#Block -Out Boards

[egophiliac]

if they release equestrian club cards I swear if silvers horse isn't named something like Reginald and sebeks isn't something like cheddar cheese I might cry

bad news: Sebek's regular horse is named Tempest (sorry 😔), and Silver's is Samson (yes you're very cute Twst)

good news: the reason we know this is because they were fighting about whose horse was prettiest

[marvel-lous-guy]

Tony: The compound has been quiet recently. It's both unsettling and refreshing

Peter: Its not been quiet, you just haven't left your lab for 76 hours

[mosquitinho]

from my Unemployment Celebration last friday night !

[bestworstcase]

Anything from Volumes 1-3 that is setup that you don't think is given enough attention or respect for good setup?

Sidenote to this:

Open seat with no person in it + Salem having someone looking for the Choice Relic was hinting at Summer Rose. Did we have anything hinting at her pre Beacon's Fall or just things that she fits given additional context?

regarding summer specifically, while i wouldn’t call them hints per se, there are a handful of beats in v1-3 that smell like foreshadowing to me:

the first is “she was right about you; such arrogance.” – cinder might well be referring to salem here, of course. however. what strikes me about this remark is that arrogance is not a characteristic that salem seems to perceive in ozma; rather she describes him, in her soliloquies and songs, as a self-destructive, deceitful, manipulative fool blinded and trapped by his faith in the old gods. cowardly. fallen from grace. think of what she says to oz in 8.9—look how you’ve diminished, how you’ve lessened yourself—she sees him groveling at the feet of tyrannical monsters and sees debasement.

does it follow for salem to characterize ozpin to cinder as, primarily, arrogant? i’m not convinced it does. but summer rose? well… hm. consider, also, that the full line is “this whole time, right beneath our feet… she was right about you; such arrogance…” <- i think it is more likely than not that “she” is someone inside the brackets of “our,” and in context “our” is either [cinder + ozpin] or [cinder + her associates physically present at beacon].

in the event that “she” is not part of “our” the more naturalistic phrasing is “beneath our feet… salem was right about you” – because “she” otherwise has no antecedent. of course, some allowance here for this to be a narrative choice not to name salem yet, but we’re one (1) episode off from revealing her face and by this point we’ve known for a while that cinder works for someone else, so the choice to drop the name here or in the volume credits is of fairly trivial importance. unless of course cinder isn’t talking about salem.

second: “Oh! We've also stopped some bad guys, too! I guess it's like they say: "like mother, like daughter"! I still wonder why Ozpin let me into the school early…” [laugh track] – obv this part of ruby’s address to summer’s memorial headstone foreshadows ozpin’s conspiracy and team strq’s involvement therein. but it also foreshadows this exchange:

RUBY: We don’t have to kill you to stop you, and we will stop you. SALEM: Your mother said those words to me… she was wrong, too.

and i think it bears pointing out that ruby is wrong here, and later in the volume qrow specifically calls attention to this and lays out why she’s wrong. team rwby didn’t stop the bad guys; they cut off one avenue of attack and cinder circled around from a new direction that took advantage of torchwick’s imprisonment, and this also resulted in the public break between ozpin and ironwood which eroded the cohesion of the inner circle. ergo, ruby thinks she stopped the bad guys but in the long run the consequences of the breach all benefited salem.

looks into the camera like im on the office.

like mother, like daughter!!!

further, that sequence of events ultimately leads to the final confrontation between her and torchwick – wherein he declares “if you can’t beat them, join ’em,” and shortly gets eaten by a grimm right after making it clear that he intends to kill her. torchwick’s death is thematically motivated – a narrative rejection of his cynical every-man-for-himself, dog-eats-dog outlook – but consider that:

summer rose, if she is indeed salem’s willing agent, is certainly at beacon tonight – because she’d be the one who stayed behind to hold the fort.

summer is thus the one salem instructs to “reinforce our numbers at beacon,” meaning the grimm; that instruction only makes sense if the person receiving it can communicate with or command grimm. ergo, summer must have some degree of control over grimm.

ruby is disarmed and on the ground getting beaten by a man who fully intends to kill her, and a grimm swoops down out of nowhere to eliminate him faster than he can blinks. and then… the grimm rears up, roaring at her, and comes down with a sweep of its wings that creates a blast of air that pushes her away. that isn’t aggression!! that’s a defensive threat display!! (the feilong in v4 does the exact same thing – trying to push the boat away). it’s ruby who charges the gryphon, and while it lunges forward in reaction to her charge, all that happens is she gets her feet on its head and pushes off to leap over it, and the grimm goes fucking flying so hard it crashes into the ship’s interior and never emerges. the point being,

math.

