#what does she have? A KNIFE | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

essektheylyss · 2 months ago

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My thing about Veth potentially venturing into polyamory is that I do think everyone involved would be perfectly fine with it and happy to help her experiment, and I think that no matter how they do it, it would not fix her. This isn't to say that she wouldn't get any benefit out of trying! It's just to say that it's not a solution to her actual problem, because I genuinely don't think the problem is that she's lacking any one thing that would make her life complete.

Fundamentally, I think Veth struggles with the idea that there will come a point at which she has to settle. Not in a bad way, just in the sense that she is one person with one life and she will have to live within those bounds. Because the thing is, I don't really think her issue ends at struggling to "have it all"; to an extent she does! She is a good parent, even if her kid is a little rebellious; her marriage is supportive (and has fun sex); she gets to go off to save the world with Yeza's blessing on occasion, when the world needs saving. She doesn't have all of these things all the time, but... that's not really a flaw, that's just a fact of life.

But she started out her adult life settling to an extent—even if she loved Yeza and loved being Luc's mom, she did the safe thing that was expected of her. The goblin attack and everything that transpired after shoved her out of that life, but in retrospect, to an extent it likely feels that that pushed her to find something more that she wouldn't have had otherwise. Being pushed to her limit under the worst conditions made her better, stronger, braver, and at the end of it she found that she could have both her original life and much of her new life—so why wouldn't she then wonder if further experiences of that ilk could do the same?

Crucially, she has not actually run up against a hard limit yet, and as such she hasn't had reason to believe that there is a point at which she has to stop and recognize that there isn't more for her to find. When she was drinking more heavily during missions, even when it caused the death of herself or others, there were no long-term consequences. And the thing is, I'm not saying that she should face that kind of major consequence, but she seems as though she is scared to accept that maybe she could be happy if she stopped before she does.

I'm also not suggesting that she should stop experimenting or trying new things—the Luxon knows I am not one to talk in that realm—but I do think she is searching for novelty not because that would make her happy, but because she doesn't believe that she has the capacity to know what would make her happy. She was unaware that polyamory was even an option, so think of what else she might not be aware of! She doesn't have perfect knowledge of the world, after all, so how can she trust that she's found what she really wants? So yeah, she could fuck someone else, and it might even be an enjoyable experience that she didn't know was missing! But that only prolongs the question of what else she might be missing.

I think that deep down, she's terrified that if she doesn't keep pushing until that external hard limit, she will end up with regrets later, and simultaneously she is resentful that her friends all seem to have reached a point where they are largely content with what they have, because she wants them to have everything. She wants herself to have everything. And she has not yet allowed herself to come to terms with the fact that only she can determine when the everything of what she already has is enough, and anything else is the cherry on top.

#but also she should still try polyamory. because it'd be very funny.#I just think she should corner essek with a knife after sleeping with caleb like 'SURELY YOU WEREN'T ACTUALLY OKAY WITH THAT YOU LIAR'#(because she still feels guilty and unsatisfied and she couldn't possibly be the one keeping herself from being content. nosiree lmao.)#but in all seriousness hilariously I think she should talk to essek about it cuz I think he would actually relate most lmao #and he does seem to be doing well with it! like he's living within the bounds of what will keep him alive sure #but he's also doing so in such a way that's like #I can't have my cake and eat it too but I can be content eating the cake #like look. as an essek girlie. do you think I do not relate lmao. BUT the important point is that it really is up to you #you can do what you want forever! but you also have to live with that.#critical role #cr spoilers #cr meta #veth brenatto

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bestworstcase · 2 years ago

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you refer to summer as proto-cinder - do you have thoughts then for how actual cinder coming into the picture affected that dynamic? like was summer Salem’s protege first, do you think? did cinder replace her + she got sent away or did she get promoted when cinder arrived? mostly just asking for your speculation since I don’t think we have many canon answers but I love reading your rwby thoughts

loosely my thinking is that:

1 - salem at the time was not participating in ozpin’s forever war in any meaningful sense. that his hush-hush last minute urgent missions routinely turned out to be inconsequential false alarms because he was jumping at every shadow while salem mostly ignored him. (and: i think she knew he’d hidden the relics in the schools, but didn’t yet know the particulars.)

