#There are probably a ton of typos in this but meh

[some-cookie-crumbz]

Kidge Parent HC Part 2.5

Previous Part Links:

Kidge Married Pre-Babies: [here]

Kidge w/ Babies Part 2.1: [here]

Kidge w/ Babies Part 2.2: [here]

Kidge w/ Babies Part 2.3: [here] *There’s a little angst in this one, FYI

Kidge w/ Babies Part 2.4: [here]

HEY LONG TIME NO RAMBLE SO SORRY ABOUT THAT!!! School and Work and blah, ya know how it goes! Let’s get into the fun stuff, though, shall we? :3c

I decided to break this one down by dynamics; specifically, I’ll start by talking generally about Keith and Pidge as parents, family dynamics/routines that are the same between all the kids, then their relationships with each of the kids, and then we’ll get into what, exactly, the kids are like themselves. I’ll be stopping off with information once we hit around the 12-13 age with each kid and will resume explaining things in the next part from there, as there will be one more part.

There will be one more part focusing on more on the kids in their later teens/ young adult/ adult years, so there will be some Kidge Grandparent stuff in there! Hopefully I can get that part out much sooner than it took me to get this part out, but I am going to warn that I want to try and get one update completed for each of my current fics before I start really focusing in on the next part, so there will be a bit of a wait.

Also, up until the point I explain how he got the nickname, I’ll be calling Newt by his actual name of Oliver. Just wanted to add that so there wasn’t any confusion as to why I shift names halfway through.

First little random side note that I wanted to mention!!!

Keith does pretty well about maintaining his workout routine, though he definitely skips days more often once Pidge first gets pregnant – wanting to make sure to look after her, make sure she isn’t overworking herself, etc. – and becoming a bit more sporadic as the kids are born. Normally he can sneak in a session while the kids are taking naps or otherwise occupied, though. Matt teases that his six-pack is more of a four-pack now. Additionally, he gets a bit more relaxed about shaving his face. He’ll let himself get a bit scruffier just because he’s more focused on Pidge and the kids and forgets he should probably do something with that scruffy nonsense cropping up.

He goes from being Fitness Keith into Rugged Dedicated Daddy Keef. Pidge loves him just the same because, as far as she’s concerned, he’s still the same romantic goof she fell for.

Having four babies also affects Pidge’s body physically a bit. She does pretty good about maintaining a healthy balance of foods during her pregnancies, but there’s always a bit of weight gain as a side effect, plus pushing a small human body from your own tends to do a bit of widening to the hips, giving her a sort of pear-shaped silhouette; and, she is admittedly a bit salty that her breasts don’t get too much more in the area of growth as a result. She also does a moderate job about working out between pregnancies once she’s healed, but she’s not particularly worried or stressed about having a little extra weight packed on. It’s not a particularly large amount that she gains and she carries it well, but she definitely has a little bit of pudge around the middle. Most of it, though, goes to her thighs.

Becoming a mom basically makes Pidge a bit more Thicc™. Keith is absolutely 100% okay with this and still sees Pidge as the most incredible woman he’s ever known.

Okay, back to the tooth-rotting sweetness! :3

This is just something I need to say outright; they have baby books for each of the kids that are overloaded with pictures of their first full year in the world, with little notes stating when they had their first smile/laugh/word/step/tooth. They also save the onesies that each baby was brought home in and keep them in little shadow boxes with other sentimental items as the kids get older because they’re incredibly sentimental about all of it.

Pidge’s office at the Garrison is covered in photos of her, Keith and the kids, and if you notice she’s in a pissy mood? Point to one of the pictures and ask her what the family was doing when that was taken. She’ll start excitedly regaling you with how amazing her kids and husband are. Likewise, Keith carries a little pocket-album of family photos on him practically everywhere. If you’re meeting him for the first time and need to break the ice? Ask him if he has any pictures of his family, which you’ve heard so much about. He will immediately decide you are Good People and tell you all about how great they are and how much he loves them.

Keith is by far the more protective parent in their duo. Part of this is because he's always wanted a family and wants to be a Good Dad™ but thinks he has to work harder at it because he didn’t have a healthy family environment to grow up in. His dad died when he was young and Krolia wasn't around during his younger years so he frets over not knowing how to be a Good Parent™. Pidge always reassures him that so long as he makes sure to let the kids know how much he loves them, he's gonna be an absolutely phenomenal dad. It helps a bit during her first pregnancy and once Amber's actually there, in his arms, he realizes that they're all gonna be just fine.

He promises each of the kids when he first gets to hold them that he's gonna always be there to love and protect them. Takes any chance he can to reiterate that to them, too.

Pidge tends to be a bit more relaxed in her approach, in that she’ll give the kids a bit more independence sooner than Keith thinks they should, but by some strange proxy she tends to be the disciplinarian more often. Mostly because, while Keith will dish out punishments and lectures when necessary, it's clear he feels way guiltier about it than she does. Pidge, meanwhile, does not take mutiny in the ranks of the Kogane home lightly despite the fact that she was the LITERALLY embodiment of mutiny in her teen years; and, to specify, the kids only get in trouble when they knowingly do things they’ve been told or taught not to. They’ll let the kids slide the first two or three times they make a mistake after they learn not to do something, but once it clearly becomes a matter of testing how much their parents will put up with, the hammer gets dropped.

Since I'm on the subject, sometimes they do disagree about how to parent the kids, but they take the time to talk and find compromises. It’ normally a matter of Keith being a hyper-cautious Mother Hen, but there are points where Pidge is giving the kids more credit in regards to maturity/ responsibility than they deserve. I’ll expound on that sentiment more once we get further down the line.

Also, regarding punishments, they agree to using timeouts and sending the kids to their rooms when they're little, and graduate to revoking privileges and grounding as they get older.

Also, they're both terrible about co-sleeping. Like, initially Pidge insists it's okay because it makes things easier for her. Newborns need to be fed every 2-3 hours for the first couple of weeks. It's just easier for her to be able to either unclasp her nursing tank top or tug her shirt up, let the baby latch on to her boobie, and then pass back out. Eventually the baby will get milk drunk and pass out, too. Once the babies can go longer without feeding, they start trying to get them settled in their bassinette so they get used to sleeping in a spot by themselves so the transition to the crib is easier. But then they'll get fussy and Keith and Pidge feel bad because the baby is clearly sad and lonely and wants love. So they'll get up and bring them into bed for sleepy snuggles with Mommy and Daddy.

They do eventually get the kids transitioned from co-sleeping to their cribs. In order from easiest to hardest, it goes as follows; Oliver - and the irony of that isn't lost on Mommy and Daddy -, Kaden, Amber and lastly Aria.

When the kids get scared at night, they'll still clamor into bed with them. Aria does it the most and Amber does it the least, while the boys fall into a middle ground where they’re about equal with each other. There have been a handful of instances where they end up with all four kids in bed with them – specifically during really bad storms - and Keith is always grateful he let Pidge talk him into ordering the special extra-large king-sized bed from the planet Hintinue because there is no way they’d be able to fit six people on a regular king comfortably.

Keith and Pidge are really affectionate parents. Like, if one of the Kidgelings’ wants some cuddles? They will get those cuddles, no questions asked, regardless of the circumstances. Mommy’s drafting up a new schematic for an alternate generator for the Garrison to use? Fuck the Garrison; Pidge will push her projects aside to scoop the needy tot up in her arms, pressing little kisses to their head and rubbing circles into their back. Daddy was getting ready to do his workout in the basement gym? Leg Day is on hold; Keith has a responsibility to snuggle up with whichever baby it is, tucking their head under his chin and chatting with them softly about this or that.

I’ve always imagined that the Holt’s are an incredibly close, affectionate family that just exudes love and acceptance, so for Pidge this is just natural. These are her babies and they deserve all the snuggles and smooches they could ever want or need. It’s her gosh darn responsibility and she is more than willing to take it on. I also think that this mentality from the Holt’s probably boggled Keith’s mind when he started dating Pidge and they just… Kinda took him in with open arms. Probably a bit of an adjustment period for him but he learned that he actually really admired and emulated how open the relationship within his wife’s extended family is.

For Keith, it’s a matter of wanting to give his kids what he didn’t really get. Like, I imagine that Ethan Kogane was a great dad, who always told and showed Keith how much he loved him, but he was also a single father with a young child he was trying to raise all alone. And he died when Keith was still pretty young. I know the series hasn’t said what age he was, but I always leaned towards Keith being about seven/eight when it happened. And, obviously, Krolia wasn’t around when he was young for him to have an affectionate, doting mother figure either. Also, I think Krolia is certainly a loving mother, but I think that she’s sometimes unsure of when physical displays are appropriate with Keith because of the time they spent apart.

I think that would help to explain some of Keith’s canon struggle in how to properly interact with other people, and why he is probably the Paladin who has had the least physical shows of affection with other characters, but the ones he’s had have been deeply significant to his character. This rationale is also why I choose to read/ interpret him as the kind of father that I do. Keith is definitely someone who loves the people around him but isn’t always sure how to express it though this doesn’t apply so much to Pidge herself because she has straight-up told him to shower her in affection whenever he wants because she’s gonna do the same. But with little kids? As someone who lives in a house with a three-and-a-half year old and a nine month old baby, I can assure you they love nothing more than attention and physical affection. Interacting with the kids, Keith doesn’t need to worry so much about his physical affection being unwanted.

They’re just really loving parents, you guys.

Until all four kids are officially in school, Keith is a stay-at-home Daddy, at Pidge's insistence. She makes a bit more than him and most of his work can still be done from the house. They agree they don't want their kids spending eight hours a day in a daycare program with a bunch of people they don’t know very well. Plus Pidge thinks it’ll be really good for Keith because, when they first have the conversation about it after Amber’s born, poor guy gets extremely uncomfortable and anxious over the idea of handing their precious little lady over to a stranger for an extended period of time.

They do, however, get the kids signed into a little pre-school program for the two years before they enter kindergarten. The program only goes for three hours in the morning so Pidge will drop them off and Keith does the pickup. They do it so the kids can get ahead academically, as well as to make sure they have good social skills. While they're at pre-school, Keith works on whatever work assignment he's been given and then works on it again while the kids nap.

He, Allura and Shay form a sort of gossipy housewives group where they occasionally meet up after picking the kids up to grab lunch and talk smack about the obnoxious parents they encounter. Pidge dubs them the Soccer Mom Squad. Lance offers to make them all matching t-shirts.

As a small bonus, while the kids are at home with Keith, he’ll do fun little arts and crafts projects with them. Finger-paints, ceramics, drawing, making bead animals, scrapbooking… You name it, he’s figured out how to and has done it with the kids at least once. He and Pidge save literally everything the kids make for them ever to keep on the desks at work, or on their desks at home, or just keeping them saved in containers to keep them safe and because they’re both ridiculously sentimental.

In regards to the Holidays, I’ve always liked the idea that Pidge’s maternal side of the family is of Jewish heritage, while Samuel’s family was a bit more agnostic and partook in Christmas based solely on the fact that they supported the main ideals Christmas was meant to represent; i.e. Being kind to your fellow man, spending meaningful time with your family, giving to those that have less, etc. I also like the idea that Keith’s father was not someone who aligned to a specific religion and more fell in line to Christmas based on the commercialism and to give a young Keith something to look forward to during the holiday season. As such, the Kidgelings celebrate Hanukkah with the Holt’s as well as Christmas with the whole family. Additionally, they’ll go partake in community events to help their fellow man.

While Keith and Pidge are both practical people, they still kiss any boo-boos the kids get after they clean and cover them. It's just Good Parenting 101.

Also, Keith and Pidge take turns packing lunches for the kids to take to school once they start. Each time they do, they’ll use a sharpie – in their respective color, of course – and leave little notes on the Ziploc baggies that they put one of their little snacks. It’s always well wishes, but sometimes they’ll add little bonus points if they know the kid has something big going on that day too. Things like “Knock’em dead in the soccer team tryouts!” and “You’re going to kill that math test this afternoon!” that are just little things but the kids seriously love that their parents do that for them.

Keith joins the PTA so that he can help out with funding events and always know what's going on with the kids' extracurricular activities. For the longest time, the PTA parents are convinced Keith's a widower, due to Pidge being MIA at a lot of the events. This normally happens due to situations such as other functions for one of the other kids coinciding with the one Keith's attending or one of the kids being sick and needing to stay home. The other PTA parents gossip over their thirst for Rugged Dedicated Daddy Keef, with the boldest of them actually going so far as to openly flirt with the oblivious doof.

They all realize they were wrong when, at the science fair, they see Keith, balancing a sleepy three year old Aria on one hip, holding the hand of a fiery little bombshell blonde who is arguing with the judges because "Excuse me my son LITERALLY reverse-engineered a piece of alien technology and then rebuilt it using Earth tech and you give him a participation ribbon? And give first place to the kid who lit a light bulb with a potato? Oh Heckle deckle naw!"

They still thirst after him, but they are quieter about it. And some of them may even start thirsting after both the Kogane parents who are we to judge them? We'd all be just as bad let's be real.

Keith sings to all the kids when they're little and each of them has their own special song he only sings for them. He does, however, have one song that all four kids share, too. The songs - with links in the titles - are as follows:

All - Heart of Life cover by I Fight Dragons. Original version is by John Mayer but the chiptune cover is just Hella.

Amber - Boats and Birds by Gregory and the Hawk It's symbolic for reasons

Kaden – Somewhere Only We Know by Lily Allen

Oliver - You are the Moon by the Hush Sound

Aria - Into the Woods by Cilla Jane

Pidge loves to read to the kids. When they're super little, she goes with stuff like Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein. As they get older, though, she does more lengthy books like the Warrior Cats series, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Harry Potter Series. Keith will help with the dialogue for male characters while Pidge does the females and narration.

An added bit to the reading thing which I've made reference to in a fic before but wanted to take the time to further elaborate on here; Pidge develops little headbands for the kids to wear while she reads. It'll create the story in a small hologram and depict the events of the tale as the kids' see them. It focuses more the general ideas as they see it instead of the more minuscule, fine details. This is mostly because the kids views of certain things - fur pattern of a cat, color of a dress, etc - may differ and, thus, conflict.

They have a system for bedtime.

First, Pidge and Keith read to the kids before they start doing all the other stuff, all the kids gathered together in the living room with their parents. The kids get bathed every other night but two kids get bathed a night. Amber and Kaden take baths on the same nights, while Oliver and Aria take the same nights. Keith and Pidge take turns with who does what. If Keith bathes the kids, Pidge is responsible for getting them dressed and helping them brush their teeth, and vice versa. Pidge always tucks the kids into bed and turns their nightlight on for them before heading out of the room. Keith always sings to them when he comes in after to help them settle in further.

When the kids are still little beanie babies and in the bath, Pidge says the goofiest, cutest things to them.

*Pidge, gently rinsing Aria off.* “How do you feel now?” *Pauses for a whole second.* “Adorable.” *Said with a small, sassy head warble.*

*Aria giggles excitedly.*

*Pidge, grinning wide as she leans in closer to pick her up.* “And how do you look?” *Pauses for another whole second. “Super adorable!” *Said, again, with sassy head warble.*

*Aria squeals in delight.*

With Keith, he and the kids play elaborate games while they’re in the bath using their little toys. Like, they come up with entire backstories for it and probably spend way longer in the tub post-clean-up than necessary. One such instance involved Newt pretending to be Cthulhu and flooding half the bathroom with a splash and Keith’s pants with the splash he created. Pidge was a little bit displeased with this. Keith ended up having to clean the mess up with the wet pants still on.

So Homework!! They have a system for this too!!

The kids always do their homework at the kitchen table just to assure they it gets done and they don't goof off. They love their kids but they know what to expect from them. Keith helps them with History and English, Pidge takes Math and Science, and they alternate on Geography/ Social Studies/ Whatever the Hell they call it now. Since they also take turns on who makes dinner, they work the system as such: If Keith is making dinner, the kids work with Pidge on her respective subjects while he's cooking. After dinner, while Pidge does the dishes, Keith works on his respective subjects with them. And vice versa, obviously.

Most of the time, the kids will help out, too. They’ll help set the table and, depending on where they’re at with their homework, they’ll help with doing the dishes and putting away any leftovers.

The only night that homework isn't an immediate concern is Friday nights because weekend. Typically, though, the kids still fall in line with the schedule solely because they like having their weekend be stress free so they can go fuck shit up have a lot of fun.

They teach all the kids basic self-defense moves. Amber and Kaden are the only ones that take a vested interest in learning the art of fighting, though, so that becomes a way for those two to bond. Newt learns a decent amount for really dire situations but normally relies on his quick thinking in a fight. Aria doesn't remember jack from what she's taught because she never has a reason to use it. This is due to how she is a Too Smol Cinnamon Roll™ who would never want to fight anyone ever.

Additionally, over the weekend, they tend to do a variety of things from one-on-one kid stuff as well as family-centered things. Sunday nights are typically when they either watch a movie or play board games together.

Okay, now let's talk about the dynamics between each parent and the children individually!

Keith and Pidge each have something special that they only really do with each kid, one-on-one. This is because they want to make sure they know their kids and are close to them, so that way the kids know their parents are always there to support/help them, as well as to give them chances to open up to them if/ when they are facing struggles. It’s also because they want to make sure that the kids feel like they get equal care and attention from both their parents. I’m gonna start with Pidge, and go in birth order with each of the little Kidgelings.

Basically, Keith and Pidge are the kind of parents who, when they say they know what’s going on with their kids, they mean it. And not in the sense that they snoop or pry, but in an organic and respectful way that the kids feel comfortable coming to them about the mundane stuff as well as when a situation gets really challenging for them.

