#rwby volume 8 hurry up

[aspoonofsugar]

RWBY in Wonderland

So happy about the new volume starting! Here are some thoughts on the episode, the opening and some fairy tale references that are popping up everywhere. Probably what many other people are thinking already, but still...

INSIDE

The opening lyrics confirm to me 2 things I have been thinking for a while.

Ruby's arc strongly foils Oscar's and this volume would probably tackle their similarities when it comes to struggling with growing up and finding their own identity.

Inside A new me, I'm ready But who will I find? Inside I've gotta let go but could I lose my mind?

Who will you see? There in the darkness When no one is watching Who will you be? When you're afraid And everything changes Will you see a stranger? Feel proud or betrayed?

They have an outside/inside motif, after all. Ruby starts focused on the outside and is forced now to look inside, while Oscar initially struggles with his interiority to the point he is introduced literally talking with his other self (Oz) and is slowly opening up to the outside. Oscar and Ozpin are also the ones, who bring out The Girl Who Fell Through the World's fairy tale by giving it opposite spins. So, this juxtaposition between Ruby and Oscar is not surprising. In the past volumes (vol 6 - 7 - 8) Ruby has struggled on how to be a leader and Oscar has struggled with who he is. Right now, they may start tackling the other's conflict. Curious to see how it will play out in the story as a whole.

This volume is probably going deep into the characters' interiority and I am fully expecting The Ever After to mirror this. After all, the meaning of the song is rather clear, we are diving INSIDE to discover who the characters are and who are going to become. The world, which is clearly magical and unknown, should mirror this struggle:

Inside Our worlds unwind

Now, I don't know if it is going to be because the world has some magical property to bring to life the characters' fears and dreams (which would fit with the theme of Creation) or if there is going to be some other explanation that links the Ever After to the Gods and to the hidden Lore of Remnant. In any case, I am rather open to everything, but I think looking at the wonderland characters and world through the lens of what they can tell us about RWBYJN's personality is worth doing.

This also fits the Alice's inspiration for this volume because both Alice's books end with the protagonist waking up and "decoding" a dream:

Now, Kitty, let’s consider who it was that dreamed it all. This is a serious question, my dear, and you should not go on licking your paw like that—as if Dinah hadn’t washed you this morning! You see, Kitty, it must have been either me or the Red King. He was part of my dream, of course—but then I was part of his dream, too! Was it the Red King, Kitty? You were his wife, my dear, so you ought to know—Oh, Kitty, do help to settle it! I’m sure your paw can wait!’ But the provoking kitten only began on the other paw, and pretended it hadn’t heard the question. Which do you think it was? Alice Through the Looking Glass

The long grass rustled at Alice's sister feet as the White Rabbit hurried by--the frightened Mouse splashed his way through the neighbouring pool--she could hear the rattle of the teacups as the March Hare and his friends shared their never-ending meal, and the shrill voice of the Queen ordering off her unfortunate guests to execution--once more the pig-baby was sneezing on the Duchess's knee, while plates and dishes crashed around it--once more the shriek of the Gryphon, the squeaking of the Lizard's slate-pencil, and the choking of the suppressed guinea-pigs, filled the air, mixed up with the distant sobs of the miserable Mock Turtle.

So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality--the grass would be only rustling in the wind, and the pool rippling to the waving of the reeds--the rattling teacups would change to tinkling sheep-bells, and the Queen's shrill cries to the voice of the shepherd boy--and the sneeze of the baby, the shriek of the Gryphon, and all thy other queer noises, would change (she knew) to the confused clamour of the busy farm-yard--while the lowing of the cattle in the distance would take the place of the Mock Turtle's heavy sobs. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

As you can see, wonderland and the glass world are dreams, even if it is really unclear who the dreamer really is :P. Speaking of grass rustling, this line kind of reminds me of:

The leaves of the tree rustled and on the wind she heard one more question...

The grass rustling helps her sister to enter Alices's dream and to understand it, while the tree might help the characters to better decompress everything that has been going on. So that they can grow and heal.

Speaking of the tree, there is an interesting tidbit in Alice in Wonderland:

She noticed that one of the trees had a door leading right into it. “That’s very curious!” she thought. “But everything’s curious today. I think I may as well go in at once.” And in she went.

Once more she found herself in the long hall, and close to the little glass table. “Now, I’ll manage better this time,” she said to herself, and began by taking the little golden key, and unlocking the door that led into the garden. Then she went to work nibbling at the mushroom (she had kept a piece of it in her pocket) till she was about a foot high: then she walked down the little passage: and then—she found herself at last in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds and the cool fountains.

Alice's main objective in the book is to enter a beautiful garden full of red roses and eventually she manages through a door found in a tree. I think the metaphor is clear, the Tree will lead Ruby and the others home both physically and psychologically since it will help them discover who they are.

OTHER REFERENCES

There are many and everyone is being catching up to them quicker than me. Here are some I found:

The Girl Who Fell Through the World is a line from the novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland itself

The Dodo is a reference to Carroll himself, since Alice meets a Dodo, who alludes to him

At the beginning of the story Alice almost drowns in the pool of tears and then meets a mouse, but offends him by mentioning her cat. Here Ruby starts crying, which leads to rain, but then she befriends Little and scares them off by talking about Blake (a cat).

The Jabber Walker alludes to the Jabberwocky, which I love so far because it is not a character in the story of Alice, but rather a poem, with no clear meaning. So, it is beautiful they rendered them as a mysterious creature, who is difficult to understand when they speak. I also wonder if they have something to do with Yang since she is introduced fighting them and she even fights them in the trailer, as well. Moreover, the Jabberwocky's poem mentions the monster having eyes of flame, so...

The world being organized in neat sections reminds me of Through the Looking Glass, where Alice finds herself on a giant chessboard, playing a game to become Queen.

Speaking of Queens and Kings, it seems we are gonna have a red King, who plays chess, which kinds of combines the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen. Moreover, he cracks in the trailer, so I wonder if he may reference Humpty Dumpty, as well:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall Humpty Dumpty had a great fall all the king's horses and all the king's men Couldn't put Humpty together again.

You're heading for a fall And you're nearing the end Like a house made of straw No one's putting you together again

This would be interesting because chess + theme of falling = the Atlas Arc and Ironwood. I wonder if the play of chess would be a chance for Ruby to metaphorically face what went down in Atlas.

Then we have some obvious ones, like the caterpillar, the cat, the mushrooms (which in Alice can make you become big or small), Neo as the Mad Hatter and Jaune as a combination of the Hare from Wonderland and the White Knight from Through the Looking Glass.

SPEAKING OF ALYX HERSELF

I adore her design! It has immediately become one of my favourites in the whole series!

Secondly, I really like @greenteaandtattoos idea she might allude both to Alice herself and to the White Rabbit, since she has a rabbit motif and the characters are shown running after her shadow and looking for her:

In general, the opening seems to be setting Ruby, Neo and Jaune as foils to Alyx.

Alyx's silouette overlaps with Ruby's and especially Neo's (after all, grinning Ruby may also be Neo tbh) several times and she has a golden rabbit patch, which resembles Jaune's new Hare friend:

Jaune seems to combine the Knight Imagery (the White Knight from Alice Through the Looking Glass) with the March Hare (a mad hare from Alice in Wonderland). This is interesting because it is as if the story is asking Jaune to reconcile his different parts. His persona (the Knight) with his shadow (the Hare).

I know I failed so many times Drown my troubles hid my mind Buried everything in hundred proof A skillful coward hides the truth so well

Ren: Him (Jaune) on the other hand… There's no fear at all. I can see it, he believes we're going to get this done.

Is he brave or is he a coward? And can he be both?

The Mad Hatter (Neo) and the March Hare (Jaune) are also linked symbolically, as in Alice in Wonderland they are 2 jokes on the idea of madness. Hatters used to lose their mind because they used mercury in their job, while hares go crazy in the month of March because of hormones. Here, I think it might enforce Neo and Jaune's foiling:

They are both going mad out of grief, but they go at it in opposite ways. Jaune is probably interiorizing and blaming himself, while Neo is externalizing and blaming Ruby. I am interested to see how they will influence the story, especially since they might move independently from the group, at least for a little while. Neo is RWBY's enemy, while RWBY have no idea Jaune has fallen too.

RWBY'S JOURNEY

This might be a giant red herring, but the opening might give us some hints on the order the characters are gonna explore the different settings.

They started from the beach and are probably gonna move to this market while proceding to the Red King's area:

This market is probably where they are gonna meet the Knight, since the trailer shows there Jaune's feet while riding a Hare (obvs I am considering Jaune=Knight, but I might be wrong). It seems to be also where the Racoon and the Blacksmith woman are.

Here is where they are gonna meet the King and play chess with him. WBY are gonna be small for the chess game. Also the market town and the Red King's Kingdom seems to be in the same place:

The red buildings are the same of the market town, after all. This place also reminds me of the Forever Fall forest, which is interesting. In general, the characters moving from yellow to red makes sense considering alchemy. They are currently in the yellow phase, but are approaching the red phase, which I think will be Vacuo.

The mushroom forest is where the caterpillar is. Also, in Alice in Wonderland the mushrooms are able to help Alice control her size, so I wonder if WBY are gonna go back to normal here... or if they are gonna be miniaturized again... This area is also where this lake with the lotus building seems to be:

Finally, there is this place in the clouds, which resembles the Central Meeting Point of volume 8, in concept:

Here is where the bridge scene is probably gonna play out. Again, them being in the sky makes sense given they need to reach air through fire in alchemy.

Obviously, there might still be more locations and we don't know where Ruby is gonna find Penny's sword or where the shining globe is (maybe the Blacksmith's woman's house? No idea). In general, it is also possible they might find themselves stuck in circles at one point... After all, the opening ends back on the beach, where Alyx wakes up to start her journey once again... and where Crescent Rose is found:

OTHER THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE

We had already seen the majority of it thanks to clips, but there are still many interesting moments!

Little is clearly meant to be Ruby's mirror and it is interesting so much focus is put on them being innocent and young. They still don't know who they are, but this means they can take their time to discover it. This is something Ruby seems to have forgotten. In general, Little is very similar to volume 1 Ruby. They see a person in pain and want to help, after all. It is also interesting, they are already considering Ruby their personal hero, since she takes out the cheese for them. The relationship between Little and the Cat is also going to be interesting.

Yang and Ruby's interaction is great. I think their relationship should be in focus. Yang should move from Ruby to Blake symbolically, which would be better also for her and Ruby, since the balance in their sisters' relationship is changing.

I am curious if Blake and Weiss are gonna be foiled this volume, since they are introduced together. I don't have many thoughts on this, though, so far.

It is interesting Blake is the one, who points out they may be in a fairy tale. As someone already noticed, it is an inversion from volume 1. There Ruby was the idealistic one, while Blake was a prisoner of her own cynism. It seems their journey has led them in opposite positions now. It would be interesting to reread their stories through this foiling.

The mysterious woman opens the volume and I wonder if we will discover who she is at the end. Just like Salem starts the series and she is revealed to be a character in volume 3. Wouldn't it be interesting if the woman is indeed Summer and she is revealed alive at the end of this volume? As a way to introduce us to the Vacuo story arc?

