Which is NOTHING! RWBY didn't even take down the hound: WILLOW and WHITLEY did. A drunk woman and an unarmed teen defeated it.

Oscar is the one who blows up the whale (with his time bomb? huh??)

Ruby whines that it's all too much, cries on a staircase while her sister (remember that Ruby and Yang are related????) comforts her. The scene has no emotional depth because the two barely interact anymore.

OH GOD AND WHEN YANG TAKES A HIT FROM NEO THAT WAS MEANT FOR RUBY IT TAKES HER OUT COMPLETELY. AURA? GONE. HELL, SHE'S EVEN UNCONSCIOUS. I swear it's like the animation budget could only afford to have ONE character react, and it's Blake "sad kitty face" Belladonna. Not Ruby, who is her sister. WHO HAS A SPEED SEMBLANCE. But no, they just watch her fall, not knowing if she's alive.

Ruby has more of a reaction to CRESCENT ROSE, HER FUCKING WEAPON falling.

Which is retconned so hard in the Vol 9 trailer, where she tells Neo "I hope it was worth it" before falling into the void. Huh??

Anyways I'm rambling again but I am so angry!

-🎼

Never, ever, EVER apologize for rambling. I LOVE hearing peoples thoughts and sometimes it's a really nice feeling to let out your frustrations and anger towards something that has caused you harm and it really REALLY sounds like this caused you a lot of harm and so I do not blame you one bit for being hurt and angry. I should apologize for this taking so long. This was a lot and I needed to sort my thoughts and even so I probably missed some points so I also apologize for that.

Penny and Ironwoods biggest mistake was trusting and being kind to RWBY. They lied and betrayed James and treated him like garbage even though he showed them nothing but kindness and did whatever he could to help them and listened to them. Penny was told what to do and think far more so then James ever supposedly did. Ruby decided to give her a new body, decided she didn't like how James was treating her and that she thought James was a bad person, and decided that Penny was better off with them. Penny stopped being able to make her own decisions once she started hanging out with RWBY and co.

Really though what did they all think was going to happen when they sent out a message that matched beat to bear a lot of what Cinder said before Atlas fell? Did she think about the panic that would cause? Did she forget she was worried about Ironwood telling everyone back in Volume 7 because of the panic it would cause everyone??? Did that just conveniently slip her mind?

I honestly think Weiss would have been the best choice to give the broadcast of them all but I don't think they should have sent out the broadcast in the first place. It should realistically only cause panic and death but the narrative is gonna yadda yadda right past all of that.

Oh god yea RWBY and co complain and whine and scream that Ironwoods plan is bad whilst offering up no alternatives then just taking his plan and acting like it was theirs the whole time. They even did this in Volume 7 when in episode 2 they where worried about James telling Atlas about Salem and then turning around and acting all happy and shocked when James told everyone near the end of the season as if they wanted him to the whole time and not the other way around.

Man RWBY really did jack shit all volume huh? As you said all the major things side characters did: Fight James TWICE: Winter, Emerald, and JNRO.

Try and rescue Oscar: JRY

Blow up the Whale: Oscar

"Redeem" Hazel and Emerald: Again Oscar

Defeat the hound: Whitley and Willow

Launch the tower: Penny

Help defend Mantel against the swarm of Grimm: FNKI and the soldiers that all died trying to buy Ruby time while she cries in a mansion.

Like what does this girl do to help any of the people SHE trapped???

Oh god Ren, poor Ren, he's finally seeing the light but he can't stray from the Hivemind so he needs to get back in, we can't question the pure and perfect Ruby her plans are always right even if it causes Salem to get two relics and destroys the only kingdom with an army or the technology to restore global communications in the process.

Yea you're right like CRWBY can make excuses all day for why Ruby didn't react to Yang falling and MAYBE I can buy her not using her Semblance because she's in shock but not crying or reacting at ALL to her supposed death?? Why does her weapon get a more emotional response then her SISTER? Why is only BLAKE allowed to be sad about Yang supposedly dying? Why does fucking WINTER have more of a reaction to her sister dying?

Why are all the people we are supposed to be rooting for so fucking unlikeable???

