#rwbyrg

[rwbyrg]

The Boy Who Fell From The Sky vs. The Girl Who Fell Through The World

[tecnestheim962]

…

Rosegarden Week day 1 & 2 - First and Flower

(Click or open image in new tab for better quality)

[rwbyrg]

Reason Why Rosegarden is Canon #008

In V6, there is an interesting series of events where Ruby mentions that food makes her feel better when she's upset, and we see Oscar overhearing this conversation.

A few episodes later, Oscar sees Ruby crestfallen at the conflict in their group in light of Ozpin's lies getting exposed, and so he stands up to try and mediate when Ruby has run out of things to say and looks defeated.

💡 Note: the framing of the fractured wall right behind Ruby's head to emphasize how she's feeling.

After the conflict escalates, Oscar disappears for some retail therapy but comes back while everyone is out looking for him and starts making dinner. When asked if something is cooking, he starts to say he did it to help people feel better after the earlier argument - specifically pausing to look at Ruby as he does so - before he deflects at the last minute.

So the tl;dr is Oscar heard Ruby say that food makes her feel better and the moment he saw she was upset, he went out to buy ingredients to make her a casserole to hopefully lift her spirits. But he didn't want to make it weird, so he DODGED THE QUESTION when asked why he did it.

All this after putting on new clothes that are essentially Remnant's equivalent of a marriage ritual. Boy is atrociously down bad and is as subtle as a brick through a glass window. 😔

[rwbyrg]

Reason Why Rosegarden is Canon: #004

Oscar's fairytale allusion has been confirmed by Miles Luna - one of the show's lead writers - as The Little Prince.

Which is a story that links back to many of Oscar's character themes and story beats. The most notable of which is the two characters' shared love for a Rose.

RWBY fairytale allusions work in complex ways. Most of the main cast has a primary allusion, and then secondary allusions for what roles they fill in other character's stories. For instance, Yang is Goldilocks from Goldilocks and the Three Bears in her own story, but she is also the Beauty to Blake's Beauty and the Beast.

Ruby is very clearly Little Red Riding Hood at her core, but she is also the Rose Red to Weiss's Snow White, and the Rose to Oscar's Little Prince.

I also just think the parallel of both their stories being "Little" when they're both the youngest of the group to be very cute.

[rwbyrg]

Reason Why Rosegarden is Canon: #005

As mentioned in the previous post, Oscar's fairytale allusion is The Little Prince, a character who is in love with a Rose. There are ample examples of how his story links back to that source material, but one of the first of which we see when he meets Ruby Rose for the first time.

Upon seeing her, Oscar steps through the doorway and immediately comments in awe of her physical appearance, implying that he thinks she is beautiful.

💡 Please take a moment to appreciate that the first word out of his mouth upon seeing her for the first time was literally "Woah."

Versus...

Then one morning, exactly at sunrise, she suddenly showed herself. And, after working with all this painstaking precision, she yawned and said: "Ah! I am scarcely awake. I beg that you will excuse me. My petals are still all disarranged . . ." But the little prince could not restrain his admiration: "Oh! How beautiful you are!"

Not only is that attraction established from their introduction, their first words to each other directly mirror one another's and co-relate to both of their greater character narratives surrounding identity.

Oscar: You... have silver eyes. Ruby: Who... are you?

Oscar comments on Ruby's eyes, the legacy of Summer Rose that she is carrying, and one of - if not the only - trump cards they all have against Salem and her forces.

Meanwhile, Ruby comments on Oscar's identity asking him who he is. Which Oscar, some nobody farmboy from the Mistral countryside who is the next in line as an Ozcarnation, spends every following volume trying to figure out. Who he is, who he's becoming, and who he wants to be.

[tecnestheim962]

Dreams do come true sometimes….

Rosegarden shippers! We need to manifest a scene in the extras of Oscar talking about how much he misses Ruby!

🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 MANIFEST! 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯

[rwbyrg]

RWBY Ship Parallels #1: Fear & Bravery

There are too many ship parallels to put them all in one meta, so I'll make individual posts as I remember them. The first one I want to tackle is how all the canon or hinted-at-being-canon ships all have pivotal moments where the themes of being afraid and/or having courage come up.

