#she *tried* to be a different person for Tai and Yang

[toaarcan]

Still kinda fucks me up that the latest episode of RWBY showed us the last time Tai was a happy, healthy, functioning human being and parent. 

Like it actually made my gut twist a little to see him like that, because we know that it’s like... a week away from everything going to shit, at most (Assuming that Raven saw Summer fall, told Qrow, and Qrow told Tai, and there wasn’t like... several weeks of Summer being MIA and TQ didn’t know while Raven was panicking elsewhere).

[rachetmath]

Favorite Jaune Ship

Okay, let me do this. My Jaune ships. Other ships I’ll do later.

Lancaster/SilverKnight (Jaune x Ruby);

This ship still holds a special place in my heart and to me was supposed to be one of the factors of the show. Jaune and Ruby's relationship started at Beacon. Jaune was Ruby’s first friend and was the first thought of being a part of a team besides her sister. Unfortunately, she was stuck with Weiss and Jaune had a crush on her. Ruby has times when she and Jaune talk but were always cut short for reasons. However, after the fall of Beacon, I was happy to see her and Jaune team up. But my hopes were short-lived when Weiss and Oscar came onto the scene. Now, because of them, the one relationship I could support died because the story tries its damndest to push Whiteknight and Rosegarden together. (Like seriously, this is one of the reasons why I hate Oscar to this day. Volume five, to this day, I believe Jaune should have unlocked his semblance for Ruby instead of Weiss.)

DragonKnght/GoldenKnight/DragonSlayer(Jaune x Yang);

Now normally this is a crack ship. This ship is just two people boning for almost no reason, but I can see a story behind this ship with Jaune and Yang being an alternate version of Tai and Raven. Jaune is Raven because both  have supportive semblances, use swords, and have a distaste for Ozpin’s methods. Yang is Tai due to mainly being raised by him alone. Throughout the story, we see how Jaune and Yang interact and how their relationship differs from Tai and Raven’s. How Tai and Raven fell apart and what they should’ve done to maintain it. How Jaune and Yang handle situations differently they’ll always find a way to bounce back by talking it out and giving each other space. Though I believe Bumblebee fans would be offended and probably say, “Blake could add that same effect”, I still stand by this.

SilentKnight(Jaune x Neo)

Cute, deadly, and very sad. I haven't read the book but I have heard about it. Also, I wish they made a movie starring her or gave us an episode but… okay. Back on topic, I find this ship enduring. They have only one thing in common but that's enough to create a dynamic between them. However what makes the ship sad is that Neo will be the only one hurt. Image Neo trying to be Ruby just to be with Jaune only for him not wanting to be with her. Loving and caring for Ruby more than Neo. Neo hates and becomes jealous of Ruby because unlike her Neo has no friends. Roman died. And Cinder betrayed her. Jaune probably being the best thing in her life but she will never have. So sorry folks, Silentknight was a no-go.

Topaz (Jaune x Emerald)

Same as Silent Knight except it's Emerald’s loyalty to Cinder getting in the way of her having any relationship with anyone. Jaune probably would talk to her but trusting her could be too much of a stretch for him. Emerald might as well be one of the few who could talk to Jaune one-on-one and be real with him but still, I don't think neither of them is looking to like each other.

Knightshade (Jaune x Blake)

These two never had a single one-on-one conversation. Like really they barely interact with each other. I would not be surprised if they both got drunk somewhere and were found sleeping in the same bed by accident. But I believe they are good friends.

Knightfall (Jaune x Cinder)

Okay, this can go either way. Jaune is done playing the good guy to a bunch of girls who are favored by everyone and want to destroy the world. Cinder decides to be a good person and wants to redeem herself. I highly doubt this would happen but I love the concept. Imagen Jaune has to tell Cinder to chill out all the time. Then having to be the most patient with her especially when following a plan. Cinder trying to be nice but pushing her feelings down so she doesn't show weakness is funny, sad, and insane.  

Martial Arc and Nora's Arc(Jaune x Ren x Nora)

You two do not deserve him. You had four volumes to talk with this man but you didn't. Ruby knows your leader better. Yang treats your leader better. Shit Weiss treated your leader better. Ya’ll barely maintain a relationship with each other. How will you two be in a relationship with this guy if you can't contribute or commit to it? F*** the both of you.

Whiteknight(Jaune x Weiss)

Okay, now this may be my f*** all worst ship. First, I’ll admit Jaune was just a fanboy seeing his female idol for the first time in real life. But as he continues he eventually gets over her a bit. Then in some way, he does try to get with Pyrrha, who was an upgrade. What I don't like about this ship is unlike Lancaster it feels forced. Like in volume five Weiss got stabbed by Cinder for no reason. It should have been Ruby considering Jaune traveled and spent more time with her than Weiss. And Cinder hates Ruby. Then in volume seven she basically used the man to get away from Bumblebee. And the only time she ever acknowledged this man was in volume nine when he turned out to be her favorite character in a story. I may be wrong but no, this is not my favorite.

[strqyr]

Hi, you don't have to answer this if you don't want to but what are you personal headcanons for the rose-xiao long family if you have any :)

I've been curious for a while now seeing how positively you view their family dynamic compared to a good majority of the fandom

i'm. honestly not sure if i really have any? like, canon provides sufficiently enough that i don't have this huge "need" to come up with any.

like, the most is derived from my own desire to "redesign" their house and where it's located lol. no one can tell me they wouldn't have a small garden in the backyard where they grow food during the summer—like carrots, onions, potatoes, etc—and that each plant has been named by ruby and yang. every single year there also has to be a patch for strawberries, as demanded by ruby (and tai is like, the worst when it comes to actually saying no to his daughters), doesn't matter that there are wild strawberries growing in the forest not even five minutes of walking away.

on the kitchen doorway there's height marks for each girl, always tracked on their birthdays—though the latest are from the day before they went to beacon, mainly bc ruby wanted to know how much she would grow during her time at beacon once she graduated.

and like, tai's overprotective but like i said, he's also the worst at saying no if ruby or yang really want something, so if ruby wants to make one of the most dangerous weapons the world has to offer to use as a weapon, well... he'd prefer if she picked literally anything else, please and thank you, but he'll also make the call to qrow to get his ass over here, ruby made a scythe but she sucks at it and now she's sad and this will not do. train her or else.

or how yang has a motorcycle like that's?? expensive??? but also a Death Machine™ like please, not again... but he's still going to save money for it and buy the dorkiest helmet possible as a promise that she will get her motorcycle, eventually, because safety is important and if yang wants to ride a motorcycle, she's gotta be prepared. (and yang could have absolutely bought a different, much cooler helmet by the time she actually got her bike, but the dorky helmet means something, so she wears it with pride.)

whenever qrow comes back from his missions, he brings some kind of souvenirs to the girls, especially when they were younger. he may not stay around for a long time each visit, but he tries to make it memorable.

there also totally should be a small lake within a five or ten minute walk of their cabin for swimming and fishing purposes, be it summer or winter, it makes no difference.

also x2 tai has absolutely tried to teach ruby and yang how to cook. ruby just seems to get distracted by something every single time, and yang just keeps discovering new ways to mess up to the point it feels like a sabotage, but she swears it isn't. the kitchen tho? definitely cursed.

[bestworstcase]

hi, found your post about Yang and Salem. Didn't know that she, out of all people in team rwby, is the one who foils Salem the most. Like she's the most normal member in team rwby.

Which led me thinking, Yang has a lot of parallels with the villains, notably, Adam, Cinder, and Salem. What do you think is the ideal route of Yang during volume 4?

well that’s the thing about salem, isn’t it? she wasn’t anyone special. her father was a lord in a world ruled by kings and queens, and he abused and isolated her so viciously that whatever notional privilege she might have had by virtue of noble birth was stripped away from her; after she and ozma murdered her father and escaped, she was a commoner. the raw magical power that sets her apart on remnant was commonplace then. there was nothing extraordinary about her at all.

but she was brave. passionate. determined. angry. she walked into the domain of gods and refused to flinch.

who does that sound like?

anyway, yang’s core allusion is goldilocks. too hot, too cold, too hard, too soft, just right. balance. compromise. scathing eyes ask that we be symmetrical, one-sided and easily processed. rwby is a story about complexity and nuance. every dichotomy is false. yang is a good person—good to the bone—but she’s also strong-willed and not inclined to be forgiving. who would she have become if, say, ruby died on one of those occasions they were left home alone as children? what would it have done to her if she watched adam kill blake during the battle for beacon?

it took millions and millions of years for salem to break. she tried so hard not to become a monster. cinder bowed her head and endured years of torture because rhodes told her it was the right thing to do. before adam lost his way, he fought to protect others; the first time he killed, it was in defense of his leader.

the difference isn’t as simple as a choice to be good or bad. yang has always had ruby and now she has blake and weiss, too, and—bluntly, her trauma is of a lesser order of magnitude than her villainous foils. yang has endured a lot of suffering—parental abandonment, childhood neglect, the vytal tournament and the battle that followed, losing her arm, being left behind by her sister and friends—but she wasn’t enslaved and tortured as a child. she isn’t the sole survivor of a genocide. she did not spend millions of years alone.

if you put yang in salem’s or cinder’s or adam’s shoes, would she have turned out different than they did? would she make better choices? would she still be a good person?

would she even know how?

and if you put salem or cinder or adam in her shoes, would it make a difference? if salem wasn’t alone, if cinder had even the smallest taste of genuine love, if sienna had seen adam’s increasing anger for what it was years earlier—would they still have become what they are now?

yang’s gone through her own personal hell and back, but she wasn’t alone. she had role models and a loving sister and a father who provided for them and at least made some effort to be involved—he read bedtime stories and trained yang, tai is far from the worst parent in the story. it was bad. it could have been so much worse. how much of a difference did it make for yang that she had these crumbs of support?

as the blacksmith says, even the smallest act kindness can change a life. no one is an island. everyone is responsible for their own choices, but sometimes our choices are limited by forces beyond our control. sometimes there is no right thing to do.

everyone has breaking points.

everyone has a limit.