[skye-huntress]

RWBY Ice Queendom Reaction

Episode 11: “Light in Shadows”

There is so much I love about this episode

Let’s start with Negative Weiss’ moment of clarity. What a lot of people might initially miss about Weiss, especially in her early verbal clashes with Blake, is that as much as she hates the White Fang and is distrustful towards Faunus, she is fully aware of why they would hate the SDC and her family. More importantly, it was always Weiss’ intention to take control of her family’s company from father and reform it. Her ultimate goal was always to help the Faunus regardless of the crimes of the White Fang. Nega-Blake throwing the flaws of the SDC in Nega-Weiss’ face helped her recall this goal but in doing so created contradictions in the narratives within the dream. It gave Nega-Weiss a sense of awareness to the true nature of what was going on.

So it seems I got Weiss’s line to Ruby mixed up, the Grimm hides itself in the shadow of the person facing it. If Ruby were to cut away the vines surrounding the piece of Weiss’ heart, the light from it will create a shadow which is the direction Crescent Rose’s barrel will be facing. Altering the weapon the way she did was Weiss’s attempt to tell Ruby how to kill the Grimm.

With her Semblance, Yang is the heaviest hitter of Team RWBY, but because of how it works she really has to pick her moment when to use it. Punching a giant sentient building in the face seems like as good a time as any.

I never realised how much I wanted to see Nicholas and Weiss together until I got it. To see him to inspire Weiss to protect the people and those precious to her is everything to me. It also gives clarity to why Weiss’ dream was built the way it is.

Moving on to Jaune, lifting that sword is well beyond what he is capable of right now, but just like when he killed that Ursa Major, he doesn’t need to do all by himself. One thing that Weiss learned from Pyrrha is to support your friends when they need a little help.

I was a little concerned that seeing “Big Nicholas” crumble would negatively affect Nega-Weiss, but she was still set on helping Blake even as her Negative side was trying to kill her.

So we did indeed get a silver eyed moment, and based on how we know it works, it was Ruby’s desire to save Weiss that did the trick. By the looks of it, she did so much damage to it that the Grimm died when it couldn’t find a new host to sustain it.

So now we’re back to the moment Weiss fell asleep, but instead of seeing a manifestation of her Nightmare self, she sees Ruby. Weiss always wanted a bunk bed because she wanted to be closer to her siblings, to anyone really. She had the largest family of everyone in her team, but she grew up feeling alone, until she finally found her bunkmate in Ruby.

No fake out this time, Ruby finally gets to hug Weiss for real, at least as real as you can in a dream world.

So even though Weiss’s subconscious was able to resist the dream and even communicate directly with Ruby, Weiss’ conscious mind is just completely confused. Despite how active our brains can be when we sleep and dream, we rarely remember anything when we wake up.

One nightmare down, now they have to deal with the one they intentionally set free. So we got our Ruby vs Weiss fight before, now prepare for Yang vs Blake!

Yang pulling Blake out of her Nightmare makes me happy. White Rose and Bees shippers have been fed this episode.

There is no way we can have a final battle in RWBY without Team RWBY all fighting together. You simply can’t do it any other way.

So the piece of Blake’s heart was the original White Fang flag, the one that represents a hope that humans and Faunus can live and work together for a better world. It’s so appropriate for her.

I notice this Nightmare didn’t seem to die even with all the attacks it suffered and how little it was able to feed compared to Weiss’s Nightmare. Just proves how powerful and effective the silver eyes can be.

So now the reunion with Jaune, Pyrrha and the little Weissies. Seems Weiss was still waking up so to speak because she still hasn’t realised what’s going on.

You know, I was so worried for a safety, even though obviously she was always going to survive, I failed to considered that the real damage has already been done. Unfortunately, Weiss is eternally mortified. I fear she may never recover. I think anybody would feel the same, it’s just that Jaune is probably used to the feeling by now.

So we now have the last episode appropriately sharing the name with Volume 2’s first episode. We’re most definitely going to get the food fight, but that won’t cover the entire episode, so we’ll likely get a lot of other team bonding moments. I’m hoping for at least one more one-on-one with White Rose and the Bees each. I need it. In fact, I demand it after Shaft traumatised and humiliated my favourite RWBY girl.

[texanredrose]

Okay, to put some limitations on this, I’m only including the WIPs that I’ve done more than a synopsis for... that I can remember... that’s on Google Drive... that I actually think I might post one day... but haven’t posted yet because my posted WIPs are fairly easy to identify... okay... I got tagged by @unsteadyshade and I’m tagging @faunusrights and @alexlayer69

1) Across Time - Inuyasha AU where Weiss gets thrown back in time to the ancient past, where she meets two demons (Yang and Blake) warring against each other over a misunderstanding.