Some elaborations under the cut!

For starters, just for context to refer back to throughout the post, the definition of courage/bravery is as follows:

noun 1. the ability to do something that frightens one. 2. strength in the face of pain or grief.

I was initially going to list these chronologically, but we're going to do it on a ship by ship basis instead. First up:

Renora

The first incident for them happens all the way back in V4 during their backstory flashback. Ren underwent a small arc learning from his father that sometimes the worst action to take is not taking any action at all, even if it's scary. He then tries to support Nora by teaching her this same lesson: that they both need to be brave. She expresses vulnerability about how scared she is, Ren confesses to feeling the same, and together they decide to look after each other from that point on. Which makes everything just a bit less frightening.

We also revisit these same themes in their V8 confession. First we see Nora criticizing Ren for running away just because things got difficult:

And after Ren owns up to this cowardice, the things he did out of fear of failure, the conversation shifts. Nora admonishes herself, and Ren lists things off about her that he admires, the last of which - while not using the word itself - calls to how brave of a person she is and cites it as one of the main reasons why he loves her. Because as the definition above states, being strong and helping people without worrying about how much it might hurt you in turn is what it means to have courage.

WhiteKnight

Their heart-to-heart in V9E9 says it all. Weiss has been carrying the weight of failing to save Atlas since it fell, and after Ruby's actions in the episodes prior, she became aware (a bit too late) of how those same failures were weighing on their leader. So when Jaune acknowledges the harm he caused from trying so desperately not to repeat their past mistakes, Weiss is the perfect person to step up for reassurance.

She knows that their failures do not equate to their worth or all the good they're capable of doing. And reminding Jaune of this, calling him a brave and good person in spite of his failures, is what he needed to hear to be able to reach an acceptance he hadn't been able to achieve in all those years trapped alone in the Ever After.

(Also the framing parallel of BB and WK both holding each other is a very nice touch.)

Bumbleby

With BB it's not just one or two moments. Blake and Yang's characters both centre around the themes of cowardice and bravery since their beginnings and we see it come up throughout the show a lot. Back in V2, Yang sees the bravery in Blake when she herself can only focus on the opposite:

Blake: When you figured out I was a faunus I didn't know what to do, so I ran. when I realized my oldest partner had become a monster, I ran! Even my semblance... I was born with ability to leave behind a shadow of myself. An empty copy that takes the hit while I run away.

In V4 and 5 we see Yang struggling to get back on her feet after losing her arm and the trauma she endured at Beacon. Blake tells Sun that she sees Yang as the "embodiment of strength" and we, the audience, get to see the proof of this every time she keeps fighting despite shaking, and especially when she faces off with Raven in the finale.

These parallel arcs culminate with both of them facing off against Adam together, but most especially gets called back to in their mutual confession scene in V9:

Yang acknowledges what she saw in Blake all those years ago, that she doesn't give up on what matters to her, even when people hurt her, she still fights for what's important. While Blake acknowledges Yang's reliability, her strength, and her courage. And both of them, like Renora, cite these reasons as things they admire, and reasons why they love each other.

Now last, but certainly not least:

Rosegarden

One of the very first things Oscar says to Ozpin when he leaves the farm is that he's scared. This comes back time and time again, especially in the Atlas arc where Oscar spends so much of his time counselling Ironwood against letting his fear control him (a conflict Ruby is also a part of). Our little prince even has a theme song titled Fear to really drive it home.

Whereas Ruby has always been the poster child of "keep moving forward", no matter how much the trauma, stress, pressure, and grief weighs you down. You just have to be strong and keep pressing on, fighting the monster that took her mother away. No matter what.

So, much like BB, there are themes around bravery, fear, and perseverance that apply to both Ruby and Oscar's personal arcs. Both of them especially have focus on being brave despite fears of loss. With Oscar, it is fear of losing himself to the merge; whereas Ruby has a fear of losing those she loves.

All the way back in the infamous Dojo Scene is where we first see these themes addressed in their dynamic. It starts with Oscar expressing vulnerability to Ruby about how afraid he really is.

