chaucer-blackwood

[chaucer-blackwood]

The truth about Medusa and her rape... Mythology breakdown time!

With the recent release of the Percy Jackson television series, Tumblr is bursting with mythological posts, and the apparition of Medusa the Gorgon has been the object of numerous talks throughout this website… Including more and more spreading of misinformation, and more debates about what is the “true” version of Medusa’s backstory.

Already let us make that clear: the idea that Medusa was actually “blessed” or “gifted” by Athena her petrifying gaze/snake-hair curse is to my knowledge not at all part of the Antique world. I still do not know exactly where this comes from, but I am aware of no Greek or Roman texts that talked about this – so it seems definitively a modern invention. After all, the figure of Medusa and her entire myth has been taken part, reinterpreted and modified by numerous modern women, feminist activist, feminist movements or artists engaged in the topic of women’s life and social conditions – most notably Medusa becoming the “symbol of raped women’ wrath and fury”. It is an interesting reading and a fascinating update of the ancient texts, and it is a worthy take on its own time and context – but today we are not talking about the posterity, reinvention and continuity of Medusa as a myth and a symbol. I want to clarify some points about the ACTUAL myth or legend of Medusa – the original tale, as told by the Greeks and then by the Romans.

Most specifically the question: Was Medusa raped?

Step 1: Yes, but no.

The backstory of Medusa you will find very often today, ranging from mythology manuals (vulgarization manuals of course) to Youtube videos, goes as such: Medusa was a priestess of Athena who got raped by Poseidon while in Athena’s temple, and as a result of this, Athena punished Medusa by turning her into the monstrous Gorgon.

Some will go even further claiming Athena’s “curse” wasn’t a punishment but a “gift” or blessing – and again, I don’t know where this comes from and nobody seems to be able to give me any reliable source for that, so… Let’s put this out of there.

Now this backstory – famous and popular enough to get into Riodan’s book series for example – is partially true. There are some elements here very wrong – and by wrong I do mean wrong.

The story of Medusa being raped and turned into a monster due to being raped does indeed exist, and it is the most famous and widespread of all the Medusa stories, the one people remembered for the longest time and wrote and illustrated the most about. Hence why Medusa became in the 20th century this very important cultural symbol tied to rape and the abuse of women and victim-blaming. HOWEVER – the origin of this story is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, from the first century CE or so. Ovid? A Roman poet writing for Roman people. “Metamorphoses”? One of the two fundamental works of Roman literature and one of the two main texts of Roman mythology, alongside Virgil’s Aeneid. This is a purely Roman story belonging to the Roman culture – and not the Greek one. The story of Medusa’s rape does not have Greek precedents to my knowledge, Ovid introduced the element of rape – which is no surprise given Ovid turned half of the romances of Greek mythology into rapes. Note that, on top of all this, Ovid wasn’t even writing for religious purposes, nor was his text an actual mythological effort – he wrote it with pure literary intentions at heart. It is just a piece of poetry and literature taking inspiration from the legends of the Greek world, not some sort of sacred text.

Second big point: The legend I summarized above? It isn’t even the story Ovid wrote, since there are a lot of elements that do not come from Ovid’s retelling of the story (book fourth of the Metamorphoses). For example Ovid never said Medusa was a priestess of Athena – all he said was that she was raped in the temple of Athena. I shouldn’t even be writing Athena since again, this is a Roman text: we are speaking of Minerva here, and of Neptune, not of Athena or Poseidon. Similarly, Minerva’s curse did not involve the petrifying gaze – rather all Ovid wrote about was that Minerva turned Medusa’s hair into snakes, to “punish” her because her hair were very beautiful, and it was what made her have many suitors (none of which she wanted to marry apparently), and it is also implied it is what made Neptune fall in love (or rather fall in lust) with her. I guess it is from this detail that the reading of “Athena’s curse was a gift” comes from – even though this story also clearly does victim-blaming of rape here.

