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bestworstcase · 3 months

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I found your blog via your post about yang and strength, got really interested, and then I ended up reading through a loooooot of your rwby commentary, and now I’ve got a question for you, if you don’t mind: Is it okay to want Penny to come back? I’ve read a lot of your analysis of her story arc and character, specifically that giant post you wrote about her in november 2021. i um, have definitely been guilty of wanting her to come back a whole lot. I’ve definitely done some frantic and outlandish theorycrafting to cope, but also I really do see what you mean about how her atlas arc is meant to be a tragic ending, so I don’t know how to reconcile my appreciation for the show’s story with my desire of just… really wanting to see her again?

This isn’t me asking you about whether or not she might come back because I’ve made my peace with whatever happens, this is just me asking if like… am I entitled or ungrateful for missing her so much that it makes me cry when such a wonderful story is being told in the show as a whole?

of course it’s okay!!!

the fact that her death had such a profound and lasting emotional impact on you speaks to the strength of the storytelling and the care that the writers poured into her character. tragedy aspires to incite the feelings you’re describing for the purpose of emotional release; catharsis is the whole reason tragedy exists at all.

you’re not just allowed to cry—you’re meant to. you’re supposed to care deeply that she’s gone. it matters. the story grieves for her and it’s inviting you to grieve too. when ruby breaks down over losing penny, it’s okay to be right there with her emotionally.

wanting her to come back or hoping that she might is a natural aspect of that feeling. theorizing—even in a grasping at straws kind of way—is a natural way to process that feeling. so is writing or reading “fix-it” fic or other kinds of AUs where penny survives or returns or never endured that ordeal in the first place. inherent to catharsis is the idea that letting painful feelings out is not only good but necessary for emotional well-being.

(you are also under no obligation to like every creative decision a story makes and it is entirely okay to feel like penny dying in v8 lessened your enjoyment of the story overall, if that’s how you feel. by no means do you owe it to any story to like everything about it just because it’s written well.)

what is entitled is the attitude held by a specific subset of hardcore penny 3.0 theorists that penny’s death was something bad that the writers did to the audience that they now have an obligation to “fix” or “make right”—often accompanying a sentiment along the lines of “why even bring her back if they were just going to kill her off?” and dismissal of her entire presence in the atlas arc as “just fanservice,” sometimes with the implication that the writers took advantage of penny fans only to stab them in the back.

the entitlement comes from the failure or refusal to recognize that the writer’s room does not revolve around what penny fans would like to happen (or indeed fans of any other character) and a narrative turn that upsets you is not something that the writers have done to hurt you. it’s entitled to act like the writers owe it to you to bring a character back to life, which was the general tenor of a lot of high-profile penny 3.0 discourse back in 2021 although the attitude has mellowed since then.

(& just in case: if you, personally, were in the category of penny fans who felt outraged or hurt back then and wanted to demand that the writers make it up to you by reviving her, and you’ve since reflected on those feelings and moved on from them to—as you say—make peace with whatever the story has planned, That Is Also Okay, and you should not beat yourself up over it. this is not something you need to feel guilty about.)

as for how to reconcile appreciating the story for what it is and still feeling like crying when you think about penny… i mean this completely in earnest, even if you’ve never written anything before in your life, try writing a fanfic where she lives or finds her way back or her friends manage to save her. not just reading or looking at fanart—i do think that there is really something to be said for making your own fanworks. writing or drawing gives you a degree of control over what happens in your story or artwork that you can’t get anywhere else and that can be a very comforting outlet when mourning a character.

you’re okay.

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invested-in-your-future · 8 months

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"But ever after was unpredictable idea. No one saw it coming! We wouldn't want the audience to be bored!"

I've had multiple people say this and I'm honestly going to throw a little hot take out there - okay so who cares if specific plot elements get guessed? Sure you can blindside the viewers but the audience being able to follow where the story is going (even if the story arrives there first) is...what's good writing all about?

An author isn't there to "beat" the audience. If you set out to write something for no other reason than "oh yessss they'll never see it coming!" You already failed.

Westworld s2 was written with sole focus of making theorycrafting fail because writers were angry fans guessed the twist in S1. It was a mess.

Game of Thrones ran on subverting expectations (coincidentally alongside the infamous "themes are for school reports" quote). And it certainly managed to run the entire cast into the ground so much, that actors still hold genuine disdain for what was done to their characters.

Lost is notable for attempting to "one-up" viewers without really having a plan. JJ Abrams overall is known as "the mystery box guy" who tends to tempt people with "boxes" that either contain nothing or another box inside.