Ruby initially tries her usual strategy; surface level reassurances about just pushing through it... but it doesn't work on him. So after some upset from Oscar, she ends up being vulnerable with him too. Something she hadn't done with anyone else in show by that point.

Ruby admits that she's afraid too, not just for herself, but for the threat Salem poses to the world as they know it and the people within it. Ruby tells him about those she's lost and says that if it had been her instead, those friends would have kept fighting too. That vulnerability, which requires courage in and of itself, is what motivates and inspires Oscar to keep moving forward where Ruby's earlier attempt could not. The scene closes off with one more nod to these themes where Ruby pauses at the door and turns back with one final thought:

In both the above scene and the V4 finale, Ruby cites "fighting for those they've lost and those they haven't lost yet" as her main motive to keep fighting. Up until V8/9 she used this as her greatest source of strength, but that strength is a double edged sword which eventually became her greatest weakness when Neo used it against her. First trapping her in a room with all the people she "failed":

And then landing a finishing blow with making her kill lose one of the people she loves most: Oscar.

Ruby can be brave if it means she can protect the people she loves. But just as Penny's death dealt a very big hit to Ruby's hope, what little she had left was crushed at the thought of losing Oscar (and Little) too.

Aside from that, there has also always been an underlying mystery around what having silver eyes means for Ruby. In V4, she is hunted by Tyrian and in V8 she finds out what her fate would have been had he succeeded. A fate which very justifiably terrifies her and seems to be a theme that will carry on into the Vacuo arc. It is also something that was brought up in the second RWBY x JL movie, I talked about this a little bit in this meta, but I'll share it here as well. In the movie, Ruby opens up a bit about this fear saying the following:

“Did you know I lost my mom when I was a kid? I don’t know exactly what happened to her, I don’t really remember her, I just have stories. And I keep trying to live up to those stories, but… I realize they don’t matter anymore. Heroes fall. And I just want to get as much done as I possibly can before I do.”

This scene directly parallels one of Oscar's back in V6:

“I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be… me. But I did some thinking, and I do know that I want to do everything I can to help with whatever time I have left.”

Both of these scenes show their respective courage around fears related to their issues with identity. Oscar saying he will do whatever he can before he loses himself, and Ruby doing whatever she can before she loses her life as all heroes eventually will.

So to summarize: Renora, Whiteknight, Bumbleby, and Rosegarden all have a scene where one or both partners cite the other's bravery as something they admire or love about the other person. All of these ships also include at least one scene - but often more that just weren't listed here - where they open up and are vulnerable with each other about their fears and motivations. And lastly, with BB and RG especially, bravery and fear are central themes to both their relationship dynamics as well as their individual character arcs within those pairings, all of which narratively parallel each other extensively.

CRWBY is very consistent with how it writes its ships and this is only the tip of the iceberg of all the parallels we've seen between these partners so far. But that's all for now; thanks for reading!

[rwbyrg]

The foreshadowing in this show - this scene and its framing specifically - destroys me. ❤

[rwbyrg]

Reason Why Rosegarden is Canon: #001

When geeking out over weapons of Beacon students back in V1E2, Ruby makes comments about two different students that directly link to important character foils for her arc.

The first is a kid with a collapsible staff that she makes heart eyes towards (aka Oscar)...

and the second is a female student that carries a fire sword (aka Cinder).

[tecnestheim962]

@rwbyrg if Ruby cupped Oscar’s cheek…

But what’s better:

When Oscar cups ruby’s face for the first time, he does it with uncertainty. Looking for permission. A silent ‘is this okay?’ in the way his fingers hesitate, through the trembling of his hands. Then he feels the coolness of her fingers brushing against the back of his hand, gently guiding it to rest on her cheek and holding him there. He looks into those silver eyes of hers and sees nothing but unwavering affection as she nuzzles into the warmth of his palm.

when a character cups another character's face and they kiss their palm well that makes me weak in the knees

[rwbyrg]

Reason Why Rosegarden is Canon: #006

In V6E9, Oscar returns after disappearing in the previous episode. When reuniting with the group, he has donned a new outfit and talks about his resolve towards their fight against Salem that directly mirrors the talk he had with Ruby in The Dojo Scene in V5E5.