2) Alpha’s Devotion - Omega’s Strength, but from Winter’s POV.

3) Bears, Oh My - An exhausted Winter, lost on a hike, comes across a cabin where Yang lives with her three pet bears.

4) Brave New World - Continuation of the Dishonored AU where Ruby and Winter reflect on the new Mantle.

5) Bruised - Third installment to the ace!Yang AU. 

6) Coming Home - Based on Dash’s Tiny Knight AU, Princess Blake is betrayed and stranded far from home and must rely on a reticent knight named Weiss to return to her kingdom.

7) Complications Always Arise - Papa Schnee is demanding Weiss marry before he’ll allow her to take his place as head of the SDC, so Yang volunteers to pretend to be Weiss’ beloved. No one else knows the relationship is fake, least of all Blake and Winter, and it’s just a bunch of pain.

8) Divided - Continuation of the By Moonlight AU where Whitley returns to the castle and Winter’s not upset by that- and Winter’s upset by the fact she’s not upset and has to figure out why her inner wolf is cool with this when she should, by all rights, be furious.

9) Dragonsbane - Mage Knight Winter hears tale of a dragon in the countryside that the local villages wish to see vanquished. Winter, however, has other plans.

10) Eye of the Beholder - Blinded and near death after a battle, Winter is rescued by the mysterious Yang and is nursed back to health despite her protests otherwise. (It’s a Medusa!AU.)

11) Fabled - Fable 3 AU where Princess Ruby and Princess Yang are forced to confront the fact that Queen Raven has lost her fucking mind, only to discover that fear drove the woman insane- a fear they must confront themselves.

12) Fields of Love - Farmer Yang offers a job and housing to apparent single mother Winter and her young daughter Penny. What starts as a kind gesture grows into something so much more.

13) Full Circle - Van Helsing (2004) AU, Winter and Weiss, amnesiacs employed by the church to handle all manner of unholy problems, are sent to discover what happened to King Taiyang. Along the way, they become wrapped up in a centuries spanning prophecy and a bloodline hanging in the balance.

14) High Bar, Low Blow - Yang owns a bar where the gimmick is that everyone’s an out of work actor and the staff is staging an ongoing drama on par with a soap opera to keep their customers coming back. Winter joins the staff and then things get a bit real.

15) Hoodlums and Hijinks - Robin Hood AU where Princess Winter and Princess Weiss are just as in favor for overthrowing the king as the group of bandits run by Ruby, Yang, and Blake. 

16) Last One 2: Electric Boogaloo (title subject to change) - a sequel to Last One where the haunt continues.

17) Lexical Access - Sequel to Tip of the Tongue, where Yang gives her girlfriend a bit of roleplaying payback.

18) Little Red - Carmen Sandiego AU where Ruby was kidnapped adopted by a group of thieves and raised to become the world’s greatest thief, but a chance meeting with Penny via a stolen phone opens her eyes to the wider world, and she meets the rebellious heiress Weiss, street smart Blake, and brawler Yang, creating a team that works to foil Ruby’s former friends while eluding capture by mysterious operatives with a somewhat familiar white color scheme...

19) Long Term Investment - Yang, a fae who lives in the woods, makes a deal with Princess Winter to save the Queen. The price? Winter’s firstborn. Winter misunderstands how she’s expected to get pregnant and Yang’s never actually intended to collect. Next thing Yang knows, Winter’s moving into the clearing beside her tree home.

20) Miscalculation - Another Omegaverse AU where Weiss is an omega and Blake and Yang are alphas, except Weiss lied and said she was an alpha when enrolling in Beacon and now she’s locked in a room with Blake and Yang on the verge of starting her heat. Sharing is caring.

21) More Than Words Can Say - Winter, rendered mute by a military accident early in her career, is honestly the best girlfriend Yang’s ever had. However, tonight’s the night they’ve decided to get intimate, and that includes showing some scars that they don’t show often. It’s less about sex and more about trust and intimacy.

22) Music of the Night - Phantom of the Opera AU where the mysterious, disfigured shade of the opera house, Weiss, finds herself at odds with the rich, jovial Yang in a competition for Blake’s heart. Then there’s Adam being a dick, too, and the opera house has never seen so much drama.

