#rwby vol 8

[ahn1zos]

The Reasons We’ll Never be Happy • Part One

it’s the remastered version baby, four panels per day!

[stubbornessissues]

THAT’S MY GIRL

[marnma]

so I’m sure I’m not the only one losing my mind over today’s episode, right?

[banancrumbs]

redraw of that one trailer scene with my own colors 🤭

[zekya]

Little Whiterose comic because i was rewatching RWBY and i feel like this would be soft on vol 8

[situationallyintelligent]

Not Ren the emotionally aware/unaware/closed off king finding out that his semblance has evolved to the point that he can literally see emotions while with the Ace Ops and just. Live, in front of everyone, fully exposing everything the Ace Ops are feeling.

POV, this 19 year old with a license that should have taken him another 2 years to get just called out that you were genuinely devastated about the loss of your teammate in front of all of you teammates that you treat like "colleagues only"

[rwac96]

could I see a Ruby, Penny, and Oscar prompt based on this?

(Okay, since this looks kinda funny)

Weiss: "Penny!? Ruby!? HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!"

Ruby: "Remember that gum we got from Walker Wunku?"

Yang: "The weird candy maker?"

Penny: "Upon further analysis, and what our current predicament: This confectionary contains an edible element similar to helium."

Jaune: *confused* "Meaning...?"

Pyrrha: "They ate experimental helium gum."

[randombook4idk]

showed up for 5 seconds in a middle of desert

said bro and nothing else

damn they're such icons

[flare-vortex]

Some Jaune angst from Volume 8 hehe, still relevant in V9 ofc 🤭😈 … 😭

[ahn1zos]

Escapism

[nottoxicfr]

Why didn’t they just have Ambrosious make a bunch of hallways instead of an area that has no safety rails and an endless abyss. Or maybe just a place with a floor and walls.

Or even just make doors that go to the vault itself, and then just one door that goes to Vacuo.

For that matter, why not just move the whole of Mantle in one big door? Then just drop it somewhere else.

Create a giant door that catches the whole of Atlas and drops it somewhere in the sea. Make a second Atlas and destroy the first Atlas by collision.

Just create a giant guy to catch the island and hold it on his shoulder. Cinder would never predict that. A giant colossus. What could they call him. It’s a real thinker.

That would be pretty funny though.

[guardianjameslight]

RWBY SPOILERS

Imagine being made a leader while being 15 at the time and having no experience in the position. You have to be responsible for others, not just your teammates, but for the people who trust you as well. But then you see those people get hurt or killed, and there's nothing you could do about it. But despite that, you continue to fight because if you don't, then who will? But even then, people you care about get hurt.

Then you learn about the ancient evil that wants to destroy everything you know and love and it wants you because you pose an actual threat to it, and you also learn that this evil took your mother from you.

But despite that you try to make the right decisions to save as many people as you can, but you fail anyway, and once again people you care about are getting killed, which hurts even more when this is the second time you lose them.

And then you end up in a place where nothing is like it's seems. You and your friends must fight to get home, but there's really not much you can do because of everything that happened. And the worst part is that you don't know who you are anymore. And then people think you'll give some inspiring speech to make them feel better, but after everything that happened you're done with being the leader and you're tired to be the one who always has to say something to make things better when you're the one who actually needs it.

Ruby has been through a lot, so it's understandable she's done with being a leader since her decision ends up making things worse. She's just a child with the responsibility no one is really ready for, and she can't get others out of the mess they're in because she's in it too.

[haltraveler]

I think I've cracked the primary conflict of the Atlas arc: James and Ruby are each other's foils. They're too similar to have ever been able to work together.

Both of them have placed the burden on themselves to be the sole hero who has the plan to save the day and neither of them are ready to accept that they don't need to do it alone, that they can share the load with people they trust. When Salem arrives, neither of them have a real plan. Instead they act on impulse because they feel like everyone is counting on them to be the one who has a plan to win. But their differing backgrounds mean that same impulse takes them in very different directions. 

James is the pinnacle of the Atlesian man. He has been raised and trained to see strength as the willingness to sever all sentiment and accept any sacrifice in service to his kingdom. When he sees a situation with no clear solution, his impulse is strength. Save Atlas no matter the cost. 

Ruby was raised on fairy tales and the memory of a mother who seemed to have come straight from one of those stories. To her, a hero is someone who always saves everyone, who can find a way out of any situation without compromising their morals. When she sees the same situation as James, her impulse is hope. We CAN find a way to save everyone, we HAVE TO or I'm a failure.

While neither of these are particularly grounded viewpoints, I do think Ruby is more in the right because she’s reacting to James’s stubbornness more than instigating the conflict herself, and she’s at least trying to do the right thing. That impulsiveness leaves her desperate and floundering to actually find a solution which I think makes some people feel that “Ironwood at least had a plan”. 

But James’s “plan” is equally impulsive and short-sighted. He immediately jumps to “run away without finishing the evacuation” without actually making any effort to figure out if he has time to do something more. And we see in V8 there was in fact time to send a distress call and probably to evacuate at least much more of Mantle. But James can’t allow himself the time to think things through. Everyone needs him to have A Plan!  Never mind that it'd probably only buy him a few months at most while cutting him off from all allies and material resources.