Pidge and Amber bond over B-Grade horror flicks. They love sitting and riffing on the effects, plot, characters, all of it. They’re favorites are Plan 9 from Outer Space, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, and both of the Birdemic films. They make sure to get plenty of snacks and drinks before they start their little movie marathons. They go with Butterfingers, Reese’s, Red Vines, and a bowl of popcorn with, strange as it may seem, chocolate syrup drizzled on top. They go with Dr. Pepper – or Cherry Dr. Pepper when they’re feeling a little different – for their drink of choice and settle in for a Mother-Daughter riff fest.

Pidge and Kaden bond over building small soapbox carts together. Kaden joins a little hobby racing group for kids and they hold frequent charity racing events. The club has a rule, though, that the child participants can only participate with soapbox carts they make themselves; with the help of a parent/ guardian, of course. Pidge, given her knowledge in regards to constructing technology and devices, is the perfect partner to help her son. Pidge actually clears a little area in her garage workshop and buys him a toolkit for his use only. She always takes her time and lets him do a majority of the hard work, serving more as a guiding hand, and Kaden adores getting the chance to gain some firsthand knowledge from his Mom about stuff like this.

Pidge and Newt bond over classic video games, which is to be expected, I think. Newt is the one whose interests and hobbies – for the most part – fall in line with Pidge’s own so they have the most ground to build on. In specific, he’s really intrigued by old game systems and video games from way before he was born. Pidge, being an avid collector, has a wide array for him to get a firsthand experience with. She likes watching him get angry when he gets stuck on puzzles in games and then try to whine at her to tell him the answer. How well-behaved he’s been between their gaming sessions determines how quickly she relents in giving him hints or tips to help him figure things out.

Pidge and Aria end up bonding over, interestingly enough, doing yoga together! One day, when Aria is about six, they’re picking Kaden up from his karate class and notice a flier for a Mommy-Daughter yoga class that one of the dance instructor’s is aiming to start. Aria gets really excited about the idea and asks if they can go, which Pidge agrees to because she can’t say no to one of her babies getting excited about participating in things. They have a blast getting to go to their weekly yoga sessions to get a bit of a workout and spend some one-on-one time for a good while, but then the instructor moves away and the class is cancelled. After that, Pidge invests in some yoga DVDs for at home so they can still do their work out together, using that as a guide.

Sometimes, when Aria notices that he isn’t busy, she’ll invite Kaden to join her and Pidge with their yoga session, since it’s a good way to unwind.

Keith and Amber bond over the great outdoors. I’ve always really kind of loved how Pidge isn’t very interested in nature despite being the Green Paladin, while Keith feels more at ease in those environments. Amber tends to lean towards siding with Keith in this regard. She really likes it when Keith lets her help him with the gardening and other yard work tasks. She loves getting to go out, slip on some gloves, and help Keith with pulling weeds or putting in a new type of plant. Keith teaches her all that he knows about plants and wilderness survival – because, come one. The dude lived in a rundown shack in the middle of the desert for at least one year. Homeboy has to have some decent wilderness survival skills – such as teaching her how to tell what kind of berries are safe to eat, how to use moss on a tree to navigate better, how to start a fire without a lighter/matches, etc.

Keith and Kaden bond over old mecha shows and building models of the mechs they see. I’ve always believed that Keith was a huge fan of giant robot and super sentai shows growing up, so when Kaden starts taking an interest in those kinds of things, he’s eager to encourage and engage in them with him. They’ll power through a whole series of Gundam over the course of a night or two, select their favorite two or three robots, and Keith will look into ordering the model kits for them to construct together. They take turns on who reads off the instructions and who does the actual assembly. So far, their favorites have been the original Mobile Suit Gundam that started the whole franchise and Gundam Wing. Their favorite builds are RX-78-2 Gundam and XXXG-01D Gundam Deathscythe. This hobby is somewhat similar to what he does with Pidge mostly because Kaden likes doing tasks that keep his hands busy.

Keith and Oliver bond over wildlife and animals in general. Remember in the last part where I mentioned that Keith ends up taking Oliver with them on the morning walks because of what a Lil Shit™ he is to Aria? When Keith takes him along, he gives him a little checklist of wildlife common on the path they take and tells him to put a little checkmark next to the name of each one he sees. After this, Oliver becomes greatly fascinated with the habits and differences of the wilderness around their home. Due to Keith having those previously-mentioned wilderness survival skills, he actually knows a lot about the animals so he can answer most questions Oliver has for him. Sometimes they’ll go to wildlife exhibits and museums to further their knowledge, or just go dink around in the wilderness near their house. This led to a time where Oliver located a few Rough-skinned newts in a pond and, knowing very little about them, snatched two up and took them over to show Keith. Fun thing about this type of newt; they release a toxin to deter predators. Keith hastily helped him put them back and, on the way to a nearby public restroom to thoroughly wash his hands clean of the toxins, he explained this to his son. After this, Oliver declared newts his favorite animals and the family gave him his infamous nickname: Newt.

Additionally, because Amber and Newt have somewhat similar interests, Keith will sometimes take them with him for a little one-night camping trip.

Keith and Aria bond over music, obvious as that is. Keith knows how to play the guitar and piano and has a decent set of pipes on him. Plus, he loves getting to sing the kids lullabies, too. Aria’s always been soothed by music and as she grows, so does her passion for the subject. Keith teaches her the piano and will take her to see musicals when they come into the area. Pidge teasingly calls them their “Daddy-Daughter Dates” because of how they’ll go out for dinner either before or after depending on what time the show is. For days afterwards, they’ll randomly burst out into duets of whatever their favorite songs from the show were. Of the shows they’ve been able to see, they’ve liked Wicked, Chicago, and Phantom of the Opera the best. Keith may also have a soft spot in him for Mamma Mia!; Pidge has heard him humming Dancing Queen more times than he’d like her to acknowledge, and teases him about it when she catches him.

Okay, now why don’t we actually talk about the Kidgelings themselves, hm? I’ll be going in birth order again because it’s easier. I may, however, jump around a little bit in this since I’ll try to talk about the relationships between the siblings.

So little Miss Amber Rose Kogane!

Let’s start with some superficial, trivial fun facts; Amber’s favorite color is peach, just like her baby blanket, but she also really likes dark green hues. Her favorite animals are giraffes and deer. Her favorite foods are anything pasta-related, but she’s especially fond of five-cheese lasagna and chicken alfredo. Since Nanny Collie is a master at Italian dishes, she’ll happily make these for the kids when they’re over, and later teaches Amber the family recipe when she’s older. Her favorite desserts are anything mint-flavored, much like Keith. The two of them will often share bowls of mint chocolate chip ice cream together. Her favorite candies are Reese’s and Butterfinger bars. Since they’re the same as Pidge, she’ll often share them with her Momma.

Amber is a snarky, headstrong and confident little thing. She’s quick with a quip or jab at anyone who tries to antagonize her or her siblings. Also, she’s as stubborn as a mule. She will happily get into knock-down drag-out fights with other people – of both the physical and verbal variety – when she knows she’s right. And that, right there, is the big thing about her; Amber will fight tooth and nail when she knows that she is in the right.

Amber is often seen as being a bit arrogant by some of the other kids at school, but really it’s just that she’s confident, self-assured, and brave to the extent that it’s borderline suicidal. Guess which parent she gets that from. She’s learned something significant from both of her parents that have a huge hand in shaping her. From Pidge, she learns to be proud of what she’s good at while working hard at areas where she falls short. From Keith, she learns when to choose her battles, but also that when she chooses to pick the fight, she should see it through; regardless of if she wins or loses.

Her parents are firm with her that they don’t approve of fighting, but they’re also not naïve enough to think that conflict won’t happen sometimes. They were Paladins of Voltron fighting the Galra Empire. They know what it means to be placed in a situation where fighting back may be the only conflict-resolution that yields any kind of meaningful results. So, while they make sure that Amber understands that non-hostile approaches should always be her first approach, they do take the time to make sure that she has the necessary skills to take care of herself if/ when she needs to handle an escalated situation.

They teach all the kids this lesson, but Amber’s the one who tends to need to have a refresher on it most often because she just can’t stop herself sometimes. Amber Rose Kogane lives to fight.

Her tendency towards conflict ends up working well in her favor once she starts taking on extracurricular activities at school. She joins the soccer, volleyball, and track and field teams at school, as well as taking fencing classes and gymnastic courses outside of that. She always liked how good Keith was with a blade, but she finds the rapiers that fencers use to be a bit more suited to her, given that she’s a petite and zippy build. Engaging in somewhat competitive and physically draining hobbies helps to temper her out quite a bit as she gets older. She’s still a bit of an impulsive right-fighter, but she gets a lot better about assessing a situation before she starts in on the smug commentary.

In regards to her relationships with her siblings, she’s probably the closest with Kaden, but she does get along really well with Newt and Aria too. Well, except when Newt’s being an antagonistic lil’ shit; then she puts on her Big Sis Breeches and reminds him how the pecking order works. She and Kaden like to spare together in regards to both fisticuffs and practicing with blades; while being supervised by an adult, of course. Sometimes Newt will come into her room while she’s doing homework and just sit with her, working on some project of his own at the desk she never uses, music playing and the two of them just enjoying some quiet company. Amber and Aria have the least common ground, but the older Kogane definitely has a soft spot for her baby sister, listening to her prattle about the latest bit of gossip within her friend group and offering advice on how to hopefully diffuse the social situation.

Ironically enough, Amber’s really good at thinking of peaceful solutions to conflicts that don’t directly involve her. Not so good at the practicing what she preaches thing, though.

Amber takes her position as the oldest very seriously; though, sometimes, this leads to her butting heads with the others more than she should. Amber tends to be a bit of a nosy busybody, so if she thinks that something’s up with one of her siblings, she’s gonna shove her nose into their business. More times than not, though, once she knows what’s up, she’ll keep quiet and just kind of keep tabs on them. If she thinks they need her help, she’ll intervene. If she thinks it’s outside of her pay wage, she’ll drop subtle hints to Keith and Pidge that something is up. Typically they already noticed, but they appreciate her concern regardless.

While her abrasive attitude makes her a bit difficult to get along with, Amber does have a small group of friends; most of them being boys. The two she’s closest with are Alfor, the oldest of Lance and Allura’s kids, and Richter, Hunk and Shay’s son. Richter tries to be the voice of reason in their little gaggle but, sadly, tends to get ignored a lot when they’re really young. As they get older, though, Amber really values having him as her friend because he can help to keep her from picking needless fights. She and Alfie are kind of like frenemies and, because of this, the “legendary rivalry” between Keith and Lance lives again.

Only this time, the involved Kogane is an active and willing participant with just as much sass as her opponent.

Hunk’s heart goes out to his son, because he’s been there.

One time, when they were playing hide-and-seek at the park, Alfor accidentally broke Amber’s nose. For the game, they made up only three simple rules; you can’t move from your location once you hide, you can’t hide in any of the family cars, and you can’t hide in the bathroom. Amber was it and had found everyone except him.

“Okay, where could he be?” *Amber grumbling, hand son her hip, glaring around angrily.*

“I thought I saw him heading towards the bathroom!” *Patrick, another one of the kids in their rag-tag grade-schooler gang, chimed in.*

“Are you kidding me? Well, Prince of Dorktea just signed himself up as being it next since he broke the stinkin’ rules!” *Amber, furious, marching her way over to the bathrooms*

“But Amber, that’s are the boy’s restroom! You can’t go in there!” *Richter, fretful and reasonable as always.*

*Amber turns, walking backwards towards the little bathroom hut.* “Yeah, and he went in there specifically to try and cheat to win! If he thinks I’m gonna let him win, he’s got another thing coming!”

“Oh man, she’s gonna give it to him good!” *Curtis, another one of their friends, states with a laugh. He then starts jogging after her.* “Come on! We gotta see this!”

*Cue the small group of Richter, Patrick, Curtis, Kaden, and another kid in their group, Monty, pattering along with her. The other boys are all giggly and giddy because they think Amber and Alfor’s fights are funny. Richter has a Bad Feeling™.*

*Amber marches in and looks down at the bottom of the stalls, seeing a set of electric blue and black sneakers scuffing up the cement flooring in the second stall.* “Alfor, you big cheat! Get out here and take your turn being it!” *She begins pounding on the door to add emphasis to her point.*

*There’s a quiet shift and suddenly the shoes are gone.*

“I already saw your feet, dingus! Standing on the toilet isn’t gonna help you none!”

“Go away or I’m gonna tell your Mom and Dad you went into the boy’s room!”

*Cue all the other kids – sans Richter - letting out a scandalized ‘Oooohhhhh!’*

“Go ahead! I’ll just tell your Mom and Dad that you were cheating!”

*Cue another round of jeers from the Peanut Gallery.*

*Alfor suddenly throws the door open with way more force than necessary, causing it to fly full-force into Amber and knocking her flat on her back.* “Don’t you dare, you dirty-! Hey, where’d she-?” *He starts, then pauses when she isn’t there, and looks around. His eyes get really wide when he sees her as she rolls onto her side and starts to push herself upright.* “Uh, A-Amber, are you-?”

“You friggin’ jerk! What’d you do that for?” *Amber turns to face him, scowling and furious with a few tears prickling her eyes, not realizing that her nose is now gushing blood. She reaches up to wipe at her eyes then freezes when her fingers come back bloody. Slowly lifts her head to look at the other kids, who are now pale and aghast, then glares over at Alfor.* “I am so telling on you!”

*The other boys scatter immediately, darting off to avoid being included in the backlash that’ll most certainly come from the grown-ups. Kaden rushes over to Pidge, Keith, Allura and Lance, who are settled at a picnic table talking. Aria is napping in her stroller while Newt is on the swings with Krolia, who they all call Nana Olia. The little guy is shrieking and wailing like mad as he approaches, causing all the adults to go into Panic Mode. Pidge and Keith dart over, meeting him halfway, and Pidge scoops him up.*

“Kaden, baby, what’s wrong? What happened? What hurts?” *Pidge, trying to remain calm, but her tone just a bit urgent and frantic.*

*He’s way too distressed to understand but they at least manage to get “Amber” and “bad owie” out of it. Keith starts to look around for her, glancing over at the playground equipment and swings to see if she’s there, and then towards the little soccer field since sometimes Patrick will bring a ball and they’ll play out there.*

*And then, when his eyes swipe back towards the direction Kaden came from, Amber has trotted up, still scowling, blood having started to stain the front of her shirt, little arms crossed over her chest.* “Dad, Mom, Alfor is a stupid jerk who cheats and then he went and did this to me!” *She points at her still-steadily bleeding nose.*

Keith nearly has a heart attack. Pidge is absolutely livid. The McClain’s lay the law down something fierce with Alfie once he stops hiding in the bathroom.

This isn’t the last time that any of the Kidgelings get hurt pretty bad and Ho Boi does Amber give them another more severe bout of heart attacks about injuries in the future but it is the first time it happens and it freaks them both out something fierce.

Pretty early on into her pre-teen years, when all her classmates are starting to get past the concept of cooties and start to develop attractions to their peers, Amber reveals that she’s not attracted to boys. She is, though, attracted to other girls. She’d always sort of known because she never really thought any of her friends were cute but there were tons of girls in her classes that she thought were cute, she just never really thought much about it when she was younger. Keith and Pidge are both absolutely supportive and accepting of her sexuality, telling her that she’s their baby girl and they’d love her regardless of her sexual orientation. She also talks a lot about it with Uncle Shiro, since he’s openly gay and happily married at this point.

*Amber, shrugging off her backpack and flopping face down on the couch with a loud groan when she comes home from school.*

*Shiro perks up, pouring himself a cup of coffee since he was over visiting.* “Hey there, Ber-Ber. How was school?”

“Beatrice friggin’ Hollinger!” *She lifts her head just long enough to be heard shouting this before flopping back down.*

“Oh, she’s the cute red-head on the volleyball team with you, right?”

*Another long, drawn-out groan from Amber.*

“Come in here with me. I’ll make you a glass of chocolate milk and you can tell Uncle Shiro all about it, my poor Padawan.”

I’ll elaborate much more on these two in another post I’m planning to make *cough IhaveanaskthisfitsbetterinthatI’mstillpreparing cough* so look forward to more information about that there.

On to baby number two; Kaden Ethan Kogane!

So the fun trivial facts with the little guy! Kaden’s favorite colors are any shade of red and any shade of orange, kind of like the predominant hues of a sunrise. His favorite animals are moose, thanks to his dear friend Bob, and he also really loves fennec foxes. His favorite food is anything with meat and, additionally, he really likes artichokes. His favorite desserts are snicker doodle and gingerbread cookies; he loves things that have a bit of spice and kick to them. This is more something he gets from Pappy Sam, so whenever he goes over to visit them, Nanny Collie will make a little platter of cookies for them to share. His favorite candies are anything with dark chocolate, though he also really loves dark chocolate raisins. Keith is also fond of the chocolate raisins and the two will snack on them together.

Kaden may not be the oldest since Amber became an official member of the family roster, but that doesn’t really change much about him. He’s still a very noble little dude who will eagerly throw down for the greater good of those he cares about. He’s a bit more on the reserved side, his appearance not being the only thing that he got from Keith in this regard, but he’s also quick as a whip like his Momma. He, much like Amber, has also inherited the hot-headed tendencies of both their parents, and with him it’s also paired with a pretty short temper – which is quite a bit longer for members of his family - and is even quicker to launch into Fight Mode than his sister. He and Amber are similar in this vein, which is probably another reason why they’ve got such a close bond, but they are a bit different in how they go about it.