23) My Heart Will Go On - It’s the Titanic, but double the rich, unwilling-to-marry ladies and triple the won-a-ticket-to-a-ship ruffians. Penny’s there too; she, like Ruby, just really likes ships.

24) One Fucking Favor - Winter’s due for a long assignment and wants to make a sex tape for stress relief purposes. Yang doesn’t ask questions; she’s just the one with the camera. But then, Winter’s partner for the vid doesn’t show up. What’s Yang going to do about it?

25) Prophecy - Star Wars AU where Ruby, Yang, and Blake are trained as Jedi, Winter and Weiss are part of the clone army, and Ruby’s the chosen one. That’s a lot of pressure to put on someone, but Senator Salem is there to lend a helping hand...

26) Propositioned - Faunus experience bouts of heat; sometimes, they can safely ignore it and go about their lives, but every now and again, they really can’t. Concerned for Blake’s health as she’s skipped too many heats to be healthy, Yang sets up a partner for Blake’s heat. Blake’s not a fan but she does like the idea of banging Weiss Schnee.

27) Proven - ARK: Survival Evolved AU where Winter, after being ‘won’ by Yang, is taken into the bowels of the earth to learn how the underground tribes who inhabit the area survive in such an unforgiving environment. As she acclimates to the tribe’s ways, she finds herself carving out her own path, culminating in facing off against the Queen and proving herself worthy.

28) Reaping What You Sow - When Winter escaped to the countryside with Penny to start a farm, she knew she had her work cut out for her. In need of help and facing a harsh cold season, she hires Yang, a one armed drifter, to help her. The two end up needing the other more than they could’ve imagined.

29) Tear My Heart Open - Blake thought she understood how the world worked. As a member of the White Fang Gang, all she needed to do was keep everyone motivated to continue their ongoing street war against the police and authorities bent on keeping them down. But while running from the cops, she’s offered sanctuary in the home of one Weiss Schnee and her girlfriend, Yang. From there, her perception of the world is completely upended.

30) The Duel - After her father offered her hand in marriage to the winner of a tournament, Winter opted to assume a disguise and fight for the prize herself. In the final match, she faces Yang Xiao Long, a competitor she’s come to know quite well, and she finds her conviction to win wavering slightly. Is it enough to lose her the fight?

31) The Lies We Tell Ourselves - Weiss has made it; she’s opened her tattoo shop in Vale, well away from her father, and aside from a bad first impression with the florists across the parking lot, everything’s looking up for her- until her father finds her. Luckily, Blake’s been through some shit and doesn’t mind helping Weiss drive daddy dearest up the wall, even if it means letting her own parents think she’s dating Weiss. It’s not like either of them is going to catch feelings... unless...

32) The Princess’ Bride - After losing her fiancée to the dreaded White Fang Pirates, Yang vows to take to the sea herself and exact her revenge. Princess Weiss finds herself falling madly in love with Yang, who still loves Blake, and all this is thrown into even more chaos when Yang gets kidnapped and Blake comes back from the dead! 

33) Two for One - Yes, another Omegaverse AU. Five years after the fall of Beacon, Yang and Blake cross paths, each believing the other has spent the time keeping their mutual mate, Weiss, safe. When they realize Weiss is with neither of them, old wounds are torn open, but before they can resolve their dispute, Winter captures the both of them and hauls them to a remote part of Atlas where an SDC facility has been turned into a fortress. There, they find a mortally wounded Weiss clinging to life and raising twins daughters; she gives her mates until her death to endear themselves to their children, else the twins might opt to stay with Winter and be kept from Blake and Yang for good. Between learning about their kids, Blake and Yang navigate their complicated feelings and try to reconnect with Weiss, all while a sinister force gathers to destroy the fortress and steal the prize within.

34) Weaknesses - Loosely set in the Glamour AU, Yang is being forced to assume her mother’s position as leader of their vampire coven. Her fellow vamps disapprove of Yang’s werewolf girlfriend. Winter, of course, doesn’t care.

I got lazy and cut a bunch out. No, fuck you, I don’t have too many AUs, I will add more if I want. Also, some of these, the first chapter is posted on my Patreon. Don’t ask me which ones; I genuinely have no idea. I’m bad at this, y’all.