yang… in addition to having all these villainous character foils, is also the heroic character most inclined to ask why. why did raven leave her? why did ozpin lie? why did he make the branwen twins into birds? why did raven sell them out to salem? why is she the spring maiden? why did blake run away? why did ozpin think it was okay to hide so much from everyone? why shouldn’t she and blake think critically and follow their consciences instead of blindly obeying orders? why is salem waging this war? why why why

yang isn’t the most empathetic character—she can get too tangled up in her own feelings to see clearly where other people are coming from. she isn’t the most compassionate, either—she can, in fact, be rather ruthless. but yang does care, a lot, about why people make the choices they do.

and i think that is because yang knows her own darkness. she sees herself clearly; she knows she’s capable of cruelty, of being vindictive, of hurting people in anger. the reason yang isn’t an angry person is she works fucking hard not to be. i think yang is self-aware of these similarities between herself and adam, or raven, and maybe even cinder and salem too, and the question of why she didn’t end up like them bothers her. what made her different? what saved her? if she could have been like them, then doesn’t that mean they could have been like her? why aren’t they? what made the difference?

so she keeps asking. why. why.

weiss helped her understand why blake ran, but yang has never gotten a satisfying explanation from anyone else. the resolution of ruby’s arc in v9 leaves her asking why summer chose to leave; the natural trajectory is toward answers. why did summer leave, and why didn’t she come back? why did raven keep her secrets? why has salem gone to war? why did ozpin hide so much? it’s all tangled together. it all needs to be answered together. i think, if the olive branch comes from the heroes, it’ll be yang who plants the seed—what if we just ask salem what she wants? it’s not like we have any better ideas. and if salem’s the one to make the first move, it wouldn’t surprise me for yang to be the most open to hearing her side of the story.

after all, yang’s the one who asked.

[mysticarts]

Yujin Drawings! (Plus a ramble)

decided to do some drawings of Yujin!

If you guys don't know Yujin, She's one of my many LMK ocs! Yujin is a Emperess of the Eastern empire in China, a empire that has been standing for generations. All people of any kind stay there. (She's Also PIF biological sister)

Anyway, time to ramble about Yujin's charater-

Lets start with Yujin herself.

Yujin, in the LMK series, is a person of royalty. She's intelligent, tactical, a person who overworks herself, very much like her sister. However, Yujin is not only intelligent, but she's powerful too.

When Yujin was younger, again, was a Celestial Maiden along with PIF. However, younger Yujin was a confidence and courage fueled girl, leading Yujin doing unspeakable actions without thinking of the consequences.

Due to these actions, Yujin got banished from the Celestial realm. Yeah, it was that bad. When Yujin was stuck down on the mortals plain, she met others who seemed like outcasts. One of these friends were Macaque

Again, back then, Macaque was a much more cautious guy. But this cautiousness rubbed off on Yujin in the best way possible. Yujin's much cautious now.

Anyway, the next topic I'm talking about is femininity, and how I tried to properly add it to Yujin's charater. I'm not a writer, but I want to be a good enough one for my art. So if you feel uncomfortable with this, feel free to pass through this-

Yujin's never really been considered pretty before. But she knows that she is pretty. Yujin likes to dress up, wear make up, shopping etc. But Yujin isn't afraid to get her hands dirty when necessary.

At a certain point in life, while she was still in the Celestial realm, Yujin felt....lost. She saw all the other maidens around her prefect things she never seem to get right. They where all the same, yet so different, to the point Yujin felt outcasted. So what did she do? She started to wear what she wanted.

Yujin wanted to stand out, she wanted to be appreciated and accepted from others including herself, that Yujin started to do reckless actions to be noticed. Of course, it took a lot of time, a lot of talking to others and herself that Yujin realized: the only person who can fully accept you in yourself. So that's what she did.

To when her husband died (that's right, i aint name dropping but design dropping soon-) to when Red Son was born, to deal with that amount of truama on her shoulders, she had to accept that it wasn't her fault.

Overall personality wise, younger Yujin was a hot-headed girl who was competitive, and was a petty loser. But she cared for her the people around her, because those where the only people she felt accepted by. The Yujin now is still hot headed and sometimes stubborn, but her pride has lowered, she's more cautious, but she still loves to have fun.

Now, let's get talking relationships!

First off, Hui Ying!

Considering Hui Ying is the daughter of one of whom Yujin considers a sworn brother, Yujin treats Hui like her wn daughter.

Yujin sees how smart Hui is, how her determination and ambitious nature makes her have great results, but takes away her early years.

Yujin dosent want to watch Hui just toss her life at endless work, so she encourages hui to go shopping with her, go dancing, go to fast food places, basically outside. Yujin wants Hui to savor in New surroundings and areas, as not everything Hui thinks is actually correct.

Hui Ying sees Yujin as one of the best people in her life, and usually calls her Auntie Yujin. Hui Ying never had healthy female figures in her life, but Yujin changed that. Yujin didn't tell Hui who or what to be. She encouraged Hui to follow hearts desires, but to keep in mind on what her wants.

Tai Yang

Yujin notices that Tai Yang got his dad's friendliness, but also got his mother's craving for destruction or chaos.

Tai Yang is mostly quiet, and can be short tempered, but he's not afraid to grab a deal if it presents himself.

Tai Yang reminds Yujin of when she was younger, a person who's courage and ambitiousness can lead them to recklessness. So, Yujin brings Tai Yang down to earth, telling him it's okay to express himself.

As quiet as Tai is to Yujin, he does care about her a lot. He even calls her Auntie sometimes. Tai is very thankful that someone besdies Hui is trying to see through his eyes, to try to feel how he feels.

Anyway, that's all! Feel free to ask about Yujin, and if you want me to do any other of my ocs, don't be afraid to ask!

[selenestarmoon]

Ruby Rose and Michael Kaiser: The Huntress and The Emperor

I don't know about you but Kaiser shares things in common with Ruby and, in a way, Kaiser is what Ruby could have been if instead of receiving love from her family she had received hateand how she would have abandoned her optimism and embraced cruelty as a result of that.

I'm quite aware that many think that Ruby is more like Kunigami and Kaiser is more like Mercury and Cinder but as I watched their arcs I couldn't help but notice how they are more similar than it seems and that's because Ruby and Kaiser are the same person under different circumstances.

To begin with, Ruby and Kaiser's struggle is rooted in their respective relationships with their families. To begin with, they had to deal with enormous pain at a very young age caused by the disappearance of their mothers:

On the one hand Ruby was raised in an unstable family environment where her mother went on a mission and never returned which caused her family to break down: her father Tai was consumed by depression, Yang had to be a surrogate mother for Ruby although she was also a girl who suffers from the abandonment of Raven, and Qrow, despite being the most stable figure for Ruby, he already had a history of having a semblance of bad luck that he cannot control and that he comes from a family of bandits but Summer's disappearance was the straw that broke the camel's back and he ended up sinking into alcoholism but despite everything all of them continued to love Ruby and tried to do everything possible to stay together as a family.

On the other hand, Kaiser grew up in a completely broken family: his father was a film director and his mother was a famous actress, they both fell in love and Kaiser was born as a result of that relationship, but his mother abandons them to continue with her acting career and his father is so submerged by pain to the point that he becomes an alcoholic, loses his prestige as a director and vents all his anger and pain on his son to the point of telling him that himself (Kaiser's father) and Kaiser's mother are worth less but that Kaiser doesn't even have value.

Both situations are quite different but the effect it caused on both is practically the same: Ruby and Kaiser see themselves as a burden and want to compensate their existence by being special:

Ruby witnesses her suffering from the loss of her mother, which is why she ends up seeing herself as a burden and wanting to be a copy of her mother, not only because she admires her and wants to emulate her to feel that somehow Summer still alive, but she also empathizes with her family and wants to ease the pain they have from losing Summer.

Kaiser sees himself as less than human and witnessing violence and insults throughout his childhood which makes him unable Kaiser is unable to empathize with others, interacts with people through violenceand ends up believing that in order to feel that he is valuable and not a burden he has to take away the value of others.

Even the mere fact that they both look like their mothers only makes them both view their own existence as less: Ruby feels like she has to be Summer's copy to make up for her lack but knows she can never replace her. Because of the way Kaiser's father treated him, Kaiser subconsciously internalizes that he can never be a human (in other words he can never make up for his mother's absence or be loved by his father) because to his own father Kaiser is worth less than himself (Kaiser's father) and his mother (and there are even indications that Kaiser's father probably hated him because of the resemblance Kaiser has to his mother and that made him remember her and increased his pain for abandoning him after having Kaiser).

Another thing that Ruby and Kaiser share is that they have rose motifs and the reason is because of their mothers: Summer left her rose emblem as a symbol of love for her daughters, Kaiser's mother abandoned him and his father and the only thing she left behind was a blue rose that Kaiser's father keeps it as a souvenir of her, becoming a reminder of lack of love.

In a way their rose motifs also show that despite being opposites, Ruby and Kaiser still have similarities between them, just like the petals and thorns are different parts of the rose, but they are still parts of the same flower.

As I said before, Ruby and Kaiser have rose motifs only that Ruby's motifs focus on the petals and Kaiser's motifs focus on the thorns, this symbolizes that Kaiser can only see the cruelty of the world and puts aside its beauty while Ruby is aware of the cruelty of the world but that doesn't prevent her from seeing the beauty in it.

Also the fact that their rose motifs are different is because Ruby received love which makes her develop kindness while Kaiser only received hate which makes him develop his malice. This shaped the way they both seek to compensate for their existence:

Ruby compensate her existence by being the huntress who helps and protects everyone with her kindness.

Kaiser compensate his existence by being a striker who crushes his enemies on the field with his malice.

The way in which they both want to compensate or give meaning to their existence is through something that they were passionate about since their childhood: Ruby always listened to fairy tales, stories of Summer and the stories of other hunters in general and the only good thing that Kaiser had in his childhood was his soccer ball that bought himself.

Ruby and Kaiser get their chance to continue their quest to compensate for their existence after they got into trouble and they are detained for that: Ruby stopping Roman from robbing a dust store and Glynda helps her but immediately afterwards takes her to an interrogation room for acting without being a licensed hunter and Kaiser being framed for a crime he didn't commit, beating his father for trying to protect his precious soccer ball and the police and being arrested for it.