But what is very fascinating is that… we are not definitively sure Neptune raped Medusa in Ovid’s retelling. For sure, the terms used by Ovid in his fourth book of Metamorphoses are clear: this was an action of violating, sexually assaulting, of soiling and corrupting, we are talking about rape. But Ovid refers several other times to Medusa in his other books, sometimes adding details the fourth-book stories does not have (the sixth book for examples evokes how Neptune turned into a bird to seduce Medusa, which is completely absent from the fourth book’s retelling of Medusa’ curse). And in all those other mentions, the terms to designate the relationship between Medusa and Neptune are more ambiguous, evoking seduction and romance rather than physical or sexual assault. (It does not help that Ovid has an habit of constantly confusing consensual and non-consensual sex in his poems, meaning that a rape in one book can turn into a romance in another, or reversal)

But the latter fact makes more sense when you recall that the rape element was invented and added by Ovid. Before, yes Poseidon and Medusa loved each other, but it was a pure romance, or at least a consensual one-night. Heck, if we go back to the oldest records of the love between Poseidon and Medusa, back in Hesiod’s Theogony, we have descriptions of the two of them laying together in a beautiful, flowery meadow – a stereotypical scene of pastoral romances – with no mention of any brutality or violence of any sort. As a result, it makes sense the original “romantic” story would still “leak” or cast a shadow over Ovid’s reinvented and slightly-confused tale.

Step 2: So… no rape?

Well, if we go by Greek texts, no, apparently Medusa was not raped in Greek mythology, and only became a rape victim through Ovid.

The Ancient Greek texts all record Poseidon and Medusa sleeping with each other and having children, but no mention of rape. And the whole “curse of Athena” thing is not present in the oldest records – no temple of Athena soiling, no angry Athena cursing a poor girl… “No curse?” you say “But then how did Medusa got turned into a Gorgon”? Answer: she did not. She was born like that.

As I said before, the oldest record of Medusa’s romance but also of her family comes from Hesiod’s Theogony (Hesiod being one of the two “founding authors” of Greek mythology, alongside Homer – Homer did wrote several times about Medusa, but only as a disembodied head and as a monster already dead, so we don’t have any information about her life). And what do we learn? That Medusa is part of a set of three sisters known as the Gorgons – because oh yes, Ovid did not mention Medusa’s sister now did he? How did Medusa’s sisters ALSO got snake-hair or petrifying-gaze if only Medusa was cursed for sleeping with Neptune? Ovid does not give us any answer because again, it is an “adaptational plot hole”, and the people that try to adapt Ovid’s story have to deal with the slight problem of Stheno and Euryale needing to share their sister’s curse despite seemingly not being involved in the whole Neptune business. Anyway, back to the Greek text.

So, you have those three Gorgon sisters, and Medusa is said to be mortal while her sisters are not. Why is it such a big deal? Because Medusa wasn’t originally some random human or priestess. Oh no! Who were the Gorgons’ parents? Phorcys and Keto/Ceto, aka two sea-gods. Not just two sea-gods – two sea-gods of the ancient, primordial generation of sea-gods, the one that predated Poseidon, and that were cousins to the Titans, the sea-gods born of Gaia mating with Pontos.

So the Gorgons were “divine” of nature – and this is why Medusa being a mortal was considered to be a MASSIVE problem and handicap for her, an abnormal thing for the daughter of two deities. But let’s dig a bit further… Who were Phorcys and Ceto? Long story short: in Greek mythology, they were considered to be sea-equivalents of Typhon and Gaia. They were the parents of many monsters and many sea-horrors: Keto/Ceto herself had her name attributed and equated with any very large creature (like whales) or any terrifying monster (like dragons) from the sea. The Gorgons themselves was a trio of monsters, but their sisters, that directly act as their double in the myth of Perseus? The Graiai – the monstrous trio of old women sharing one eye and one tooth. Hesiod also drops the fact that Ladon (the dragon that guarded the golden apples of the Hesperids), and Echidna (the snake-woman that mated with Typhon and became known as the “mother of monsters”) were also children of Phorcys and Ceto, while other authors will add other monster-related characters such as Scylla (of Charybdis and Scylla fame), the sirens, or Thoosa (the mother of Polyphemus the cyclop). Medusa herself is technically a “mother of monsters” since she birthed both Pegasus the flying horse and Chrysaor, a giant. So here is something very important to get: Medusa, and the Gorgons, were part of a family of monsters. Couple that with the absence of any mention of curses in these ancient texts, and everything is clear.

Originally Medusa was not a woman cursed to become a monster: she was born a monster, part of a group of monster siblings, birthed by monster-creating deities, and she belonged to the world of the “primordial abominations from the sea”, and the pre-Olympian threats, the remnants of the primordial chaos. It is no surprise that the Gorgons were said to live at the edge of the very known world, in the last patch of land before the end of the universe – in the most inhuman, primitive and liminal area possible. They were full-on monsters!