Shyamalan pretty much ran his career into the ground with "twist focus".

Write twists and subvert expectations and all that but having internal logic within narrative that dictates on what is and isn't possible and what each character would or wouldn't do is just...basic necessity.

It's perfectly fine to have specific crucial plot points be something the audience anticipated. Who knew a place named Atlas would struggle with the weight of the world on their shoulders?! Oh wow a protagonist that has been dealing with trauma is traumatized and deals with trauma? Oh wow death flags are real? That's all fine. A character inspired by Greek tragedy suffering similar fate makes sense, a build up to Fall of beacon leading to...well...fall of beacon makes sense. Writing doesn't need to be unpredictable to flow together. You build your house of cards piece by piece.

And RWBY hasn't ever really subverted expectations or did anything truly unpredictable. It just doesn't know what it wants to do next till the writing team just puts something together so even if they tried to be Shyamalan that attempt just isn't there.

Ever After was bad because it was as pointless padding volume, it broke suspension of disbelief completely and it was simply bad. It was a random last minute thing with no internal consistency that they just threw together without any regard of whether it works or what it does to the overall story.

Same with two gods, relics and a bunch of (a lot of) other things.

Sometimes plot threads feel out of place and bad because they outright are.

#rwby #rwde #seriously its not rocket science #rwby volume 9 #rwby v9

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waheelawhisperer · 1 year

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R00by's incremental episode factor was very much a double-edged element: on the one hand you have tons of fan speculation, on the other there's that 'didn't turn out just like my headcanon/other anime/how I wanted?? Wroooong' nonsense. Oh, and of course the intra-fan 'your theorycrafting sucks do you even know how to narrative' meta wank.

Yeah it's definitely a double-edged sword. Weekly releases are great to build hype and fan engagement and stuff and I love seeing people get but this fandom sucks ass sometimes and half the people who watch this show throw bitch fits if it doesn't turn out exactly how they want it to, which is usually exactly like every shonen anime ever.

The last thing is also true, and it doesn't help that a lot of the people who watch RWBY (fans and critics) are actually stupid and have no media comprehension whatsoever.

#rwby

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bug-the-chicken-nug · 7 months

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I've been meaning to get around to this for a long time and I was going to make it a more gussied up and "formalized" sort of theorycrafting post, but fuck it, im just gonna freestyle it.

So basically

My idea of what makes magic different in RWBY basically comes down to source.

Semblances use Aura, and Magic doesn't.

You power magic by sucking in the invisible natural energies of the universe around you. And this *theoretically* has all the energy you could feasibly want.

But why aren't mages unstoppable, then?

Because Aura is still important in a *different* way, and is now like your "stabilizer" or "foundation", rather than your fuel.

Just because magic has almost unlimited fuel doesn't mean *your* capabilities are unlimited, in much the same way as how a car wouldn't suddenly become omni-capable just because its fuel tank endlessly refills.

So basically, Aura is now still important for making yourself a *sturdier* and more *reliable* car for pulling crazy magic stunts.

In this way, magic overuse is sometimes actually worse and more dangerous than Aura overuse.

Instead of your power having a point where it'll naturally run out, it *won't* do that by itself, it just gets increasingly painful and unstable.

And looking at a different angle of all this, someone like Ozpin can still become a *worse* mage over time despite having "infinite fuel" because his body's "entryway" for magic, or proverbial Magical Succ Strength, has become increasingly Shit over time, and whenever he splits off a new, smaller and more specialized "entryway" for someone else to use, he has to reduce the diameter of his own accordingly.

So basically he has access to the world's BIGGEREST pool of pure rocket fuel but he has to sip it daintily with a teensy widdle silly straw.

Salem, meanwhile, is actually being nerfed by what the gods did to her, in a way.

She can't just instantly nuke anyone within sight because *her* system is constantly forced to passively run one very taxing spell in particular, and that spell is called Being THEE Most Unkillable There Ever Was.

This is effectively using up a bunch of this bitch's RAM and bandwidth at all times, and her trip to the Forbidden Hot Tub only made it Worse.

"But Salem is an INDESTRUCTIBLE car" you say. "She's That Fucking Car your great uncle has thats like a majillion years old but still works great somehow! So if she wants to she could just squnch out more magic, overclock herself like mad, and not care about what happens to her!"

Ohr but you see i Thot of that.

