#rwby volume 6 spoilers

[zexapher]

Dragonslayer kinda cute tho, ngl

Tbf, Yang does get a more questioning look when Jaune actually mentions stealing the airship, but I thought this was pretty good.

I’m usually more of a White Knight kind of guy, but the Dragonslayer ship is also really fun.

[foulfirerebel]

Cue the song!

Seriously, the song goes well with the fight.

#RWBY6spoilers #Spoileddish

Duel of Fates

HD images are on my Patreon : https://www.patreon.com/Dishwasher1910

[clementinecloudz]

Long live pyrrha (she died 7 seasons ago but it's okay nothing bad ever happened)

[zexapher]

The caterpillar comes while Weiss is trying to grow and evolve, even crawling up to the visual representation of progress in Weiss' little summoned sword. She's not there yet, but is on the path. To ultimately become the Snow Angel, as Jaune always knew she could be.

And hey, look at that, she grows wings in the Chess fight of vol 9. Just as a caterpillar goes through metamorphosis to gain its own wings. Jaune saw it in Weiss from the beginning, because he's awesome like that, ngl.

We can associate this growth to be with more points of Weiss' arc. The Faunus/class conflict with the Schnee legacy for instance.

On a microscale, it's the whiteknight story arc, and the prejudices she associated Jaune with. Believing he was just like the shallow suitors of Atlas' high society, after the perks of her name. That was a false belief she'd eventually overcome at the dance, realizing Jaune was actually genuine in the end. And with their tenuous friendship established in vol 3, it would grow into the deeper bond we see in vol 9.

On a macroscale, Weiss is overcoming her greater prejudices and ultimately fighting against her father, as he's the manifestation of this part of Weiss' arc. The Faunus prejudice and conflict with Blake in vol 1, the callousness of Atlas' high society in vol 4, the Mantle v Atlas arc in vol 7, and so on. Weiss' growth as a character is necessary to overcome these challenges.

The butterfly comes when Ruby is struggling with her own identity, before ultimately realizing she doesn't need to change, but instead accept herself. She's already beautiful, if you will.

The butterfly being a sort of metaphorical guide, associated with Ruby's arc of not giving herself enough credit (as Maria put it in vol 6), putting herself down, before she's brought to the realization of how she's already good in the end and more than enough.

We could say Ruby is in the end a static character. Not meant to change, instead overcoming the conflict and doubt suggesting she should.

Volume 6 really started to bring this arc out into the open, volume 9 more or less resolves it, but it's been there from the beginning. Recall the leadership advice she gives Jaune during Jaundice. Ruby suggesting the leader more or less put aside and ignore their own troubles, for the sake of carrying the burdens of leadership on their shoulders.

Ultimately, this incomplete, and even detrimental, advice comes to a head in vol 9. With Ruby erupting over the burdens leadership has weighed on her.

So I’d like to talk about one small part of Volume 9 that was never directly addressed or even noted by the characters, yet feels like it is EXTREMELY significant going forward:

This infuriatingly CURIOUS Blue Butterfly that for SOME reason keeps showing up around RUBY.

As we all know, this butterfly first showed up in Volume 6 during Ruby’s conversation with Maria about the nature of their Silver Eyes. At the time, it seemed like a pretty vague bit of symbolism that we probably didn’t understand the full context for yet.

THEN that Blue Butterfly showed up again in the Ever After. Multiple times, and seemingly CLOSELY associated with Ruby.

First it showed up during prior to Ruby’s game with the Red Prince.

Next, and far more interestingly, the Butterfly shows up flittering around Ruby herself after she runs away from her team and Little. Again clearly establishing some kind of connection with Ruby.

And the funny thing is, this Butterfly is not explained or even acknowledged by the characters this volumes. They’re just�� THERE.

Then we get to this Butterfly’s final appearance in Volume 9, which also happens to be massively consequential when you start thinking about it:

They appear in the Blacksmith’s flashback as the first being shown to be ‘awakened’ by the Brothers.

Implying that this Butterfly is not just a denizen of the Ever After, but may well have been one of, if not THE first Afteran to have been created by the Tree after the Brothers.

A Butterfly which again, seems to have a close connection with RUBY and others with Silver Eyes.

At this point, I’m wondering if Maria was actually wrong about the Silver Eyes coming from the God of Light. But rather somehow through this Afteran. Like what if the Brothers weren’t the ONLY denizens of the Ever After to come to Remnant?

Either way, there is clearly SOMETHING important about this Butterfly and how it connects to Ruby and the other Silver Eyed Warriors.

And as a final note, I thought I’d point out that while Volume 6 was the first time we were introduced to a specific Blue Butterfly in relation to Ruby, it wasn’t the first time we had butterfly imagery associated with a character. But it wasn’t Ruby…

…It was WEISS back in Volume 3.