The outfit he has chosen lends many more colours to his initial design and mimics the look of his Little Prince allusion. But what's important about this upgrade is the colours and placements he has chosen.

He's thrown on red shoes which are emblematic of his commitment to "keep moving forward". In other words, to follow the path Ruby is walking. Beyond just the boots, he has also put a red mantle on his shoulders in the same shape as Ruby's hood which is symbolic of his commitment to help her shoulder her burdens.

💡 Important to note that Ruby's following Atlas outfit upgrade, starts to mimic Oscar's shape language as well. And, while team JNR are all designed by Erin Winn, Oscar's design has always been done by Ein Lee, who is responsible for all of team RWBY's outfits as well, adding more evidence to these design similarities being intentional from the beginning.

Also important to note, that when Nora asks Oscar "What are you wearing?" she is literally pointing to Ruby signaling to the audience where he got the inspiration from.

Beyond this, we have confirmation from Eddy Rivas, one of the show's writers, that wearing the colours of your partner is a common sign of affection or expression of the bond a person shares with someone else.

We've seen this same pattern in other canon couples throughout the show as well. Most notably with:

Renora, who have always shared pink elements

Arkos, with Jaune wearing a red sash in honour of Pyrrha and

Bumbleby incorporating each other's colours into their weapons

Bumbleby has also been designed with that complementary colour scheme in mind since the very beginning with their Yellow/Purple duality. And this same design intention is clear in Rosegarden as well. Not only with the Red/Green, but also their Silver/Gold contrast as well.

And it goes beyond just the colours in their costumes, it is also included in their very names by the colour naming rule.

Ruby (as in Red like the Gemstone) Rose (yes like the flower, but also as in Rise like the Silver Moon)

Oscar (as in Gold like the Award Statues) Pine (as in Green like the Coniferous Tree)

[rwbyrg]

You could do an entire "why RG is canon" post just made up of Miles's cameo vids.

lol. you got it boss.

Reason Why Rosegarden is Canon: #007

Miles Luna (affectionately referred to as RG King by many shippers), one of the show's head writers since Volume 1, has shown constant support for the ship at panels as well as in viewer submitted questions on Cameo. Everything from direct questions about the pairing's validity to talking hypotheticals, he often puts emphasis on Rosegarden in ways that are pretty difficult to ignore.

List of Miles' Cameos

The RG Dynamic

The RG Age Difference

Little Prince Allusion Confirmation

Oscar's Birthday

NND and RG

How Oscar May Inspire Ruby

Oscar in The Ever After

The ship has also seen support form other members of CRWBY. Including Eddy Rivas (another writer) interacting with RG fanart on twitter, to some enthusiasm from a couple voice actors, most notably:

Oscar's VA - Aaron Dismuke

Emerald's VA - Katie Newville

I'm pretty sure this list is not exhaustive, so if I missed any please send them over and I will update it accordingly!

[rwbyrg]

Reason Why Rosegarden is Canon: #002

At the Beacon Dance in V2, everyone in the main cast is paired off with someone that either is already important to them or becomes important later on.

Except for Ruby, because her partner hasn't joined the cast yet... but he is later brought into her life by the person who does stop to chat with her at the party: Ozpin.

"If you think about it, fighting and dancing aren't so different. Two partners interlocked..."

This theme becomes consistent for many of Ruby and Oscar's later interactions. Up until the middle of V7, the theme that follows them is fighting:

Sparring together (V5 & V7)

Heart to heart in a practice room (aka The Dojo Scene)

Oscar constantly showing concern for Ruby during fights

Ruby constantly protecting him from Grimm

In V7, they start to transition more towards the dancing side of things:

Mirroring scenes, arcs, and dialog that parallel each other. Doing the same thing but slightly different, two parts of one set.

Regaining trust in each other(aka The Fumble) and,

The Almost Hug, both happening in the Schnee Manor Entryway that looks like a ballroom.

For a more in depth breakdown of how the dance foreshadows future ships, please check out this meta!