See, even if you are Thee Car Of All Time, magic overuse still fundamentally warps you and strains you in ways that your body at some point no longer registers as "damage" and are instead just like... a new, worse sort of "normal". Kind of like accumulating a bunch of metaphorical scar tissue and junk. But you are supposed to be a car in this analogy still so like. I guess you're some kind of horrid flesh car that has the ability to scar. Freak.

This also can mean that your like magical cloaca for succing can slowly get smaller or less powerful if you keep pulling that horseshit, with a similar sort of logic where its degradation is not properly recognized as "damage".

And this is why Salami is escared to just nuke or Power Word Kill any bitch that so much as rears their head in her 100 mile vicinity.

She doesn't want her magical clussy to prolapse.

THE END!

#salem rwby #ozpin rwby #rwby

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asmallermorehonestsoul · 1 year

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Negativity warning, so feel free to ignore if you're not in the mood: TBH I'm not sure which bugs me more WRT the (current) end of Penny's arc: how it capped off (which was sad enough) or some of the Grand High Theorycrafter(C) fans insisting This Was It and anyone figuring she might have some way of coming back is grasping at straws to spoil a perfectly fine tragedy subplot. Actually scratch that, the latter officially irks me more.

to be honest I don't really theorize about future plot points... so yeah if people want to theorize how she might come back thats fine! I have seen a few that sound plausible. Death is generally pretty permanent in RWBY, but Penny is a special case

I don't hate her actual death though, sad it as was... she got to prove she was a real girl and later take control of her last moments after being treated as a weapon by Atlas/Watts or trying to be protected by well-meaning people like Pietro and throw a wrench in Cinder's scheme, unlike her first death as a pawn at her hands

Personally I would love to see her come back again though, bc I love her

#anon

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anthurak · 3 years

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So there is one subtle, but also very important detail about RWBY’s storytelling that I feel is often overlooked even in very well thought-out theories about where the story and/or characters are going.

That being, despite how much CRWBY takes reference from fairy tales, folklore, mythology and many other stories, they NEVER play a reference, allusion or trope straight. There is ALWAYS some form of twist, subversion, deconstruction, or otherwise in how the story and character beats have played out.

Little Red Riding Hood is not prayed on by monsters, she is a monster hunter. Pinocchio isn’t turned into a real boy, but rather is proven to have always been a real boy (or girl, in this case). The Wizard of Oz really is a great and powerful wizard, but he’s also still a liar and a charlatan. Cinderella is Evil because the fairy godmother she got was basically Maleficent. Even Sun Wukong himself takes a Journey to the East. And that’s not even touching on how CRWBY have subverted the absolute hell out of two of the most well-worn fantasy-hero-protagonist archetypes with Jaune (Heroic Destiny) and Oscar (Chosen One), and possibly a third depending on how Penny’s arc shakes out.

Basically, any serious theory about where the story and characters of RWBY are going that uses ‘because that’s what happened in the source material’ as it’s main bit of evidence is kind of missing a really crucial detail.

#rwby #rwby theory #rwby theorycrafting #rwby fandom #rambling

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masterweaverx · 2 years

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It’s time for another chaotic connect the dots theory! Settle in, kids, this is going to be a bombshell.

Salem’s longterm goal is to get all four relics, summon the gods, and destroy Remnant. So the win condition for her is Get The Relics. The only things currently stopping her are the vaults, otherwise it’s just a matter of attrition and patience, which she has in spades. This is obviously a Bad Thing.

Now Ruby’s our new leader. She’s willing to do things Ozpin isn’t, and we’ve seen how far she’s willing to go to protect people. She looks at every angle and if she doesn’t like the game, she will flip the board. LITERALLY dropped Atlas to save its citizens. Do not doubt her focus.

And here’s a little detail. Jinn--and maybe all the Relic spirits, but most obviously Jinn--is based on the Genie of the Lamp from Aladdin stories. And just in case you didn’t see it, the Disney version of that story ends with the genie being set free, his shackles popping off.

So, using a relic summons a spirit, who is in chains. But those chains--or their equivalent--fall off the Genie in the movie. And if the spirit of a relic is free, well, that renders the matching relic inoperable doesn’t it? And if Salem can’t use a relic, she can’t meet her end goal.

So here’s my theory: Ruby Rose is, at some point, going to destroy one or more of the relics.

#RWBY #Speculation #Ruby Rose #Relics #I am throwing this bomb out there to see what happens #Chaotic theorycrafting is the best theorycrafting!

