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I felt this needed a little update.

Everybody else is having siezures over bees right now but I’m just sitting here vibrating about finally getting Pyrrha back.

#imagery #RWBY #The G.U.N. Theory #the rwby gun theory #Pyrrha Nikos #Cinder Fall #she will return #cinematography

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Your allusion to Summer Rose as the Buried Moon is fascinating because the Buried Moon is such a fundamentally weird fairy tale. It doesn't fit into any of the Aarne-Thompson types, it's edges the boundary between myth and fairytale to the point where some people doubted it even was a fairy tale when it was first written down until they found similar stories in the area. And it's the sort of psychological, metaphorical underworld tale that Campbell and Jung would drool over.

It’s a gorgeous story on so many levels, and that’s why it’s so fitting for RWBY. The Dead Moon isn’t popular, but it’s not so obscure only academics are aware of it- it’s the sort of story which is beloved specifically by people who are really, really into fairy tales, which are exactly the sort of people writing RWBY.

Furthermore, when I personally recognized The Dead Moon in RWBY it was only because RWBY isn’t even the first fairy tale mashup to use The Dead Moon as its framing mythos- the tragically unfinished webcomic No Rest For The Wicked, created by @andrael​, similarly tells a story set in a fairy tale mashup world in which the moon has disappeared and the creatures of darkness run wild unchecked because of it. In this case it is the extraordinarily sensitive titular princess of The Princess and the Pea who sets out on a quest to discover what has happened to the Moon and find a way to restore her to the sky, in order to cure her own insomnia:

The Dead Moon really is a tragically underappreciated story, dripping with potential for adaptation, and I’m amazed it’s remained so obscure for so long. With RWBY, I think perhaps its time has finally come.

And the history of the story is itself so fascinating! We owe the preservation of The Dead Moon entirely to the very high quality of anthropological work done with the Lincolnshire marsh people by the The Dead Moon’s recorder, Marie Clothilde Balfour, because if it weren’t for that body of consistently accurate work and her good reputation, such a very unusual story never could have been accepted as genuine by the academic folklore community. I am endlessly fascinated that we can trace the best, most complete version of the story we have directly back to a specific telling by a specific little girl, crippled and laid up in bed yet enthusiastically telling her own embellished version of the spooky story to Balfour as Balfour sat beside the bed scribbling it down furiously. When the story opens with:

Long ago, in my grandmother’s time, the carrland was all in bogs, great pools of black water, and creeping trickles of green water, and squishy mools which squirted when you stepped on them.

Well, granny used to say how long before her time the Moon herself was once dead and buried in the marshes, and as she used to tell me, I’ll tell you all about it.

…those are that little girl’s words specifically. (One source has her name as Bratton, but I’m not 100% confident on it.) Because of the way The Dead Moon’s usage within RWBY seems to frame all of the rest of RWBY’s plot within it, and the way RWBY emphasizes over and over again the importance of childhood stories, I am often seized with the whimsical notion that the entire story of RWBY is just one big imaginative embellishment on The Dead Moon, pouring out of that excited little girl sitting up in her bed in the dim light of a humble marsh village home over a hundred years ago, as Marie Balfour listens to her in rapt attention while writing as fast as she possibly can.

#answer #RWBY #The Dead Moon

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I've really been enjoying your G.U.N. theory and my and my friends have been discussing it and might have found some more LOTR references (You probably know them already) Ironwood=Saruman and Atlas=Isengard (The Atlas school is literally Saruman's tower) Cinder also takes the place of the Balrog when she kills Oz/Gandalf the first time on a bridge while he buys time for his companions to escape before he comes back again later.

Are you going off just information from my Tumblr or have you visited the Discord server? Because at this time the Discord server is still where almost all the action is at. I don’t think I’ve talked about LOTR parallels much outside of the server, though.

You’re absolutely right to peg Atlas as Isengard, but generally our expectation is that Winter Schnee will play Saruman, though Jacques may take on part of the role as well.

That’s a great point about Ozpin telling Pyrrha and Jaune to run while he fights Cinder paralleling Gandalf and the Balrog; we usually focus on that scene for its Wizard of Oz and Iliad parallels, but Ozpin is totally one of our Gandalfs, and Oscar’s introduction to team RNJR parallels Gandalf’s reintroduction to the fractured fellowship, with Jaune, Nora, and Ren being the ones to greet him, and initially suspecting that he is an agent of Salem.