He is better than Amber about going for help to the proper authority, but when he does get pushed to his breaking point he hits a lot harder for a lot longer than Amber does. I’ve addressed it a handful of times before in at least two separate fics, but he doesn’t mess around when it comes to the safety of his siblings and friends. Additionally, because of what Kaden’s seen happen with Newt and Aria, he feels very strongly about bullies. While Amber will go to bat for her siblings and her close personal friends, Kaden tends to be a bit more of a vigilante of freedom for his peers in general. If he sees someone getting roughed up by a bully, he’ll square up with the bully and get them to step off.

He also, however, reminds the people being bullied that they need to make sure they speak out to the grown-ups about what’s going on. In some cases, where the bullied student has reached out to teachers but gotten no help, Kaden will teach them the strictly defensive techniques he knows so they can at least protect themselves when he isn’t around. Keith and Pidge don’t necessarily agree with his approach, but they also can’t say they’re angry that he’s trying to help other kids that need it.

As I’ve mentioned somewhere before, he’s the biggest cuddle bug of all the Kidgelings. All the kids like to get paid some attention and affection from their parents, sure, but Kaden? Getting snuggled is his jam. Even as he gets a little older and starts going to school, he’ll sometimes just walk over to Pidge and, without a word, just hold his arms out. She immediately pauses in whatever she’s doing to scoop him up for hug and, until he gets too big for it, she’ll just kind of carry him around like he’s a koala bear on a tree.

Much like Amber, Kaden ends up participating in a few sports teams as well. He joins the soccer – because he wants to be like his big sis – and baseball teams. Outside of that, he joins the little hobby racer group that I mentioned before, and signs up for martial arts classes. He really enjoys participating in the tournaments and getting to test his skills against equally skilled opponents.

As for his bonds with his siblings, as I mentioned, he and Amber are the closest due to their sparing and shared interest in sports. She’ll give him tips and tricks in regards to soccer techniques, showing him how to balance the ball on his head and such. He tends to be the Newt Wrangler as they grow older just because he likes trying to help with keeping things together and take some of the weight off of his parents. This, however, doesn’t mean that he and Newt don’t occasionally get into dumb shenanigans together, because they do; stealing Garrison ships, doing stupid Jackass-style stunts, etc. He and Aria get along pretty good and he’s rather protective of her. Sometimes when he’s working on homework he’ll go join her while she’s practicing her piano or cello because he likes the quiet background noise as he works, and sometimes he’ll know the song she’s trying to play and will hum along to help her figure out where she may be making a mistake in the tune.

Because of his position as a Pillar of Justice, Kaden has a ridiculous amount of admirers, but only a handful of really close personal friends. Part of this is because he really likes hanging out with Amber and the bigger kids she rolls with. Amber lets him because he can keep up with them and she’s a good big sis who likes to let her siblings be included. Outside of that, he also has six friends of his own that he’s close with that are in his own grade. His group and Amber’s eventually just kind of becomes a Frankenstein-like cluster of kids doing goofy stuff.

I’ll elaborate on this more in the next part, but I wanted to at least touch a bit on this relationship. Lance and Allura have a daughter about the same age as Kaden named Raya. The kids are more mutual acquaintances who look after one another because of their parents/ siblings being friends. This is because they have wildly different personalities/ interests/ and having skewed opinions of one another; Raya sees him as an impulsive reclusive meat-head and Kaden sees her as a loud-mouthed spoiled brat. Unlike Amber and Alfor, who have developed The Frenemiship for the Ages, they opt to just leave well enough alone and run in their opposing circles. The only times they interact is when they’re forced to, and even then the worst they do is a smack-talking session.

Well, until one incident, in specific, where he, his friends, Newt and Aria are playing with a ball and it gets stuck up high in a big oak tree in the Kogane backyard. Raya’s over because Allura is visiting with Keith, but she’s just sitting on the back porch flipping through one of those pre-teen magazines.

*Kaden, staring up at the tree, where the ball is teetering on a limb that’s shaped like a really small wishbone.* “Really? Dude, Emmett, we told you not to kick it so hard!”

*Emmett, one of Kaden’s friends, holds both his hands up defensively.* “Hey, it’s not my fault! You know that I’m a straight beast when it comes to this kind of stuff!”

“Oh, is that what they call it?” *Clyde, another of the group, snorts lightly.*

“Come at me, scrub lord. I’m ripped.” *Emmett, dead serious, staring the other kid down.*

“I’ll go get the Frisbee from the front yard. We can play with that instead!” *Aria, trying to be helpful, before scampering off.*

*Newt points to the other side of the house.* “We could go get the ladder. I think Dad left it over there after he checked that loose panel on the roof.”

“Nah, I got this.” *Kaden says before starting to hoist himself up into the tree.*

“Dude, that thing is way up there. I don’t think you’ve ever climbed up that high before.” *Levi, another member of the group, adds.*

“Just means it’s a new accomplishment I can add to my list of achievements.”

*The other boys all cheer him on as he continues to climb up, making sure to grab the branches closest to where they connect to the tree, since that’s where they’re sturdiest. He makes it all the way up to where the ball is at and, with a quick pivot of his body, manages to grab it. He turns and holds it above his head as his friends cheer louder. It’s at this moment, though, that the branch that he was holding snaps and he goes plummeting to the ground below.*

*And when he hits, he hits hard. And there’s a very distinct snapping sound when he does.*

*The other boys crowd around him as he lays there, the wind knocked out of him and blinking to try and ground himself. They’re all talking super-fast and asking him way too many questions for him to think straight.*

“Back up, now! Give him space, you lug heads!” *He hadn’t even heard Raya approach until she was right there, but he kind of appreciates her. She kneels beside him and looks him over, then lets out a small hiss.* “Newt, go get your Dad. Tell him that Kaden’s arm is really hurt and he’s gonna need to go to the hospital.”

“W-What do you-!” *Newt starts to argue, then pales when he sees a sliver of white sticking out of his brother’s skin. He turns on his heels and tears off for the house.* “Dddddddaaaaaaaaaaaaddddddddd!”

*Kaden moves to sit up and Raya helps him, keeping him from using his hurt arm to try and prop himself up. Meanwhile, his three friends are freaking out.* “Oh man! Oh geez! We’re gonna be in so much trouble!”

“Why would any of us get in trouble? Kaden was the one that went up there!”

“None of us tried to stop him, though!”

“Uh, speak for yourself! I totally tried to!”

“You’re so full of crap, Levi!”

*As they prattle on, the pain starts to register for Kaden and his eyes lock on his injury. His breathing starts to escalate and he looks ready to start freaking out.*

*Raya’s eye has started to twitch and she glares up at his friends.* “If you three want to do something helpful, then shut your mouths! You’re only making things worse!” *She watches the trio for a moment and then, upon them all falling silent, she turns her attention back to Kaden.* “Take deep, steady breathes, okay? Here, watch me and do as I do. In, nice and slow, and then out, nice and slow. In, out. In, out.” *She’s extremely soft and patient with him, taking the time to make him focus on her instead of his busted arm. She then briefly looks up at his friends.* “You can join in, too, if you want to calm down.”

*The other three do, picking up on the rhythm as well. She keeps this up until Keith comes running out, Newt and Allura not far behind. Keith is aghast and gently pulls Kaden to him, reassuring him that an ambulance is on the way, and carries him through the house to the front yard. Allura instructs the other boys to head back to their houses, and ushers Raya and the other Kidgelings inside so she can look over them. Thankfully, it isn’t a long wait for the ambulance and Keith and Kaden are ushered in. The EMT in the back carefully settles Kaden on the gurney they have and starts getting him all settled. She ends up having to reset the bone, and warns both he and Keith of how bad that’s gonna feel.*

*She lets out a small whistle once he’s settled back down a bit from having the bone reset.* “You did a pretty clean break on this, huh, buddy?” *She’s polite yet playful in her words.*

“I-Is that b-b-bad?” *Kaden sniffles, starting to get worried at her words.*

“Not at all! This typically means it’ll heal faster!” *She then carefully picks up a alcohol wipe and begins clearing off the blood and the cut.* “How’d this end up happening, if you don’t mind telling?”

“I-I was climbing a t-tree to get our ball back.”

“Oh yeah? What game were you playing?”

“Kickball.”

“That’s a really fun game! Is it one of your favorites?”

“Y-Yeah. I’m really good at it, too.”

*The EMT keeps him chatting the whole ride to the hospital, which helps him calm down a lot. This experience sticks with him for a long time afterwards.*

After he gets home with his cast, he thanks Raya for her help. She shrugs and tells him that it was the right thing to do. He decides not to press her or ask how she knew that’d help, and offers to let her be the first person to sign his cast. Excluding his Dad, since Keith signed it at the hospital once his heart palpitations settled down.

Now that we’ve got the older two down, let’s get down to the third musketeer, Oliver Maxwell Kogane, A.K.A. Newt! With his facts, I kind of jumped around a bit so it doesn’t quite follow the same structure I had for Amber and Kaden, but hopefully it’ll all still make sense!

I’m still going to start with the trivia nonsense, though. Newt’s favorite color is blues, regardless of the hue or shade of it. He just thinks it’s a super mellow, calming color. He doesn’t actually have any specific favorite animal, despite what he said when he found the newts. He loves all animals, though he does admittedly have a soft spot for canines and amphibians. His favorite foods are pizza and garlic bread, all day every day. His favorite desserts are banana cream pie and carrot cake. This is something he actually gets from Keith’s dad, which immediately endears Nana Olia to him and she’ll occasionally treat him to one of them. He’s not really fond of any specific candy bar and likes all of them pretty even; he does, however, adore having ants-on-a-log as a tasty treat. Pidge is always willing and able to make these for him and enjoy a few with him.

Newt is a smart little trouble maker who marches to the beat of his own drum, leaning towards being a bit more interested in more in-door hobbies like video games or reading for the most part. He’s incredibly curious, eager to learn and, once you get to know him, he can be a really caring little guy. He, however, doesn’t suffer fools gladly and he has a very forward approach to sharing his own opinion; this is not helped by the fact that he is A Notorious Shit Talker. He has very little grasp or regard for social graces or tact when it comes to correcting someone about something. This isn’t due to him not caring about other people’s feelings, though, but because he himself would rather people tell him honestly when he does something stupid. He probably gets this from watching his Momma break down some of the Garrison officials she works with when they try to correct or dismiss her.

In regards to his relationship with his siblings, he’s the textbook-definition of a little brother in regards to Amber and Kaden. They all get on well enough but sometimes Newt just has to go and poke the bear, just because his brother and sister get So Extra when they’re angry. He and Amber find more common ground through the camping trips with Keith, as they grow to admire and respect each other’s respective nature knowledge. He and Kaden play video games together, as well as the aforementioned Jackass-style shenanigans and other highly illegal typical boy-stuffs; these are normally ideas from Newt, modified by Kaden and his friends, and then put into action by the older boys while Newt stands off to the side and observes. He insists that this is for someone to see the science behind their stunts; he is a liar. As for his relationship with Aria, he remains a constant source of antagonistic behavior towards her up until the point they start going to school. He starts to back down and will actually humor her games more often than not, and sometimes he’ll let her play his video games with him. As they get older, though, they get much closer, but I’ll elaborate on that later.

The way he is perceived by his peers’ causes two assumptions about who he is to become prevalent among his classmates; that he’s either a total jerk, or a bratty know-it-all. The second interpretation is typically what leads to him getting bullied as often as he does, and the first is why people don’t normally speak out on his behalf; and, furthermore, the situations aren’t helped remotely by the fact that Newt has a mouth that tends to write a lot of checks his sorry tail can’t actually cash. Kaden and Amber are always willing and eager to stand up for him, but as he gets older, it starts to bother and really hurt Newt how none of his classmates are willing to do the same. Regardless of if they like him or not, they should be speaking out because what’s being done to him is wrong, right?

Hey, know who we haven’t talked about a lot? Resident Good Boi Cosmo!

Because of his issues in dealing with humans and his interest in wildlife, Newt actually ends up being really good with animals in general; especially Cosmo, who is his most favorite animal in the whole known universe. And, I mean, can you blame him? Cosmo is basically just a Pokémon brought to life! He’s ridiculously attached to the cosmic wolf, and the feeling seems to be mutual. 9 times out of 10, Cosmo’ll sleep in Newt’s room with him, and if Newt’s just chilling on the couch stooging out, he’ll jump up and plop his head in the kid’s lap from some ear-scritches.

One time, Newt proclaimed that Cosmo was his best friend because he liked Newt just the way he was and never got mad at him for saying something harsh. It broke Keith’s heart two-fold; on one hand, he was glad that his son cared so much about the family wolf, but on the other hand it hurt to know that the other kids weren’t willing to give him the chance to befriend them.

Because of his actually tender heart, Newt has a bad habit of finding abandoned animals and trying to bring them home. Keith and Pidge will typically keep the animal for a night or two before taking them to the local shelter where they can get proper treatment and a good home; in the case of wildlife like rabbits and such, they’ll take them to a nature preserve. Every time Newt begs them to let him keep the animals but for the longest time Pidge and Keith are concerned that he’s just too young for the responsibility that would come with a pet.

That changes shortly after his ninth birthday. Pidge notices that someone’s been sneaking out some of the leftovers at night. She also notices that one of the pails that she occasionally uses to drain fluids when she works on Keith’s bike – which he still occasionally uses – or some new engine block she herself is building, as well as some of the old tattered up towels she kept in case of a big spill, are also missing. She has an idea of who is doing it – as well as why – but it takes her an extra day or two after she pieces it together to catch him in the act. She spots him sneaking out the back door, into the backyard, and watches him carefully scale the fence, tossing his messenger bag over before doing so.

And, because she’s gonna get an answer, she follows after him.

*Newt creeps over to a large tree in the small forest area behind their house, tossing the flab back on his bag.* “I’m sorry I’m late. I know you don’t like to be left alone for very long. But I brought you some treats! I even got some leftover bones with some meat and gristle on’em for the steak we had last night!” *He kneels down and rummages through the bag, pulling out an aluminum foil bundle.*

*A quiet little whine is heard from whatever he’s talking to as he fishes a bone out and carefully offers it to it.*

“I also brought some stuff to try and get those ouchies you have a bit cleaner. I’m pretty sure hydrogen peroxide is safe for dogs. And, I mean, Neosporin should be fine, too, I think? I looked in to it and all the sources I found said that it’ll be good. I mean, not as good as the actual stuff that vets use, but at least this way maybe it’ll hurt a little less for now.”

*Pidge carefully creeps up behind him to get a better look at the dog in question. There, stretched out on the towels, is this mottled little mutt pup. Can’t be older than six, maybe seven, months, judging by how small it is. The little thing is mostly light grey but has little cloud-like splotches of tan-orange and white spots all over. In specific, she notices there are two tan-orange spots right above it’s big brown eyes. It’s left ear looks pretty ragged, with a good chunk taken out of it. The cut is too smooth to be an injury from another animal, though, which is a bit distressing. Additionally, there are some marks on its hind quarters and tail like it got clawed up by something. The pup lifts it’s head and stares at Pidge, letting out this quiet little rumble, trying to be threatening.*

*Newt cocks his head at the puppy.* “What’s wrong, buddy? Do you see something?” *He turns and then freezes when he sees her.* “Mom…”

“Hey, buddy. Wanna introduce me to your friend?” *She makes sure to be calm, betraying nothing, as she indicates the pooch with a tilt of her head.*

*He looks at her and then back at the pup, his shoulders slumping but still reaching out to lightly scratch behind the little guy’s good ear.* “You’re gonna call the shelter to take him, aren’t you?”

*Pidge watches him for a moment, shifting to kneel beside him. She slowly offers her hand to the pup, who sniffs before giving her fingers a timid lick. She smiles a bit. The little guy is highly apprehensive, and has seen a lot of awful things, but he clearly trusts and cares about Newt.* “Did you name him?”

“I like calling him Smog, because of how his spots look like puffs of smoke.” *Newt’s voice cracks a bit and his eyes get a little watery, already anticipating the heartache of letting him go.*

*Pidge takes a deep breath before pulling out her phone, dialing a number, and waiting as it rings. She reaches out and gently rubs between his shoulders with her free hand but he doesn’t relax at all, staying focused on his furry friend.*

“Hey. I was just about to call; where’d you go?” *Keith, sounding a bit confused.*

“Sorry, I just needed to check something out. You’re not busy right now, right?” *She hums, trying to keep the smile off her face as Newt jerks to attention at hearing his dad on the other end.*

“Nah, just finished verifying the budget Adwru sent me. Why?”

“Can you do me a favor, and make sure the back of the van is cleared out? We need to make a trip to Dr. Valencia and I want to make sure Smog is comfy.”

*Newt’s eyes get wide at the mention of the doctor, as he’s the vet they take Cosmo to.*

“Wait, Dr. Valencia? Smog?”

“I promise I’ll explain everything in a bit, but can you just make sure the van’s ready?”

“Need me to call Dr. Valencia, too?”

“No, I can get that. Thanks, babe.”

*The minute she hangs up Newt throws himself at her, hugging her and saying “Thank you” over and over. She smiles and gently kisses the top of his head, giving him a squeeze back. After he’s a bit calmer, she calls Dr. Valencia’s office and they agree to take them in once they get there. Smog doesn’t have any damage to his paws, so he can walk just fine, and he pads along beside Newt like a little duckling.*

“Now, Newt, I want you to understand that you’re gonna be responsible for him. You’ll need to train him, and feed him, and you’ll need to make sure that he doesn’t mess with his scrapes and stuff, okay? This is a big responsibility, but I think you’re ready for it.”