[alkaria]

The Wielder of the Staff

Penny isn’t going to retrieve the staff from the Winter Maiden’s Vault. She’s going to open it, either this volume or next, that much is for certain - you can’t build up to a grand finale for RWBY without all four relics ending up in play. But it won’t be Penny walking out of that vault with a relic.

One of the key themes we’ve covered, in Penny’s character as well as in the Atlas arc more broadly, is about free will and choice - who you serve, why you serve, and what you do to serve. And ultimately, though Penny undoubtedly feels a debt and a responsibility to protect Mantle and Remnant more broadly - she never wanted this. She took on the mantle of Winter Maiden not because she was groomed to, like Winter, or because she wanted it, like Cinder - she took it because she had to.

We see her struggling to come to terms with the burden she’s placed on herself because of her selflessness in the first two chapters of Volume 8, but we don’t just see that. We see Penny’s central character flaw coming to a head - that even now, her destiny is being written not by her, but by the actions of General Ironwood.

(Hm. Two characters both starting with a P that ended up in contestation for Maiden powers, with a character arc of Destiny. That bodes well.)

Crucially, Penny is going to, over the course of this volume and the next, finally have a chance to carve out her own destiny - her ideals, her wishes, and most importantly, her limits. The points at which she learns it’s okay to say no to taking on more responsibility than you can handle.

And, as a result, she’s going to say no to taking the Staff of Creation out of the Vault.

But we know the staff will come into play, so who’s going to take it? 

I don’t know whether it’s too early in the story (and brothers, we’re 8 years in at this point) to say with any certainty whether who initially claims the relic will be ultimately relevant to the finale and whatever happens to the four relics, but it’s certainly clear from the Volume 5 finale that there’s a significant portion of symbolism allotted to it - even if just to mark the emergence of a relic as an important moment with no further connotation.

When Yang emerges with the Lamp from the Vault, she is raised up above the others - figuratively as well as literally. The first wielder of the Lamp since the Great War, held up by Jinn herself.

Remember Blake’s little speech to Sun earlier in Volume 5:

“I remember getting to know Ruby and thinking, this girl is the embodiment of purity. After a while, I saw Weiss was defiance. And Yang was Strength.”

Yang claimed the relic not because she was the only one there, but because she was Strength. She had what Raven lacked, and Blake’s speech came full circle. Yang is elevated onto the central platform, in a way that only three others even experience - Raven, as the Spring Maiden, Leo, as Haven’s Headmaster, and Oscar (for fairly obvious reasons).

Now, you may wonder where I’m going with this. Salem has the Lamp; the Vault isn’t open. Even if Penny refuses to take it, what’s that got to do with what’s going on right now?

Well, the person who claimed the Relic of Knowledge? She’s on the ground. She’s separate from the events in Atlas, and she’s not going anywhere near the Staff. The symbolism in the intro couldn’t be more apparent:

Everyone else, on the other hand?

I already ruled Penny out, but everyone else here could be in contention to wield the Staff. Although, personally, I’m going to narrow it down to two:

Nora

A lot of people thought Nora was getting flags as a potential maiden last volume, from her resemblance to Fria to her possible Mantle origins to her vocal disagreement with Ironwood. It, obviously, didn’t pan out that way. But there’s still a couple things in her favour for her claiming the Staff of Creation:

“Always hoping that a lightning bolt is gonna save you from this gravity”

That’s the line from the V7 intro that perked a lot of people’s ears, and I still think it applies, possibly even more so. More than anyone, Nora represents lightning. Her main literary allusion is Thor, the Norse God of Thunder. Her semblance is powered by electricity, and her weapon generates it. In the history of Robyn calling highly amusing and accurate nicknames for our cast, Lightning Bolt could easily apply to Nora.

Gravity obviously applies to the weight of the severe situation our heroes find themselves in, but that’s not just all. It also, obviously, applies to the huge flags we’re getting that Atlas could plummet to the ground, destroying both it and Mantle and handing Salem a huge victory in her quest to ruin humanity.

That’s not guaranteed yet. If we expect volume 8 to go the way of volume 3, where there is a significant defeat for our heroes, that doesn’t automatically equal a complete and arbitrary annihilation. After all, Salem could crash Monstra into Atlas and achieve pretty much the same goal. The key thing that came out of volume 3 was that Beacon was destroyed - but not unreclaimable. There were slivers of hope, and the smaller soul remained.