Finally, this is not an episode thought, but the opening also seems to set the Jabber Walker and the Knight as foils somehow... I wonder what this means for Jaune and the other characters...

This is it, for now. I have other thoughts on Neo's allusion to Trivia/Hecate, but they are pure speculation, as for now, so they will have to wait!

#rwby #rwby theory #rwby meta #rwby volume 9 #rwby spoilers #team rwby #neopolitan #jaune arc #ruby rose #my meta #my thoughts

[tempoaryblogformightyjensblog]

Last night:Aww I remeber back with Steven Universe, how we were all pissed that one time it took so long for 'Legs from here to homeworld' to get released

Me now, aggressively tapping my feet waiting for the new RWBY episode to drop on VRV while seeing people on VRV pissed off too:Well isn't, this, Nostalgic

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #worst kind of Nostalgia #HURRY UP ALREADY #I want to discuss with friends

[kingangelrose]

RWBY Volume 8 Chapter 8 Recap

“Dark” ------------

In the Atlas prison, Qrow, along with Robyn, Watts and Jacques were hearing the noises of the war outside between the Atlas and the Grimm, but Qrow noticed that there was something headed towards them and suddenly, the wall blew up in front of them causing the roof above them to start collapsing, and all that was seen outside of the giant hole through the wall was a raven cawing.

Meanwhile, back at the Schnee Manor, Klein was treating Nora, as she was slowly regaining consciousness, then Ruby, Weiss and Whitley carry Penny into the room, laying her down on the smaller bed by Nora, Ruby asks Klein if he can help her, Klein says that even what they have told them, he hardly knows what Penny is, but her basic anatomy is similar enough to stitch up her wound.

The power in the manor shut down due to the bombings outside, May calls Ruby on speaking, wanting to know if their okay, Ruby tells her that the bombing cause half of Atlas’ power to go out, but their okay. 

May apologized for not staying with them as she flies her airship, saying that time is running out for the people of Mantle in the carter. Ruby apologizes back and tells May that when they know what’s wrong with Penny, they’ll do something to help them. May then tells her before she signs off to not beat herself up, saying at that point, she doesn’t know how much is left to be done.

Ruby says, with tears in her eye that it’s all too much, The Grimm, The Carter, Nora and Penny, she wanted to know how they could fix all of it, Klein then says they can’t worry about fixing everything and try and focus on fixing things one step at a time, he then says that he can work faster to fix one problem if the power was turned back on.

Willow Scnhee then arrives at the door, saying that they have a generator near the edge of the estate, also saying that she’s above drinking in the dark, then greeting Klein in whom she hasn’t seen in a while. 

Weiss brings up that Schnee Dust Company executives have their own exhilarate power supplies in case of city wide blackout, saying that it’s extremely unfair, but it may be so bad to have company perks. Whitley then says that the SDC just doesn’t have perks, but the whole company. Whitley goes on to say that if the people of Mantle need a way out, they could use the rows of cargo ships sitting in the hangars because of the embargo, Weiss then says that there are also drones there similar to the ones at Snowshoe Shipping, Whitley says that he can order as much as they need to pilot the ships down to the crater and get people to safety while the Grimm are occupied with General Ironwood’s forces, all he needs to do is to access Jacques’ computer.

Ruby and Blake head to the generator to turn it on, while it’s processing, Blake tells Ruby that this will work, Ruby replies by saying that nothing else has. Blake then tells Ruby....

“I know you don’t always know what to do, but that’s never stopped you from doing something. I was like that as a girl, but time and...a lot of other things took their toll on me and then I wasn’t sure if that girl could actually survive in the world...until I met you. It was a little strange at first cause you were younger, but I’ve always looked up to you, Ruby, and I still do.” - Blake Belladonna

Ruby, with tears in her eyes, thanks Blake for those kind words as the generator’s process was now completed and the power was back on in the Schnee Manor, but as soon as they did, Blake’s expression turned to shocked as she saw The Hound in the window right behind Ruby.

The Hound busted through the window, which caused a big noise that was heard inside the manor, causing Willow to reach for her wine bottle shaken. Weiss then contacts Ruby and Blake to know what’s going on, Blake just said that it was a Grimm attack, but they were to occupied with it to say anything else, Weiss then leaves the room to let Whitley carry out the rest of the plan on the computer.

Ruby asked what kind of Grimm is The Hound, but Blake said it was just a Grimm, unaware that it was sentient, telling her to focus on her Silver Eyed Attack while she holds it off, however, it didn’t last long as the Hound made quick work of Blake, it then said “Get The Girl” as it charged and took down Ruby, depleting her aura and holding onto her, The Hound then spread out its wings and was about to fly away with Ruby, but then, Blake used her weapon to wrap around the legs over the Hound, holding it in place, Weiss arrives on the scene, then she warns Klein about the Grimm and tells him to keep everyone together and call if there is trouble.

Inside the manor, Willow dropped her wine bottle and glass, Klein asks her to calm herself, but Willow says she can’t and runs out of the room, but then suddenly,  Penny woke up with glowing red eyes, but as a completely different person, hacked by Watts, Klein tries to treat Penny when he turned around to see her up, but Penny didn’t respond as she pushes him away, but trying to fight to it, Penny activates her maiden powers to try and fight the control off.

Weiss tries to summon a giant ice Grimm to fight off the Hound, but suddenly, the underground Grimm appeared distracting Blake and Weiss, The Hound broke free from Blake’s weapon and then saw the green light emanating from the manor, Ruby warns Weiss and Blake that the Hound is after Penny, the Hound drops Ruby to the ground, knocking her out for a while, Weiss then goes to help Klein and the others while Blake tries to help Ruby, but then out of nowhere a centipede like Grimm comes from underground, confronting Blake.

Back in the manor, Klein tries to Penny to calm down saying that she is okay, but Penny then says that she doesn’t want to help Salem, just then, a now conscious Nora grabs Penny’s hand and tells her that no one will make her do anything that she doesn’t want to do, Penny, still fighting the control says that their is a part of her that is making her do so.

“It’s just a part of you...don’t forget about the rest...” - Nora Valkyrie.

Hearing this, Penny stops her maiden power, holding onto Nora’s hand. Weiss then calls back Klein to let her know she’s on her way to help, Klein asks her to hurry, saying that Willow and Whitley have yet to return.

Willow ran into her room in a panic, she was about reach for her wine bottle, but she decided not to, just then, the Hound busted through the front entrance window, sniffing out Penny, who’s green blood was stained on the floor of the entrance, Weiss entered the manor to search for the Hound, then Willow contacted Weiss shouting “Above you!” and then the Hound came down and struck Weiss to a piano, Weiss was ready to fight it, but the Hound sniffed out something and crawled onto the walls to the hallway, searching.

Willow tells Weiss that she can see the Hound crawl to the hallway near Winter’s old room, then asking if Weiss can kill it, Weiss asks Willow what it’s doing, Willow says that she doesn’t know and asks what it’s doing here, Weiss then says it doesn’t matter and tells her to keep an eye out on it so she can track it down. Willow agrees and keeps a look out, but where the Hound was heading towards next, shocked her.

Willow tries to warn Whitley who was finishing the shipment, but Whitley ignored it and said she was the last thing he needed, just then, the Hound came in the room slowly where Whitley was in, surprised by this, he hid as quick as he could behind the desk, the Hound was sniffing around the room when the computer sounded a notification about the credentials being verified, the Hound was moving closer and closer to the desk, saying “I Know You’re Here...”

Suddenly, a summoned Ice boar Grimm charges and holds down the Hound, Willow arrived and shouted at Whitley to run, which he did, before confirming the orders to the crater. Willow and Whitley ran as fast they could away from the Hound, and before it could get them, Weiss summons an ice wall to defend her mother and brother from The Hound. “I didn’t forget you...” - Weiss Schnee

But the Hound was breaking through the ice wall, Weiss tells Willow and Whitley to run while she fends it off.

While fighting this acid spewing Grimm, Blake then pleads with Ruby to get back up and that she needs her. Blake uses fire and ice clones to try and counter its attacks, but this Grimm was too formidable as it was about to finish her off, but then suddenly, Ruby awakens and finishes off the Grimm, then smiles at Blake, saying that she heard Blake calling her for help, as she helps her up.

Penny then lets out a scream, trying so hard to fight off Watts’ control, but it was too late, Penny succumbed to it and walks out of the room to the entrance area, Whitley asks what she was doing, Penny then said that she was going to the vault and was going to self-terminate, then suddenly, the Hound attacked Penny, but she held him off, then suddenly, the Hound grows another arm on its back, holding on Penny’s head and slamming her down three times. 

The Hound held Penny hostage, and then Ruby with a serious tone said that was enough, then she used her Silver Eyes to blast the Hound through the window of the entrance way, letting go of Penny.

But then, in a shocking turn of event, as the Hound was getting right back up to its feet, it was living person who was the Hound all along, as he was slowly regenerating he kept saying “Take The Girl!”, but as he was slowly headed towards Ruby’s team, Willow and Whitley pushed down the knight statue to take down The Hound, destroying it. Ruby fell to her knees after what she just saw, Weiss asked what it was and all Ruby could as she sees the Hound turn dust... “....That was....a person....” - Ruby Rose

Back at the prison, Cinder Fall removes the debris from Watts’ body and says to him that this is the first time I’d be happy to see him again as she helps him up to his feet. Watts tries to ask what she was doing there, but Cinder covers his mouth and says that it’s her turn to ask for something, as she carries Watts in fireman’s carry position. The Atlas security arrive to stop Cinder from helping Watts escape, but Cinder used her flame semblance to fly above them, dodge the rocket launcher and fly away to the Whale back to Salem. 

----------- The secret of The Hound has been revealed to be a faunus! That means Salem has the power to turn humans and faunus into Grimm Hounds. Is there any hope to turn them back to normal? If not, what will Ruby’s decision be? What of Penny? Will she be able to break free from Watts’ hacking control before she leads herself to destruction? So many questions have yet to be answers and will be found out on the final chapters of RWBY Volume 8.

#rwby #rwby8 #rwby volume 8 #rwby8 spoilers #rwby spoilers #qrow branwen #robyn hill #jacques schnee #arthur watts #ruby rose #weiss schnee #blake belladonna #nora valkyrie #penny polendina #whitley schnee #willow schnee #may marigold #rwby hound #cinder fall

[luimnigh]

So, I’m just gonna go through the Reddit AMA that happened today (December 2nd 2020), and compile the answered questions that I personally find interesting

Taking part in this AMA was Eddy Rivas, RWBY co-writer; Eugene C. Myers, write of After the Fall, Before the Dawn and Fairy Tales of Remnant; and Violet Tobacco, illustrator on Fairy Tales of Remnant. 

(Not all questions and answers are repeated here verbatim, if you want to check the exact wording, please use the link above.)

This is gonna be long, so I’ll place a cut here:

Eddy Answers:

JNPR Birthdays: Someday. They’d rather reserve that information for the show or other materials, but they felt it was well past due to learn RWBY’s birthday. 

Who is the girl in the photo in Theodore’s office?: “That’s something we’ll come back to later.”