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headcanonrepository · 3 years

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I have a lot of thoughts about Neo. She's an amazing character to theorycraft about given that we still know next to nothing about her even after all this time! And my wife and I steadfastly refuse to believe that what we see is all that's going on with her (come on, her whole thing is manipulating her image, you can't just read her at face value!). So here's a bit of a masterpost of our predictions/theories about what she's doing and why:

Until the fall of Beacon, it's pretty obvious what she's doing and why so I won't go into too many details. She's Roman's trusted right hand woman, she's obviously very loyal to him for reasons we can only guess at but One Thing hinted at him finding her on her own and taking her in. (Which would be interesting if the show contrasted that past against Cinder's, Nora's and Emerald's...they're really fond of orphan girls developing co-dependent relationships with the first person to show them a crumb of kindness, huh? Anyway, that's another post)

Everything she does for Cinder at Beacon is following Roman's instructions. I'd like to think he had an exit strategy that didn't involve being Grimm chow, but we didn't get to know anything about it. Either way, they are so close to being done with this and then Roman's 'death' happens (not to beat a dead horse but as I’ve said before, if the Hound is a person, it makes more narrative sense that it's Roman and until I see some concrete proof, I'm going with supposed death. Either way, the important thing is that Neo thinks he's dead)

So Neo is pissed. She wants revenge. And Cinder is absolutely at blame, her plan got Roman killed. Neo tracks her down with a little help from the criminal underworld and has Cinder on the ropes until she pulls out the maiden card. It’s worth noting that throughout that fight, the cinematography makes sure that we see Neo noticing both Cinder’s bandaged (Grimm) arm and her subtle manifesting of the maiden powers (fiery punch) before she actually relies on maiden powers to stop the fight.

Cinder tries to persuade Neo that Ruby is who she should really want to kill. Now, I don't think Neo believes that for a second. She keeps fighting Cinder after her first attempt to shift the blame onto Ruby, only stopping after Cinder uses a blatant display of power Neo can’t or won’t match. My guess is either: she realized that if Cinder drew on her full power, she wasn't going to win OR she realized that her true target is whoever/whatever controls the Grimm and Cinder isn't it. Potentially both, with Cinder still being a target for revenge but only after the bigger problem is dealt with.

So she seemingly teams up with Cinder to get information/lull her into a false sense of security. And she gets a lot of information very quickly - Cinder tells her about the relics and maidens and Salem pretty much immediately in Haven vault. (Cinder really underestimates people if she thinks they’re on her side and if that isn’t going to bite her in the ass this season, I’ll be very surprised. Probably won’t be Neo, but her treatment of Emerald has been a problem for a while and that’s got to hit a breaking point soon)

They get to Atlas and bide their time/gather information until they find out where the relic is and how to get it. Neo makes a point of 'telling' Cinder she wants to go after Ruby but after being told no, she doesn't push it any further. At this point, Neo knows where Ruby is and had a great opportunity to go after her if that's really what she wanted. And at any point after the dinner party, she could have split from Cinder to go after Ruby if she wanted to. She hasn't.

She gets the relic for Cinder. She toys with ORNJ in the process but her main aim isn't to kill. She’s literally fighting with one hand behind her back at one point. In fact, she hangs around much longer than she had to, she swiped the relic off Oscar off screen appearing as ‘someone else’ - she could have made off with it without a confrontation at all. She hung around so everyone got a good look at her and knew she was there. Nora even identified her. Almost like she wants the good guys to know what she's doing and who is doing it. Then she goes. (Random thought: I know CRWBY have said the ‘Oscar punch’ was an animation error but what if that literally is Neo ‘showing her face’ in the least suspicious way possible and CRWBY don’t want to say it because it’s too much of a spoiler?)

Cinder doesn't seem appreciative of her actions and dismisses her contributions and she appears put out by it. I suspect that's more for Cinder's benefit - a lack of any reaction might be suspicious.

Cinder and Neo deliver the relic to Salem and from here on out, every whale scene Neo does as little as possible to draw attention to herself, staying out of Salem's notice, standing off to the side or behind Cinder, doing nothing to draw suspicion...but she's watching and listening in every scene.

She doesn't want Cinder to go after Penny, but winds up going anyway when it looks unavoidable. In the resulting fight with Maria, Neo comes off as she isn't even trying; she's slower than usual, less lethal. I believe it's plausible deniability for not helping Cinder - she was busy. But she did make it super clear to Maria that she knows who Ruby is, and Maria is alive to communicate that at some point. Neo only gets the upper hand when Maria is distracted by Penny’s fall (or to see it another way, when Cinder has enough free time to pay a second of attention to the other fight in the room and see that Neo isn’t really trying).