“I will! I’m gonna take really good care of Smog!” *He’s absolutely giddy, the happiest she’s seen him in a while. It’s clear that she’s just made his whole year and she can’t help but be incredibly glad. She likes it better when her kids are happy.*

She explains everything to Keith when they get home and, after taking a look at the little guy, he agrees that they can keep him; he does, however, state that in exchange for keeping him, Newt’s not allowed to beg them to keep any other injured animals he might find. In the end, turns out that Smog is, indeed, only six months old. The injuries on his flank and tail, Dr. Valencia surmises, are most likely from getting caught under a fence trying to get away from wherever he was before. He has to wear the Cone of Shame for a while, to avoid him biting at them as they heal, but Newt is attentive to looking after him, just like he promised.

Once he’s well enough, Newt starts working on training him, and he includes Cosmo in it. Cosmo had been mostly ambivalent to the other canine when he arrived but had been a bit stand-offish with how much attention Newt was lavishing the little pup with at first. Once Smog’s all clear, Newt makes sure to give them as equal amounts of attention as he possibly can, and he includes Cosmo in Smog’s training so that he doesn’t feel ignored. He’ll have Cosmo do a specific trick a couple times – and receive pets and treats for his good examples – and then try to get Smog to copy him. Training Smog takes some time, but Pidge and Keith are floored by how diligent and patient their son is with his new pet. When he said he was going to take good care of the pooch, he meant it.

Once he has Smog and Cosmo to look after, he starts to do a bit better about coming out of his shell and interacting with other people more. He takes both dogs with him to a nearby dog park on the weekends and, through this, he makes friends with some of the other doggy parents over their shared status as animal lovers; a few of which are actually in his class and allows them to finally see past their own preconceived notions about him. Keith thinks he might have had mild social anxiety due to his bullying that is quelled a bit by having a point to better branch out and forge friendships through.

Now, in regards to Newt’s social life, he’s always been included by Amber and Kaden’s friends, but he never really considered them his friends. He always just felt like they were his siblings’ friends and they were just humoring him. Additionally, he always did have one friend in Hunk and Shay’s daughter, Morganite, but this was another friendship that he always thought was kind of forced by their parents. In all actuality, Morganite actually really admires Newt’s intelligence and willingness to so openly speak his mind; while she isn’t as timid and easily-unnerved as her older brother, Richter, she is a much more docile sort.

As Newt’s social circle expands to friends of his own, independent of his siblings, he realizes that she really is a great friend and actually apologizes for ever thinking less. She happily accepts and the two just kinda fall into their usual routine of amicable silence with the occasional break for playful banter.

In regards to additional activities Newt ends up participating in, he joins the local scout troop for a whooping two days before realizing that there’s a lot more outside to the activities than research on animals. He’ll occasionally refer to himself as an ex-scout, which results in Kaden making teasing comments about how quickly he was dispatched. Aside from that, he ends up helping out at the local shelter as often as he can, joins the Yearbook Committee, and ends up on the Debate Club. The only problem with the Debate Club is how verbally vicious he gets when proving someone wrong; despite this, the school still lets him compete because he’s their star team member.

There’s this one kid, named Zane, on the other top team that he can’t stand, because the kid is so pompous and arrogant and thinks he’s unbeatable. One time, at a match against Zane and his team, he showed up wearing a shirt with writing in Galra on it. He proudly informed both Zane and the referee that it said, “Dear Zane, Your mother wishes she swallowed you.”

Pidge thinks it’s hilarious. Keith gives not only him, but Nana Olia, a lecture about sportsmanship and respect. This is not the last time Keith has to direct this lecture at his youngest son.

That’s a wrap on him! Now let’s get on to the resident songbird, Aria Emma Kogane!

So, what kind of goofy trivia do we have on this girlie? She loves all colors but she specifically loves pastel hues of anything. Her favorite animals are tigers and bats, but she says that Muffin is her most favorite animal in the whole wide world. Her favorite foods are chicken wraps and pork chops. Her favorite dessert is rice crispy treats with chocolate drizzled on top. She shares this soft spot with Nanny Collie and loves getting to make them with her. Her favorite candies are Red Vines, which is something she actually has in common with Great Uncle Coran.

In regards to personality, Aria is an absolute heel-turn for the family. Where her siblings and parents are both vocal and strong personalities, she tends to air a bit more on the timid, modest side of things; at least when you first get to know her, anyway. Once she’s comfortable with you, or you ask her the right first question, she’ll be more than happy to talk your ears off. She inherits the excited rambling from the Holt side of the family, obviously. Additionally, she’s incredibly sociable and extremely transparent about her feelings. When she’s upset, everyone knows it and, depending on the severity of her distress, it can take quite a while to get her to cheer back up. Being the youngest, she tends to get a bit more coddled by not only their parents, but her siblings as well.

Excluding Newt, of course, but we’re gonna put a pin in that fact for now.

Her preference towards pacifism tends to make her a target for bullies, for the opposite reasoning as with Newt. The kids that go after Aria do so because they expect no retaliation; and, if they choose to bully her away from the watchful eyes of any of her siblings, they’ll typically get away with it. She really hates conflict and violence, and she dislikes making any of her siblings upset. She knows that telling them about what’s going on with her will only make them mad and lead to big fights between them and her bullies, so she typically tries to keep her mouth shut. Despite being bullied every so often, Aria gets along with most of the kids she goes to school with. Most of her bullies are bigger kids looking for easy targets, so she’s able to find solidarity and companionship with some of the other younger kids that get the same treatment.

As she gets older, her opinion and approach to conflict changes a bit, but that’ll be something else to remember for later times.

She’s an incredibly creative kid, with a vast imagination and a deep passion for the finer nuances of playing dress-up. She’ll create intricate, elaborate backstories for all her stuffed animals before the start of every play session and, as implied before, she takes it very seriously. Whenever a member of the family gets roped into playing with her, she’ll give them the full run down of all the specifics behind the inner workings of the stories she has crafted into one another. It’s a little exasperating, but her family also finds it incredibly endearing. Her favorite game to play is Detective Fairy Princess Aria, working as a magical detective with the help of her faithful dinosaur partner, Deputy Muffin.

Aria, much like the rest of the family, has quite a lot of smarts that she makes use of in the most bizarre of instances. One time, she used two devices Pidge invented – one being a device that magnified the gravitational pull of whatever it was attached to, and a small gun that fired a spider web-esque material – to trap Newt under a spare laundry bin and stick Kaden to the ceiling during a game of play-pretend. Her brothers were absolutely gob smacked. Her parents and sister were rather impressed. Additionally, she has perfect pitch and can much more easily adjust her own singing to match, as well as being very skilled at picking up new languages as she gets older. Before the age of twelve, she’s well-versed in French and Italian, dabbles in a little bit of Galran, and really wants to start learning Spanish.

In regards to her musical prowess, she learns how to play piano from Keith, as well as taking an interest in the cello. Due to her having perfect pitch, she learns how to tune her instrument by ear pretty quickly so she can practice much easier at home. She loves taking the time to tinker with the tuning and correct the sound of her cello, then losing herself in practicing her sheet music. She also likes to practice her pieces for the choir as well.

In regards to extra-curricular activities, Aria ends up going into orchestra and choir, as predictable as those are. She also, however, ends up joining the drama club and cheer-leading squad once she gets to middle school. Participating in these helps get her out of her shell, making her more confident, and makes her significantly more outgoing. She ends up being in the top-ranking choir the school has and auditions for any solo that she can so she can test her skills. She also enjoys participating in the drama club productions, but she tends to audition more for secondary roles just because she’s a little less confident in her acting chops compared to her singing pipes; she will, however, audition for the lead in the cases of them doing a musical.

So, her relationship with her siblings! I know I’ve already talked about it with all the other kids, but I want to keep talking about it here because, as I’ve already established, I have no self-control. She goes to Amber a lot for advice about her friends and such as she gets older and, in her younger years, Amber will occasionally indulge in her elaborate games of pretend. Aria and Kaden have an incredibly close bond, with the two of them able to enjoy one another’s companionable silence. Once she starts getting more interested in her drama club activities, he’ll also help her most often with her line-reads. She and Newt have a strange relationship up until two specific points; Newt starting to develop more friendships due to his having both Cosmo and Smog, and Aria becoming more self-confident due to her musical performances.

The triggering event for their dynamics chance occurs during a weekend where the kids are left home alone while Keith and Pidge are out of town for their wedding anniversary. They leave Amber in charge as a test, since the kids have been insisting that they can handle themselves without the need of a babysitter. The kids are 17, 14, 12 and 10 respectively. From the moment they’re gone, however, Kaden and Newt take to being absolutely terrorists. They refuse to listen to any of the rules in place, or take Amber seriously when she tries to rein them in. This all comes to a head Sunday morning when, after the two tearing up the house with their friends all weekend and throwing a huge party with said friends, they refuse to help with cleaning when Amber wants to get started.

Some nasty things are said because, while they’re all close, they are still siblings and that’s just something that occasionally happens. Newt is particularly awful in the snide comments he makes, going out of his way to undermine Amber.

Amber, who had been struggling to maintain composure throughout the weekend between upcoming exams and other obligations which we’ll get into in the next part, ends up having a breakdown and locks herself in her room. This is the point where Aria breaks and steps in, taking charge and showing she has more of that Kogane-Holt spirit.

*Aria watches Amber disappear upstairs, a trash bag in one hand, then turns and glares at the boys.* “What is wrong with you two?”

*Kaden blinks then turns and heads towards the kitchen.* “Oh, calm down. We’ll clean up after breakfast.”

“Yeah. I need some cereal before I do anything to help out pwecious wittle Ber-Ber.” *Newt agrees, cupping his hands beside his cheek and batting his eyelashes as he speaks.*

*Kaden snorts a bit as he gets two bowls down.* “You’re acting like we have no intention of making sure that Mom and Dad come back to an intact house. If we don’t, they’ll never let us go sitter-free again for a weekend.”

“And they still aren’t going to. I’m telling them about all of this.” *Aria gestures to the scattered bits of junk food, spilled drinks and other such mess in the living room.*

*Kaden and Newt exchange glances before they start busting up laughing.* “Yeah, right! You won’t do anything!” *Newt’s sneering when he says this, leaning a bit closer to her.*

*Aria’s eyes suddenly spark with a new fire, blazing as she glares at him more ferociously. Instead of saying anything, she turns on her heels and disappears upstairs as well. The boys think that things are totally fine and have themselves a celebratory bowl of cereal. Meanwhile, Ari is making a very important call.*

*Keith perks up in the driver’s seat when Pidge’s phone starts chiming with the lyric-less version of The Cell Block Tango.* “Huh. Wasn’t expecting to hear from Ari so early.” *Pidge comments before accepting the call.* “Hey there, sweet pea. What’s up?”

“Mommy? I-I don’t want to bother you when you’re not home yet, but I didn’t know what else to do.” *Ari lays it on thick, adding sniffles and faked hiccups as if she’s crying. In actually she’s just sitting on the edge of her bed, kicking her feet lightly in the air.*

*Pidge sits a bit more upright immediately, adjusting the strap of her seatbelt.* “No, it’s okay. What’s going on? Are you and the others okay?” *Keith perks up and looks over, mouthing a quick ‘What’s going on?’ Pidge holds one finger up at him as she waits for Ari to elaborate.*

“W-Well, it’s Kaden and Newt. They threw a party last night while Amber was at a study session with some of her classmates. I told them not to, but they wouldn’t listen! They made a huge mess of the place, too! And then, this morning, they said awful things to Amber when she told them they needed to get it cleaned up before you two got home! Amber’s really upset in her room and they’re just laughing about it! I know I should have called Nana Olia or Nanny and Pappy but I just-!”

“Oh, sweetheart, no. It’s okay. You did the right thing calling us. We’ll deal with your brothers. For now, you just check on your sister and make sure she’s doing alright, okay? Dad and I will be home in less than two hours, judging the traffic, so you two just stay out of the way until we get there, okay?” *Pidge speaks in a soft and reassuring tone. She looks over at Keith, holds up her middle and index fingers – they’ve developed a code using their fingers, sans thumbs, to signify which kids they’re referencing – and then makes a slit throat gesture. Keith lets out a small swear, knowing this means the boys are in trouble. He’d been hoping the kids would behave themselves while they were gone.

“Thank you, Mommy. I love you both.”

“Love you too, Ari. We’ll see you soon.” *The minute they’re off the phone, Ari darts to the basement to put the next part of her plan in motion. Meanwhile, Pidge loads up her phone and sends a request to Kaden for a video call.*

*The boys see the phone lighting up, see who is calling, and immediately start losing their shit. They know that they probably shouldn’t answer it, because they’re thinking that Pidge tried calling Amber first and didn’t get an answer, which means they’re already going to be on high alert. But if they don’t answer the call, then they’re gonna get in even worse trouble for not answering and making their parents worry even more.*

*Newt is the one that bites the bullet and answers, making sure to turn the phone so that Pidge can only see the boys.*

“Hey, Mom. S’up?” *He asks, plastering on a tense smile.*

*Pidge, meanwhile, has a much better fake smile on her face.* “Not much, sweetie, just doing a check-in. How have things been this weekend at the house?”

“Oh, they’ve been – you know – uh, great! Absolutely great!” *He’s trying so hard to sound normal.*

“Oh yeah?”

“Totally! We know how to behave when you guys aren’t around, you know!” *Kaden chimes in, sounding only slightly less terrified than his brother.*

“Good, good. Been making sure to keep up on your chores?” *Pidge’s smile twitches at the corner, the only sign the boys get that reveals what’s actually going on.*

*The boys briefly exchange glances, because they know what this means. Kaden and Newt Kogane realize, in this moment, that they have made a grievous error in judgment.*

*Pidge makes them pan the camera over to how the kitchen and living room work, leading to her tearing them each a new one. She makes it clear they’re both grounded for two weeks from the television, the gaming consoles, and having free time on the computer; one week for being so disrespectful to their sister, and the other for the mess they have. She makes sure to let them know that they’ll get a third week tacked on if they come home and the house is still a pit.*

*The minute they get off the call, two sets of rubber cleaning gloves are tossed at them. They turn to see Ari leaning in the doorway, looking smugly satisfied as she examines the chipping green nail polish on her hand, five differently colored little drones floating beside her.* “Well, boys, sounds like you two should get to work. And don’t worry; the Rover Squad will be here to help keep you motivated.” *She says, her tone sugar and sweet and so devious it’s unnerving. The Rover Squad have been given the command to make sure they keep working until every spot of the house is immaculate and, if they stop, they’ll start blaring an ear-splitting noise until they start working again.*

While they get to work, she makes some waffles for herself and Amber, then takes the plates upstairs and joins her older sister in her room. They have breakfast, occasionally snorting at the sound of blaring alarms downstairs, and, once they’re done eating, Amber repaints Aria’s nails for her.

This reminds Kaden and Newt to not underestimate their baby sister. Despite being on the receiving end of her wrath, Newt realizes how clever his sister is, causing him to have further respect for her, and this is the point where his attitude towards her starts to shift.

Unlike her siblings, Aria is by far the most sociable of all the Kidgelings. She starts out befriending other kids that are bullied, but as she and the kids get older, she just ends up being the kind of person that others gravitate towards. It’s mostly because Aria’ is just so genuinely kind and sweet. She’s a charming little kid with plenty of admirers, both male and female. She has a couple of friends that she’s significantly closer to than others, naturally, but she does her best to be polite and respectful to everyone she meets.

In specific, she gets is really close to Raya and Coriander, two of Lance and Allura’s daughters, as well as Morganite, her older cousin Hikari, the daughter of Shiro and Matt. With Raya and Coriander, they bond over the typical “girly” hobbies, such as fashion and make-up and such. With Raya, she bonds over both fashion advice as well as Raya helping her with her cheerleading moves. Raya is the head cheerleader of the older girls’ squad and she’s always eager to help teach Ari higher level steps and moves to help her with her auditions for the next rank up. With Cori, it’s always fashion advice and helping her to determine what’s in and what isn’t. As they get older, Cori also helps her with doing her hair and make-up for her performances. Morganite is really skilled at making jewelry and other such accessories, which is something she helps to teach Ari to do as well. Hikari is a huge shutterbug, who loves taking pictures, recording videos and also does art/animation in her free time. She’ll always record Ari’s performances and, when she does animations, Ari will help her with voice acting/ composing original scores for her animated shorts.

That’s all for now! Keep an eye out for the continuation of this, and thank you so much for taking the time to give this a read! x3

[legend-of-binkus]

The Master Sword of the Downfall Timeline

As promised in my last post, here it is! My little deep dive into Legends sword and how I think it will affect the story going forward.

(Also, I loved reading everyones thoughts on that post. Thank you so much for sharing!)

(art is from Nintendo Player's Guide (SNES) for A Link to the Past, pg 17. AND Jojo's LU comic, Divine Dark Reflections pt7)

Sorry this took a little longer then planned, but I came across some new interesting details while researching this and it took me a bit longer to compile my thoughts.

Let’s quickly start off by discussing some points that were brought up by others on my last post.

Is it possible for two Master Swords to coexist in the LU?

YES. In fact it's happened in canon before!

“At the end of Skyward Sword, because of the time travel involved, the Goddess Sword and Master Sword exist simultaneously. The Master Sword is within the Sealed Temple while the Goddess Sword is up in Skyloft.” —https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Master_Sword

Is the Spirit of the sword still in Legends sword?

Again, I would say yes. Not only is this supported by the Tempered Sword glowing in response to the Master Sword after Legend regains his human form, but also if BotW is the ending point for all the timelines then that means the spirit of the sword lives on, as it's HEAVILY implied that Fi is the one who tells Zelda that Wild can be saved.

— 

Ok, now let's jump into the predictions and theory!

First, gotta start off with some context.

This actually all began when I came across this old quote from Jojo while making my The Chains Secrets post (and my thoughts just kind of spiraled from there...)