[birder-of-remnant]

Their takeaways aligned with my thoughts as well. Like Anthurak, I have generally seen Ruby being Oscar's role model more than as a romantic option (especially with how Lindsay talks about Ruby's character and how her character is meant to connect with everyone, not just one person as would happen in a romance). Although I am not 100% convinced, there are some convincing parallels between their allusions. And their complimentary color schemes fit within the dynamic that we have seen from other official ships. But I will not go into that here, you can see rwbyrg for more in-depth arguments. But RG speculation aside, the scene showed Oscar while he was at his lowest. He wants to be a leader who can inspire hope in everyone, like Ruby, but he cannot seem to find the light as symbolized by the sunset.

Likewise, it is painful seeing how far Winter has fallen into depression. She has long been Weiss's role model. Like with Oscar's foil, their roles have now reversed. On the subject of Penny, I am less certain. It costs CRWBY $25,000 to $35,000 per minute of animation. They do not have the funds to develop every character, hence why they have to prioritize which characters get development each season. Penny is my favorite character and it broke my heart when she died both times. It was so unfair for her to die right after she got her wish to become organic. But, her story was tied to Atlas. If they were to bring her back again, it would mean they would have to shift development away from someone else (for example, Team CFVE). And right now, there are a LOT of amazing and wonderful characters in Vacou that deserve attention. I don't know, this conflicts me deeply.

---

And let's not forget about that whole thing about Vale being freaking destroyed. I absolutely adore the idea of how RWBY saved all the people of Atlas-Mantle using the portal system, as an idea at least. But in reality, that one small exit into Vacuo would have been like trying to empty an Olympic-sized swimming pool's worth of people using a shower drain. And seeing that single lonely airship coming from Vale and Oobleck's face, it seems that they experienced their Mt Glenn all over again, but this time, on a national level. I always feared that if all the nations rallied behind Vacuo, that Salem would attack Vale or Mistral instead, simply to make them think twice about getting in her way. But I never could have imagined that it would have happened before the ending of v9. Where is Tai? Zweii? SHOPKEEP??? It may sound weird that out of all of the heavy and heartbreaking scenes from the animatic, that this was the part that hit me the hardest.

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An almost as hard-hitting was the realization that THE CROWN was going to be in this! I have long wondered how much v10 was going to reference the books. I figured that since 99% of people have not read those hidden gems, they would probably make a few casual references. But that they would avoid making too much reference to them to avoid confusing people. Don't get me wrong, I was sure that Gillian was going to be royally pissed about the situation, but that she would have been powerless by this point to do anything about it. I am so excited for this plotline! Please, let us have it! AND, THIS MEANS MORE CFVE!!!!!

If you have not read or listened to the books, get to it!

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I would love to continue gushing about Ren, Nora, Qrow, and the rest, but I have rambled on too long. I am so happy that we got this extended version. It pains me that they did not have the budget to make these into a real episode. But at the end of the day, as amazing as their animation is, the heart of this series has always been in the characters and in their stories. And that is what we got from this! In the end, no matter what happens to this series, I will never stop loving it.

Takeaways from the Volume 9 Epilogue:

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One thing I really like about Oscar’s ‘If there was anything I wish I could borrow from you…’ monologue is that it laid out/confirmed something I’ve always felt was a major aspect of Oscar’s dynamic with Ruby that I nonetheless feel a lot of the fandom has missed: That Oscar very much sees Ruby as a mentor and an example to follow, and how their dynamic is specifically a foil to what we saw between Ruby and Ozpin. That Ruby acts as a mentor and example to Oscar in the same way Ozpin was to Ruby, and that Ruby is a far BETTER mentor and example to Oscar than Ozpin ever was to her. Which, as an aside, is a dynamic I can’t help but feel a lot of people have been misinterpreting as ‘ship-teasing’ and is one of the main reasons I’ve simply never been able to see Oscar as any kind of viable love-interest to Ruby. Frankly the dynamic of ‘Ruby is the mentor and example to Oscar that Ozpin couldn’t be for her’ is simply so much more INTERESTING than any kind of romance could ever hope to be.

--

Even in animatic form, Winter basically going overdrive on the maiden powers was a sight to behold. And her own monologue had all the self-deprecation we were expecting. Our girl is clearly holding on by a thread and it’s going to be REAL interesting seeing how she reacts and adjusts to her sister not actually being dead. As in, I can imagine a situation where Winter tries to throw herself into a heroic sacrifice with the belief that Weiss would make a better Maiden than her.