Mercury Thoughts: He’s reserving them for later in the Volume, though he does find some people’s takes on his character “interesting”, but can’t say why just yet. 

Thoughts on the Em/Merc/Hazel dynamic:  “As for the Merc/Em/Hazel dynamic, moooooore to come. I've always enjoyed that little trio in the midst of these bananas villains.”

Are we ever gonna get an origin for Dust, even a biased one?: “Yes, more than likely.”

Are Ghira and Kali’s bands in each other’s colours “wedding bands”, and is this a faunus/huntsman tradition? (The asker also notes that Tai has a red armband):  “Different cultures/kingdoms have different ways of expressing their bonds to other people, and there's not even really a set standard for that across the board. Most often it comes to incorporating it on their clothes/person in some way, usually through color.”

Do the Gods have actual names, or are they only known by their titles as God of Light and God of Darkness?: “Certainly the Two Brothers might have other things that they are known by!”

Does the women who first followed the Infinite Man have a name as well? “Ozpin was choosing in the re-telling of that story to keep those things pretty general/vague -- more than likely to keep it from being perceived by the audience as truth.”

Things created by the Staff of Creation have no ontological inertia: a created object will disappear once the Staff is used again.

The Grimm in Before The Dawn were attracted to the amped Auras because “large flare-ups of Aura (the soul, which goes hand in hand with emotions) would read similarly to the emotions that Grimm are naturally drawn to.”

Remnant Holidays: “There are certainly different holidays in Remnant, many of them similar to our own. This is the kind of thing we always want to save for the screen or other materials if we can help it!”

Semblance Rules: “Semblances can basically be anything, we just make sure there is some kind of check on it -- take Tock, for instance, who could become invulnerable but it's going to lead to her Aura breaking. I wouldn't say there's a hard and fast rule against a Semblance being transformative, but it certainly would be uncommon.”

It seems Ironwood did issue an arrest warrant for Robyn, but the Council offered her safe passage to Atlas and Schnee Manor, in order to put Ironwood off-balance. 

Is Nicholas Schnee dead or is he still alive?: “Yes.”

Production of the 2D shorts on various Fairy Tales has been impacted by the pandemic, but more details are “hopefully coming soon”.

Sage is not connected to the AceOps, despite being based on an Aesop. There are more characters based on Aesops besides them. 

Beacon’s Academic Year: “It's fairly similar to our own semesters.”

The events of the books will impact the main series, but they want to fit them in in such a way that non-readers won’t feel like they’re missing out.

Will we ever find out more about Summer/how she died?: “It certainly seems like a pretty important thing for the show to touch on :)”

RWBY’s favourite fairytales: “We'll get to this.”

Eddy says we will learn more characters’ sexualities. 

Will We Ever See Roman Again?:  “I will say that Roman is a very fun character who has obviously made an impact on everybody. There will always be a desire to go back to that well.”

Aura would block a Lightsaber.

Cinder did not get any of the Spring Maiden’s power when she used her arm on Raven.

Is there is a link between semblance and magic?: “Yes.”

Are the Gods All-Powerful?: “This is a tough question to answer, but a very good one. I think it's something we'll actually learn more about... later.”

THE GOD OF LIGHT ALONE MADE ALL FOUR RELICS.

Eugene Answers:

At one point, Eugene, not knowing the ships of the fandom, named a location “Arkos”. His editor had to tell him why he couldn’t use it.

What inspired you to choose memory erasing and telepathy for Yatsu and Fox respectively?: “For Fox, it came about honestly because he had never spoken on the show, and I wanted to provide a canon reason for it, and then it just opened up so many interesting possibilities. For Yatsu, it probably started as I thought about Edward and Augustus and what might fit in thematically; and again, it fits in with Yatsu's more meditative nature, and I like the fact that his Semblance isn't based on physical strength.”

“”From my perspective, it was very important to me to not contradict anything in the series past or future, help expand on things that haven't been covered in the show yet, and help lay the foundation for things that may appear in later volumes. The RWBY writing team is terrific to collaborate with, answering all the questions I had as much as they could, and of course they review, approve, and correct anything needed to fit the show's continuity and its tone.”

Does the Chill have a physical form?: “I envisioned the Chill as being incorporeal, living in the shadows.”

Can you save someone from the Chill?: “You could save someone from possession, if you acted quickly.“

The books tell us Coco has an older brother, Toma; and a younger brother, Mate; as well as a third brother, Van. Eugene confirms Van to be younger than Coco.

He wishes he could have spent more time on Scarlet and Sage.

Favourite OC: Rumpole. Favourite Show Character: Penny

Fox’s Personality: “People often compare him a bit to Toph, who is my favorite Avatar character, so I think that influenced his character. Plus, the voice in your head would have to be the one that says things you shouldn't say aloud. That's Fox.”

If he gets to make a third novel, it would be SSSN-focused.

“I believe it took SSSN several months to reach Vacuo from Haven, partially because they weren't in any hurry, and it's a long way. And then the main events of BtD take place a month or so after AtF.” 

Before the Dawn takes place before Volume 8.

Violet Answers:

What are some of your artistic inspirations?: “Arthur Rackham was the biggest inspiration throughout. The grungy, rough nature of his work was very helpful in merging my style with something more traditional to match the fairytale feel needed for this book.“ 

#rwby

[itsclydebitches]

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!"

to

"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

[moondrop04]

RWBY VOLUME 8 EPISODE 10 SPECULATION

Hello Hello Hello......and WELCOME BACK to the next RWBY Speculation Post!!! Now with all the snow and ice finally melted here in Texas, we can finally go back to our regularly scheduled programming of new RWBY content. As always let’s see what I’ll get RIGHT and what I’ll inevitably get WRONG!!! 😁

-(Qrow, Robyn and Ironwood) Ok I have no doubt that these three will show up for this next episode. For what I’ll speculate on their scenes I’ll refer to what I wrote back in my episode 9 speculation post, so please read on that if you can. I’ll also like to add that we may see Ironwood again crossing the line, much like he did back in episode 1 when he shot a councilman, and sacrifice lives needlessly just to destroy the Grimm and defeat Salem....so expect that kind of drama 😓

-(The Whale) With Salem momentarily destroyed, thanks to Oscar using Ozpin’s magic, I suspect that the Grimm Whale will become agitated and go out of control because of its master’s disappearance.

-(Jaune and Oscar) Due to Oscar using a large amount of Ozpin’s magic I think he will become unconscious for the entirety of episode 10. In the last episode Jaune was concerned of what Oscar was attempting to do, so I wanna say that both Jaune and an unconscious Oscar will still be aboard the whale while Yang, Ren and Emerald managed to escape. They will attempt to try and climb back up but the Grimm Whale will enclose its sides due to its agitation, leaving both Jaune and Oscar trapped inside.

-(Winter and the Ace-Ops) With The remaining soldiers clearing a way to the whale, Winter and the Ace-Ops begin carrying the bomb towards the whale. They eventually make it inside and come across Jaune, carrying Oscar on his back. Winter orders Marrow to begin the timer on the bomb and reports back to Ironwood of their successful infiltration. She also reports that both Jaune and Oscar are with them, to which the general commands that they dispose of the two.

Winter and the others question the order that was just given and argue on what they should do. Unfortunately they are interrupted by swarms of Grimm, which were summoned by a resurrected Salem, heading their way through the halls. Hearing what is happening on the comms, Ironwood begins to panic and makes a severe judgement call. He opens up the controls of the bomb and manually overrides the systems to cut the timer of the countdown down to 30 seconds. As Winter and the team fight off the Grimm, Marrow notices the new countdown and yells out to everyone to look.

Everyone becomes shocked and stunned on what they see, unfortunately they don’t have time to process as Ironwood speaks through their comms and apologizes to Winter and the team, and that their sacrifices would not be forgotten. Winter shocked of what just happened becomes frozen out of fear and betrayal, as her team cries out on what they should do. With no time to lose Marrow quickly casts his semblance on the bomb to momentarily stop the timer and pleads for Winter to help. Winter clenches her pained hand and quickly creates an ice wall to block the Grimm heading their way.

With time no longer on their side Marrow tells everyone to hurry and run, while he stays behind to pause the timer as long as he can. Saddened by his decision Winter says farewell to Marrow and orders everyone to evacuate immediately. Jaune follows after winter, with Oscar on his back, but notices that Harriet, Elm and Vine aren’t running with them.

They look to each other and decide that they weren’t going to leave their teammate alone to finish the mission. Winter desperately commands them to follow her orders, but Harriet quickly remarks that she won’t take orders anymore. Elm and Vine agree and Marrow wags his tail at the sight of his teammates staying by his side. Though he is sad, Jaune urges Winter to leave them as they have made their decision and that they were almost out of time. Winter clenches her hurt hand again but soon let’s go as she looks to her team and gives them one final Salute.

Both Winter and Jaune run as fast as they can until they reached the mouth of the whale. Winter creates a summon to carry them out of the whale and fly off as fast as they can. Back inside the Ace-Ops make one final banter with each other as the ice wall in front of them begins to crumble down. On the other side appears a furious Salem and her horde of Grimm as she glances to sight of the Ace-Ops and the bomb. The team glances at each other one final time as Marrow releases his semblance and the timer reaches to Zero. The bomb goes off, vaporizing everything in its blast radius and eventually destroying the Grimm Whale.

All of Atlas cheers at the accomplishment and raise their hands in victory, while Winter and Jaune land near Yang and the others. Yang yells to Jaune that they did it, but Jaune gives her a gloom look and replies “yeah, they did....” as they both stare back at Winter, quietly weeping at their victory....

Whew.......that was mouthful 😓, but yeah that’s about all I got for tomorrow’s episode 😆. As Always I Can’t Wait To See What I’ll Get Right......Or......What I’ll Inevitebly Get Wrong, Till Then See In The Aftermath......BUH-BYE!!! 😎

#rwby #rwby volume 8 #rwby salem #james ironwood #jaune arc #oscar pine #winter schnee #ace ops #yang xiao long #lie ren #emerald sustrai

[rainbowdragon117]

So far RWBY Volume 8 is going exactly how I thought it would.

The episodes aren't too cliffhanger-ry so I'm not salivating for next week to hurry up and come but it does need to come sooner.

With that said

PREDICTIONS!!

:readmore:

Penny is gonna get hacked (yes we all know this one)

We're STILL not gonna know who the Summer maiden is (even though I think its Goodwich)

If the relic or creation is captured then the vaults will collapse and Salem will get the Beacon Relic

Cinder is going to lose her Grimm arm.

Mercury is gonna be in Salems inner circle.

Atlas is gonna fall but not back into the crater

Neo is gonna replace Cinder but not as a maiden - more as a subordinate.

Nikos will be back. Either as a spirit or from a wish or Relic.

The Hound - while I dont think its Summer I do think it was a human or it was Silver Eyes.

Raven might reappear to support Yang

Qrow is gonna get himself killed trying to kill Ironwood.

People are definitely dying this season 🤣 and I don't mean that one guy that Ironwood dropped. I mean a more prominent character.