2 - raven did not go back to banditry when she broke things off with tai, or if she did it was as a cover for her work as a spy; hence her continued working relationship with summer years later.

3 - gretchen rainart was the spring maiden. ozpin picked her out of beacon’s ranks the same way he did pyrrha, then pulled her out of the normal curriculum and sent her to mistral to be trained, in secret, by raven. the public story was that she “tragically lost her life in a training mission,” and hazel knew something didn’t add up.

4 - discomfort with that situation, combined with raven and summer both thinking ahead 10-12 years to when their daughters would be gretchen’s age, is what got the wheels turning on the secret rogue mission to take salem down.

5 - the plan was for summer to go in alone, banking on silver eyes, with raven and gretchen at a safe distance but ready to intervene if summer got into trouble. (think: gretchen blasting magic through a portal positioned to hit salem, raven ducking through and yanking summer out before salem could recover. with kindred link’s sensory aspect and a maiden’s firepower, that’s about the best escape plan summer could have had.)

6 - ozpin does his level best to keep his people as far away from salem as possible. salem knows this. one of ozpin’s guardians tracking her down with heroic declarations at the ready would interest her, and she’d instantly zero in on summer having gone rogue. that’s an opportunity: it indicates a fracture in her faith in ozpin. so salem didn’t try to smush summer like a bug; she started talking.

7 - unlike her daughters, who really have been fighting a war, summer’s experience up to that point had been a lot of secrecy, paranoia, and false alarms. if she said “i’ll stop you” and salem answered “i’m not doing anything to stop”—it would not have taken a lot of convincing to believe that, because it tracks.

8 - once the first hurdle of believing that salem isn’t waging existential war against humanity is cleared, it’s really, really easy to flip the narrative against ozpin. all salem has to do is tell summer about the mandate while stressing that the gods cannot be appeased, that they destroyed the world once before and will do it again if ozpin calls them back. which is true!

9 - salem, for whatever reason, wants the relics. if summer believes her about the mandate, getting her on board with stealing the relics is as easy as “ozpin is planning to bring them together soon; we have to get them away from him” or “i can destroy them” or “we can use them to stop him forever.” if summer doesn’t believe it… well, ozpin must trust her a great deal, to have told her of salem’s existence. surely she knows where and how he’s hidden the relics? go find the lamp. use it to find the truth for yourself; then make your choice.

10 - isn’t it serendipitous, then, that summer has the living breathing key to the vault of knowledge on her side?

check and mate.

whether summer buys salem’s story or not, the stakes are so high that she can’t afford not to seek confirmation—and with raven and gretchen already involved, it would be so easy to be in and out of that vault with no one the wiser, and they can always seal it away again if it turns out salem lied. one way or another, summer has to open that vault.

what happens next?

i think there are two plausible ways this might have shaken out, depending on how much trust raven had in ozpin and how willing summer was to take salem at her word.

if raven trusted ozpin and summer believed salem, then things probably got heated fast when summer returned unscathed from meeting salem and started talking about ozpin being the real danger and needing gretchen to open the vault; they might have come to blows then, and with gretchen caught in between.

if summer believed and raven was skeptical, they probably did get the vault open—but they wouldn’t have been able to use the lamp. none of them knew jinn’s name. so what then? do they seal the lamp, or trust salem’s word and bring it to her? how does gretchen feel about those options? how intense is summer about getting at least one relic away from oz?

either way… the only thing we really know about the last spring maiden is that she struggled with the magic; it was too much for her, she was scared, the training never stuck, she wasn’t cut out for it. and she was a student—probably not much older than pyrrha. we’ve seen how poorly a young, not-fully-trained maiden fared against a couple of kids and cinder. summer and raven were among the best of the best. so if things got heated enough to come to blows…

i doubt very much that summer planned or intended to kill gretchen; she’s the proto-cinder in the sense that i think salem saw an opportunity to snag a relic and maybe a valuable double agent and went for it. why look a gift horse in the mouth?—but it was all sort of ad hoc.