Now you might ask why Poseidon would sleep with a horrible monster, especially when you recall that the Greeks loved to depict the Gorgons as truly bizarre and grotesque. It wasn’t just snake-hair and petrifying gaze: they had boar tusks, and metallic claws, and bloated eyes, and a long tongue that constantly hanged down their bearded chin, and very large heads – some very old depictions even show her with a female centaur body! In fact, the ancient texts imply that it wasn’t so much the Gorgon’s gaze or eyes that had the power to turn people into stone – but that rather the Gorgon was just so hideous and so terrifying to look at people froze in terror – and then literally turned into stone out of fear and disgust. We are talking Lovecraftian level of eldritch horror here. So why would Poseidon, an Olympian god, sleep with one of these horrors? Well… If you know your Poseidon it wouldn’t surprise you too much because Poseidon had a thing for monsters. As a sort of “dark double” of Zeus, whereas Zeus fell in love with beautiful princesses and noble queens and birthed great gods and brave heroes, Poseidon was more about getting freaky with all sorts of unusual and bizarre goddesses, and giving birth to bandits and monsters. A good chunk of the villains of Greek mythology were born out of Poseidon’s loins: Polyphemus, Antaios, Orion, Charybdis, the Aloads… And even his most benevolent offspring has freaky stuff about it – Proteus the shapeshifter or Triton half-man half-fish… So yes, Poseidon sleeping with an abominable Gorgon is not so much out of character.

Step 3: The missing link

Now that we established what Medusa started out as, and what she ended up as… We need to evoke the evolution from point Hesiod to point Ovid, because while people summarized the Medusa debate as “Sea-born monster VS raped and punished woman”, there is a third element needed to understand this whole situation…

Yes Ovid did invent the rape. But he did not invent the idea that Medusa had been cursed by Athena.

The “gorgoneion” – the visual and artistic motif of the Gorgon’s head – was, as I said, a grotesque and monstrous face used to invoke fright into the enemies or to repel any vile influence or wicked spirit by the principle of “What’s the best way to repel bad stuff? Badder stuff”. Your Gorgon was your gargoyle, with all the hideous traits I described before – represented in front (unlike all the other side-portraits of gods and heroes), with the face being very large and flat, a big tongue out of a tusked-mouth, snake-hair, bulging crazy eyes, sometimes a beard or scales… Pure monster. But then… from the fifth century BCE to the second century BCE we see a slow evolution of the “gorgoneion” in art. Slowly the grotesque elements disappear, and the Gorgon’s face becomes… a regular, human face. Even more: it even becomes a pretty woman’s face! But with snakes instead of hair. As such, the idea that Medusa was a gorgeous woman who just had snakes and cursed-eyes DOES come from Ancient Greece – and existed well before Ovid wrote his rape story.

But what was the reason behind this change?

Well, we have to look at the Roman era again. Ovid’s tale of Medusa being cursed for her rape at the hands of Neptune had to rival with another record collected by a Greek author Apollodorus, or Pseudo-Apollodorus, in his Bibliotheca. In this collection of Greek myths, Apollodorus writes that indeed, Medusa was cursed by Athena to have her beautiful hair that seduced everybody be turned into snakes… But it wasn’t because of any rape or forbidden romance, no. It was just because Medusa was a very vain woman who liked to brag about her beauty and hair – and had the foolish idea of saying her hair looked better than Athena’s. (If you recall tales such as Arachne’s or the Judgement of Paris, you will know that despite Athena being wise and clever, one of her main flaws is her vanity).

“Wait a minute,” you are going to tell me, “The Bibliotheca was created in the second century CE! Well after Greece became part of the Roman Empire, and after Ovid’s Metamorphoses became a huge success! It isn’t a true Greek myth, it is just Ovid’s tale being projected here…” And people did agree for a time… Until it was discovered, in the scholias placed around the texts of Apollonios of Rhodes, that an author of the fifth century BCE named Pherecyde HAD recorded in his time a version of Medusa’s legend where she had been cursed into becoming an ugly monster as punishment for her vanity. We apparently do not have the original text of Pherecyde, but the many scholias referring to this lost piece are very clear about this. This means that the story that Apollodorus recorded isn’t a “novelty”, but rather the latest record of an older tradition going back to the fifth century BCE… THE SAME CENTURY THAT THE GORGONEION STARTED LOSING THEIR GROTESQUE, and that the face of Medusa started becoming more human in art.

