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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Dark”

Welcome back, everyone! Can you believe it's been six weeks already? I can't. Something something the uncomfortable passage of time during a pandemic as emphasized by a web-series.

But we're here to talk about RWBY the fictional story, not RWBY the cultural icon. At least, we will in a moment. First, I'd like to acknowledge that shaky line between the two, growing blurrier with every volume. A sort of good news, bad news situation.

The bad news — to get that out of the way — is that we cannot easily separate RWBY from its authors and those authors have, sadly, been drawing a lot of negative attention as of late. This isn't anything new, not at all, but I think the unexpectedly long hiatus gave a lot of fans (myself included) the chance to think about Rooster Teeth's failings without getting distracted by their biggest and brightest production. There's a laundry list of problems here — everything from the behavior of voice actors to the quality of their merch — but as a sort of summary issue, I'd like to highlight the reviews that continue to pop up on websites like Glassdoor, detailing the toxic, sexist, crunch-obsessed environment that RT employees are forced to work in. A lot of these websites requires a login to read more than a page of reviews, but you can check out a Twitter thread about it here.

Now, I want to be clear: I'm not bringing this up as a way to shame anyone enjoying RWBY. This isn't a simplistic claim of, "The authors are Problematic™ and therefore you can't like the stuff they produce." Nor is this meant to be a catch-all excuse for RWBY's problems. If it were, I'd have dropped these recaps years ago. I'm of the belief that audiences maintain the right to both praise and criticize the work they're given, regardless of the context in which that work was produced. At the end of the day, RT has presented RWBY as a finished product and, more than that, presents it as an excellent product, one worth both our emotional investment and our money (whether in the form of paying for a First account, or encouraging us to buy merch, attend cons, etc.) I'll continue to critique RWBY as needed, but I a) wanted fans to be at least peripherally aware of these issues and b) clarify that my use of "RT" in statements like, "I can't believe RT is screwing up this badly" is meant to be a broad, nebulas acknowledgement that someone in the company is screwing up, either creatively (doesn't have the skill to write a good scene) or morally (hasn't created an environment in which other creators are capable of crafting a good scene). The real, inner workings of such companies are mostly a secret to their audiences and thus it's near impossible for someone like me — random fan writing these for fun as a casual side hobby — to accurately point fingers. Hence, broad "RT." I just wanted to clarify that when I use this it's as a necessary placeholder for whoever is actually responsible, not a damnation of the overworked animator breaking down in a bathroom. Heavy stuff, but I thought it was necessary (or at least worthwhile) to acknowledge this issue as we head into the second half of the volume.

Now for the good news: RWBY has reached 100 episodes! For any who may not know, 100 is a pretty significant number in the TV world because, when talking about prime time programming, it guarantees syndicated reruns. Basically, networks don't want audiences to get burned out with a show — changing the channel when it comes on because ugh, I've seen this already, recently too — and 100 episodes allows for a roughly five month run without any repeats, making it very profitable. RWBY is obviously not a television show and doesn't benefit from any of this (hell, modern television doesn't benefit from this as much as it used to, not in the age of streaming), but the 100 episode threshold is still ingrained in American culture. Beyond just being a nice, rounded number, it is historically a measure of huge success and I can't imagine that RT isn't aware of that. Regardless of what we think of RWBY's current quality, this is one hell of a milestone and should be applauded.

All that being said... RWBY's quality is definitely still lacking lol.

Our 100th episode is titled "Dark" — keeping with the one word titles, then — and I'd like to emphasize that, as a 100th episode, it definitely delivers in terms of plot. There's plenty of action, important character beats, and at least one major reveal, everything we'd expect from a milestone and a Part II premiere. The animation also continues to be noteworthy for its beauty, as I found myself admiring many of the screenshots I took for this recap. There are certainly things to praise. The only problem (one we're all familiar with by now) is that these small successes are situated within a narrative that's otherwise falling apart. It's all good stuff... provided you ignore literally everything else surrounding it.

But let's dive into some examples. We open on Qrow starting, awoken by the thunder outside. Robyn has been watching him and makes a peppy comment about how none of them will be sleeping tonight, followed by a more serious, "Sounds bad out there." Yeah, it does sound bad, especially when they all know — thanks to Ruby's message back in Volume 7 — that this is due to Salem's arrival. I think a lot of the fandom has forgotten that little detail because people often discuss Qrow as if he is entirely ignorant of what is going on outside his cell. Even if we were to assume that he's forgotten all about the pesky Salem issue (the horror of Clover's death overriding everything else, perhaps) he still knows that Tyrian is running loose in a heat-less city with a creepy storm going on and, from his perspective, the Very Evil Ironwood is still running the show. So it's bad, which begs the question of why Qrow (and Robyn, for that matter) hasn't displayed an ounce of legitimate worry for everyone he knows out there. Thus far, their interactions have centered entirely around Qrow's misplaced blame and Robyn's terrible attempts to lighten the mood, despite the fact that a war is raging right beyond that wall. It's another example of RWBY's inability to manage tone properly, to say nothing of balancing the multiple concerns any one character should be trying to juggle. Just as it rankles that Ruby and Yang don't seem to care about what has happened to their uncle, Qrow likewise doesn't seem to care about what might be happening to his nieces. When did we reach a point where these relationships are so broken that someone can be arrested/chucked into a deadly battle and the others just... ignore that?

So Robyn's otherwise innocuous comment immediately reminds me of how badly the narrative has treated these conflicts and, sadly, things don't improve much from here. We are thankfully spared more of Robyn's jokes when Qrow realizes that what he's hearing can't be thunder. A second later, Cinder blasts through the wall — called it! — and Qrow instinctively transforms.

The only downside to this moment is that the whole ceiling falls down on Qrow and the others because APPARENTLY these cells don't have tops on them. Seriously. As far as I can recall we don't see the stone breaking through the forcefield somehow and this looks pretty open to me.

If it is... you're telling me these crazy powerful fighters who practice landing strategies and leap tall buildings in a single bound —

— can't just hop over this mildly high electric fence to get out? Qrow can't just fly away?

We're, like, two minutes in, folks.

We transfer to Nora's perspective as she wakes up, seeing Klein giving her the IV. He tells her not to worry, that "you and your friend are going to be just fine." What friend? Penny? Klein went upstairs prior to Weiss hugging Whitley or Penny crash landing outside. I had thought them bursting through the door with another unconscious friend was the first time he learned what the big bang outside was, but apparently not.

Penny is, obviously, a mess. While I now understand the choice to make her blood such an eye-catching color when that's crucial to the Hound's hunt, I still think it looks strange visually. Like someone has taken a copy of RWBY and painted over it. It doesn't look like it fits the art style. More than that, it implies some rather complicated things about Penny's humanity, especially in a volume focused around her being a "real girl." Real enough for Maiden powers, but with obviously inhuman blood that isn't even referred to as "bleeding." Penny "leaks" instead.

Toss in the fact that she's literally an android who is made up of tech — recall the running gags about her being heavy, or it hurts to fist-bump her, to say nothing of keeping things like multiple blades inside her body — yet Klein says that her "basic anatomy" is the same and he can "stitch up that wound."

I'm sorry, what? Whatever Penny looks like on the inside, it's not going to resemble a human woman's anatomy, and Klein might be able to stitch the outer layer of skin she's got, but that won't do anything to fix whatever metal bits have been broken underneath. Penny isn't a human-robot hybrid, she's a robot with an aura. Penny has knives in her back, rockets in her feet, and a super computer behind her eyes. When our clip introduced that Klein would be the one to help Penny, my initial reaction was, "Seriously? He's a butler and a doctor and an engineer?" But RWBY didn't even try to get away with a Super Klein explanation, they just waved away Penny's very obvious, inhuman anatomy. Yeah, I'm sure "stitching up" an android wound is just like giving Nora her IV. I hope the surgical sutures he used are extra strong!

In an effort to not entirely drag this episode, I do appreciate that Whitley is allowed an "ugh" moment about the non-blood covering his shirt without anyone calling him out on it. That felt like the sort of thing the show would usually try to make a character feel guilty about and I'm glad that, for once, he was just allowed to be frustrated without comment.

Then the power goes out and May calls, which raises questions about what state the CCTS is in and when scrolls are available to our protagonists vs. when they're not. But whatever. She's checking in because she just "saw another bombing run light up the Kingdom" and —

Wait. Bombing? Salem is bombing the city? I know we've seen explosions in the sky, but I'd always just attributed that to evil aesthetic. Why does this dialogue sound like it's from a World War II film and not a fantasy sci-fi show about literal monsters launching a ground attack?

May looks pretty against the sky though. I like her hair color against that purple.

I'm admittedly grasping at positives here because we finally return to her "You have to choose" ultimatum and — surprise! — May has pulled back completely. Ruby says that once they've helped Penny, "We'll...we'll do something!" which is once again her avoiding making a decision. Ruby still refuses to choose, instead falling back on generic, optimistic pep talks. They'll figure out how to stop Salem later. They'll think about the impact of telling the world later. They'll choose who to help later. Ruby keeps pushing these problems into the future where, she hopes, a perfect, magical solution will have appeared for her to latch onto. When that continues to not happen, others pressuring her to actually do something and stop waiting for perfection — Ironwood, Yang, May — she panics and continues stalling for time. Wait an episode and the narrative supports her in this.

Because initially May was forcing Ruby to decide. Now, May enables her desire to keep putting things off. "Don't beat yourself up, kid. At this point, I don't know how much is left to be done." That's the exact opposite of what May believed last episode, that there was still so much work and good to do for the people of Mantle. This is precisely what the show did with Yang and Ren's scenes too, having people call Ruby out... but then return to a message of, 'Don't worry, you're actually doing just fine' before Ruby is forced to actually change.

None of which even touches on May calling her "kid" in this moment. That continues to be a convenient way of absolving Ruby of any responsibility. When she wants to steal airships or Amity Tower, she's an adult everyone should listen to, the leader of this war. When the story wants to absolve her of previously mentioned flaws, she becomes a kid who shouldn't "beat herself up." I said years ago that RWBY couldn't continue to let the group be both children and adults simultaneously, yet here we are.

So that was a thoroughly disappointing scene. Ruby gets her moment to look sad and defeated, listing "the grimm, the crater, Nora, Penny" as problems she doesn't know how to solve. Note that 'Immortal witch attacking the city I've helped trap here' isn't included in that list. Ruby is still ignoring Salem herself and no one in the group is picking up where May left off, challenging her to do more than wring her hands over things others are already trying to take care of: Ironwood is fighting the grimm, May has gone off to help the crater, Klein is patching up Nora and Penny. Ruby, as one flawed individual, should not be expected to come up with a solution to everything, but she does need to stop acting like she can come up with a solution to everything when it matters most (office scene) and rejecting others' solutions when they ask for her help (Ironwood, May).

If it feels like I'm dragging the flawed, traumatized teenager too much, it's not in an effort to ignore those aspects of her identity. Rather, it's because she's also the licensed huntress who wrested control from a world leader and violently demanded she be put in charge of this battle. Ruby, by her own actions, is now responsible for dealing with these problems, or admitting she was wrong and letting others take the lead, without purposefully derailing their plans. She doesn't get to suddenly go, "I don't know," cry a little, and get sympathetic pats.

But of course that's precisely what happens, courtesy of Weiss.

During this whole scene I kept wondering why no one was celebrating Nora waking up, especially when Ruby outright mentions her. Have they just not noticed given all the Penny drama? Because Nora absolutely woke up.

Aaaand went back to sleep, I guess. What was the point of that POV shot? No worries though, she'll wake up again in a minute.

Willow arrives and announces that they can fix the power (and Penny) using the generator at the edge of the property. I'm convinced RT doesn't actually know what a generator is because the characters are acting like it's some super special device that only richy-rich could possibly have. Whitley says that it's the SDC executives who have their "own power supply" and that it's "extremely unfair." Now, don't get me wrong, a good generator powering large portions of your house can run you 30k+, but you can also get one that plugs into your extension cord and powers your fridge for a couple hundred. There's absolutely a class issue here, just not the one Whitley and Weiss seem to be commenting on. They make a generator sound like the sort of device that only a politician-CEO could possible have and it's weird.

Likely, it sounds weird because it's a choppy way of getting Whitley to bring up the wealth disparity so he can then go, 'That's right! We're crazy rich with a company housing tons of ships! We can use those to evacuate Mantle.' Awkwardness aside, I do like that the Schnee wealth is being used for good purposes, but... evacuate where? To the city currently under attack by a giant whale? In a RWBY that wasn't determined to demonize Ironwood, this would have been a great plot point during the office scene instead, with Weiss offering her services to Ironwood, even if the group decides that a continued evacuation still isn't possible.

Instead, we get it here from Whitley. Do I need to point out the obvious? That Whitley is the MVP of this episode? He's done more good in an HOUR than the group has managed in a year. Give this kid some training and make him a huntsmen instead.

We're given a (very pretty!) shot of the shattered moon because it wouldn't be RWBY if we weren't continually reminded that gods once wiped out humanity before destroying part of a celestial body... and absolutely no one talks about that lol.

Blake's coat might not make any sense for her color scheme, but it does make her easy to spot as she and Ruby run across the grounds. Oh my god, they're actually doing something together! It only took eight years. They even get a lovely talk where Blake admits how much she looks up to Ruby, despite her being younger, and once again I'm struck at how much more I would have loved this scene if it had appeared elsewhere in the series. It is, indeed, as sweet and emotional as all the RWBY GIF-ers are claiming... provided you overlook that this is the exact opposite of what Ruby needs to hear right now. She doesn't need to hear that she's more mature and reliable than her elders when she's functioning under a "We don't need adults" mentality. She doesn't need to hear that not knowing what to do is totally fine, not when that led to her turning on Ironwood, despite not knowing how to stop Salem. She doesn't need to hear that "doing something" — doing anything — is a strength, because Ruby keeps avoiding the big problems for smaller ones she's comfortable with, like standing by Penny's bedside instead of deciding between Mantle and Atlas. Blake's speech is heartfelt, but it's a speech that suits a Beacon days Ruby who is having some doubts about her leadership skills, not the girl whose impulsive — and now lack of — actions is having world-wide repercussions. Everyone is babying Ruby to a staggering degree. It's like if we had a med show where the doctor is standing by the bedside of a coding patient, fretting between two treatments. 'Don't worry,' their colleague says, patting their shoulder. 'I've always looked up to you. You'll do something when you're ready' and then they continue to watch the patient, you know, die.

Also: who does Ruby look up to? Everyone talks about how much they depend on and trust Ruby, but who does Ruby look to for guidance? A number of her problems stem from the fact that she has rejected the advice of everyone who has tried to help her improve: Qrow, Ozpin, Ironwood, even Yang. Ruby is presented as the pinnacle of what to strive for in a leader, rather than a leader who has only been doing this for two years and still has a great deal to learn.

Anyway, they get the generator on and the Hound shows up.

I am begging RT to just make RWBY a horror story. All their best scenes the last three years have been horror I am bEGGING —

Anyway, while Ruby waits to be eaten we cut to Willow and Klein, the former of which is reaching for her bottle, pulling back, reaching again, all while her hand shakes. This is good. This is what we should have gotten with Qrow. Which isn't to say that their (or anyone's) addiction should be identical, but rather that this is a far more engaging and complex look at addiction than what our birb got. Willow tells us that she doesn't drink in the dark despite bringing the bottle with her; tries to resist drinking when she's scared and ultimately fails. Qrow just decided to stop drinking after decades of addiction, seemingly for no reason, and that was that. Why is a side character we only met this volume written better than one of the main cast?

Blake manages to call Weiss about the Hound and she asks if Whitley can handle the airships without her. I mean, I assume so given that Weiss is looking at the bookshelves while Whitley does all the work lol. He makes a teasing comment about how he can if she can handle that grimm and she comments that they still need to work on his "attitude."

No they don't. Weiss stuck a weapon in her kid brother's face. Whitley made a joke. Even if Weiss' comment is likewise meant to be read as teasing, it's clear that we've bypassed any meaningful conversation between them. That hug was supposed to be a Fix Everything moment even though, as I've laid out elsewhere, it didn't even come close.

We cut back to Ruby getting thrown through a wall into the backyard and the Hound creepily coming after her. She's freaked out by this clearly abnormal grimm and Blake is weirdly... not? "It's just a grimm. Just focus!" Uh, it's obviously not. Have we reached the traumatized, sleep-deprived point where the group is sinking into full-blown denial? I wouldn't be surprised. They've been awake for like... 40+ hours.

Because the Hound knocks Ruby out with a single hit. Just, bam, she's down. "Focusing" is not the solution here.

Weiss calls to warn the others about the grimm, telling them to stick together. Willow (understandably) starts freaking out and flees the room (classic horror trope!). Klein is left alone when Penny wakes up with red eyes. Oh no!

Don't worry. You know nothing meaningful happens.

She shoves Klein before (somehow?) resisting the hack, her Maiden powers going wild in the process. Just when it looks as if Penny might cause some serious damage, Nora wakes up, takes her hand, and says, I kid you not:

"Hey... no one is going to make you do anything you don't want to do... It's just a part of you. Don't forget about the rest."

Okay. I want to re-emphasize that I love hopeful, uplifting, victory-won-through-the-power-of-love stories. Istg I'm not dead inside, it's just that RWBY does this so badly. I mean, what is this? It has similarities to the character shouting, 'No! Resist!' to their mind-controlled ally, but this is not presented as a desperate, last-ditch effort by Nora. She just speaks like this is the most obvious truth in the world. If you don't want to have your mind taken over... just don't! It's that simple. The problem definitely isn't that Watts has changed her coding and has implemented a command she can't override, it's that Penny has forgotten about the "rest" of her personhood.