After Ruby and Kaiser are detained, an adult (Ozpin/Ray Dark) comes to recruit them when they realizes that they have talent for their respective areas (huntress and silver eyed warrior/soccer player and striker).

Ruby and Kaiser take the opportunity and join them and although at first they have trouble adapting to their teammates, they eventually manage to become outstanding huntress/footballer who manage to inspire them. Only while Ruby inspires them with her skill as a leader and her optimism, Kaiser does so through his skill as a striker and manipulation.

Part of the reason they have managed to be so prominent in their respective fields is because they have proven capable of being resourceful and cunning, even more than people give them credit for: Ruby is always seen as a naive and enthusiastic girl, but she has managed to make her enemies lower their guard and attack them when they least expect it and Kaiser not only manipulates people off the field, but is able to think and create solid plays when playing his matches.

However, Ruby and Kaiser share their obsession with being the best in their respective areas to the point of becoming symbols because that way they don't have to deal with their trauma and even refuse to talk about it with those closest to them. Ruby is so busy saving others that she doesn't have time to think about her own trauma, Kaiser takes too much delight in being the best striker on his team that he pushes aside any thoughts about his own trauma. Neither of them thinks about it because both Ruby and Kaiser see themselves as worthless to the point that not only do they feel they have to prove that they are not a burden, but they both believe that their own traumas are not important because Ruby and Kaiser deep down doesn't believe that themselves are important.

Ruby and Kaiser have a belief in “making the impossible happen”, Ruby really believes that she should keep fighting even if winning is impossible, she believes that she and her friends can stop Salem and change Remnant for the better, Kaiser really believes that if he was able to escape from his abusive home that seemed impossible, he can achieve anything he sets his mind to. However, Ruby and Kaiser take this belief to extremes due to their respective traumas, which prevents them from having true growth: Ruby truly believes that she has the weight of the world on her shoulders and that she has to solve everyone's problems, Kaiser never believed in himself to the point that he needs to feel that others are inferior to him in order to feel special.

All of the above makes both characters want to become symbols (after all there is nothing better to represent the impossible and put aside their traumas and not feel pain than a symbol), only they don't understand that being symbols isn't about Ruby redeeming the world with her hope or Kaiser destroying the hope of others; it's about Ruby and Kaiser learning to live in a world that wants to crush hope with their hope still intact.

Ruby and Kaiser believe that symbols are loved by everyone and that symbols don't feel pain but always move forward but Ruby and Kaiser forget that they are still human so seeing themselves as symbols that don't feel pain is not a healthy coping mechanism and as their respective stories progress these coping mechanisms stop being viable and they are forced to take the first step to grow which is to accept their humanity (accept their trauma to be able to face it, accept that they are humans who suffer and they fail like anyone else but don't let themselves be defined by said suffering or failures, be more independent, trust others more and ask for their help, etc.) because if they don't do so they will not advance.

Even in their closest relationships there are subtle evidences and consequences of that stagnation, Ruby feels that she owes it to Yang to be the perfect little sister and leader, Kaiser always receives assistance from Ness and depends on his passes to score goals (Ness and Yang are also dependent on Kaiser and Ruby: Yang sees Ruby as the younger sister who needs protection, Ness sees Kaiser as a symbol of the magic he wants to see but doesn't know him for who he really is, Ruby and Kaiser on the other hand don't understand that they are already enough for Yang and Ness, so I I think that both Kaiser and Ness and Ruby and Yang have to be more independent from each other so that their bond is healthier and stronger).

Their abilities as well as their roses motif show evidence of this stagnation too. Ruby rushes to be the perfect hunter by using her semblance to help others quickly, but she can scatter and lose herself. On the other hand, Kaiser is so focused on crushing his opponents with his thorned goals that he doesn't realize that he could become crushed by his own thorns.

But part of those first steps that they need to take to begin to evolve begin with a process of destruction

and rebirth.

Part of that rebirth is that both have to redefine the meaning of their rose motifs: Ruby and Kaiser must convert the meaning of the rose (a mother's promise/a mother's abandonment, being in the end a reminder of the pain left by the departures of both women in the lives of Ruby and Kaiser) and give them a new meaning, converting them from the symbol of their mothers to their own symbols, the roses go from being a symbol of loss to a symbol of hope, only while Ruby is beginning to understand this, Kaiser hasn't yet understood it:

Terrible things happen to Ruby, we see her get sad and angry and she has a breakdown that almost makes her give up but then she stops being Summer Rose 2.0, remembers who she is and takes the first steps to recognize herself as her own person and continues to hold on to hope thanks to the love that her family and friends give her and Ruby is able to accept it.

While Kaiser begins to remember who he was, that he is no longer just the prodigy of Bastard Munchen, and that leads him to take the first steps to define himself not because of his status but as his own person, despite recovering from his breakdown, Kaiser still holds on to malice because he believes that he only serves to hurt others because he, unlike Ruby, has not realized that he already has value just by existing and that there are already people who love him, and all this is because no one gave him true love in his life so Kaiser can't know when someone truly loves him and Kaiser rejects Ness's love because he sees that not as something genuine but as the result of Kaiser's own manipulation.

Curiously, both had to reconnect with their inner child in order to move forward and take these first steps towards their evolution: Ruby connects with Little (who represents her inner child) who is vital for her development in volume 9, Kaiser remembers his self as a child and this becomes key to his growth in the match against PXG.

And even both of them have a rivalry with someone who are considered high-level strategists who have enormous resentment towards our roses for different reasons:

Although Isagi has more valid reasons for being upset with Kaiser than Cinder being upset with Ruby but that still doesn't take away from the fact that part of the reason Ruby and Kaiser go through their breakdowns and development arcs is because of the actions of Cinder and Isagi.

Cinder hates Ruby for hurting her with her silver eyes (optimism), but I'm sure that later Ruby along with other characters will save and inspire Cinder to change.

Isagi on the other hand clearly hates Kaiser for the way he treats him (malice) but also sees Kaiser as the type of soccer player he aspires to be and is inspired by his plays to improve his own.

Our roses' journey is not over yet, but considering how their arcs are similar despite their differences, I am excited to see how they will end and I am very sure that there will be more similarities and contrast between the two.

[citadelofmythoughts]

So I kind of already got this with red like roses part two. (Context about the ruby and yang v10 family drama) but I’ve always wanted a slice of Ruby Is Angry With Summer. She loved her mom, she loves her memory, she mocked her outfit partially after her. She feels burdened with her gone. And while she’s sad and upset with her gone.

RLR2 is just. It’s my jam idk. It’s one of the only pieces in early days that showed how Ruby truly felt. Yang has nothing but good things to say about Summer and it’s clear BOTH girls idolize her to some extent. But while Yang lives in the bubble of “mom is still my hero even if she failed bc I know how strong and caring she was” it felt like or maybe I just hoped that while Ruby loved her mom here is laced with “How can you love someone and still be so angry with them”

In a way, in a very very different way that maybe would take a longer post to elaborate on, the way Yang sees Tai and the way Ruby sees Summer TO ME are similar. Not in subject matter but in the deeper more complicated feelings.

Tai was present but not emotionally. He was the fun dad. He seems to have grown from context clues into the nag your kids about life lessons, referencing Ruby’s annoyance at Yang saying she needs to branch out bc she “sounds like dad”. But he was neglectful. And loving a parent who hurt you even by accident, who never Saw your pain and then when they did handled it badly. Someone who tries but it’s wrong or not enough. That’s hard. The memory of super mom Summer keeps Yang going and is probably her version of Bubba Bubba Boba. It was bad. But not always. And that’s why her feeling about him are so complicated.

Whereas Ruby “maybe we don’t have the full picture” seems to give him space to be better / good. Of course dad loves us we know that. I imagine Yang has been the buffer for her since Yang was taking care of Ruby emotional needs growing up, and Tai took them out for fun trips and got them a puppy and taught them. He’s maybe distant until he “gets better” after Summer leaves. But with Qrow being the more visibly unstable one Ruby seemed to put her attention onto him and so Tai is just Dad to her.

But for RUBY, Summer is the omen hanging over her. Yang says in BTC that she believed Ruby was too young to truly grasp what had happened. How accurate that is we don’t really know but RLR2 tells us that even if she didn’t have the words Ruby felt more than ppl thought a toddler showed. Sadness and loss. Betrayal. She has to be the new Summer and she can’t even remember what she truly looked like. She’s perfect in every way. Ways Ruby can never be. And unlike Tai who Yang could potentially have a screaming match at, Summer isn’t here. Ruby’s only outlets for her feelings are fitting and herself, since she looks so much like her.

Their family makes me so sad but I have so many questions. And while a neglectful parent is NOT the same as a dead one, it���s hard to forgive someone who you can’t even tell you’re mad at them. (Not trying to downplay Yang’s own burdens this is more a sad fun parallel of how I personally view the girls and their complicated emotions with their parents)

The Rose/Xiao Long/Branwen family is a troubled one and it's so complicated and messy.

You can love someone but still be angry at them, you can love someone and be disappointed in them. A parent can love a child and still completely screw up and in the process hurt them without meaning to.

[someidiotwithalaptop]

Alright: What the FUCK happened to Summer???

Because something sure did, and every new thing we hear about her gets more disturbing, and it haunts me.

So, I'll start with stuff that's fairly certain and like, small leaps of logic before I go full tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist. We have very little actual info about Summer, nearly all of it from different characters talking about her.

From Yang we get the basic facts from her family's perspective: Summer was a Huntress who went out on a mission and never came back. We also get the characterization of, "Super-Mom: Baker of cookies and slayer of giant monsters."

From Qrow, we learn that 1. She was a brat, which like, honestly STRQ was probably just "oops! all brats" 2. He thinks she would have pressed on if she knew the truth, which, uh, she almost definitely did. "We don't have to kill you to stop you," is not the sort of thing you say to Salem if you don't know she's immortal, that's all I'm saying. 3. Whatever her final mission was, she didn't tell him or Tai or Ozpin. I'm inclined to believe Ozpin when he says he genuinely doesn't know what happened to Summer, since his biggest secret is already out—plus he's been genuinely repentent about the mess his lying caused in Volume 6 and is taking steps to do better in the future. It would feel really weird thematically if he knew and was keeping yet another giant bomb of a secret. So Summer went on her final mission alone, or at the very least, she didn't tell any of Ozpin's inner circle where she was going.

