bestworstcase

[bestworstcase]

i think people who treat summer joining salem as synonymous with ‘summer is BAD and EVIL’ are cowards actually

the central conceit, the essential idea that makes it compelling, is that “she was always the best of us” is true; that summer rose was and is the kind of person who could look into the face of someone she’d been led to believe was a soulless, inhuman monster, the root of all evil in the world, and see a person, and want to help her. that summer rose was and is the true ideal of what a huntress is supposed to be—compassionate, righteous, honorable, merciful, someone who stands to defend those who cannot defend themselves—and that is why she joined salem.

because the divine plan is horrific and once she learned the truth, she could not return home to be complicit in upholding it. she had to do the right thing.

summer rose is not a cautionary tale or a victim or a monster or a tragedy or a fallen hero; she is the answer. how do you stop salem? you help her.

#yes she left her family behind and yes she started a war—the wrenching heartbreak of this impossible choice she had to make #go home and be complicit in something so evil. or plant her feet and say no. this is wrong and someone has to stop it. someone has to try. #that’s what the story is ABOUT

[bestworstcase]

do you think you can add volume 9 beyond to the mega folder

info.txt may help you

[bestworstcase]

i’m uh, not stressing myself out. lol.

“what is tai doing?” is a question the narrative has been openly inviting us to wonder about ever since v4. he says he hasn’t gone after ruby himself because he’s “got some things to look after” at home, and he doesn’t leave when yang does—ergo, there must still be “some things” he’s doing around patch.

okay, so what is “some things”? the only stuff we’ve seen tai do since yang left home is tend his sunflowers and sit on the couch to watch his daughter’s broadcast. tai has to have been doing something more narratively meaningful than this, because we are told as much (he starts going on missions again in v2-3, he has “some things to look after” in v4).

it follows that whatever tai has been doing is both narratively meaningful and intended to be unexpected—so the narrative keeps nudging us with little reminders that we don’t know. where’s tai? “on assignment.” what was tai doing before atlas fell? “some things.”

the narrative doesn’t do this with glynda—which is why there isn’t this level of interest in speculating about what she’s been up to. we know what she’s been doing: in the first CFVY novel, glynda is leading the effort to reclaim beacon from the grimm. we see her out and about in vale during the broadcast; she was shopping for dust when the broadcast began, implying she’s been doing stuff she needs dust for, like patrolling borders / fending off grimm / helping to rebuild.

we don’t know the specifics, but we know roughly how she’s spent most of her time since beacon fell, and likewise we know why she isn’t in vacuo: she went to a different kingdom to try to find help.

so glynda is currently in mistral-or-menagerie having conversations with councils or recruiting more people to send to vacuo with aid; she’s probably responsible for all those mistrali ships we saw at the end of v9. we can speculate that maybe she’s also doing something else—such as removing the crown’s vault away from vale, which her semblance theoretically might be able to do—but the “where’s glynda? what’s she doing?” question has a clear answer.

“where’s tai? what’s he doing?” doesn’t. or rather, the textual answer is “some things” and “on assignment, but what’s more important than here?”

if tai were working with glynda—either literally with her or just doing the same thing she is—then yang and ruby would know. there’s no reason for them not to know—no reason for the narrative to tell us what glynda is doing but pointedly hide what tai is doing if glynda and tai are doing the same thing.

now!

my point in juxtaposing tai-in-patch vs glynda-in-vale is we never once see tai or glynda interact during the period between the fall of beacon and the broadcast, and from the way oobleck and port phrase their goodbyes to tai in v4, tai isn’t involved in the effort to reclaim beacon—it’s not a dig at tai, it’s. these two characters have been in different places and focused on different things all along. given that tai isn’t involved with any of the inner-circle activities we see in v2-3, i’m also a bit skeptical as to whether he even continued to actively work for ozpin at all after ozpin, uh, got his second love killed.

like tai used to be one of ozpin’s agents. we… don’t know that he stuck with ozpin after summer disappeared? we do know that he stopped going on missions for a long time, which may have only been a pause for the sake of not orphaning the kids, but just as easily may have been tai completely justifiably telling ozpin to fuck off.

the “why is [insert other damaged adult] allowed to change, but tai isn’t?” point is a false equivalency: qrow, raven, willow, and ozpin have changed—as in, they have gotten onscreen character development leading them to take action in a new direction—whereas taiyang hasn’t changed yet—he has had no character development since yang left home at the end of v4. he is at a different point in his character arc than the rest of the adult cast.

so my interest in him is: okay, what will his character development look like? what incites change? what is the story setting up for him? how will that play out? which requires examination of where he’s at now and what he’s been doing and why he’s doing that. because that is the foundation of any character arc; you have to start somewhere.

as for, uh, this:

We don't know exactly what the girls have or have not been told about or why they were or werent told so why are we making grand sweeping statements as if we know anything at all what is going on. Speculation is great and fun but it has to be based on what we actually know and with some healthy occam's razor on top.

we do know that, though, is the thing. we know that:

yang and ruby have been told by qrow that tai is “on assignment”

neither of them know what that assignment is, exactly: “do you wonder why he isn’t here with everyone?” and “what’s more important than here?”

they’re both aware that they don’t have the full picture; yang in particular wants to know more.

and we can extrapolate that they’ve asked for more details—because there is a clear desire to know more, here—and not received them, meaning that qrow either

doesn’t know, or

is lying to them.

if qrow doesn’t know, then oz either

doesn’t know, or

gave tai this assignment and is lying to qrow about it.

occam’s razor is that none of them know. this tracks with tai’s apparent distance from the inner circle in v2-4 and increases the likelihood that the missions he went on in v2-3 were not inner-circle business but rather contracts he, a licensed huntsman, picked up off the job boards independent of ozpin.

shrug.

if he was taking random contracts around the kingdom at the same salem’s people were prepping for the attacks on the vytal festival, it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that he crossed paths with summer rose. and i think that’s both interesting and the best fit for the puzzle pieces we have right now. i am not sure why you think that i, notable evil sorceress apologist, am “upset” about the possibility that tai might have gotten himself romantically entangled in some way with salem’s general (his not-dead wife). i think that would rock! will i be broken up about it if i’m wrong? nah, who cares, but it’s fun to chew on.

if you don’t want to participate in speculation about what tai’s up to because it stresses you out, then… don’t? you don’t have to? no one is forcing you to engage with theories you don’t like? but im having fun and interacting with my posts on a topic that i am enjoying is not an effective way to avoid discussion of theories you don’t like.

@red-bulbasaur from here

ok but he's probably working with glynda?? it combines him saving people and protecting the relic in a way that makes sense and gives him important work that he can't abandon without making him too important to the plot. qrow not telling the girls much could be for a million reason including keeping a sensitive mission secret and not worrying the girls since they have enough allready.

three issues with the idea that tai and glynda are working as partners on the same ‘assignment�� for oz:

that’s not how ozpin did things. in every other context he assigned one person per task

we know what glynda is doing: she left vale to find help, presumably in mistral and/or menagerie. if tai is working with her, there’s no reason for his ‘assignment’ to be kept secret; even if “trying to find help” is a cover for the real mission (eg, moving the crown somewhere else), then the cover story should cover tai as well.

there is zero narrative connection between glynda and tai other than both of them being adjacent to ozpin, and glynda is much closer to ozpin than tai is. he’s on patch sitting at home during the broadcast, she’s visiting the dust shop in downtown vale. she spearheads the failed effort to retake the academy, he stays at home.

the issue with qrow lying to the girls is that lying is always framed as the wrong choice. the idea that they’re not trustworthy enough to know more than “your dad is on assignment,” or that they need to be protected from the truth, is exactly why everyone—including qrow—was spitting mad at ozpin after 6.2/6.3; qrow is also the one who chose to bring the kids into the loop and has since v6 consistently trusted their judgment and been forthcoming with them.

for him to outright lie to their faces about information they specifically asked him about would be an enormous, shocking reversal for his character—and that’s a frankly bizarre thing to expect the story to do at a point where qrow is sober and more optimistic than he’s ever been. bordering on character assassination, like i said. this is a narrative where you cannot be a good person and lie to people. period. the liar is always wrong.

so it’s like. it comes down to whether you think the narrative will just sabotage everything it’s developed with oz and qrow in the last few volumes for the sake of making tai look better, or if you think the two characters who have been present and actively trying to better themselves since v6 will prove to be more trustworthy than the one who’s been sitting at home off screen since v4.