#rwby theories #rwby #rwby volume 8 #rwby spoilers #roosteteeth

[ac-liveblogs]

RWBY vol 8, ep 12

i still can’t get over how heavy-handed the symbolism in the opening is

you’d think if they’re using lyrics like “we said goodbye to all the things we loved” they’d actually use the still images of the team to... show us the things they loved and lost? but they don’t, except for ironwood.

casey lee williams’ vocal talent is wasted on this show

Am I to understand that Mantle is aware they’re about to be bombed, but everyone’s just sitting around instead of trying to evacuate? I get an hour isn’t a lot of time, but... come on.

I still can’t get over the fact that Shots McGee Ironwood forgot to get mad at Winter for deliberately letting Yang’s team escape. I’m sorry, Marrow gets near shot in the head for being mad about a bomb being dropped, but Winter can let political prisoners go and that’s just fine and dandy? No bullets for her???

In a completely predictable turn of events, Winter betrays him. Like, it wasn’t even predictable for us, it should’ve been predictable for Ironwood, too. Given he’s so hyperaware to threat at the moment it’s... strange he didn’t notice this. 

Are... are handcuffs supposed to restrain Penny? She was a superpowered robot even before she became a Maiden...

Also still can’t get over the fact that Emerald’s just... a good guy now. That’s fine? We’re over it? Destruction of Mantle whomst? 

Did. Did Winter just go all samurai delayed slash on Ironwood??? Anyway, that entire fight sequence was super anticlimactic. I’m once again reminded of Early Bird Boss Adam getting shitkicked by Bumblebee while barely putting up a fight at all.

I guess because it’s... ~satisfying~ to see the bad guy trivialised? Whatever. 

w. wait. in order to save mantle and atlas... they’re going to use the staff of creation to make something new.... which will cause atlas to fall out of the sky? i’m sorry? that’s the plan right now???

okay, so they’ve decided how they’re going to evacuate Mantle and Atlas (using SDC evacuation protocol which I guess the Staff of Creation will allow to be... done on a larger scale? make more ships?) but... both cities are still currently dealing with a Grimm incursion, right? That didn’t stop just because the whale went down, I assume? Also where are these people going to go that’s safe??? While being attacked by Grimm???

 Whitley continues to be the only competent team member. 

i’ll say now that i’m not a fan of the McGuffin Relics having spirits inside them. I don’t think its necessary. Anyway, I haven’t seen the Staff Spirit yet, but if he’s not just as naked as Jinn, I’ll be mad

... he is just as naked as jinn. okay, respect

Yeah, the reason I don’t love having these talking spirits is that functionally they don’t accomplish much except chew up time talking to the cast when really, you could just make your wish and be done with it. 

I sort of like that they’re very carefully using the whole “be very careful what you wish for” aspect of genies - more so than they ever did with Jinn - but... holy shit this is chewing up a lot of screentime... Ruby’s functionally just repeating the same thing over and over to make it clear to blue man joe exactly what she wants, which... hurry up guys. we wasted half an episode talking about semantics while in a pretty field, the tension just plummeted to rock bottom

Also, this whole “we’re turning Penny into a REAL GIRL” thing sort of... renders her becoming a real girl last volume (by becoming a Maiden validating her humanity) kind of... pointless.

kind of like “nobodies are real people with hearts too! always have been! but now theyre just genuinely real people now too so making that a thing was kind of pointless to begin with” from the kingdom hearts school of brainpain.

the staff of creation is one hell of a mcguffin

Theoretically evacuating the entire populaces of Mantle and Atlas to Vacuo is a great idea, but

That’s a lot of fucking people to just dump on a Kingdom that isn’t expecting them.

Communications have been down since the Fall of Beacon. No one has ANY idea what state Vacuo is in right now! Are they drowning in Grimm? Who knows!

For that matter, why on earth would anyone go through magical white holes of light without knowing what they are? who exactly is going to throw themselves in there?

You know, I kind of assumed Ironwood would be back with a vengeance but no. Getting slapped around was enough to stop him I guess. 

unless he’s the reason comms dropped

was that the end of the season, or....

#ac watches rwby #rwbylog

[calliecat93]

One of the biggest criticisms of Volume 4, if not the biggest criticism, was it usage of multiple plotlines. While an ambitious idea, the balance was really off which really affected the pacing. It felt like everything was scattered around and like things were being dragged out, or not even given as much attention as needed. But it looks like with Volume 8, CRWBY is getting a chance to try it again. One advantage is having all the relevant characters in tow main groups so only two major plotlines to focus on. This chapter focuses on RWBNP as they break into the Atlas Military Facility. How will it go? Well... since this is late you already know, but I’m gonna blab anyhow. Enjoy~

Overview

Team RWBNPM have made it into the military compound and Penny has located where the terminal is. They’re able to wonder around the base undetected via May’s Invisibility Semblance and Penny is able to use Pietro’s credentials to access the doors. They eventually reach an area that even with May’s Semblance, will be too difficulty to get through without being spotted. Penny, however, has a solution. You remember how Harriet pointed out Ruby’s Semblance was more than she thought in V7? Well Penny actually breaks it down here. Ruby essentially breaks down her mass and is able to more or less teleport herself and others before reforming, so Ruby should be able to do this with all of them.

Meanwhile, remember when Watts got taken by security last chapter? Well it’s because Ironwood is now forcing him to work for him, having a whole squadron ready to shoot him to death if he doesn’t comply. What does he need Watts to do? We’ll go into that later. Until then, Watts points out that Pietro’s credentials have been used, causing Ironwood to raise the alarm. This means that the team has to hurry, so they trip a worker with coffee as a distraction. As the guy's co-workers yell at him, RWBNP move past via Ruby’s Semblance as May goes to commandeer a ship.

Eventually, RWBNP reach the terminal. It is a VERY highly secured area with the door being guarded by some powerful electricity. It’s so secure that no humans even work in there. Penny allows Pietro to take over manually to begin the process of green lighting Amity. During this, Blake expresses concern about ruby and Yang’s fight, though Weiss assures her that sometimes sisters just disagree. Nora also tries to help by pointing out that Jaune, Yang, and Oscar should be fine (haha...) but noticeably leaves out Ren. It’s here that Nora expresses how upset she was about their argument and how just when things look up for them, it goes right back to zero. Even worse, without Ren, Nora doesn’t feel like she even knows who she is aside form the strong girl who hits stuff. Blake and Weiss point out to her that Ren is only a part of her, the rest however also matters and that maybe she can use this chance to discover more about herself.

The process is completed and Penny can now launch Amity. But despite wanting to resume helping Mantle afterwards, both Pietro and the girls believe that it’s best for Penny to remain with Pietro and Maria in Amity once it launches. This disappoints her. As the group gets ready to leave, they are confronted byt he Ace-Ops. Vine tries to reason with the g4roup, but they continue to refuse. it doesn’t help when Harriet and Elm essentially blame Penny for Winter’s condition and accuse her of stealing the Maiden power, nor does Harriet threatening to lock up Ruby alongside her uncle. To no one’s surprise, the group refuses, so the Ace-Ops trap RWBN in the room, leaving Penny to fight on her own.

Penny is ale to hold her own, even managing to make good use of her Maiden powers. However, the Ace-Ops are able to match against her and eventually Marrow is able to use his Stay power on her. RWBN try to break through the door, bot nothing is working. Nora, staring at the electric door, decides to do what she dos best be strong and hit stuff. Using her hammer and Semblance, Nora absorbs the electricity until she’s powered enough to blow the door off it’s hinges. However, even for Nora, this was far too much as her body gets some ugly scarring. She collapses, her Aura breaking.

Seeing the fight, Watts suggests that the Ace-Ops get one of Penny’s swords. Ironwood orders this, and they bandage to rip one off of Penny before retreating, though Marow noticeably is hesitant. WBNP reach a hangar where May has gotten an airship. They escape, but Nora is still passed out and seriously injured. After this, Penny agrees that she needs to remain in Amity and it’s time for her to go. She and Ruby hug one more time, promising to see each other again before Penny flies off for Amity. Meanwhile, the Ace-Ops turn over the sword to Ironwood. Why did they need this? The same reason that Ironwood recruited Watts: to hack into Penny and turn her back onto their side.

Review

Ah, action, emotions, and spilt coffee. All the things I love in a RWBY episode~

Let’s talk about Ruby’s Semblance first since I’ve seen some debate about it. IDK how scientifically accurate Penny’s explanation is... but Ruby is a girl who can trail rose petals behind her, so I’m not all that concerned about accuracy here. But this just more or less confirmed what I’ve been thinking for a long time now. I, as well as others, have pointed out that her Semblance doesn’t really appear to act line a speed-based one. Heck as I said, Harriet pointed it out just last volume. Now we know that Ruby’s power is essentially a slow-formed teleportation. Considering I always assumed that Summer’s Semblance had a similar breaking her body down function, this makes a lot of sense to me.

I’ve seen some complain about how Ruby didn’t know this... but really? That’s perfectly in-character for her. She’s a clever girl, but she’s always been one to act more than give deep contemplation. She knows the basic function of her Semblance, to move fast compared to normal, and that works for her. Heck remember last volume when she used her split apart trick. Oscar asked how long she could do that, and she answered that she had never really thought of it. Sure Ruby HAS carried people with her Semblance before (Penny in V2, Nora in V4, Weiss in V6), but that was with a single person. She had never tried it with a group before. It fits into how Semblances evolve over time and I’m really happy to see Ruby grow more. I get the feeling that she needs all the happy development she can get before things really go off the deep end.

Speaking of though, the chibi art accompanying Penny’s explanation? Both cute and hilarious. It reminded me of Ruby’s imagine spots back in Volume One. This chapter had quite a few funny moments. Weiss pulling Nora’s ear for last episode, Nora pushing all the elevator buttons. Blake clearly hating all forms of unconventional transportation, and while I feel it clashed with the tone a bit the coffee guy tripping up was great. The crude poster of a Shark Grimm (when do we get that?) especially got a giggle out of me. Like I said last review, it’s nice to have these bits of levity. I love it when Ruby gets feelsy and serious, but I don’t want it to divert form fun and light-heartedness all the time. They’ve gotten a lot better at keeping a balance and transitioning us from one mood to the other. I feel last chapter did it a bit better, but this was still well done.

Now lets talk about Penny. It was nice to see her act like her usual perky self a bit with her Semblance explanation and the direction to the terminal. But still, it’s clear that things are still haunting her. She’s still reminded of her robot identity with May’s comment, which no IDT May was trying to be offensive or anything, after all Robyn uses nicknames like that all the time and she DID use Penny’s name after the correction. But even past that, we have Pietro manually taking control of Penny. Now it WAS done with permission and there’s a good reason why, but my reaction to it was the same as Ruby’s. You ca tell that Penny wasn’t looking forward to it since it one more emphasizes that she is a robot. We all know she’s more, but Penny is still trying to figure out her new place.