but then you have a girl with power she can’t master because she’s been isolated and she just wants to go home, and the old unspoken tension between the only two adults who care enough to try to make that happen very suddenly erupting when one of them flips her loyalties out of the blue. that is a volatile situation. all the more so if it’s kept simmering until the relic is out of the vault and they’re realizing that they don’t know how to use it and they’re all going to have to choose without knowingwho told the truth.

what happens to summer rose if things get out of control and she lands the fatal blow? does she run? does she move to help before raven lashes out and forces her to run? how far does she get before it hits her that she cannot go back home?—that the choices she made, the blood she spilled tonight have tied her irrevocably to salem whether she likes it or not?

and then there’s raven, left behind to give gretchen the bitter mercy of a quick and painless death. she becomes spring—maybe seals the lamp away again, if it got that far—and then has to consider her options. tell the truth and face whatever consequences there might be for letting this happen, or… ash the body, and feign surprise come morning? leave on the pretense of searching for her missing protege, then drop out of contact and stay as far the fuck away from this mess as possible? let the guilt and the secrets fester unchecked for twelve years, always looking over her shoulder because summer has to know, she must, who gretchen gave the magic to. does salem know? would summer tell her? can raven afford to trust that she won’t?

salem specifically sought out hazel. why? how did she even know about him, if not because summer told her? (<- a decade and change later when salem is actively prosecuting a war, she doesn’t have the slightest idea who neopolitan is—after neo was instrumental in the fall of beacon! salem is not exactly obsessively monitoring what goes on in vale!) and hazel says that gretchen’s death taught him never to trust ozpin.

if “training mission gone wrong” was a cover story for pushing gretchen into hiding after she became the spring maiden, and summer knew that, and summer tried to stop it only for that attempt to go so catastrophically wrong that gretchen died because of her, and the whole time hazel was still desperately trying to get answers… and one of the very few things we know about who summer is as a person is that she Does Not Like To Lie… wouldn’t she feel that hazel deserved to know what really happened?

and if this is how salem learned that the relics are in vaults only the maidens can open—to say nothing of how the maidens themselves are treated!—then. well, ‘divide’ and ‘sacrifice’ are both seethinglydisdainful about the futility of ozpin’s sacrifices and his cause. it isn’t a stretch to think this might have been what incited salem to actually go to war for the relics. and in that case it seems only natural for her to recruit hazel, too, because salem literally is motivated by gretchen’s death. and she can sidestep the part where summer is the one who killed gretchen by hammering ozpin’s conspiratorial lies.

and then—because summer is wholly unsuitable as a skeleton-key maiden vessel by dint of having moral reservations about murdering people and no particular desire for power—salem needs to find herself a protege. and maybe pick up another agent or two while she’s at it.

cinder is only a few years older than yang. she was probably around ten or eleven when summer met salem and the dominoes began to fall; she didn’t escape the madame until her mid-teens, and we don’t know how much time passed in between then and salem finding her. so quite a lot—half or more—of the interim between summer joining her and the beginning of V1, salem probably spent just looking for a viable candidate. and then training her while laying out the plan to off ozpin, hit the academies, and seize the relics before ozma even knew what hit him. so summer, i think, would have had a fairly lengthy period of time to reconcile herself to beginning the war she thought she was going to end, as a necessary step towards ending the wider conflict and the harm done by ozpin’s one-sided imaginary war. her life is a mess. she probably hates… everything about what her side is doing but if she really was involved directly in gretchen’s death then she’s kind of stuck with salem until/unless the truth comes out, and even aside from that there is the problem of the divine ultimatum to worry about; after more than a decade i would imagine that summer has firmly been convinced that salem isn’t gunning for annihilation, because if it came down to a choice between confessing to murder or helping bring about the end of the world, i do think summer would pick the former.

#‘summer killed spring’ does really feel like the most plausible pin holding summer on salem’s side #with zero attempts made to contact her family or negotiate with oz #i’m nnnot convinced heroic burnout alone would be enough for THAT long. 12 years!#also: ‘what does she have on you’#would sure uh. hit different #along with literally every other word out of raven’s mouth lmfao #. . . wouldn’t it be punchy though if gretchen died because summer knocked her off the ledge of the haven vault #easiest possible way to kill someone without meaning to. and it would recontextualize the end of V5 in such a knife twisting way

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