[bestworstcase]

o7 wrt to:

Interesting, I recall Ruby reacting with hurt and confusion in V3 when Yang was to traumatized to fill her parental role. But what were the other instances if you don't mind my asking? (I do recall her seeming a little upset during those two earl instances where Yang either let Ruby find her own way or suggested not being on the same team. Though it felt light enough in tone that I wasn't sure how deep it went.)

parentheticals are the incidents i have in mind, yeah. like you say, those times don’t feel nearly as heavy as the devastation when yang rejects her in v3, but i think that comes down to a lesser need on ruby’s part: in v1, her problem is that she’s socially anxious and feeling isolated, so she gets a bit clingy with yang (“why would i need other friends when i have you!!”), whereas in v3 she’s just woken up from a coma after witnessing the murder of two friends.

it’s different in scale. and then there’s also the factor that in v1, yang makes the right call for ruby in not indulging that clinginess—it’ll be good for ruby to meet new people and make her own friends separate from yang!—BUT handles it in a very, well, seventeen-year-old way. awkwardly ditching ruby at the entrance vs taking a few minutes to talk through the fear with her and help her figure out some ways to approach new people, which is how a hypothetical Actual Adult Parent would ideally handle the situation.

the ditching incident in particular sticks out to me because ruby reacts to it quite strongly: “WAIT! where are you going?! are we supposed to go to our dorms? where are our dorms? do we have dorms??—” while she’s depicted as literally spinning in place to represent how discombobulated she feels. and then she’s like “i don’t know what i’m doing” and falls over. & by the end of that scene she’s so overwhelmed and upset that she just sinks onto the ground again.

i think yang realized after the fact that what she did was actually pretty mean—hence saving ruby a spot and calling her over as soon as ruby comes into the hall and (awkwardly) checking in, she’s trying to make up for it.

and then in the lockers the following morning, when the same issue bubbles up again, yang gets really nervous and self-conscious because she 1. doesn’t want to hurt ruby’s feelings again, but 2. also doesn’t know how to say “i think being on separate teams would be good for both of us” without it coming across as rejecting ruby. ruby still feels rejected, plays it off as sisterly ribbing, but once they’re in the forest she’s outright on the brink of panic “gotta find yang gotta find yang” and i think the hurt from Being Ditched the day before definitely feeds into that, bc in her mind ‘yang isnt with me’ = ‘i feel lost and scared and mess everything up and strangers yell at me’

after that point it’s better because 1. yang doesn’t ever ditch her like that again and 2. ruby forms friendships with other people so she doesn’t feel the need to cling to yang anymore, and they settle into a more balanced dynamic until the next time ruby rly needs a caretaker at a point when yang isn’t able to step into that role, which is after beacon falls

but i do think those interactions in the first couple episodes are really important for establishing that this dynamic exists; on first pass it’s easy to read as normal sibling stuff but then once more context is revealed looking back it’s like—ah. that’s probably the first time ruby’s turned to yang for parent-like support in an environment where yang didn’t feel so much pressure to be a parent.

and that being like, the second major interaction they have after the scene that establishes how yang loves ruby to bits (so we know the ditching doesn’t happen bc yang sees her as an annoying tagalong, or whatever)? very much lays the groundwork to support what is gradually revealed about their home life.

similar to how the ‘light-hearted’ framing of qrow’s alcoholism—the fun drunk uncle! he’s always drunk! the inner circle’s exasperation is played for laughs! (winter is furious that he’s drunk. mercury says “he smelled like my dad.”)—sets up for when the narrative gets serious and goes no this is a real problem actually, this has always been a problem, even when the characters brushed it off.

So, regarding your Tai post,

https://www.tumblr.com/bestworstcase/748954216598470656/the-perennial-tai-discourse-is-really-interesting?source=share

I had some thoughts: I technically cover it in a separate post

https://www.tumblr.com/tumblingxelian/749060919422861312/really-solid-addition-here-much-like-with-qrows

But I'm unsure if the links will work so here is a slightly edited & expanded version:

Now, the idea that Ruby & Yang had very different childhoods is not an idea I strictly disagree with. But, I also think it is a bit inaccurate to treat it as outlined in your post.

What I mean is that while Yang is definitely more overt in the fact she feels Tai and the other adults failed them and defaults to centering family moments on Ruby. (For instance she frames the Zwei package as something to cheer Ruby up, its not for her & Ruby's the one really excited, Yang's just kind of there about it)

Despite that, Ruby herself doesn't have a simple relationship with Tai, or in fact she just might but that's not a good thing.

See, Ruby does not think about Tai very often, he's largely an afterthought in her letters for one. But more to the point he is not someone Ruby goes to for advice or guidance or even comfort.

Post Beacon, she mostly gets an update from him and is not bothered to see him go. She is OK being a bit more vulnerable around Qrow.

But the person she actually seeks out and seems utterly shocked at not receiving comfort from is Yang. It was also Yang who she questions for what to do next and Yang whom she confided her plans in before leaving.

Again she is shocked when Yang cannot supply these things to her.

Tai is her dad, but its a superficial relationship, he's nice, he can be fun, she does love him. She does not however, seem to perceive him as a reliable or responsible adult from whom she seeks protection or guidance.

The person she always defaulted to for that was Yang until she could no longer fill the role post V3 which likely fed into her issues with showing vulnerability in V9.

I tend to think she might have been more open to it in V5 given the breakdown tears & hug, but then Yang demonstrated she was still very much not all right & Ruby had no clue what to do. So she just sort of locked into her head that Yang needed 'her' protection now, not the other way around.

I would also just straight up note that even Ruby said it was Yang who raised her. Like, that wasn't even subtle, she knows who the parent was in that house and it wasn't Tai or Qrow. I don't think she'd say that if their childhoods were 'so' different that Tai was a functional parent to her but not Yang.

She definitely has a less... frosty relationship with the two grown men who she grew up around, Largely because they project the saintly Summer onto her and the Wretched Raven onto Yang.

Again, let's not forget Qrow's entirely willing to accept Yang brutalized a kid for shits and giggles or is "crazy". Or that Tai outright sees a lot of Raven in Yang, despite most of the traits he described not meshing with Yang's demonstrated or self described persona.

But even with that more positive relationship being projected onto and still raised by a sister two years your senior isn't exactly ideal. Both sisters had a shitty childhood, both were deeply neglected and failed and suffered because of that fact.

all true! but the nature of parentification is that the children experience the neglect in very different ways; the elder child is forced into an adult role, parenting the younger child, who is harmed in more invisible ways because they do have a caretaker—their sibling. anecdotally nearly every account of a childhood i’ve read by an adult who was raised as a child by older siblings has either alluded to or outright described 1. a much better childhood than their caretaking sibling(s) got, 2. because their sibling(s) shielded them from the worst neglect or abuse.

with that in mind and taking into consideration things like the different reactions to the package from tai (this will cheer ruby up vs ooh, something from home!) and yang staying behind at beacon when tai takes ruby to visit the memorial stone, and now these clear differences in how the girls feel about the boba shop (yang: unsure, downplaying the surprise, maybe it’s dumb / ruby: boba!!!) which probably reflect their emotional experience of the outings with dad (yang: fun, happy that ruby is so excited, not that special otherwise / ruby: magical)…

well, let’s put it this way:

yang did not have a real caretaker starting from age five, when she became the de facto main parent to her three-year-old sister with at best sporadic breaks when qrow wasn’t too blackout drunk / tai was having a good day.

ruby had a primary caretaker who struggled but was always there (yang) and a dad who had to work a lot but made time to do special things like the boba trips so that he could spend quality time with his family (tai). plus an uncle she sometimes needed to help her sister deal with.

yang being parentified has the effect of insulating ruby from the severity of tai’s neglect; in a functional single-income household where one parent stays home and the other works to support the family and both parents are adults who chose this dynamic and enjoy their respective roles, the working parent is not bad or neglectful simply because they aren’t around during the day to take care of the kids, and they can foster close, loving relationships with their children by making the most of the time they have at home. the childhood ruby had was a dysfunctional imitation of that dynamic.

and then factoring in the summer-vs-raven projection, when tai was around he focused on bonding time with ruby moreso than yang.

the net result is that the harm to ruby is much more invisible (yang by virtue of being a child herself could not provide ruby with healthy parent-child boundaries or the emotional stability children need from their parents to feel secure and develop good emotional regulation; tai’s favoritism of ruby being intertwined with idealizing of summer fucked ruby’s sense of self really badly; in the first few volumes ruby feels hurt and bewildered every time yang acts like her sister instead of her parent).

ruby sees clearly and states in volume nine that yang raised her; i don’t think she would have been able to articulate that so plainly in volume one, and this is something she’s come to realize after leaving home / living independently. in v1 it’s “yang used to read to me when we were little” and i’d bet that’s how ruby would phrase everything yang did—as discrete habits, not the combined pattern of “yang raised me.”

whereas yang like. the first thing she does at beacon is try to step away from ruby: encouraging her to meet new people then ditching her to catch up with friends, not wanting to partner up with her for initiation… much as yang loves her sister and enthusiastically supports her, it’s also pretty obvious that yang saw beacon as an opportunity to focus on herself for once. which says to me that she’d already grasped that their home life was messed up and that she needed to break those patterns once she left.

#set up -> execution basically

[bestworstcase]

@red-bulbasaur from here

ok but he's probably working with glynda?? it combines him saving people and protecting the relic in a way that makes sense and gives him important work that he can't abandon without making him too important to the plot. qrow not telling the girls much could be for a million reason including keeping a sensitive mission secret and not worrying the girls since they have enough allready.

three issues with the idea that tai and glynda are working as partners on the same ‘assignment’ for oz:

that’s not how ozpin did things. in every other context he assigned one person per task

we know what glynda is doing: she left vale to find help, presumably in mistral and/or menagerie. if tai is working with her, there’s no reason for his ‘assignment’ to be kept secret; even if “trying to find help” is a cover for the real mission (eg, moving the crown somewhere else), then the cover story should cover tai as well.

there is zero narrative connection between glynda and tai other than both of them being adjacent to ozpin, and glynda is much closer to ozpin than tai is. he’s on patch sitting at home during the broadcast, she’s visiting the dust shop in downtown vale. she spearheads the failed effort to retake the academy, he stays at home.

the issue with qrow lying to the girls is that lying is always framed as the wrong choice. the idea that they’re not trustworthy enough to know more than “your dad is on assignment,” or that they need to be protected from the truth, is exactly why everyone—including qrow—was spitting mad at ozpin after 6.2/6.3; qrow is also the one who chose to bring the kids into the loop and has since v6 consistently trusted their judgment and been forthcoming with them.

for him to outright lie to their faces about information they specifically asked him about would be an enormous, shocking reversal for his character—and that’s a frankly bizarre thing to expect the story to do at a point where qrow is sober and more optimistic than he’s ever been. bordering on character assassination, like i said. this is a narrative where you cannot be a good person and lie to people. period. the liar is always wrong.

so it’s like. it comes down to whether you think the narrative will just sabotage everything it’s developed with oz and qrow in the last few volumes for the sake of making tai look better, or if you think the two characters who have been present and actively trying to better themselves since v6 will prove to be more trustworthy than the one who’s been sitting at home off screen since v4.