As for the Balrog fight itself, Raven and Cinder more explicitly parallel the mechanics of the fight, with Raven actually flying up into the falling rocks so that they can act out the ‘fighting while falling through the chasm’ scene, and of course Cinder goes off the bridge at the end. RWBY likes to hit a lot of these notes more than once. And of course, that’s why the fall didn’t kill Cinder: she landed in an underground lake, just like Gandalf. @alexkablob has even pointed out that on the director’s commentary for that scene, one of the CRWBY calls out “Ker-plunk!”, which is like, you know, onomatopoeia for something dropping into water.

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I’ve tried really hard to keep this blog focused on a certain brand of serious, evidence-based RWBY analysis, but I’ve finally accepted that I need to a place for being silly about the show, making baseless speculation, reblogging great fan works, and gushing over ships. This new blog is that place. Welcome to my madness.

#personal #RWBY

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So this is interesting and got me thinking!

I've definitely been one of those people who, while not being in any way against Bumblby as a ship, have felt like RWBY's story has failed to show what's so amazing about Blake to inspire such devotion from Yang, while Yang is meanwhile presented as basically a goddess of love and punching.

But this post is an outstanding argument that something must be right about their relationship, if Yang is able to express healthy self interest directed at Blake and not feel the need to constantly be the one who gives more, when that's such a huge problem for her in all of her other relationships.

Thinking on Blake in that context, it occurs to me that from a certain point of view, Blake is arguably even more unhealthily selfless than Yang. Yang is over-giving in her personal relationships and to random strangers, but largely ignores the wider implications of the problems she encounters in the world. Yang needs to know that she's helping, but big societal problems are too abstract to be meaningful to her, so she just goes with the flow and helps whoever happens to end up in front of her while putting the few people closest to her above all else. Blake on the other hand not only has a history of allowing herself to be used and manipulated for greater causes in unhealthy ways, but is obsessed with finding solutions to the big problems of civilization to the point of it interfering with her basic day-to-day functioning. Blake feels compelled to find ways to help absolutely everybody, even all the people she's never met and never will; as someone who lives in books she's very good at imagining all the things she can't see directly, while sometimes failing to see what’s right in front of her. Blake ends up not only sacrificing directly of herself, but also sacrificing the personal relationships she has with others because of her compulsion to serve what she perceives as the greatest good of all.

I’ve often heard it said that Yang loves Blake ‘because Blake gives her purpose’. Previously I’ve always interpreted that as meaning Yang sees Blake as someone she can save, and I do think most people who say that mean it that way. But I’ve always disliked that idea- Yang has plenty of people she can save already, and doesn’t need another little sister to watch over. Worse, it defines Blake’s value to Yang as being her weaknesses rather than her strengths. But when you think of Blake as someone who is *even more selfless* than Yang, suddenly this idea starts to feel very different. Yang has expressed dismay at her own lack of direction in life. Yang knows she wants excitement, and she knows she wants to help people... and that’s about it. But Blake! Blake was born into a civil rights movement and raised from early childhood to believe that her duty in life was to play a part in making the whole world a better place. Blake is autodidactic and philosophical and driven. Blake speaks passionately about what’s wrong in the world and how she wants to see it changed and how much she believes in the necessity of that change, and of the struggle to create it. Blake shows more focused clarity of purpose than any other characters in the show except for Pyrrha and Cinder. And like Pyrrha and Cinder, Blake inspires others around her to change- her entire arc with Sun is about opening him up to a wider world, educating him, and giving him a cause to fight for. So perhaps, just maybe, when the aimlessly awesome Yang Xaio Long looks at the laser-guided Blake Belladonna what she sees is someone she envies for being so sure of what she wants, wanting something so big and bold and good, and being able to glare into the abyss without blinking while looking for it. Maybe Blake gives Yang purpose because Yang feels like she could follow Blake to the end of the world, because helping Blake means helping Blake save the world.

And so, maybe, imagine Yang, a person who feels she always has to be there for others first, who is unable to ask others for her own needs to be met,  gradually figuring all of this out about Blake as they get to know each other. And Yang still can’t actually ask Blake to be there for her, because that feels selfish to Yang. But, in the back of Yang’s head, maybe she thinks: “Wow, Blake really wants to save everyone. That’s so cool. Well, uh, I'm a part of everyone. Is it possible... she wants to save me too?"

And the twisted thing is, Yang is so destroyed at the end of V3 because despite all she's done to get Blake's attention, Blake still doesn't seem to consider Yang an important enough part of the world to end up on her ‘to save' list. Except, you know, she totally did, and Blake just doesn't understand that saving Yang means simply being there for her and that Blake herself is not the poisonous source of the problem that needs to be removed, at great emotional cost to Blake, in order to best protect the people Blake believes in protecting.