“they know a Hero before failed, it’s nothing personal to them, it’s simply the world as they know it. But it gives weight to their responsibility seeing as the Hero of Hyrule’s home is still suffering the consequences. but this did give me some good ideas so Thanks for this Q!”

This quote is regarding Hyrule and Legend’s knowledge of the death of a previous hero. They haven’t mentioned it yet to the others (and I highly doubt they realize that the Hero who died was an alternate version of Time), but it’s not like it’s never crossed their minds… for instance, I bet you anything that when Twi was discussing the Master Sword with Legend that the thought of the previous hero’s fate crossed Legend's mind.

It’s a small but important detail. Legend is aware of the fate that met the hero before him, but hasn’t said anything about it yet. I’m not entirely sure why, but I can see how this knowledge would weigh heavy on him.

So how does this relate to Legend's version of the Master Sword?

Strap in, we're diving into a lot of lore!

As I delved further into research for this theory I noticed something very peculiar about the Master Sword in ALttP that I have never noticed before.

The Master Sword changes forms when pulled from the pedestal.

Now you might be thinking, Binkus, come on... the developers had to simplify the sword cuz originally it was like the size of the player. And yeah... true. BUT while looking into official art for the game I noticed that the sword is also depicted in two different ways from when it's resting in its pedestal VS Link wielding it. Take a look.

See how the sword is depicted in the pedestal in comparison to outside of it? Even the box art and the games title screen feature the two different versions of the sword.

To my knowledge, there's no in-game explanation for this. It just happens.

(quick side note... I am once again floored by Jojo's attention to detail here! She took elements from various depictions of the Master Sword when designing her version of the sword that Legend finds. There's the shape and coloring of the modern depiction of the sword, the lack of a spike on the on the cross-guard and the different rain-guard on the ALttP version of the sword in the pedestal, plus the cloth/leather wrapping from the golden hilt version. Just amazing.)

Now, it's not unheard of for the Master Sword to take on different forms. It has slight variations in all the games it appears in, with the largest changes to its design happening in Skyward Sword, Wind Waker, and (of course) A Link to the Past.

Ok... but why? Why change forms upon being pulled out of the pedestal? And specifically why change to look so beat up? Is this the swords true form? The sword in the art with the golden/orange hilt isn't looking it's best. Just look at the sword on the box art for the game, it's all dinged-up.

(This is probably why Legend tempers the Master Sword in the first place)

But you know, Legends Master Sword reminds me of another— the Master Sword from BotW. Specifically it's depiction in the final memory.

During that last battle, Wild is dying and the state of the sword reflects that. He wasn’t suddenly struck down with a surprise killing blow. He was struggling to even stand and was running only on adrenaline and determination to protect Zelda. The moment she accesses her powers and saves them he just collapses.

Zelda's dialogue in the game also implies there's a connection between sword and master.

“We pray for your protection, and we hope that… that the two of you will grow stronger together, as one.” — Zelda (Breath of the Wild)

So it seems that if the sword's master dies, there's a negative impact on the Master Sword itself.

Even though Wild was brought back through the Shrine of Resurrection, the Master Sword is definitely not in the best of shape and constantly breaks (and the BotW 2 trailers further support this with the sorry state of the sword in those previews)

Now, remember what happened to the swords previous master before Legend?

He died...

And the Master Sword's true state after being pulled from the pedestal in ALttP reflects this.

Legend inherited the burden of a suffering kingdom and a dilapidated sword mourning for its lost master.

"Thank you, Master Link. May we meet again in another life…" — Fi (Skyward Sword)

Time was only the swords second wielder— Fi finally got to meet her master again, however this time he was only a child. The spirit of the sword probably did what it thought was best by putting a young Time into a seven year sleep, but unfortunately we know that decision didn't turn out too well in any timeline...

One he's essentially erased from and Ganondorf returns, another he regains his lost time but dies full of regrets, and the last (which Legend is a part of) he dies fighting Ganon.

Maybe it would have actually been worse if the sword had never put him to sleep, but we'll never truly know...

Ok, so where can this take the story in regards to LU?

Well... there's two character's in particular that I've already mentioned that I believe could be impacted by both Legend and his version of the Master Sword; Wild and Time.

And perhaps part of the reason Legend has yet to mention the nature of his sword is just for story telling purposes. You know...for the ✨DRAMA✨

I've touched on Wild's complicated feelings towards the sword in a previous theory, and we know that he's currently struggling under crushing guilt at the moment.

Legend is probably not someone's first choice when seeking out comfort, but I believe Legend's unique experiences could help him understand what Wild is going through. Legend knows that Wild is not the only Hero to die. He knows what it's like to not be able to save everyone you care about. He knows what it's like to wield a battered sword. He knows what it's like trying to save a barren land. He knows that none of what happened was Wild's fault, and that the blame falls solely on Ganon.

I'd love to see these two have an interaction where they open up about their experiences.

With Time, I ponder the possibility of his views on the Master Sword changing slightly. Or maybe just healing the spirit of Legend's sword. He would never willingly use the sword that Sky currently carries, but imagine a circumstance where he unknowingly takes up Legend's blade, and he wields the sword that has been mourning his death for centuries. This could be an interesting way for everyone to find out more about their weird timeline split. (plus Time finding out he died in one of them is delicious drama/angst)

Having said that however... Seeing how the Hero before Twi (AKA Time) left the sword in perfect condition in the woods where he grew up PLUS the fact that the Hero's Shade carries the Master Sword's scabbard when teaching the 5th Hidden Skill leads me to believe that Time's feelings towards the sword may soften up a bit.

I'm leaning more towards the Legend & Wild interaction theory more so then the Time & Legend's Sword theory, BUT let me know your thoughts! I always love to hear them.

Also, if you like my long rambling then feel free to check out my other LU Theories!

Thanks again to everyone who read up to this point! You're the real Heroes! <3

[psyga315]

Prelude

With Volume 7 just beyond the horizon, I figured to look back at my thoughts for Volume 5 and, through more cooled down eyes, boil down why I consider it to be the worst volume of RWBY. When I wrote my review of Volume 5, it was literally the night the episode premiered, so I was boiling. But now? I’m going to look through the review with fresher eyes and clarify what sort of problems I had with RWBY.

First, a bit of backstory. There was an interview made during the summer in between Volumes 4 & 5 that had the cast say what sort of themes one could expect for Volume 5. Among these were stuff like “building yourself back up again”, “shouting ‘we’re not done here!’”, “solving problems on your own”, and lastly, from Barbara herself, “Strength” and “Growth”. For someone who was just starting to realize why people were turned off by the darkness of Volume 3, this was uplifting to say the least…

Shorts

The Character Shorts kinda hyped the Volume, though they sunk in their own way. Weiss’s Character Short effectively foreshadowed her loss to Vernal. This tough and talented girl gets her ass stomped rather quickly and needed to be bailed out. Winter’s line about how she “won’t be around to save her” was foreshadowing to her not actually being in the season, but when I first heard it, I thought she meant “Hey, I’m going to die this volume, lol!” and that’s without bringing up how the trailer fails to hype Weiss up like the other trailers did.

Blake’s Trailer was alright, especially in taking steps to address a problem regarding Menagerie, but it felt more like Ilia given the backstory dump we got that feels all the more like mandatory reading. The problem is that, and it’s perhaps the very first problem I’ve heard about RWBY, is that the trailers (and by extension, anything that’s a spin off of RWBY like World of Remnant) feel more like you need to watch this rather than you can watch this. It’s confusing, but let’s use Blake’s Short as an example.

Ilia talks about her backstory as it is contrasted with a chase between Blake and a random dude we never see again. Assuming you’ve never watched the trailer, you’d just get the truncated version of “MUH PARENTS ARE DEEEAAAD!” and not the bits where she was forced to resent her own race because it was easier to blend in to her surroundings, like a chameleon. It’s ironic, since RWBY would do the reverse problem with Adam, where his trailer isn’t mandatory but we barely get a backstory for him beyond “I got branded, but everyone will speculate that it’s because I did something bad and not that it drove me to do bad things”.

Lastly, there’s Yang’s short, which had the minor hiccup of contrasting what an interview said about running out of Aura means you can’t use your Semblance. The Aura thing is something that can be discussed for another day, but the basics you should take away from this is that, for some time, people didn’t know how running out of Aura is symbolized. Most people take the flickering as the signal as the next hit on those guys are usually the one that does them in. As such, you had this huge debate on what kind of flickering means Aura broken and what just meant Aura is low, which, personally, could have been avoided if the writers and/or animators just utilized that Aura dust thing (seen prominently in the Bumblebee vs Adam fight) as their definitive “aura broken” animation instead of just using it some of the time.

First Episode

The first episode proper promised a lot. In fact, a good chunk of the first half promised a lot. However, it became much clear in a second viewing that a lot of it was just padding at worst and showing us where the characters are at best. But what I think was done dirty the most in this episode was introducing Mistral. We were hyped in Volume 4 (thanks to World of Remnant) that Mistral was this dichotomy of rich, cultural people and the seedy underbelly of criminals and that, at least one of the elements would be utilized in Volume 5. Unfortunately, all we got were a few mat paintings that contrast what Lionheart was saying in regards to Mistral being in chaos.

And so, the most we get out of Mistral are those mat paintings and a perpetually raining downtown that we don’t see much of, even when it gets briefly revisited in Volume 6. We’re supposed to be invested in the city and yet all we get are empty rooms and 2D art. They took great steps to improve this in Volume 6 with Argus, though, so if there’s any consolation, it’s that they learned from their mistakes here.

But we now get into the biggest problem of why Volume 5 is disliked. Because of the situation, the group are left to basically wait until Lionheart convinces the council to get them some Huntsmen. The heroes. Wait. In a volume where the writers were talking about the themes of improving yourself and pulling through with your own strength.

Do you guys see the problem here? I know people have bitched about Volume 5 to hell and back and you’ve probably heard the complaints to high noon, but this entire issue is what rots Volume 5 to the core the most. Not the piss poor fight scenes, not the inconsistent characterizations, it’s that the plotting decides to take a back seat when the volume was meant to be about taking action.

As the episode goes on, you see the problem unfold. Ruby and friends hit a dead end until Oscar appears and has Ozpin exposit things to them, Weiss is denied a chance to save people and fight the Grimm until the Grimm come to her, Blake is hit with the dead end of the Albains deflecting blame, and Yang had the chance encounter with Bakugou where he knows the hideout of her mom.

The closest person who is taking action here is Yang, who established that she is actively looking for Ruby (technically Raven, but as we see later on, moot point). Blake’s situation is being handled by her dad, Weiss is sitting in the plane until the Grimm come for her, and Ruby is sitting on the couch that I’m pretty sure has her grooves molded into the cushion with how many times she’s sat there.

Episode 2

A minor complaint before we go to Episode 2, we had the Stinger repeat itself because the crew thought that people wouldn’t see the stingers. This is the show, mind you, that makes a point to include scenes at the end of every volume, regardless of how long they are or what point they serve in hyping the next Volume. Hell, one of the major complaints about Volume 2 was about the stinger not mattering. So why did they suddenly decide that the viewers might not see the stinger in a culture where the MCU exists?

Alright, cooling things down, we have three major scenes in Episode 2. Salem’s chat with Lionheart was meh at best and wtf at worst. I get the idea of Salem using different approaches to get people to do what she wants, but the cool aspect of Salem was that her approach was not what a villain would normally be. Instead of berating or choking her minions should they fail or talk back, Salem instead talks people down like she’s a mother to them. Even when Tyrian fails, she doesn’t hurt him, but rather tell him that he disappointed her. So, having her choke Lionheart, even when in hindsight it made some sense, is kinda an odd thing to do.

But not as odd as Salem’s whole “Not you, Arthur” bit. A lot of people drew points to that and the best I can explain is that it’s either a typo (she’s meant to say not yet or not now) or Arthur and Watts are some sort of Jekyll & Hyde thing. Unfortunately, it seems Watts is more a parallel to Watson rather than Jekyll, so that brings me to believe that it’s a typo and so, rather than have an easy explanation for a problem, we just have a compounded problem. One of many.

And there’s something funny to be said about Salem warning Cinder about Silver Eyes when Ruby barely learns about it this Volume. And also that she wants to speak with Tyrian but we never see what comes of it. At all.

I only have one new thing about Weiss vs. the Bees. Originally, the pilot was supposed to be gay, but held off on it because they’d be killing off their first revealed gay character, something that wouldn’t look good to the fanbase. Now, while I understand the reason behind it, I have to question the logic behind why they think it isn’t okay for their first LGBT character to be offed, but instead be someone who seemed okay with murdering her crush’s parents while sending said crush to her abuser.

But more on that later, we have Sienna to discuss. Now, there’s a lot to dissect. For one, RT has obviously realized that they’ve messed up and brought Sienna back for a bit (while taking the heat for “if she’s so badass, why did she go out like a chump”). However, in hindsight, what purpose did she actually serve outside of some cute nod to Shere Khan?

All she did was tell Adam that he’s going too far and that’s it. And really, it just seems hypocritical for the leader of the White Fang to effectively restructure the organization into a terrorist group, murder tons of people, and then suddenly back away and say “woah, too much” when Adam proceeded to help torch Beacon. It’s to the point where one question most people want to ask at cons is “did Sienna order the hit out on the SDC”, since we don’t actually know and that it could be a radical leader of that quadrant like Adam.

It felt more like Sienna should have been just the leader of Mistral’s White Fang faction instead of ruling over all the White Fang, which would make more sense as Adam would need permission to attack a kingdom that isn’t his stomping ground. Then there’s the introduction of Hazel, who at first is presented to be a pretty decent character, not wanting to kill people if he had no choice, but as time goes on, is basically your stock “big soft guy with a secret hulk side” character.

Unfortunately, this episode didn’t help enforce the theme of taking action when it’s the villains who are doing it and seeming to be two if not twenty steps ahead of the heroes.

Episode 3

Episode 3 has that whole speech thing I overlooked. Barring Ghira’s speech that the crew said is based off Obama’s “we killed Osama” speech (which, if it is, paints the whole situation of Sienna’s death in a rather dark light) before Ilia interferes. Now, I actually liked that Menagerie is hesitant to stand up for Haven. After all, humans hated their guts so much that the island was originally planned to be a place where people could dump Faunus on. There were lynchings and enslavements that are still going on to this day, just in subtler forms, Of course the Faunus wouldn’t want to fight.

Then Ilia swoops in and robs Blake of any agency she has with the scene. If RT wanted to not let Blake convince the people until three quarters to the end, they should have cut the subtlety and have some annoying kid go “IT’S TOO EARLY IN THE PLOT TO DO YOUR SPEECH!”. Hell, let Blake tell her story about her team, but the audience balks at the fact that she’s not only friends with a Schnee, but also a human who crippled a guy on live television. Remember that plot point?

We then cut to Oscar and this is perhaps the reason I decided to do this revisit of Volume 5. The way Ozpin talks of action and resolve, it felt like we’re going to the root of the themes of taking action. No more being subject to the events of the plot like in previous Volumes. Now? Now is the time to fight back! And that built up to… what? One training scene and Ruby learning headbutt?

Granted, we see later on that there was a bit more to the plan, but for the most part, it seemed like an excuse for “character growth” as opposed to actual character growth. A training arc isn’t just some short scenes of a person lifting weights and jogging up stairs. Its meant to be a sort of means of growth for the character. There’s a reason most training montages have the character suck at first, but then get better by the time the montage ends. It’s because it’s the quickest way to show growth. But even without that, you could get some serious mileage for a pulled off training arc.

Rocky IV and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back have some good examples of it. Rocky IV had the titular hero train and work out in the middle of a cold, mountainous range, while his opponent is simply given steroids. It shows the dichotomy between the two and how they view their eventual fight. Empire, on the other hand, had that masterful scene with Luke in the cave, where he has a huge moment of both foreshadowing and character growth.

Here? We just have Ruby learn headbutt like she’s nothing more than a Pokemon. There could have been a lot more done with it, like having Ruby put a lot more force in her punches, causing others to realize she’s extremely angry about what happened to Pyrrha and Penny, or, if the need to exposit about Semblances is needed, bring something new to the table that isn’t going to confuse the fuck out of people… Something like:

“Your Semblance might not reveal itself until you need it most” or something like that. Not “A semblance is someone’s personality, but not. Wow! Exposition!” or “Hey, remember how we said Aura was passive? Welp, not anymore!”

Not to mention that Jaune is seemingly cool with Ozpin suddenly coming back from the dead. Here’s the thing, last Volume had him upset with Ozpin about what happened to Pyrrha, something that didn’t seemed to resolve itself. Keep in mind that, for all rights and merits, Jaune believed Ozpin to have died. In fact, it was that confirmation that Ozpin had lost against Cinder that convinced Pyrrha to kill herself. Now here he is, seemingly stuck in the body of another kid and he just outright said this is a normal thing for him.

You’d expect him to have something more than “golly!”. The fact that he didn’t seem to have any aggression towards Ozpin until after he ran to his hidey hole in Volume 6 seems rather odd given that his entire character is that he’s angsting about Pyrrha and angry at Cinder for what she did. The group seem rather content to just sit back and let the plot happen, which is the opposite of what the crew was trying to convey with their themes.

Episode 4 and Episode 5

I still stand by what I said regarding how Episode 4 was a good episode, finally having a reunion between two members of Team RWBY, but it’s perhaps one of the last good things about RWBY we’ll ever see in Volume 5. Because Raven’s promise to tell Yang “the whole truth” turns out to just be regurgitated exposition at worst.