[bestworstcase]

So, regarding your Tai post,

https://www.tumblr.com/bestworstcase/748954216598470656/the-perennial-tai-discourse-is-really-interesting?source=share

I had some thoughts: I technically cover it in a separate post

https://www.tumblr.com/tumblingxelian/749060919422861312/really-solid-addition-here-much-like-with-qrows

But I'm unsure if the links will work so here is a slightly edited & expanded version:

Now, the idea that Ruby & Yang had very different childhoods is not an idea I strictly disagree with. But, I also think it is a bit inaccurate to treat it as outlined in your post.

What I mean is that while Yang is definitely more overt in the fact she feels Tai and the other adults failed them and defaults to centering family moments on Ruby. (For instance she frames the Zwei package as something to cheer Ruby up, its not for her & Ruby's the one really excited, Yang's just kind of there about it)

Despite that, Ruby herself doesn't have a simple relationship with Tai, or in fact she just might but that's not a good thing.

See, Ruby does not think about Tai very often, he's largely an afterthought in her letters for one. But more to the point he is not someone Ruby goes to for advice or guidance or even comfort.

Post Beacon, she mostly gets an update from him and is not bothered to see him go. She is OK being a bit more vulnerable around Qrow.

But the person she actually seeks out and seems utterly shocked at not receiving comfort from is Yang. It was also Yang who she questions for what to do next and Yang whom she confided her plans in before leaving.

Again she is shocked when Yang cannot supply these things to her.

Tai is her dad, but its a superficial relationship, he's nice, he can be fun, she does love him. She does not however, seem to perceive him as a reliable or responsible adult from whom she seeks protection or guidance.

The person she always defaulted to for that was Yang until she could no longer fill the role post V3 which likely fed into her issues with showing vulnerability in V9.

I tend to think she might have been more open to it in V5 given the breakdown tears & hug, but then Yang demonstrated she was still very much not all right & Ruby had no clue what to do. So she just sort of locked into her head that Yang needed 'her' protection now, not the other way around.

I would also just straight up note that even Ruby said it was Yang who raised her. Like, that wasn't even subtle, she knows who the parent was in that house and it wasn't Tai or Qrow. I don't think she'd say that if their childhoods were 'so' different that Tai was a functional parent to her but not Yang.

She definitely has a less... frosty relationship with the two grown men who she grew up around, Largely because they project the saintly Summer onto her and the Wretched Raven onto Yang.

Again, let's not forget Qrow's entirely willing to accept Yang brutalized a kid for shits and giggles or is "crazy". Or that Tai outright sees a lot of Raven in Yang, despite most of the traits he described not meshing with Yang's demonstrated or self described persona.

But even with that more positive relationship being projected onto and still raised by a sister two years your senior isn't exactly ideal. Both sisters had a shitty childhood, both were deeply neglected and failed and suffered because of that fact.

all true! but the nature of parentification is that the children experience the neglect in very different ways; the elder child is forced into an adult role, parenting the younger child, who is harmed in more invisible ways because they do have a caretaker—their sibling. anecdotally nearly every account of a childhood i’ve read by an adult who was raised as a child by older siblings has either alluded to or outright described 1. a much better childhood than their caretaking sibling(s) got, 2. because their sibling(s) shielded them from the worst neglect or abuse.

with that in mind and taking into consideration things like the different reactions to the package from tai (this will cheer ruby up vs ooh, something from home!) and yang staying behind at beacon when tai takes ruby to visit the memorial stone, and now these clear differences in how the girls feel about the boba shop (yang: unsure, downplaying the surprise, maybe it’s dumb / ruby: boba!!!) which probably reflect their emotional experience of the outings with dad (yang: fun, happy that ruby is so excited, not that special otherwise / ruby: magical)…

well, let’s put it this way:

yang did not have a real caretaker starting from age five, when she became the de facto main parent to her three-year-old sister with at best sporadic breaks when qrow wasn’t too blackout drunk / tai was having a good day.

ruby had a primary caretaker who struggled but was always there (yang) and a dad who had to work a lot but made time to do special things like the boba trips so that he could spend quality time with his family (tai). plus an uncle she sometimes needed to help her sister deal with.

yang being parentified has the effect of insulating ruby from the severity of tai’s neglect; in a functional single-income household where one parent stays home and the other works to support the family and both parents are adults who chose this dynamic and enjoy their respective roles, the working parent is not bad or neglectful simply because they aren’t around during the day to take care of the kids, and they can foster close, loving relationships with their children by making the most of the time they have at home. the childhood ruby had was a dysfunctional imitation of that dynamic.

and then factoring in the summer-vs-raven projection, when tai was around he focused on bonding time with ruby moreso than yang.

the net result is that the harm to ruby is much more invisible (yang by virtue of being a child herself could not provide ruby with healthy parent-child boundaries or the emotional stability children need from their parents to feel secure and develop good emotional regulation; tai’s favoritism of ruby being intertwined with idealizing of summer fucked ruby’s sense of self really badly; in the first few volumes ruby feels hurt and bewildered every time yang acts like her sister instead of her parent).

ruby sees clearly and states in volume nine that yang raised her; i don’t think she would have been able to articulate that so plainly in volume one, and this is something she’s come to realize after leaving home / living independently. in v1 it’s “yang used to read to me when we were little” and i’d bet that’s how ruby would phrase everything yang did—as discrete habits, not the combined pattern of “yang raised me.”

whereas yang like. the first thing she does at beacon is try to step away from ruby: encouraging her to meet new people then ditching her to catch up with friends, not wanting to partner up with her for initiation… much as yang loves her sister and enthusiastically supports her, it’s also pretty obvious that yang saw beacon as an opportunity to focus on herself for once. which says to me that she’d already grasped that their home life was messed up and that she needed to break those patterns once she left.

#profoundly different childhoods not much in the sense of good/bad but covert/overt harm. #which is p typical for any kind of favoritism dynamic #the favored child will have a happier childhood that masks the insidious ways the dysfunction Fucks Them Up

[bestworstcase]

option 1: tai’s guarding the crown of choice.

pros:

a legitimately important task that recontextualizes his ongoing decision to remain on patch as a personal sacrifice he makes for the greater good.

ozpin would pick the guy named for the god of light to be the gatekeeper of choice, huh.

if any parent in this story is meant to die, it’s him, and narratively this is the most intuitive way to do it.

cons:

realistically, what can tai do to prevent salem / cinder / summer from accessing the vault if they find it? if he’s the gatekeeper, staying on patch alone after everyone else evacuates achieves nothing except, ah, signaling to the enemy that the real vault is under signal academy. bad plan.

it means oz is breaking his promise to be honest and forthcoming, undermining his character growth for the sake of ‘surprising’ the audience with the most obvious answer.

means qrow has either been kept in the dark (see prev point) or he’s also deliberately hiding this information from his nieces after they asked him outright if he knew where tai is; this is so far afield for his character as to border on character assassination, and likewise undermines his positive growth since v7.

honestly makes both yang and ruby seem kind of stupid. they know the crown is hidden somewhere near beacon, that ozpin did something to protect it differently from the others, and that their father hasn’t left patch. ruby was sharp enough to guess that long memory might be a relic hidden in plain sight; yang is just as smart, and she knows tai had “some things” to look after on patch. are we expected to believe that “hey, is dad guarding the relic?” somehow hasn’t occurred to either of them?

tai harbors a whole lot of resentment toward ozpin, and based on qrow kicking him out of ruby’s bedroom to drip-feed her hints on where to go next, he seems to have been on the outer perimeter of the inner circle. why would oz entrust him with the relic’s safety?

glynda—ozpin’s scrupulously loyal second-in-command whose emblem is a crown and whose semblance puts her on par with a maiden—is a far more narratively plausible vault-guardian than tai, and the “sun dragon” makes a damn good red herring.

if he’s guarding the vault, he dies. sorry. but the point of putting the father of 2/4 protagonists in between the two main villains and the thing they want most (choice) is so they can kill him to get it, increasing tension and raising the emotional stakes of negotiating peace. to be clear, rwby is willing to Go There, but i think it’s an unsatisfactory way to close out the rose xiao long family arc.

option 2: survivors trapped under mountain glenn, and tai is taking point.

pros:

a genuinely important, worthwhile thing for him to be doing—even more so than guarding the crown. likely sets up a resolution for him in the vein of “you can be a good huntsman or a good father, and tai picked being a huntsman,” which is an elegant way to balance his contradictions.