it’s plausible that the grimm was drawn to torchwick’s murderous rage. but the way it behaves immediately after it swallows him – that very clear “get away from me please” body language, and ruby -apparently- kicking a grimm the size of a goddamned clydesdale dozens of feet and then through the hull of a literal warship? ruby is strong, but she’s not… that strong. but if the grimm didn’t want to engage her and propelled itself under and past her at the same time as she vaulted off its head? that would explain what happens perfectly – ruby’s kick altered its launch trajectory just enough that it crashed.

minutes later, someone loyal to salem scraped a very badly injured cinder off the top of beacon tower and left ruby alive where qrow would find her. salem’s vested interest in keeping ruby alive is VISIBLE throughout the battle for beacon, and notably include a perfect opportunity to capture her while she’s in a coma atop beacon tower that isn’t taken – suggesting that salem makes her singular attempt to capture ruby solely to reassure cinder that Something is being Done.

and if summer rose has command over grimm and was at beacon that night… the gryphon’s behavior is exactly what i’d expect if all the grimm had marching orders to insure this one girl in particular – the spitting image of their commander – doesn’t come to serious harm. there’s a nonzero chance that gryphon did in fact save ruby On Purpose!

…and that happens in the context of a fight between ruby and the bad guy she thought she stopped (but she was wrong), who joined salem because “if you can’t beat em, join em.” (salem voice) she was wrong, too…

also

<- like mother like daughter. summer had a nevermore’s eye view of the battle for beacon, in this essay i will –

third: this one is something i didn’t really Think About until v9 and specifically the v9 ost dropping, but some of the things cinder says in v2-3 strike me as like – she got that from summer im sure of it. for example, in midnight, cinder’s view of huntsmen is that they’re free, they have power, they can go anywhere and do whatever they want, and rhodes never contradicts this. where did she get “huntsmen and huntresses should conduct themselves with honor and mercy”? who taught her the aspirational moral ideal?

summer rose, maybe.

but in the deeper sense,

where did cinder get the ‘destiny’ conceit? her underlying beliefs about how the world is are a product of her childhood, but the overt framing of fate/destiny isn’t present in midnight; nor has salem ever spoken of destiny and her philosophical views are in many ways a rejection of destiny – salem does not believe in fate, she is the woman who dedicated her life to toppling the gods.

and on close examination this looks like yet another suspiciously summer rose shaped hole!! “you’re special, ruby […] special the way your mom was special […] it was said that those born with silver eyes were destined to lead the life of a warrior.” – in after the fall, ozpin gives coco an entire pep talk whose central conceit is embracing and submitting to the turns of fate – sacrifice “show them gods and deities/blind and keep the people on their knees” & guide my way “you were born to hypnotize them all/they all said their prayers/can you hear me up there?”

cinder, of pyrrha: “people assume she’s fated for victory, when she's really taking fate into her own hands. interesting. add her to the list.” & “it’s not about overpowering the enemy; it’s about taking away what power they have.”

<- that second statement is salem’s strategic doctrine, through and through. but the ‘power’ cinder is talking about here is derived through manipulating the perception of destiny; the self-fulfilling prophecy. the invincible girl cannot be touched because she makes subtle adjustments to insure that no one is able to try. it is pyrrha’s belief in destiny that destroys her, as it destroys ozma. ozpin invokes fate to justify and explain his choices. those born with silver eyes are destined to lead the lives of warriors.

summer rose was destined to live and die fighting the grimm – so the world promised her. maybe she believed, maybe she felt like she had no choice but to accept her prescribed fate. until she met salem, and took fate into her own hands. made a choice. broke the chains. it’s about taking away what power they have, like salem did when she tore the scales from summer’s eyes, like summer did when she refused her destiny and joined hands with the grimm instead.

what does summer rose look like through cinder’s eyes? she was a huntress. she was literally destined to be one of the greatest huntresses in history, a hero, the shining pillar upholding the world order that chose the enslavement of children as a fair price for peace. fate dictated that she be the icon, the idol, the embodiment of the system that brutalized and subjugated cinder – she had every privilege cinder could ever dream of, freedom and security and a home, a loving family – and she chose to walk away.

and if they talked about that like, ever, and specifically if summer talked about that warrior’s destiny as a cage, a curse she had to escape – is it any wonder that cinder would adopt that framing to make sense of what happened to her? if summer rose was fated to stand at the pinnacle, then does it not follow that cinder fall was fated to be ground into the foundations? and likewise, if summer rose can shatter her pedestal and fall from grace, then cinder fall can shatter her chains and rise. summer proves that the idea of destiny is powerful but not inviolate. and it is hollow, it is a lie, a fiction, and that means it can be taken away. revealed as a deception. destroyed.

anyway

to the broader question

i think people really, really do not give the jaundice arc enough credit for the long-term set up it’s doing.