And this works. Granted, not for long, but we leave Nora having successfully calmed Penny down and until her eyes unexpectedly go red again scenes later, we're left assuming that this is a permanent solution. That, imo anyway, is taking the Power of Love too far, overriding the basic reality of Penny being hacked. It’s not a personal failing she must overcome, it’s an external attack. I would have rather had Nora react to the scars she saw on her arm, or have a moment with Klein, or get some love from the group. Not a wakes up, falls asleep, wakes up again to save Penny with a Ruby level 'Just ignore reality' pep-talk, then back to sleep again.

So Penny isn't attacking her allies, or mistakenly hurting her allies with wild Maiden powers. Not that the group doesn't have enough to deal with, but still. Weiss arrives to help with the Hound and attempts a new summon, only to fail when two minor grimm burrow up into her glyphs. I really enjoyed that moment, both for the wing visual and the knowledge that Weiss' glyphs can fail if you break them somehow (which makes sense). Also, I just like that she failed in general? Weiss is, as per usual now, about to demonstrate just how OP she is compared to the rest of the team, so it was nice to see her faltering here.

The Hound tries to make off with Ruby and Blake does an excellent job of keeping it tethered. Ruby finally wakes, only to realize that the grimm is actually after Penny since it's staring at her power up through the window, no longer trying to escape. Moments like this remind me that there's someone on RT's writing team that knows what they're doing, at least some of the time. The assumption that the Hound is after Ruby as a SEW, the surprise that it's actually Penny, realizing it holds up because Ruby is covered in Penny's blood and Blake is not... that's all nice, tight plotting. More of that please!

The Hound drops her and Ruby's aura shatters when she hits the ground. I want everyone to remember this moment as an example of how strong the Hound is. The group may be tired, but unlike YJR they've been sitting around in the Schnee manor for a number of hours, regaining strength. We saw the Hound hit Ruby twice — once through the wall and once to knock her out — and then she falls from a not very high distance for a huntress, yet her aura is toast. That's the level of power and skill the Hound possesses. Decimating YJR, knocking Oscar out, same for Ruby, avoiding Blake and Weiss' hits, soon to treat Penny like a ragdoll. Just remember all this for the episode's end.

Blake tells Weiss she'll take care of Ruby, you go help the others. Yay breaking up the duos more! Bad timing though as the new acid-spitting grimm pops out of the ground and Blake is now left alone to face it.

Weiss re-enters the mansion, knowing the Hound is somewhere nearby, but not where. Suddenly, Willow's voice sounds through her scroll with an, "Above you!" which... doesn't keep Weiss from getting hit lol. But it's the thought that counts! Willow has accessed the cameras she's set up throughout the manor, watching the Hound's movements, and I have to say, that is a WAY better use of her separation from Klein than I thought we were getting. I legit thought they'd have Willow run away in a panic, meet the Hound, die, and then Weiss could be sad about losing her mom.

It does say something about RWBY's writing that this was my knee-jerk theory, as well as my surprise when we got something way better.

The Hound runs off, uninterested in Weiss, and she asks Willow to keep tabs on it. It heads for Whitley next (also covered in Penny's blood) and very creepily stalks him in the office with a, "I know you're here." Whitley is seconds away from being Hound chow before one of Weiss' boars pin it against the wall. He runs, then runs BACK to finish deploying the airships, before finally escaping assumed death. Goddamn this boy is pulling his weight.

I assume all these ships are automated then? I hope someone takes a moment to call May. Otherwise it's going to be super weird for the Mantle citizens if a fleet of SDC ships just show up and hover there...

I don't entirely understand how Weiss saved him though. She's nowhere to be seen when Whitley leaves and he runs a fair distance before he and Willow encounter Weiss again. We know her summons don't have to keep right next to her, but are they capable of rudimentary thought, attacking an enemy — and an enemy only — despite Weiss being a couple corridors down and unable to see the current battlefield? I don't know. In another series I'd theorize that this was a deliberate hint, a way to clue us into the fact that Willow, someone who we currently know almost nothing about, had training in the past and summoned the boar herself. Weiss and Winter certainly didn't get that hereditary skill from Jacques. Hell, we might still get that, Weiss reacting with confusion next episode when Whitley thanks her for the boar, but I doubt it. That scene with Ruby and the Hound aside, the show isn't this good at laying groundwork and then following up on it.

Case in point: Weiss says, "I didn't forget you" to Whitley after he gets away from the Hound, the moment trying to harken back to her promise to Willow. Key word is "trying." Because she absolutely forgot him! Weiss threatened and ignored Whitley until he proved his usefulness. I also shouldn't need to point out that, "Don't forget your brother" does not mean, "Don't let your brother die a horrible death by abnormal grimm." Weiss acts like her saving him is a fulfillment of her promise, rather than just the most basic of human decency. And also, you know, her job.

So that part is frustrating. The entire Schnee dynamic is a mess, from Weiss making a joke of her father's arrest, to Willow (presumably) fixing their relationship by putting a hand on her daughter's shoulder. Okay.

Then Weiss cuts off the Hound by summoning a giant wall of ice. My brain, every time this happens:

YOU COULD HAVE FIXED THE HOLE IN MANTLE'S WALL.

Moving on, Blake's fight against the acid... thing has some great choreography, including Blake using her semblance which we haven't seen in AGES.

I really like the fight itself, just not what Blake is shouting the whole time. "I need you, Ruby! We all need you!" This has really gotten ridiculous. Ruby is presented as everyone's sole savior despite failing time and time again. It's not that I don't think Blake as a character should have faith in her leader, it's that I don't think the writers should be crafting a story where everyone puts their unshakable hopes in an untrained, disloyal, impulsive 17 year old. I mean, Ruby is currently unconscious, yet Blake is acting like if she doesn't wake up — she, as an individual, if Ruby Rose does not re-join this fight — then all is lost. If Ruby doesn't save them, no one can. Which is, of course, absurd on numerous levels. Blake doesn't need the passed out, aura-less Ruby right now, she needs the still very healthy Weiss pulling out multiple summons and an ice wall! Use your scroll and call for backup again.

But of course, Ruby wakes up and kills the new, terrifying grimm with a single hit. It's a preview of what's to come with the Hound and it's just as ridiculous here as it will be there.

Speaking of the Hound, am I the only one who thought this was... cute?

I can't possibly be the only one. That head-tilt is exactly what my dogs do and my brain instinctively went, "Aww, puppy!"

Murderous puppy.

The Hound realizes none of the Schnees are who it's looking for and runs off. Penny, meanwhile, has been fully taken over because, well, that's just what's convenient now. She resists long enough keep Amity up, then succumbs, then resists to apologize to Ruby, then succumbs, then resists because Nora asked her to, then succumbs once it's time to knock her out. If RWBY was willing to commit to consequences, Penny would have been taken over and that was that. The characters would need to deal with whatever outcome happens as a result. Instead, the show very carefully avoids any of those pesky consequences by having Penny successfully resisting at key moments, despite no explanation of how she's managing that.

She shoves Klein again (Klein is having a Bad Time) and starts walking down the main steps. When Whitley wants to know where the hell she's going, Penny mechanically responds that she must "Open the vault, then self-destruct." I suppose the change Watts made was the self-destruct order? Ironwood obviously wants the vault open, though not necessarily Penny's death. Think what you will of his moral compass, she's a damn powerful ally — a research project, perhaps — and a Maiden to boot. At the very least, her death may give the powers to someone even worse.

God, please don't let them have brought Penny back and made her a Maiden just to kill her again.

The Hound arrives though and, as said, knocks Penny out. We're back to square one with her, then. Note though that this attack is near instantaneous. She grabs its hands one second, is hanging limply the next. Wow, the Hound sure is a terrifying antagonist!

Not for long.

"That's enough," Ruby says and one-shots it with her eyes.

Now, I want to talk for a moment about the implications of that line. "That's enough." Obviously Ruby is #done with this situation and emotionally unwilling to let the Hound kidnap Penny (congratulations, Nuts and Dolts shippers), but there's a meta reading here as well. Not intentional, but glaring to me nonetheless. Basically, the idea that the Hound has, from a plot perspective, done enough. It has served its singular purpose. It kidnapped Oscar and now it dies. Never-mind how insanely powerful we've established the Hound to be, never-mind how Ruby's eyes also work or don't work according to whether anything of actual import is on the line. From a plot perspective "that's enough" and the Hound can be disposed of instantly. It got Oscar and gave us an episode of filler creepiness. Move along now.

The idea behind Ruby's eyes isn't bad, but the execution absolutely is. RT has undermined a huge portion of the stakes by giving their protagonist an instant kill-shot that always works precisely when she needs it to. Starting with the Apathy, we have yet to get a moment where Ruby's eyes fail to save the day when she really needs them to, no matter how incredible the challenge. The Hound was very intentionally written to be a grimm outside of the group's current power level. It thinks, it talks, they literally can't touch it. This creates the expectation that the group will need to grow stronger — or at least become smarter — in order to surmount this new obstacle, yet Ruby's eyes undermine all of that. The group hasn't grown in years, the show just makes enemies weaker as needed (Ace Ops), or has Ruby pull out her eyes as a trump card. It wouldn't be that bad if we'd at least gotten a good battle out of it, one where the group gets close to defeating the Hound on their own, but needs Ruby's eyes to finish it off. Instead, she literally walks up without any aura, announces to the audience that this antagonist's time is up, and blasts it out a window.

Granted, Ruby's eyes don't completely finish it. The Hound pulls itself to its feet and we see this.

Yup, that's a guy and yup, those are silver eyes.

I would like to issue a formal apology to the "It's secretly Summer!" theorists in the fandom. I mean, I still think it would be ridiculous (and at this point highly improbable) that Ruby's dead mother has actually been a grimm mutant this whole time, just hanging out in Salem's realm while she waits for the plot to start before attacking the world, and then sends some no-name faunus dude after the group instead of their leader's mother for extra, emotional torture... but you all were definitely right about the “It's a person” part! I... don't know how I feel about this. Admittedly, it seems to be a logical continuation of the other grimm-human hybrids we've seen — namely Cinder and Salem herself — and it finally explains why Salem wants Ruby alive (even though it actually doesn't because WHY did she want more SEWs for Hound grimm when she wasn't even attacking back then? And already has all these other insanely powerful tools??), but at the same time, it feels like it's complicating a story that doesn't need further complications. The group fights monsters and has an immortal enemy. You don't need to add 'Some of those monsters are secretly human' to the mix.

It doesn't hurt that this twist is giving me Attack on Titan vibes, which, ew. A dark time in my fandom life, folks.

The Hound staggers a few steps before Whitley and Willow dump a suit of armor on it. That's all it takes to kill the most dangerous grimm we've ever seen: a single flash of silver eyes and some heavy metal. This also wreaks havoc with the implication that Salem wants SEWs alive because they create such powerful grimm. Obviously not. I mean yeah, normal huntsmen are going to have serious problems, we’ve seen that this volume, but any other SEWs nearby will take a Hound out instantaneously. For a villain with so many other powerful abilities — immortality, magic, endless normal grimm, her nifty soup — Salem would be much better served just killing SEWs straight out. Clearly, creating Hounds isn't worth the effort.

The Hound leaves some bones behind and Ruby collapses to her knees, overcome with the knowledge that this was once a person. Again, uncomfortable Attack on Titan parallels.

We finish our premiere with Cinder clearing away rubble to reveal Watts. Honestly, I like that we ended on this because her rescue is hilarious. She just slings him over her shoulders like a sack of potatoes and blasts off with her magic fire feet. Fantastic.

Note though that with this scene we've seen almost everything from the clip and the trailer. What's to come in the rest of Volume 8? No idea. Outside of Winter leading the charge with the bomb, we got it all here.

Time to update the bingo board!

I'm crossing off "Introducing new grimm that are quickly abandoned." Between the Hound and acid-dude both falling to a single blast/cut from Ruby, we've more than earned this square.

It doesn't look as if we'll get another Watts-Jacques team-up now that he's left, but you never know.

Maria's got me worried. I feel like her Yoda fight against Neo is the one thing she'll be allowed to do this volume, but given that we didn't see anyone except Ruby's group this episode, we don't yet know whether the story is now ignoring her and Pietro, or if they'll re-appear in another episode like YJR.

Qrow is free. Will he get a drink before trying to murder Ironwood? Perhaps.

Still no bingo :(

All in all, the episode was by no means horrible. I think there were lots of horrible parts, but also some legitimately well executed moments, fun action, and scenes that I can easily imagine as squee worthy if you lean back and squint. Everything is comparative and in the growing collection of bad RWBY episodes, this one isn't securing a top slot. Which doesn't mean I think it's good, just... not as bad as it could have been and primarily only bad due to long-running problems, not things this specific episode has done. That's my bar then, so low it has officially entered the underworld.

Still, RWBY is back and a part of me is eager to see where this volume takes us, for better or for worse.

Until next week! 💜

[Ko-Fi]

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #mymetas #rwby recaps #rwby dark

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littlemisssquiggles · 3 years

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so besides the stuff with oscar,witch i'm not in the mood to talk much about,do you think winter will show up next episode an fight weiss ,and how do you think things will go with penny next episode

Yeah I’ve basically removed all posts questioning me about that scene from my inbox. I don’t want to talk about it either. Even after a day of rest and a week of getting it off my chest, I’m still upset and I still can’t bring myself to rewatch that part of V8CH4 in its entirety. It’s depressing since it’s the only Oscar-related moments from the episode but…nah son, I can’t look at it and I’m not sure how I will feel moving forward towards the remaining episodes. I’m really hoping that someone either helps Oscar to escape or he escapes on his own.

A part of me wished to hope that the Hound---Salem’s so-called experiment---ends up turning on her and is an instigator in Oscar’s escape. I understand that some folks are hoping for Neopolitan and while I don’t mind that, right now Neo is off with Cinder Fall and Emerald Sustrai. So…at the moment, Oscar has no one within Salem’s ranks he could actually reach out to for potential aid. He’s left alone in there with all the bad people who could potentially hurt him further. And I just…ugh….

Anyways to answer your actual question anon-chan, to be honest I’m not sure. To tell you the truth, I’m not really expecting Winter and Weiss to fight one another per say but I do expect Winter to possibly show up at Schnee Manor to inspect the premises under the suspicion that home is probably the first place her sister would chose to take refuge while up in Atlas Kingdom. After all, the only other Atlesian safe haven our heroes were familiar with is the academy and no way in sh*t were they going back there.

I’d like to think that we could potentially spend most of today’s episode focusing on RWBN dealing with Nora’s sustained injury. I’m not even quite sure how they expect to treat Nora and I’m surprised they didn’t steal the chance to try and make it back to camp down in Mantle. But I’m guessing that Nora’s injuries are so serious that they couldn’t wait. Given the fact that Schnee Manor houses both a dining hall and even an in house auditorium for Weiss to perform (allegedly), it wouldn’t surprise me if the house also contained a medical bay or some area of the household stacked with medical supplies.

Again, still not sure how RWBN intend to help Nora but I’m supposed it’s better than nothing. What I hope we see next episode is more moments of the girls bonding with one another. I’d like to possibly see Ruby and Weiss having a discussion about sisterhood and perhaps, Ruby could give Weiss the encouragement to seek out Whitley. She did send him to his room which---honestly annoyed me at first but now I find it highly amusing and adorable even. Weiss straight up parented Whitley. In that moment, she wasn’t acting like a big sister---she was actually being a mom to Whit and what’s even funnier and more interesting is that Whit actually listened to Weiss.

Despite everything they’ve been through, Whit isn’t a bad person entirely. He’s not like Jacques. While I already knew this as a fan of his character, it is nice to see more examples of Whit’s compassionate side. I genuinely hope this leads into Weiss and Whit discussing their relationship. Whit told Weiss that Willow is locked in her room which…I know is something she does commonly but…I dunno, somehow I feel suspicious of this instance.

My concern is that the reason why Willow told Weiss that she needs to look out for Whit is because, ultimately Weiss will be the only person Whit has to nurture and guide him. Jacques’in jail, probably for life. Winter practically disowned the rest of her family outside of Weiss and doesn’t give Whit the time of day. And Willow…I dunno, somehow I getting “death flag” readings from her.

So yeah, for the most part, I’m hoping that RWBN’s time at Schnee Manor will lead into some development for Weiss and Whitley. My other concern in that Willow and Whit may end up being arrested by Winter and her forces on behalf of the General after being accused of housing “felons”.

While I doubt we’ll see Weiss and Winter fight each other (at least not yet), I do feel like they will cross paths and will be forced to challenge each other on the battlefield. Not in any kind of major fight but more so like Weiss summoning her Armour Gigas to defend her and the others and keep Winter’s Beowulf Summons at bay while the others escaped back to the airship to flee. That’s my hunch. But as I’ll say again, we’ll see how the episode goes.

As for Penny P---well judging from the title of the episode and the thumbnail, we may get some action over at Amity Tower especially since Penny returned there to help her father and Maria. We also know that Watts helped the General with creating something that would force Penny to return to Atlas. We also know from last episode that Cinder may be heading over to Amity Tower with Emerald and Neo. So there’s a chance for all of that to go down in this episode.

That’s my hunch. But as I’ll say again, we’ll see how the episode goes.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2020)

#squiggles answers: rwby #oscar pine #ruby rose #whitley schnee #weiss schnee #winter schnee #rwby volume 8 spoilers #Anonymous

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real-jaune-isms · 3 years

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RWBY Volume 8 Chapter 4 Review/Remix

A pretty good episode this time, and only 30% pain and despair so things are looking up! But when it goes mean it goes real strong with the mean. Lots to think about here, and boy oh boy do I wonder what we’ll see next week!