We'll get to speculating about why not later, but I think this point is probably going to be important in Ruby's character arc—whatever Summer's ultimate fate, she got there because she tried to save the world alone, and we've seen Ruby do something similar. Like she's not running off after Salem by herself, but she's definitely trying to shoulder the burden of leading and inspiring everyone to keep going all on her own, without asking for help as that responsibility has been slowly yet systematically destroying her mental health. I mean ffs she's been literally carrying her team on her shoulders for two episodes now.

HOWEVER: Oz, Tai, and Qrow don't know anything about what happened to Summer, but it's possible that Raven might. When Ruby tries to reach out to her and convince her to work together, because they'll have a better chance than if they try to do it alone, Raven says, "You sound just like your mother," in truly the most bitter, disdainful-ass tone I have ever heard. And then she opens a portal for Cinder to throw a fireball at her. Whether this is about a more generalized friction that maybe contributed to Raven leaving, or a specific moment when Summer tried to get her on board with whatever she was doing on that final mission, is kind of uncertain. Or it could be both!

(And it might also be she married my ex bitterness but, admitting my biases here, I hate that fucking trope with a fiery passion and I think it's more interesting if her anger at Summer is actually about Summer.)

Regardless, if Summer did ask her for help, then based on how Raven reacted to Ruby I don't think she got it lmao

And then. Oh, and then. We get Salem!

"Your mother said those words to me. She was wrong too."

"Her again?"

So like. Salem definitely met her. Had a whole-ass conversation with her, even.

And that fucking smile??? Salem did some shit to Summer. It's just a question of what, exactly?

Right. Okay. So after they kill the Hound and realize WHOOPS that was a person and he looks an awful lot like Ruby! and everyone reunites, Ruby says this:

"When I saw its eyes, I knew. Salem used to kill people with Silver Eyes, like Maria. But she’s always wanted me alive. Why would that change unless, when she met Mom, she learned she could do something new?"

Timeline-wise, this seems accurate! But I'd like to also insert TR into the equation. It's a little hard to tell given the uhh, body horror of it all, but he definitely looks younger than Qrow (which is maybe not saying a lot given that Raven looks at least ten years younger than Qrow and she's his twin lmao) and, more to the point, like he's probably younger than Summer.

Like, yeah, hard to tell, but I don't think this man is past forty. And even if he is, it doesn't seem like Salem's had him for very long, seeing as she never sent him after Ruby or the relics in previous volumes. So he's probably an example of what Salem's been doing to SEWs after Summer.

Also, Salem calls him an experiment, and says that so far she's pleased with the results. Meaning Summer isn't exactly a Hound, though I wouldn't say that puts grimmification off the table. Just that it's not in the exact same way he is. And it's worth pointing out that the way TR has been grimmified, it's left him completely without agency and unable to disobey Salem. Even after Ruby blasts the Grimm off his head, he's still left repeating "Take The Girl" over and over without any sign of whoever he used to be coming back to the surface. It's possible that is what Salem is referring to when she calls him a successful experiment.

So the way Salem has dealt with people with silver eyes has gone:

Maria (kill her) > Summer (?!?!) > TR (an... experiment) > Ruby (bring her to me alive)

Adding TR into the mix, it seems unlikely that the "something new" Salem learned she could do from Summer Rose would actually have been, y'know, a Hound. Plus from a narrative perspective, I don't think we're going to have Ruby literally saying exactly what happened to Summer into the camera only for her to turn up, Hound-ified just as expected, a couple volumes later. So, some possibilities:

Ruby is actually exactly correct about what happened to Summer, but she's not going to show up later so there's no reason not to just tell us. Personally I doubt it's this, given the way the mystery has been unfolding over eight volumes and counting. It'd be kind of weird to just tell us instead of showing us, or indeed having the Hound literally be Summer. Also, if Summer is a Hound too then why is TR an experiment?

Summer was Grimmified but didn't survive the process, so she gave Salem the idea but she's not actually a Hound. This also seems a bit odd to me given that would mean she's basically just dead like we assumed, but with extra steps. Like it's upsetting but it doesn't represent the kind of dramatic upheaval to the sisters' worldviews that it feels like this is building towards. It doesn't explain how fucking smug Salem is about the whole thing.

Summer was Grimmified, but didn't actually lose any agency. This would explain why Salem is still experimenting, and why she's so pleased with TR—he's even more singleminded in carrying out her goals than Tyrian is. It also fits with the way the Grimmification worked on Salem. Even after she jumped into the goop, she was still very much herself—it's possible it influenced her, but she was definitely capable of showing love and affection to both Ozma and her daughters. She just, uhh,,, was also willing to try and murder them. But it's unclear to me how much of that was Evil Goo and how much was just that there's no way a human being spends any significant length of time as the Last Woman Alive without some unpleasant side effects. We're social creatures and we do not generally do well when completely deprived of company.

Summer wasn't Grimmified at all, the whole Hound thing is a red herring.

In either 3 or 4, regardless of how much body horror happened, Ruby is wrong about what happened to Summer. And in order to not undercut that moment of utter despair at what probably happened to Summer... I feel like what actually did happen has to be. like. worse.

AND IT'S A TAD DIFFICULT TO GET WORSE THAN THE HOUND.

So. Time to put our tinfoil hats on: what if we add an element of horrible betrayal?

Yes this is a Summer-joined-Salem conspiracy post.

But hear me out okay! Circling back a bit, why wouldn't Summer tell any of the inner circle where she was going? If she talked to anyone, it was Raven, who had already noped the fuck out by the time Summer went on her final mission. Now, if it was just Tai and Qrow I'd say she might've kept it from them for the same reason everyone always keeps that secret—she didn't want them to lose hope. But... Ozpin already knows. There'd be no reason not to tell him what she was doing, unless she knew he'd try to stop her.

Now: my goal here is to make all this make sense, without altering the first foundational piece of characterization we get for Summer. Namely, "Super-Mom: Baker of cookies and slayer of giant monsters." I'm not saying Summer learned the truth and went, welp, if you can't beat 'em join 'em. Because both Summer and Raven tend to act as foils to Ruby and Yang, and "gave up immediately" doesn't feel like an interesting foil to Ruby's perserverence. But, if you find out that there's an existential threat to the entire world, and she can't be killed...

Isn't it worth trying to negotiate?

Especially if, say, you were absolutely desperate to end this war in your lifetime. Because Summer knows that if it's really impossible, if Salem can't be stopped, then Ruby will get dragged in whether she likes it or not. All because of a trait that Summer passed down to her.

Salem's been killing people with silver eyes, probably for millenia. It's easily possible that Summer had her own visit from someone like Tock, or noticed the same thing Maria's father did, that there's a suspicious lack of people with silver eyes considering how useful they are against the Grimm. As long as Salem is a threat, Ruby is going to be in that same danger. Forever.

So she has to do something, right? If there's even the tiniest chance she can end this now, before Ruby will ever have to suffer for it, before she gets pulled into an impossible war and Yang comes charging in after her, because of course she's going to try to help her sister... isn't that a chance worth taking?

This is why I think Raven knows some shit, by the by—when she's telling Yang about Salem, she actually kind of indirectly drops the same bomb that went off in Volume 6, it's just that she didn't do it in the same explicit terms that Jinn did. "She can't be stopped, she can't be reasoned with, and she will not rest until Humanity crumbles at her feet."

"Can't be stopped" is Raven's translation of can't be killed, since "We don't have to kill you to stop you" seems to be a flavor of terrifying exclusive to Ruby and apparently Summer. But "can't be reasoned with" implies that somebody tried. And like, let's be honest. Do we really think Raven was the one who decided to give diplomacy a go?

Not to mention this line, which I'm like 90% sure is referring to Summer:

"Or... you can go back to Qrow and join Ozpin's impossible war against Salem, and meet the same fate as so many others."

It really seems like Raven knows something she's not telling us. Like, if that is a reference to Summer's fate, does that mean Raven knows what it is, or is she just speculating like everyone else? Does she have a portal to Summer, and is that giving her information the others don't have? All that, combined with the fact that she's also way more bitter about Summer than everyone else, seems signficant.

Anyways. Let's say Summer decides to have a chat with Salem.

She can't tell Ozpin. He'd try to stop her, because he'd see it as a suicide mission. Qrow or Tai both might tell him, or agree with him and get in her way, so she keeps it from them too. Maybe she goes off completely by herself—or maybe she goes to Raven, because she's the only one who might be able to help who Summer knows won't breathe a word of it to Ozpin. Either way, Raven doesn't help her. She's not getting anywhere near Salem.

And then... well. Salem got here by manipulating people, by swaying them to her cause. Summer asks her what she actually wants out of all this. Isn't there some way they could resolve this without this endless war, all this endless death?

Important to note, I don't think we've heard Salem's motivation in her own words. At least, not since the Lost Fable, when she wanted to rule with Ozpin as the new gods of Remnant. I think it's safe to say at least a few things have changed since then. Closest I can think of is what she says to Cinder in Volume 8, "In pursuit of a new world, no cost is too great." Which is ominous, but also quite vague, and says nothing about what she plans to do with the relics.

Instead, we get a whole lot of people guessing. Ozpin thinks she wants to die. Tyrian thinks she wants to destroy the world. Hazel and Mercury think she wants to remake it, with no Huntsman Academies, with them as the new top dogs.

There's a pattern here—Salem never actually says what she wants, and other people have a habit of projecting their own motives onto her actions. Ozpin wants to die, Hazel wants to destroy the Huntsmen Academies, Mercury wants to be the one with the power so he's not getting hurt, and Tyrian's just in it for the chaos.

And it's not like Salem hasn't done stuff like that on purpose. By the time she started growing her army against the gods and telling people they would all steal immortality like she did, she'd already tried to kill herself. She didn't want immortality. She just let people think she did, because it was more convenient for her.