So Neo doesn’t want to be there. And she doesn’t want to help Cinder out once she is there. Why not? Either she's still after revenge against Cinder and giving Cinder more power (via winter maiden) wouldn't help that and/or Salem said no and Neo is trying to be as passive and non-confrontational as possible to slip under the radar while she gathers information on Salem. My money is on both.

If Cinder had had Neo and Emerald's full help against Penny, I don't think Penny would still be around. And that would mean the Winter Maiden powers would be with either Cinder (bad for revenge), Emerald (Cinder would just kill Emerald, leading back to option 1) or Neo (Cinder would try to kill Neo and while Neo might be able to escape, she's got a massive target on her back and she'll not be able to get information on or plot against Salem anymore, which would be bad for revenge in a different way).

What does this mean for the future? Well, Neo is going to keep pretending to be on side until she either has information or an opportunity to mess up all of Salem’s plans. She knows Salem needs the relics. I could see her breaking Oscar out and sending him on his way with the lamp at some point (and TBH, I would love to see what the main guys make of that and how they try to rationalize her behaviour). Or she could use the rifts forming in Salem’s team to undermine Salem’s plans (but I think Oscar is already on that one). Or she could be waiting a lot longer before taking action.

Basically, there's only two ways I can rationalize Neo's fluctuating character motivations and abilities. Either a) CRWBY aren't thinking about her as much as I am or b) Neo is playing a very long game of revenge. After all, it's best served cold, like ice cream! ;)

Until I know for certain otherwise, I'm going to believe it's b.

#rwby volume 8 spoilers #rwby8 spoilers #rwby theory #rwby spoilers #long post #neopolitan #and don't worry #I saved clown makeup incase CRWBY really do intend for us to take this at face value #but the best part of theorycrafting is that if I'm wrong #I do have a whole fanfic outline right here to make the best AU

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falleri-salvatore · 3 months

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If Jaune actually were to go villain, he would be not be an omnicidal maniac; he would be an absurdly overpowered yet well-intentioned tyrant....

He would have the ambitious persistence of Cinder... The inhuman resilience, endurance and sheer overwhelming power of Hazel... The manipulative and vindictive cunning of Salem... The self-destructive selflessness of Ozma... The unyielding and unrelenting determination and conviction (read: stubbornness) of Ironwood...

...and to top all of the above: an undying body as well as an eternal soul that both evolved beyond humanity due to overuse of Aura Amp pretty much making them transcend into becoming superhuman. In other words, he has acquired both of Salem's (cannot die by old age or illness and instantly regenerates any damage inflicted to him and instantly regenerates any spent Aura) and Ozma's (even IF his body is somehow destroyed, his soul will still persist and, unlike Ozma, he can actually choose which vessel to possess as his next body) forms of immortality naturally and by accident instead of as a curse (because it would not be Jaune Arc if he doesn't get double the suffering than the previous Big Good and Big Bad)... He can be beaten, but not by strength, nor underhanded tactics, nor by outsmarting him, and definitely NOT by outlasting or out-stubborning him. He can only be defeated by making him acknowledge that he needs to rest and to finally trust that people under the yoke of his well-intentioned tyranny won't all suddenly die without him.

#rwby #jaune arc #rwby shitpost #rwby headcanon #rwby theorycrafting #if jaune were a villain he would be a benevolent demon king not an unhinged murderer

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cyrusvgz · 1 year

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Theory time.

We see organic animals and beings but we also see automatons and puppets.

The puppets control everything and there's some kind of war or conflict between two factions. We see a chess board with pieces and later we see what appears to be two of those Chess pieces fighting.

Red Queen vs. White Queen.

White is the smaller one and the Red has the hammer or it could be the other way around.

#RWBY #RWBY Vol.9 #RWBY Theorycrafting #This is what I've been waiting for

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bestworstcase · 2 years

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So I've been wondering why you seem so contemptuous about Cinder getting rid of her Grimm Arm and it's just that you think she can fry it off, okay. Think there's more to it as a shock collar analogue than Salem demonstrating the ability and willingness to hurt her with a thought, but also how Cinder never knocked the button away as she killed the Madame. That Cinder will hold onto what hurts her until she Wins is, pretty obviously what will destroy her if she never learns how to let go.

my feelings re: removal of the grimm arm are twofold, really.