gives him meaningful stuff to do in v10; for example, one stealthy huntsman with a bullhead could slip in and out of mountain glenn to get a few dozen people out at a time, and/or run supplies and messages between the kingdoms.

we get to see zwei back in action around mountain glenn :)

introduces a natural segue from playing defense in vacuo to mounting a counteroffensive against beacon as tai’s work clarifies the situation in vale.

easily the most 'heroic' direction for him without contorting the story to arbitrarily lionize tai: he’s a scout preparing the stage for the heroes to take the fight to salem, making him the good counterpart to watts.

cons:

makes no sense to keep it a secret. the emotional beats of B4 can still happen if the girls know this is what tai’s doing: instead of “do you… wonder why he’s not here? i know qrow said he’s on assignment, but what’s more important than here?” yang says “do you… wish he were here? with us? i know qrow said he’s looking for survivors, but how many of them can there really be by now? we need all the help we can get,” and ruby says “maybe we don’t have the full picture” as in maybe dad knows something we don’t and that’s why he hasn’t given up yet. the emotion is the same, and the big "they’re hiding in mountain glenn" reveal is hinted without spoiling.

leaves hanging the narrative thread of what tai has been doing since the fall of beacon, because the “some things” he was dealing with in v4 obviously wasn’t this.

option 3: tai is dead.

pros:

explains the apparent secrecy; qrow knows tai was away “on assignment” (i.e., had taken a huntsman contract that brought him out of the kingdom) at the time salem attacked vale, so he is missing but not yet presumed dead.

might reopen the mystery box of summer’s last mission through the real-deal “left on a mission and never came back” echo.

cons:

raven would know.

it’s a cheap, narratively unsatisfying twist that fails to deliver on the bread crumbs set up in v2-3 (tai starts going on missions again) and v4 (“some things”), and also undermines any serious emotional resolution with regard to yang and ruby’s complex relationships with tai.

option 4: summer’s working with salem, and tai is trying to convince her to come back.

pros:

“some things” being his presumed-dead wife who left him to join the enemy and with whom tai is now having an affair or otherwise hoping to coax back to the heroic side through the power of love whilst also keeping his mouth shut about her being a) still alive and b) a traitor is OBJECTIVELY the funniest answer.

brings forward and interrogates the way tai’s romantic grief informs the choices he makes as a parent: from hiding raven and then refusing to talk about her with yang, to shutting down when he lost summer and letting his five-year-old pick up the pieces, to discovering and then keeping summer’s secrets for the sake of some faint hope that she might finally come back to him.

cogent with the Dead (Absent) Mother / Neglectful Father / Evil Stepmother fairytale paradigm rwby deconstructs with raven, tai, and summer; the father chooses the stepmother over his children.

raises the emotional stakes of the war for summer through direct confrontation with the life she left behind, creating narrative opportunities to develop her character (is she still in love with tai? how does she feel about being his first priority, over their children? does she resent that he has her on this pedestal even now?) and apply pressure to her relationships with salem and cinder (do they know? is summer keeping her communication with him a secret, too? or is he an “asset” she’s using for salem’s benefit?).

consequently, raises the momentum of the narrative toward negotiation with salem; tai still has the coalition’s trust, however strained his personal relationships may be. summer is the obvious ambassador for salem’s side of the war, but she’s also the traitor who needs someone to vouch for her good intentions.

the secrecy needs no explanation: just as summer’s last mission was a summer secret, tai’s "assignment" is a taiyang secret and the girls know everything that oz and qrow do, because all of them have been left in the dark. raven might know, and she has the means to find if she doesn’t, but tai’s whereabouts are entangled with what raven knows about summer, so she can’t explain where tai is or why until she reveals her deep dark secrets about what happened between her and summer that night.

foreshadowing is solid: tai starts to go on "missions" again in v2, after the inner circle becomes aware that salem has infiltrated beacon and just before the breach downtown. when ruby visits summer’s grave in v3, she says "[dad] told me he’s going to be on some mission soon! i think he misses adventuring with you." he’s got to "look after some things" (but he isn’t talking about yang, because he stays home after she leaves). and then with B4 we have ruby echoing what the blacksmith taught her about summer in relation to tai, "maybe we don’t have the full picture?"

juicy

cons:

???

dependent on the unconfirmed theory that summer is working for salem as herself, not some unrecognizable enslaved monster, but i am as confident in that as i was about salem going to vale next and we all know how that turned out :)

taking their mom was not enough salem had to go for the full set APPARENTLY

option 5: secret fifth thing

pros:

???

cons:

???

[bestworstcase]

This is hyper specific but I want to get your take on the infamous shot in the lost fable where the sclera of Salem’s eyes are White and NOT Black. Her eyes are back to “normal” in the next scene. I’ve gone back and forth on this from it being an animation error (plenty prevalent in this indie animated show) to being superduper significant. At this point I’m 50/50 on it, where do you land? We can also just have fun with it, sometimes mistakes from the creators lead interesting places when you’re playing in a sandbox

she looks so wrong 😭

i also go back and forth because it’s weird and this is the only instance but on the other hand, this is a 3d model and color data is—afaik—stored on the faces and how likely is it, really, that a material failed to render in just this one scene ONLY for this specific set of polygons to make it look like her sclera were white instead of black. or else there’s something white clipping perfectly through her eyeballs for the whole shot. it just seems improbable? it’s not like every frame is colored manually. it’s also like that in the next shot too

<- very zoomed in

and the other thing is, there’s weird color stuff going on with ozma’s first reincarnation’s eyes in the lost fable too; they’re brown but there’s this sort of misty-green film that appears in them once they’re ruling their kingdom.

and the white sclera make her eyes look human, right. in a world where bright red eyes are within the spectrum of regular human eye colors (raven, emerald). from… a symbolic perspective it’s interesting to give salem human eyes specifically and only when she says “you said we needed to bring humanity together; in order to do that, we have to spread our word, and crush those who would deny it.” like. if eyes are windows to the soul then what does it mean for salem’s eyes to be wrong—not her own, not grimm but human—in this moment when she says that?

if nothing else, it does fit with reading the line as salem making a rhetorical point (this is what’s necessary, and if the end doesn’t justify the means, you must reconsider your end) rather than stating what she herself truly wants or feels, because. wrong eyes.

in which case it probably isn’t meant to be a diegetic change. the lost fable’s flashbacks are constructed and there are other instances where jinn adjusts details to make a point (like the wash of red light when salem talks to ozma outside her cabin).

but in terms of. like. headcanon. i like the idea that salem used magic sometimes to alter her appearance in small ways, because people were less scared of her when she made herself look more human. and then the implications of her feeling the need to do that when it was just her and ozma.

#but yeah i go back and forth on it too

[bestworstcase]

#oooooooooh#would love to see elaboration on the summer-rhodes connection at some point#but that grimm arm post was really long I understand you're prolly tired (via @blakistan)

FORTUNATELY this one is less of an episode close read and more of a conspiracy guy dot gif squinting at etymology and setup sitch

rhodes has two etymologies, one from greek ῥόδον (rhódon) meaning “rose,” the other from old english rōd meaning, variously, a cross or crucifix, a rod, or a clearing in a forested area. in the first sense rōd was used idiomatically to suggest a great burden or torment in the same vein as “a cross to bear.”

sidelong glance at summer rose. ok

we don’t know very much about rhodes but his establishing character moments is this:

followed by this:

which tells us a few things about him:

he pays enough attention to notice that something is not right here, but chooses not to intervene.

as a huntsman he has social clout that he is aware of and enjoys; these people might be friends or just admirers but either way man whipped out a sword in a hotel lobby to show it off.

he’s popular and a huntsman and has money (because this place is swank and he’s a patron), so his reason for #1 is Probably Not that he can’t.

we don’t know a whole lot about summer rose but what we do know is that 1. she was up on the literal mother of all pedestals and the blacksmith all-but-confirms this is what broke her, and 2. she is the kind of person who Does Something when she sees a problem. she Does Somethings so hard she joined salem…

points at rhodes. popular huntsman who enjoys and stokes the admiration and attention but Does Nothing when he sees a problem.

points at summer. perfect idolized huntress (the best of us!!) who burned every bridgeto escape that expectation and is defined by her dedication to the principle of Do Something.

hmm. gestures at the likelihood that summer rose trained cinder. hmmmmm

when cinder meets rhodes, her impression of what huntsmen are is “you can do whatever you want. go wherever you want.” rhodes told her she shouldn’t kill the madame because it wouldn’t make her life any better. he taught her to fight. not what we’d call a guy who cared a lot about the philosophy

fast forward like, ten years and cinder’s view is now, “huntsmen and huntresses should carry themselves with honor and mercy, yet i have witnessed neither.” who taught her that. who put it to her in those terms, that huntsmen are called to uphold a moral ideal. not rhodes, that’s for sure! but the best most perfect huntress who learnt the truth about what ozpin really stood for and decided she could not remain complicit and gave salem a reason to fight back? uhm. hm

black eyes / silver eyes. inverted mirrors…

the madame -> salem. first a cruel "mother" who deems cinder worthless and viciously exploits and abuses her, tangibly reveling in her power over cinder right up until the instant she loses control. then a cold, exacting, profoundly fucked up mother-figure who thinks the world of cinder but is also a labyrinth of trauma and isolation that twists her caring into abusive and dysfunctional patterns; cinder is reminded of the madame but salem is trying—however badly—to protect cinder from herself.