This is especially evident in her reaction to remaining on Amity. Of course she doesn’t want to do that. She still considers herself the Protector of Mantle. She is now the Winter Maiden. She wants to help people. She wants to be out there doing good alongside her friends. But unfortunately with the target on her back from both sides, it’ simply too dangerous. She not only puts herself at risk, but those around her. We already know that ironwood will now go to any extreme to get his way, including work with an evil scientist and have a firing squad ready to fire. Salem... do I need to explain any further? The safest thin is for Penny to remain in Amity, but it still clearly pains her even after accepting it as necessary. And with Watts now having a piece necessary to hack her AND the episode showing us how it can be done... yeah, pray for Penny folks.

She DID however get to kick ass with her Maiden powers. While we had some Grimm fights last chapter, this was the first major fight of the volume, and it was awesome. Penny, even after just getting her power, uses it to great effect. Not as much as Raven or even Cinder, but is clearly more than capable of controlling it. But the Ace-Ops do manage to match her. They aren’t holding back now, they are going in for the kill and all of them (save Marrow, I’ll talk about him in the CH4 review) seem to be on the same wavelength. I think this helped the complaints about the Ace-Ops losing to RWBY (ones I don’t agree with, but still) and shows how even with Clover dead, they are still a capable force. Harriet and Elm’s words were still overly cruel, but I can’t deny that they can fight. Oh and we also FINALLY got to see Vine’s weapon, so there’s that. It was a fun action sequence~

But now we get to the star of this episode for me: Nora. Now... I have made it no secret that Nora is my least favorite character of the main group. Why? There’s two main reasons: her lack of development compared to the others and her character largely revolving around Ren. I won’t lie, some of the over-exposure and her portrayal in Chibi also contributed, but those don’t really affect her character in-show. While I feel that she has slowly improved, last volume especially being a step up, I still felt like she was the least developed. So going into Volume 8, I was very curious about hat they would do with her now that she and Ren are divided and she is on her own.

I have to say... I am very happy with her in this episode. It addressed my complaint about her and Ren being co-dependent as far as their portrayals in-show went. They outright existed more or less to fill out Team JNPR, and they spent Volumes 1-3 as comic relief to focus on Jaune and Pyrrha. I miss Pyrrha to this day, but her death DID allow the two to finally grow as characters. I don’t like it when the focus of a character is mainly on their relationship with another, hence why shipping gets on my nerves a lot. It was a HUGE issue I had with Renora until they became fleshed out. Here we have Nora expressing how upset she is about Ren, how every time it looks like they’ve gotten closer something comes in to ruin it (Volume 4 for example), and now that she’s without him for the first time in who knows how long... she doesn’t really know who she is. This has been something that I’ve wanted the show to go into since at least Volume 4, and it is FINALLY happening.

I love how the ones who talk to her are Blake and Weiss. Blake struggled with separating herself from a previous attachment, and knows how hard it is to remember that that’s only one part of yourself. Weiss has struggled with carving her own identity which while not in the romantic context, is still relevant as her family name is only a part of her, not the whole thing. It’s a dynamic I never knew I needed, but I am SO glad we have it now! I think as hard as it is, Nora needed to part from Ren for now. She needs to remember to care about herself and know that she is more than just the girl who likes Ren and hits stuff with a hammer. She’s funny, she’s caring, she’s loyal, she’s fun to be around, she can get carried away with things yet it’s always entertaining when she does. She is Nora Valkyrie before everything else. And in the end, she more or less sacrificed herself to break the door and save Penny. IDK if she knew that the electricity would be too much, but she still made the choice by herself. Now we just need to hope that she recovers... and that when Ren finds out, he doesn’t snap...

In the intro, I talked about how V8 seems to be a second attempt at the split teams plot in Volume 4. While I find V4 underrated and a nice character development/world-building volume, the handling of the split plots... did certainly cause pacing issues. The biggest issue was cramming essentially six storylines into the volume, four of which were vital, and not being able to give them all proper attention. Essentially, it worked fine when binged, but going week by week it could get tiresome very quickly. This time, we have the entire team split into two groups with the side plots being the villains and Ironwood’s forces. This only leaves two major plotlines that need the main focus and allows for unique character dynamics, like Nora with Weiss and Blake. 

So far, the pacing with these two groups has been done very well. While we don’t see JYRO in this episode, last chapter did enough that we already know what to expect when we get back to them. Nothing feels out of focus or like one plot is getting more attention than the other. It feels balanced. It feels like both plots matter and I want to see what happens. The writers have clearly learned and improved over the years, with this being a clear example. It’s been really fun (and scary) so far and I’m really excited to see more of these different group dynamics (and since I’ve already seen Chapter 4, they are delivering!), though hopefully we will get the team reformed before long. But for now, I’m loving this~

Chapter Stats

Favorite Character: Nora Valkyrie Favorite Scene: Nora, Weiss, and Blake talk Least Favorite Scene: Coffee Guy Favorite Voice Actor: Samantha Ireland (Nora) Favorite Animation: Penny going Winter Maiden against the Ace-Ops Rating: 9.9/10

Final Thoughts

Three chapters in, and already this volume is looking to be one of the best. Some nice humor, great character dynamics and focus, an epic action sequence, and a lot of heart and emotion put in especially with Penny and Nora. This was a fantastic episode that gave me everything that I was hoping for! If the quality stays at this pace, the this is absolutely going to become a great one! And considering what happens next chapter, we haven’t strayed from that yet. But that review is for another day, for now I’ll say that this chapter was great~

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

[rukakikuchi]

Song shuffle tag

Was tagged by @akko-chan

Rules: go on your music, hit shuffle and report with the first 10 songs that pop up! then tag 10 people!

1. AKB48 (Team Surprise) - Bara no Gishiki (Ritual of the Rose)

2. Poppin’ Party - Hashiri Hajimeta bakari no Kimi ni (On Your New Journey)

3. Afterglow - True Color

4. Superfruit - Hurry Up!

5. DIVA - Tsuki no Uragawa (Dark side of the moon)

6. RWBY Volume 2 soundtrack - Shine

7. Sound Source Collecting for Cocoon Period (TRUMP series OST Vol. 1) - Visitors from the Outside World

8. AKB48 - Kyou Made no Melody (The Melody until Today)

9. Minami Takahashi - Kodoku wa Kizutsukanai (Lonliness doesn’t hurt me)

10. HKT48 (Yappari Mitarashi-dango) - Aitakute Iya ni naru (I miss you so much I hate it)

I will tag @skylarkdragonstar @yuri-or-death @misakishishido @thatonekeyakizaka46fan @harleymar @sugar9cat48 @putschki1969 @shinyuutriolove @punkish48 @sunshine-sakae (Only if you guys want to! 😉)

#tag #meme #tag response #music

[yoshimickster]

RWBY Vol. 6 “Stealing from the Elderly” Micksterecap: Anyone else feel like watching season 4 of Legend of Korra?

HEY NOW-wasn’t today’s episode so cool and crazy and shipworthy? Well if you wanna talk about it-HERE’S THE WRONG PLACE-its about LAST week’s episode-MICKSTERECAP STARTS NOW!

OUR EP STARTS OFF-

-with an UTTERLY pristine naval base that I’m SURE is gonna stay that way!

Here we see everyone’s favorite lady to hate Caroline Cordovin guiding Weiss and her giant suitcase that’s TOTALLY not smuggling a bionic old woman, while Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum goosestep behind them, which considering how racist Cordelia is REALLY says something abou the Atlas military!

Caroline: I’m sending two of my BEST guards to escort you.

Weiss: Oh that’s nice of you, what are their names?

Nubuck1: WE-don’t have names!

Nubuck2: We can’t afford them in this economy!

Weiss: That’s fine, just LET GO OF MY BAG!

Nubuck1: NEVER-it was all I was PROGRAMMED TO DO!

BUT-Cordelia starts to catch on-

Weiss: I can take care of it by myself.

Caroline:(A rich person...NOT wanting help from...the HELP?! NONSENSE!)

BUT LUCKILY FOR TEAM RWBYJNRQOM-they had the ultimate disrupting agent of ALL time with them!

3:03

A CRYING INFANT-using its distraction powers for GOOD instead of EVIL like interupting the sound at a movie theater, and then you just gotta SIT there because you know there’s no polite way you can ask the mother to take the baby outside, because DAMMIT-they just want to watch a movie but still have a child to take care of!

EITHER WAY-greatest baby actor of all time Adrien Terra-Cotta’s ruse works Prompting the Nubucks-

-TO STRIKE POSES-before attempting to console him! I’ma just ask, do Nubuck guards go through Ginyu pose training before serving? Because it LOOKS like they do. ALSO-what the fuck’s a Nubuck?

Weiss and obviously Maria in a bag sneak theyselves on board, all while Ruby gives the troops the lowdown-WHILE QROW-

-stands against a tree like a goth teen trying to look cool, because he’s SAD old man.

Terra also gives Yang and Blake the lowdown on how to mess with the radio for their plan, because she is HELPFUL!

Blake: Man, for someone whose job is repairing a radio tower, you’re SURE happy to help us mess with it.

Terra: After being constantly being blamed for it breaking despite NOT being my fault, I want to give that leather bitch Cordovin some REAL grief!

Yang and Blake then split up in the CUTEST way possible-

Blake:[To Yang]-besides, stealth isn’t exactly your um-

Pouty Yang is pouty.

Blake: I mean...your great, and I’ll hurry back!

Yang:(She’s god damned lucky she’s cute, I can be a stealth...apparatus at times).

Sure ya can Yang.

Blake than runs to the radio tower, everything seems to be going to plan-

4:38 But that STILL does not impress anime legs uncle, the curmudgeon he is.

A THEN CUT TO-

-WEISS’S PHONE-where its revealed that either A.)Weiss hasn’t changed her friend’s pictures since Volume 1 or B.)They didn’t change their pictures and it just looks like that when they call her. EITHER WAY-mix it up whoever, nothin’ wrong with a little change!

But I know what you’re all thinking-WHAT ABOUT THE NUBULUCKS ON THE PLANE?!

Weiss: OFF the plane you go!

Nubuck1: DAMMIT-knocked out by a teenager.

Nubuck2: We are PROFESSIONAL soldiers, how could the both of us not take her?

Weiss: BECAUSE I’M SNOW WEISS BITCHES-enjoy the parachute!

Nubucks: THANK YOU WE WILL!

Love it.

Maria after apparently unzipping herself from the bag off panel-JACKS INTO THE PLANE-

Weiss:...wait, wasn’t there all ready a dongle on your eyes? Where did it g-

Maria: SILENCE FOR I AM THE GRIMM REAPER!

Usually not one to point out continuity errors but THERE ya go! ALSO-a few continuity errors doesn’t mean the show is bad, SUCK A DICK RWDE TAG-you Cinemasins copycats.

After Weiss reminds Maria that her eyes are broke as shit to which Maria rebuffs with a silly finger wagging, EVERYTHING is fine-

Ruby: Blake your up...Blake...

BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE?!

-and by fine I mean fine for their standards, which is utterly chaotic and full of terror.

Ruby: YANG YO GIRL AIN’T PICKING UP THE PHONE!

Yang: Did you try texting her instead?

Ruby: OF COURSE I DIDN’T WE’RE BASICALLY ON WALKY TALKIES RIGHT NOW!

Yang: I KNOW I JUST USE HUMOR TO SHIELD MYSELF!