1 - whenever the subject of cinder either getting rid of or being ‘saved’ from the grimm arm arises, the common scenarios put forward nine times out of ten involve some variation on “…and then ruby uses her silver eyes to blast it off,” often followed by “and cinder is so grateful that her cynical worldview shatters and cinderdemption happens” which, um.

i am really skeptical of any proposed path to a cinder villain-to-hero arc whose emotional turning point hinges on ruby dismembering her again, especially because the most common variation by a wide margin is: “cinder has been disarmed and her aura is broken and she’s crumpled at ruby’s feet waiting for the killing blow, and then ruby magnanimously silver glares the grimm arm away to save her, cue redemption arc” LIKE. WHAT??

the grimm arm is in a sense a repetition of the shock collar situation but it is also,, LITERALLY CINDER’S ARM. IT IS A PART OF HER BODY. you can’t… take it away from her against her will and expect her to get positive emotional growth out of her you’re just going to traumatize her more!! it’s her arm!!

in the event that cinder chooses to get rid of it herself, it’s not going to be an emotionally easy or straightforward process because, again, we are talking about dismemberment. if it gets to the point where cinder is incinerating the grimm arm to free herself from salem we are at ‘trapped animal gnawing off her own leg’ levels of desperate, and even more desperate than that if she willingly turns to ruby, the girl who dismembered her in the first place, to save her from it.

but because the arm is also grimm the theorycrafting on removal really doesn’t… engage with that emotional reality, and cinder’s arm is treated solely as a parasitic shock collar that she needs to get rid of before it destroys her, often accompanied by this underlying stance that cinder is too blinded by obsession with power to notice she’s being abused again. which… hm.

a) cinder knows she’s being harmed. she explicitly associates salem’s abuse of the arm with madame’s use of the shock collar. she knows.

b) when cinder received the grimm arm she had… dubious feelings towards it, kept it covered, and avoided using it; since then she has been steadily inching away from concealment (long loose sleeve -> bandages under loose sleeve -> fitted glove -> bare arm) as she gets more comfortable with it. if the fact that it’s grown up her arm bothers her she has yet to give any indication. she fidgets and casually gestures with it. like. this thing is not just a weapon salem gave her for the exclusive purpose of hunting maidens it is her arm; cinder suffered an extremely traumatic dismemberment, and the grimm arm represents an important part of her healing process.

so i feel, um, WEIRD about fan discussions where the grimm arm is presumed to be, like, a parasitic monster salem hoodwinked cinder into accepting and of course cinder couldn’t possibly have complicated feelings about it, let alone any genuinely positive ones.

i guess fundamentally i just… don’t read the grimm arm as a dire threat cinder urgently needs saving from, and i feel very put off by removal theories that arise from that mindset.

2 - my impression of the rwby fandom in general is that the fandom has by and large bought into the idea that salem is the way she is primarily because of grimm “corruption” and by extension that cinder is currently on the same path, i.e. the grimm arm is bad because by nature of being grimm it is corroding cinder’s humanity.

the implied corollary here is that if you could take the grimm out of salem or cinder then that would fix what’s wrong with them, which… nnno. i don’t buy that, and after eight whole volumes of meticulous narrative deconstruction of “creation/light=good!” i find it hard to believe that rwby is ultimately going to play the reverse principle of “destruction/dark=bad!” straight. i’ve touched on this before but in a fantasy world where the human soul is explicitly free will with an equal capacity for creation and destruction, it would be a profoundly strange narrative choice for getting rid of destruction to be the ultimate solution to the conflict.

so, separate from everything outlined in the first point, i also feel Some Type Of Way about hypothetical redemption arcs for salem/cinder that center physical purification as the fulcrum of change. if cinder can be fixed via forcible removal of the grimm arm, that makes some implications about her agency and ability to choose her own path that i find to be really unpleasant and narratively disappointing. she’s the maiden of choice. i don’t want her to be saved. i don’t want her to be redeemed because somebody else chose to fix her whether she liked it or not.

i want her to choose.

and while i probably would go nuts for an arc where cinder gradually comes to see the grimm arm as a tool of salem’s control and decides that she wants freedom enough to burn her own arm off... because of the setup we’re already seeing with salem, i’m not convinced that will end up being cinder’s only or best option—and personally i feel that removal in any form is the least interesting possible route.