For a nice touch of levity, we open on Robyn telling a funny story about a time Joanna lost a fight to try and pass the time. Maybe she’s trying to cheer Qrow up too, but as someone who gets very bored at work pretty often I get the appeal of talking just to keep sane. She sees Qrow is too lost in his brooding about Clover’s pin to listen to the story, and Jacques is too busy fussing over a fly buzzing around his head (the Pence jokes write themselves). Tough crowd indeed, though her joke about Ironwood needing to pay for cell block entertainment does get a smile and a chuckle from the sad old bird. She takes this chance to apologize, possibly again and we’re just seeing this conversation now, for what happened with Clover. Many would argue it is really her fault for getting trigger happy back in the airship when Qrow was the one under arrest, but that’s an argument not worth having because the blame soup was being stirred by way too many cooks to make a clear verdict. Qrow, however, blames himself for deciding to team up with Tyrian, which was certainly a bad move. It was a heat of the moment thing, and he makes it clear he really would have preferred working with Clover to re-detain Tyrian again, but Clover just wouldn’t let up on his arrest orders. The real pain though, he admits, is that he had really started to let his guard down around this guy and thought her could actually make a partnership work again without his Semblance tossing 1,000 monkey wrenches into the mix. Feels like a fairy tale dream, vanishing like a rose petal on the wind, like every other friend. I of course added the part about rose petals, because you know he meant Summer and the unity of STRQ she probably represents in his mind. Robyn knows a thing or two about having a Semblance that impairs your relationships. Not many people like being around someone they can’t keep anything private from, and she can call out and mistruthing with a touch of the hand. Qrow has to admit he hadn’t considered someone else having that kind of personal trouble like he does, but their conversation is ended by Harriet coming in to toss Watts back in his cell. She’s pissy at Qrow and says he shouldn’t have Clover’s pin, but he retorts he has no reason not to have it since he’s not Clover’s killer. She still has a hard time believing that since Harbinger was the murder weapon, but Robyn finally raises a very good point. Miss Hill is a literal walking polygraph and all they would need to do to prove Qrow’s innocence is let her out of her cell and take her hand. But they won’t do that because they don’t want to prove what’s really true here, they want to cling to a convenient story so they don’t have to admit what really happened. Cuz if they put those glasses back on and face the facts, that means reevaluating what side their on if Clover died because he refused to help detain a serial killer before arresting a former colleague and that’s the real problem. Hare had already threatened that if she was gonna open the cell she wouldn’t use her hands for a friendly shake, and the dig at her allegiances and her ignorance towards Ironwood’s sins almost riles her up to the point of taking Robyn’s bait. But Marrow calls her back down to sensibility and she leaves in a huff. Robyn lays back and sighs at how there was almost something exciting happening.

Cutting to an actually exciting scene, Yang Jaune and Ren are outside the city chasing the Hound through a mountainous canyon on their bikes. It can fly while they have to navigate the rocks, and their bikes aren’t handling the cold terribly well. Yang laments that none of them can fly, but that inspires Jaune to pull out his shield and get closer to Ren. He’s gonna get his teammate up there, and Ren immediately understands how. Leaping off his bike and onto Jaune’s shield, he’s launched through the air by the burst of Gravity Dust in the crest and uses his grapple line blade to wrap around the Hound’s leg... and get dragged through the air like Curious George at the end of a bunch of balloons. Still, he’s weighing it down some and can climb up the line to get in close... when he’s not getting swung around against the cliffside. To further slow it down, he shoots his other line around a big rock that gets dragged behind them for about 5 seconds before the Hound flies higher up and the line comes loose. Ren gets knocked around even more while Yang finds an inclined path that gives her enough height to start shooting at the Grimm. It handles this fairly well, by dropping Oscar from its mouth into its hands and flying ahead of her with a loud roar. Apparently one of its Grimm for all Seasons abilities is to call for backup, because dozens of Centinels suddenly burrow up out of the rocks and ground around them and several Teryx swoop in above. Navigating becomes that much more difficult for the blondes, especially when one Centinel spits acid and hits the thruster of Jaune’s bike. He thinks fast and leaps off his bike to launch off another Grimm in front of him and flip onto a rocky overpass where he almost loses his balance and falls back down. Luckily Yang instead zooms by and pulls him onto her bike where they continue their pursuit. She does a great job of bobbing and weaving around the insects, but a Teryx lands in their path. Jaune tosses his shield grenade in front of a large rock and they drive onto it to tilt it into a ramp, launching over the avian foe into a spin between two more big bugs. They bump on a rock, but the Grimm cannot touch them with Yang’s driving. Unfortunately, they have a far more dangerous problem: They’re heading towards the edge of a massive cliff. Yang tries to make a quick turn but instead flips the bike over and launches both of them off to go tumbling off the precipice. Jaune tries to plant his sword in the ground as an anchor, but he doesn’t keep hold of it with their momentum and they both fall with a very believable scream. Big props to Miles and Barbara for this and the dramatic performances soon to come. Ren comes swooping in for a massive save and grapples Jaune’s sword with one weapon and the poor guy’s leg with the other. Jaune grabbed Yang by the hand so she’s fine too, but an incoming Teryx might soon negate it all. Luckily, Ren instead negates all their emotions with his Semblance and the Teryx passes them by. Less lucky, Ren being here means he’s not hanging from the Hound. He let it get away with Oscar to save his friends, and you know he’s kicking himself for it.

Shifting scenes from that tense gloom, we see Weiss decided the safest place to take Nora for the time being is her own damn mansion. Whitley answers the door and is about to try and berate Weiss for this but she is having none of it. She holds him at swordpoint and insists that they are coming inside. Whitley is very against the idea of harboring fugitives after the hit the Schnee family’s reputation has taken in the wake of its patriarch’s arrest for war crimes, and Blake is quite frustrated that this is what he chooses to complain about. The staff is all gone, Willow has retreated to her room and assumable to the bottle, you gotta admit Whitley probably feels more alone now than ever and is... coping in less than ideal ways. Weiss still seemingly carries a chip on her shoulder of wanting to prove that she is doing something actually important and she made the right move by leaving home to be a Huntress, so she insists that Whitley has no right to nag them because they are saving the Kingdom here. At least, that’s what my 2 semesters of psychology classes would tell me. Ruby plays intermediary between the Schneeblings and lays down their very minimal terms. Let them stay here a little while so Nora can rest and recover, and then they will leave him to his sulking and riches. Whitley begrudgingly accepts and asks what he has to do, and Weiss seems to relish this chance to tell him to go to his room. Finally flexing her big sister authority without Papa around to veto her in favor of his adoring son. But like Willow said last Volume, Whitley has been stuck in this house just like Weiss and Winter, and they could certainly try to treat him with a bit more fairness and sympathy. I’m sure it hurt him a little inside to have yet another authority figure bossing him around without a care for his desires. Still, he’s not giving much reason to make us sympathize so I say wait a little bit to see if he’s got any softer moments to come. Weiss directs May on where to carry Nora, and Blake checks on Ruby while they have this quieter moment. Possibly because she wants the chance to talk to her too, Blake suggests Ruby should try calling Yang to make sure things are okay, both between the sisters and in general. But that’s just it. She did it 35 minutes ago. Okay not really, but I wanted to toss a Watchmen joke in. Still, as much as Ruby worries how that half of the team is doing, she’s already trying to call them and it’s not going through.

We fade back to our three battered teens as Yang collects what scattered pieces she can from her bike, the only one they still have. But like I said, it crashed into a rock after they tumbled off and it’s in no condition to run anymore. So Jaune is trying to call for help and transport back to Mantle, but either Ironwood shut down all communication in the lower districts or they’re just so far out in the tundra that a signal just won’t reach. The latter would make sense, and explain why Ruby couldn’t reach Yang. Giving up on the call, the three instead trudge through the snow in the light of the setting sun back more or less the way they came. Jaune is dragging the bike along while Ren leads the way to an outpost he saw while getting dragged by the Hound. Yang notes how low their auras have been drained due to protecting them from the cold this long, and like a kid on a car trip asks how much longer it will be. Ren has no immediate answer so she asks again and he gives a snippy “I don’t know”. She can tell there’s something more bugging him and tries to coax it out of him after sensing the hostility in his explanation that he only got a glimpse of their intended destination before he had to abandon Oscar in favor of saving them. He refuses to discuss his deeper feelings because he thinks it’ll just waste time. This riles Yang up and she demands to know what his deal is, to which he insists she not worry about it. The argument keeps escalating from there. Things aren’t going smoothly enough for Ren? No, they’re not going smoothly at all, but boohoo Ren, that’s part of the job as a Huntsman. He doesn’t think it’s a job they should have at all, they weren’t ready for it or to make the incredibly damming decisions they’ve had to since taking that position. Sure, they had a few lucky breaks and near miss successes, but then they entered this losing streak that they can’t seem to recover from because the losses are too drastic and every choice they’ve made has been the wrong one. Yang refuses to accept such pessimism and insists that even if they haven’t done everything perfectly they still had to do something because inaction would have made things worse. But how could they be worse than they are now, Ren demands to know as they freeze to death out here. Salem has the Lamp and Oscar, and they have nothing but the cold winds. They may not have an army but they have the Maiden, Yang tries to counter, but because they haven’t let her to open the vault for Ironwood all of Atlas is just a buffet waiting to be chowed down on and it will all be their fault when that happens. Yang rightfully asks him if he seriously thinks letting Ironwood try and float Atlas away to safety will work out for him or for the people of Mantle he’s abandoning, but he argues that they shouldn’t even be the ones asked to make that call. He’s trying to spit the hard truths no one else wanted to face, but this is way too harsh and mean, especially for Ren. What are these hard truths, you ask? That Ruby is still too young to be a leader, that he himself is an orphan from a town that doesn’t exist anymore (which I guess shows how unimportant he is for someone thrust into this decision making role), and that Jaune, who by the way has been trying in vain to get the two to cut the shit and quiet down this whole time, cheated his way into Beacon. A damn low blow there, bro. Bringing back the deep wound from Volume 1. And you can tell he regrets it immediately, but to say that would mean backing down from his point. Jaune doesn’t even address the personal callout and just says alright, you don’t think we should have the job, good for you. I’m still gonna keep walking and get out of the cold because like it or not we were given a goddamn job to do. Maybe not in those words, but the meaning was there. Ren and Yang silently let him take the lead, probably feeling the hot wash of shame distracting them from the arctic chill. Yang still takes one last dig at Ren though by asking if it’s his goal to push everyone away, implying he’s being an asshole and not even Nora is sticking by him. Well... in so many words anyway.

We get another change of scenery with a dramatic violin stroke like something out of a murder mystery movie. Oscar is regaining consciousness, and he hears Ozpin try to reassure him to stay calm and that it’s gonna be okay. When he looks up, however, he sees Salem leaning in a shadowy doorframe staring at a smoky apparition in her hand and welcoming back her long lost Ozma. Judging by the childlike laughter and general shape of her smoke display, I think she was manifesting a memory of her and Oz’s dead daughters to try and reminisce about the days when they were still lovers. Oscar realizes he’s being held in the air from the Hound’s mouth and tries to struggle free as Salem notes how young and weak this new vessel is. She’s not even acknowledging Oscar, just talking through him to Ozma. It’s been what may have truly been centuries or even a millennium since they’ve last met, and dear Oz has nothing to say to his wife? Oscar does his best Ozpin impression to try and fake it till he makes it, but Salem knows her man better than anyone and sees through it to grab him by the face and call his bluff. But he really is still a separate person from Oz, so maybe he can be more cooperative to her requests than that old wizard. She still wants to know where the Relic of Choice is, since Oz clearly must have used an extra layer of deception to hide it opposed to the others, and she wants Oscar to reveal the trick. But that’s not a memory he has access to, and he tells her plainly that he doesn’t know. She believes him, knows Oz would hold that one close to the chest longest of all, so she asks an easier question. How does she go about asking the Lamp questions? She gets the standard coverup answer, the Lamp is out of questions so it’s futile to even try, but she refuses to believe that one. Instead she blasts the poor kid with an evil magic rainbow laser and lets him scream himself hoarse for a bit. His chest has scorch marks, or at least his clothes do, and he fearfully tries to pull away from her “loving” touch. Lying so easily about these things, he truly was reincarnated into a like-minded soul... but sooner or later one of the two in this battered body will break and Salem will learn what she wishes to know. He tries to insist he won’t tell her anything, but that’s why she has backup. Hazel comes in to literally gut punch this 14 year old until he coughs up his guts or the truth, whichever comes first. And he justifies it all by saying this is revenge for his defeat at Haven and from the still unforgiven death of his sister.

Salem doesn’t stay to watch the savage beating, instead walking the halls of Monstra with her lovely new pet. Cinder has been waiting in this hallway for a chance to speak with her Mistress, but is distracted by her immediate discomfort in the face of the Hound. Salem claims it is an experiment that she is quite happy with the results of thus far, and wants Cinder to get on with whatever point she had so she can get out of the way. Cinder wants to search for Penny, she thinks she can make up for the past blunder and claim the Winter powers for herself. But Salem just laughs at this. “She thinks, she wants!” It’s like hearing a cockroach tell you about its hopes and dreams. Mommy Salami does not give a fuck what Cinder wants to do, she has done nothing to earn Salem caring about that. Cinder, to her credit, does not take this dismissal lying down and tries to argue that they are doing nothing to further their plans when Cinder could be achieving a great victory for her Mistress by securing their way into the Atlas vault. Salem does not slow her pace, and says when it is time to act she will tell Miss Fall what she needs her to do. Cinder tries to argue, and is met by the snarling maw of the Hound turning on its heels to send her shrinking back. Salem has been pretty damn patient with this bratty girl, but she will not repeat herself again. You are not going the the ball, Cinderella, you are staying here and doing what your godmother tells you to because if you don’t you will learn just how easily you can be replaced and forgotten. Cinder gives up her case and assumes the position of submission, which is to say taking a knee and repeating her self-depreciating mantra that without Salem she is nothing. This satisfies Salem and she walks away with her dog in tow, leaving Neo to glare at Cinder as if wondering who is really the domesticated little pet in this place.

Cut to Cinder immediately rebelling against her given orders and heading for the airship insisting she just wants to go check on something and then they’ll come right back before anyone knows they left. Neo just floats along behind her because like hell she’s staying in the Satan whale when it’s this bitch’s fault she’s here at all. We get the last unseen shot from the trailer as Cinder looks out over Atlas and rationalizes that Salem doesn’t know Team RWBY like she does, she wouldn’t understand how determined they would be to try and save the world, and so it falls to her to check out Amity Colosseum again and see if they’re up to something. Neo seems annoyed and disinterested at Cinder’s petty little scheme, but they’re both caught off guard by Emerald arriving behind them and offering to tag along to help. She’s been getting better with her Semblance and asserts that she would be very useful. Poor misguided lass, searching so desperately for acknowledgement and praise you’re never gonna get... Cinder seems pissed that she was eavesdropping, but she’s not gonna turn down the assist. Time for an evil girls’ night out~

Back on the ground, night has fallen as JRY have found the outpost at last. Jaune hits a heater to get it running and prevent their freezing to death as Ren broods out the window and Yang is outside working on her bike. The leader takes this time to address the tension with his teammate. Yes, he did make a bad decision and cheat his way into the Academy. But when he found himself in that bad situation he realized he needed help and he asked for it. He turned his situation around and got better, became the strong person he is now. Holding onto this ideal that being strong means doing everything on your own? That was literally the issue Jaune faced in his mini character arc back in Volume 1, and he came out of it humbled and ready to accept support from his team. From Pyrrha. But she’s not here anymore, and Jaune is. Nora is, team RWBY is here for Ren. So Ren needs to understand that he can let them in, because the more he hides from how he feels the worse it’s gonna feel and hurt him inside. Ren goes outside to sulk under a streetlight, but Yang has come inside now to say that she’s found the part she needs to fix the bike so with a little more tinkering they can get it working and ride back into the city once they’ve got some R&R. Yang does take the time to say she’s sorry Ren said what he did because of her argument with him, but Jaune dismisses it for the time being as all three of them being under a hellish amount of stress. He’s been where Ren was before, he knows how much it hurts. Yang turns back to the tool bench to work on the thruster, but she’s got some inner turmoil of her own to vent about. She wants to know if Jaune thinks “She” thinks less of Yang for making the choice she did and staying to help Mantle instead of going to help fix Amity. Playing the pronoun game like this can be tricky, and Jaune fairly assumes she means Ruby since the two of them did have the verbal disagreement before splitting off, and Yang did question her leader’s decision making and leadership. He assures Yang that her sister will always love and believe in her even if they have squabbles like this. But it would seem Vomit Boy lost the pronoun game, and Yang was not actually asking about Ruby. Judging by the purple cannister she’s wrenching into the battered thruster, she was asking if Blake would think less of her because of these recent actions.

A lot of people seem rather torn about this choice in priorities for Yang, but allow me to explain why I think it’s not that bad of a writing decision. If there is one thing that has been consistent in this Volume it has been the confidence of other characters that Yang and Ruby will endure this clash of ideals and remain loving sisters. Usually these sentiments have been given by characters who are siblings themselves and know the strength of that bond, like Weiss and now Jaune. We’ve never actually heard either sister personally express any anguish or regrets over that argument, but we can assume they’re both still a little sour about it. But they have been there for each other to a depth that few siblings have, as evident by Yang’s story in Volume 2 about how she had to step up in raising Ruby in a lot of ways after Tai went into grieving for Summer. They’ve been each other’s best friend and closest confidant for so long, I truly believe their bond is clad in iron and they know it too. Meanwhile, a lot of Yang’s recovery arc in Volumes 4 and 5 was dealing with being abandoned by Blake in a time of need and it continued into 6 as learning to accept her back into her life and find a way to make their partnership work again. Shipping or not, they do have a strong bond that has been renewed by dealing with their combined trauma and killing Adam. And when that happened they both promised they would stick together and back each other up, but now Yang has been the one to decide she wants to split paths and do something else. She has good reason to worry this might have upset Blake, and we the audience know Blake is worried about how she’s doing. So, when faced with a color that reminds her of her partner, it makes some sense that Yang would try and get an outside perspective of if she’s fractured their bond. And if you ship them, that more magnifies the interpersonal concerns than really changes the problems.