So if this agent of Ozpin's comes to her, absolutely desperate for a way to end the fight before it can come for her daughters, well... why not just tell her about the gods? About how Ozpin plans to one day reunite the relics, and submit Remnant to their judgment? About what might happen if he does?

(TBH I don't think Oz will ever do that, not because I think he's decided not to or anything like that, but because I doubt he'll ever see a humanity united enough for it to be worth trying. We're an argumentative bunch.)

But like. To Summer, all of a sudden there's this other, even bigger existential threat. And Salem isn't like Ozpin. She does have a plan! She wants to destroy the relics, so that the gods can never be resummoned, because of course she hates them and so she would never want them to come back!

(Again, not saying this is actually true, my best guess is that she's trying to bring them back so she can fight them again slkdfjlskdj)

And then, if they succeed, not only will the gods not be a threat anymore, Salem won't be a threat either. She'll have gotten what she wants!

"This can all... be... over..."

Summer has to finish this. There has to be a way for her to do this by herself, to save everyone, to put a stop to it all in time to protect her children! (Raven can't be right, it can't just be hopeless!)

From there, all Salem really needs to do is be a bit careful how much she tells her other followers about what she plans to do—which it seems like she has—and eventually find a way to either hide what relics she has or convince Summer that she's trying really hard to destroy them, definitely, pinky promise!

(And, as an aside: if true, it's very possible that the reason Salem's so insistent on keeping Ruby alive isn't that she wants to turn her into another Hound, but rather that was one of Summer's conditions.)

All this, of course, may or may not come with a sprinkle of Grimmification. Because why not add some body horror to the good old-fashioned betrayal horror! Though, if I'm right and not going completely off the wall here, I suspect it's probably more in the vein of Cinder than TR. Namely, like, consensual.

Regardless, it definitely feels like Summer has been idealized to a point that's just sort of... begging for trouble. She's the perfect Huntress. The best of us. The one who would have pressed on. And like, historically putting people on pedestals like that has not gone well in this show (see: Pyrrha). Not to mention the way trying to be the perfect Huntress that Summer was has been affecting Ruby over the years.

Also, definitely totally unrelated to all of the above: I think paragons that turn to evil despite or indeed because of all their wonderful paragon qualities FUCK SEVERELY and I would like to see it.

[hiimtai]

Character: Tai

Face Claim: Amberly Yang

Full Name: Tai Lin

Age: 24

Birthday: July 23rd

Species: Mutant, Half Neyaphem

Abilities: Teleportation, Time Manipulation, Martial Art Mastery

Gender/Pronouns: Female, She/Her

Occupation: N/A

Affiliation[s]: The Hellfire Club, The Feng Empire

Family

Mother: Dai Lu Lin [Alias: Feng]

Father: Azazel

Siblings: Kurt Wagner [paternal half-brother], Dawn Quested [paternal half-sister]

Abilities [expanded]

Tai has the power to teleport to any place she can see. This isn't limited to direct line of sight, as she can use images of places to travel globally. She also has the ability to stop and rewind time, the limit being a few hours before she begins to experience psychological side effects. She can use these two abilities together to "jump" to the past or teleport when time is stopped. The area of effect of her time manipulation is roughly ten miles in any direction from where she's standing, but she can affect individual people or things directly.

Personality

Traits: Loyal, Generous, Outgoing

Flaws: Manipulative, Merciless

Likes: Reading, poetry, card games, sunny weather

Dislikes: Flying, being late, board meetings

Bio

Our story begins with a woman named Dai Lu Lin. Originally from Hong Kong, she was arranged to be married to the son of a wealthy crime lord who ran a large organization in Madripoor. Dai Lu, who had been an orphan all her life, saw the marriage as a way to propel her forward and accepted it with little resistance.

The marriage was one of convenience more than anything, and while her husband worked as a goon for his father, Dai Lu would go on to learn about organized crime and the inner workings of the family she married into. She also studied law and was permitted to return to Hong Kong to get her degree.

When she returned to Madripoor, Dai Lu found out that her husband's father had been murdered, and a power struggle for the criminal underground had begun. Dai Lu wanted her husband to assume his father's role, something that would, in turn, serve her own desires, but he refused. Incensed by her husband's weakness, Dai Lu poisoned him and tried to assume control of the criminal underworld.

However, she was met with resistance and forced to go into hiding after a failed attempt on her life. Madripoor's criminal underworld continued to crumble as different families tried to assume power, all while Dai Lu waited for the perfect moment to strike again.

During this respite, Dai Lu lived in Hong Kong and worked as an attorney at a small but proifatble law firm. It's here she would meet Azazel, who would make her the offer of a lifetime. If she would bear him a child, he would remove her competition and make it so that she could assume complete control over the criminal underworld in Madripoor. She agreed, and Azazel held up his end of the bargain by slaughtering the smaller crime families and anyone else who would stand against her. Dai Lu held up her end by giving birth to a baby girl.

Dai Lu, now operating under the name Feng [凤], would teach Tai the ways of the world they lived in while also providing her with love, comfort, and protection. Tai has always been a generally happy person, and she and her mother have lived lavishly and generally unbothered. Due to her connection to Azazel, Dai Lu is also a lower ranking member of the Hellfire Club, which means Tai is affiliated as well.

Notes

Tai has worked as a bodyguard for her mother on multiple occasions

Tai was trained in several different martial arts styles from a young age

She has a tattoo down her spine that says "在擁有你之前我不懂得如何去愛" ["I didn't know how to love before I had you." -something her mother said to her]

She's close to the Frost siblings, but closest to Amelie, whom she regards quite highly

Despite her generally sweet exterior, Tai is just as, if not more ruthless than Dai Lu

[razorblade180]

I want to see Jaune and Ruby celebrate Christmas. Yes I know you said it’d hurt but I want it regardless.

No pun intended but Ruby was the gem at Arc Holiday celebrations; laughing and fitting right in. Jaune of course was already welcomed by Tai, Qrow, and Yang. Turns out family approval is pretty easy to gain when you’ve done nothing but fight alongside side your significant other to keep them alive. Big feasts family food secrets were plentiful.

After they got married things only got better. Ruby’s holiday spirit is pretty infectious and Jaune is romantic softy that only ever wanted the little moments like waking up beside her and spending hours in bed laughing and enjoying each other’s company. He always tried spoiling her and Ruby returned the favor. If her love was infinite, then he was a bottomless well. She never felt embarrassed about how grand or small her affection was. He’d want it regardless.

It was online after their first child did the holidays became sour. After all, it should’ve been three happy people, instead it was two devastated adults thinking about what could’ve been. Celebrating anything felt wrong and like a robbed experience. Not that Ruby was around or available during much of the grieving. Yang was a real saving grace during that time period, visiting Jaune and taking home to either Blake’s family or Tai’s house. She was the only person assertive yet gentle enough to make sure he wasn’t left alone under any circumstances.

After some long needed healing and being reunited, Jaune and Ruby once again were together during the holidays (and just in general) their friends always went to them or gave them great reasons to leave their house. Still, eventually they had to return home. Gift giving between them didn’t seem as swell of an idea for awhile. Even so, misery loved company, and both found a familiar yet different kind of warmth in simply holding each other as their lows hit.

Nothing remained miserable forever though. Christmas joy began to mean something again after they had their second child. The pain didn’t completely fade but having Carmine in their lives brought light again. The girl loved Christmas and jumpstarted Ruby’s festive cheer again which meant Jaune also got into the spirit again. By the time they had their third, Garnet, the couple got back into a groove. Celebrations were big again every member from every family was happy to see the two brightest of the group get their luster back.

Nowadays, everyone is pretty busy in the world. Hidden truths were uncovered and their little girl was now 17 with a more shaky relationship between her and Ruby, but despite their views on the matter of fighting for what’s right, neither ever lit it get in the way of Christmas or the little ones enjoyment of it. All and all, the family is alright. Maybe just like before, all that’s needed is a little time before grand celebrations return once again.

[obsidianstrawberrymilk]

Reentering the RWBY fandom apparently anyway if I was gonna change the characterization of most of the characters (which I would) here's what I would have done

More emphasis earlier on with Ruby as an inventor character. Crescent Rose is "one of the most dangerous weapons ever designed" and that's about as far as they go with that plot point. Make Ruby see her problem solving and leadership through the lense of building something; have her struggle to reconcile with her teammates as people and not just cogs.

Make Blake actually representative of her theme song. "From Shadows" is about fighting against a world of discrimination and hatred; Blake is a centrist princess who later tells her people that if they're just model minority enough discrimination will go away. Go with her originally shown backstory of (seemingly) being a kid without anyone, in the thick of systemic oppression. Her breaking away from the White Fang shouldn't be a case of 'but violent resistance is bad guys ):'; it's entirely possible to have ideological disagreements without that.

I am absolutely not opposed to the idea of Adam Taurus; people use leftist spaces for their own personal gain and use social clout to cover their abuse. I know people like that. However, make it clear Adam's abuse of Blake is the bad thing, not the idea of violent resistance at all.

Actually have Weiss and Blake's conflict be explored and resolved beyond Weiss just going "I'm not racist bc we're teammates now"

Actually have Ruby and Weiss's conflict be explored and resolved beyond Weiss going "I'm gonna be the best teammate ever now" after being told so by her professor

More exploration into Tai, Yang, and Ruby's dynamic, and how it affected both sisters.

Give Pyrrah a Patroclus character, considering she's meant to be representative of Achilles. Also, do more with that inspiration - beyond her being shot in the heel prior to her death there's very little done in the show alluding to Achilles.

...take out Jaune. And Neptune.

Use Sun and Blake's contrasting attitudes about Faunus liberation and revolution to talk about the differences between how Faunus are treated in different places as well as for ideology.

Contrasting, given Blake is actually a leftist and not all "guys please protest nicely my dad who's the king of paradise told me so"

...that's only about up to Volume 3. Huh

Elaborate more on the parallels between RWBY and their respective villains. Blake and Adam, Yang and Mercury (this one makes me so angry), Cinder and Ruby. I would say Emerald and Weiss but this one was given even less ground than Yang and Mercury. It could have been interesting, had they actually tried to develop it.