ALSO-

YUP-everyone’s kept their same phone pic since season 1, bunch of LAZY huntspeople they is.

A CUT TO-

6:27 Every command room in every science fiction thing-EVER-because television!

Obviously they figure out the plane is flying back into their own airspace, forcing Maria to use the old HUNTRESS CHARM-

Nubuck: What's going on up there? Come in!

Maria: Uh, everything is under control. Situation normal.

Nubuck: What happened?

Maria: Uh, had a slight weapons malfunction. But, uh, everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here, now, thank you. How are you?

Caroline: YOU BITCH-that’s from Star Wars!

Maria: Shit, I figured you’d be too dumb to remember.

Caroline: YOU TURN AROUND THIS MINUT...what’s that sound?

Maria: Oh that sound? That’s the sound of-

Maria: DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE NUTS!

Weiss: WHY IS EVERY OLD PERSON I KNOW INSANE?!

So quick recap...in a recap, Cordo is onto them, Blake is STILL not responding...and that’s it. What, you expect a joke about some sort of dance being the day after today? NO LONGER!

Either way, Yang and Bumblebee are in FULL chase!

Yang: I’M COMING ALMOST GIRLFRIEND-whom I’m not sure if we’re official or not-BUT THE SUB-TEXT IS EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVERYWHERE!

In times like this, its ALWAYS good to gain advice from our elders-

8:15

Qrow: Everything’s fucked, its all my fault, we’re all gonna die.

...okay maybe not AAAAAAAAAAAAALWAYS good.

Ruby then tells Qrow to shut the fuck up in the politest way she can, even saying she still wants him on their side (lord knows I’d bench Mr.Sadpants here) and that everyone there is there by choice and will do everything in their power to help out.

Qrow: Hmph...how did you grow up so fast?

Ruby: *Cute Pause* I had good rolemodels.

Qrow:...okay that’s Tai and...uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh...Summer?

Ruby: Yes but also you, I obviously also meant you.

Jaune: We’re willing to accept this has just been a bad season for you given how cool you looked in the last three seasons.

Qrow: *SNIFF* Youse is some good kids.

Its at this point that Caroline Cordovine being the responsible specialist she is, would send in fighters to take down Weiss and Maria’s plane-

Caroline: PREPARE TO FACE MY LOVE, MY PAIN, AND ALL OF MY ANGER!

Maria: Oh yeah because G Gundam quotes are JUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUST as timely! 

Caroline: FUCK YOU I HAVE A LASER GUN!

*MEANWHILE IN ATLAS HQ*

Winter: Um...General Ironwood sir...I have news from Argus-

James: Please tell me that crazy lady we stuck there didn’t activate the doom mech to take out ONE small plane.

Winter:...well...I won’t tell you then.

James: DAMMIT-that thing costs MONEY!

At this point the PLAN has changed, Ruby’s gonna need Weiss on the ground to take down this boss-mech from Starfox 64. And WHERE is Blake you might ask?

STEPPING ON HER SCROLL LIKE A CLUTS-although I AM amazed after being bent like that, it only has a small crack and a RIDICULOUSLY intact picture....I want a scroll. EITHER WAY-I hope Blake has an excuse for being so carele-

SHIT-its crazy pants, keep running Blake, stomp on SIX scrolls if you have to!

11:45

Adam: THIS IS MY REVENGE FOR DUMPING ME AT PROM!

Blake: A.) It wasn’t prom, it was a terrorist attack, B.) Your nuts, and C.) WE WERE NEVER OFFICIAL!

And then CLING-CLANG-CLUNG-swordfight between our beloved Faunus princess, and one CREEPY ass bull man-CLOSING IT OUT-

-with one HELL of a stand off!

DAMN good episode, outside of that continuity ep I pointed out, an utterly great mix of action and humor. With that, SEE YOU NEXT WEEK-on Micksterecap! And if you liked what you read, message me if you wanna donate to my paypal or Kofi!

#rwby #rwby volume 6 #rwby season 6 #rwby 6 #rwby spoilers #ruby rose #weiss schnee #blake belladonna #yang xiao long #yang xiaolong #jaune arc #lie ren #nora valkyrie #qrow branwen #oscar pine #saffron cotta-arc #terra cotta-arc #adrien cotta-arc #caroline cordovin #adam taurus #rooster teeth #roosterteeth #vrv #micksterecap #rwby volume 6 episode 10 #rwby volume 6 episode 10 stealing from the elderly #stealing from the elderly #yoshimickster

[blue-rose-89]

RWBY Volume 5 Chapter 7 (Rest and Resolutions)

Now that we’ve reached the half way mark of the Volume, now is a good time for a Breather Episode.

What did we learn......

1.  As the title suggests, everyone is resting and having dinner for the first time in about a year. 

2. Ren makes comments on how everyone has changed for the better since they first arrive at Beacon. You have Ruby that’s now smarter (Most of the time. Sorry Ruby, but it was your fault that Qrow got poisoned.), Weiss is kinder, Jaune is stronger, and Yang is more cautious. 

3. Yang’s robot arm can act like a rocket launcher. I can see it now: Xiao Long Punch!

4. Ozpin reveals more about himself........

-As expected, Ozpin was the Wizard that gave the first Four Maidens their magical powers.

-Ozpin explains that Qrow and Raven became birds so that they can be his eyes and ears while they fly around the world keeping track of Salem’s plans and searching for Maidens when their new hosts are unknown to them. 

-Qrow says that him and Raven chose to get to have this power and responsibility, but in the previous episode Raven implied that Ozpin forced them into it. It’s now hard to tell who’s the ‘right’ one because both of them have extreme biased views about their feelings towards Ozpin.

4. The reason why Ozpin is in such a hurry to defeat Salem is because his magic is dwindling. He has to be careful on when he should use magic on himself and others because once the magic is gone it’s gone forever.

5. Ozpin offers the team an out since the fighting Salem will be no cake-walk. The team choose to stay but on the condition that Ozpin stops hiding secrets. Yeah, that’s not going to last long because he looked hesitant before he agreed to the deal. Some fans even pointed out that Yang and Jaune appear to be the most cautious around Ozpin because Yang is taking Raven’s words to heart much to her displeasure while Jaune is back to being passive aggressive towards the Ozlumenati. 

6. Cinder and her team arrive at Raven’s camp to “negotiate” (it’s Cinder. We know for a fact that she doesn’t negotiate with anyone) with Raven into working for Salem and handing over the Spring Maiden.

Predictions

The fight between Cinder and Vernal, the Fall Maiden and Spring Maiden, is inevitable but there’s a chance that despite having a decade worth of experience, Vernal could lose because:

a) Power vs Skill

Raven’s tribe is all about brute force. If Raven hasn’t trained Vernal to be more skilled as a fighter and a Maiden, then Vernal is screwed.

b) Reintroduce Cinder as an ever bigger threat

As much as hate her guts we have to be shown that Cinder has made progress in her quest for power so that taking her down will be a challenge for RWBY and JNR.

c)The villains are going to cheat

They know that they need the Spring Maiden alive so if she’s not going come willingly then they could have a back up plan that ends with them controlling her in some way. Raven and Vernal will not see it coming.

Episode 8 is not going to end well for Raven.

#rwby #rwby volume 5 #rwby vol 5 #rwby spoilers #rwby predictions #rwby speculation #rwby ruby rose #weiss schnee #yang xiao long #jaune arc #rwby nora #rwby ren #rwby ozpin #rwby qrow

[shaevira]

Now that RWBY is on hiatus until Fall, we have 8-9 whole months of coming up with amazing Freezerburn headcanons and predictions for Volume 6! Bring on the Freezing of burns! (I may or may not write a whole bunch of scenarios once I finish L&F)

HEY DON’T REMIND ME YOU FIEND

But annnyways, this is going to be one long ass hiatus that I’m looking forward to in the first time for forever. :’) All hail the BURNING OF THE FREEZERS. Eli, you better hurry with L&F because I want to see your scenarios NOW! >:3c 

Tbh, I feel like I’ve invaded the Freezerburn tag enough. xD

#Ask A shae #Gotta go back into hermit mode then emerge from my shell once the new volume comes out #eli-the-writer-guy

[the-perfect-film-blog]

How To Fix RWBY Volume 4

With the existence of trains and steampunk airships, there's really no reason for team RNJR to have to walk all the way to Haven.

Rather than have an entire season of our heroes in transit to do something interesting, I propose that Volume 4 could be condensed into 6 or 7 episodes without losing anything of value. 

Spoilers below the cut.

Before I begin I just want to say that I could have done without Blake's storyline for much of this season, as it hasn't tied into the main plot or directed Blake towards the rest of the cast yet. I would have instead ended Volume 3 with Sun running off after Blake and come back to her when she is likely to become relevant. (None of this Blake didn't even notice Sun following her nonsense.)

So with that in mind, let's cut fix Volume 4's pacing.

Episode 1. The Next Step

We can still open on WTCH I guess. But instead of Tyrian laughing for no goddamn reason just have him quietly suggest, "Hey Cinder u want me to cut that girl's eye out for u since you're indisposed? ;)"

Instead of the Geist fight, cut between the grimm being born in the opening and show RRNJ pushing a group of grimm into a pit or funneling them through a something that would actually display strategy. for a nearby village to fund the next leg of their journey.

Either Jaune has already upgraded his weapon or he uses his share to have his upgrades done after the fight, not before it like a tool. No need for this scene to last 8 minutes either, just have him see the armory and be like "can you modify this?" then cut to his new weapon.

Team RWBY moves on to the next village where they can board a ferry to Haven. It's destroyed and everyone is dead. Ruby and suggests waiting for an incoming ferry so RRNJ can explain what happen but Ren and Nora object. Eventually they get going. As they move on, we zoom out to Qrow cutting down some Grimm and watching them progress.

No Oscar for now.

Episode 2. Rememberance

Ruby wakes up from a nightmare and walks in on Jaune either practicing with his new sword while watching Pyrrha's tape or trying to figure out his semblance. Pyrrha's tape is also just actually training drills and any "btw love u babe <3" is condensed to one sentence. Ruby comforts Jaune and says, "I know. I miss my partner too." Bonus points if Jaune's training has nothing to do with Pyrrha's instructions and he just wanted to hear the sound of her voice.

And then we cut to Weiss and Jaque after Ironwood storms out. Can reduce the altercation to Ironwood vaguely saying he needs to secure Atlas and Jaques objecting because his monopoly-man mustache needs as much Dust money as it can make.

Weiss reluctantly agrees to sing a song that would be likely to be sung at a banquet for rich people. Maybe Whitley walks in on Weiss being all buddy-buddy with Klein and kind of casually noses in like "lol whatcha doing sis?" breaking up the conversation. Maybe Weiss buys it but Klein doesn't.

Yang can get her arm but neglect to actually try it on for a while, or she tries it on and can't move it the way she wants, gets frustrated and takes it off. (Because irritability is a symptom of PTSD! Why not use it!)

We can have Port and Oobleck drop in, reminding everyone of Ozpin and asking when Tai is going to come help and be useful, since he's an actual huntsman, and he rejects because Yang. Instead of the OMG SHOCKING "callout" from Taiyang about Yang losing a few brain cells with her arm, maybe Yang gets frustrated that Taiyang is never around to help and decides to push herself. Either way she tries the arm again and challenges her dad for not being any more willing to help than he was the past three seasons.