If Blake can get this sorted out, and begins being as giving to Yang in small ways as she tries to be to everyone else in the whole world in big ways... then I would get 100% on board the Bumblby train, no brakes. That could actually raise it above Freezerburn for me, which is my favorite non-Arkos ship right now. Heck, if done really well like that, Bumblby could compete with Arkos as a ship thematically central to the whole series, because there's some potentially really powerful universal themes in there about the balance between saving the world, saving those you love, and saving yourself.

Some people say that All That Matters shows that Yang’s relationship with Blake and her need to be with her even though it might hurt her is unhealthy. But actually it’s quite the opposite. @yangonfire​ pointed out one of the most important aspects of Yang’s relationship to Blake in this post: Yang always keeps her problems to herself because she’s the one to rather take care of everyone else than relying on them as well. Her allowing herself to want Blake to be there for her is a huge step for her. It wouldn’t mean as much coming from Ruby, but this is Yang we’re talking about. Yang allowed herself to need Blake. 

Especially since the Fall of Beacon Yang’s whole motivation has been the need of others. Being there for Ruby, helping her. I think the only thing she really did for herself was trying to find Raven way back in the Yellow Trailer, but even in V5 her motivation to find Raven changed from wanting answers to wanting to find Ruby. As much as I love Yang and as much as her caring so incredibly much for everyone else, it’s also unhealthy how much she keeps all her issues to herself. When Yang was at her weakest she pushed Ruby away and even her father couldn’t help her through her depression. She picks herself up for Ruby without being truly ready, she pushes through it anyway and confronts her mother. She pretends to be okay, just because she wants to be there for the people she loves, because of course she can’t be there for them when she’s weak. Everything she does, she does others. But Blake is the only person so far who was able to make Yang voice a need to get something in return. A need for someone to be there for her. Something for herself.

In All That Matters she talks about how much she wants to be around Blake even though she is sure she will still hurt her, but it comes from this exact need, the need to be with Blake, and for once she wants something for herself. She wants to be with Blake for herself. Not for Ruby. Not for Blake. Just because she has this need to be with her and for Blake to support her. Blake makes Yang act more selfish in that regard and actually that’s a really good thing for her.  And this is why her relationship to Blake is actually a lot healthier than her relationship to most other people. Because it’s balanced. Because Yang doesn’t just want to give, she also allows herself to want something in return. Because Yang doesn’t feel like she needs to be strong for Blake all the time. Because Yang wants to be there for Blake but is also willing to let her return it.

This is why All That Matters doesn’t prove the relationship between Yang and Blake is unhealthy but quite the opposite, thanks for listening to my TED Talk.

#diablog #by request #RWBY #Blake Belladonna #Yang Xaio Long #Bumbleby #@thomsenator-kms #@rwby-analysis #there i did it #hope you like it #posting things publicly is scary #why can't i just hide on the discord server forever

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This is a terrifying post and I don’t know what to think about it but I can’t find any fault with it.

OKAY SO

I should clarify before we begin: I haven’t yet watched the V5 DVD commentaries, but I have seen collections of notes on them from others who have. And apparently, according to one of them, it’s mentioned that Ruby takes some inspiration from Gon, the main protagonist of Hunter x Hunter:

Look at this chipper little fucker. 

I was at first surprised to hear the comparison, then thought about it and decided it wasn’t too far-fetched: like Ruby, Gon is cheerful, eager to make friends, was raised on an island by a single parent. Most importantly, he dreams of becoming a great Hunter just like his father Ging, whose talents are legendary. For a great deal of the show, this is built up similarly to Ruby’s admiration of Summer’s career as a Huntress.

(We shall put aside the fact that when we actually meet Ging, he’s more like if Raven had terrible fashion sense and lived in a dumpster.)

However, Ging is thankfully not the only inspirational Hunter in Gon’s life, nor is Summer the only one in Ruby’s. 

Or, in other words…Here’s why I’m suddenly quite convinced that Qrow won’t make it to the end of the show alive. Pretty major spoilers for Hunter x Hunter beyond this point, so proceed with caution:

Keep reading

#reblog #RWBY #Hunter x Hunter #director's commentary

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Everyone’s over here dying over the angsty bee song and I’m sitting over here like “holy shit I think All Things Must Die is actually Cinder singing about murdering Pyrrha”.

#reblog #submitted without comment #RWBY #rwby soundtrack #all that matters #Cinder Fall #Pyrrha Nikos #she will return

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I’ve only ever watched the WoR segments once each, and I haven’t watched the earlier ones since we uh. Learned that the narrator was both an actual character and also the primordial queen of darkness. So, some thoughts, in order:

Sweet fuck is this weird. This is so weird. I’m so uncomfortable.