[EDIT: I also forgot to add that this evolution of Medusa is also proved by strange literary elements, such as Pindar's mention in a poem of his (around 490 BCE) of "fair-cheeked Medusa". A description which seems strange given how Medusa used to be depicted as the epitome of ugliness... But that makes sense if the "cursed beauty" version of the myth had been going around at the time!]

And thus it is all connected and explained. Ovid did invent the rape yes – but he did not invent the idea of Athena cursing Medusa. It pre-existed as the most “recent” and dominating legend in Ancient Greece, having overshadowed by Ovid’s time the oldest Hesiodic records of Medusa being born a monster. So what Ovid did wasn’t completely create a new story out of nowhere, but twist the Greek traditions of Athena cursing Medusa and Medusa having a relationship with Poseidon, so that the two legends would form one and same story. And this explains in retrospect why Ovid focuses so much on describing Medusa’s beautiful hair, and why Ovid’s Minerva would think turning her hair into snake would be a “punishment fit for the crime”: these are leftovers of the Greek tale where Medusa was punished for her boasting and her vanity.

CONCLUSION

Here is the simplified chronology of how Medusa’s evolution went.

A) Primitive Greek myths, Hesiodic tradition: Born a monster out of a family of sea-monsters and monstrous immortals. Is a grotesque, gargoylesque, eldritch abomination. Athena has only an indirect conflict with her, due to being Perseus’ “fairy godmother”. Has a lovely romance with Poseidon.

B) Slow evolution throughout Classical Greece and further: Medusa becomes a beautiful, human-looking girl that was cursed to have snake for hair and petrifying eyes, instead of being a Lovecraftian horror people could not gaze upon. Her conflict with Athena becomes direct, as it is Athena that cursed her due to being offended by her vain boasting. Her punishment is for her vanity and arrogant comparison to the goddess.

C) Ovid comes in: Medusa’s romance with Poseidon becomes a rape, and she is now punished for having been raped inside Athena’s temple.

[As a final note, I want to insist upon the fact that the story of Medusa being raped is not less "worthy" than any other version of the myth. Due to its enormous popularity, how it shaped the figure of Medusa throughout the centuries, and how it still survives today and echoes current-day problems, to try to deny the valid place of this story in the world of myths and legends would be foolish. HOWEVER it is important to place back things in their context, to recognize that it is not the ONLY tale of Medusa, that it was NOT part of Greek mythology, but rather of Roman legends - and let us all always remember this time Poseidon slept with a Lovecraftian horror because my guy is kinky.]

EDIT:

For illustration, I will place here visuals showing how the Ancient art evolved alongside Medusa's story.

Before the 5th century BCE: Medusa is a full-on monster

From the 5th century to the 2nd century BCE: A slow evolution as Medusa goes from a full-on monster to a human turned into a monster. As a result the two depictions of the grotesque and beautiful gorgoneion coexist.

Post 2nd century BCE: Medusa is now a human with snake hair, and just that

[chaucer-blackwood]

“Rooster Teeth had a lot of issues as evidenced by the allegations past employees have come forward with” and “Warner Bros is fucking evil for axing an entire company and letting some of its employees find out via tweet” are statements that can and should coexist.

Like. It’s not some gotcha that RT is shutting down. It’s not some vindictive justice that this Big Bad Company is gone now. Projects are now canceled. People will be fired from their jobs. And because it’s Warner Bros. it’s only a matter of time before all those animation projects (RvB, RWBY, Camp Camp, every single episode of anything they made) is scrubbed off of the internet.

It’s gonna be the same thing that happened with HBO Max. It’s gonna be the same thing with the Coyote vs. Acme movie and Batgirl.

RT going down is not the thing you should be lording over people. RT going down should not be some ammo for your “RWBY is mid” takes. RT going down is not some “I always knew it was cringe” meme. Real people are gonna be effected by this. People will lose this jobs and will lose all the passion projects they worked on.

This is horrifying for the people involved in these projects and the state of animation itself. Warner Bros. only owned Rooster Teeth for 2 years. They bought them in 2022. Not even 2 full years. They didn’t even get a chance and they axed THE ENTIRE COMPANY. NOT JUST ONE SHOW. THE ENTIRE FUCKING COMPANY AND ALL ITS IPS. HOLY FUCKING SHIT. THIS IS NOT THR TIME FOR A FAN WAR.