(or the very overt textual statement from THE HISTORY PROFESSOR! placing the blame for the violent radicalization of the white fang squarely on human bigotry and persecution of faunus in general; the white fang arc is clunky and hamstrung by the inadequacy of its vocabulary, but the fandom talking point that the narrative perspective on this subject has “evolved” or “improved” is just. not true. v1 is very emphatically clear that 1. terroristic violence is not activism, 2. ascribing the terroristic violence of a few to an entire minority group to rationalize bigotry is bigoted in and of itself and completely unacceptable, and 3. violent radicalization is created through relentless discrimination and hate, which creates a self-reinforcing circle wherein the justifiable outrage of the persecuted outgroup and the extreme violent reactions provoked by the persecution are distorted into a justification for further persecution by those of the in-group who materially benefit from perpetuating this cycle!!! all of this is explained in an almost afterschool special manner by the main character faunus rights activist and the history professor!!! in volume one!!! what changed is that the writers developed the skill and vocabulary necessary to weave these ideas into their storytelling in a more effective and more cogent way!!! literally begging the rwby fandom to start listening to the actual words the characters say)

ahem. the jaundice arc lays so much of the groundwork for jaune’s and ruby’s character arcs reaching all the way to v9 and undoubtedly beyond; it sets up the first pieces of the ozlem fractal; it foreshadows the white fang arc and sets up blake’s character arc of self-reclamation and figuring out how she wants to use her voice as an activist; it draws attention to the misogynistic cultural norms that define and are defined by the history between ozma and salem; it lays the foundation for the scene in v2 where ozpin questions blake, which hits the way it does because we have the context of anti-faunus harassment occurring openly at ozpin’s school and nobody doing anything about it, and by extension is the first stroke of the salem-faunus connection that is almost certainly the keystone holding the entire narrative together because it is her relation to the faunus that provides the key to decipher the lost fable.

the jaundice arc is a crucial load-bearing pillar that supports the entire narrative and people revile it because nobody in this fandom can be fucking normal about jaune. lmao

[the-real-couchrat]

A new chapter of ‘Transdimensional Arc, Alcor Finds a Ford!’ (by @random-dragons-interest-hoarde) came out, so I revisited some old doodles from back when chapter two was published. (These are newer versions)

I tried to be clever on how dinosaur clothing would work on Ford, but I think I just made it needlessly complicated

“Why does Ford’s fin look different?” Because no one can agree what the Spinosaurus looked like and I stopped paying attention, only to realize my mistake while writing this post.

More versions below:

No clothes

Clothes no shading

Close up clothes

Close up swimming/flying

If you haven’t read the fic yet, GO DO IT!!!! It’s worth it, and there’s not many chapters out yet so it won’t be hard to catch up! (And it has DINOSAURS and TALKING DOLPHINS)

[intermundia]

Mace exhaled hard, and rubbed his face again, smoothing his expression. “Of course, Master. I am sorry. But if we make every right choice, and it leads to our annihilation, doesn't that mean that our criteria of what is a right choice is wrong?”

i LOVE seeing a dissident windu. absolutely loving how you characterize him in war drums!!

hehehe i'll be honest and say i stole his characterization wholesale from the revenge of the sith novelization from stover, there's a fascinating passage in there where he talks about civilization and peace that was formative to how i understand his perspective. vader gave him a nudge of information that he was tragically missing in canon, but i was extrapolating from the novelization very closely about how he'd respond (imho). i'm glad it hits right, mace windu is an all time favorite character of mine, and i want to do him justice

[sofiasfanartcollection]

Game night! Playing a game of Scrabble :]

Was inspired by @olliethescribe ’s answer to my ask about what Warren and Hypno’s favorite games would be :D

And I included River (my mutant sona) for fun :] She’s not winning by the way, she’s just happy to be there. Warren on the other hand—he’s got a q and he knows how to use it!

And some sketches of a game of Jenga too :] Warren’s not as much in his element here.

