opalharkness

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Happy Pride Month!! 🏳️‍🌈

Just a quick sketch, but I wanted to do something to celebrate! ❤️

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RWBY and the Difference Between Combat Schools and Huntsmen Academies

One really interesting aspect of RWBY that I think we don’t discuss or recognize enough is just how long and involved the process of becoming a huntress/huntsman actually is.

Like people love to throw around terms like ‘magic high-school’ to describe Beacon and ‘super-powered teenagers’ to describe our heroines or just huntresses and huntsmen in general, but that is just demonstrably NOT the case. Sure, RUBY may have been fifteen when she came to Beacon, but that was only because she’d been bumped up two whole years. It seems that the standard age for a first-year Beacon student (and almost certainly Haven, Atlas and Shade as well) is seventeen/eighteen. And according to Ozpin, students will spend four years at the academy before graduating as full-fledged huntresses and huntsmen. Meaning that the average age for an academy graduate and newly minted grimm hunter is twenty-one/twenty-two.

Simply put, the Huntsmen Academies are NOT magic high-schools, but rather far more analogous to COLLEGES and UNIVERSITIES. Rather, it is the Combat Schools like Signal, Pharos and Sanctum that are the ‘magic high-schools’ of Remnant.

And it’s when we consider those that I think we start getting a sense of just how lengthy and dedicated the process of becoming a huntress likely is.

In her meeting with Ozpin in the first episode, Ruby comments that she ‘only has two more years at Signal’, implying that she’s likely already halfway or more through her expected time there. Meaning that Combat Schools likely run for at least four or possibly five years. Which in turn would mean that the whole process of becoming a huntress or huntsmen starts at age thirteen or even twelve.

Now obviously we can be unsettled by all the ‘child soldier’ implications there, but for one I highly doubt the Combat Schools are throwing thirteen-year-olds against Grimm, and more importantly it could even be NECCESARY for prospective huntresses and huntsmen to start training at such a young age, particularly when it comes to things like Aura and Semblances.

Consider the fact that it’s pretty clear that most people on Remnant DON’T have a Semblance, or rather an unlocked semblance, or an especially strong aura. Because actually training those things to the point where you can go toe-to-toe with rabid darkness monsters is a very long and difficult process. A process that I imagine only gets HARDER to begin the older one gets. Like with so many other skills, I wouldn’t be surprised if unlocking and beginning to train one’s semblance and aura is MUCH easier as a child than as an adult. The same likely goes for weapons and combat training.

I imagine this is one of the real purposes of Combat Schools: to provide students with a safe, controlled environment to unlock and begin training their semblance and aura.

And I imagine the Combat Schools likely serve another, more grim but ultimately necessary purpose: to weed out the kids who simply AREN’T cut out for the whole ‘monster slaying’ business.

Consider for a moment that there are likely several Combat Schools and Academies in each Kingdom, with medium to larger cities having perhaps one or two each, like Signal Academy on Patch, and Sanctum in Argus, with maybe three to five in the capital cities, and several more scattered around the kingdoms in smaller villages. And that with the legendary status of Huntress and Huntsmen in Remnant culture, a LOT of kids likely join these schools, all hoping to become a cool, badass legendary hero themselves.

Now consider just how many Beacon applicants we saw at the start of the show. A few dozen, maybe a hundred, hundred and fifty, tops? And remember that not all of that number even went through the standard Combat School training, as we know from Blake that one can apply for Academy admission directly, albeit through what is almost certainly an EXTREMELY difficult exam process. I mean, out of the eight students we follow at Beacon, we’ve confirmed only THREE actually went through Combat School; Ruby, Yang and Pyrrha. Weiss, Blake and Jaune definitely didn’t attend one, and while Ren and Nora might have, they could just as easily have done what Blake did.

To really put some numbers to this, let’s say that the Kingdom of Vale and Eastern Saunus as a whole has maybe twenty Combat Schools in total, from the handful of big schools like Pharos in the capital and other large cities, to more mid-sized schools like Signal in the larger towns and settlements, to some scattered ‘schoolhouse’-type setups run by one or two retired huntresses or huntsmen. And every year, all of those schools each get a combined average of maybe between fifty to a hundred bright-eyed thirteen-year-olds in their starting classes, each hopeful and positive they’re going to be legendary heroes one day. Putting the total number of huntsmen hopefuls across Vale each year at anywhere between one- and two-thousand.

Cut to four-to-five years later, only about a hundred of those kids will be arriving at Beacon. Which again, isn’t even counting students like Weiss and Blake who didn’t even attend a Combat School, or Pyrrha who came from a different kingdom.

Now that’s not to say I think some dark and grisly fate awaits those kids who can’t make the cut. I don’t think kids are getting killed or horribly maimed and crippled in these combat schools. Rather, they just drop out of the program.