So remember how Raven hyped up Oz as doing something awful to her and Qrow? And then they... turn into birds? Uh. Give that some actual merit - something like what Oz told Pyrrah about her being chosen for the next Fall Maiden. Actually taking advantage of children with hero complexes who feel responsible for everyone and/or indebted to him.

Actually have Weiss struggle with the biases she was raised with her whole life.

Gave Blake and Ruby have more than 3 conversations.

Have Weiss and Yang have more than a few conversations.

There's more but I'm tired.

[tumblingxelian]

Thanks again for the contributions @sruthi9018, and also to @gimme-tea-bitch yet again, you both have so many wonderful insights, apologies but I wanted the, consolidated here if that's OK!

Not as much to add this time regarding either of your excellent additions, save that they really serve to highly and emphasize the overall points regarding there being a major disconnect between the Yang we see on screen & the Yang that exists in Tai's head. Both in terms of character & relations.

Ala, the humor point where-in despite his gruff and sharp tongue, Qrow takes Yang's perspective seriously and she is comfortable enough confiding her worries in him. Meanwhile we never really see her try and do the same with Tai. The closest she came was feeling derided and trying to make a point which he responded to with dismissal and then shouting. Its very different to how her talk with Qrow went.

Theory: Almost like he saw the relationship Yang & Qrow have and subconsciously tried to mimic it but doesn't have the kind of bond or, gods of all things, tact, that Qrow does so it just ends in an argument that Yang eventually drops out of awkwardness.

Also yeah I've always found it monumentally hypocritical that Tai, the guy who shutdown, part of the family a five year old kept together, who is rather notably not the one Ruby says raised her is do dismissive about trauma.

Fanon: I think one of the reasons I don't take most Tai defenses seriously is that so much of it relies on either ignoring what's on screen to take him at his word. Or creating elaborate headcanons about how he hates himself for having been "Moping", or how their training is "Bad to basics" as opposed to just him being wrong.

Also yeah Port & Oobleck, kudos to them were the one's who actually managed to pull something useful together for Yang, while Tai made his help conditional and otherwise coasted. Very interesting final segment, though not as much to add there, but thanks for sharing sruthi9018!

Now as to gimme-tea-bitch:

Even more fantastic additions since last time! It's an interesting thing you pointed out there that Ruby goes to Yang for advice even after Yang lost her arm and not Tai and I 100% believe that intentional. For all of the closeness that even Qrow has when you compare both him and Tai to Yang she is frankly more put together and mature like neither of them are on her level and it's interesting because unlike Tai Qrow seems to actually realize it to some extent. When he's telling Yang she's insane he's also taking her words very seriously because he's seen who Yang is he watched Yang raise Ruby there's not a chance in fucking hell that Yang Xiao Long would've lashed out like this unprovoked it's interesting because we do see Yang get angry quite a lot but even then she's not really particularly reckless. the rare instances being with neon I guess and frankly she doesn't ever view Neon as a real threat so it's not really the same her fight with the paladin and getting injured that much leading to that anger still doesn't have her being reckless she sets up her finisher and she executes it with teamwork brilliantly all of this to say Tai doesn't understand Yang on a fundamental level She just knows that she was reckless as a kid and nearly died and that she gets angry and lashes out at him but to him that's all “temper tantrums” because he's still not accepting that her lashing out is very much his fault and certainly the other adults in Yang's life have contributed for all her sunny disposition and kindness Yang is profoundly hurt character who is more justifiably bitter than anyone gives her credit for and she deserves to be bitter because every person in her life has failed her and she is always the one who has to do the emotional labor to keep her family together when frankly none of them put in a fraction of her effort into the relationship. Ruby gets a pass because she's also a kid and Yang did a truly baffling job raising her to be so much happier than Yang ever got to be. Anywho great analysis Xelian

Thanks again both for the kind words & insightful tags!

Also yeah, like Ruby clearly doesn't hate Tai or anything, but I think it says a lot how she got a general update from him, showed a little vulnerability to Qrow then went to Yang clearly expecting more than se could give and seemed legitimately lost when she couldn't be there for her.

Their dynamic is very much not one that reminds me of sisters used to seeing each other through hard times so much as Ruby viewing Yang as the primary source of comfort & guidance, the safe place and person. Even in V5 she still seems frozen at the idea of Yang needing help & just sort of has to hover around and let Weiss do it.

Meanwhile her letters and their contents always seem to emphasize Yang a lot more than Tai. Which I feel either says a lot about the relationship. Or at the very least serves as a reminder that Tai is not a main character and his narrative does not trump that of the main characters. IE, it doesn't make sense for him to be right about everything given his overall place in the narrative and themes of the show.

Also yeah, Yang & Qrow are interesting cos while he can be in uncle mode with her in V3, he can also switch easily to peer mode, which he only starts doing with Ruby in V6/7. Meanwhile Tai does not seem to see Yang as anything but a kid and or worse, Raven junior who needs his help to not be even more like her.

It is interesting you bring up Neon, @sir-adamus has some greta posts on this covering how in that instance, much like the Emerald Forest, Yang's issue is less anger & more irritation/frustration. The moment she lets off steam or gets actually angry, angry as highlighted by Port she either cooled off & calmed down or became laser focused and dismantled Neon & Flynt in minutes.

This is another one of those things where the story and characters say one thing and Tai says another. What's especially interesting regarding the anger point is that we see the show call out anger at different time. But when they do it stuff like Jaune losing his head at Cinder & being goaded, or Ren lashing out and hurting those around him, or Qrow projecting his anger at himself & Tyrian onto Ironwood.

The problem is them using anger and lashing out as a coping mechanism, in seeking catharsis by inflicting pain. When Yang gets angry she's pretty much all focus as you outline with the Paladin.

Its not about feeling good, its about how the problem has become so severe that she is now furious and so things like "Mercy" or "Playfulness" getting locked inside a box until whatever made her that angry is shrapnel.

As above, love the ending but not much to add, thank you both for adding your voices!

A Necessary Post - Yang, Taiyang & Seeing Red

I debated this being a message or a note or a reblog, but ultimately this warranted an essay. Because a hatred of nuance is not even remotely the reason why Tai is critiqued as a teacher or father.

With that fact in mind, let's begin:

During RWBY Volume 4, Episode 9: Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back Taiyang has a great deal of critical feedback for Yang regarding her fighting style, personality & Semblance.

The issue is that Tai's words and advice when compared to what we saw on screen before & afterwards demonstrate he does not understand how it works or how she used it.

So here for your reading pleasure if a more or less line by line breakdown of Tai's advice and why I don't feel it holds up & more to the point, why I don't believe Yang utilized it.

Taiyang: Do you realize that you used your Semblance to win every fight after the qualifiers?

Yang rightfully points out that her using Burn is no different than anyone else using their Semblances. I would add that Yang's Semblance only serves to enhance her already present abilities with damage taken in a fight. So her not using it would be stupidly holding back extra energy for no reason.

Tai's critique also fails to register that when using her Semblance to take out FNKI, Yang specifically disrupted the ground so Neon could not skate effectively & used the boost in power to turn Flynt's own weapon against him.

I will be addressing Mercury further down but she used it effectively and intellectually here and to great effect.

What's more, every other fights fighting style, weapons or both were literally built around their Semblances. Yang's threat level remains fairly consistent without her Semblance, all three of these other characters take a huge dip.

Taiyang: Because not everyone else's is basically a temper tantrum.

Ignoring that calling the manifestation of Yang's soul a temper tantrum is another in a long line if dickish things Tai says to Yang. Her Semblance literally does not work that way.

Her anger has jack and shit to do with it, this has been explained & demonstrated time and time again. Yang only gets a power boost when she's been injured, the fact she tends to be angry when using it is because being hurt sucks and she's usually in an intense fight. When the fight is going well and she still gets to use it she's not angry, as seen with a pleased smirk here:

So as before, Tai's critique is bereft of any merit, Yang's Semblance does not work that way.

Taiyang: I'm serious! Once you take damage, you can dish it back twice as hard, but that doesn't make you invincible!

Cite a time Yang thought she was invincible, cite it provably that Yang thought, said or indicated that she felt she was invincible. You can't because Yang never indicated as such this is something Tai is assuming about her at best.

& no her jumping in the Nevermore's mouth is not an example because she was not using her Semblance, did not take damage, it was a very effective strategy & seemingly either part of the plan, or was so easily understood that it could be safely and reliably worked into the plan. She wasn't using her Semblance here but finding evidence of risky behavior was hard, especially with her Semblance, go figure.

In fact every time Yang used her Semblance she did so only because someone landed a blow, which just happens in fights sometimes.

Taiyang: It's great when you're in a bind, but what happens if you miss? What happens if they're stronger? What then? Now you're just weak and tired!

We know what happens when Yang misses, she can swing again!

After the first blow on the Paladin she missed & needed help to catch it, her missing had zero impact on her Semblances.

As to what happens if they are stronger, um, she loses, that sometimes happens in fights. Its not something Yang can do anything about by holding back on extra strength. Not to quote Qrow but sometimes bad things happen. Other characters losing to stronger opponents don't get given this kind of diatribe's because its pointedly obvious that there was nothing to be done about it.

& on the final piece, she was very pointedly not weak and tired after using it. The only times she has been shown to be is when she was extremely low on Aura regardless in which cases not using her Semblance is a death sentence.

So again, we've established Tai's critique comes from nowhere & his understanding of her Semblance is nonexistent.

Taiyang: But you gotta keep your emotions in check. Keep a level head, and think before you act. Your Semblance is a great fallback, but you can't let yourself rely on it.

This is so painfully unfair it hurts.

No other character gets this kind of shit for expressing emotions in combat. In fact we see characters expressing emotions in battle all the time. Nor has she stopped displaying emotions in combat:

I already outlined how in all two of the Yang fights Tai actually witnessed she used strategy and retained excellent combat form. So again, baseless claims from Tai.

What's more, Yang primarily does use her Semblance as a fallback rather than rely on it in these fights. She only whipped it out against Mercury when he'd unleashed his seeming kill move on her and was confident he'd won.

Not using it here would be dumb and make no sense.