But first, we need to have Blake, the woman who doesn’t want her race to be labeled, turn out to have labels for her friends. Okay, granted, it’s not that dumb but it is kinda patronizing that we need to have a character tell us what another character is. While the rest of her speech is pretty effective in defining Blake’s character, making her perhaps the only character these themes of growth and strength actually apply to, it still is annoying that the most we take away out of this is her boiling down every character to a single word, then bringing up how Adam is going to ruin everything for the Faunus. You’ll see why this is a problem later. I liked the setting of Menagerie’s Shallow Sea marketplace thing and felt like Menagerie is wasted potential.

Ruby’s whole speech still feels like damage control, but with the added complaint of Ruby deciding to blame Salem for something Cinder did. Now, I heard the common excuse a lot: “Salem told Cinder to do it so it’s all her fault”, but that problem with that? Cinder told Emerald to kill Penny. So… Yeah. It is her fault. Hell, I wouldn’t have minded this if Ruby didn’t word it like Salem personally killed Penny and Pyrrha. Like as in, she just up and appeared out of nowhere and shot both Penny and Pyrrha in the head.

It still doesn’t fix the fact that Ruby is basically “hey, remember how I’m supposed to be upset?”

Lastly for Episode 5, we have the White Fang do the brilliant plant of murdering the chieftain who just spoke out against them. It’s dumb. Extremely dumb. What the hell do they think will happen after they murder the chieftain in cold blood? Menagerie is just gonna magically bend over and obey the White Fang? But perhaps the biggest waste is the White Fang in general.

You have these two sneaky fox brothers who seemingly oversee everything and even state that they’re only letting Adam do what he wants until he’s no longer of use to them, a buff bat dude, and a spider-lady… And they’re never seen again after this Volume. I get the idea, because RT is trying to wrap up the Faunus subplot as quickly as possible, but the problem that you can’t exactly introduce new characters or hidden depths if you’re just gonna throw them out with the bath water.

If they wanted to end the subplot, why did they put all the effort in some random characters that are just gonna be defeated off screen with a tea tray? Then again, this is a problem endemic to RWBY. Introduce this character, then quickly shoo them away before you’re committed to writing a plot for them. If you know you were going to half-ass the White Fang conclusion, why bother with stuff like more White Fang members or the SDC brand? In fact, why bother with the White Fang to begin with if you’re going to do so little with them?

Episode 6

Moving on before I lose my cool, we have Qrow aimlessly walking around downtown Mistral. Now, the crew said that Maria was supposed to be here… But… Why? What purpose would she serve? If she’s just gonna be a “hey, look, cameo to foreshadow Volume 6”, then that’s a horrible purpose. You know how most Cinematic Universes tanked because they spent more time hyping the next twenty movies when they should focus on their pilot? That’s what she would have been like.

Not to mention that she would have been caught in the crossfire of why Volume 5 was bad. “So here we have this random old lady who doesn’t matter at all to the plot so why is she even there” and then “Oh wow, she’s a SEW. They’re doing damage control to justify her unneeded presence in Volume 5”. And, don’t get me wrong, Maria is a fun lady and all that, but there needs to be a reason she was there beyond “hype for next Volume”.

What makes the problem worse was that they’re planning to include Maria so as to have a sort of Yoda to teach Ruby. This makes the complaint of “why didn’t Ruby ask about the Silver Eyes” even more of a complaint because now it seems like they decided “hey, we’re going to address it next volume, so let’s not bother bringing it up here”. Which is even worse than “hey, people noticed we didn’t address this so let’s completely invent this character for the sole purpose of addressing it!”

And then there’s Raven who is all “lol, I know more than you realize but I’m not actually gonna answer anything trolololololol” AARHG!

Okay. Okay. Before I completely lose my marbles, there’s one thing about the scene with Raven that’s stupid.

It’s the “there’s no such thing as magic” thing.

Okay. I get it. Turning into a bird is something that, in the world of RWBY, seems impossible. But there’s a ton of problems with this:

What makes summoning dead Grimm to fight for you so much more different than magic?

You’re willing to believe in magic rocks that augment your fighting style and are in fact part of a company that profits off magic rocks, yet turning into a bird is the messed up thing?

The guy who gave her this ability is currently inhabiting the body of a young boy and has said to basically devour his soul in due time, as well as create the magic that’s responsible for torching your school and your friend… And the BIRD is the most messed up thing!?

“But Raven made it sound like she was forced into it”. She didn’t seem to have any fucking problem with it though. Not only that, but it didn’t seem like a big dark secret that Ozpin wouldn’t want uncovered. In fact, he even said he gave Qrow and Raven the ability to turn into birds in an amused way.

Even more so when everyone but Yang seemed to respond to it with disbelief rather than outright anger. There’s a reason this whole bird issue was made fun of in Jello’s “So This is Basically RWBY” video.

Also, before we move onto Episode 7, I wanna bring up that the scene where Qrow visits the Shields is perhaps the reason why I hold Ozpin’s censorship of Lionheart’s role in the Battle of Haven to be one of the most scumbag moves he could have made. “Your mom’s dead, but don’t worry, the guy who sold her out is a hero!”

Episodes 7-10

Right, back to Episode 7. Okay, I’ll admit, it was a nice reunion scene all things considered, albeit with some rather unnerving things like Yang asking Weiss if she let the Boarbatusk skewer the trophy wife or even the dumb, patronizing “we haven’t made character arcs for us to go through so I’ll just say we had some”, since they had the great idea to use Ren, who is voiced by Monty’s brother, as the mouthpiece for that.

Unfortunately, this is the episode I always think back to when I think of Volume 5. The perfect epitome of a slow, monotonous Volume. The problem I have is that, yeah, it’s meant to be this breather episode, a calm before the storm, but this just feels like a long lull that’s made even more insulting with the cliffhanger. All it has is people dumping exposition that viewers have either figured out or weren’t even burning questions and I think the awkward silence that followed Ozpin saying how he was the wizard that gave the Maidens his power is the perfect epitome for just how boring the volume is. The dude just revealed a massive plot twist and it’s treated as nothing more than a “did you know” factoid.

While I liked how they addressed that Blake leaving Yang would have had some serious negative emotions in Yang, it felt rather half-assed that they basically resolved it with “hey, my mom’s drunk, so shut up and accept Blake the moment she comes back”, especially since it comes from Weiss, who told Blake at the end of Volume 1 that if she ever runs away again, she best let RWBY know. If they wanted to ship Bumblebee so badly, this would have been a great hurdle for them to come across instead of just “hey, let me resolve this plot for you”.

Now, the whole thing with Ilia… Let’s get the elephant out of the way. The way they revealed her sexuality, I feel, could have been done better. “You wanna know why I’m gonna kill your parents and bring you to your abuser? Because I wanted you to look at me like a lover!” There’s a reason why some fans label her as a “psycho lesbian”.

However, I want to bring up that Rooster Teeth did an excellent job at building tension during the climax of the Menagerie Arc. Sure, the cliffhangers were tiresome, but you couldn’t help but admit you were at the edge of your seat and it even did a good job at subversion. Even if they allegedly didn’t even intend for it to happen.

The constant dryness of exposition and dialogue exchanges is what made Episode 10 so much better than the other episodes. Not just because it’s action-orientated, but because it finally tries to get back to the themes that it was originally supposed to tell. Throughout the entirety of the middle portion of Volume 5, the group basically took a backseat and allowed characters and plots to happen to them rather than advocate for themselves. The closest thing we got to the theme of “building yourself back up” is Weiss talking to Yang about Blake.

In fact, the only actual characters taking action are the villains. Constantly roadblocking the cast, setting them in for a trap, and even aiming to screw each other over. These guys have more advocacy and agency than the main characters. The most any of them did was…

Burn down their own house and blamed everyone else for it, all while saying that the house is the message Adam wants to send.

Use a girl’s unrequited feelings towards them to their advantage, straddle them, and guilt tripped her enough for her to consider switching sides.

Cry about how things are not going their way until their hands start magically glowing.

Yelling at someone until they cry bitch tears and then have them run away without even bothering to close the door leading to the dangerous artifact everyone had been working so hard to keep out of enemy hands.

In the volume where the theme is “solving problems on our own”. Just because Yang drops the word strength a few times when bitching out at Raven doesn’t mean that the theme had been accomplished. In fact, they do nothing of their own accord and just follow a script. Even Ozpin, the supposed smartest guy in all of Remnant, doesn’t even bother to figure out a way to counter the trap. Just instead walk in. Hell, if Yang didn’t spot Raven, they’d be mulched.

But, back on track. Episode 9 was an entire waste that failed to pay off the expectations of what we had with the cliffhanger set up in Episode 7. “But it subverted your ex-” NO. There’s a good way to subvert expectations and being promised a fight after episodes of bland exposition only to have it be “lol, no, it’s just gonna be more talking” is not a good subversion.

No. Here’s a better way. Set up the cliffhanger like normal, but don’t show Cinder’s dragged out negotiation with Raven. Instead, have her “allying” with Cinder be a twist. That way, people’s expectations for what happened are actually, you know, subverted?

The Battle of Haven

But, you know where this is leading to… The Battle of Haven. Really, I don’t think I can say anything that hasn’t been covered by someone else. We all know it makes all the Vytal fights look like masterpieces by comparison, we all know the jokes about useless Weiss or Lionheart hogging the staircase, or even the plot holes of Raven knowing Cinder’s arm being Grimm but doing nothing about it or Blake, despite spending the past volume saying how Adam must be stopped, suddenly doesn’t care about him…

So let me cut it simply:

The reason this battle sucks might have to do with the crunch.

We don’t know how long this issue with Rooster Teeth had been going on for, but if it is indeed what people say it is and that animators don’t get paid for the last quarter or third of their work, then that might explain all the cut corners animators and writers made. Why the fights are broken up into one on ones or why fights are cut out entirely. Maybe they weren’t getting paid enough and thus, the quality of RWBY suffered as a result of it.

And that’s perhaps the shittiest thing about the Battle of Haven. It could have been this epic fight that would have made up for all the boring, drawn out scenes of exposition and chatting, but because Rooster Teeth got too greedy or even because of our own impatience (which, again, isn’t helped by the aforementioned long, drawn out scenes), we are treated to a final battle so broken and tiresome that the Battle of Winterfell manages to be a better final battle, with the only thing holding it back being that Haven had a better identity twist.

And if, for whatever reason, it isn’t due to crunch issues, then we have another problem. This was meant to be this hyped up rematch between the heroes and villains, who haven’t seen each other since the latter ruined the lives of the former. This would have been excellent to see how the killers of Jaune and Ruby’s friends would interact with them, how Yang would react to the person who framed her, even how the group had grown since their last battle…

But… if crunch wasn’t to blame for the quality dip and the writers intended for the fight to go the way it went… I have to say… What the fuck were they thinking!? So many moments could have been brought up here and yet they decided that they weren’t important enough to focus on! And now, with this battle over and done with, those moments lost their luster. If they decide to bring them up, it’d be too little, too late at best and “why the fuck are you bringing this up now” at worst.

I’ll deal with one commonly used example to get what I mean. Adam was established in Volume 3 to be a threat only made strong because he uses Blake’s emotions against her and has a Semblance that lets him dish out aura-breaking damage. Blake easily defeats Adam and has him on the ropes, only to let him run with a few excuses that some people have debated to death and back, when it would have been much easier for Blake to have to choose between apprehending Adam and helping Yang. Then, when he inevitably returns to haunt Blake next volume, suddenly he’s a threat that Blake is afraid of again despite Blake having “grown” to oppose him.

They wanted that “triumph” over him, but realize that by doing so, they’ve burned that opportunity to have the triumph be meaningful. Same goes with Emerald and Mercury. They had a good opportunity for Ruby to effectively call them out for their crimes like how Jaune did to Cinder, but instead she just headbutts Mercury. Yang had at least some closure on her arc with Mercury, but it was meh.

The Point in All of This

Hell, speaking of wasted opportunities, the reunion of Team RWBY, something that the opening had hyped and one that the fans had been waiting for since Volume 3 ended, is nothing more than an afterthought. They couldn’t even be assed to show Blake’s first fight back with Ruby and Weiss. That’s how little they cared. It’s like everyone was just wanting to get that paycheck but they needed to rush that final episode out the door and also need to make room for Gen:Lock and Nomad trailers. They didn’t even care about the stinger, as they basically ignored any sort of information relating to the stinger.

Perhaps the biggest reason why Volume 5 sucked so hard was that it was running off the heels of Volume 3. Everyone basically accepted that Volume 4 was meant to be a breather Volume, with lower stakes and lower drama (with the exception of possible death flags for Ren and Nora), but the moment they made Volume 5 the grudge match everyone wanted, then the stakes got raised back to the heights of the third Volume, only for it to fail to live up to the expectations. Sorry, I think I mean to say “subvert the expectations” in this day and age.

Though, I think the huge problem with all of this, and perhaps the biggest bottom line I can say, is that it might be due to Volume 3 going too over the edge. By killing important characters and even dividing the team, the villains had raised stakes up so high, that people began to take the show more seriously. When characters were vaguely hinted to die, be it through threats from the villains or even flashbacks, people fretted that they would die. When the villains go back to striking distance with the heroes, people desired a grand battle. When the show tried to deal with the ramifications that happened with RWBY separating, people wanted to know what was going through the characters’ heads.

And when Volume 5 failed to deliver/“subverted their expectations”, people considered it a bad volume.

But worst of all, it failed to live up to its own themes. Jaune was the only person to build himself back up again through deus ex hands, and we saw next Volume that it needed a statue for him to feel better. No one was in a position of giving up only to be defiant and shout “we’re not done here”, but instead cry “it wasn’t supposed to be like this!”. The big problem of Volume 5, make sure the relic is secure, is only solved because two characters had a catfight in the basement and the survivor didn’t bother to lock up because their daughter was too busy bitching at her. No one really grew or strengthened their resolve. The triumph… wasn’t theirs to have.

Although, it seems Rooster Teeth had learned from their mistakes, with Volume 6 being leaps and bounds better than Volume 5, regardless of what you thought of the latter half. Best of all, the themes promised in Volume 5 were shown prominently in Volume 6, albeit some of the scenes capitalizing on those themes feeling more like a child is having a tantrum because they couldn’t have the airplane.

To close out this rather long winded discussion, and to give people a tl;dr on the whole matter, Volume 5 failed to address the themes it had presented and instead just padded itself out, expecting people to accept it because it’s RWBY.

[asterinjapan]

Lucky day

Good evening again!

Jetlag is still there, but slightly improving. Dinner is proving to be a bit of an obstacle, but apparently nausea is very common with jetlags, so I’ll just grin and bear it then.

Anyway, today was quite a bit busier than I’d planned, even though I got a late start. As it turns out, shops open a lot later in Tokyo than I’m used to. This combined with the fact I’m staying in Tokyo and don’t have to leave super early to be somewhere at a reasonable time means that I can probably get up a bit later tomorrow, hmm.

My initial plan was visiting Nakano Broadway, but most of the shops there open around 12 o’clock, while I was ready to go out by 10. Oops. I just went to Ikebukuro station and decided to pay the Parco building a visit, only to find that the queue in front of the Pokémon Let’s Go pop up café was non-existent today. For reference, yesterday the queue ran down the stairs for two floors and I spotted an estimated waiting time of an hour and a half. What a difference a day makes! (Or, well, it being a week day instead of weekend helped I suppose.)

Since I had some time to kill anyway, I killed some time looking around in the merchandise shop before entering the queue of 2 whole other people.

They put a lot of effort in this café considering it’s only up for like, 3 months? At most? I got an ice latte with Eevee and a glass parfait with Snorlax. The latter was served with a spoon with a picture of a flute attached, and the waitress actually played the appropriate song in order to wake Snorlax up, haha. Like said, they sure put in effort.

I had kind of overestimated how much I could eat again and couldn’t completely finish it, but I felt bad enough anyway about eating such an adorable treat, yikes. I got two super cute stickers as commemoration of my visit here and then went my merry way to the JR part of the station.

Going to Nakano meant a transfer at Shinjuku station, my absolutely favouritest station in the whole of Tokyo! Nay, the whole of Japan! (Yeah, typo intended, I’m being sarcastic. I do not like Shinjuku station. Not at all.) Sigh. Anyway, on my way there I noticed the weather was actually very bright – the forecast had said rain for most of today, but that was clearly not true. And so I decided to stay in Shinjuku for a bit and walk to the Metropolitan Government Building (Tocho).

You see, there’s an observatory on top free of charge, and I kinda wanted to go up this week anyway to see if the view had improved over summer. And indeed it had! Once at the top, I was almost immediately treated to a view of the ever elusive Mount Fuji  looming over Tokyo. Combined with the haze over the city and the clouds just below the summit, it made for a surreal scenery. I immediately whipped out my fancy lens and I called my own photos ‘obviously fake’ as I took them, haha. It really kind of looks like I just pasted two photos on top of each other.

Anyway, I was so mesmerized by the Fuji I almost forgot to take my obligatory pictures of the Skytree and Tokyo Tower, so I quickly fixed that and wandered around the shops here for a bit. After a break, a stroll past the windows at a little past 2 revealed that Fuji had gone back into hiding again, meaning I got super lucky having seen it at all. After all, it was indeed rainy for most of the morning, so Fuji can’t have been in sight for more than a couple of hours.

 Happy with my photos, I strolled back to the station and hopped over to Nakano station, a couple of minutes removed. Right outside the station is the Nakano Sunmall shopping street, all decked out in illuminations, leading right into Nakano Broadway. Nakano Broadway is basically a 5 story shopping complex for nerds, haha. They sell a ton of comics and related merchandise, including quite some stores specializing in retro series. So if you ever considered going to Akihabara for the merchandise, definitely consider Nakano Broadway as well. There’s also a ton of gachapon – those machines that you can throw a couple of coins in to get a random 1 out of 5 or 6 different figurine or whatever. They sure have interesting stuff – Christmas hat for your cat, anyone? I ended up with a pug in a cup, haha. It’s actually a solid statue, I thought it’d be plastic but no, feels like rock. (I’d aimed for a French bulldog in that set, but meh, a pug is cute too.)