rhodes -> summer rose. first a "mentor" who trained cinder to sacrifice herself and accept abuse for seven years until she earned her freedom, and condemned her without a second thought when she defended herself from her primary abusers. then…?

possibly also: the reason salem isn’t and can’t be like the madame is that she knows exactly what it is like to be cinder. the girl in the tower, the witch in the woods, doomed because her creator despises her.

glances at the adam burning rose / wilt and blush / moonslice / lunar eclipse / ENSLAVED EXPLOITED BRANDED ACROSS HIS EYE?! / what-is-he-foreshadowing-about-miss-silver-eyed-turncoat-over-there questions about summer’s child soldierhood. hmm

mutters. also summer rose is to rhodes as salem is to the madame. trust

#half pattern recognition and half #they really named him rose huh. #but rose in a way that is also a cross to bear or an empty space—an absence you might say—in the woods. #biting things and chewing very hard

[bestworstcase]

oh and there is something about the decor of the glass unicorn being decked out red and gold and brown, cinder’s red-and-gold feminity-as-power-fantasy femme fatale thing, brief stint in earthy colors for a disguise, and then this

to kick off her liberation arc

mutters. also summer rose is to rhodes as salem is to the madame. trust

#coughs. you know how weiss and blake went from white/black to blue/purple as they healed from their trauma #and became their true selves #taps cinder’s atlas fit. #the reason this looks so dramatically different from all her prev outfits is she’s actually comfortable in it.

[bestworstcase]

mutters. also summer rose is to rhodes as salem is to the madame. trust

[bestworstcase]

the only purpose of the shock collar was to subjugate, enforce cinder’s status as an object the madame owned. she neither chose it nor wanted it—and in the end, it was just a necklace. cinder breaks it with ease, with one hand. anyone might have set her free at any time with, literally, no more effort than it would take to lift a finger.

(do not try the bullshit nonsense about cinder’s enslavement being legal with me. slavery was abolished after the great war, and when the madame is displeased she brings cinder into the kitchen to torture her behind closed doors. adopting an impoverished orphan from a foreign country and using a collar made to look like a pretty necklace is how she gets away with it, enabled by the complete indifference of her wealthy patrons to the plight of the "adopted child."

the thematic point of rhodes is that he enforces the law only when it’s convenient for him to do so: he knows cinder is being abused, but he’s a regular patron of the hotel and he chooses not to say or do anything to intervene until he recognizes cinder as a threat to the madame. “hurting them won’t make your life any easier.”

we see this pattern reoccur again and again in atlas, that those who hold political or economic power flout the law without consequence or contort it to work for them while those beneath are subjected to strict, unforgiving enforcement. everything robyn does before the election is legal and above-board but the ace-ops openly treat her like a criminal and hound her about obeying the law, while ironwood misappropriates construction materials earmarked for mantle. this is the idea that rhodes embodies.)

so the greatest injustice of the collar is that it had no real power, by itself, over cinder. she could take it off whenever she wanted, except that she was not allowed to; no one willing to help her, no safe haven where she could find refuge after, and when she becomes desperate enough to resort to violence to free herself she is immediately prevented from doing so by a huntsmen—exemplars of moral virtue as they are intended to be—who tells her that in order to be good she must endure seven more years before she is allowed to leave without her guardian’s permission.

as an instrument of control, the collar can exist only through the willingness of the hotel’s patrons to participate in the fiction that cinder, having been lifted out of poverty by the madame’s generosity (look, she even gave the girl a lovely necklace!), is now earning her keep, learning the value of hard work. pay the scars no mind. rhodes intervenes to keep protect the madame, and his fondness for cinder is circumscribed by that motive.

the first time he leaves after he begins to train her, rhodes says goodbye by placing his hand on top of her head; cinder flinches—

—and the scene cuts right to the collar:

in the same mode, the madame electrocutes cinder in a panic as cinder strangles her, and rhodes’ final act is to place his hand on cinder’s head, scaring her—

—after which she cuts him down and stands upright to remove her collar:

the collar and the gentle (unwanted) hand are one and the same, two faces of a single instrument. carrot, stick. neither figures cinder as a human being. rhodes is only gentle until she disobeys him, whereupon the covert violence of their first meeting is reified: he enters her only ‘safe’ place to catch her in an unlawful act; his first action is to pass judgment; his second, to draw his weapons.

now, that’s not yours, is it?—huntsmen are called to embody a heroic ideal, to protect others who cannot protect themselves. rhodes places his own weapons into cinder’s hands and declares that he will train her as a huntress on the condition that she agrees not to protect herself; he releases himself from his duty to protect her by moving her into the category of people who do not need to be protected, and thereby makes her both guardian and grimm: as a child who will become a huntress it falls to her to protect her family from the monster of herself.

thus she’s forced to become an active participant in her own abuse; before she can break free of the collar, she has to bite the hand that held it in place.

now to the grimm. during the montage of cinder’s training-and-abuse, there is a particular sequence that goes like this: rhodes and cinder spar with wasters late one night, he disengages and gives her an approving nod; we cut to cinder kneeling before the madame in the empty lobby, dusting a glass statuette of a sabyr for inspection. her work is found inadequate, and the madame finds quiet satisfaction in reminding cinder of the power she has over cinder:

then the madame walks away, and although cinder strives to maintain the performance of being unaffected—indifferent—she can’t:

in contrast to the scenes preceding cinder’s bargain with rhodes—wherein the larger-than-life glass statues looming over the lobby alternate between prominently visible or just protruding into frame and cinder’s face is an open book of angry resentment—this is the only instance of a grimm figurine being clearly visible and in focus during the montage, and also the one time cinder’s mask slips to reveal her anger.

similarly, in the time-skip at the end of the montage, the glass sphinx sitting on the coffee table in the mid-left is removed to signal the passage of time, with no other changes made to the decor:

but guess who’s back as soon as the situation reaches critical mass?

glass wolf. glass dragon. glass shoes.

the point is, throughout the flashback midnight leverages these glass-grimm to symbolize cinder’s true self, her anger which protects her and which the gentle hand demands she extinguish. the fantastical gilded opulence of the glass unicorn depends on cinder staying quietly in her cage. no, it isn’t fair—the gentle hand admits this—but it is her moral imperative to serve others. in this distorted unreality the defenseless and the indefensible become commingled. a huntress, as salem would have it, is a defender who lives and dies to protect a lifestyle. or she is, as ozpin defines it, one who guards the peace by killing monsters.

cinder’s instinctive understanding that this is not fair—that she is not nothing—that she has been wronged—is the monster she must slay to become the hero of this story, the story of the glass unicorn and madame and rhodes and all of atlas. and in the end she can’t.

rwby has never been precious about depicting blood, but there is no blood in this scene: not not on the floor, not on the bodies, not on her weapons, not a single drop upon her white shirt. her hands are clean. in shadow, the monster snaps the chain around her throat and turns to looks up at the moon—and its light reveals what is true. her tears, her scars. a child who deserved better than she was given. a child who did nothing wrong.

ahem.

Keeping [grimm] in captivity has proved to be an understandably difficult task, as the creatures tend to either die, or kill those who imprisoned them in the first place.

hm! anyway. the narrative function of this flashback is to provide context and contrast with the scenes that follow.

to review:

the collar’s power is enforced by communal indifference and complicity.

the madame, though unaware of him, depends on rhodes to keep cinder under her control; rhodes intervenes to protect the madame from cinder.

the gentle hand is an equal to the collar, a mechanism of control by which cinder is made to participate in her own abuse, and when she disobeys, it turns to iron and inflicts violent punishment. even when he is gentle, cinder flinches under his touch.

by training cinder to fight but forbidding her to defend herself, rhodes casts her into the role of both guardian and grimm: she is expected to protect the madame by slaying her anger and turning the other cheek.

the glass grimm figurines symbolize cinder’s anger, which protects her. when she defends herself, cinder metaphorically becomes grimm: the monster of the glass unicorn is destined to be hated and hunted for the rest of her life, and the monster of the glass unicorn is a blameless child who refused to let herself be hurt. grimm, in this story, are good.

also note

the similar framing here.

now!—from the moment cinder wakes up, it is abundantly clear that she expects to be met with brutal punishment for her failure. “you—you brought me back here… we failed.” she’s horror-stricken at finding herself in this place and that hardens into terror as the reality sinks in that she is within salem’s reach.

later, on the bridge, she affects calm until salem pauses in front of her; her eyes snap open. she shrinks into herself at the sound of salem’s voice but hangs on every word. when salem mentions the winter maiden, cinder grits her teeth and braces herself.

cinder associates salem with the madame: that is why without you, i am nothing falls out of her mouth so easily when salem tears her down in 8.1 and again when salem threatens her in 8.4—those are the words to make the pain stop, to appease, to demonstrate that she is contrite and repentant and grateful. she believes that this is what salem wants to hear when cinder has displeased her. and she is, at the top of the bridge scene, waiting for the torture to begin so that she can choke it out again and survive this humiliating ordeal.

except that is not what salem wants to hear.

by now salem knows beyond any doubt that “without you, i am nothing” is what cinder believes she wants to hear, and it is obvious to anyone with eyes that cinder expects to be tortured. whether salem knows cinder’s history or not—i don’t think she does, not in any great detail—she knows people well enough to put two and two together. salem knows, then, that cinder expects to be tortured into groveling self-denigration.