Yang doesn't rely on it to save her, she deploys it when it makes sense to & she has the energy or the need. This is more than we see from many characters.

Taiyang: It won't always save you. Obviously.

So now he is critiquing her for a fight he didn't even witness & knows jack shit about. So let's break this down once again:

Yang has spent the last 24 hours questions her sanity.

Yang's new home (Her words) is burning down.

Yang's sister is missing in all this chaos.

Then Yang's partner gets fucking stabbed, and the guy who did it is standing between them with a sword & gun, with fire all over Grimm all around.

Anything Yang can do he can counter, she tries to go around he only has to pivot. If she tries to fire from long range she might hit Blake. She tries an earth shock wave, she launches Blake into the fire.

She quite literally had no others options & zero time to try anything else because he can just shoot or stab Blake whenever he wants.

Taiyang: You definitely have your mom's stubbornness.

This, this right here is where all this is actually coming from. Tai is once again projecting Raven onto Yang despite them frankly having almost nothing in common.

With most of Yang's visible personality tells being inherited from Summer, such as the mother daughter shoulder check of V9. Thanks to chittychittyyangyang for the GIFs

Or as outlined in some songs with Yang's side of the lyrics explicitly citing how she is trying to fill the Summer shaped void in their lives.

Like the smell of a rose on a summer's day, I will be there to take all your fears away.

Taiyang: Your mother was... a complicated woman. Like everybody, she had her faults, but those faults are what tore our team apart. And, it did a real number on our family.

Tai blames Raven for tearing their team apart. Save that by all accounts, barring her absence things seemed to be going fine. Qrow seemed to be present in their lives, Tai looked happy, the girls were happy & Summer at least seemed happy though we know she was covering up a lot of dread.

Keep in mind Tai is projecting Raven, the woman he blames for destroying the team and damaging the family onto his daughter who literally kept the family together after Summer died. Yang's established this, Ruby has established this, its canon.

Yang: I had to pick up the pieces. I had to keep things together. Alone. (pause) Weiss, if you have something to say, then say it. Ruby: If you thought we wouldn’t come for you, then you must’ve forgotten who raised me.

Tai was not the one holding that home or family together. Unless you think the writers are gonna randomly swerve & say both Yang & Ruby are big whiny liars for some utterly nonsensical reasons. So no, I don't take him seriously as a narrator or critique of Yang, I have no reason to.

But let's push on, because I'm not done.

Taiyang: You both act like the easiest way to tackle an obstacle is through it. (pointing at Zwei) That strength is all that matters in a fight.

Ah yes, Raven, the woman famously known for thinking the easiest way to deal with an obstacles is to tackle it head on. That's why she spent years adorning herself in a Grimm helmet that hid her eyes & raised a False Maiden to serve as her body double.

A woman so inclined to rely on her own raw strength that when she was ambushed by Salem's forces she decided to trick them into an ambush.

Then when fighting Cinder and was at a disadvantage she freezes her in place while making Cinder think she is going on the offensive leaving her to be crushed by Stalactites & also utilized mind games to distract her & deal the finishing blow... Cos she only relies on strength.

As to his final piece of advice I already address it up above, there was no way around Adam, the situation was fucked from the start.

Saying it was Yang's fault she was dismembered is no more than victim blaming, I stood by that in Volume 3 to to this day & beyond.

Taiyang: But if you just take a second look, then maybe you see... (walking toward her, stepping around Zwei) there's a way around as well.

But let's actually look at Seeing Red & if Yang listened to Tai's advice or if she not only ignored it but did the opposite of what he ordered.

Let's see she goes in with open aggression & emotions, and also takes many blows rather than going 'around' them somehow.

Yang, as if she were 'indestructible' outright tanks a massively charged up Aura beam for the purpose of increasing her strength.

Then burns through all of her Aura & Semblance energies delivering one direct blow, relying on it to save her & leaving her weak & tired.

Or in other words, she:

Yang didn't miss, but we know that isn't a real issue anyway.

Yang used her Semblance to 'win' the fight & very much did rely on it to save her.

Yang expressed anger & many other emotions in the battle & still continues to does so.

Yang willingly took huge risks that involved her being able to take tons of damage rather than go "Around" the problem.

Yang knew Adam was likely stronger given it was 2 V1 but relied on her Semblance to get her out of that bind and she was in fact left weak and tired.

This is also the first time she has done several of these things, or otherwise demonstrated these traits, such as being left weak and tired or willingly tanking big attacks rather than just being hit by surprise or due to being overwhelmed.

I don't take Tai's advice seriously because none of it was accurate or aligned with the Semblance we saw in action or had described to us.

I don't trust Tai's opinion on Yang because his take on her is explicitly informed by Raven & not the Yang we spent four & then five more volumes getting to know.

I don't take Tai's words over Yang's, Ruby's or what we see on screen because Tai is at best a secondary or minor character & a recurring theme in RWBY is the failure of older generations.

These failures are not just in the past but how they have been consistently failing the next generation as the story is being told. There is zero reason to think Tai is some magic exception to this narrative trend when much more well explored characters like Maria, Qrow, Ozpin, Ironwood, Raven, and hell, Summer Rose are not.

& that is my stance on that, thanks for tuning in!

[anthurak]

Not the Bird You’re Thinking Of...

When thinking of Team STRQ as a ‘previous generation’ version of Team RWBY, it feels like a pretty common held take among the fandom at this point that Raven was the ‘Blake’ of her team, in the same way it seems pretty clear that Summer paralleled Ruby and Tai paralleled Yang. And it’s certainly been easy to draw some links between Blake and Raven, particularly when paralleling Blake’s relationship with Yang to Raven’s relationship with Tai.

I mean I’ll freely admit that I myself was one-hundred-percent on-board with this take back when the end of Volume 3 seemed to pull a ‘history repeats’ trope with Blake abandoning Yang in a way that felt very similar to Raven abandoning Tai. Which continued through Volume 5 where it seemed like the story was setting up Blake/Yang as a foil to Raven/Tai, with Blake returning to Yang, where Raven didn’t return to Tai.

However, more recently I’ve started to question how well this current interpretation of Team STRQ=Team RWBY actually works with what we now know of the characters. Like if nothing else, this current setup of Summer=Ruby, Tai=Yang and Raven=Blake leaves Qrow being the equivalent to Weiss, which I think we can all agree is… a head-scratching comparison to say the least.

Now to be fair, I do think the parallels between Summer-Ruby and Tai-Yang are still solid. Rather, it’s the supposed parallels between Raven and Blake that I’m questioning.

See, when you start looking past the surface-level ‘Raven did something similar to what Blake did’ parallels and start comparing these two as actual characters and people, things start getting pretty sketchy.

Yes, both fit the ‘dark, edgy loner’ trope, but beyond that are some serious differences. Blake is quiet and withdrawn whereas Raven is brusque and standoffish. Blake often acts humble while Raven often acts superior. And whereas Blake is so often self-deprecating and wallowing in self-pity for any wrongs she believes she may have committed (see Volume 4), Raven tries to blame others for her mistakes and runs away from responsibility. Ask yourself, does it really make sense that Blake could feasibly grow into the kind of person we see Raven as in Volume 4 and 5? Personally, I don’t think it really does.

And the best part is, do you know who IS so often quiet, withdrawn, brooding and has shown a serious self-deprecation and wallowing-in-self-pity problem in recent volumes?

Qrow.

So yeah, I actually think that it’s QROW who makes a way better parallel to Blake on Team STRQ than Raven does. And let’s not forget that Qrow ALSO put his absolute trust and faith behind a leader who ultimately let him down in a huge way. Even their weapons feels similar from a certain point of view, both having a sword-mode, the gun-form of Qrow’s weapon functioning like a handgun, and the sickle-form of Blake’s weapon more or less serving as a miniature scythe. Plus, I feel like growing up into basically the James Bond of Remnant fits Blake way better than Raven.

Oh, and this shift ALSO fixes the confusing element I brought up earlier. Because you know who was brusque and standoffish and acted like she knew better than everyone else at the start of the show?

Weiss.

Just as Qrow makes a way better parallel to Blake on Team STRQ, I think Raven likewise makes a very good parallel to Weiss. Certainly a better parallel than Qrow does. When we look at Raven in Volumes 4 and 5 and consider what we’ve heard about her, I think it makes way more sense that she would have been more like Weiss in the teams Beacon days. Oh, and let’s not forget that Raven’s weapon is a dust-infused sword with a rotating chamber just like Weiss’s.

And when we start extrapolating these changes to the character dynamics of Team STRQ, I think we start seeing a LOT of interesting parallels to the dynamics of Team RWBY. Particularly when we think of Team STRQ as the ‘failed’ version of Team RWBY who made the wrong decisions.

Like one of the things that made Qrow paralleling Weiss so confusing is that what little we’ve heard of his relationship with Summer doesn’t mesh that well with Weiss’s dynamic with Ruby. But with Qrow paralleling Blake, suddenly the way he talks about Summer makes a LOT more sense. Qrow seems to hold a great admiration and respect for Summer, saying ‘she was always the best of us’ and seems to have also had a close, platonic affection towards her. Which lines up very well with how fiercely loyal Blake has shown to be towards Ruby in recent volumes and in particular their conversation in Volume 8 when Blake tells Ruby how much she admires and respects her.

And of course, even the scant amount of info we have about Raven’s relationship with Summer makes a lot more sense paralleling to Weiss’s and Ruby’s relationship. Like if we start looking at Raven as at least partially representing a version of Weiss who lost Ruby, I think a LOT of her behavior and actions start making a lot more sense.

Now the one wrinkle with this whole idea I know a lot people are going to bring up is; ‘How can Raven be the Weiss of Team STRQ when her and Tai’s relationship parallels Bumbleby?’

Well consider this: What if Raven and Tai didn’t actually HAVE a relationship? If we start working from the concept of Team STRQ being a version of Team RWBY who made the wrong decisions, what if Raven and Tai trying to get together was one of those? I’ve brought this up in other posts, but I have a hunch at this point that Yang was an unplanned pregnancy. The product of what was supposed to be some one-night-stand between Raven and Tai which drove them into trying to force a relationship that one or both of them didn’t actually want. Which in turn is at least one of the major reasons Raven fled her team after Yang was born.