Because it’s all simply too much for them.

Being a professional monster slayer is HARD, probably the hardest, most dangerous job in the world. And very few are truly cut out for it.

I mean, just look at the results of those Combat Schools: At the start of the series, when all those prospective Beacon students learned they were about to be launched into a Grimm-infested forest, the ONLY guy who was scared or even mildly concerned was the one who faked his way in and didn’t actually have any training or experience. Ruby, Yang, Weiss, Pyrrha, Nora, even whats-their-faces in CDRL, all of them were cool, composed and even excited.

Every last one of those first year applicants* arrived at Beacon a highly trained, capable and experienced fighter in each their own right. With an unlocked semblance, a trained aura and a custom-build weapon of their own.

This is one of the big reasons why the Huntsmen Academies are FAR more analogous to colleges and universities rather than the ‘magic high schools’ we so often see in fantasy stories, and one of the things that makes RWBY rather unique.

Basically all of our main characters (aside from that one idiot who thought he could skip the line) enter the story having already completed their requisite ‘training arcs’ and are pretty much READY to become huntresses. It’s why Beacon itself and various ‘school stories’ really WEREN’T a focus of the first three volumes and served more as a safe and comfortable ‘home base’ for our heroines. At least until Volume 3 burned down said home base and thrust our heroines into the real world for the actual story to begin.

*Obviously excluding Jaune who frankly by all rights SHOULD have been dead or at least horribly and permanently maimed within the first thirty seconds or so, were it not for the Grace of Pyrrha.

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Dodging one of Cinder's arrows

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He grew wiser with age

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He thinks he's too old for this

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Baby Naruto <3

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Sakumo go get your fucking dog son.

extra:

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"Broken wings won't hold you down, you'll take flight soon"

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Blake 🖤

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Instagram / Cara

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another Blake screencap redraw :D

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One of my favorite things about Ruby as a character is just how so much of her personality and design completely contradicts with conventional character design.

Characters with Ruby’s personality and mannerisms, particularly main characters, those All-Loving Heroes/Heroines who always strive to do the right thing and stay positive through adversity generally have pretty consistent design elements: Lots of warm, heroic colors like blues, bright reds/pinks/orange, greens, yellow/gold. Eyes that are usually blue or green. And uses a standard ‘Heroic’ weapon like a sword, staff, wand or shield. And they typically don’t wear hoods because those are for sneaky people.

Ruby on the other hand, follows exactly NONE of these design conventions.

Ruby’s two primary colors are Blood-Red and Black, with her very first outfit of the series being nothing but those two colors. Her hair is likewise a very dark red. Ruby also has Silver/Gray eyes, a trait more often seen in prophets, seers or characters with a sense of superiority above others. Also Snipers.

And then there’s Ruby’s weapon: The gigantic scythe/sniper-rifle. Two of the most Not-Heroic weapons in one! This isn’t some noble, heroic weapon. This is a Final Boss weapon!

Just about everything about Ruby’s design aesthetic just screams ‘Anti-Hero’, ‘Brooding Loner’ or even outright Villain. At first glance with no foreknowledge about RWBY, most people would never peg Ruby as some social-awkward, adorkable ‘always sees the best in people’ cinnamon roll kind of protagonist that she is. And I know this for certain because way back when all we knew of Ruby was the RED Trailer, that is exactly what happened.

If you want something really trippy, go track down some of the very first RWBY fan content that came out prior to the first episode airing in 2013. Back then, pretty much everyone was thinking that Ruby was going to be some combination of serious, brooding, quiet or soft-spoken. Heck, some people were thinking she was going to be outright mute, which is kinda hilarious in hindsight considering what we later got with Neo.

It’s no secret that RWBY, particularly early on, drew a LOT from Final Fantasy, specifically FF7 and FF8. But something I’ve never seen talked about very much is that in visual terms, the character Ruby takes most inspiration from is none other than Vincent Valentine.

(I mean just LOOK at what his cape does in Advent Children and tell me that didn’t directly inspire Ruby’s semblance.)

Ruby Rose, our adorkable cinnamon roll of a heroine, has a design aesthetic directly inspired by easily one of the darkest, grimmest, edgiest characters in all of Final Fantasy.

The Ruby we are introduced to at the start of the series is a character who dress and fights like a cold, hardened, brooding, edgy, badass anti-hero, yet has the demeanor, personality and overall character of a sweet, adorkable, kind heroine who wants to make friends and help everybody.

It’s a case of character design that I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen anywhere else and it all serves to make Ruby feel all the more unique as a character.

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would you pick up the phone for this hot blonde? 📞😳

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its always the quiet ones that rock your world 😏🐈‍⬛

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girl get up your crown is gonna fall 🤭

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are we thinking evanescence or paramore played during this photoshoot? 💀

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💛🖤