she doesn’t want cinder to expect that from her. there’s no other reason for salem to be so thorough in dismantling the expectation.

if she wanted to make cinder afraid, the more effective way is to decline to torture her at all: cinder is so certain that salem will hurt her that withholding punishment entirely will only convince her that salem intends to wait until the moment she lets her guard down, or some other form of deferred retribution all the worse for being delayed.

whereas the most efficient way to puncture cinder’s terror of being tortured is—somewhat perversely—to actually torture her a little bit. because cinder does not BELIEVE there is any possible outcome in which salem spares her, if salem wants to introduce the possibility of mercy she first needs to enter cinder’s reality, where mercy doesn’t exist, by proving she can and will inflict pain to answer both defiance (“you chose to disobey my specific instructions”) and failure (“just to fail again…”)

a brief burst of pain to express displeasure instead of holding cinder under torture until she breaks isn’t really merciful, but it’s the lower bound of what cinder will be able to trust and it eases her into the idea that salem is lenient.

then, “and i’ve realized it’s all my fault. you’ve fought your whole life unwaveringly for what you want, and here i am holding you back, instead of lifting you up; you deserve so much more than i’ve given you.”

aside from being a straightforward subversion of cinder’s clear expectation—cinder thinks she will be abused without mercy until she breaks, salem stops and absolves cinder by reframing cinder’s disobedience as a natural consequence of her own failures—salem has a few specific things in mind here.

the most obvious is the reversal of what she said to cinder in 4.11: “i thought you were the girl who wanted power. did you lie to me? then stop holding back.” and she’s also pointedly walking back things she said yesterday, in 8.1 and 8.4: “all you need concern yourself with is your ability to act when i tell you to” and the “she thinks; she wants…” bit are here flipped into implicit praise for cinder’s tenacity in pursuing what she wants and implicit apology for standing in her way.

but the most interesting angle to consider is that this is salem’s response to “without you, i am nothing.” salem does not verbally respond either of the times cinder says that to her in 8.1 and 8.4; the first time, she dismisses everyone with a gesture, and the second time she just walks away. both reactions are in line with what cinder expects—after all, the point is to remind cinder that she is nothing.

however, cinder has—from what we’ve seen—never spoken to salem this way before, and given she seems genuinely taken aback when salem shuts her down in 8.1 i do think it’s likelier than not that salem has never demeaned her like this before, and that together with having been in atlas for months is what surfaces the trauma association with the madame and thence the appeasing behavior.

so consider how this looks to salem.

the last time she spoke to cinder, she said “you’re free to speak your mind,” and cinder whipped around from the window without hesitation, outraged: “i don’t understand! working with bandits? leaving ruby alive? what’s the point? we’re strong enough to take what we want by force!”—not even a ma’am in there. cinder addressed her like she saw herself and salem as equals, notwithstanding that salem had final say, and salem clearly didn’t have a problem with that.

several months pass. salem is displeased about the loss at haven but trusts that cinder will make an effort to recover the lamp; she is also worried enough for cinder to toss her plans and divert nearly everything to atlas, not that she’s willing to admit that’s why.

cinder walks onto the bridge and the first words out of her mouth are “my queen.” a few minutes in salem curtly informs her that no she will not go rampaging after the winter maiden and cinder’s answer is a demure, “of course; without you, i am nothing.” and then a few hours later they quarrel about it and cinder repeats those exact words in exactly the same tone again.

unless salem knows cinder’s history in far more granular detail than i believe cinder would be willing to divulge, that’s… a really strange shift in behavior with no clear reason; yes, she had to make up the loss at haven (and she did), and yes, salem was unusually mean to her, but neither of those things add up to this plainly well-practiced self-abasement from the girl who only a few months ago did not appear to have a humble bone in her body. once might have been sarcasm; but twice within a few hours?

whereafter cinder ran off to attack the winter maiden and almost died again and salem had six hours to pick all of this apart in her head while cinder lay unconscious.

why didn’t she respond to cinder saying “without you, i am nothing,” if that is not what she wants from cinder? well,

“you disobeyed my specific instructions, just to fail again, and i’ve realized it’s all my fault.” both times cinder said that, it was in response to the specific instructions that cinder disobeyed when she went after penny: you will act when i tell you to, and you will remain here. six hours, salem had to think about this. “you’ve fought your whole life unwaveringly for what you want, and here i am holding you back, instead of lifting you up; you deserve so much more than i’ve given you.”

salem does not think of cinder as nothing. even when she is deliberately being mean, she makes a point to say that she values cinder (“just because you’re more valuable to me than a pawn–”). cinder holds the key to her victory and cinder is also important to her in ways she cannot bring herself to admit except that she keeps bending her plans further and further for cinder’s sake. the first time cinder says “without you, i am nothing” to her, she seems bemused (brows up) and then wry. the second time, she doesn’t react at all.

then because she left it there, cinder nearly dies and is unconscious for hours. and once she wakes up salem hits her with:

this is my fault

what you want matters

i should be lifting you up

you deserve better

i will help you

IN A CLASSIC SALEM MOVE she does not actually say what she means, which is “you are not nothing,” but she finds an impressive number of ways to say it without saying it in just a handful of lines. and:

she doesn’t touch cinder, but instead she offers, gives cinder a choice to take her hand or not, and this matters because no other character has ever given cinder that.

in 2.1 cinder touches roman’s face to assert her power over him; she does the same to pyrrha in 3.12 right before killing her; she slaps emerald in 3.7.

in 5.9, cinder reacts to watts grabbing her wrist like this—

—and then sets his hand on fire. in 8.1, emerald starts to run over to embrace her, cinder snaps her head around and snarls “quiet.,” stopping her in her tracks. and after she wakes up in midnight, when emerald rushes into the room and grabs her, cinder tenses and verbally lashes out before jerking her hand away.

cinder really does not like to be touched and that all traces back to:

rhodes patting her head. which is what he’s reaching down for when cinder kills him, because this time she senses him moving to touch her and can’t take it.

cinder bristles and retaliates whenever anyone touches her, and outside of grappling during fights the only times cinder ever touches other people is to hurt them or to remind them of her power to hurt them, because that is what touch means to her; it’s something those with power do to those beneath them, and something the weak must endure.

for salem to offer her hand to help cinder up is strange and unsettling; it breaks the rules. and cinder is very hesitant to take it—her fingers shake—but she does, and it isn’t a trick, salem pulls her to her feet without hurting her.

whereupon cinder’s whole demeanor transforms from terrified incredulity to calculation. she doesn’t understand what just happened, but she knows touch is an instrument of coercion and a way to inflict pain. if salem were like the madame, she would not have done any of that; if salem didn’t touch her with the intent to harm her, then there are only two possibilities:

one, that salem’s resemblance to the madame is superficial and she is actually much more like rhodes; or two, that salem is the weak one and cinder holds some unknown degree of power over her.

the instant this thought enters cinder’s head, it becomes urgently important to figure out which it is, hence the murdering of colleagues and stepsisters and lying to salem’s face that cinder gets up to immediately afterward. BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT THIS POST IS ABOUT THIS IS A POST ABOUT THE GRIMM ARM. AND THEMES.

wheeze. okay

in the glass unicorn, cinder has two parental figures—the madame and rhodes—who act in synchronicity to keep her in her place. shock collar, pat on the head. stick, carrot. she is tortured and made to refract this violence inwards, against herself, by turning the other cheek. within this narrative, the symbolic purpose of the grimm is to protect cinder and cinder herself is symbolically identified as grimm; just as black glass is her signature in in the present, the white glass of the hotel’s grimm figurines reflects cinder’s starkly white-and-grey uniform.

glass, cinder. glass grimm, glass shoes.

unicorns, classically, are said to be ferociously wild and dangerous beasts tamable only by the touch of a maiden. those who hunt unicorns, then, should solicit a maiden’s assistance. she goes out into the woods alone; the unicorn finds her and docilely, fearlessly lays its head upon her lap and goes to sleep; and thus the hunters take it. this manner of hunting unicorns is called entrapment, and among medieval and renaissance depictions of unicorns it is by far the most common motif.

in the world of remnant, if unicorns are real then they are undoubtedly a kind of grimm.

gestures at cinder, the fall maiden, who can tame the grimm. who feels for them. maiden. unicorn. maiden. unicorn.

the story of the glass unicorn is a story about a maiden-monster whom a huntsman instructs to tame herself lest she be hunted forever; an entrapment of the self; in the end she hears the baying of hunting dogs in the distance and awakens to the truth that she too will be killed, in spirit if not in body, if she obeys the huntsman. the unicorn is not to blame, and the maiden is right to protect it, and the unicorn is, has always been, grimm.

bearing all of this in mind,

is the grimm arm another collar?

i don’t think it…is, actually, in any sense except that cinder forms an association between the madame and salem in 8.1—the collar and the arm are diametric opposites, mirror-images of each other:

where the collar was fragile and easily removed, the grimm arm is part of cinder’s body. where the collar derived all its power from pretense (it’s only a pretty necklace!), the grimm arm is impossible to mistake for something other than what it is. where the collar’s sole purpose was to inflict pain and remind cinder of her place, the foremost purpose of the arm is to replace cinder’s missing limb. where the collar was forced upon her and she hated it, cinder trained hard to master her new arm and has grown more comfortable with it in every new volume.