I’m getting a first-grade science lesson from Salem and I don’t know how to handle it.

I am still going embarrassingly Sam Traynor for Salem’s voice oh god 

ANYWAY

Keep reading

#reblog #submitted without comment #RWBY #World of Remnant #Salem #Ozpin

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is it ok if i ask you what your opinion is on the symbolism of red in the schnee family (each member having one article of clothing that is red- breaking away from the white- dark blue-grey aesthetic)? I personally have the theory that it is meant to be an allusion to the poisoned red apple in the Snow White fairy tale, but i would like to get your input if that's ok. Btw, i love this blog and your theories- theyre great!!!!

Of course it is okay!!!! The ask button is there for asking things so if you are asking something you are using it correctly and should feel a wave of positive feelings about yourself because you are a wonderful person who is using a thing for the purpose for which it was intended! No guarantees you are going to get a satisfactory answer, though, and also I’ve been under the weather a lot lately so I am sorry about slow replies.

Also, some people use the ask option to send me messages telling me I don’t know things and that is confusing because there is no question mark and I am not sure what sort of response those people are hoping to get. They don’t tend to get it, I don’t think, because I don’t tend to reply to those.

But anyway your question! I actually read your post about that earlier when I saw you liking my stuff and checked out your blog, and it was very interesting! I do not myself actually have any opinion on the significance of the usage of red in the Schnee family wardrobe generally. While costumes in RWBY tend to be filled with meaningful details that can be very subtle, my own style of investigation into the show rarely uses trying to guess at the meaning of such symbolism as its starting point. Instead I look to costume details as a way to further support connections and parallels already suggested by allusions, or less often I look at the themes of the entire ensemble of a character to try and generate ideas for where I should be looking outside of RWBY for allusions the creators have never declared. (For example, why does Yang dress in stylized western wear?) I haven’t yet seen anything in the allusions that the Schnee family makes which suggested to me that kind of coordinated use of red across multiple characters, so I haven’t looked at their collective usage of red as potentially representing something.

As for the inner red lining used in Weiss’s original combat outfit, I personally always took that as symbolism of how Weiss is cold on the outside but warm on the inside. I never saw it as anything deeper than that, and I don’t know why the red was removed from her outfit after the Fall of Beacon. This doesn’t mean that the red in her outfit doesn’t have other, deeper significance though! Just that I haven’t identified any myself.

As for Whitley’s lack of red- the one allusion I could point to that might have something to do with this is the character of Kai from Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, who I am certain Whitley is heavily based upon. Kai is a cursed boy who has a tiny splinter of a shattered, evil magic mirror stuck in his eye, which makes it so he can only see ugliness and never beauty, and whose heart has been frozen by the kiss of the Snow Queen. Kai was once friendly and kind, but after being cursed he became cruel, and he was eventually kidnapped by the Snow Queen and taken away to be kept prisoner in her palace. But even though Kai is a cursed prisoner, because his heart is frozen he doesn’t feel anything, so he does not even want to be freed, and is content to remain with the Snow Queen as her pet, appreciating the pure mathematical geometry of the ice crystals in her palace, as math is the only thing he can still see beauty in. So, I think that Whitley’s lack of any red in his outfit may be in part an allusion to the frozen heart of Kai from The Snow Queen.

As for Winter and Willow- I don’t have a specific opinion on the color of the brooch they both wear on their collar, however, I think it is super significant that it appears to be the exact same brooch. In fact, if you compare adult Winter with the depiction of Willow in the family portrait, adult Winter seems to be wearing an identical shirt to the one her mother is wearing under her vest in that portrait. Furthermore, portrait Winter has very similar color layout to her mother in general, with similarly shaped vests with identical buttons arranged in a double breast. Adult Winter’s vest is a different color than her mother’s, but the cut is even more similar. I think the biggest tell though, is that Winter’s hairstyle is just a slight variation on her mother’s: her side bangs hang to the right instead of the left, she wears her bun high instead of low, and she only has a curly sidelock on one side instead of both. But that’s it; otherwise their hairstyles are identical. What do I think all this means? I think it’s symbolic foreshadowing that Winter, just like Ruby, is in many ways a carbon copy of her mother, and an inheritor of a heavy legacy. Weiss may be doing a great job of breaking free of her family’s negative influences right now, but I think we’re going to see as the story progresses that Winter is still set up to follow exactly in her mother’s fated footsteps- and that just as has been heavily foreshadowed for Ruby, Winter must also face a trial of not succumbing to the same fate as her mother did.