And that’s where Nora could come in. She’s been a stalwart protector of the people, especially Mantle, and if she were wielding the relic, she’d definitely not want to doom them by using it - and, equally, not doom them by losing the relic. Nora was there when Neo took the lamp - she’s going to know that the same thing could happen, and so, she will save us from gravity - by using the staff to lower Atlas safely to the ground before taking it out of the vault.

Weiss

“After a while, I saw Weiss was defiance.”

This feeds more specifically into the possible theory that each relic will be claimed by a member of team RWBY. While Yang has maiden flags from Raven’s possible death, after Penny gaining the Winter powers and Ruby mastering her silver eyes, the RWBY maiden ending looks unlikely. But anyone can claim a relic.

Weiss has matured a great deal throughout the storyline of RWBY, but the ultimate character motivation for her has stayed consistent: she wants to reclaim her family’s legacy and restore it to one comparable to her grandfather’s, in opposition to the mismanagement of her parents. She is defiant towards them, to her brother and sister, towards Ruby, towards the general trend of history, and towards General Ironwood.

“NONE of this matters right now!”

”Not friends. Family.”

So why Weiss, and not Nora?

Well, going back to the theory with the relics being claimed each by one of the members of Team RWBY, Salem is their end villain:

It’s team RWBY who are together confronting Salem in Ironwood’s office, and it’s team RWBY who’ll be stood together confronting her at the very end of all this. To do that, you need the relics.

To be sure, Nora is a member of the main cast - she’ll have an end villain to face off against, just like the rest of our protagonists - but even though it seems Tyrian is shaping up to be Qrow’s, Salem is very clearly not Nora’s. Arguably, we saw in Volume 5 that Nora is the only person capable of going toe-to-toe with Hazel:

“I don’t need him to hurt. I just need him to GO DOWN.”

Nora makes sense as Hazel’s eventual final foe - his origin story is being driven to work for Salem by his grief and possessiveness over his sister, who died as a huntress-in-training. Nora lost her teammate - a huntress-in-training - precisely because of Salem. We know she’s an orphan, and homeless - she likely has lost a great deal of people to the grimm. Morally, she’s the polar opposite to Hazel - someone whose hardship and grief made her a protector of the people, rather than someone on a doomed quest for vengeance for someone who would never have wanted it.

So if we rule out Nora for that sake, why Weiss, and not Ruby or Blake? Well, for one, Weiss has far more personal investment in Atlas as a whole.

“This is my home. And I’m not giving it up without a fight.”

For Weiss’ own character arc to complete as we eventually move towards a resolution and a departure from Atlas, her family needs to survive. Jacques is fairly irrelevant, and his death would matter least - but Willow, Winter and Whitley need to survive, and the Schnee family needs to begin healing. That doesn’t square itself with Atlas falling to the ground and millions dying. But it could square itself with Atlas being lowered enough to survive without the Staff, and Salem still making off with it in order to attack Vacuo.

Weiss’ semblance also thematically fits with the relic of Creation - she has a mastery of dust, and her glyphs are used to create a range of different things. Her arc points now towards creating something new - a new future for her family, for the SDC, and for Atlas. It would make sense.

For their own relics, Ruby and Blake make more sense being involved with Vale and Vacuo. While Blake is from Menagerie, not Vacuo, the Sword of Destruction would resonate well with her character arc. It’s a symbol of how she, and the faunus, have grown - the power to destroy, but rather than used angrily and blindly like Adam would, used carefully, with great thought. As well as this, the symbolism of the sword - taking up arms and fighting, rather than running away.

And Ruby is just obviously choice. She’s the central character of the Vale arc, one of her most defining traits is determination - the choice to never give up and keep moving forward, that we’ve heard referenced more than once post-Vol 3. But, if you’re wanting a bit more in the way of arguable evidence - who’s younger than the rest of their team of four, is pure of heart, makes choices that fundamentally determine everyone’s paths, and ends up with a crown?

So that’s where I’m staking my claim. Yang, the Strong, giver of Knowledge. Weiss, the Defiant, guardian of Creation. Ruby, the Pure, defender of Choice. Blake, the ???, arbiter of Destruction.

The only thing we’re missing is what embodiment Blake actually is.