Regardless, Jaune realizes this is a problem he’s not quite equipped to deal with and decides he’s going to get some rest in one of the beds in the outpost. He gets the strong feeling he’s gonna need it cuz it feels like things will only get worse before they get any better. As we pan out past Ren, whom Yang promises she won’t let brood himself to death out in the snow, we see cracks start to form out on the ice. That can only bode poorly for these poor kids. Many folks think this is a frozen over lake with some scary aquatic Grimm waiting in the depths like a megalodon Grimm shark or the sulfur fish Grimm that apparently were the winners of a fan design contest this past year. Personally, I’m taking a note from the opening and saying it might be a cloister of Apathy since their gross grabby hands wrapped around Team RWBY when they fell through the ice at the end of the intro. But we will have to wait and see. Thanks for reading, hope to see you and your notes soon!~

Edit: this came out a week late and we did indeed see what it really was. Boy were we not ready for the truth...

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calliecat93 · 3 years

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Well didn’t get this done before Chapter Five came out, but I’m still MUCH more caught up than I had been. Good thing they’re going on a six week break here soon since that’ll not only let me catch my barrings... but let my soul have a break, GOOD GOD THESE PAST TWO CHAPTERS HIT HARD!As far this specific chapter goes... boy I did not expect me to shock me as much as it did. So w\let’s not waste anymore time and jump right into it.

Overview

Robyn is recalling a story about Joanna in prison, but neither Jaques or Qrow are all that into. But she does manage to get Qrow to finally smile, as well as notice him still holding Clover’s badge. She apologizes for what happened, which lets Qrow vent about the entire fiasco and how for the first time in so long, it felt like he had made a connection without having to fear his Semblance ruining it. Robyn... actually understands, herself having been ostracized due to her lie detecting Semblance making people fear her revealing their secrets. Harriet and Marrow enter, throwing Watts ack into his cell. Harriet doesn’t believe Qrow declaring his innocence, even when Robyn offers to use her Semblance. Robyn also calls Harriet out on essentially blaming others and not caring about the truth since it’s easier for her to not accept her own blame. Before Harriet can act, Marrow stops her and the speedster storms off/

Back in the tundra, JYR are still giving chase to The Hound, Jaune even launching Ren at it. It doesn’t work and The Hound even calls for backup, summoning more Grimm. It leads to a giant chase sequence, including a new song that IDT has a title yet, but it is dark as Hell. The chase ends with two of the bikes being destroyed, Yang and Jaune almost falling over a cliff until Ren uses his grappling features to save them, and the three are forced to watch as The Hound escapes with Oscar in it’s clutches. Back up in Atlas, RWBNM have gone to, surprisingly, the Schnee Manor to lay low and tend to Nora. Whitley is less than pleased, especially with what Weiss did not even 24 hours ago in-show, but Weiss makes it clear that they’re not leaving and she sends him to his room. As Weiss and May tend to Nora, Blake sees Ruby worried about the others. She suggests that Ruby can still call Yang... but there’s one problem, Ruby already did.

JYR are out of signal range, forcing them to make their way back to Mantle on-foot. During the trek however, Ren’s closed up attitude is flaring up, which eventually causes Yang to get on his case. Ren i9s frustrated due to not just losing Oscar, but everything that has happened. Losing the Relics, Ironwood’s betrayal, the current Grimm attack with Salem just outside the doorstep. Even with yang pointing out their accomplishments and admitting that they have made mistakes but still pulled through, Ren’s anger flares as he points out that they are WAY in over their heads. Jaune tries to calm them both down, but Ren continues to point to how Ruby is leading them despite still being a kid, he himself is an orphan form the middle of nowhere, and the biggest shock is him getting after Jaune for forging his way into Beacon. This shocks everyone, even Ren himself, but Jaune simply says that he’s getting out of the cold and walks on. Yang asks if Ren just wats to push everyone away before following, leaving Ren shocked and upset.

Meanwhile... oh boy, this scene. Oscar wakes up and standing right across from him is Salem. She addresses Ozma and how long it’s been since she’s seen him and... yeah it’s pretty unsettling. Oscar tries to act like Oz, but Salem sees right through it and tries to get Oscar to give her answers. He genuinely doesn’t know where the Beacon Relic is, so Salem tries to get the password to the Lamp out. When he tries to use the ‘out of questions’ ploy... Salem uses her magic to... magically torture him... yeah it’s... rough. Oscar still doesn’t talk, so Salem brings out Hazel... you know, the guy who hayes Oz probably more than anyone and has sworn to kill him? Yeah...

Cinder meets with Salem, taken back by The Hound which Salem calls an experiment. Cinder again tries to convince her to let her go after Penny, but Salem again orders her to stay put. Cinder agrees... well, verbally anyways. But she knows that the heroes are likely going to still try and launch Amity, so sh decides to go for the Maiden Power anyways. Neo is less than thrilled with this plan, but Cinder has another person willing to help her: Emerald.

Back in the tundra, JYR have found shelter for the night and Jaune admits that Ren is correct about how he cheated his way into Beacon. But he’s since realized that he was above his mistake and tries to convince Ren to not push them out, knowing fully well how all that it does is hurt you more. If it did any good, Ren doesn’t show it as he goes to sit outside. Yang has found a part to fix the bike and also assures Jaune that she knows that he worked hard to get to where he is now. She starts working on the part before asking Jaune if ‘she’ thinks any less of her. Jaune, assuming that she means Ruby, assures her that they’re sisters and will be fine... but Yang was talking about a certain cat girl. Our episode ends here... but not before showing us the ice nearby beginning to crack... thanks a lot CRWBY!

Review

Like I said in the intro, I didn’t expect this chapter to shock me like it did. Did I expect intensity? Of course, especially after the last chapter? Did I expect what we got? Nope, but it was perfect!

Let’s talk about Ren first. Ever since last volume, it’s been clear that he’s been unraveling. He wasn’t engaging in Nora’s antics anymore, was more closed up than usual, seemed in agreement with Ironwood at one point, and of course his mini-breakdown in the finale Not even Nora and him kissing helped, heck considering what happened after it only seemed to make him worse. Even now he’s at serious odds with Nora for the first time since childhood, something that is clearly bothering him despite him keeping it to the chest. He’s trying to keep his focus on his duty, but with everything going more and more wrong, the facade is not only shattering, but the cracks are causing him to push those close to him away.

His argument with Yang was a tense moment. I like it though. Not only for more unique character dynamics, but out of every character Yang will lay it out as it is. If Ren’s going to have an attitude problem, then she will call it out and not give a damn about the reason why. Since Nora can’t get though to him, the harsher approach is kind of the only thing left. Ren’s breakdown was hard to watch... and he is right to an extent. They are in over their heads. Their decision, even if the right one morally, is creating more problems and endanger more lives. Ruby is still a kid and she’s placed far too much on herself. I think he is underestimating himself and the others about not being ready, but his concerns are completely understandable and he has some good, if harsh, points.

But then he brings up Jaune cheating his way into beacon. Yeah, been a while since that came up, huh? I actually gasped when that came up. While Ren clearly didn’t mean for that to come out, the fact that he did when pointing out that they’re way over their heads does display at least some doubts he has about his leader. JNR have grown close over the past few volumes, Ren and Nora essentially considering Jaune family by the time of Volume 6. So hearing this was hard, especially since all that Jaune was doing was trying to calm him and Yang down.

I do, however, like how Jaune reacted. Back in the early volumes, he likely would have taken it as a blow to his confidence and gotten huffy about it. Now? While the blow clearly stung, he keeps himself in check and keeps focus on finding shelter. Then once there, he outright admits that Ren’s right and tries to comfort him. He tries to advise him on opening up and how closing yourself off doesn’t help. Considering that he tried this both in V1 when we found out how he cheated and after Pyrrha died and only getting better when he allowed others to help, he absolutely knows how Ren feels. But the fat that he handled this so maturely and tried to help his friend instead of get angsty about it shows how much he’s grown. It’s really nice to see.

Now let’s talk about Weiss and Whitley. So this got some... mixed reception. Some were upset about Weiss pointing her weapon and Whitley and her general harsh behavior towards him this chapter. Now I do understand the first part since I was similarly annoyed at Yang for threatening Qrow in Volume Six when all that he was trying to do was be reasonable about the Lamp. It was likely too harsh, but in farness Weis sis not only trying to help save the kingdom, but one of her teammates is in critical condition and she has no time for Whitley to be angry at her. The Manor is the safest place at the moment, and she needs to get Nora care now. Not saying it’s a justification, but it isn’t her being mean for the sake of it either.

But even so... guys I’m sorry, but do you seriously expect Weiss to suddenly forgive and coddle Whitley this soon? After years of him belittling her and rubbing his success in her face while she was punished, not to mention seeming more concerned about the family reputation than the current conflict? I’m sorry , but it’s not that simple. Yes, Whitley is also a victim who was manipulated and groomed by his father and unlike Weiss, he was never able to get a proper support system or have any family to help like how Weiss had Winter. I do feel bad for him, and I do think that Weiss will take her mother’s words form the last volume and will help Whitley later in the volume. But they’ve both hurt each other. Whitley by treating Weiss badly, and Weiss not giving him support like she was given. They’re both victims AND hurt each other. Some try to paint it as one is problematic and the other is an innocent child, and that’s simply untrue. They’re only going to realize that if and when they talk out their problems with each other out, it’s just a matter of when it’ll be. It takes time to mend these kinds of things, sadly.

Next is the villains scene... ho boy. So I’m gonna wait on Cinder for the next chapter, but her ignoring Salem in favor of power isn’t a shock at all. No, let’s discuss Oscar. Just... this poor, poor kid. He’s trying to be brave, but seeing him get tortured and especially the screaming?! Aaron Dismuke, why do this to me you jerk?! I do admire him for trying it imitate Oz and keep his composure, but it was just so... brutal to watch. Salem doing it so calmly and being perfectly willing to wait for the answers since she can just make Oscar suffer is... well, evil. And don’t think I missed her with the shadow versions of her daughters. Some say that humanizes her, but since she remorsefully tortured a child and sicked an emotionally unstable brute to physically harm him without a care in the world... no. It didn’t excuse Ironwood, and it sure as Hell isn’t excusing Salem. Tis just makes her all the more terrifying.

Okay... last thing is that scene at the end. The Bumblebee implication scene. So... I won’t lie it did annoy me at first. Before anyone says anything, it was NOT because of hating the ship or anything stupid like that. I’m not a huge Bumblebee fan, but anyone who keeps saying there’s nothing there at this point is living in denial. It’s happening people and since at least Volume 6, I think they’ve been doing it pretty well. My issue is mainly just because... we’ve had plenty of Bumblebee content. Volume 7 had them together in pretty much every scene, and I just don’t like having a pair of characters limited like that. I had the same issue with Renora, especially in Volumes 1-3, and with shipping in general. The main reason though is that I want there to be some more focus on Ruby and Yang because I feel like it’s been a long time and that there is a genuine conflict between them that can bring some interesting things for both. I’m not saying they need to be at each other’s throats, but siblings DO argue and no, it doesn’t always get easily resolved and I am speaking form experience here. To be fair it could happen later and Ruby herself hasn’t been pondering on it that much either. Heck Blake seemed more concerned about it than either of them have. But I would like to see more than just the one pair that I’ve already seen focused on plenty of times because it’s limiting. That’s just a personal thing though and I’ve always enjoyed sibling stuff more than romance, so yeah just a me thing.

That being said, those saying that Yang doesn’t care about Ruby need to calm down. No, that is NO the case. Did we forget Yang trying to console a broke Ruby despite her own grief just last volume? Mere hours ago in-show at that? Despite what I said above and while she’s clearly concerned after Ruby’s recent choices, Yang still loves and ultimately trusts her sister. She never said that she didn’t think that Ruby would fail or was wasting her time, she just felt like Mantle needed them more and the consequences to trying were too much. Heck this is a spoiler, but considering her reaction in the next chapter, it only reinforces that belief. At least with Blake, this is the first time they’ve willingly split apart and Yang clearly still has some abandonment issues and concerns. Plus... yeah, it’s natural when you have feelings for someone to worry if they made a bad choice that may make them doubt them. Blake won’t, but it’s understandable. Heck, Blake was clearly concerned about Yang when trying to get Ruby to call. I think she was trying to comfort Ruby as well with the suggestion, but it was still pretty evident... also Ruby and Blake interaction, yay! Still yeah guys, let’s just... chill a little bit and see what more comes of anything.

Okay, got that out of my system, and I apologize if it came across wrong. Whatever annoyance I had I’m over anyways, especially after the recent chapter. Anyways, the chapter had so much good. Plus we not only had a badass chase sequence, but a new song! Again, IDK the title, but it was another banger for sure. The opening scene with row and Robyn bonding and Robyn calling out Harriet was great. Marrow’s subtle expressions showing how not okay he is, and I’m seriously hoping that he may be the one to free the others. It would be a really good move for his character in him deciding that being lawful doesn’t equal the right thing, and making it right especially considering his interaction with Robyn last volume. The animation was good with the backgrounds looking fantastic, the pacing has been on fire, and of course that ominous ending. God they’re trying to keep us on edge, and I love it!

Chapter Stats

Favorite Character: Lie Ren Favorite Scene: Ren losing it in the tundra Least Favorite Scene: Probably the wrong term, but seeing Oscar be tortured while well done was hard. Favorite Voice Actor: Neath Oum (Ren Favorite Animation: JYR chasing The Hound Rating: 9.9/10

Final Thoughts

This was fantastic, especially in the character department. I haven’t been this shocked in a good while. It hurt no doubt, but the writing and voice performances were so well done. Seriously, this is probably Neath’s best performance to date. Add in the great animation, the tone being on point, and the set-ups with the Schnee Manor and cracking ice and the fact that this is only Chapter Four is crazy. But it’s only going to get crazier people... oh so, so much crazier. Only one review to go until I’m back to being caught up... my poor heart XD

#rwby #rwby8 #rwby spoilers #rwby reviews #rwby musings #callie reviews

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toooldforfandom-liveblogs · 4 years

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RWBY S07E08 - Cordially invited

Every time I see "cordial" written I can't avoid thinking that it's passive-aggressive, but I think that's mostly a thing in Spanish (saludos cordiales -> best regards) In this case I'm pretty sure Jacques does mean it in the most passive-aggressive way possible.

I expect insults, fights and generally the worst. So, what I imagine thanksgiving is like but with actual politicians in the table. Can't wait to see this mess, let's do this!

Is the entire team invited or just Weiss? Because Blake is _really_ good at burning houses down and it'd be a missed opportunity if she doesn't go.

I almost wrote "wouldn't they at least suspect Watts is around if they've already seen Tyrian?" but they have never even seen Watts. Dude was smart enough to leave once Cinder agreed to Raven's plan.

That makes me wonder how is he going to get revealed. I feel Pietro (or Ironwood?) has to be around for that or everyone is going to go "literally who?"

Oh look at Ruby, so grown up, planning things on the border of being illegal.

I've been looking at this paused frame for the past 30 seconds and I can't figure out her expression. Is she smiling? She goes from sad -> this expression -> determined.

Huh. I wonder if they're reusing an asset from a past season, it looks... not bad but a lot simpler than I've become used to.

I keep saying this but I really like how the show manages to make Ironwood likable even though he's one step from becoming a dictator. He feels very human.

What a power move from Ironwood to have both of Jacques's estranged daughters by his side.

On the other hand, the show has no qualms in making Jacques the most over the top evil they can. Because of course he'd fire Klein.

The subtitles really make the screenshot here.

Oh. Penny is here.

Oh no. Please tell me Jacques is not going to ask Ironwood to dismantle her of something.

Is... Is Qrow flirting with Clover?

I have been avoiding reading fanfiction because I'm so behind but I definitely need more "Fair Play" in my life after this.

I'm trying to remember if there have been any more women with a larger body type in RWBY. There was the blacksmith with an eyepatch in Volume 5, Lil' Miss Malachite in V6 and now this woman. Progress, I guess?

Back when "one of the Ace Ops is with Robyn" was a stronger possibility, I was a bit against Marrow being the one to "betray" Ironwood, if only because it felt too obvious. He obviously has issues with how the Faunus are treated in Atlas but he seems to be going for the "fix it from the inside" route.

Related to that, I was also against Harriet being the "traitor," if only because it also felt too obvious that the brash "we're not friends" woman would be the one to betray her team.

I'm in Team Yang here.

I _really_ like the animation of her hand here. It's very Weiss.

That's the saddest, emptiest plate I've ever seen.

Props to Jacques VA because I feel like there's actual slime on me after hearing him.

fuuuuuuuuck youuuuuuuuu

Yeah, she didn't like that either.

I feel Penny's best outcome after this season/arc would be to just leave Atlas and everyone who can control her behind.

That was amazing. And he actually looks a lot better with some color on him.

They were getting to Ironwood (because they _are_ making a lot of sense) but the second Jacques opened his mouth it tainted everything.

It's awesome that Winter is finally getting the chance to explode at her father (and Robyn liked it) but I think this is going to hurt them more than help them.

This just screams that there's someone at her back.

there you go

Aaaaa stop treating Penny like a lesser being.

Oh lord help me if she starts crying

Soft Winter to the rescue. She _has_ been spending a lot of time with Penny, she probably knows that's a sore topic.

What an interesting exchange. I wonder what Winter got out of it though.

And it really shows that _everyone_ is hiding or trying to hide something this season except Penny. She doesn't even really understand the concept of hiding your true feelings because it's not the right moment. I wonder if that is going to come up at some point.