paired with the way grimm function symbolically within the glass unicorn narrative, as representations of cinder’s justified anger and desire to protect herself… well. maiden, unicorn. lol

is it then an iteration of the gentle hand? that’s a more interesting question, because salem’s abuse of cinder is really quite a lot more like rhodes than the madame, but then there’s also… the reversal. rhodes’ affection for cinder is restricted by his interest in protecting the madame, and when cinder disobeys him he attacks her presumably with the intent to arrest her for murder. whereas salem has repeatedly and increasingly rearranged her plans for cinder’s benefit, and when cinder disobeys her, she reconsiders her treatment of cinder and offers an apology.

and obviously—

—we have the way rhodes touches cinder’s head, which at best makes her tense up in discomfort and at worst scares her so much she kills him to make him stop, mirrored in the same episode by salem offering her hand and cinder choosing to take it.

salem is not by any stretch of the imagination good to cinder, but midnight places her in juxtaposition with the madame and rhodes in order to clarify the difference between salem and the parent-figures of cinder’s childhood. it’s salem who tells cinder that she isn’t nothing, that she deserves better, that she was right to become defiant when salem was cruel to her. it’s salem who gives cinder a choice to let salem touch her or not.

everyone who gets where the wind is blowing with cinder understands, because it is obvious, that her turnaround is going to be incited by someone showing her mercy, which will shatter her view of the world and open a door for her to change. but… that “someone” is salem. it is literally already happening.

the first crack is salem telling her you deserve so much more than i’ve given you, as she pulls cinder to her feet.

and cinder doesn’t know how to parse that, she has no frame of reference except the madame and rhodes and she’s superimposed them both onto salem; the discrepancies, the pieces that don’t fit, are small right now. they will get larger, and the cracks will keep widening until the looking glass breaks.

which is why the grimm arm is related to the collar in the specific way that it is, with cinder flashing back to her childhood and the pain salem inflicts ending when cinder shifts emotionally from helpless fear to defiance and salem then explicitly affirming the rightness of cinder’s anger. the moral of the glass unicorn narrative according to rhodes is that what cinder did is unforgivable, and she will never escape it; the moral according to salem is that cinder did the right thing, and deserves better. the symbolic function of the grimm figurines in the glass unicorn narrative is to represent cinder’s self-protective anger. salem, grimm, uses cinder’s grimm arm to make a point that cinder should get angry when salem mistreats her, and then rewards her for being defiant.

is that a really fucked up way for salem to make that point YES OBVIOUSLY but no one else is even trying. lol

little steps.

(whispers into a cup) the grimm arm is also a metaphor for learning to be vulnerable and trust others not to harm you

cinder feels its pain. when it’s severed, it hurts, but also grows back. it’s both powerful (superbly strong, inhuman flexibility) and vulnerable (aura can’t protect it). salem can use it to hurt her; it connects them both together, so salem knows she’s alive and cinder knows when she’s back. it refused to bond with cinder until she let go of her fear and welcomed it.

the shattering trauma that made her what she is now was rhodes telling her that defending herself made her an irredeemable monster. the grimm figurines in her childhood story symbolize cinder’s desire to defend herself. the grimm arm is part of her body that connects her to salem in a way that salem can abuse to hurt her, but salem is also the first character to look cinder in the eye and tell her that she is right to defend herself. both cinder and salem are in the early stages of developing villain -> hero arcs.

your newfound strength brings with it a crippling weakness, salem says. remember that it comes with a cost. take care to protect yourself; there is only so much i can do to aid you. cinder wants to be strong, but she is terrified of weakness, and it is the terror of weakness that drives her, that must be faced, that must be resolved before she can find peace. her story isn’t about “learning to be satisfied with the power she already has” it’s about learning to be okay with being vulnerable. with having weaknesses.

like an arm she can’t shield with aura, that grows back when it’s severed, which she feared and then hid in discomfort and now accepts as a part of herself. just because salem can hurt her doesn’t mean that salem is incapable of choosing not to. salem could also, like, smash cinder into a gory pancake with a snap of her fingers.

it’s a story. about trust.

#blah blah blah ''but her shoulder—'' #cinder doesn’t care. #v8 is HER volume and not one #single solitary HINT that cinder is #even a little bit concerned about #this thing putting up roots? #none of you would survive sirin hárohȧm lmfao

[bestworstcase]

the perennial Tai Discourse is really interesting to track bc, speaking broadly, the two major camps are just:

those who focus primarily on ruby’s recollection of her childhood and relationship with her dad (and filter what yang says through that lens such that “i had to pick up the pieces and keep things together when i was five” gets diluted into “yang had responsibilities as a child”)

those who focus primarily on yang’s memories and her arc in v4 (and tend to just ignore or minimize the things ruby says that suggest a positive relationship with tai, in particular often just flat out disregarding how excited ruby is to spend time with or receive care packages from him)

when it’s like. yeah that’s. literally the point. that ruby and yang had profoundly different childhoods.

they’re half-sisters in a story about fairytales and only one of them had a decent dad. rwby is unsubtly interrogating the fairytale archetype of the Evil Stepmother/Dead Mother with raven (not dead, but absent) and summer (villain, presumed dead) and that archetype quite literally requires its counterpart archetype of the Neglectful Father who remarries and tacitly participates in the Evil Stepmother’s abuse of his child from his first wife

tai is as much an exploration of the fairytale Neglectful Father as raven is the Dead Mom and summer is the Evil Stepmother. that’s. a core aspect of the narrative surrounding the rose xiao long family.

the Dead Mom often reincarnates as a bird or tree or similar spirit to watch over her child; rwby turns this on its head by reimagining the Dead Mom as an absent one. raven watches over yang in her bird form because she is too afraid to be meaningfully present; she isn’t dead, but her absence in yang’s life is so complete that she might as well have been, and the fairytale tension between the Dead Mom’s death and her lingering presence is explored through these cramped and inadequate half-measures raven takes in trying to have it both ways.

the Evil Stepmother is a vehicle for making the fairytale heroine miserable; she has no identity nor any reason for her monstrous treatment of the child who is not her own. rwby, again, flips this over with the mystery of summer rose. who was she, really? did anyone know? she was a good stepmom—she loved yang like her own daughter—but now she’s gone. she left. she never came back. she lied. she joined salem. why? what expectations did she feel on her shoulders? what broke her? why did she do the things she did?

lastly, the Neglectful Father must either be a love-blind fool or a weak, contemptible man with no love or loyalty to his own blood; he forgets his motherless child at the behest of his new love. rwby turns this on its head too by rendering tai as a human being—messy, flawed, fully-realized. wicked stepsisters exist for the purpose of being spoiled by the Evil Stepmother in juxtaposition with her cruelty to the first child, who is kind and good because she remembers her mother’s lessons. the fairytale children of these archetypes function as repetitions of their mothers. rwby makes that the central conceit of its spin on the Neglectful Father: what if he loved both the Dead Mom and the Evil Stepmother so much and then both of them broke his heart in mirrored ways, leaving him a single father to both of their children? if he sees raven in yang and summer in ruby, how does that color his relationships with both girls? if you take away the Evil Stepmother but not her daughter, does the Neglectful Father remember his first child? or are people more complicated than that?

and with all three, the narrative engages with these one-dimensional archetypes by constructing complicated, multi-faceted characters on top of them; by tossing the simplistic moral didacticism of a fairytale and presuming, first, that everyone is trying their best, that bad choices can be made from good intentions, and that no one gets it right all the time, or even most of the time. love and profound dysfunction can coexist.

ruby and yang had very different childhoods. that’s the narrative foundation the whole rose xiao long family is built on, because they’re a deconstruction of the archetypal fairytale blended family.

#this is also why every permutation of ''tai isnt rubys Real Dad'' is nonsense btw. ruby being yang’s half-sister instead of step-sister is #on purpose. the condemnation of the archetypal fairytale Neglectful Father is he mistreats his own blood in favor of another man’s children #and rwby uses his blood relation to both his daughters to question that framing; #the dynamic doesn’t become any Less dysfunctional if the favored child is equally the father’s by blood

[bestworstcase]

an aside. it’s very [clenches fist] vindicating to see stuff like the hard-light doors protecting shade’s library from the elements and like boba shops around vacuo because my god am i over the fandoms typical treatment of vacuo as this like backwards hellscape where technology doesn’t exist. as if there isn’t explicitly a ccts tower and at least one smaller regional support tower there, as if all the vacuan characters other than the anti-tech extremists don’t have scrolls.