[chaucer-blackwood]

Honestly im not worried about RWBY. As far as I've seen WB is trying to sell it off to another company that may continue it. This is not the end for RWBY.

I'm more worried about all the workers who are losing their jobs at RT.

[chaucer-blackwood]

You know what? F it.

GREENLIGHT VOLUME 10

GREENLIGHT VOLUME 10

GREENLIGHT VOLUME 10

[chaucer-blackwood]

Rooster Teeth is being shut down and WB is selling RWBY.

So the best we can do is PRAY that whoever gets it keeps the writers, directors, and as much of the CRWBY as possible

[chaucer-blackwood]

Tag yourself. I’m Overworld.

#mipedians

[chaucer-blackwood]

Pretty much the same thing that happened when Watchmen unintentionally spawned the "dark anti hero" and superhero "deconstruction" craze.

It's been thirty years, and superheroes still haven't recovered from that.

Or the dark fantasy obsession spawned from Game of Thrones that still is nowhere close to letting it's grip on Fantasy literature go anytime in the next generation or two.

I feel like a lot of MadoMagi copycats miss that MadoMagi doesn't really hold any malice towards the magical girl genre at all and if anything embraces it fully, it just takes its concepts and interprets it in a darker sense. A lot of media that tries to replicate misses that and just go "Pfft magical girls are so stupid and childish, we should make a show where they all die, and are miserable and depressed, and it's dark and edgy for the sake of being edgy."

[chaucer-blackwood]

I feel like a lot of MadoMagi copycats miss that MadoMagi doesn't really hold any malice towards the magical girl genre at all and if anything embraces it fully, it just takes its concepts and interprets it in a darker sense. A lot of media that tries to replicate misses that and just go "Pfft magical girls are so stupid and childish, we should make a show where they all die, and are miserable and depressed, and it's dark and edgy for the sake of being edgy."

[chaucer-blackwood]

It's always amusing to me to hear fans decry this sequel or that adaptation as "expensive fanfiction" like they aren't exactly the people who read and probably write copious amounts of fanfiction.

Food for thought.

#star wars #lord of the rings #wheel of time #I also read and write fanfic #There's no shame in that #Stop using it as an insult when you also do it though #star wars sequel trilogy #rings of power

[chaucer-blackwood]

Story recommendation time!

This story is a magical girl story! It gets fairly dark, but it’s extremely well written. In the story, magical girls/boys/enbies, called Keepers, are known throughout the world as those who protect people from the monstrous Harbringers. The more Harbringers a Keeper destroys, the more they begin to change, a process known as Emergence. The story is about Liadain, a terminally ill girl who becomes a Keeper.

The story can be read here: https://nowherestars.net/?amp=1

It’s also on Royal Road and Scribblehub!

[chaucer-blackwood]

Nowhere Stars my beloved

It’s a dark magical girl web novel and it’s very, VERY well written. The author is super nice too! I haven’t been keeping up with the latest chapters (I actually have only finished the first two arcs) but still!

Also there is BEAUTIFUL cover art by someone called KobutaNori, but tumblr is being a meanie and won’t let me paste it 😭

Just check it out, okay?

[chaucer-blackwood]

People are saying they hope Neo comes back in some new form, but, honestly? Nah.

I like this. I like this as her exit. I like the ambiguity and open endedness of it. I like the certainty that she'll find herself and be better off, but we the audience are left to imagine what form that will take.

There's a kind of beautiful openness to that, and I think showing who and what she chooses to become would take away from that. Better it be left to our imagination, I say.

Godspeed little ice cream girl. You were a hell of a companion to have these last years, and I treasure having watched your journey.

#Rwby #neopolitan #rwby spoiler tag #rwby volume 9

[chaucer-blackwood]

We saw Amity Colliseum over Vacuo along with a fleet of Atlesian airships.

Long enough for all that to happen.

Also, the Blacksmith said "when" they were needed. So. How long has the time jump been while they were in the Ever After?

#rwby #rwby spoiler #rwby volume 9

[chaucer-blackwood]

I’m not convinced that door leads back to Remnant

Well. Not straight back, in any case.

Obviously it’s the way back, because Luis had to have reached Remnant to write the book about Alyx.

But maybe not immediately. We now know for a fact the Brothers made at least one world before Remnant. We know they haven’t been back to either in quite a long time.