The reason I'm not freaking out about Willow here is because I read the DC comic where she appears so it felt like an inevitability. She sounds a lot softer than I imagined.

To the point she feels like a different character altogether. What happened in the months Weiss was away?

that pause screams "oh wait I should have used them when he hit you"

For an unnamed character that has been mentioned maybe twice in the show, that was a really strong intro that said everything we could need about her and her relationship with Weiss.

It's _so_ easy to drink your problems away, and Willow definitely had a lot of problems. But that meant abandoning Weiss and Whitley, who probably resent the hell out of her (Weiss obviously does after seeing her reactions.)

I feel the writer of the DC comic just got a memo saying "drunk rich lady" and went from there because the characterization was so different.

DC comic Willow reminds me of Emma from Ghost Trick:

Eccentric drunk rich lady. While the Willow we see here is just a sad defeated woman. V3 Qrow vs V6 Qrow.

lol, "literally who?"

Standing on a roof while it's raining means serious business.

Turning off the heating feels comically evil.

That kid is going to appear frozen to death next episode.

Was this episode the calm before the storm? It really feels that way, nothing concluded. They are still having dinner, Weiss is still in Jacques's office, Watts _just_ turned off the heating, the Ace Ops are... somewhere(?), even Penny's reaction felt like it was hinting at something.

Willow giving a canonical reason for Whitley being such a little shit was good. I mean, it's only her impression but it makes a lot of sense, especially considering Whitley himself mentioned how hard it was to be under Jacques tutelage. I hope he gets redeemed at some point or another, but sometimes family relationships are unfixable and maybe the best they can do is to get Jacques out of his hair and then go their own ways.

JNR's plan to distract Whitley was a fun way to show us that they are still a cohesive team even though they may not share the same ideas of what's the right thing to do at the moment. I was a bit worried about Ren last episode but he's not that far gone yet.

Penny's entire thing is breaking my heart. There's been a lot of "she's just a robot" talk lately in the show and it's really making me wonder if Penny is going to explode at someone at the end of the season or becoming free somehow. Because there's no way Ironwood doesn't have some sort of way to _really_ control her. Or maybe she'll get controlled by Watts and she'll defeat that by the power of friendship? But something is definitely going to happen with her.

I already wrote about Willow and Weiss so I won't expand too much on that. Just reiterate how real it all felt and how effective that scene was.

I think that's all for now so, until next time!

#rwby #rwby liveblog #rwby v07e08

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Witch”

Happy Saturday, everyone! Well, it's perhaps happier provided you didn't watch today’s episode lol. Getting through these 18 minutes felt like watching an extended version of a CinemaSins vid. I heard a little 'ding!' every time something nonsensical, contradictory, or just downright stupid happened. My mind became a pinball machine.

Which, in the interest of being fair as opposed to just snarky, only matters if you're looking for something resembling emotional depth in this show. RWBY, for all its faults, is enjoyable as a mindless spectacle. It's when you expect — or simply hope — for anything more that this very fragile house of cards comes tumbling down.

If it’s not clear already, today’s recap contains copious amounts of salt. Fair warning.

With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s dive in. Episode nine is titled "Witch," which is fitting since many members of our group go toe-to-toe against Salem herself. The narrative issues inherent in having your heroes fighting their final boss years before the series is meant to end might have been avoided if it weren't for Oscar's ridiculous, sacrificial attack... but we'll get to that.

We open with a sweeping shot of the Atlas battle, as hundreds of dead soldiers segue into endless grimm. Hold onto that image for a bit. At the end of this carnage is, of course, the mouth of the whale. We cut to Jaune, Ren, and Yang already safely inside.

"Well," says Yang, "that was harrowing."

I'm on the fence about this choice. On the one hand, yes, it's good that RWBY knows it can skip over extraneous scenes. We have NINE characters to keep track of and develop, fourteen if you count Ozpin, Maria, Winter, Ironwood, and now Whitley. Plus villains. There simply isn't time to show every insignificant moment... but was this insignificant? Obviously finding Oscar and escaping Salem's clutches is the true hurdle of this mission, but that doesn't mean getting through an entire army of grimm is in any way a cake walk. I'd be more willing to ignore this time skip if it weren't likewise presented as such a challenge for Winter's team. They have to "clear a path" to the whale, but our trio got there unscathed and unnoticed? The obvious implication here is that Ren just masked them the whole way — supported by his aura breaking later in the episode — but it still feels like we missed an important chunk of this task.

I'm nit-picking though. As said, I’m straddling the fence on this one and, given that, I'm inclined to settle on a, "Good job, RWBY. You're keeping the writing tight," if only because I don't have much else to praise about this episode. Throw the poor, struggling show a bone lol.

Now that they're inside, they realize they haven't the slightest idea how they'll find Oscar. “Like finding a needle in a giant…whale… why did we think this was a good idea?!” Because you and your friends are idiots who no longer bother to think about a situation before throwing yourself straight into it? This isn't me being mean to Yang, she literally says as much later on. Our heroes no longer get by on intellect, strategy, and skill, but rather plot armor and a staggering number of coincidences. For example, Ren.

Yang: Wow, it sure is lucky for us that on our way to this incredibly dangerous mission Ren inexplicably developed a new part of his semblance. Now he can not only mask peoples' emotions, see the true emotions that someone is feeling, pull thoughts out of their head about what they believe about a situation, but can also track someone across long distances through their emotions alone. Even that doesn't actually help us find Oscar, we just got lucky again when, in this maze of a whale, he ran right into us!

Me: So what were you going to do if this meta-world stopped giving you the most contrived solutions in Remnant history?

Yang: Die gloriously, I guess.

What Yang actually says is, "Okay. That's new!" and they enter the literal belly of the beast wielding a shield of convenience.

Jaune is also being awkward again because remember, RWBY doesn't know when to incorporate humor and when to treat a situation seriously. He reminds Ren not to "drain [himself]," he'll help him, and it's clear the scene is hinting at their earlier fight. There's a lot to unpack there, but I want to save it for the second conversation.

For now, we cut to Oscar, curled up in his cell, repeating stories to comfort himself. Yeah that's fine. I could use a broken heart right before Valentine's Day.

“She brushed off her bumps and bruises, for nothing hurt worse than the loneliness in her chest." It's a line from The Girl Who Fell Through the World, which Ozpin recognizes given that he's "lived through" a fair number of fairy tales. He immediately asks how Oscar is holding up — because he's a caring person! — and Oscar admits that he never understood why the girl of the tale was sad upon reaching home again. Now he does: she wasn't the same person anymore. I don't think the fact that Oscar has had both a metaphorical fall — leaving his farm to 'fall' into this war — and a literal one — falling through Atlas to unlock his magic — is lost on anyone. This is a nice allusion to our themes. Yang's speech to Salem later on? That’s something else entirely.

Storytelling done, Ozpin says he thinks "this plan to divide might have run its course” and it's time to try and find a way to leave. I'm sorry, I love my farm boy, but what plan? He didn't do anything. At least nothing that could remotely be termed an intellectual plot. Oscar convinced Ozpin to try and turn Hazel by telling him the world would end under Salem's rule and the only reason that worked is because the story decided to chuck out Hazel's entire character. You know, the one that hates Ozpin above all others, wants the world remade into a non-Academy horror show, can't understand that people make their own choices, is terrified of Salem, and has no reason to trust a prisoner he's currently torturing. Oscar's "plan" hinged on his writers erasing a great deal of work to build a new story that fits said “plan.” He didn't even get Emerald involved, she just — again, conveniently — eavesdropped outside their door at just the right moment.

To be clear, I'm not against a story being written to work in the hero's favor. Of course things are going to be convenient in a happy-ending tale. Someone manages to hold out just as long as they need to, a sword is lying just within reach, you, yes, happen to run into the one person you're desperate to find. This kind of stuff is reassuring, telling its audiences that sometimes things do work out for the best. It's enjoyable... but only provided the hero's entire success doesn't hinge on fate being shockingly kind to them. That's what RWBY has become. A world where Salem doesn't attack Mantle, Amity Tower is suddenly finished, the group can charge into any deadly situation they want to and bank on destiny twisting around itself to ensure they come out of it safely. A hero finding a convenient weapon nearby to defeat their enemy with is only reassuring after we've seen them implement a brilliant attack, struggle, nearly win, but then suddenly be faced with failure, necessitating that little push from coincidence. They earned it. The hero doesn't get to run in blindly and find a Defeat Bad Guy plot point gift wrapped for them at the first sign of trouble. They just die.

RWBY used to be a better written show because that's precisely Pyrrha's story. She charged a Maiden unprepared, without a single plan or hope for success, and she died. That's what happens in a dangerous, internally consistent world, but RWBY has since lost the second half of that formula.

I'm harping on this because this entire episode is built on that foundation of coincidence, something that shouldn't be happening at all, but especially not when you're pitting the heroes against Salem herself.

So yeah, it just gets worse from here.

Back to Oscar. Without the cane magic is the only weapon they have at their disposal, but he's reluctant to use it because every time he does, they merge more quickly.

They... do?

Okay, there are three major problems with this announcement:

I'm pretty sure we've only seen Oscar use magic once: creating that barrier to survive the fall through Atlas. That was the point of his near death experience, to unlock something that had previously been unavailable to him. Yet if he's only used it once, why is he so sure that it hurries the merge along? What's this "every time" business? This confusion could have easily been avoided if the show had just let Oscar use his magic this volume, tackling some other questions and gaps in the process. Let him use it to fight off the grimm in Mantle, giving him the opportunity to admit to at least Jaune, Ren, and Yang that Ozpin is back. He could have used some magic against the Hound with Ozpin's encouragement, answering the question of why he was entirely silent while the two of them got their ass beat. Give us a moment where Oscar uses his magic against Hazel, nearly escaping in the process, but is captured again at the last moment. Basically, his line makes it sound like magic has been this ongoing resource with an established downside when... it hasn’t.

Coinciding with all of the above, how is it that Oscar can suddenly use magic at will? Yeah, yeah, he unlocked it during the fall, but really? You open up the magic gates and from then on out it's as natural as breathing? This is the same issue with Ruby's silver eyes. The story gives these characters incredible powers, but never has them talking about how they work, let alone training them. They just exist, perfect in execution, as soon as the plot needs them. (See: the final shot of this episode.) At least Weiss had to practice her summoning for multiple volumes.

Finally, the question of how Oscar instinctively knows how to use magic could easily be answered with, "Well, he's kind of Ozpin now," but that would require the story to actually explain what the merge is. "We merge faster," Oscar says, but what does that mean? The Ozpin and Oscar we see in this scene are fundamentally indistinguishable from the Ozpin and Oscar who existed at his aunt's house, four whole years ago. They're still separate people, with one controlling the body and the other existing as a consciousness he can talk to. Nothing has changed. The show keeps insisting that Oscar is going through this deep and painful arc of losing himself to Ozpin... despite the fact that he has yet to lose a single bit of Oscar-ness. Has he changed? Well of course, but anyone going through these experiences is going to change. Remove the "merge" aspect and Oscar's confidence or power up is likewise indistinguishable from any of the other characters' developments. Nora is becoming more of an individual this volume. Ren is becoming more powerful in his semblance. Neither have an Ozpin to force that change, it just happens on its own. So what separates Oscar from every other character going through a formative experience? When is “I’m not the same person anymore” due to unnatural magic vs. just growing up?

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy our boy is getting more screen time — and that the cast is actually being kind to him now — but overall his arc is objectively terrible. He bought some clothes, told Ironwood he was as bad as Salem, told Hazel how to access the Relic, and then asked him not to be a villain anymore. Somehow these things are presented as significant moments of growth while the real questions surrounding his merge go unanswered.

“Honestly, I think you’re doing just fine on your own," Ozpin tells him, but he's not. God knows our boy is trying, but this is a moment where Ozpin's self-hatred (and the story's insistence that the younger generation is intrinsically better than the older) is blinding him to the situation. Oscar has made terrible decisions lately, in as much as he's been able to decide anything at all, and now he's rejecting escaping captivity because he's terrified of a concept he doesn't even understand yet. None of that is fine. Reassurance is one thing, but painting this situation as Oscar making better choices than he would with Ozpin's input is insane. He literally just decided to keep them in Salem's clutches indefinitely because something something magic is scary, I guess. Oscar doesn't need a, 'You're better than me' speech, he needs a reality check so they don't both die. Remember back in Volume 5 when Oscar, a brave but idiotic 14 year old, insisted on fighting someone entirely out of his league and Ozpin was like,

then saved him from getting his head crushed in like a cantaloupe? We need more of that. Our teenage heroes need guidance, but because RWBY keeps insisting that every adult they encounter is corrupt or incompetent, that hasn't happened in three volumes. They're just aloud to decide things like, “Let's tell our captor the Relic's password because UwU ~trust~” and then the story bends over backwards to make that work. Instead we could, you know, let characters learn that they can be wrong.

The snow scene was the beginning, but RWBY really went off the rails the day it let Qrow warn the group against stealing from and attacking an allied city, only for them to call him an idiot for doubting them. Now, Ozpin doesn't even get to warn Oscar about stupid decisions, he just agrees with them, reassuring and passive. Never mind the complication of whether Ozpin is even emotionally capable of providing guidance after they labeled him the worst thing to ever happen to them.

Why does RWBY keep ruining my faves 😔

Anyway, we’ve got to stay on track. Oscar has decided to just lie there but, luckily for him, Hazel's redemption — I use that term so loosely — has begun. He drags Oscar out of his cell before we cut to Winter.

She's leading a portion of Ironwood's army, trying to get things ready for when the bomb arrives. Neon and Flynt are a part of her team, sharing scared glances and trying to remain optimistic. It's a legitimately hard-hitting moment, striking that balance between horror and hope. Funny though, I wonder that RWBYJNOR would think of their friends fighting for evil Ironwood...

Marrow, continuing the tradition of insisting that our heroes be both adults and kids simultaneously, looks sadly at the soldiers heading into battle and goes, "But... they're just kids." I would like to remind everyone reading that Ruby is younger than them. Anyone who thinks that these teenagers shouldn't be fighting grimm — the thing they have been training to do as their professional career, during an unprecedented attack on their home — should not simultaneously be looking to the girl who is two years younger as his savior. (Something that, while not overt yet, is very much where Marrow is heading as he continually doubts the Ace Ops and looks to RWBY's group as his new, moral leaders.) I'm glad that, for once, this perspective is firmly called out. Elm arrives to tell him point blank that he needs to figure out his personal ethics later. It doesn't matter because there's an army of grimm out there and monsters aren't going to spare anyone, adult or child. Quit philosophizing and kill some already.

Back to Hazel where we get the doorway shot from our trailer. He's taken Oscar to the Relic, because of course he has. Do I really need to list how convenient this is too? Apparently, "the moment we move that thing, this place goes on high alert," but there’s no alarm for when Oscar is taken from his cell, they enter the Relic's room, or when they use it. What does a movement alert matter if someone can just waltz in and waste the last question themselves? Put some of those endless grimm in the room to guard it, Salem!

Just assume that I am, at any given point in this episode, letting out the longest sigh my lungs are physically capable of.

Emerald shows up, demonstrating both the convenience of everyone arriving when they need to, and the very real danger that Salem herself could come in and discover what they're up to. Hazel has Oscar summon Jinn, only to immediately say that “Actually, I think all my questions are answered now.”

I'm sorry, how does this answer any of Hazel's questions? His driving question was not, "Is the Relic actually a magical object capable of doing magical things?" but rather "Are you telling me the truth about Salem's plans to summon the Gods and destroy all of Remnant in her quest to finally die, thereby changing who I'm going to support in this war?" Seeing a naked, blue djinn does not answer that question.

Hazel's "redemption" is non-existent. He — we — learned about Salem's death wish despite how that contradicts previous lore, then he trusted Ozpin despite that contradicting his entire character, now he joins the heroes because, literally, he sees Jinn floating there. It’s bad enough that Hazel goes from clear villain to sacrificial hero in a matter of in-world hours, but we don’t even get a reason for why that change occurred.

Oh, there's also this:

So Jinn doesn't come out of her lamp unless someone intends to ask a question, but does it for Ruby because she's special, yet still reiterates that this won't happen again. Then Oscar summons her without intending to ask a question, she comes out anyway, confirms that none of them seek knowledge from her, and happily pops back inside her lamp because eh, it’s whatever.

If RWBY had any courage the three of them would be cursed now for toying with a powerful, magical object. Remember the days when Jinn was a little terrifying because it felt like she was warping her answers and we had no idea what she might do to someone who used her carelessly? When she felt like a djinn? Good times.

Or better times, at least.

So Good Guy Hazel and Good Gal Emerald promise to get Oscar out. Never mind all the horror they caused, the people they killed, and that for Hazel, at least, this defection is coming out of nowhere.

Anyone remember that Emerald orchestrated Penny's death? No? Just me?

As they leave it turns out Neo was camouflaged against the wall, because she was also precisely where she needed to be. Does everyone just periodically pop into the Relic room to see what’s going on? At least this time it's not working in the heroes' favor. Remember when I said it's beyond idiotic for Oscar to just hand out the Relic information to known enemies currently holding him captive and torturing him?

Yeeeeaah.

So Neo's got the Lamp. Funny how all of this could have been avoided if Ruby had just put it in the vault like she came to Atlas to do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We return to our trio where Jaune and Ren need to rest because their aura is giving out. Good! These guys fought a battle, fought Neo, fought more grimm, fought the Hound, traipsed through the tundra, presumably fought through more grimm to get to the whale, and have been using both their semblances to look for Oscar. It's about time their reserves started to falter.