Also, Winter’s monologue giving major focus to how Penny is super-super-dead-dead-and-definitely-not-coming-back-for-really-realsies, as she is talking to the sister who she ALSO believes is DEFINITELY also dead? Specifically with the words that Penny is gone, when Penny’s last words to her were that she’d be ‘part of you’?

Yeah, there is no way in hell we’ve seen the last of Penny XD

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The CROWN. Like it was only a few shots, but as someone who read the CFVY Books (which you totally should if you haven’t, they’re great), holy shit I was NOT expecting them to pop up here.

I mean, in hindsight it makes perfect sense that they’d be involved in Volume 10. They’re basically Vacuo’s equivalent to Vale’s criminal element and the White Fang splinter faction as Salem’s co-opted insurgency group, with Jax and Gillian joining Roman, Adam and Jacques as the latest of Salem’s unwitting patsies. It’s definitely going to be real interesting seeing the crew deal with them. Like it’s really fun to imagine Team RWBY in particular being kind of exasperated at seeing Jax’s probably doing a whole ‘With Salem’s help I shall be King!’ shtick after everything they’ve seen with Roman, Adam and Jacques.

Oh and if you don’t know, Jax has a mind-control semblance, so him trying to use that on Yang could actually lead to a sneaky callback to the Justice League crossover, ie; Yang doing a ‘Yeah, I’m not doing THAT shit again.’ XD

--

Qrow’s whole vibe through this is fascinating. Like his section may have been the one we already saw, but after seeing the abject depression and growing despair of all the other characters, Qrow actually being OPTIMISTIC hit so much harder.

--

Raven showing up at the end is… interesting.

I’ll admit that ever since we saw that specific clip a few months back, I’ve been rather conflicts about Raven showing up to deliver RWBY+J to Vacuo, particularly after Ruby’s tree vision. Like for one it felt a bit random and unnecessary. The tree already deposited the Ever After team outside of Vacuo so they didn’t exactly need help getting there. Not to mention that it kind of clotheslines the story-thread set up by Ruby’s vision; that she now has a reason to track Raven down to get the ANSWERS to what happened to Summer. Finally, it’s just kind of… random? Like where did Raven even come from to get the team?

But now having seen the clip with its intended context, I’m definitely more on board with it. Particularly hearing from Kerry and Eddy that the original ending for the penultimate episode had RWBY+J going through the portal to arrive at their memorial stone, and met by a ‘Mysterious Figure’, ie; Raven. Here it feels like were getting more set up to get answers later as to what Raven was doing at the memorial.

And really, now that I’ve thought about it more, this method kind of puts the thread of Ruby going to Raven for answers even MORE into focus. Like the story reintroduces Raven in the present right after Ruby got a vision basically saying ‘hey, Raven is important’. And now going into Volume 10, we’re pretty much perfectly positioned for Ruby to pull Raven aside for those all-important ‘Why were you fucking my mom? What happened to my mom?’ questions.

--

Finally… yeah that ending hit me a LOT harder than I was expecting. Like that ending was HOPE in its purest form and it was honestly beautiful to see. Particularly right now with the future of the show seeming so uncertain. I’ve personally been optimistic about RWBY’s future (in a manner not unlike Qrow’s vibes I suppose lol), but damn the hopefulness of that ending hit especially hard, and was something I’ll admit I needed. And I imagine the rest of us could use as well.

We'll be getting Volume 10. And 11, and 12, and however many more it takes to finish this story. At this point, I have no doubt of that.

[rwbyrg]

Reason Why Rosegarden is Canon: #003

The framing of Oscar's introduction in V4E1 immediately links him to Ruby. He is shown waking from a nightmare, but the scene that he is waking up from is one of Tyrian being sent to hunt Ruby down at Salem's request.

[tecnestheim962]

It was more like @chaikachi posted art (amazing ness) and @rwbyrg started posting a lot and I also had a random relapse so I thought it was funny

Is it just me or is the RG side of the fandom having a collective relapse of Rosegarden brain rot?