#answer #RWBY #The Schnee Family #costume design #foreshadowing

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You’re focusing on the wrong end of the room.

Watch the chains.

She’s trying to break free.

“How I Wish This Scene Had Gone: A Memoir”

Anyways I really hope we get to see her oNCE in the new animation style because she looks so?? out of place??? in the new one

Bring her back, RT. I know you can do it.

(Click images for higher quality)

#diablog #cryptic mysteries #RWBY #she will return

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So you were staging something with Pyrrha, but the whole time Emerald was secretly there too even though she wasn’t supposed to be, subtly altering what was seen and affecting the outcome.

@swan2swan I got Emerald a friend

#diablog #banter #just silly #RWBY #Pyrrha Nikos #Emerald Sustrai

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she’s seriously givin me zuko vibes

#reblog #submitted without comment #RWBY #Avatar: The Last Airbender #Cinder Fall #Zuko #The G.U.N. Theory

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note found in your library book: we have a bunker, the secret handshake is finger guns

me: *calling out m&k for their secret storyline allusions*

miles to kerry over a walkie talkie: she knows too much. take the shot.

#banter #cryptic mysteries #RWBY #The G.U.N. Theory #The Discord Server

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“Never been in Menagerie before! It’ll be a regular journey to the east!”

#reblog #imagery #submitted without comment #RWBY #Journey to the West #The G.U.N. Theory

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Azula vs Suki/ Cinder vs Pyrrha parallels

#reblog #submitted without comment #RWBY #Avatar: The Last Airbender #Cinder Fall #Pyrrha Nikos #Azula #Suki #The G.U.N. Theory

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This is a good post and I fully endorse this post.

I will never understand how people on this site get so pissed off about me comparing Azula to Cinder

I mean it’s not like they both have fire powers

or two henchmen they’ve basically strong-armed into joining them

or a master who forces them to push themselves past their limits in order to get their approval

and they aren’t both responsible for single-handedly engineering the collapse of a city while working undercover!

They definitely didn’t defeat the badass, shield-wielding warrior love-interest of the goofy, initial comic-relief turned leader!

which caused said comic-relief turned leader to fly into a rage and attack them, jeopardizing the protagonist’s mission

They certainly didn’t both suffer a humiliating defeat at the hands of one of their former allies who attacked them from behind

And in the heat of one of the most climactic battles of the series, they definitely didn’t direct their attacks at a helpless girl, in order to mess with their opponent

And they absolutely weren’t defeated at the end of their respective series in a similar manner (by being encased in ice)!

Yup! There’s absolutely nothing that Cinder has in common with Azula! I am completely out of my mind and have no business comparing the two!

#reblog #RWBY #Avatar: The Last Airbender #The G.U.N. Theory #Cinder Fall #Azula

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This is a good post and I fully endorse this post.

The Cycle Of Abuse In Costume Design

This feels weird, not gonna lie; @alexkablob is usually the one writing up RWBY meta! But since it’s not fair to expect her to write up ALL of our skype discussions, here I am, trying to put together a coherent image essay for y’all.

The repeating of abusive patterns down generations–and the breaking of those patterns–is a major theme in RWBY. We see it in the Schnees (Weiss breaks free of the cycle of her father’s abuse by finding a group of supportive friends who model healthy relationships, help her process what she’s been through, and provide a safe environment for her to flourish and a safe place to escape to when she’s ready to leave; Winter leaves her abusive father but does not have the support system and emotional safety that Weiss does and ends up unconsciously replicating abusive patterns; Whitley intentionally patterns off his abuser in order to become the favorite and no longer a target; Willow turns to alcohol and withdraws from the world.) 

We see it in Blake who, like Weiss, leaves her abuser but doesn’t fully begin healing and moving on with her life until she has time and space to process her experiences with a support group. We see it to a degree in Yang, who was never abused but who very much has emotional scars from Raven’s abandonment that she is still struggling, with the help of friends, to heal from.

And we also see it, in a very interesting, organic, and heartbreaking way, in a three-generation form–patterns of emotional, psychological, and physical abuse that passes from Salem, to Cinder, and finally to Emerald. (I hope very much that Emerald is going to be the one to break that cycle, but as of the end of v5 that’s still up in the air.) And what’s fascinating here is the subtle way in which this is represented down to the design of their clothes.

LONG post under the cut:

Keep reading

#reblog #RWBY #Salem #Cinder Fall #Emerald Sustrai #costume design