Jaune decides to scout ahead a bit, leaving Yang and Ren to talk about nothing of importance. I mean that seriously. Remember a few days ago when I spoke about how, if the snow conversation does come back up, Ren's points would be entirely ignored for a nonsensical “I’m glad we’re friends” speech? Remember how I also spoke about how every emotional beat now is entirely generic and you could replace any character with another and not a single thing would change? Yeah. This is both those arguments in one. Nothing is said about the points Ren made. His problems with how the group has been acting lately and the very real, very deadly consequences it has had are flat out ignored. We went from

"But these aren't the kinds of decisions we should be making because we have no idea what we're doing!"

"Forward, no matter what!"

in a matter of hours, with precisely zero insight into how Ren went from one perspective to the exact opposite. Kind of like Hazel. Because see, RWBY doesn't write arcs, it just writes one thing until it decides to switch it up for something else, with the opposite idea presented as a “resolution” or a “twist.” Our creators writes scenes they know the fandom is begging for without considering how to get a character to that place, let alone how to get them out of it. That's all Ren's speech was, the equivalent of moral fan service. Here's a glimpse of actual character depth and a morally gray situation... now forget it ever happened because we're back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Instead of working through the laundry list of issues Ren raised, Ren instead accepts Jaune's aura help — something they've been doing since Argus — and tells Yang it's okay to be scared. These moments are meaningless and, as said, could have been between anyone in our cast. Ren could have told Nora she doesn't have to use jokes to cover up that she's scared. Jaune could have reminded Ruby that she can depend on him. Yang could have tried to keep Blake and Weiss' hopes up. This scenes ignores the individuality of the characters, like the fact that they just fought over very different world views, to instead favor any dime-a-dozen moment of support. The number of times this volume has rejected the conflict and resolution the group needs for bland, generic reassurances staggering.

Also, apparently Jaune isn't scared at all? I don't think that's as good a thing as Ren seems to think...

Then Jaune immediately rounds the corner, terrified lol.

One of the seer grimm is on its way and he tells Ren to mask them. Apparently he had been masking them before — one of the reasons he's so tired now, trying to do two things at once — but it's only here that they go black and white again. Ren manages to keep it up for a little while, but his aura breaks before the seer passes and they're spotted.

Hark! A consequence!

That was well done. It makes sense and it adds to the stakes. We've seen the insane amount of fighting the group has done since Volume 7, we just established that they're at their breaking point, and then Ren's aura fails him right when he needs it the most. Add this to the miniscule pile of things that were well done this episode.

Salem runs into Emerald and Hazel, the former of which is acting very suspicious when asked if he's made any headway with Oscar. The seer's alarm interrupts them though and... okay. Was I the only one who cackled during this moment? Between Salem's voice acting and the fact that she just yeets herself down the hallway, it came across as really funny to me.

Either way, it is a bad situation. Our trio is trying to figure out what to do, to which Yang responds, "Do what we do best… charge blindly into danger!!”

Ren's aura is broken. Jaune barely has any left and it’s unlikely he could heal right now even if Ren had any aura to amplify. If Ren takes a single hit anywhere important he is dead.

Me, on my knees, surrounded by the ashes of the Hound, the last bit of serious storytelling we had: "For the love of God, the kingdom is on fire and simultaneously dying of cold. There's a grimm army decimating hundreds outside. Half their group is missing and they're wandering lost inside a devil whale, about to have the most powerful being Remnant has ever known personally try to kill them — can we please have their attitudes reflect that?"

The answer, in case you were wondering, is no.

Back to the bomb. Whatever scientists were given this task have completed it and Marrow watches as it's flown out towards the whale. "Come on, Juan" he whispers and I'm all, "Juan?" Apparently it's a callback to last volume when Marrow couldn't remember Jaune's actual name, but it took me hopping onto the RWBY wiki to remember that.

As death via explosion inches closer, the trio runs into Hazel and Emerald. Turns out though that Hazel is really Oscar, disguised through Emerald's semblance. Nice trick! Jaune immediately drops both weapons to hug Oscar and, while that's nice and all, it's also the stupidest thing he could possible do in enemy territory. Also, Oscar has been beaten up by the Hound, tortured with magic, and likewise beaten bloody by Hazel. I was hoping for a tender hug like the one Nora gave him, not a giant squeeze for more comedy purposes. It just feels like RWBY has no idea how to manage the tone of this volume, let alone the torture of a child...

There's the obligatory, "Why should we trust you?" from Yang regarding Emerald joining the team, to which Ren responds, "Because she's scared, just like us."

That doesn't prove anything. Literally everyone is scared right now. There is a war going on. I really cannot emphasize enough how RWBY throws out Deep™ sounding lines that are, upon inspection, absolutely nonsensical. Nora reminding Penny that there are different parts to her personhood, Hazel saying that all his questions have been answered, Ren announcing that Emerald is scared... it's all worthless chatter that has no bearing on their problems: How do I keep from being hacked? How do I know you're telling the truth? How do we know you're trustworthy after you spent years trying to kill us? But of course, because it's RWBY, Ren's announcement is treated as some sort of secret truth that everyone accepts. Emerald joins up.

As they head for an exit we return to Marrow who, frankly, is getting on my last nerve. I know the fandom loves him because he's clearly leaning towards Team RWBY, but does anyone actually listen to what he says? He starts yelling at Winter for sending in the bomb because the trio might still be alive in there, despite:

Seeing for himself the hundreds of soldiers that have fallen trying to keep Atlas safe

Knowing and hearing again from Winter that the only way to stop this carnage is to take out the whale. Given more time, the whole city falls

Sadly announcing to the world that children shouldn't have to fight in a battle, rather than just joining the fray and helping to keep those kids safe

How does Marrow think those kids are going to be able to stop fighting? How does he think he'll get a city to return to? It's no wonder that he's drawn to Ruby because both characters stand around twiddling their thumbs, mourning that things are bad, and blaming others for imperfect solutions rather than doing something to make the situation better. Marrow's disgust at Winter over the bomb is precisely the same as Ruby's disgust at Ironwood over Mantle: how dare you not have a plan that results in both victory for us and zero sacrifices? They want perfection which, yes, is an admirable trait, but their problem is they refuse to do anything until that perfection appears. They’re paralyzed, a trait that’s particularly dangerous when your story insists that perfection will never appear: it’s not a fairy tale. So they just continue to get mad at others for the fact that they live in an unfair world. You want that perfect solution? Think it up yourself. Otherwise, stand aside and let those coming up with something do what they can to make things better.

Marrow goes so far as to drag Weiss into things, trying to guilt Winter with the knowledge that she'll have to relate the death of her sister's friends back to her. Winter, because she's a badass who isn't in denial over the situation, tells him that yes, she will shoulder that responsibility. To Marrow's credit he backs off then, but man. RWBY has legitimate moral questions here — when is holding out for a few worth risking the many? — but they go about exploring it in the most frustrating way possible. I personally have no respect for the guy who wants to announce that Children In War Is Bad instead of, you know, using the power he currently has to protect those kids already neck deep in a battle.

Because John Mulaney remains relevant:

"There shouldn't be a horse in the hospital :( "

"We're WELL PAST THAT."

Marrow is the one going, "There shouldn't be kids in a war :( We shouldn't have to kill a few to save the whole kingdom :( " and everyone around him is like, "No shit, dude! But this is the hand we were dealt! You going to help us, or what?"

Literally all of these characters could have been so much more than what they currently are.

Except Winter. She's doing great.

Now for the final scene. Our group nearly manages to escape the whale, but is incapacitated by some sort of screechy power that Salem employs.

She contorts her body, stretching out her arms to snag Emerald, and the others have a brief, but intense skirmish. Jaune manages to block a blast of magic aimed at Ren with his shield — nice — and Yang dots Salem's face with a bunch of bombs before blowing her sky-high — double nice. Oscar shoots out some magic of his own because, yeah, I guess he can just do that now? It really feels like it came out of nowhere after eight episodes of being the punching bag.

Of course, Salem immediately reforms. She traps the group with grimm arms that come out of the whale, interrogating Ozpin about why he bothers to keep coming back. There's a very sad answer there of, "I don't," referring to his lack of choice in reincarnating to fight her.

Yang interrupts their little tet-a-tet to throw the question back in Salem's face, calling her out on her choices. A great idea but, as always, execution: "because something bad happened to you once upon a time? No one gets a fairy tale ending."

I’m sorry, but that dialogue had me cringing. Like I said before, way too on the nose. There's keeping with the fairy tale theme, and then there's shoving the viewer's face in it. More of Oscar's musings on how he relates to the protagonists of fairy tales, blurring the lines between storytelling and reality, which in turn encourages the viewer to consider how they see themselves in the RWBY cast. Less... whatever this is.

Yang goes on to talk about how many people Salem has taken from her, which upon reflection makes a certain amount of sense if you toss in all the people who are here, but changed somehow due to Salem's influence, as well as acquaintances who died as a result of her meddling: Raven is scared off, Tai suffers as a result, Pyrrha dies, Penny dies, Yang loses her arm and her school. I think the dialogue could have been revised to reflect that better though because what Yang implies is that Salem has killed countless of her loved ones, yet what she says is, "Summer Rose. My mom." Honestly, for the few seconds this exchange was happening my thoughts weren't even on Summer. Yang calls Salem out for killing loved ones and my brain went, "Pyrrha??"

That's how little they've done with Yang and Summer. I know in the past I've argued that RWBY has a "better late than never" situation going on, that I would praise them for making the right writing choices even if they arrive years too late... but now that we're here, I find that it's a hard problem to overlook. Summer is Yang's mom? When's the last time we heard that? Volume 2? Whenever the conversation with Blake was. Since then Yang has called Raven "Mom," focused on that emotional connection (or lack thereof), was excluded from the conversation with Qrow, comforted Ruby after she was blindsided by Salem's taunt, and otherwise hasn't mentioned Summer at all. There is no foundation for this accusation except a few lines about getting cookies as a child and the fact that we're tossing references in now makes me worried that we'll indeed get a grimm!Summer reveal. Better remind the audience that she exists before the twist arrives! Honestly, as much as a part of me wants to praise RWBY for trying to get things back on track, moments like this just ring hollow now. They waited years and now it’s too late. It doesn't help that this is the episode where we shrug off Ren's speech. What will Yang's cutting admission amount to based on this trend? Probably nothing. Summer will become Yang’s mom again in another six seasons.

Salem, obviously, doesn't care. The real Hazel arrives and she orders him to take Oscar back to his cell. Instead, he gives him his cane with a whispered, "No more Gretchens, boy."

Behold, another meaningless line. Hazel hates Ozpin for "forcing" Gretchen on a mission and "getting" her killed. The whole point of his villainy is that he doesn't understand the concept of choice and that bad things can happen to good people with no one able to prevent it. Not every loss has a responsible party attached (outside of, you know, Salem/the grimm). So what is he even demanding here? No more huntsmen schools? That's what you wanted Salem for. No more "forcing" people to fight for you? Ozpin never did that in the first place. Or is it just a strange promise that no one else will die here? RWBY seems to be under the impression that they can just name drop dead family members — Summer, Gretchen — and that's that. Emotional depth created, never mind a lack of buildup or clarity.

Then Hazel punches Salem across the room and she releases every single hero from their bonds. See the theme of this episode: convenience. Hazel shoves a whole bunch of dust crystals into his shoulders and yells that he's doing what Gretchen would have wanted, clearly sacrificing himself so that the others can escape. The battle between him and Salem is pretty decent. I enjoyed the dust vs. magic creativity and the sheer damage Salem can take before reforming. This fight really showcases how not human she is.

It does, however, bring into question Hazel's reveal about her needing an hour to heal at the longest. I mentioned how unlikely it would be that our heroes would get the chance to "kill" her multiple times, yet here we are, just a few episodes later. They got that opportunity and... does it matter? Salem's reforming doesn't appear to slow down at all, despite her head getting obliterated at least three times, so at what point does she need longer than a few seconds to heal? If this was meant to be a potential weakness the group would eventually exploit, we needed to see it here, both for that setup and to keep it consistent with Hazel's story.

Regardless, they fight and at first it looks like a pretty straight-forward sacrifice on Hazel's part, giving the group their chance to escape. Except... Oscar.

"She'll just come after us," he tells Jaune, turning away from him to fight.

I need a list for this:

Of course she's going to come after you. This is not some shocking revelation. At no point has anyone thought that escaping the whale is the answer to all their problems, it just creates one less problem to deal with. Namely, the problem of "Our ally is captured, being tortured, and may give up important intel to the enemy. Oh, also he's about to be blown up with a bomb." Salem coming after them doesn’t matter. What matters is making her plans as difficult as possible as you work to come up with more solutions of your own. This is just a smaller version of the Ironwood conflict: “Well, Salem will just follow Atlas into the sky so it’s useless to attempt escape, or to buy ourselves time.” It’s really not. I know I’ve used this ridiculous comparison before, but if you’re ever chased by a horror movie serial killer hell-bent on your destruction and your reaction to this problem is, “Why run? He’ll just chase us. The only possible choice is to fight him with a 99% chance of our death,” then I beg you to re-evaluate things.

What was the point of coming to rescue Oscar if he was just going to stay behind? The whale is about to be blown up by a bomb and the trio risked their lives ten times over to get to him. If I were them I would be pissed. We went through all that to get you out and now you’re refusing to leave when we have a chance? Thanks for that.

Same with Hazel. Not that I care about the guy, but if I was sacrificing myself for others to escape I'd be pretty annoyed at them randomly deciding not to do that.

What does Oscar even think he's going to do? Kill the immortal witch? The entire point of our series is that they can’t do that (yet).

However, if he is able to do something significant via Ozpin's magic, why didn't Ozpin do that generations ago? Somehow I don't think a younger Ozma closer to the height of his power was in a worse position to attack Salem than a tortured, aura-less kid who unlocked his magic yesterday. The more RWBY reveals about Salem, the more I go, “Okay, but why didn’t his happen [insert any number of years] ago?”

Did Jaune actually leave? I assume he's just grabbing an airship or something before coming back to drag Oscar away, but seriously where did he go?

There's no way I can approach this scene without throwing up my hands and going, "What? WHY?" Which is a real shame because we finally get to see a bit of what the cane does and it’s... precisely what Ozpin's magic has always done? I mean, we saw that green shield five years ago and now there's a giant white beam. Okay.

If the beam just hits Salem with Generic Magic Power then there was never anything secret about the cane, it’s just, you know, Ozpin’s weapon. If the cane does something significant to hurt her we're left with the question of why it took literal generations to use it. Nothing is making sense to me and the only way I can think to salvage this scene is if Jaune runs back in, snags Oscar like a sack of potatoes, and runs out yelling about how he's clearly suffering from a concussion because what are you trying to accomplish here?

It doesn't help that this moment feels... final. Hazel has managed to hold Salem in place. Oscar has unlocked his cane and lands some mega hit right before Hazel passes out and looses his hold. Not only does this feel like a scene that should be at the end of the volume (we've still got five episodes), but also the end of the series. RWBY is building Salem into an unbeatable enemy by giving her more and more powers, and simultaneously eliminating the stakes by having our currently weakest character (in terms of exhaustion/injuries/aura/training) landing a shot like that. Why would you nerf Salem's threat level like that in the middle of a volume? Especially with a tool our group has had available from the start? If the cane does damage, maybe lead with that in the, “Here’s why we should stay and fight” office conversation.

I assume that Oscar's hit will obliterate Salem to the point where both he and Hazel have time to escape, or he obliterates both of them (“Do it”) and that's somehow presented as a better choice than just running while Salem is captured, or the bomb will interrupt things somehow... but it's just so shoddily done. At the very least, if they were going to have Oscar refuse to let someone fight alone, have it be an actual friend he's staying to assist. Having Oscar refuse his own rescue to help Hazel has more than one problem attached to it. We can say what we want about RWBY's themes of forgiveness, but this guy was torturing him just a few hours ago while serving Remnant's version of the devil. Just let him sacrifice himself and move on.

And that's where we end. Oscar powering up, the cane getting all magic-y, and him shooting a crazy big blast that engulfs both Salem and Hazel. I can't believe how not excited I am about my farm boy doing something badass, but here we are.

Overall I think this episode was way worse than last week's. We absolutely had problems in "Dark," particularly when it came to the Hound and the group's blind devotion to Ruby, but at least those moments were cushioned by an otherwise decent episode. "Witch" felt like I was watching something closer to a parody of RWBY, one deliberately poking fun at the fandom's desires: erase all conflict for awkward silly times, your favorite villains are instantly good now, the heroes go toe-to-toe with the main antagonist because why not, throw a bunch of magic in there for good measure, and wrap it all up in some over the top "this isn't a fairy tale" lines. I can see the pieces of a much better episode here — Emerald sneaking Oscar out with her semblance, Neo snagging the relic, Flint and Neon, Hazel attacking Salem — but it simply didn't come together.

I know I said this last time, but I have no idea what we're going to do for another five episodes. Salem slowly reforming from bomb damage as the group tries to keep Penny from opening the vault? The grimm attack halted with the whale gone so Qrow can go after Ironwood? The longer this volume runs, the more I think it was a mistake for them to introduce Salem as a fightable antagonist now. RWBY doesn't know what to do with her besides have her inevitably fall in the final season, so until then she's left being stupid (Relic), passive (Mantle), or, likely, written out of the story temporarily so the heroes can turn their attention towards smaller conflicts and weaker foes. They literally can’t beat Salem yet, but they can’t focus on other problems when she’s around without coming across as negligent, so if you have to find ways to erase her to make room for that... what was the point of bringing her here in the first place? We could have established that Salem is bound to her realm and had her send the Hound and whale to attack Atlas. There, all the fun parts of the volume without her complicated presence.

Well, the next five weeks will certainly be interesting, at the very least...

