#weird archfey summer rose or bust tbh

[theseerasures]

god but there is something so Xiao Long about Ruby's breakdown in Risk

granted: we don't know Summer, we don't know how Summer would react situations like this, part of the REASON why Ruby's so upset right now is because she doesn't know either, but:

the same resentment to comfort, the same muted emotional devastation, the same walling-off, and, oh--Ruby is literally the same age now that Yang had been. given what we know about how Tai reacted after Summer's death, i think they both got it from their dad.

and Ruby "i'm seventeen we sent out a message 24 hours ago EVERYBODY DIDN'T IMMEDIATELY TELEPORT IN EVERYTHING IS A FAILURE" Rose isn't ready to recognize it yet, but i certainly take heart in it, regardless of how the Summer stuff ultimately shakes out.

on one level it's just that Yang has been depressed before, and she can help Ruby through it now, but even beyond that: what Yang went through after Beacon and what Ruby is going through right now parallel each other at a core level. it's about experiencing intense loss and alienation, focalized through the actual/potential loss of a part of the body. Yang lost her arm, but she also lost Blake, lost Weiss, lost Raven, lost Summer, even lost Tai for a while, and the despair comes from the fact that it's start to feel inevitable--that everyone leaves her behind. a piece of me is gone. and it's never coming back. there's a horrible fatalism to it.

Ruby's eyes have marked her and isolated her since the very beginning of the show, long before she even knew why, and the more she finds out, the more awful it gets. and now she's learned something that feels like the final piece for the puzzle of her life: that her mother might not have died heroically, or died at all, and the loss isn't better but much worse, because now Ruby might meet her, and have to destroy her, WITH her eyes. the eyes that are her link to Summer, that also caused whatever happened to Summer, that are part of why everyone is suffering now; the eyes that made her special, and placed so much responsibility on her, and it's all just too much. she'd said to Yang it's not pointless, and look where it got her. we shouldn't lie to ourselves. she's just one more person on the same inevitable trajectory, and things only get worse.

so much of Ruby's identity has always been wrapped up in how much she wants to live up to Summer, and she is neck deep in that crisis right now, but...i'm suddenly thinking of End of the Beginning, when Qrow was first telling Ruby about her eyes: you're special, Ruby. and not in the Daddy loves his special angel kind of way. that's always raised my hackles, because...well, because it's just a shitty thing to say to a fifteen year old who just came out of a COMA AND THE MOST TRAUMATIC NIGHT OF HER LIFE, but also: Ruby is special because her father loves her. it's been hammered home repeatedly in the show that not everyone gets that. the fact that she is echoing the mannerisms of her sister and father even in the depths of her Summer-related horror means something. it means she has her father, even if he's not physically with her right now. it means she has her sister, who is. it means she has her team, her friends, her...Penny--hell, it means she has the whole world, because she got the message out using Amity, and she said: my name is Ruby Rose. i'm a Huntress. everyone knows who she is.

and she might not feel it right now, but with all of that, the weight of the world can be eased. the weight of her mother, which feels even heavier--that can be eased, too.

it is, after all, just a part of her.