And I doubt this arc Ruby is on will be resolved in a single episode.

Whose to say the road home doesn’t wind through a few more?

#rwby theory #rwby spoiler #rwby volume 9

[chaucer-blackwood]

It’s not that I’m opposed to the idea of Ruby going through something like this (though I disagree strongly with the sentiment that’s a requirement, as is oft implied).

But I don’t like the way it’s being handled.

Ruby is acting like the mantle of hero was placed on her by someone else. That she’s the one whose been required to step up and be the one leading the charge against Salem, and everyone expects her to be cheery and optimistic.

And that’s not really what’s happened.

The whole reason I like Ruby, as a character and as a protagonist, is that she’s never been expected to be the hero. Aside from being named Team Leader by Ozpin (which was rendered a functionally meaningless title post-V3) nobody has ever asked her, ordered her, or even really expected her to be the hero. She always, always chose it of her own volition. A problem appears, and she steps up without even thinking first.

It’s been commented on, and people (most notably Jaune and Blake) have openly praised her for it, told her she inspires them to be more heroic. But at no point has anyone placed any special expectation of heroism upon Ruby specifically. The opposite, actually, because that praise has repeatedly come with comments this wasn’t expected of her; that she didn’t have to be out here, and absolutely no one would’ve said anything if she just stayed home (everybody else did, after all).

Nobody put the title of hero on her. If anything, she’s been putting it onto herself.

Now, I can see her coming to regret that. I can see the narrative claiming that it’s been unhealthy, and she needs to take some of that weight off of herself. That’d be fine.

But Ruby is talking as though all of this was something placed on her against her wishes, as though everyone was relying on her in a way we really haven’t seen, and forcing her to neglect her own emotional needs, and that just isn’t backed up by anything that’s taken place.

I’ll be honest.

I don’t like the way this is going. At all.

I get a lot of people have been wanting exactly this to happen to Ruby for literal years. That she “needs” to have a breakdown, or something.

I don’t like it.

It doesn’t feel like a natural progression of her arc, it feels like a derailment of her arc to satisfy the RWDE and RWBYCritics crowds. A lot of Volume 9 feels like that, honestly. The things that are happening, and the things characters are saying, especially from Ruby, don’t feel like them. It feels like a way to try and please both sides, to get the voices on social media to cool off.

And that’s so… disappointing.

Maybe it’s just me? Maybe I spent too long arguing with haters and critics and trying to defend what I liked about RWBY, and it’s colouring my perception and giving me bias. Unlike them, I’m willing to admit that I might be the one in the wrong here.

Maybe the end of the Volume will really knock it out of the park, and this will all come together.

But right now… I just don’t like this. I don’t like thinking the two-year hiatus was spent trying to figure out how to please people who already made up their minds to hate the show. I don’t like seeing these characters, in my view at least, basically backpedaling their arcs instead of progressing them.

#rwby #ruby rose #rwby character analysis #rwby volume 9

[chaucer-blackwood]

I’ll be honest.

I don’t like the way this is going. At all.

I get a lot of people have been wanting exactly this to happen to Ruby for literal years. That she “needs” to have a breakdown, or something.

I don’t like it.

It doesn’t feel like a natural progression of her arc, it feels like a derailment of her arc to satisfy the RWDE and RWBYCritics crowds. A lot of Volume 9 feels like that, honestly. The things that are happening, and the things characters are saying, especially from Ruby, don’t feel like them. It feels like a way to try and please both sides, to get the voices on social media to cool off.

And that’s so... disappointing.

Maybe it’s just me? Maybe I spent too long arguing with haters and critics and trying to defend what I liked about RWBY, and it’s colouring my perception and giving me bias. Unlike them, I’m willing to admit that I might be the one in the wrong here.

Maybe the end of the Volume will really knock it out of the park, and this will all come together.

But right now... I just don’t like this. I don’t like thinking the two-year hiatus was spent trying to figure out how to please people who already made up their minds to hate the show. I don’t like seeing these characters, in my view at least, basically backpedaling their arcs instead of progressing them.

#rwby #rwby volume 9 #ruby rose

[chaucer-blackwood]

Actual Dialogue From My DnD Game

The Rogue: Are we stealing something? I’m in!

Me: Wait, there’s context you--

Rogue: I don’t need context, I’m in!

Me: You aren’t getting a cut.

Rogue:...Ok, give me the context.