soo, when i see developments like cinder getting more and more comfortable with the grimm arm and seeming to integrate it as a genuine part of herself happening in tandem with cinder also getting bolder in how she challenges salem, less afraid, more willing to transgress the rules and boundaries of her subordinate relationship to salem… i think that what a lot of cinder fans took away from the changing dynamic in v8 was this sense of mounting urgency, of cinder reaching a crossroads where it’s no longer sustainable for her to remain in salem’s inner circle and she has to either get out now or she’ll lose whatever agency she has left. but what i saw, watching this, was actually mounting pressure on salem to change, because whatever control she had over cinder before the haven debacle is gone, giving orders doesn’t work even when they’re backed by the threat of torture, and the only way she’s going to keep cinder on her side in the long run is if she starts to engage on cinder’s terms.

taking the events of v8 in that context, the question of whether or not cinder will remove her arm is intertwined with the question of whether or not salem will make that necessary. salem has always placed an enormous degree of importance on cinder’s role in her plan. how far is she willing to bend to keep her in that role? what compromises is she willing to make? she already gave an inch, cinder is absolutely going to try for a mile, and it is… not inconceivable that she might succeed?

and because—to my mind—the danger the grimm arm poses to cinder lies entirely in what salem chooses to do with the control she has over it, if cinder does manage to change the dynamic between herself and salem in this fundamental way, breaking the control at the level of salem’s actions, then… the question of removing the arm itself becomes moot.

ANYWAY,

on the subject of the madame and the shock collar.

i’m actually not sure i agree on that reading of cinder going right for the throat without disarming the madame first?

generally my take is that cinder, upon being pushed beyond the limits of what she could endure, attacked the root of the problem first. the sisters ratted her out and tried to take her ticket to freedom away, so she killed them. the madame tortures her, cinder kills her. rhodes tries to arrest her, cinder kills him too. at every stage there was—at least in theory—something else cinder could have done to protect herself, whether that be running away while the sisters fetched their mother or knocking the shock collar’s remote out of the madame’s hand or appealing to rhodes on the grounds that she acted in self defense.

but cinder wasn’t. in a frame of mind where de-escalation was even possible; she’d been backed into a corner and tortured while her abusers ripped away the tiniest little bit of illusory freedom she’d managed to hold onto, and she… reacted. maybe she could have escaped that night by ripping off the collar and running; she’s got a sword, what are these untrained civilians gonna do to stop her? but to be able to think of doing that requires a modicum of, of rationality, of being able to take a step back and assess, and all cinder could do, all cinder could think about in the heat of the moment, was MAKING IT STOP.

and… she acted on that need by killing them, which put an immediate and permanent end to both the pain they were inflicting on her right then and the possibility that they could hurt her again in the future.

the temporary patch of knocking the remote out of the madame’s hand first probably didn’t even occur to her, because i don’t think she was in a state where she could even, like mentally separate the pain from the madame. “she’s using that remote to hurt me, if i take the remote away from her she won’t be able to hurt me anymore” is reasoning that demands a certain degree of abstraction that “she is hurting me” does not.

why disarm the person tormenting you when you can just eliminate them instead? cut the problem down at its source.

and while it’s logically better to remove the weapon being used to hurt you first, cinder really isn’t the kind of person who can think logically through intense pain or extreme emotion. she acts on instinct and her instinct is to go for the throat.

that’s exactly how she lost the winter maiden in 7.13. winter chopped off her arm and completely diverted her attention away from penny and fria because pain overrode her rational thought and she tunnel visioned on cutting down the person who hurt her.

in the context of salem and cinder’s association of salem with the madame this gets murkier because cinder can’t deal with salem the way she dealt with madame, because salem can’t be killed. i think that informs a lot of the contradictory emotion in how cinder thinks of salem—she hates salem, resents salem, admires salem, emulates salem—all because she can’t just knee-jerk brute force her way out of salem hurting her, and that generates the emotional turmoil that bubbles out as this increasingly blatant power struggle.

more broadly though i do agree that cinder doesn’t really know how to disengage—she can do tactical retreat, she can pull off drastic changes in strategy when she realizes an approach isn’t working, but she doesn’t stop fighting until she either feels that she’s won or she physically can’t continue fighting anymore.

which… i think comes less from pure stubbornness than it does from a conviction that she has to keep fighting for every scrap of freedom she’s clawed out of the world since the night she killed the madame. fundamentally cinder doesn’t feel safe, has never felt safe, and isn’t capable of letting her guard down because she believes that if she relaxes for even a second, everything she has will be ripped away from her again. so imo it’s less a question of learning how to let go of things than it is a question of learning how to trust, how to unravel this constant terror that she’s one wrong move away from being nothing again.

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invested-in-your-future · 1 year

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What restrictions have you set for it?

Oh that one's easy.