Connection?

[almea]

I'm low-key convinced the reason they didn't show us RWY meeting Blake's parents in Mistral is because they're going to show up in Vacuo along with Raven and Tai, and they wanted Blake and Yang to be girlfriends when they meet each other's parents for the first time.

[cornonjacob07]

Fucking me up so bad that Weiss shows attraction to Ever After Jaune who’s pretty close in appearance and knightly aesthetic to Nicholas Schnee, I would like Freud to leave my head now.

[shattering-the-mirror]

Remember when Ren called Yang out for joking to hide her fear?

You don't suppose Yang was doing that this episode...

Y'know...

"You have cat ears!"

(ie avoiding being vulnerable)

Or

"Any big truths we haven't dropped on each other yet?"

(ie joking about the one thing she's too scared to actually say)

[foulfirerebel]

If she was there, she would.

Because @short-wooloo wanted this...

[gallopinggallifreyans]

The more I think about it, the more I'm sure Pyrrha's headpiece is the Relic of Choice.

(Buckle in, folks. This is a long one. Spoilers for all of RWBY under the readmore. You can find this crossposted to ao3 here.)

Pyrrha's entire character has always revolved around choice.

From the minute we meet her, we know that she's the top student, probably invited to Beacon by Ozpin (this is likely; Ruby showed similar skill). In volume 6, we find out that she wanted to go to Beacon and accepted the offer, whether by invitation or passing an exam, and left by her own choice.

We also learn in volume 2 that Pyrrha never had much of a choice in mundane events, like getting a date to the dance, which is something she laments. Her initial appearance where we learn of her skill and nobody asking her to the dance are two significant instances where Pyrrha's lack of choice is made obvious. This sets her apart from her peers and development-wise puts her in a position where she can never choose to have a mundane life — she is literally destined for greatness.

And then we get to volume 3, where the Maidens come into play. The Maiden plot was a late addition to the series, but it gave Pyrrha an additional role to play that further demonstrated the importance of choice. Qrow and Ozpin make it very clear that she was being given the choice to take on the rest of the Fall Maiden's powers, which, significantly, were taken by force from the previous Maiden, by Cinder. Qrow reminds Jaune of this in volume 4.

Volume 6 gives us that heartbreaking scene of Jaune and Pyrrha's mother standing before the honourary statue in Argus, and Pyrrha's mother says this:

"She understood that she had a responsibility to try. I don't think she would regret her choice, because a Huntress would understand that there really wasn't a choice to make."

And that all but proves that Pyrrha was determined to take her life into her own hands when it mattered most. She was given the choice to accept the Fall Maiden's powers, and she knew that she was the only one who could do it, so she did. It was an impossible decision and she knew it; there really wasn't a choice to make.

I won’t lie and say Oz hadn’t already chosen Pyrrha very early on. Qrow certainly wouldn’t have made Pyrrha become the Fall Maiden if she didn’t want to, but we know from later volumes that Oz can and will use underhanded methods to play his own game, just like Salem. The Maiden plot was developed late, but fortunately the lore is kinda fuzzy early on so we can draw conclusions, and we can glean from Oz’s later behaviour (volume 6) that he can be very manipulative.

We also know that Qrow and the rest of team STRQ, Glynda, and Ironwood have all been used as pawns by Oz to some extent, and Qrow is vocal about this several times. Not to say that he’s without fault, but he wouldn’t push Pyrrha into a role she wasn’t ready to take, and he wouldn’t have been confident and comfortable saying she was ready if he wasn’t sure. We see this behaviour in volume 4, and then consistently when he thinks the kids can't handle something.

The Relic of Choice is a tricky one, because it was supposedly hidden in the Beacon vault, which could only be opened by the Fall Maiden. However, nobody knows what happened to it after the fall of Beacon, and Salem concludes that Oz must have hidden the crown differently than the other Relics. In addition, according to the wiki, the appearance of the Relic is unconfirmed, though whether this was due to choices made in adaptation or made intentionally, is unknown.

Based on the two Relics we've seen on screen (Knowledge and Creation), we can guess that the crown would be visually similar — gold with turquoise accents. But, again, the physical appearance is weird and inconsistent. Fairy Tales of Remnant was released just after volume 6, when we first see Jinn, so the design choice is a little bit iffy considering they were probably in tandem development. Because of this, I think the Relic of Choice appears differently to each holder, and most importantly chooses its own appearance. We don't know when Pyrrha got her headpiece, but it was before Beacon. The colour scheme matches her overall appearance, but as I've already established, the design choice is probably not constant for thematic and plot reasons.