Episode 3. Runaways and Stowaways Family

Salem and Cinder have their little "Is Ozpin really dead?" moment.

Cut to Oscar doing a little bit of his farm work and then going to wash up for the night only to hear, "Hello! I'm professor Ozpin!"

RRNJ reaches Higanbana where they hope to wait for an airship. Except there is not an airship to catch; they're currently in use by some huntsman searching for bandits. RRNJ shrug their shoulders and stay in an inn.

Raven and Qrow have their little, "Hey you asshole you gonna go help your kid?" spat and ask each other about the relics and spring maiden.

Taiyang and Yang spar, during which at some point Taiyang literally disarms Yang (frustrating her) but instead of all the vaguetalk about Raven Taiyang offers an anecdote that reveals more about Raven's character and demonstrates a parallel between Yang and Raven. Instead of his problem with Yang's overuse of her semblance being "it will make you weaker" (which it obviously does not), it should be that a semblance wherin she has to damage herself to use is not viable in every situation. (Also she shouldn't have been 100% powered up vs Adam in Volume 3).

Tyrian does his "Have you seen a girl with Silver Eyes" schtick but instead of laughing maniacally his eyes flash purple.

Episode 4 - Tipping Pont

Not really all that different from Actual! Tipping point. Start off with Weiss at the concert singing some sick Atlas Opera about Grimm and a Princess instead of "Let me live my life, DAD!"

Gala. Weiss has her meltdown. Instead of accidentally summoning a boar maybe she does something innocuous like knock a glass out of a lady's hand out of spite and all these hoidy-toity rich people are aghast and ready to call security. Ironwood intervenes and walks Weiss out, complete with his, "She's the only one around here making sense" line. We see Whitley whispering to Jaques and Jaques ruffling his mustache.

Instead of having both Oniyuri and Kuroyuri we could instead have them come across a sign with the name crossed off, where Ren explains why Kuroyuri was to be built and explains there's no point in going, it's already destroyed.

"But Ren how do you know that--"

And oh shit it's Tyrian!

Maybe Tyrian confronts them in an open space initially - team RRNJ clearly has the advantage because of course they do, it's four on one. Maybe Jaune says as much.

"Hey, it's four against one! We're not looking for a fight, just walk away!"

And then Tyrian, who doesn't really give a crap, goes for Ruby and RRNJ uses powered-up Nora to push Tyrian back. With some distance between them we get the dialogue exchange minus the "the rose has thorns!" line because Ruby’s comeback was weaksauce. Any laughter is going to be used strictly when Team RRNJ thinks they can scare Tyrian off. Tyrian proceeds to wipe the floor with RRNJ until we see a Qrow flying in overhead. We watch from Qrow's perspective as Ruby's aura breaks and Tyrian goes in for the kill incapacitation. At the last moment Qrow blocks Tyrian and pushes him back.

Episode 5 - Punished

Tyrian fights Qrow. Ruby attempts to help despite Qrow warning her numerous times not to get involved. RRNJ attempts to offer fire support, but Qrow warns them to stop.

Tyrian chases Qrow into the forest and Ruby pursues despite Qrow's protests. When she and RRNJ catch up their auras are broken and she rushes in in an attempt to help. Qrow's semblance causes her to trip, drop things on herself, and almost get stabbed. In his rush to stop Ruby from getting hurt, Qrow gets stabbed by Tyrian's tail, which Ruby then cuts off.

Tyrian flees and either Ren or Nora starts to chase him, until Qrow nearly collapses and his injuries are made apparent. He promises to explain everything.

Weiss gets told she's not the heiress anymore, Whitley is, and she resolves to pack her things and hit the road. She asks Klein for help in getting out and he agrees - and he brings her weapon so she can train. Whitley mocks Weiss because “you’re grounded what are you gonna do with that” and she slams the door in his face with zero fucks given.

Oscar and Ozpin have a brief moment in which Ozpin explains what he wants Oscar to do, and it's for the greater good so you gotta, and Oscar kind of vaguely says, "I gotta talk to my aunt."

Qrow gives some exposition to RRNJ and starts to lose feeling in his limbs. This is a slow-acting poison, not a wake up and keel over poison. RRNJ argue about what they should do next and against Ren and Nora's wishes they go to Kuroyuri, because it's the closest place they can actually get to.

Nucklavee tease.

Episode 6 - Kuroyuri

Not too much is different but this time it is clear from Ren's behavior that he is certain of some danger in the village and he warns the team that they need to get what they're looking for and get out fast.

Ren's flashback (condensed into just the part about meeting Nora and finding her once the village has been destroyed) is played as a way of him explaining the danger to Ruby and Jaune, and though they hurry up the Grimm blocks them as they're preparing to leave.

Qrow collapses and there's no choice but to fight.

RRNJ fights the Nucklavee but this time instead of "Run in a circle, team who are already running in a circle!" we see the team overwhelmed at first, trying to charge for perceived weak points like its knees and firing at the head only to be brushed aside.

With the pressure put on, maybe the beast disarms Nora, Ren loses his cool and tries to go for the head. Big mistake. It screams/spews some sort of sludge and Ren is injured. His Aura breaks. Nora is injured getting him out of there.

It is at this point that Nora runs to yell at him for losing his cool and Jaune and Ruby realize that the only way they're taking this thing down is by turning the whole thing sideways (it's a horse, horses are really bad with taking a fall). When Ren and Nora return, Jaune uses Ruby and Nora to use their respective powers to flip the horse over so Ren can slip in and stab it.

Jaune acts as a distraction and tanks a few hits for the rest of the team to do this. As they're fighting we see the first sign of the airships over the horizon, it's almost over. They just need to hold out.

Once the grimm is killed the team goes. Ruby writes a letter to Yang and sends it by drone. Taiyang warns Yang that she isn't ready, but says it's ultimately her choice and he won't stop her. Maybe Yang calls him out on not going to help and tries to rush off on her own again, leaving Taiyang concerned.

Meanwhile we see Weiss sneaking out with Klein to board an airship. Weiss overhears just "Based on information your daughter gave me, I'm closing the border!" and Weiss gasps and hurries the fuck out of there.

Blake arrives at Menagerie where she and Sun are aghast to see Adam Tauras's White Fang flag flying, not the White Fang flag one would typically see in Menagerie.

Tyrian returns to Salem while Cinder is doing whatever it is that Cinder does these days, admits he couldn't take Ruby and says he poisoned Qrow so they're very likely dead.

Salem says, "Yeah whatever you useless turd" and Tyrian has his little meltdown.

Episode (7???) - (Anything to do with Blake)

Rather than Blake and Sun being surprised by the White Fang presence, this trip is about Blake returning to her family for closure, because she knows she did the wrong thing.

And rather than a drawn out sequence in which Blake and her father talk it out we need only a long scene of Blake not wanting to enter.

Maybe she explains to Sun that she left home to be part of Adam's White Fang, that she thought her father's leadership was weak, and that she has done terrible things.

With some consolation and encouragement from Sun, she knocks on the door and her parents accept her. She has her cry with her family, and from there I really don't know where Blake's story is supposed to go yet so I can't go into much more detail about how to rework it.

Oscar meeting Hazel and getting on the train can go here too; it would be easier to make it clear he's not traveling a huge distance but maybe only about 100 km or so if we can easily recognize Haven just on the horizon.

I hope I've more or less demonstrated the ways that the pacing in this season could have been adjusted. Since there are fewer unnecessary fight scenes, this leg of the season should be overall easier to animate, and the finale can instead head towards the team getting back together.

#rwby 4 #rwby spoilers #rwby critique #rwby volume 4 #rwde #rrnj #rnjr #team rnjr #rwby criticism #rwby critical

[bryanclaesch]

The Top 10 Reasons Why Ruby Should Be Your Favorite

Hey, everyone.

So my blog post on why I like Weiss was so popular that I decided to keep it going. Not about Weiss, but about all of Team RWBY. Today, we'll be looking at Team RWBY's leader, Ruby Rose and the top 10 reasons why she should be your favorite. I'd like to thank my friend Michaela Roan and RWBY Wonderland admin Blake Belladonna for helping me put together this list.

And if you guys want to stay up to date with everything I'm doing RWBY related, then you can sign up so you never miss a beat. (Get it?) http://eepurl.com/cWX8Fj.

Let's jump in!

"Ruby!"

So, why would anyone like Ruby? Isn't she just a naïve, inexperienced, and socially awkward, 15-year old? What about her is so great that anyone would call her their favorite character?

1. A Smaller, Honest Soul

In the opening scene of RWBY, we are introduced to man's creation on Remnant and how he first fought against the grimm. Finding strength in dust, man was able to fight off the grimm, and not only survive, but thrive. But when Salem turns the tables and tells us the end is coming, that "there will be no victory in strength," Ozpin replies, "Or perhaps victory is in the simpler things that you have long forgotten. Things that require a smaller, more honest soul."

Within Ruby is this pure and more honest soul. Ruby is good for the sake of good, and wants to become a huntress for the simple reason to help and save others, and to make sure that everyone lives happily ever after. Is there a nobler virtue?

2. Optimist

Ruby has a bright outlook on the future. Thinking back to Field Trip, after Team CFVY returns from their mission that ran long, Team RWBY seems worried about their own mission to Mountain Glenn. Ruby admits that their mission is going to be tough, but she reassures her team that they can do it. Having never backed down from a challenge and coming out smelling like roses every time (to that date), Ruby's pep talk warms the spirits of her team and they get pumped for their mission.

3. Skipping Ahead Two Years of School

Ruby is a competent and skilled huntress. If she wasn't, Ozpin wouldn't have let her into Beacon. Thinking about Ruby's combat history, she has fought alongside huntresses and huntsmen at least two years older than her, she has faced villains single-handedly, and slain dozens of grimm. While I don't like the fact that the Beowolf is regarded as RWBY's version of the slime from Dragon Quest, because the Beowolf is really cool, Ruby has fought multiple packs without a problem. She fought one in her trailer, she criticizes Weiss for not being able to handle a pack alone, and then there was the Volume 4 character short where Ruby took out a Nevermore, Beowolves, and a Beringel all by herself. Girl's got skillz.

"You better hurry."

Translation: I'm not saving any for you guys.

4. "I have a plan."

Regardless of what the situation is, Ruby always seems to have a plan in mind. From taking down giant Nevermores to giving Weiss obvious advice in class, Ruby always manages to find the solution to her combat problem and is remarkably adaptable. If it weren't for Jaune and high heels, she could be the best strategist in the show.

5. The Badge and the Burden

One of the things working against Ruby is her age. And with her youth comes immaturity. Everything from making fart noises in class to balancing a binder on a pencil. But when her immaturity creates friction between her and Weiss, with some help from Ozpin, Ruby realizes that she has to always be at her very best so that those who follow her will be, too. Even in Volume 4, Jaune tells Ruby, that despite everything she's lost and could still lose, she gave the rest of JNPR the courage to follow her.

6. Cutest Character in RWBY

 "Uh... well..."