[corvidaedream]

logging my meals not to lose weight but to leave a paper trail so that when i feel like im losing my mind and the world is ending i can look back and see its bc ive eaten one handful of shredded cheese and a can of ginger ale all day

[audreythevaliant]

I think a large part of why adulthood has been so much less exciting and desirable to continue living (sometimes) to me is that I really have very few good and close friends like I did in my childhood and teens. I really need to do something to fix this, but it is for sure a lot more challenging as an adult.

[villainvillain]

chapter 3s weird route/S-rank route is personally more unsettling to me than chapter 2s and i cant really explain why. we arent even controlling a close friend of ours and forcing her to kill people. idk i guess it captures that sorta cursed “videogame creepypasta” vibe in a way that Hits good in my brain

[vivacia-18]

After many years, guess who decided to try their hand at bookbinding again?

That's right, me! And of course I chose I giant of a fic, because I am nothing if not ambitious XD. I think it's 3 inches or more thick, and came to a whopping 1088 pages! The fic is Count Your Blessings by @madmothmadame , a Founders Era Tobirama centric fic and I cannot recommend it enough <3 <3 <3

My cover fabric and end paper are pretty simple, one part because I thought it suited the story, one part because I had them on hand, and one part because I'm a raw beginner and that's about as good as I could manage XD

It took a lot of waffling on my part (graphic design is NOT a great skill of mine) but overall I ended up really happy with how the title page came out - if I had the artistic skill to paint/draw it or the supplies to transfer it, this would have gone on the cover as well. Alas, for now it shall remain inside only.

A little detail that gave me some grief, as I waffled on font style and size a bit, but ultimately I'm really pleased with it - I used a plum blossom branch as the scene break throughout the book. If you've read the fic, you probably know why I picked that particular image for this and the title page ;)

I realized after printing that some of my paper had gotten a bit aged, even though it was stored in the printer. I wasn't about to waste the paper, ink and time for a reprint though, so I left it. Since the book is for me, little things like that are no bother. I was just glad I didn't fuck up in the printing or signature sewing order X'D

I included the authors notes from the end of each chapter as a bonus section at the end, so they'd be preserved with the story but not breaking up the flow of reading the book ^_^

Final view, this time from the spine - think I left the gap a little to wide between the cover boards and spine but eh, again this is just for me and only my third binding ever (and certainly the largest! XD) so I'm still really pleased overall.

A very fun experience, and I'm looking forward to my next re-read of the story, where I'll be doing it with my very own chonky boi version held in my hands :3

[ef-1]

Sending this to you specifically because I feel like you understand it best and you never shy away from calling Daniel out. Not an apologist for rich men, every single one of them is fucked up and has done fucked up shit. Would never defend Daniel from things he deserves to be criticized for, but so much of the uhhh 'dialogue' right now is just hate wanking lol. There is this blog who genuinely made a post celebrating that she would have never been able to tag Daniel hate in the past because he was too popular and she willingly (?!) admitted she regularly searches him up to look for hate and 'smile' LMAO? We're not even doing the ole' moralising our hatred thing now? Allow it 😭

1. where are you fucking finding these people I just screamed.

2. That one derek pope lyric

[moomeecore]

i found a book abt the anti lawn movement at the library & decided to sit out in my yard & read it. but ironically there was a neverending barage of power tool noises making it difficult to focus. so i walked to a nature park near me in order to escape the dreaded sounds. almost stopped at the mowed picnic table area bc i hate walking but fortunately pushed forward and made myself walk up an annoying hill to an area that is a preservation of a native oak savanna & sat down against a tree near the edge of the path & did my reading there. and honest to god that was a 100/10 experience. there was something so powerful abt being in a preserve for a locally native habitat while reading abt the impacts homeowners can have on native plant preservation! it powered up my energy towards my life mission (evangelize abt enviormentally sustainable gardening to every single person who comes within a 10 ft radius of me) by like. 15 points. also a deer walked up to me and that was super cool

[not-sewell]

just hopping by to say that one day im going to be able to get over myself and sit and see through the mona x nate drabble that has been sitting in my google docs for 2 years

[kinokoshoujoart]

i couldn’t find a video of this version so here’s Rock’s post engagement event if you choose the negative option for my own reference. please enjoy my framerate dropping to hell trying to record anything because of all my mods

[starsforhours]

Ok but like what IS Ruben's aesthetic and what clothes does he like???

We know Jon likes to dress more on the modest side - im picturing dark academia, Angel likes to be a more revealing - for him I picture like 70's glam/stage wear, and Zach loves emo culture, but what about Ruben? His Galatic/Chorus costume was a soft dark academia boy, but what does he really like to wear? I feel like despite being one of the main characters, the book doesn't go too deep into this???