(“watts would have been of no use to salem in vacuo” fanon in particular is so obnoxious. YOU THINK THERE ARENT COMPUTERS IN VACUO??)

like… it’s a resource-poor kingdom in a harsh desert environment where food/water are both scarce and the outskirts of the city are constantly shifting due to sinkholes opening up and there isn’t a functioning government to coordinate the resources + labor necessary to excavate abandoned buildings buried by sand storms. That’s It.

none of that precludes vacuo having the same level of technology as like mistral or vale. (which. it. explicitly. does. CCTS tower and all.) none of it precludes vacuo having… like… an economy that exists at all… bfrgdc

#also loving that dry river running past the city #aesthetically it’s a nice-looking way to break up the terrain #the palms and vegetation growing around it imply seasonal variation ie a wet season #and the fact that it’s DRY during the dry season… tasty #prayer circle for a flash flood episode in v10 i think that would be pretty neat #the mountains too… #well those are mentioned in BTE but it’s nice to see them. they look good

[bestworstcase]

salem DOES allude to the blacksmith pretty overtly in WOR: aura :3c

that said, alyx / little / somewhat wouldn’t have any reason to know salem, ’cause any journeys she made through the ever after would surely have happened quite long ago. the only remnanters they could possibly recognize are rwby (and maybe jaune by his armor, but neither alyx nor little nor somewhat ever saw him in his Youth)

the blacksmith also sends the kids back through an identical portal; it becomes multi-colored as it settles but this is what hers looks like when it first forms:

so the known options are:

the staff

the blacksmith, who we know has some degree of knowledge of what happens in remnant (possibly the ability to see what she needs to see, when she needs to see it?) so conceivably they could find a way to ask her for help from remnant

and then there’s the unknown option of how alyx and lewis fell into the ever after, because jaune doesn’t mention seeing a portal or the kids using the staff (which seems like it would be something he’d 1. ask about and 2. share, if the kids had found and used the staff). so there’s either some sort of gate or door that either resides in vacuo or floats around remnant and can open under particular circumstances

and the commonality between the blacksmit’s portal and ambrosius’ portal leads me to suspect that all the relic spirits might have the power to open a door to the ever after, since 1. they seem to be beings who were bound to the relics rather than spirits of the relics themselves, and 2. ambrosius implies pretty heavily that there are things he can do but isn’t allowed to, meaning the spirits may have powers beyond the scope of the rules of the relics, and if the bindings don’t specifically prohibit those other powers a la ambrosius being specifically forbidden to bring people back from the dead… well. who knows!

“the hawker will be back” isn’t an observation i expected to be vindicated on but lmao. here we are. never doubt me

given… the portal and everything “oh! you’re back!” is probably intended to make us think neo. but a) neo would have eclosed from the tree just as ruby did, and b) somewhat wouldn’t know her. they might recognize her a little bit like they did the prince, but unlike the prince (whom they’ve played a game with twice before :3c) they don’t have any reason to feel good about neo, and “oh! you’re back!” is a tangibly happy sentiment.

an unexpected portal opens in the brothers’ acre, and someone somewhat knows walks through. the spot ends on the question of who it is and what happens next—meaning it’s probably a spoiler for the show proper—and there are, realistically, only five people this could realistically be. alyx and lewis were from vacuo, so whatever the equivalent of the ‘rabbit hole’ is, it’s probably in the desert somewhere.

it’s team rwby. either someone in v10 is going to have the idea go hide the sword in the ever after, or… this is a tease for the very end when everyone goes to the ever after to put the relics together so they can convince the god of light to ascend.

[bestworstcase]

anyways. enough spitballing

i was so right abt fun parent tai

YANG: Do you… wonder why he’s not here? With everybody else? I know Qrow said he’s on assignment, but what’s more important than here? RUBY: Maybe we don’t have the full picture. YANG: I don’t know. Some things you just need to be there for.

first. there are two possibilities: if qrow knows what this “assignment” is, he hasn’t filled in his nieces and the old guard backslid HARD after team rwby fell—the exclusion of ren and nora from the secret meeting in B1 also points in that direction, so it feels quite plausible; on the other hand, if raven knows where tai is and what he’s doing, it seems strange that ruby and yang would not also know, unless the girls haven’t asked her about summer at all (in which case i’d believe that they’re just not really on speaking terms).

like if raven had a conversation with ruby about summer, i can’t see her hiding ‘the full picture’ with regard to tai if she knew about it, even if qrow wanted her to. maiden of knowledge, begrudging oz his secrets, and all.

on the other hand. if the girls know everything qrow does, that would imply that tai’s “assignment” is either an ozpin secret (and oz hasn’t been keeping his promise to be honest, which feels incongruous with him actively fighting his curse now) or a taiyang secret, in which case i am one hundred percent sure it isn’t to do with the crown of choice.

“maybe we don’t have the full picture,” says ruby, thinking about what the blacksmith showed her and what the blacksmith said. that’s the big lesson she learned in the tree, not to jump to conclusions on incomplete information. so that narratively links tai’s mysterious “assignment” to summer’s mysterious “last mission,” which was a “summer secret.” if tai stayed behind in vale to deal with a taiyang secret that not even oz knows about… it’s summer. lol. it can only be summer. if it were the crown, oz would know because ozpin would have given him that assignment in the first place; if it were defending people hiding in mountain glenn, there’s no reason for it to be secret.

but if he knows summer is alive and well and with salem, and he’s trying to, i don’t know, turn her against salem (or ‘save’ her)… well. maybe we don’t have the full picture indeed.

second. oouuugh the weight of what yang doesn’t say. back in v4 she forced herself to put on the prosthetic before she was ready and white-knuckled her way back to functional so she could go find ruby because her dad said he hadn’t gone after ruby because he had “some stuff to look after” at home, and yang thought he meant her; that the only reason he wasn’t out there with ruby was because he had to be here with her.

so she removed herself from the situation—left to find ruby herself—and tai… stayed at home. it’s been months, now. atlas fell and everyone is regrouping in vacuo, trying to prepare for an attack they know will come sooner or later, except tai, who is “on assignment.” what’s more important than here? what’s more important than being here with both his daughters, at the end of the world? if qrow knows, what’s so important that he has to keep them in the dark? if qrow doesn’t know, then it can’t reasonably be to do with the relic at beacon—which is the only thing that could arguably be more important than joining the vacuo coalition.

“some things you just need to be there for,” says yang. my dad just kind of… shut down. and then dad was always busy with school and ruby couldn’t even talk yet; i had to pick up the pieces. i had to keep things together, alone. ruby starts to reminisce about coming to this place with tai when they were kids, and it’s a fond memory for yang too…but one undercut with all of this. the outings were fun—they slowly increased from once a month treats to twice-a-week because ruby got so excited—(ruby is over the moon when she sees the boba shop; yang spends half the walk there second-guessing herself and downplaying the surprise; both reactions speak to their experiences of these outings in childhood)—and why isn’t he here now? why is it, once again, yang trying to pick up the pieces alone while he’s busy with something else more important?—and this time it isn’t even that he’s going to work to put food on the table and make sure bills get paid, he’s just “on assignment” doing… something. that qrow either won’t tell or doesn’t know.

and that feeling is what incites her to talk to ruby about her own failings, and the first thing she says is i don’t need an explanation, because she doesn’t want to make ruby’s crisis about herself but also because she’s about to apologize for not being attentive enough or present enough or aware enough to Be There when ruby needed her.

which is not untrue (surprise! parentified children don’t make good parents for their two-years-younger siblings!) but also. back in v5 when she confronted raven, yang compared herself to raven (you’ll give me the relic and run because you’re afraid of salem; i’m afraid of salem too but i’ll be here waiting for her when she comes after me).

and that’s what yang is doing here with tai (he was physically there and provided for their needs and took them on fun outings sure, but he wasn’t there, when yang looks back on her childhood what she remembers is a sense of overwhelming responsibility and isolation because her dad wasn’t present, and now he’s not even here; she let ruby down in a similar way, being around without really seeing what ruby was going through, but she sees now how she failed and knows what she needs to do to make up for it and she will, she promises, she already is.)

#they are not uh. kid gloving tai at all

[bestworstcase]

irrespective of the fine details it does all but confirm that the main story is returning to the ever after sooner or later, and in combination with the pointed emphasis on the hawker’s return (as the hawker, no less—his feathers are darker now but he is otherwise completely himself) that feels like a really solid gesture at neo / the cat / jabber all returning to the story even if only to tie off the loose ends.

neo is a) human and b) not dead, so she’ll ascend the way ruby did (affirmation of herself and who she wants to be without leaving anything behind).

both the cat and jabber were created by the brothers; the cat was disconnected from the tree until their death, jabber died and returned or got remade many times over without being changed. now unlike neo, both of them were killed, but based on what happened with jabber i think they might turn out to ascend in an atypical manner, just as humans can ‘ascend’ without ascending. there’s probably a throughline here with light’s fixation on continuity; the cat and jabber might ascend in a way that resembles ozma without the soul parasitism. or something.

anyway the funniest possible way for the terrible trio (<3) to re-enter the story is for them to be just. there. in jabber’s acre, working together to fix it up (like jabber was trying to do alone!) when team rwby (et al?) crash the party. everyone just 😬😬😬

“the hawker will be back” isn’t an observation i expected to be vindicated on but lmao. here we are. never doubt me

given… the portal and everything “oh! you’re back!” is probably intended to make us think neo. but a) neo would have eclosed from the tree just as ruby did, and b) somewhat wouldn’t know her. they might recognize her a little bit like they did the prince, but unlike the prince (whom they’ve played a game with twice before :3c) they don’t have any reason to feel good about neo, and “oh! you’re back!” is a tangibly happy sentiment.

an unexpected portal opens in the brothers’ acre, and someone somewhat knows walks through. the spot ends on the question of who it is and what happens next—meaning it’s probably a spoiler for the show proper—and there are, realistically, only five people this could realistically be. alyx and lewis were from vacuo, so whatever the equivalent of the ‘rabbit hole’ is, it’s probably in the desert somewhere.

it’s team rwby. either someone in v10 is going to have the idea go hide the sword in the ever after, or… this is a tease for the very end when everyone goes to the ever after to put the relics together so they can convince the god of light to ascend.