The design choices for each of the Relics and their respective Maidens are also connected to the kingdom crests. The four kingdoms each have crests representing the Relics they hold in their respective academy vaults.

Vale's crest incorporates the Relic of Choice as a laurel wreath, typically meant to represent victory in the Pythian games, and became a universal symbol of triumph by the Roman period (I believe — don't quote me on that, I'm not a Romanist). Point is, it's a symbol originating in ancient Greece. Pyrrha is based on Achilles. Symbolic association of Vale's crest with Pyrrha's character inspiration kind of identifies her with the Relic of Choice, and her status as would-be successor to the Fall Maiden combined with what we learn about the Relics later solidifies the association. The Relic is represented by a laurel wreath, Pyrrha is based on a Greek character, you get it.

This seems like a bit of a stretch until we consider the other known Maidens. Raven's emblem and the Mistral crest have similar visual and thematic elements: the flared "wings" and central circle with the diamond-shaped arrow design. Winter and Penny both share elements of their emblems with the Atlas crest — Winter and Atlas both have the double ringed concentric design, while Penny's emblem is more akin to the staff in the Atlas emblem. The gear/mechanical design of the Atlas crest represents both Winter and Penny's roles as cogs in the Atlesian machine. We don't know what Amber's (previous Fall Maiden) emblem was, but her character design has similar elements to Pyrrha, connecting them visually rather than thematically.

Notably, Cinder is the only Maiden whose emblem does not resemble her respective kingdom, because the Maiden power was not rightfully hers. She stole it while the previous Fall Maiden was still alive. Cinder may believe in destiny, but she is trying to work towards a destiny that is not for her, and quite literally, the shoe does not fit.

In the screenshot below, we see Cinder disintegrate Pyrrha, except her headpiece. This could mean that Cinder has great control over her Maiden powers and can precisely burn away the entirety of Pyrrha and her armour, but she doesn't keep the headpiece as a trophy. Or, it could mean the headpiece was made of something else, like the other Relics, which are not easily destroyed.

Pyrrha's final question to Cinder was, "Do you believe in destiny?" And it's clear that Pyrrha does to some degree, and understood her role and responsibility, her choice to play the bigger game even if she had no idea what it entailed.

What makes this even more interesting is that Cinder says she does believe in destiny, immediately before killing Pyrrha, and she drops the headpiece. Later in volume 8, Cinder returns the two Relics to Salem, and Salem explicitly praises her despite Cinder not able to stop Winter or the evacuation of Mantle. How delicious would it be if Pyrrha’s headpiece was the Relic of Choice, and Cinder had no idea, losing it in the ruins of Vale?

[zexapher]

The Crew Meets Saphron for the First Time

I was leafing through some character stills yesterday for a whole other meme I was making when I saw this one of Blake with an absolutely maniacal look upon her face seeing Saphron for the first time, and I just knew I had to throw something together. It just looked too funny to pass up.

The show has this sort of off-screen friendship between Jaune and Blake going on. Do they do bookclub together? I don't know, but little bits like this really sneak it in. She is so ready to bang meet Jaune's sister. Blake wants the blonde harem to go through the childhood stories and pics, gather some blackmail material.

That scene in general is too good, so much going on. The sibling energy with Jaune, who totally knows his sister will embarrass him. It comes with Oscar, with that vacant look on his face and his hands tucked into his pockets and everything! Qrow in the background having none of it. Yang and Nora! Ren lookin’ too cool. Weiss with that wholesome smirk.

Then Ruby absolutely pops off, living her best life! It’s inspirational.

[koringus]

Dilfs and milfs am i right

[squaric-acid]

Do you all ever think about how Maria told Ruby “you don’t give yourself enough credit”

and

the Blacksmith told Ruby “then maybe that girl is enough”?

Because I do

[blackdagger456]

Ruby Sees Crescent Rose and Almost Has A Panic Attack

The fact that Crescent Rose the thing that has been ‘her baby’ since day ONE of this series is something that triggers her is amazing to me. You’d think it’d give her comfort but no, it represents the past, the past her. The very same past version of herself that’s put her down and it also represents her struggles.

Crescent Rose represents Ruby Rose the Huntress…but what has she achieved?

What use is Crescent Rose to her if whether she has it or not she’s inferior to her mother?

What good is the weapon of Ruby Rose the Huntress when she feels like her title should be Ruby Rose ‘The Failure’.

[yangfanbb]

Freaking Love the V6 callback just reversed 🖤💛🖤💛🖤💛

[n1blakelover]

the day that we get the full version of Worthy is the day i sob uncontrollably and won’t stop for weeks

[zzskyninjazz]

It’s great that it finally happened, but if this is true, then I’ll say they had an… ‘interesting’ way of developing it.