Okay, so this is a little shallow and mostly opinion based. I do know that Nora and Penny seem to be in the running for cutest character in RWBY, but my money is on Ruby. While all three girls have what I consider to be essential cute girl qualities: short, upbeat, high energy, and short hair, sometimes I find Nora really annoying, and Penny's too naïve. Even in her sexier, timeskip outfit, I still think Ruby is as cute as a button. I really wish real girls looked like that.

7. Little Red Riding Hood

Very few people can deny that Kerry, Miles, and Monty did good basing their characters off fairytales, but besides Yang, I think Ruby is really where they did super well. Little Red Riding Hood is one of my favorite fairytales, and why wouldn't it be? It's essentially a Bloodborne side quest.

*Wink*

*Growl*

I also dig hoods. I used to wear hoodies all the time and a common theme in some of my novels is that characters who are author inserts often wear hoods. Add to that, I dig Ruby's Gothic threads and if it were socially acceptable, I would dress more Gothic myself. (That and I'm basically an emo teenager at heart.) Whether it be Ruby's original outfit or her timeskip one, both are good on her with her timeskip outfit easily being my favorite in the series. And lastly, my favorite colors are red and black. So, yeah...

8. "Got your back!"

"Who's got yours?"

"My BFF!"

"No..."

Besides Ruby's noble soul, her most virtuous trait is that she's a loyal and loving friend. The thing about people like Ruby is that while they're terrible in social situations, they often make the most loyal of friends. (I should know being an INTJ.)

Remembering back to Ruby's introduction to Weiss and Blake, she really wasn't comfortable in either situation. And then at the prom, she was hiding out at the punch bowl. But despite her social awkwardness, Ruby doesn't let that get in the way of her duty to her friends. She accepts them as they are whether they be Faunus or made of bolts and nuts instead of squishy guts. She's there for them in a pinch whether they need to escape Atlas personnel or when one is being attacked by a Nervermore, (even though that friend just made quarters out of a penny). She's willing to stare down almost certain death just to save a friend.

9. She Goes Naaaarrrroooo!

Ruby's semblance is speed. Or is it turning into rose petals? Either way, Ruby can go super fast. So fast that she becomes a red tornado capable of creating a vortex that sucks up things and people in its wake. Ruby's speed allows her to get the drop on her enemies, flee when necessary, or even use it to augment others' abilities such as when she and Nora defeated the Geist grimm in the first episode of Volume 4. And honestly, after being able to read minds and turn invisible, super speed is number one on my super power list.

10. Coolest Weapon in the Series

Scythes are cool. Why? Probably because they're associated with the Grim Reaper despite the fact a scythe makes a terrible weapon. (Yes, I know about battle scythes. No need to tell me.) Therefore when you see a character wielding a scythe as a weapon, it makes them an instant badass. (Except for Dante from Dante's Inferno.) But scythes are great regardless of their inception, whether they be Crimson Rose, the Burial Blade, or Qrow's scythe, it's just a cool weapon and turns its wielder into Death's Apprentice. (Hey! Death's Apprentice. Cool story title.)

Well guys, that was the top 10 reasons why you should like Ruby. If you think I missed anything, let me know what it was in the comments. And don't forget to sign up for the mailing list so you don't miss anything RWBY. http://eepurl.com/cWX8Fj.

Keep writing, my friends.

The moment we all fell in love.

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#RWBY #RWBY Chibi #RWBY Wonderland #Nora Valkyrie #Penny Polendina #Ozpin #Salem #Kerry Shawcross #Miles Luna #Monty Oum #Ruby Rose #Weiss Schnee #Yang Xiao Long #Lindsay Jones #Blake Belladonna #Jaune Arc

[itsclydebitches]

Do you think Ruby will kill Grimm!Summer and if so, how do you think that will clash with her objection to killing Penny?

I think it's all going to hinge on a) how the story portrays Ruby reacting to Jaune in Volume 9 and b) what sort of shape grimm!Summer is in.

First, they may not have Ruby kill Summer at all. And I don't just mean that the plot will twist to ensure someone else has to (somehow, without silver eyes) do the deed because she's unavailable, thereby freeing her of that hard choice — precisely like how Ruby was conveniently in the void by the time Penny needed to die. Rather, Summer might still be able to be saved. Many (myself included) have theorized that if Ruby's eyes destroy grimm and grimm only, she might be able to destroy the portion of a grimm that possess a person (for lack of a better word), leaving the rest of them intact. That's mostly come up in Salem discussions — could Ruby remove the influence of the grimm pool, leaving human!Salem behind? — but now that same question applies to Summer too. When she used her eyes on the Hound we saw the grimm part of him get stripped away, revealing the faunus underneath, before the goo of the grimm started Venom-creeping back over the rest of him. If Ruby could give off a more powerful blast, perhaps she could erase the grimm portion entirely, all in one go, sort of akin to how they won the geist fight in Volume 4. Hit it harder, all at once, until after a single blow only the core of the beast remains. In each case the grimm would leave the thing it possessed.

So that's Option B: is Summer in a state where it's possible for her to recover in some way? How deep do these grimm experiments go, are silver eyes capable of destroying the grimm without killing the person? How much of the original Summer would be left without the grimm parts? etc. etc. Lots of questions we don't have any answers to. Option A, however, comes up if we're given a scenario where Summer is beyond hope. She's a grimm now, no way to fix it, killing her is seen as a mercy. And that, I think, is the crucial difference. Ruby unequivocally said no to killing Penny... but Penny also wasn't presented as having to die. It's one of the rare moments in the volume where I 100% agree with what Ruby is saying. Penny has been hacked, her order is to open the vault, and then she's set to self-destruct. So how does killing her benefit anyone in anyway? They obviously want to save Penny, so all killing her at the manor would do is hurry the self-destruct along, the thing they want to stop. They want to keep the Maiden powers safe, but killing her might risk sending them off into the world, lost, or even wind up with Cinder if her attempts to steal them formed any connection. Obviously we know now that the powers didn't go to Cinder, that Penny was able to think of Winter and send them to her, but my point is that just killing her then is a HUGE risk. Finally, there's no real danger in opening the vault. I mean yeah, they don't want Ironwood to get the staff... but like, he just wants to leave. If Ironwood were planning to use the staff to, idk, decimate all of Atlas I can understand the group considering killing Penny to be worth avoiding the potential death of an entire kingdom, but there's no threat to anyone if Ironwood does somehow snag the relic. The only threat here is that opening the vault will allow Salem to get the relic instead, but the group decides to open the vault anyway. Penny is basically going, "If you don't kill me now then I'll open the vault, which will lead to Ironwood escaping Salem with a large portion of the kingdom and standing down from his bomb threat, and then I'll die!" So you want them to kill you to avoid... other people not dying? And you want to die so you don't... die?

It's absolute nonsense.

This is basically a long-winded way of saying that killing Penny in that moment wouldn't benefit the good guys in any way, shape, or form. The fact that Penny suggests it at all is monumentally stupid. It's a Deep, Dramatic Moment that makes absolutely no sense. "You have to kill me!" she cries... even though killing her does nothing good, likely does a whole lot of bad, and absolutely does a Big Bad by hurrying along one of the major things everyone is trying to prevent: Penny's death.

Of course Ruby said no. That's the smartest Ruby is in the whole volume.

But when Jaune is faced with the question? Well, it's meant to be a very different context. I've gone on the record multiple times as saying that the show did a HORRIBLE job of justifying the need to kill Penny, but I also recognize that we're supposed to believe that was the best option on the table. Unlike at the manor, Penny's death does achieves something here: giving her the ability keep the powers safe. It's also presented as inevitable: Penny will (supposedly) die regardless, so better that she die when she chooses, preventing Cinder from getting more power, then dying in a few minutes with more risks attached. The manor death had nothing going for it. The finale death — no matter how badly executed — is meant to be justified to some extent, whether we personally agree it or not. We're still meant to realize, "Yeah, Penny is dying, no way to avoid it, so killing her will at least help keep the power out of Cinder's hands and will give her some agency over the time she has left." It's still stupid, but it's a "You wrote this scene really badly" stupid rather than a "This entire concept is nonsensical" stupid.

So Ruby has never actually been in Jaune's position. For all her insistence that she won't let anyone die, Ruby has never actually been in a scenario where killing someone would do the most good for the world, or would put someone out of their misery, or would give them some agency over their own existence — all the things that Penny's death is (again) supposed to represent. We don't know what she'd choose if death was inevitable and she was faced with providing a "kinder" death, or what she'd choose if a death was, from a practical perspective, presented as the best way forward. That's because right now the story is horribly written and Ruby isn't forced to choose anything, but if they actually brought her back to her Volume 1-5 self, I can easily see her killing her mother as an act of kindness. Summer was turned into a monster by Salem. The very thing she's spent her whole life trying to eradicate. There is no possible, other way to help her. She is a danger to Ruby and all of her friends. Perhaps, if a part of her is still lucid, she expresses that she doesn't want to continue living like this, being the thing she despises, being Salem's tool, being a danger to her daughter. So Ruby kills her as an act of mercy and love. It's presented as a release from a nightmare existence.

But that potential, future characterization depends on whether Ruby understands the choice Jaune made. Again (again, again, again) I think the story did a terrible job writing that scene and that it didn't succeed in justifying the kill, but for the purposes of what I think the story was trying to do, Ruby may well parrot all that back in Volume 9: "Yes, Jaune. Penny was dying and there was no way to save her even though your semblance is healing. There was nothing else you could have done even though you might have gotten her through the portal and saved here there. Killing her then kept the powers safe messy lore aside. You did the right thing, horrible as it was." And that acts as setup for Ruby doing the same thing for Summer later on. Either that, or she's initially furious at Jaune and comes to realize — after some messy and contradictory character arc — that he did the right thing all along and she was just too grief-stricken to realize it. Which I will hate if we get that given how badly it'll all end up lol.

So those are the two theories I'm leaning towards. Either the story, in the fashion of Volume 8, will ensure that Ruby never has to make the hard choice of whether to kill her mom or not (oh god I'm imagining a scene where Yang offers to do it instead as some act of sisterly devotion/a sacrifice so the "pure" sister remains pure no no no no), or Summer's situation is (no doubt just as badly) presented like Penny's second request for death, as a necessary act that Summer wants, will assist the heroes in some way, and is definitely the Best and Only Thing To Do.

Of course, Option C is that this is... just never resolved. It definitely speaks to my lack of faith in RWBY atm, but given how many important things we've dropped I would not be surprised if Summer is never actively introduced into the series again. RWBY may well treat this as the answer to a mystery that never existed until said "answer" arrived, the writers viewing this merely as the explanation of what happened to Summer and nothing more. Don't get me wrong, viewers are 100% right to expect more in the future. This change raises even more questions than were already attached to Summer's disappearance and the existence of the Hound absolutely implies that, in a well written story, grimm!Summer will appear somewhere down the line. But, to be blunt, RWBY is not a well written story. So if some number of years from now we look back and go, "Wow, the answer to how they'll handle this is that they... didn't. This was never brought up in a meaningful way again" I really wouldn't be surprised.

#rwby #mymetas