Anyway, I had a lot of fun browsing and tried to contain myself, ending up with just 2 art books. One came out so long ago I’d forgotten I ever wanted it, and the other one I’d given up years ago because it was already impossible to find then. So safe to say, I’m very pleased!

I went to a café for some matcha latte and a piece of cake before going back to Shinjuku station and hop on the Yamanote line there. Next stop, Shimbashi!

You see, most of Tokyo is decked out in Christmas/winter illuminations, but some places put in more effort than others. Near Shimbashi station is Caretta Shiodome, which has quite a spectacular layout, made even more spectacular by the shows they start putting on every 15 minutes after 5 PM. They have two, both themed after Disney movies: this week is Frozen, and within a couple of days, they switch back to Tangled. Basically, music from the movie is played (in the case of Frozen it’s obviously Let It Go, followed by For the First Time in Forever), and the lights start flickering and changing colour in time with the music. I recorded the full thing twice and made some animated gifs out of it, but I’m afraid you have to see the video to really appreciate it. Fingers crossed I can manage to upload that on tumblr, or else I’ll owe you one!

Anyway, that was pretty amazing and I’ll definitely be back later this week for the Tangled version.

It was getting pretty late now, but I still had one more thing to do. I got off at Nippori station on my way back to Ikebukuro and went to the Keisei section of the station. I almost forgot I have a plane back to the Netherlands next week, and I kind of wanted to be sure I had a seat in the Skyliner train to make it to the airport… Anyway, ticket secured, I finally boarded the train again, this time all the way to Ikebukuro. I made the full Yamanote line circle today, haha. (It’s a loop line.)

I got started on my convenience store dinner way too late, oops. My stomach doesn’t really like this salad, but at least I also had some chicken nuggets and eggs, so I’m not completely without food. Shame, though. I’d hoped my stomach was doing better today, but although I can feel improvement, I don’t feel confident enough to go out for lunch or dinner yet.

Oh well. Fingers crossed for tomorrow. At any rate, the weather should definitely be nice tomorrow, so I’ll go for some outdoors sightseeing.

Good night!

[meggie-stardust]

1, 8, 29 for the writer asks 😊

Ooh, thank you for the asks <3

1 Which of your fics would you keep the basic plot of but rewrite completely?

Oh, probably my unfinished Steter Secret Santa fic from 2017... It's like 4/5 chapters done, and I kinda lost steam (I want to finish it, I do!) I would take the general concept and condense it into a more manageable fic. I've also written a few longer fics since then, and I know how better how to structure them...

OR, I wrote this experimental BBC Sherlock fic back in the day that was based on the Hold Stead album Separation Sunday, and it was in like 500ish word vingettes told out of order. I actually really love this fic, but it was a very niche audience, and I could probably remix it into something more accessible, but meh.

8 How slow is a slow burn?

Hmmm. When I'm reading, I am a little more forgiving of something that is slow... when I'm writing, I am NOT good at slow burns at all. I can't seem to write a PWP without adding a ton of backstory or making it into something more than it needs to be, but you won't catch me writing like 25K before they hold hands...

29 What’s the hardest thing about writing?

Besides the actual writing? Probably editing. I stare at is so much, and read it in my own voice, so I miss words and typos and such. That and coming up with a good title.

[geek-gem]

The First Rampage Trailer

So after months of waiting and their being silence. We now have an official trailer for the movie based upon the Rampage video game franchise.

I've made a text post talking about this before oh stomach. Including my last reblog I well reblogged the trailer. But also just I saw the trailer again and two times rewinding the last half of the trailer mainly towards where the helicopter part is at to see the monsters.

Basically seeing that a few times made me think I wanna play Rampage Total Destruction after months well ever since my birthday.

Also I've read the notes. Some people are freaking out and about the humans becoming monsters. I did talk about this in the post probably. Even before the story was revealed I had wonder about that route.

Basically in the video games themselves spoilers in case. Ever since the original the three main mascot monsters themselves George the gorilla, Lizzie the lizard, and Ralph the wolf were are originally people. Because of a company named Scum yes their called that. Also the origins have changed in games at times. They are these people who transform into these monsters and they go around destroying shit and eating people.

Basically well originally an arcade game with sequels and also on consoles now.

While I'm not the biggest fan of the franchise. I've always liked it. Including last time I was in Kaiju mood or sometime when we got those first pictures.

I found the trailer to be nice. Yet understandable about the serious part. But their seems like comedy will be there still. Okay I was out of my room a bit to see if my parents needed help none for that front mail boxes then my cousin T's girlfriend calls face cam and I answer it and tell about what happened and give it to my mom who's holding my cousin T's girlfriend's baby girl. Then got some soap for my bathroom and washed hands whatever.

I'm sorry got off topic but about the comedy part. That helicopter that's nice yet didn't really laugh because was mainly excited about the monsters.

Including I didn't talk about more on the human part. Honestly I had this thought and I think I mentioned this in my posts and one time on Deviantart. Maybe it's because the idea of having humans still be the monsters would take a lot of time for development. Including even said in my head a waste sorry random negative bullshit yet I mean like I feel like they went with the route of animals instead humans becoming monsters. Probably because they might not wanna focus on development and their would not be much time.

Yet Rampage wasn't a very lore based game despite some of the story. From what I remember it's usually very simple. Despite the additions of aliens and time travel. Yes their is that stuff.

Including on a silly note I mentioned in that post of mine. I hope I see cute fanart of basically Dwyane Johnson's character being like a dad to these monsters. Weird idea no doesn't suck head no stop it meh head yet seriously his character basically being this guy who protects animals going against poaching. I can't remember his name but that's basically what his character is about. Honestly even the monsters in their regular forms.

I don't mind the monster being regular animals or well George in this case his hair being different and he's a rare gorilla of some kind.

Yet honestly my main negatives are just me being picky about designs and shit.

For George I was kind of expecting something similar to Kong and how he was in Kong Skull Island which was released this year. I know they can't make him look exactly like Kong. But I was honestly hoping it be similar to that. Including George is basically a parody of Kong himself.

For Ralph while his design is unqiue I was hoping something similar to like a werewolf even a wolf man I'm being weird. Instead of sticking to what an actual wolf looks like yet with added details showcasing his transformation. While I know the monsters aren't people anymore. I was hoping they some how have them gain anthro forms was gonna say human like forms too. But anthro makes a lot more sense even if it's weird.

Basically them standing on their two legs mostly like in the games.

Now we have Lizzie who is a crocodile and I'm guessing she's mainly gonna be a huge crocodile with added mutations and shit however it's spelt.

I was seriously hoping they try to stay with the well original looks. Then thought honestly they wouldn't because as the series went on they've become a lot more cartoony. Yet what I mean is basically scarier and okay I almost left more realistic yet what I mean is. Them not looking as cartoonish but their features would like faces and skin might be realistic and stuff like that.

Basically this weird grown up version of Rampage where the monsters are kind of more disgusting looking. Honestly discussing might not be the best word but basically designs that respect and honor the original looks while being their own designs.

Including I just want to mention this. Since I've mentioned this about George being a parody of Kong, Lizzie is a parody of Godzilla. While Ralph is a parody of basically well werewolves but with so right now took some time to look on Google. The game Rampage 2 Universal Tour theirs a reference to London because Ralph is held there. Basically also a reference to An American Werewolf In London and I wanna say that I've seen that film before when I was young. Good film yet it will kind of scar you for life in a way.

Honestly those were my biggest gripes because I basically wanted the monsters to be huge. While not as huge as let's say I've been thinking the Legendary version of Godzilla or even others versions Shin and the anime one too. Theirs also Kong in Skull Island yet he was still big too. Yet I kept thinking of that size and the monsters growing to that size. Including if you want them to well eat people. That's something you can do in the games.

So was looking on Wikipedia and that's where I've been getting this information yes not the most trust yet usually right I was checking Universal Tour and World Tour and Universal Tour and now the movie.

As of now it has a new thing for the plot. Also Dwyane's character is named Davis and so the thing is a rogue experiment actually. Honestly looking at the device even with Jeffery Dean Morgan's character talking about what it was. I was thinking of aliens. Including Universal Tour I know sorry if I'm wrong is the one game that deals with the alien part the most.

Honestly hope or just wait if it gets a sequel. I want to see if they can do that shit. Along with having monsters that appear later down the games. Even Total Destruction where theirs a shit ton.

Seriously I wonder if they make a joke or how people would react to a company or organization whatever named Scum. If the name is still there lol. Seriously I wanna know.

Really I liked the trailer kicked ass heard in head. In fact was thinking will this play before Justice League tomorrow. So I looked at Wikipedia a bit and it's New Line Cinema and their with Warner Bros so possibly might see it hope so man would kick ass oh head and had to keep retyping kick and just typos I'm typing too fast.

But honestly I liked this. Also I'll talk about Justice League and I haven't seen Rotten Tomatos yet lol

Got tags done lol and no other tags relating to this. Thought of making my own but just.......fine. So made two new tags if they were already made sorry if I took credit sucks ass. Also first time using a tag for Dwyane Johnson lol ha missed post I'm just smiling a bunch

[psyga315]

With Volume 7 just beyond the horizon, I figured to look back at my thoughts for Volume 5 and, through more cooled down eyes, boil down why I consider it to be the worst volume of RWBY. When I wrote my review of Volume 5, it was literally the night the episode premiered, so I was boiling. But now? I’m going to look through the review with fresher eyes and clarify what sort of problems I had with RWBY. First, a bit of backstory. There was an interview made during the summer in between Volumes 4 & 5 that had the cast say what sort of themes one could expect for Volume 5. Among these were stuff like “building yourself back up again”, “shouting ‘we’re not done here!’”, “solving problems on your own”, and lastly, from Barbara herself, “Strength” and “Growth”. For someone who was just starting to realize why people were turned off by the darkness of Volume 3, this was uplifting to say the least… The Character Shorts kinda hyped the Volume, though they sunk in their own way. Weiss’s Character Short effectively foreshadowed her loss to Vernal. This tough and talented girl gets her ass stomped rather quickly and needed to be bailed out. Winter’s line about how she “won’t be around to save her” was foreshadowing to her not actually being in the season, but when I first heard it, I thought she meant “Hey, I’m going to die this volume, lol!” and that’s without bringing up how the trailer fails to hype Weiss up like the other trailers did. Blake’s Trailer was alright, especially in taking steps to address a problem regarding Menagerie, but it felt more like Ilia given the backstory dump we got that feels all the more like mandatory reading. The problem is that, and it’s perhaps the very first problem I’ve heard about RWBY, is that the trailers (and by extension, anything that’s a spin off of RWBY like World of Remnant) feel more like you need to watch this rather than you can watch this. It’s confusing, but let’s use Blake’s Short as an example.

Ilia talks about her backstory as it is contrasted with a chase between Blake and a random dude we never see again. Assuming you’ve never watched the trailer, you’d just get the truncated version of “MUH PARENTS ARE DEEEAAAD!” and not the bits where she was forced to resent her own race because it was easier to blend in to her surroundings, like a chameleon. It’s ironic, since RWBY would do the reverse problem with Adam, where his trailer isn’t mandatory but we barely get a backstory for him beyond “I got branded, but everyone will speculate that it’s because I did something bad and not that it drove me to do bad things”.