[your-mums-nuts]

I love the implication that emerald and mercury just … hang out and are friends.

Like when we first see them together, going to Tuksons shop, emerald is going there to preemptively deal with a situation to please Cinder (very obviously her idea) and Mercury just decides to tag along. And it gets better when we see Mercury training by himself and Emeralds just sitting there, not training or anything she’s literally just there for quality time.

And their jokes! Like when Mercury follows her to Tuksons, they actually have banter. Then when they are talking with Roman and Cinder, they start joking about what kind of Faunas he was, to the point that Cinder told them to shut up.

And after they fake Yang hurting him during the tournament, he makes a joke out of being in pain and she punches him in the arm (such a flirtatious move tbh) and he asks what’s up with her, because he expected her to laugh and even go along with it. She responds that she has a headache from using her semblance, implying that her not joining in on the joke is a rare occurrence.

I just love them, I love how crwby has presented their dynamic and how they’re such good friends (they’re deeply in love)

[penny-weiss]

RWBY Parallels V5, V8, and V9

Ruby’s hand-to-hand combat.

V5E3: Ozpin, “Getting you four in fighting shape… (points to Ruby) You can only fight so long as you have Crescent Rose, but you’re still lacking in hand-to-hand combat.”

V8E14: Ruby loses Crescent Rose. While she had some coaching from Ozpin in volume 5 and tries to engage in hand-to-hand combat against Neo in volume 8, it’s clear she heavily relied upon her weapon. I expect in volume 9, we will start to see her branch out of her comfort zone to other styles of combat. I hope Yang is going to coach her a bit more in the art of hand-to-hand.

Ruby is purity.

V5E5: Blake, “Have you ever met someone and thought to yourself, ‘They are the personification of this word’? …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.”

V9: The quote from season 5 about Ruby being purity reminded me of the poem Child of the pure unclouded brow from Alice in Wonderland that speaks of losing one’s sunny face and silver laughter. Ruby's purity and silver eyes may be why she is tied to the weather in this version of Wonderland. The last stanza of the poem especially stood out to me. 

And though the shadow of a sigh May tremble through the story, For ‘happy summer days’ gone by, And vanish’d summer glory – It shall not touch with breath of bale The pleasance of our fairy-tale.

How do you handle all of this?

V5E5: 

Oscar to Ruby, “How do you handle all of this? …How can you be so confident? People have tried to kill you. The world’s about to go to war all over again. How are you okay with any of this?”

Ruby to Oscar, “When Beacon fell, I lost two of my friends: Penny Pollendina and Pyrrha Nickos. I didn’t know them for very long but that doesn’t change the fact they were two of the most kind-hearted people I’d ever met. But that didn’t save them. Pyrrha thought if there was even the smallest chance of helping someone that it was a chance worth taking, and because of that, she died fighting a battle she knew she couldn’t win. And Penny was killed just to make a statement… I am scared but not just for me. What happened at Beacon shows Salem doesn’t care if you’re standing against her or not. She’ll kill anybody, and that scares me most of all. Pyrrha, Penny, I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t hurt, that I didn’t think about them every day since I lost them, that I didn’t wish I had spent more time with them. If it had been me instead, I know they would have kept fighting too, no matter how dangerous it was. So that’s what I choose to do: to keep moving forward."

V8E14: Penny is still fighting even after Ruby and Blake fell. 

V9 Intro: While Ruby could still keep a positive outlook in Volume 5 after the initial loss of Penny, I can't imagine Ruby keeping the same outlook in Volume 9 after round 2 of losing Penny.

Think back to Beacon

V5E7: Ren, “That desire to go back and tell yourself not to be so stupid. That just proves you’re not the person you used to be. You’re smarter or kinder or stronger, and you’re not done growing yet.”

V9 Trailer: “What are you going to be?”

In Alice in Wonderland, Alice says, "Mabel, I’ll stay down here! It’ll be no use they're putting their heads down and saying ‘Come up again, dear!’ I shall only look up and say ‘Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I’ll come up: if not, I’ll stay down here till I’m somebody else’—but, oh dear!” cried Alice, with a sudden burst of tears, “I do wish they would put their heads down! I am so very tired of being all alone here!”

I think Ruby's younger self speaking to her older self is meant to mirror the conversations Alice has about who she is and who she will become.

If Ruby sticks around…

V5E7: Yang, “If Ruby sticks around, then I will too. If there’s one thing I know about her, it’s that she somehow always knows the right thing to do.”

V9 Trailer: Unknown voice (though it sounded similar to Salem to me), “You never were the hero... You seem to be carrying a rather large burden with you. What if you could leave Ruby Rose behind, shed like an old coat? What might happen if you don’t?"

Will the team have to face this question? What growth will Ruby have to go through to keep fighting and to continue being a leader?

I'm still rewatching the other seasons, but I found some of these moments interesting to compare, and I am excited to see Ruby's growth especially!

[lesbianseaweed]

I can't believe I might be able to buy all the RWBY DVDs except Volume 8

why is my life like this 😭😭😭