Until next time 💜

[Ko-Fi]

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #rwby witch #mymetas #rwby recaps

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

Note

As you said your asks are gone, I'm reposting my question just in case. Do you think that we will actually see the consequences of Ruby's speech in future Volumes? For example, in Vacuo we find out the Summer Maiden is being hunted by people who saw her broadcast and wanted the power for themselves. Or will the writers either forget or shove it under the rug?

So here’s a fascinating update: my asks might not be gone, I’m just unable to see more than ten at a time. I had ten before, got five new ones, a few that I recall from earlier today are now gone, and I still have ten! So I suppose I’ll get to see in a moment whether I still have ten after answering this, or if I’ve dropped down to nine. Regardless, I haven’t the slightest idea why this is the case (I’ve played with cookies and Xkit now too), but if my hunch is correct - that all my asks are still there, tumblr is just showing a capped amount - it’s certainly better than everything straight up disappearing. I just have more limited options in terms of what I answer and, sadly, this prioritizes whoever just messaged, as opposed to those who have been waiting :/

Ask drama aside, I feel like we have to see some sort of impact moving forward. Basically, the situation is that Remnant will never be the same. Unless the writing a) time travels or b) has the world collectively decide that this is a hoax, other kingdoms don’t see Salem for some reason (Ruby sends her back to her domain with silver eyes, idk), and the group decides not to try and convince others that this was all true... things have to change. It’s inevitable. I mean, RWBY is badly written, but I hope they’re not “Completely ignore that the entire world learned about an immortal witch” bad. And unless RWBY skips straight to a “Remnant banded together to defeat Salem in Volume 9″ ending, that change has an incredibly high chance of being negative, just because that’s where the conflict is and conflict drives further storytelling. Grimm attacks, Maidens hunted down, citizens looking for the Relics, mass panic at the thought of Salem, etc. Again, unless the story resets things somehow, I think consequences are inevitable.

So the bigger question is whether the story will act like those are consequences for the group. Let’s quickly recap some of the consequences we’ve seen lately vs. other characters’ responses to them:

Team RWBYJNOR’s choice to attack Cordovin has the consequence of attracting the leviathan grimm. However, they’re rewarded by getting into Atlas.

Their choice to steal an airship has the consequence of arrest. However, Winter is furious that someone would arrest her sister and they’re all rewarded with immediate inclusion into Ironwood’s plans.

Ruby choice to lie to Ironwood and Blake and Yang’s choice to betray him had the consequence of adding to his fear/stress, leading to him rejecting the group completely. However, instead of mourning this outcome, the group rejects him in turn and the story quickly starts treating Ironwood as a crazy villain to justify their break from him.

Qrow’s choice to team up with Tyrian has the consequence of Clover’s death. However, his speeches put the blame entirely on his semblance and Clover himself.

Then we have the numerous, smaller instances where the group’s actions don’t truly hinder them getting what they want/need. Recent examples would include the fact that Weiss’ attitude might have kept Nora from getting help... but Whitley was a good person and called a doctor anyway. The group literally beating the Ace Ops unconscious might have kept them from getting a second chance at rescuing Oscar... but Winter overruled them and sent them on the mission anyway. We have yet to see a scene where something the group does leads to a consequence that they have to sit with and accept, resulting in reflection on their behavior. Inevitably, the plot bends to either absolve them, or get them what they want another way. So the tl;dr is that I fully expect there to be horrific consequences for Ruby’s actions, but I have zero expectation that any of the blame will be put on her, or her team. The story will say, “Yeah, thousands are dying from grimm attacks, the Maidens are hunted, Glynda and Theodore are at their wits end managing this catastrophe... but how is any of that Ruby’s fault? She did what she had to do!” Even though much of the audience believes that’s simply not the case and - unless the show retcons something again, like having Vacuo suddenly appear to help - her action will provide no benefit to solving their current problem. Or, arguably, helping the world in the long run. The show never bothered to weigh the negatives of telling everyone about Salem against being “prepared” against an immortal foe, and I doubt it will start moving forward.

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #mymetas #Anonymous

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real-jaune-isms · 3 years

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RWBY Volume 8 Chapter 8 Review/Remix

RWBY finally comes back from a 2 month break, and what does it do? It scares us all half to death and then obliterates the other half with insane new story concepts and body horror imagery. Gods I missed this show~...

We return to this chaotic mess with the scene you might be expecting the least, Qrow and Robyn in their prison cells. Qrow is awoken by the sound of ships and explosions outside, and find that his three block mates are similarly left sleepless. Jacques is particularly nervous, probably because he assumed Whitley would be here to bail him out by now. Qrow picks up on an incoming sound that sounds... different, and indeed a wall is blown down in a fiery explosions that starts sending down rubble. One section of the Hard Light cell walls have been taken down, but before anyone has time to act Robyn notices a crow vehemently cawing at her before some rubble comes down above her. And... that’s the last we see of Robyn or Qrow this episode. He transformed to be a smaller target for debris and she might not have made it out quickly enough even with his disguised possible warnings.

Back to more pressing matters, we take the perspective of... the Dragonborn in the opening of Skyrim?? Wait, no, it’s just Nora regaining consciousness to see Klein has given her an IV and is saying she’ll be on the mend real quick. So that’s some good news after a few months of worry, and hey! The fan theory was wrong, she didn’t go blind from the lightning! Before we can even dwell on her wellbeing for too long, Blake opens the door for Ruby Weiss and Whitley to carry in Penny’s unconscious body. As Blake points out, Penny is leaking a green fluid most likely comparable to blood. They set her down on a cot near Nora, and Whitley is pissed about getting his clothes stained again in the span of 48 hours. But I think robot fuel/blood is at least easier to wash out than red wine. Ruby of course wants to know if Klein can help Penny as well as he has Nora, but his wheelhouse of expertise does not cover advanced robotics. The saving grace is that Pietro made her so close to human so Klein has some idea what can actually be fixed, starting with sewing up the gash in her abdomen. A thunderous rumble is heard in the distance, and suddenly the lights go out. Whitely complains about this too, but it is rather valid. Nothing quite seems to be going right, even Atlas’ power grid is against them... Ruby gets a call from May, and we learn they parted ways so May could go regroup with the Happy Huntresses and save her city. They compare notes and it’s made clear a bombing run took out part of the city’s power, though less clear is who was doing that bombing, Atlas or the Grimm? Ruby apologizes for their current inaction while they tend to Penny, but May reassures her that this may end up being more productive than trying to find something worth doing outside the city. Great googly moogly, it’s all gone to shit, and there’s very little difference a few more huntresses can make to the Mantle efforts. Ruby is left in overwhelmed despair, there’s so many problems and she doesn’t know how to solve all of them. Klein butts in with a sneeze to say she should take it one problem at a time, focus on the most immediate and possible to achieve and work outwards. For one thing, it’d help a lot of they had lights and power.

Willow surprises everyone by showing up in the doorway to let them know about a backup generator on the edge of the estate property. She’s still the lady of this house, and she has enough self respect to not lie around getting drunk in the dark. Whitley greets her with a mix of disinterest and distain, and she notices Klein has returned to the manor and offers an off guard greeting. Weiss backs up her mom’s info drop with the fact that SDC executive members indeed have access to backup power sources if the city ever suffered a power outage like this. She doesn’t like that they have that kind of privilege while other folks suffer, but it’s for the greater good this time. This gets Whitley thinking, and my boy has a full Jimmy Neutron BRAIN BLAST! Since Jacques made him heir to the company, and the man himself is possibly dead under rubble, Whitely has full access to the Schnee Dust Company and all its resources. Since Ironwood put down the Dust embargo in Volume 4, their fleet of cargo ships are sitting empty and ready for use in a hangar. As we saw earlier this very chapter, there are automated drones that answer to the SDC rather than the Atlas military. They can use those ships and drone soldiers to give all the people stuck in Mantle a way out to fly away safely. Fantastic work, young man! You make your family proud... well, the family members who don’t commit war crimes for profit. But to do that they need the power back on so he can use Jacques’ computer, so that’s what Ruby and Blake set out to do. Getting inside the small building outside of the mansion is easy enough, and its just the flip of a switch to get the generator booting back up. In the meantime, the two share a genuinely sweet conversation. Blake reassures Ruby that the fact she’s trying to make things happen is all the world could ask of her, and an optimistic attitude like that is hard to stick with for long in this harsh world. Life in the White Fang and with Adam robbed Blake of her own similar mindset, but she truly admires and looks up to Ruby for how great a woman she is. Sadly, like most things, this moment is ruined by a Grimm. While all the lights are coming back on and Whitley gets to work, a bolt of lightning reveals that the Hound is just outside the window behind Ruby... Willow and Klein are casually sitting around waiting I guess, when they hear the loud crash of glass breaking and Willow reflexively reaches for her bottle of vodka. Weiss checks in on her teammates over comms and they tell her they need some help so she makes sure Whitley will have the business handled before she rushes out to save her friends. Ruby is getting tossed through a fresh hole in the wall, and Blake’s attempt to attack it while she regains her footing is just batted away. Blake assures Ruby that it’s just a Grimm, they can handle it as long as she can stay focused. Blake goes on the offensive again while Ruby tries to get her Silver Eyes going, but the Hound swats the Faunus girl away and tackles Ruby before sprouting its wings again with her in its clutches Blake uses the ribbon on her weapon to do what Ren had earlier in the Volume, though she anchors the other end in the ground as a tether rather than ride along as it leaves.

Weiss finally arrives at the scene of this chaos and reports the Grimm sighting back to Klein. Hearing the news of this beastly intruder leaves Willow so shaken she drops the bottle and glass she was pouring herself. Klein tries to reassure and calm her, but she’s too overwhelmed and runs out of the room... just as Penny reactivates with red eyes. Full on hacked now, and Klein gets shoved to the floor for all his concerns about her being on her feet again. But she barely takes two steps before the real Penny resurfaces and tries to fight back for control of her own body. The struggle is deep enough to summon a whirling wind around her much like Fria had last Volume, but this one is green because Penny. Back outside, Weiss is about to summon something when a couple Centinels burrow up behind her and tear through it. From the looks of it, I think it was going to be the Nevermore from all the way back in Volume 1, so that’s a pretty cool callback to how important that fight was, and the imagery of glowing wings behind her was beautiful while it lasted. The Hound breaks free of Blake’s tether and is about to soar away, much to her dismay, when it sees a bright green glow coming from in the manor, clearly Penny going through her identity crisis. Ruby puts two and two together and realizes why the Hound has been saying “Take the Girl.” The girl is Penny, whose blood is still on Ruby’s clothes so it got a little confused while tracking. She warns her teammates, but the Hound chooses that time to drop her like a sack of potatoes and there goes the last of her Aura. Blake tells Weiss to go back inside and stop the Hound while she handles the Centinels out here, and they split up, but before Blake can reach her leader a new creature erupts from the ground and it’s bigger and more gross than the last bugs. It spits acid that comes up through a tube along its belly, and I’m confident in calling it an Alpha Centinel. Back in the eye of the storm, Klein tries to reassure Penny that she’s okay, which is phrased a little but I assume he means as “you’re in a safe place and your injuries have been treated, you don’t need to defend yourself like this”. The man is just a butler, he doesn’t know what we do about her internal struggle against antagonistic programming and her wrestling with her sense of self. Whatever new orders Watts has given her, she really doesn’t want to follow them. Luckily, there’s someone at her side to comfort her and hold her hand, and that’s Nora. Passing along the comforting words she got from Blake earlier this Volume, she tells Penny she doesn’t have to just be and do what other people expect of her. She may feel like a part of her is making her do what she doesn’t want to, but don’t forget about the rest. She’s more than just that one part of her mind or persona. It’s nowhere near the same situation as Nora’s own identity crisis earlier, but the words have the same positive effect. Penny gains control again and the wind barrier subsides. Weiss reports in that the Hound is heading inside and she’s on her way to intercept, and gets the bad news that Willow fled the room to go who knows where. Well, we know now cuz we see it, she went to what I assume is her own bedroom (god forbid she and Jacques still share a bed after 8 years of the most sour their marriage has been). On her vanity there’s another bottle or two of booze, and her Scroll. She wants to retreat to what she knows best, but hesitates and then gets spooked by the shattering sound of the Hound breaking in through the window above the front door.

It picks up on Penny’s scent from the blood stained on the floor, but by the time Weiss charges in through the front door it’s gone. The next five minutes of the episode have major horror movie vibes, and I love it. Weiss slowly looks around the foyer for any sign of the beast, when Willow screams over her Scroll to look out above her and indeed the Hound drops down to backhand her into a piano. Instead of staying to attack her, it goes to follow Penny’s scent again and leaves Weiss to check in with her mom after that sudden warning. Biggest triumph thus far, Willow threw her bottle against a wall and instead pulled up the feed from her series of surveillance cameras around the manor on her Scroll to track the Hound. It’s near Winter’s old bedroom, and Willow doesn’t seem to understand that it’s tracking a scent like a bloodhound. Maybe she just doesn’t encounter Grimm a lot or they’re just usually not this competent and singularly focused. She recognizes the direction it’s heading next with great horror, and what we see next gives us that same dread. Whitley still has blood on his clothes, and he dismisses Willow’s warning cuz he probably doesn’t think she has anything to say worth hearing after his years of dealing with her drunken state. He’s almost done setting up the automated orders, when he hears the door starting to open and angrily snaps at what he assumes is Willow coming to check on him since he didn’t answer the call. But he is dead wrong and hides behind the desk immediately, because it is indeed the Hound come to potentially kill him. He’s doing his best to hide, but it expands its vocabulary to tell him it knows he’s here. Just as it’s about to round the corner, an Alpha Boarbatusk charges in and pins it to the wall. Weiss isn’t the only Schnee in the house who can summon, and Willow will not let her son die this day. He’s about to bolt out of the room while it’s preoccupied with the summon, but turns back to hit Yes on the computer and get the evacuation plans started. Good job kid, you did more to save Mantle than your father and Ironwood combined. The two sprint down the hall with the Hound in hot pursuit, but get some respite from an ice wall forming between them and the Grimm thanks to Weiss arriving from the opposite direction. She’s out of breath, but assures them she didn’t forget about either of them, most likely as a callback to the conversation she and Willow had last Volume about Whitley being left behind when Weiss and Winter sought independence. The unarmed Schnees express their gratitude and retreat from that wing of the house, and Weiss prepares her summons for combat with the beast breaking through the ice.

Back outside, Blake is struggling with the Alpha Centinel and complains about how gross it is. She avoids its scythe blade-like arms with some clever use of elementally charged shadow clones and begs for Ruby to wake up and give her some backup. But that can’t last forever and eventually it holds her by the neck ready to slice. Before it can, though, Ruby wakes up and bisects it first. She laughs weakly and tells Blake she heard what she was saying. They hear a scream coming from inside the mansion and head inside to meet up with the others. Weiss and the Hound hear it too, and the Hound stops doing its best “Here’s Johnny” impression through the hole in the ice to go chase down this new sound. We see the source of it, and it is in fact Penny losing control of herself again to the new programming. The red eyes stay this time, and she shoves Klein aside once again to stiffly and mechanically walk out to the foyer. As fate would have it, Willow and Whitely are there too, and they naturally question the fact that she’s emotionlessly walking past them when last they saw she was bleeding and unconscious. She responds that she’s going to open the vault, and then apparently self destruct. Not to state the obvious, but we really can’t let that happen so lets hope the power of love will break through to her. Before Penny can even get down the stairs, the Hound arrives to try and grab her and she catches his hand effortlessly, and then the other, so they’re stuck in a shoving match stalemate. The Hound solves this problem by growing a new arm out of its back and using it to grab Penny by the head. It slams her around like a ragdoll, still repeating “Take the Girl”, and holds a claw up to her throat when RWB arrive at the bottom of the stairs. Blake and Weiss are unsure how to intervene, but Ruby goes stone cold serious telling it that’s enough. In the literal blink of her eye, a Silver Eyed blast blinds it and sends it falling out the window behind it leaving Penny to tumble down the stairs unconscious again. They hope and pray the threat is over as they check her body, but the real horror starts now.

The Hound claws his way back up through the window, and part of his head has been blasted away to reveal a dog faunus with one intact silver eye. In a voice likely not used in a long time, he continues to repeat his orders to “Take the Girl...” Ruby is mortified and shell shocked to see a living person within the frame of this beast unlike any she’s known prior, and I’m sure the wheels in her mind are turning to wonder if Summer Rose suffered a similar undying fate at Salem’s hands... and if that’s what will happen to her if she is captured? He begins shambling towards them and they try to carry Penny away from him but end up cornered. Whitley gets an idea and he and Willow start pushing on the knight statue nearest to them. Just as the Hound, whose human portion I have been inspired by a podcast to call Johnny, is about to grab the girls the statue falls down and crushes him to death. A choir chants in Latin as the Grimm fades away... and for the first time leaves behind a skeleton. Ruby seems shaken to her core as she confirms to the others that that was in fact a person they saw in there.

Ending that side of the story entirely for the week, we go back to the rubble in the jail cell to see Cinder has found Watts and the two make a flying get away. So that’s fun, we’ll have to see if they make it back in time to intercept JRY trying to sneak through Monstra. Until then, I’m gonna sleep like the dead. Ciao!

#rwby reviews #qrow branwen #robyn hill #arthur watts #jacques schnee #nora valkyrie #ruby rose #weiss schnee #blake belladonna #penny polendina #klein sieben #whitley schnee #willow schnee #the hound #tw: body horror #horror elements

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littlemisssquiggles · 4 years

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I have to say your post about Broken Machines ship has turned me to it, as if gives Whitley more positiveness, since Volume 4 I was always in the he isn't as bad as others made him out to be camp, in fact he didn't do much in Volume 4 that warrented the hate. So I am hopeing 7 gives him more character and some redemming quality if not the pairing somthing that shows he isn't a puppet of Jacque.