Lastly, there’s Yang’s short, which had the minor hiccup of contrasting what an interview said about running out of Aura means you can’t use your Semblance. The Aura thing is something that can be discussed for another day, but the basics you should take away from this is that, for some time, people didn’t know how running out of Aura is symbolized. Most people take the flickering as the signal as the next hit on those guys are usually the one that does them in. As such, you had this huge debate on what kind of flickering means Aura broken and what just meant Aura is low, which, personally, could have been avoided if the writers and/or animators just utilized that Aura dust thing (seen prominently in the Bumblebee vs Adam fight) as their definitive “aura broken” animation instead of just using it some of the time. The first episode proper promised a lot. In fact, a good chunk of the first half promised a lot. However, it became much clear in a second viewing that a lot of it was just padding at worst and showing us where the characters are at best. But what I think was done dirty the most in this episode was introducing Mistral. We were hyped in Volume 4 (thanks to World of Remnant) that Mistral was this dichotomy of rich, cultural people and the seedy underbelly of criminals and that, at least one of the elements would be utilized in Volume 5. Unfortunately, all we got were a few mat paintings that contrast what Lionheart was saying in regards to Mistral being in chaos. And so, the most we get out of Mistral are those mat paintings and a perpetually raining downtown that we don’t see much of, even when it gets briefly revisited in Volume 6. We’re supposed to be invested in the city and yet all we get are empty rooms and 2D art. They took great steps to improve this in Volume 6 with Argus, though, so if there’s any consolation, it’s that they learned from their mistakes here. But we now get into the biggest problem of why Volume 5 is disliked. Because of the situation, the group are left to basically wait until Lionheart convinces the council to get them some Huntsmen. The heroes. Wait. In a volume where the writers were talking about the themes of improving yourself and pulling through with your own strength. Do you guys see the problem here? I know people have bitched about Volume 5 to hell and back and you’ve probably heard the complaints to high noon, but this entire issue is what rots Volume 5 to the core the most. Not the piss poor fight scenes, not the inconsistent characterizations, it’s that the plotting decides to take a back seat when the volume was meant to be about taking action. As the episode goes on, you see the problem unfold. Ruby and friends hit a dead end until Oscar appears and has Ozpin exposit things to them, Weiss is denied a chance to save people and fight the Grimm until the Grimm come to her, Blake is hit with the dead end of the Albains deflecting blame, and Yang had the chance encounter with Bakugou where he knows the hideout of her mom. The closest person who is taking action here is Yang, who established that she is actively looking for Ruby (technically Raven, but as we see later on, moot point). Blake’s situation is being handled by her dad, Weiss is sitting in the plane until the Grimm come for her, and Ruby is sitting on the couch that I’m pretty sure has her grooves molded into the cushion with how many times she’s sat there. A minor complaint before we go to Episode 2, we had the Stinger repeat itself because the crew thought that people wouldn’t see the stingers. This is the show, mind you, that makes a point to include scenes at the end of every volume, regardless of how long they are or what point they serve in hyping the next Volume. Hell, one of the major complaints about Volume 2 was about the stinger not mattering. So why did they suddenly decide that the viewers might not see the stinger in a culture where the MCU exists? Alright, cooling things down, we have three major scenes in Episode 2. Salem’s chat with Lionheart was meh at best and wtf at worst. I get the idea of Salem using different approaches to get people to do what she wants, but the cool aspect of Salem was that her approach was not what a villain would normally be. Instead of berating or choking her minions should they fail or talk back, Salem instead talks people down like she’s a mother to them. Even when Tyrian fails, she doesn’t hurt him, but rather tell him that he disappointed her. So, having her choke Lionheart, even when in hindsight it made some sense, is kinda an odd thing to do. But not as odd as Salem’s whole “Not you, Arthur” bit. A lot of people drew points to that and the best I can explain is that it’s either a typo (she’s meant to say not yet or not now) or Arthur and Watts are some sort of Jekyll & Hyde thing. Unfortunately, it seems Watts is more a parallel to Watson rather than Jekyll, so that brings me to believe that it’s a typo and so, rather than have an easy explanation for a problem, we just have a compounded problem. One of many. And there’s something funny to be said about Salem warning Cinder about Silver Eyes when Ruby barely learns about it this Volume. And also that she wants to speak with Tyrian but we never see what comes of it. At all. I only have one new thing about Weiss vs. the Bees. Originally, the pilot was supposed to be gay, but held off on it because they’d be killing off their first revealed gay character, something that wouldn’t look good to the fanbase. Now, while I understand the reason behind it, I have to question the logic behind why they think it isn’t okay for their first LGBT character to be offed, but instead be someone who seemed okay with murdering her crush’s parents while sending said crush to her abuser. But more on that later, we have Sienna to discuss. Now, there’s a lot to dissect. For one, RT has obviously realized that they’ve messed up and brought Sienna back for a bit (while taking the heat for “if she’s so badass, why did she go out like a chump”). However, in hindsight, what purpose did she actually serve outside of some cute nod to Shere Khan? All she did was tell Adam that he’s going too far and that’s it. And really, it just seems hypocritical for the leader of the White Fang to effectively restructure the organization into a terrorist group, murder tons of people, and then suddenly back away and say “woah, too much” when Adam proceeded to help torch Beacon. It’s to the point where one question most people want to ask at cons is “did Sienna order the hit out on the SDC”, since we don’t actually know and that it could be a radical leader of that quadrant like Adam. It felt more like Sienna should have been just the leader of Mistral’s White Fang faction instead of ruling over all the White Fang, which would make more sense as Adam would need permission to attack a kingdom that isn’t his stomping ground. Then there’s the introduction of Hazel, who at first is presented to be a pretty decent character, not wanting to kill people if he had no choice, but as time goes on, is basically your stock “big soft guy with a secret hulk side” character. Unfortunately, this episode didn’t help enforce the theme of taking action when it’s the villains who are doing it and seeming to be two if not twenty steps ahead of the heroes. Episode 3 has that whole speech thing I overlooked. Barring Ghira’s speech that the crew said is based off Obama’s “we killed Osama” speech (which, if it is, paints the whole situation of Sienna’s death in a rather dark light) before Ilia interferes. Now, I actually liked that Menagerie is hesitant to stand up for Haven. After all, humans hated their guts so much that the island was originally planned to be a place where people could dump Faunus on. There were lynchings and enslavements that are still going on to this day, just in subtler forms, Of course the Faunus wouldn’t want to fight. Then Ilia swoops in and robs Blake of any agency she has with the scene. If RT wanted to not let Blake convince the people until three quarters to the end, they should have cut the subtlety and have some annoying kid go “IT’S TOO EARLY IN THE PLOT TO DO YOUR SPEECH!”. Hell, let Blake tell her story about her team, but the audience balks at the fact that she’s not only friends with a Schnee, but also a human who crippled a guy on live television. Remember that plot point? We then cut to Oscar and this is perhaps the reason I decided to do this revisit of Volume 5. The way Ozpin talks of action and resolve, it felt like we’re going to the root of the themes of taking action. No more being subject to the events of the plot like in previous Volumes. Now? Now is the time to fight back! And that built up to… what? One training scene and Ruby learning headbutt? Granted, we see later on that there was a bit more to the plan, but for the most part, it seemed like an excuse for “character growth” as opposed to actual character growth. A training arc isn’t just some short scenes of a person lifting weights and jogging up stairs. Its meant to be a sort of means of growth for the character. There’s a reason most training montages have the character suck at first, but then get better by the time the montage ends. It’s because it’s the quickest way to show growth. But even without that, you could get some serious mileage for a pulled off training arc. Rocky IV and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back have some good examples of it. Rocky IV had the titular hero train and work out in the middle of a cold, mountainous range, while his opponent is simply given steroids. It shows the dichotomy between the two and how they view their eventual fight. Empire, on the other hand, had that masterful scene with Luke in the cave, where he has a huge moment of both foreshadowing and character growth. Here? We just have Ruby learn headbutt like she’s nothing more than a Pokemon. There could have been a lot more done with it, like having Ruby put a lot more force in her punches, causing others to realize she’s extremely angry about what happened to Pyrrha and Penny, or, if the need to exposit about Semblances is needed, bring something new to the table that isn’t going to confuse the fuck out of people… Something like: “Your Semblance might not reveal itself until you need it most” or something like that. Not “A semblance is someone’s personality, but not. Wow! Exposition!” or “Hey, remember how we said Aura was passive? Welp, not anymore!” Not to mention that Jaune is seemingly cool with Ozpin suddenly coming back from the dead. Here’s the thing, last Volume had him upset with Ozpin about what happened to Pyrrha, something that didn’t seemed to resolve itself. Keep in mind that, for all rights and merits, Jaune believed Ozpin to have died. In fact, it was that confirmation that Ozpin had lost against Cinder that convinced Pyrrha to kill herself. Now here he is, seemingly stuck in the body of another kid and he just outright said this is a normal thing for him. You’d expect him to have something more than “golly!”. The fact that he didn’t seem to have any aggression towards Ozpin until after he ran to his hidey hole in Volume 6 seems rather odd given that his entire character is that he’s angsting about Pyrrha and angry at Cinder for what she did. The group seem rather content to just sit back and let the plot happen, which is the opposite of what the crew was trying to convey with their themes. I still stand by what I said regarding how Episode 4 was a good episode, finally having a reunion between two members of Team RWBY, but it’s perhaps one of the last good things about RWBY we’ll ever see in Volume 5. Because Raven’s promise to tell Yang “the whole truth” turns out to just be regurgitated exposition at worst. But first, we need to have Blake, the woman who doesn’t want her race to be labeled, turn out to have labels for her friends. Okay, granted, it’s not that dumb but it is kinda patronizing that we need to have a character tell us what another character is. While the rest of her speech is pretty effective in defining Blake’s character, making her perhaps the only character these themes of growth and strength actually apply to, it still is annoying that the most we take away out of this is her boiling down every character to a single word, then bringing up how Adam is going to ruin everything for the Faunus. You’ll see why this is a problem later. I liked the setting of Menagerie’s Shallow Sea marketplace thing and felt like Menagerie is wasted potential. Ruby’s whole speech still feels like damage control, but with the added complaint of Ruby deciding to blame Salem for something Cinder did. Now, I heard the common excuse a lot: “Salem told Cinder to do it so it’s all her fault”, but that problem with that? Cinder told Emerald to kill Penny. So… Yeah. It is her fault. Hell, I wouldn’t have minded this if Ruby didn’t word it like Salem personally killed Penny and Pyrrha. Like as in, she just up and appeared out of nowhere and shot both Penny and Pyrrha in the head. It still doesn’t fix the fact that Ruby is basically “hey, remember how I’m supposed to be upset?” Lastly for Episode 5, we have the White Fang do the brilliant plant of murdering the chieftain who just spoke out against them. It’s dumb. Extremely dumb. What the hell do they think will happen after they murder the chieftain in cold blood? Menagerie is just gonna magically bend over and obey the White Fang? But perhaps the biggest waste is the White Fang in general. You have these two sneaky fox brothers who seemingly oversee everything and even state that they’re only letting Adam do what he wants until he’s no longer of use to them, a buff bat dude, and a spider-lady… And they’re never seen again after this Volume. I get the idea, because RT is trying to wrap up the Faunus subplot as quickly as possible, but the problem that you can’t exactly introduce new characters or hidden depths if you’re just gonna throw them out with the bath water. If they wanted to end the subplot, why did they put all the effort in some random characters that are just gonna be defeated off screen with a tea tray? Then again, this is a problem endemic to RWBY. Introduce this character, then quickly shoo them away before you’re committed to writing a plot for them. If you know you were going to half-ass the White Fang conclusion, why bother with stuff like more White Fang members or the SDC brand? In fact, why bother with the White Fang to begin with if you’re going to do so little with them? Moving on before I lose my cool, we have Qrow aimlessly walking around downtown Mistral. Now, the crew said that Maria was supposed to be here… But… Why? What purpose would she serve? If she’s just gonna be a “hey, look, cameo to foreshadow Volume 6”, then that’s a horrible purpose. You know how most Cinematic Universes tanked because they spent more time hyping the next twenty movies when they should focus on their pilot? That’s what she would have been like. Not to mention that she would have been caught in the crossfire of why Volume 5 was bad. “So here we have this random old lady who doesn’t matter at all to the plot so why is she even there” and then “Oh wow, she’s a SEW. They’re doing damage control to justify her unneeded presence in Volume 5”. And, don’t get me wrong, Maria is a fun lady and all that, but there needs to be a reason she was there beyond “hype for next Volume”. What makes the problem worse was that they’re planning to include Maria so as to have a sort of Yoda to teach Ruby. This makes the complaint of “why didn’t Ruby ask about the Silver Eyes” even more of a complaint because now it seems like they decided “hey, we’re going to address it next volume, so let’s not bother bringing it up here”. Which is even worse than “hey, people noticed we didn’t address this so let’s completely invent this character for the sole purpose of addressing it!” And then there’s Raven who is all “lol, I know more than you realize but I’m not actually gonna answer anything trolololololol” AARHG! Okay. Okay. Before I completely lose my marbles, there’s one thing about the scene with Raven that’s stupid. It’s the “there’s no such thing as magic” thing. Okay. I get it. Turning into a bird is something that, in the world of RWBY, seems impossible. But there’s a ton of problems with this: 1.  What makes summoning dead Grimm to fight for you so much more different than magic? 2.  You’re willing to believe in magic rocks that augment your fighting style and are in fact part of a company that profits off magic rocks, yet turning into a bird is the messed up thing? 3.  The guy who gave her this ability is currently inhabiting the body of a young boy and has said to basically devour his soul in due time, as well as create the magic that’s responsible for torching your school and your friend… And the BIRD is the most messed up thing!? “But Raven made it sound like she was forced into it”. She didn’t seem to have any fucking problem with it though. Not only that, but it didn’t seem like a big dark secret that Ozpin wouldn’t want uncovered. In fact, he even said he gave Qrow and Raven the ability to turn into birds in an amused way. Even more so when everyone but Yang seemed to respond to it with disbelief rather than outright anger. There’s a reason this whole bird issue was made fun of in Jello’s “So This is Basically RWBY” video. Also, before we move onto Episode 7, I wanna bring up that the scene where Qrow visits the Shields is perhaps the reason why I hold Ozpin’s censorship of Lionheart’s role in the Battle of Haven to be one of the most scumbag moves he could have made. “Your mom’s dead, but don’t worry, the guy who sold her out is a hero!” Right, back to Episode 7. Okay, I’ll admit, it was a nice reunion scene all things considered, albeit with some rather unnerving things like Yang asking Weiss if she let the Boarbatusk skewer the trophy wife or even the dumb, patronizing “we haven’t made character arcs for us to go through so I’ll just say we had some”, since they had the great idea to use Ren, who is voiced by Monty’s brother, as the mouthpiece for that. Unfortunately, this is the episode I always think back to when I think of Volume 5. The perfect epitome of a slow, monotonous Volume. The problem I have is that, yeah, it’s meant to be this breather episode, a calm before the storm, but this just feels like a long lull that’s made even more insulting with the cliffhanger. All it has is people dumping exposition that viewers have either figured out or weren’t even burning questions and I think the awkward silence that followed Ozpin saying how he was the wizard that gave the Maidens his power is the perfect epitome for just how boring the volume is. The dude just revealed a massive plot twist and it’s treated as nothing more than a “did you know” factoid. While I liked how they addressed that Blake leaving Yang would have had some serious negative emotions in Yang, it felt rather half-assed that they basically resolved it with “hey, my mom’s drunk, so shut up and accept Blake the moment she comes back”, especially since it comes from Weiss, who told Blake at the end of Volume 1 that if she ever runs away again, she best let RWBY know. If they wanted to ship Bumblebee so badly, this would have been a great hurdle for them to come across instead of just “hey, let me resolve this plot for you”. Now, the whole thing with Ilia… Let’s get the elephant out of the way. The way they revealed her sexuality, I feel, could have been done better. “You wanna know why I’m gonna kill your parents and bring you to your abuser? Because I wanted you to look at me like a lover!” There’s a reason why some fans label her as a “psycho lesbian”. However, I want to bring up that Rooster Teeth did an excellent job at building tension during the climax of the Menagerie Arc. Sure, the cliffhangers were tiresome, but you couldn’t help but admit you were at the edge of your seat and it even did a good job at subversion. Even if they allegedly didn’t even intend for it to happen. The constant dryness of exposition and dialogue exchanges is what made Episode 10 so much better than the other episodes. Not just because it’s action-orientated, but because it finally tries to get back to the themes that it was originally supposed to tell. Throughout the entirety of the middle portion of Volume 5, the group basically took a backseat and allowed characters and plots to happen to them rather than advocate for themselves. The closest thing we got to the theme of “building yourself back up” is Weiss talking to Yang about Blake. In fact, the only actual characters taking action are the villains. Constantly roadblocking the cast, setting them in for a trap, and even aiming to screw each other over. These guys have more advocacy and agency than the main characters. The most any of them did was… 1.  Burn down their own house and blamed everyone else for it, all while saying that the house is the message Adam wants to send. 2.  Use a girl’s unrequited feelings towards them to their advantage, straddle them, and guilt tripped her enough for her to consider switching sides. 3.  Cry about how things are not going their way until their hands start magically glowing. 4.  Yelling at someone until they cry bitch tears and then have them run away without even bothering to close the door leading to the dangerous artifact everyone had been working so hard to keep out of enemy hands. In the volume where the theme is “solving problems on our own”. Just because Yang drops the word strength a few times when bitching out at Raven doesn’t mean that the theme had been accomplished. In fact, they do nothing of their own accord and just follow a script. Even Ozpin, the supposed smartest guy in all of Remnant, doesn’t even bother to figure out a way to counter the trap. Just instead walk in. Hell, if Yang didn’t spot Raven, they’d be mulched. But, back on track. Episode 9 was an entire waste that failed to pay off the expectations of what we had with the cliffhanger set up in Episode 7. “But it subverted your ex-” NO. There’s a good way to subvert expectations and being promised a fight after episodes of bland exposition only to have it be “lol, no, it’s just gonna be more talking” is not a good subversion. No. Here’s a better way. Set up the cliffhanger like normal, but don’t show Cinder’s dragged out negotiation with Raven. Instead, have her “allying” with Cinder be a twist. That way, people’s expectations for what happened are actually, you know, subverted? But, you know where this is leading to… The Battle of Haven. Really, I don’t think I can say anything that hasn’t been covered by someone else. We all know it makes all the Vytal fights look like masterpieces by comparison, we all know the jokes about useless Weiss or Lionheart hogging the staircase, or even the plot holes of Raven knowing Cinder’s arm being Grimm but doing nothing about it or Blake, despite spending the past volume saying how Adam must be stopped, suddenly doesn’t care about him… So let me cut it simply: The reason this battle sucks might have to do with the crunch. We don’t know how long this issue with Rooster Teeth had been going on for, but if it is indeed what people say it is and that animators don’t get paid for the last quarter or third of their work, then that might explain all the cut corners animators and writers made. Why the fights are broken up into one on ones or why fights are cut out entirely. Maybe they weren’t getting paid enough and thus, the quality of RWBY suffered as a result of it. And that’s perhaps the shittiest thing about the Battle of Haven. It could have been this epic fight that would have made up for all the boring, drawn out scenes of exposition and chatting, but because Rooster Teeth got too greedy or even because of our own impatience (which, again, isn’t helped by the aforementioned long, drawn out scenes), we are treated to a final battle so broken and tiresome that the Battle of Winterfell manages to be a better final battle, with the only thing holding it back being that Haven had a better identity twist. And if, for whatever reason, it isn’t due to crunch issues, then we have another problem. This was meant to be this hyped up rematch between the heroes and villains, who haven’t seen each other since the latter ruined the lives of the former. This would have been excellent to see how the killers of Jaune and Ruby’s friends would interact with them, how Yang would react to the person who framed her, even how the group had grown since their last battle… But… if crunch wasn’t to blame for the quality dip and the writers intended for the fight to go the way it went… I have to say… What the fuck were they thinking!? So many moments could have been brought up here and yet they decided that they weren’t important enough to focus on! And now, with this battle over and done with, those moments lost their luster. If they decide to bring them up, it’d be too little, too late at best and “why the fuck are you bringing this up now” at worst. I’ll deal with one commonly used example to get what I mean. Adam was established in Volume 3 to be a threat only made strong because he uses Blake’s emotions against her and has a Semblance that lets him dish out aura-breaking damage. Blake easily defeats Adam and has him on the ropes, only to let him run with a few excuses that some people have debated to death and back, when it would have been much easier for Blake to have to choose between apprehending Adam and helping Yang. Then, when he inevitably returns to haunt Blake next volume, suddenly he’s a threat that Blake is afraid of again despite Blake having “grown” to oppose him. They wanted that “triumph” over him, but realize that by doing so, they’ve burned that opportunity to have the triumph be meaningful. Same goes with Emerald and Mercury. They had a good opportunity for Ruby to effectively call them out for their crimes like how Jaune did to Cinder, but instead she just headbutts Mercury. Yang had at least some closure on her arc with Mercury, but it was meh. Hell, speaking of wasted opportunities, the reunion of Team RWBY, something that the opening had hyped and one that the fans had been waiting for since Volume 3 ended, is nothing more than an afterthought. They couldn’t even be assed to show Blake’s first fight back with Ruby and Weiss. That’s how little they cared. It’s like everyone was just wanting to get that paycheck but they needed to rush that final episode out the door and also need to make room for Gen:Lock and Nomad trailers. They didn’t even care about the stinger, as they basically ignored any sort of information relating to the stinger. Perhaps the biggest reason why Volume 5 sucked so hard was that it was running off the heels of Volume 3. Everyone basically accepted that Volume 4 was meant to be a breather Volume, with lower stakes and lower drama (with the exception of possible death flags for Ren and Nora), but the moment they made Volume 5 the grudge match everyone wanted, then the stakes got raised back to the heights of the third Volume, only for it to fail to live up to the expectations. Sorry, I think I mean to say “subvert the expectations” in this day and age. Though, I think the huge problem with all of this, and perhaps the biggest bottom line I can say, is that it might be due to Volume 3 going too over the edge. By killing important characters and even dividing the team, the villains had raised stakes up so high, that people began to take the show more seriously. When characters were vaguely hinted to die, be it through threats from the villains or even flashbacks, people fretted that they would die. When the villains go back to striking distance with the heroes, people desired a grand battle. When the show tried to deal with the ramifications that happened with RWBY separating, people wanted to know what was going through the characters’ heads. And when Volume 5 failed to deliver/“subverted their expectations”, people considered it a bad volume. But worst of all, it failed to live up to its own themes. Jaune was the only person to build himself back up again through deus ex hands, and we saw next Volume that it needed a statue for him to feel better. No one was in a position of giving up only to be defiant and shout “we’re not done here”, but instead cry “it wasn’t supposed to be like this!”. The big problem of Volume 5, make sure the relic is secure, is only solved because two characters had a catfight in the basement and the survivor didn’t bother to lock up because their daughter was too busy bitching at her. No one really grew or strengthened their resolve. The triumph… wasn’t theirs to have. Although, it seems Rooster Teeth had learned from their mistakes, with Volume 6 being leaps and bounds better than Volume 5, regardless of what you thought of the latter half. Best of all, the themes promised in Volume 5 were shown prominently in Volume 6, albeit some of the scenes capitalizing on those themes feeling more like a child is having a tantrum because they couldn’t have the airplane. To close out this rather long winded discussion, and to give people a tl;dr on the whole matter, Volume 5 failed to address the themes it had presented and instead just padded itself out, expecting people to accept it because it’s RWBY.