#volume 6 spoilers

[clementinecloudz]

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

[s30620]

Volume 6 Bonus

Nothing to see here, just two grannies, being cute and domestic, again.

[zexapher]

Dragonslayer kinda cute tho, ngl

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

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

[jadeinretrogrde]

when I say I can rationalize anything, this is what I mean

[enchantedwolfoon]

Pen doodles of 6/Stanley/The Intruder🖊️

How is this the same mf

[just-a-little-kreature]

my housemate and sibling have both finished book 6, u know what that means!!! (HEAVY TGCF VOLUME 6 SPOILERS!!!!!)

[duohensheng]

finished vol 6 in one go. like xie lian, i fear i’ve lost a part of myself i won’t ever get back. but like xie lian, i have put myself together again. 🫡

[sheepb1t]

Quickly doodled a small comic that’s basically what happened in volume 6 right

[empty-dream]

the song of saving the world

[old-danmei-fan]

I was just reading back through the notes and thoughts I had as I was reading volume 6 and the situations that happen with Mu Qing, Feng Xin, and Xie Lian's parents are still what sticks out to me the most from this book and not the 100 stabbings.

I understand where Mu Qing is coming from. He wanted to do what he thought was going to help everyone the most, and let's be honest it was probably the best option they had. Did he go about doing it the wrong way? Yes. Can I fault him for it? No.

The situation with the heavenly officials in the cultivation cave was also a fucked situation from the get go. Should Xie Lian just be the bigger person and leave? Yeah probably, but I don't blame him for not leaving. Mu Qing leaving isn't what made me cry, it was Mu Qing staying silent and then running after Xie Lian that made me cry. My heart was broken for XL. In his eyes, not only did one of his oldest friends leave him when he was at his worst, the friend then comes back with new friends and sides with them.

Then on the flip side, we've got Feng Xin who I'm 100% sure would have done absolutely ANYTHING Xie Lian would ask of him (I mean obviously, he left when XL ordered him to). Loyal to a fault Feng Xin. He was essentially trying to do the same exact thing as Mu Qing, just in a different way.

It's so glaringly obvious how much those two care about Xie Lian and how they are just trying to do everything in their power to help him and his parents.

To be honest, I really need to reread Feng Xin being told to leave and then the queen and kings deaths. I was crying so badly, I could barely read some parts.

The queen and king hit me like a fucking truck. I know that they both felt so horribly guilty for the way things ended up and for Xie Lian being banished. I can unfortunately relate to this. I was at my lowest and homeless with my child and for a while I really did think that he would be better off if I wasn't around.

The fact that it happens within such a short amount of time after Feng Xin leaves is what makes it even worse. They knew Xie Lian, their only child, would be completely alone afterwards. Maybe they thought Feng Xin was going to come back? Who knows.

The most heart breaking part of this book to me though was that Hua Cheng is literally the only person that never left Xie Lian willingly. Every time he left, he was made to do so forcefully.

All 3 of them were in their early 20s when they went through all this trauma. None of them knew how to cope so they all did what they thought would be best.

Anyways this series is one of my absolute favorites now. I am always down to talk about this series so please comment or message me.

[smply-sktchng]

it’s okay, you’re going to heaven

[almea]

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

[zexapher]

The Crew Meets Saphron for the First Time

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

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

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

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

[cornonjacob07]

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

[shattering-the-mirror]

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

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

Y'know...

"You have cat ears!"

(ie avoiding being vulnerable)

Or

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

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

[gallopinggallifreyans]

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

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

Pyrrha's entire character has always revolved around choice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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