Two sets of rules. First its the specific restriction of what I'd be using. Then things specific to V4 and onward that I swore I would never bring up or use.

The Basic set of Rules:

V1 - V3 stays the same - Everything from the first trailers till the end of V3, including the post-credits scenes, is still exactly the same. Even if its the subplots that did not work or I don't like. It is what it is, it happened the way it did. Build upon past mistakes instead of trying to "perfect" things.

Song Lyrics from the first three volumes stay - things being written still have to take into account the soundtrack lyrics (only from those specific volumes that stay), just like one would have done when theorycrafting back then.

Keep the overall "idea" of the setting mostly same as V1 through V3 - which means that its still "Somewhat contemporary" vibe of the setting and the setting is "somewhat grounded" (with exception for rule of cool) with things that could be considered "magical" being limited and ambiguous enough as to not break that suspension of disbelief. Which means the idea of magic is still limited to what's connected to "Maidens subplot". Remnant is a world built on science and myth and while there’s something in the root of it all, the best part about this setting for me was always the fact that there’s very clear limits to the world and world-building. It was the world where “magic” was a far-away fairytale that "might" have existed but majority of the world probably never was ever going to care about it or be impacted by it. It was a world after terrible strife and multiple very human very normal wars, where kingdoms were built on quite grounded and contemporary ideas with very human conflicts that sometimes might be influenced by something "out there", but would still wind up being about here and now.

Each of the leads has to have a character arc - In some cases like Blake, that would mean having to think up something new altogether. Would be weird for something called "RWBY" to have nothing on the said R, W, B and Y right? So whatever goes has to be focused on them. While other characters exist and can have stories and arcs, in the end of the day its their story and their journey first and foremost.

What would NOT be used:

Relic McGuffin Subplot - Because honestly? Its just all around ehhh and a very tired trope (ex: if you reviewed at least ten D&D RP sessions you would find something like that being used in more than half) and there already are enough things going wrong within the setting that I don't really get why they needed this? I guess it allowed the writers to basically just...not need to think up why characters are in one specific location or the other? And in some cases as a convenient exposition plot-device? And the story already has plot threads of powerful items/locations, there's no need to THIS. Also "let's go on the hunt for magic RPG Plot Items" is kind of...crass right after all the trauma and war and probably the most "grounded" end to a volume that was Fall of Beacon? So yeah, N O P E.

Salem's Evil Doom Council of Very Evil - again why does the story need this? Why does an Ancient Evil with an army of eldritch monsters at her disposal need a bunch of stereotypes? Why do we need another set of henchmen for Salem? And honestly? Whenever they would show up my brain would just start up playing the Bad Horse segment from Dr Horrible and...no. I literally expect bunch of background henchmen start singing "The evil league of evil is watching so beware" whenever Cinder's group reacts to anything there. More factions and interests in the world? Sure, but Salem does not need this and it kind of feels detrimental to how her side was portrayed in V3? The scary thing about the bad guys is not the numbers, its all the manipulation and planning that ends up working because of human nature.

A lot of V4 and onward characters - Kind of self explanatory, but since a lot of those characters are kind of one-time one-note appearances tied to specific subplots, there's not really any reason for them to be there anymore? And quite a few are kind of completely redundant. RWBY already has more than enough characters it forgets to use past their first appearance already. Doesn't mean no new or returning characters though. Just very likely not the RWBY-proper V4+ ones.

The RWBY-proper version of Menagerie and the subplot there - Because honestly I have absolutely no idea what the writers thought when doing this considering how out of touch it feels. WF subplot is already very shaky and filled with unfortunate implications in the first three volumes already. There's absolutely no need for a season long subplot filled with padding that leads to Blake delivering the equivalent of a twitter rant about how "achshually marginalized communities are as bad as literal bigots because... uhhh... burning and looting". Not to mention the fact that they basically made Menagerie be literal equivalent of rich people resort with Blake's family owning a literal freaking castle. Like you literally could just not touch WF Subplot at all past V3 and it would end up being BETTER than what was there.

Salem and Ozpin backstory from V6 and everything connected to that - so yeah got to just kind of throw all of that away. Whoooooop. Gone. "Gods did it"? Gone. Ozpin's big secret that is supposed to make everyone angry but is kind of tamest most toothless revelation ever? Gone.

The Curing of PTSD via Fear of Rats. - I have already written pages upon pages about this with how extremely vile pretty much every aspect on how Yang's trauma is handled in V4 is so I won't repeat myself.

#rwby #rwby au #rwby meta stuff mine #rwde #is this rwde?#idk really

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