Raven’s and Tai’s relationship was never going to work because they’re NOT actually the parallel to Bumbleby on Team STRQ. The parallel to Bumbleby on Team STRQ is Qrow and Tai.

Even from what little we’ve seen, I think Qrow and Tai actually do make sense as a kind of ‘failed’ Bumbleby. A version of Blake and Yang who were never able to open up about how they felt for each other and have just been dancing around their feelings for so long they’ve just given up. A version of Blake who’s fully internalized the idea that he doesn’t deserve to be happy and the man he loves would be better off without him, and a version of Yang who at this point has just given up. And you know that parallel of Raven running away from Tai? Well I’d say it’s pretty clear that Qrow has been running away from Tai just as much.

This also smooths out any prospective reconciliation arc between Raven and Tai. I’ve seen a fair bit of debate since Volume 5 as to whether or not Raven and Tai ‘should’ get ‘back together’ or not after everything that’s happened. Instead, with this setup the reconciliation arc becomes Raven and Tai recognizing that they were never going to work as a couple and being able to accept each other as Teammates and family.

All in all, I think this interpretation of Team STRQ’s parallels to Team RWBY lines up with the characters much better. With Qrow we have an equivalent to Blake who parallels her character traits much more smoothly, and with Raven we have, well a parallel to Weiss that actually works. (let’s be honest; Qrow NEVER worked as a Team STRQ equivalent to Weiss).

Oh, and if anyone familiar with my other theories is wondering if my attraction to this interpretation of Team STRQ is at ALL influenced by the fact that it positions Summer and Raven as being both partners AND parallels to the relationship between Ruby and Weiss, and leaves things open for a certain relationship between these two that in turn sets up a certain possible origin for our main heroine AND presents foreshadowing for Ruby and Weiss themselves getting together?

You are EXACTLY right. XD

[nov4-rocket5]

RWBY If It Were Written By…

Alan Moore: Moore cuts the middleman completely and goes straight into portraying Huntsmen as a super powered warrior caste master race making all the decisions and being treated as royalty by all the masses of civilians trying to keep them happy and willing to protect them. And because this is an Alan Moore story now, Ruby is the result of Tai taking out his drunken frustrations on Summer after she tried to help him after Raven left and the only reason Summer married him was because she didn’t want her kid to grow up to be a bastard. Also the gods are now snakes with Moore’s head.

Thomas Astruc: The show never leaves Beacon and by the time Volume 14’s come around we’re still waiting for Jaune and Pyrrha to finally figure out each other’s feelings.

Garth Ennis: Garth rips the entire concept of teenagers being involved in military operations and public safety to shreds. The over the top, rule of cool weapons are routinely the punchline to jokes like Yang losing both arms because her gauntlets jammed and backfired. Some variant of the Happy Huntresses are our protagonists and they all despise the Huntsmen system.

Genndy Tartakovsky: More emphasis on the action, a lot less dialogue and story, so no more White Fang.

Alex Hirsch: Lots of loredump mysteries with more character-focus before he eventually micromanages himself into exhaustion, gets tired of the show, and rushes an ending where Cinder absorbs Salem’s power, attacks Beacon and of the 4 potential ways to beat her that Hirsch had set up, is defeated via the most convoluted one.

Matt Trey & Parker Stone: RWBY Chibi with more plot sometimes, there’s also less than 6 voice actors on the entire cast. A running gag is killing Ozpin randomly just for him to come back as a completely new person the very next episode. But then after a few seasons the show starts focusing an inordinate amount of time on Tai for some reason. Also there’s an occasional musical number.

Robert Kirkman: Less fairytale aesthetic and more anime and takes plenty of passive aggressive meta shots at the anime industry and storytelling with a big status quo shift every little bit. Salem gets killed anticlimactically as a joke in the first few volumes. Other antagonists are more clearly inspired by other anime characters the way Invincible does a lot of it’s villains. And of the several redemption arcs the story would have, only one of them would be any decent.

Greg Farshty: Salem’s schemes are insanely convoluted and probably end with her becoming an actual god. She’s always getting a different group of villains for RWBY to fight every so often. There’s a prequel season about the STRQ days and a later on a couple seasons where JNPR are the protagonists for a bit when RWBY get captured and then do their own thing for awhile. But then there’s some pretty bad retcons in the final few seasons that pisses off a lot of people.

Might make a few more of these later. It was kinda fun.

[pilot-boi]

Can we have an faau check in, if you have the time and energy? I just want to see how people are coping after everything

(interpret this how you wish)

🌺

In the depths of the void time has no meaning. To you it feels like months, days, years have passed since the break out at the facility. With a such a huge expenditure of energy all at one time, none of you have been able to cross the barrier in what feels like a life age of the earth.

But down on the planet, it’s only been a few days.

The room that the gang was assigned is more lively than you left it. Flowers from parents are on every bedside table. Ruby’s bed has a blanket borrowed from her uncle’s house. Yang and Blake’s beds are pushed together.

The avians have forgoed their beds in favor of nesting on the ground in a mound of scratchy hospital blankets and stiff pillows. The starchy bedding is still the most comfortable thing any of them have ever slept on.

Hazel is awake but confined to bed rest, and he half-heartedly bats away Neo’s mother-henning. Blake’s legs are both in casts that have already been covered in signatures and drawings from her friends. Yang’s arm…

Well the less said about Yang’s arm the better.

Summer improves daily, physically if not mentally. She recognizes Raven and Qrow more consistently with every visit, and her voice becomes more strong and more sure every day.

Ozpin scarcely leaves his son’s side.

Tai sits at Ruby’s side, holding his daughter’s hand. She has yet to wake up, but Dr. Peach assures him that it’s simple exhaustion, nothing more. His daughter just needs to rest after… whatever her eyes did at the Facility.

Reports differ, but Yang and Oscar insist that her eyes lit up like the sun and burned away at Salem’s evil. Tai saw what the woman was reduced to, he saw her injuries, and he just doesn’t know how to square that with being caused by his youngest.

Speaking of burns. Tai winces guiltily and glances over at the two beds at the far end of the room. Jaune and Mercury lay in the two beds, with an aisle between them, each of them covered in bandages. Jaune hasn’t woken up yet, and although Mercury has, everyone can tell that his every movement hurts.

Every person in the room keeps glancing at the blonde’s bed, waiting and hoping for the moment he wakes.

The Arcs visited a few days ago.

Ren tried to corral them, even as they buried him in a mountain of tearful hugs. But he couldn’t waylay them forever. And they saw Jaune, laying beaten and bruised and burned in a bed, with foreign wings on his back. In sleep he almost looked like the boy they lost.

Tai had to hold the parents back from pouncing their son right then and there. It was one of the hardest things he’s ever had to do.

[kitkatopinions]

The world they landed in 'the Ever After' is something they recognized from a fairy tale, including some of the things that happened to them happening to the protagonist of the book and meeting characters they'd met in the book, but they soon got 'off book' so to speak. Later they discovered that the Ever After is actually the birthplace of the Brother gods, who were given a passageway to Remnant to create worlds of their own. The fairy tale based on the Ever After is apparently everyone's favorite book in Remnant.

Weiss felt bad about losing Atlas and not doing the best job during the Fall of Atlas, but then got over it in a snap.

Blake and Yang were forced to confess their feelings for each other and kissed.

Jaune lived in the Ever After for around twenty years or so (long enough to be going gray,) because he plucked a time fruit from a time tree that sent him back in time in the Ever After. He became the fictional character 'the Rusted Knight' that existed in the book, guiding the protagonist Alyx and her brother Lewis (who wasn't included in the OG book) through the Ever After. Jaune thought that Lewis had been murdered while Alyx had gone back to Remnant, but then found out that Lewis had gone back to Remnant while Alyx had been murdered. Jaune also was acting as 'the hero' and protector to a village of Ever After people called the Paper Pleasers that he was kind of treating like servants while he tried to keep them safe from harm, and they all 'died' but came back to life just with no memories, as the 'Genial Gems.' Jaune learned to accept that people just die sometimes or something, and then was turned back into a nineteen year old while keeping all of his forty year old memories. It was never revealed that he's the one that killed Penny.

Ruby was grieving Penny during the volume and spiraling and getting very little help from her team (though Weiss at least tried a bit,) and also experienced some pretty bad trauma that made her adverse to handling her weapon and even led to her seeing hallucinations. Ruby then yelled at her team and Jaune, basically saying that she didn't feel cared for, was under way too much pressure to be perfect, and no longer wanted to be the leader before taking jabs at Weiss for pushing her too hard in an effort to get home and at Blake and Yang for being more concerned with their relationship than anything else, and then ran away. She then went to Neo (for some reason) who was still trying to kill her and tortured her with clones she made look like dead people/ruby's friends, and tried to convince Ruby to drink tea that was poisoned with something that would 'unmake' Ruby - they call it 'Ascension' and the only example we had of ascension was the person becoming a completely different person with no real memories of who they had been. Ruby drank the tea, but when she 'ascended,' she had the choice to come back as herself and decided to do that, somehow being the only person to ascend without losing any memories or changing her appearance at all and suddenly no longer having the aversion to handling her weapon or seeing hallucinations. Her team then insisted that Ruby hasn't ever been weak or confused and that's why they follow her.

Neo seemed to accept that Roman was gone and decided to 'Ascend' herself, with RWBYJ leaving her behind with the vague idea that Neo will choose who to be now, leaving the potential possibility that she'll be back (or that Roman will be with how they frame ascension for Ruby as if she could've chosen to just return as someone who was already dead like Summer) but pretty much closing out her story.

RWBYJ went to Vacuo in the end with the vague line that they were going 'not where but when you're needed the most,' which to me indicates a possible time skip.

Oh, and Ruby also saw a memory of her mother lying to Tai that she was going on an Ozpin mission before leaving secretly with Raven to do something else, which was the last time anyone ever saw her.

So, new volume is over? Can someone summerize the important parts to see if it's worth watching it myself?

Sorry if that sounds unnecessaryly mean, but now I have school and work, can't use my precious time off too freely 😅