Hello Crystal. First off, thank you. I’m happy to hear you liked my little Broken Machines post to the point of even joining its shipping community. Nice.

Secondly, I’m in the same boat as you fam. I never honestly despised Whitley. I mean, yeah I saw him as potentially being a jerk under the influence of his father, but I more saw Whit as being misunderstood than downright rotten to the core.

Even now I’m more inclined to the idea of Whitley turning out to being a good person. I know most of the Schnee fans are more excited to see Winter and Weiss interact for this season, however personally I’m more interested in seeing Weiss reunite with Whitley. I couldn’t help but feel like there is more to Weiss’ history with her brother that fans haven’t seen yet. A backstory that could potentially show Whitley in a different light than when we first met him. I’m still hoping for the prospect of Whitley wanting nothing more than to have a genuine friendship with his sisters—or at least Weiss since she did remark that Whit doesn’t like Winter for whatever reason.

I’m still hoping that Whitley will be the Huntsman to Weiss’ Snow White story. The huntsman who was tasked with murdering Snow White by the Wicked Queen only for the huntsman to later spare Snow White out of sympathy and allow her to flee into the forest where she ultimately met the Seven Dwarves.

I have a feeling there will come a time where Whitley will actually help Weiss out of the kindness of his own heart. Despite showing moments of him being a snarky little turd to his sister back in V4 (only AFTER the moment where Weiss lost her title of heiress and it was given to Whitley instead), Whitley was also highlighted to show a genuine care for his big sister when he offered to bring her anything she would like after Jacques imprisoned her.

I feel as if Whitley does care a lot for Weiss but since she’s left home, the only person he’s has had to influence him was his father Jacques since…technically, all the women in his life have walked out on him (both of his sisters have left home to pursue their own life paths while his own mother is off who knows where getting wasted).

The audience wasn’t even aware of Weiss having a brother until V4. At least we knew about Winter from as early on as V2. But Whitley—a complete nobody left alone in the shadows of his sisters’ unbreakable bond. It actually kind of bothers me how Weiss and Winter always stuck together and looked out for one another as sisters but were perfectly complacent with leaving Whitley on his own. Where was that sisterly love and support for him, huh?

While I understand that Jacques probably got his grips on Whit from the moment he was born (as his only son); nevertheless, I would’ve appreciated the Schnee Sisters showing a little bit of sympathy and an attempt to be there for their little brother.

All the Schneesister moments are cute and all that but…again, where was that care and comfort for Whitley? This actually makes me a little annoyed at Weiss and Winter a little bit.

Did either of them even try to extend that same family support to their brother or was it just them against the world while the only person Whitley had to give two shits about him was Jacques.

Klein is actually my only hope to get some proper insight into how Whitley has been since his sisters left home.

I’m actually expecting Klein to no longer be in the picture. Unlike last time for V4 opening, Klein was nowhere in the shot with Jacques and Whitley for the V7 opening.

So was Klein relieved of his services to the Schnee Family after Jacques learnt he had helped Weiss escape home? Who knows? Will Weiss eventually find this out and go to visit Klein whereever he is? Will Klein finally tell Weiss the truth about Whitley? I’m really not sure.

Instead I’m left assuming that Winter and Weiss only perceive Whitley as being nothing more than a younger copy of their father. Hence why I think Whitley is more misunderstood than anything else. Just as how Weiss has had to deal with others misjudging her as a result of her esteemed Atlesian privilege as a Schnee, Whitley has possibly had to deal with both the oversight from outsiders and even members of his own family with the way his sisters have probably perceived him and treated him.

This makes Whit seem like a more sympathetic character in my eyes. I’m just really hoping my assumptions about him aren’t wrong. I hope the Writers do justice by his characterization and story for V7. Like you, I agree that Whitley literally did nothing wrong during the events of V4.

And yet Weiss still blamed him for manipulating her. And his reaction was what made it even more…ridiculous but interesting to note in my eyes.

Whitley didn’t even deny Weiss’ allegations. He more so…accepted it. But not because the accusations were true but more so in a manner like, it didn’t matter whether Whitley defended himself or not. Like Weiss would’ve have deemed him ‘no different than their father’ regardless of what he said. That’s the impression I got from that scene, but that’s just me.

Either way, I’m curious to see how Whitley is handled for V7. Hope it’s satisfactory; especially for us Whits in the FNDM.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2019)

#crystalandbrass #squiggles answers: rwby #whitley schnee #weiss schnee #rwby volume 7 theories #rwby volume 7

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calliecat93 · 4 years

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Top 5 Things I Liked About RWBY Volume 4

(Top 5 Dislikes)

This is going out later than I was hoping, but hey better now that never. Anyways, I honestly think that V4 is a pretty underrated Volume. There’s a lot that I really enjoy about it and after the insanity of V3, I’m glad that we got a more lowkey season that let everyone begin to heal. I’m hoping that RvB18 will follow that path tbh, but that’s not important here. There’s a lot to like, so let’s talk about the Top 5 Things I Liked About RWBY Volume 4!

#5. The Switch to Maya/Improved Animation

For Volumes 1-3, animaiton was primarily done in a program called Poser. This was mainly because it was what Monty liked to use, especially for fight animation. Poer isn’t an animation program, it is a modeling program that Monty was able to work for what he needed, but again it is not a proper animation program. V3 looks amazing, but I think that it was clear that they had reached their limit on how much they could push it. Add that with now having a larger animation staff, and it was time for a change. As such, they shifted to Maya, a common animaiton program in the field, and I am going to say it… it was 100% the right choice.

The animaiton in the Poser Era wasn’t bad, but… there were plenty of times where it felt like expressions and casual movements were very stiff. V4 changed that massively. There is so much more facial expression, but not just that. Take Blake’s cat ears for example. They are SO expressive in every scene that she’s in. Sure it might be because she threw out the bow, but still! I really don’t think that they could have done that in Poser. Animaiton models improved, like Sun’s abs no longer being glued to him for example and his little necklace sometimes daggling about. Environments look more vibrant. Environments have improved. Things like shading look better. And while the fight scenes aren’t Monty-like anymore, they are still really good! Seriously, Qrow vs Tyrian is still awesome~

I know that the shift wasn’t something liked by everyone, though I think that the vast majority have come around since V4. The animaiton has only kept improving after this, and it’s crazy going back to V1 and seeing the difference. But they sold me the second that they released the Ruby Trailer in the lead-up to the volume. Maya has allowed for a lot of improvement and new opportunities, and I believe that RT made the right choice in transitioning over to it. V4 looked so good, especially with how many new locations that it introduced us to, and I freakin’ love it~

#4. Expansion On The World

Volume 4, above all, is a world-building volume. We spent all of our time in the first three volumes primarily in Beacon and the city fo Vale. The only locations that we got a substantial amount of time in otherwise were Mountain Glenn and the Amity Arena for the Vytal Festival. Otherwise, we’ve been stuck in one place despite knowing that there is a much larger world out there. Thankfully though, this volume takes us outside the Kingdom of Vale and finally allowed us to explore the rest of Remnant… well, parts of it. Still, more than the other volumes had.

This was an advantage of using the multiple plotlines.. We got a really good amount of new locations. RNJR was in Anima, which had a lot of Asian-inspired scenery and naming. Yeah, we mostly spend the time on trails and villages, but you can still see the difference between the villages and Vale. Which we got to see what it’s like outside of Vale. Some villages like Higanbana are nice, while others like Shion or Kuroyuri… well… it emphasizes just how bleak the world truly is. Vale was an overall safe place, and even that wasn’t safe. If you don’t live within a kingdom though? Hope that luck is on your side.

We also get to see Menagerie for the first time. Sadly we don’t get to see as much here or in V5, but we do get to see how cramped it is and it overall looks nice. You can see that, as Blake said, they tried to make it a welcoming place for Faunus. We get to see Weiss’ home, which is as empty and cold as you would have imagined it being. It looks grand, but it’s just… empty and quiet with Weiss, more or less, alone aside from Klein. Patch is nice, you can certainly see why Tai would raise his kids there and in contrast to Weiss’ home, it’s small but the peaceful and comforting environment that Yang needed. Salem’s realm is eerie. Oscar’s farm is… a farm. And Mistral? Amazing.

What I’m getting at here is that we learn so much more about the world. Even outside exploring new locations, we learn about the Relics and the God Brothers. We start to get an understanding of the war between Oz and Salem, though of course, we learn the true scale in V6. The volume does a lot to make Remnant feel more like an actual world full of stories, problems, and history. It took us out of the hub that we were used to with Volumes 1-3, and I think that they did so very well. Very much appreciate it~

#3. Yang Plotline

While Yang got the least amount of focus, I… don’t view that as a bad thing. A story can’t be dictated by screentime alone. You have to look at how well they executed what they needed to do in the amount of time that they had. For example, they didn’t do very well with Ruby in V5 with the time that they had, but we’ll save that for the V5 posts. For V4, as I said, Oscar didn’t get the proper development and they didn’t utilize the amount fo time that they had for him well. But Yang though? I thought that they did her very well here.

Yang’s plot is, of course, recovering after losing her arm and getting back into fighting condition so that she can go after Ruby. We see that she has PTSD, having flashbacks and nightmares and her emotional state is… not in the bright place that we’re used to. Chapter 4, the chapter mainly focused on her, shows how concerned she is about taking the first steps of recovery, though we do see her start to laugh and joke around again. With Tai’s encouragement and support, Yang ut son the new arm, trains again and Tai helps her see the disadvantages of her fighting style/Semblance reliance, and opens up to her about Raven. In the end, Yang’s ready to go after her sister. She’s not 100% healed, but she’s got her drive back and is ready to move ahead.

Now again, Yang gets the least amount of focus. She only gets one chapter dedicated to her, and otherwise, her’s appears the least out of the four RWBY girls. But they utilized that time very well. They don’t drag it out or rush through it. They set up Yang’s mental state, show us signs of her PTSD, have Tai give her the proper encouragement, and have her start to get back on her feet. I’m glad that they were just straightforward with it, there was no need to drag it out especially since V5 and 6 show that there are still things that she has to work through. The point for this volume though was to get Yang well enough mentally for her to get back out onto the field, and they did that very well. She was in a positive environment as well, and that probably helped her.

So yeah, when I look back at the Yang plot, I have no issues with it. I think that it was given the amount of attention that it needed. It wasn’t rushed, but it wasn’t dragged out either. Yang didn’t fully recover, but she got well enough to move forward. That was the ultimate goal for everyone’s plotline, and they achieved it here. But I’m gonna leave it at 3 since it is a bit of a bummer that she got limited screentime. But for what it’s worth, they used that time properly and I am happy with the final result.

#2. Weiss Plotline

Out of all the plots, Weiss’ is my favorite and imo, the best one done. This is because this is the conclusion to her three volumes worth of character development. As I said n the V3 Likes post, her plot had her decide to finally cut herself away from her father for good and move ahead with the life that she wanted. Sadly, due to the Fall, Jaques had the perfect excuse to got o Vale and force her to return to Atlas with him. So just as quickly a she was able to embrace her freedom and the choice to never turn back, fate dealt her a bad hand and she was her father’s prisoner once more. Which she literally becomes a prisoner after her outburst at the charity event and gets stripped of her title. It’s just… horrible to watch that scene. Really, any scene with her and Jaques is uncomfortable, especially when he slaps her.

This is when we truly get to see Jaques abuse first hand, and it is as horrible as the previous hints indicated. He’s condescending and passive-aggressive to Weiss. He treats her like she’s a child and an employee more than as a parent. Compare it to Tai or Ghira with Yang and Blake, where they are nothing but caring and supportive to their daughters. Ghira especially welcomed Blake back with open arms despite how she called them cowards in the past and was just glad that she found her way again and was safe. Jaques only cares about Weiss for his image and to use her when it suits his needs, whether Weiss is willing to do it or not. He makes her sing rather than ask her. He refuses to let her out fo his sight during the charity gala. He talks down to her. He tries to gaslight her into everything being her fault and like her outburst was wrong.

Weiss did NOTHING wrong. She, and maybe Ironwood, were the only ones at that charity who gave a damn about Vale. Seeing her in that environment, where people were snobby, argumentative, and only cared about their own petty problems makes you really, really appreciate how much she had grown. She had broken out of that mindset after V1 and when the Trophy Wife claims that Vale deserved what it got, she rightfully calls her and everyone else out on their bullshit and refuses to let Jaques shut her up. Yeah, it ends badly with Weiss losing her title and Whitley rubbing it in. Weiss had no one aside form Klein, who is an actual good person who showed Weiss kindness and care moreso than her own family ever did. When Weiss breaks down, ti just… hurts. But luckily, at her lowest point, Weiss decides that enough is enough. She gets back out Myrtenaster, perfects her Summoning Glyph, and decides to break free once and for all. Klein helps her escape, and she manages to get onto a plane heading for Mistral. Which leads to… more problems, but that’s for the next volume.

Weiss’ plotline was very well done. It gets you to see how far that she’s come since Volume 1. She wanted to break free and become better, and she did. Jaques tries to lock her away again, but he failed. Weiss had gotten a taste of freedom, and she was going to reclaim it. She was going to redeem her family name her way by being a Huntress and no one was going to stop her. As This Life is Mine stated, “I won’t be possessed/burdened by your royal test/I will not surrender, this life is mine.” Yes Weiss, it is indeed.

Weiss was great, but there is one character whose focus I appreciated not just because it was good, but because it saved that character in my eyes.

#1. Ren Becoming a Character

I haven’t talked much about Ren and Nora, and that was because up until now… there wasn’t much to talk about. While I liked them fine enough, in V1-3 they’re just… there. It felt like they existed just because Jaune and Pyrrha had to be part of a four-man team because they’re nothing more than supporting characters there. Nora at least was funny and bubbly so she was at least fun, but Ren? He was just… quiet and the straight-man to Nora’s antics. That was it. He didn’t feel like a character, he just felt like a necessity needed to fill in a spot. My biggest hope with V4 was, now with JNR traveling with RWBYt hey would do something, anything to flesh out Ren and Nora. At least for one of them.

Fortunately, I got my wish.

To be fair, RWBY Chibi had gotten me to warm up to Ren since they got a lot out of him in several of the skits. More than I thought that they could. But I also like Chibi!Neo FAR more than I like Canon!Neo, so that wasn’t saying much. But fortunately, Volume 4 came around! Ren was really great in this volume! He’s still the quiet one, though he gets more here than any other volume. Which is something to note real quick. Neath has done a fantastic job as Ren. I can’t imagine how it had to have felt since he was taking over Monty’s spot. His brother’s spot. But he has done a perfect job since Day One, and I can’t imagine anyone else int he role at this point. He especially shows his range in this volume, and for a guy who had never voice acted until he started doing Ren, he pulls it off perfectly. I love Neath.

Ren is from Anima, but outside Mistral, so he’s of course the most knowledgeable of the area. We get to see more of his tracking and fighting skills, which is as fun to see as it was in Volume 1 which was the last time he got to showcase his fighting style. We get to see him interact with not only Nora, which was really nice especially with Jaune. But most of all, we get to see how Ren’s past affected him. His reaction to the destruction fo Shion perfectly fits due to what happened to Kuroyuri. His refusal to go back there makes sense since… well, no one likes to revisit the source of their trauma. He tells us about Oniyuri, and through him we see just how difficult it is to live outside the Kingdoms. We saw that with what happened to Shion, but Ren is a character that we’ve known for years and we get to see and hear about it through him. Which makes it hit us harder because it affects a character that we’ve known for so long. And when we get to the flashback and see how happy Ren’s life was and how it all went to Hell in just one night? It breaks your heart. We also finally learn his Semblance, which fits him perfectly so that was also appreciated.

But most of all, we get to Kuroyuri, and it’s the first time that we see Ren lose it. He’s always been a very calm, very tranquil person but when the Nucklavee attacks, he is understandably terrified… and then just lose it. We’ve NEVER seen him get angry before, but seeing the monster that ruined his life, killed his family, and destroyed his home? Yeah, that’ll make anyone snap. But thankfully, Nora snaps him out of it and this is when we see just how strong their relationship is. When Ren lost everything, he found Nora who had absolutely no one, and befriended her. They fought together. They survived together. They went through everything together, both good and bad. So fo course Nora could see that Ren was losing it, and she was the only one who could pull him back and stop him before he lost himself I’d still like them to be more clear on if Renora is canon or not cause I still really don’t know. But at least we get to see that their dynamic isn’t just the ‘hyper girl, calm guy’ dynamic. There is a true bond there, and it’s just beautiful.

It ends with Ren suing his father’s knife, the only thing of his family that he still has, to kill the Nuclavee. For his parents. For all the lives stolen. And, of course, for himself. This was him confronting his trauma, and finally putting it to rest and moving forward. That’s the biggest theme of this volume honestly, taking what brought you down, and moving forward. Yang began to stand up again after her trauma. Blake decided to quit running and to rise up against the White Fang once and for all. Weiss broke free of her father despite him trying to pull her back. Ruby saw just how bad the world truly was along with the Fall of Beacon still haunting her, but took ti and strengthened her resolve to be a Huntress and make things better as much as possible. And Ren? He chose to go back to Kurroyuri to save his friends and destroyed the monster that made so many suffer but without giving in to his sorrow.

The volume just made me love Ren and see him more as a character than I had before. He’s one of my absolute favorites no. I’m hoping that V7 is going to do the same with Nora since at this point, I feel that she’s the most under-developed of the main cast. But we’ll just have to wait and see. Regardless, V4 changed my opinion of Ren completely and his story was done very well. As such, it my favorite thing about RWBY Volume 4.

And another volume done! So… next we get to Volume 5. Ho boy, I haven’t revisited it since it ended and not for the reasons that you think. But we’ll talk more on those posts. For now, thanks for reading everyone~!

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