#//If THEY survive/live well; and SHE doesn't; she's still technically in the clear–an odd thinking; but it's her mindset & will never chang

[oceanxveiined]

Her obsession with the Abyss, as well as each and every undertaking she's tasked herself with always had pretty much one common denominator and purpose–to assure her own well-being and safety. To ensure she would never be powerless in the face of a threat on her life ever again, however she can. It has been that way since she'd received her Vision, since she'd had to fight to protect her family, and each and every lethal encounter after that. At her very core, she wants to survive.

Admittedly though, even that will be secondary to not only whatever knowledge she seeks to gain from an encounter, but the assurance that her brother, or more recently her group will survive, regardless of whether it will doom her or not. Hence, it is why she will take such horribly reckless and seemingly thoughtless extremes of risk to herself in her information gathering. It's never been just her maddened drive to succeed and achieve that fuels it, but in fact because at least one of her most precious allies either stand behind her in the endeavor or happen to be one who will benefit most if she pushes to return to them with something to show for her efforts.

That, she will consider worth more than her own well-being, any day.

[yandere-daydreams]

ayaka and ayato never really learned how to share.

it made sense, once you'd been in the kamisato clan's employment long enough to fully grasp the extent of their wealth. why would they have to? as children, their parents were more than able to provide two of everything either sibling may want, and as they grew up, their interests diverged, their schedules deviated, and they were never so lucky as to encounter a scenario where, say, ayaka took a liking to ayato's favorite sword or ayato decided he was fond of a material ayaka had set aside for her next kimono. they rarely fought, and on the few occasions when they did find themselves at odds with one another, it never seemed to result in anything more than a few quiet meals and a particularly impassioned sparing session. they were too mature for juvenile disagreements, too regal to squabble over toys like children. they didn't fight, but they didn't have to, either.

which must be why they seem to have so much trouble dividing your time amongst themselves.

you owe the most of it to ayaka, technically - something she's quick to point out whenever ayato asks you to help him sort through letters from the other clans or offers to accompany you on your near-daily trips to the marketplace. you're her attendant, her companion, and she's possessive of you as a swan would be possessive of the whiteness of its feathers - unwilling to let you be marred by the filthy hands of anyone aside from herself. she doesn't need your help, and you know she'd be able to survive an hour or so without your company, and yet, she clings to both, makes excuses to keep you by her side despite how clear it is that she doesn't need you to help her dress or brew her tea. you'd never think of complaining, not on a salary like yours, but still. you could afford spare more time for ayato's paperwork, if she allowed you to.

ayato's claim to you is less legitimate, but boosted by his position as one of the shogun's commissioners. ayaka doesn't need your help, and neither does ayato, not really, but it's more plausible when he claims he needs an extra pair of hands for... well, for whatever a commissioner does all day, when he's not fighting treasurer hoarders or giving poor thoma food poisoning. he's willing to employ more underhanded methods, too, to catch you the moment you leave ayaka's sight and keep you occupied until you're forced to return to her. he'll slip you notes asking you to visit his personal chambers in the dead of night, leave silk-wrapped jewelry and bouquets of white roses on the foot of your bed, openly ask you if you'd rather be his or his sister's when he knows that ayaka's well-within earshot.

they still don't fight, or scream, or let their own pettiness affect anything beyond the internal dynamics of their household, but you're not left as unharmed as the rest of the world. it's tiring, being pulled between two bodies of impossible strength and resolution, having to live between the sharpened ambition of water flowing downhill and the quiet attrition of ice splitting open solid stone. it's hard not to imagine yourself split in half, a piece of you lodge on the ends of each of their blades. you'd leave if you thought you were able to, but that's just not plausible. they're both so unyielding, you couldn't imagine ayato or ayaka ever letting the object of their desire go without a fight.

it's all you can do to smile, try to keep the peace, and hope that eventually, they'll learn how to share something without tearing it apart.

[kitkatopinions]

To be fair heroes overcoming great odds isn't unheard of and I don't expect Salem to literally win outright and end the show this volume (now THAT would be unexpected). However, that doesn't mean they can build up Salem like this and then have her fail while causing minimal no name casualties. I really wanted her to kill off at least 1/4 of the named cast. That would show the survivors though she might have been defeated, there were serious consequences to their screw ups and Salem is dangerous.

I absolutely agree with this.

Let’s look at the Fall of Beacon as an example of how the heroes overcame great odds and the bad guys didn’t win outright, but there were still plenty of casualties, the losses were significant, and the main characters had things they needed to learn from. Not only were the main cast dealing with hordes of Grimm and all the villains that have been established so far at once, the city was also overrun with Grimm, the White Fang was attacking, and the Atlas robots that were meant to protect everyone got hacked and turned against people, and then a massive and clearly very powerful Grimm got released as well, while Cinder claimed the second half of the Fall Maiden powers. These were massively hard to beat odds. And funnily enough, many of the problems got taken out without much victory from the main characters. Roman was eaten by a bird and the crashing ship cut off the signal to the Atlas robots, Blake was running from Adam and he just didn’t chase her, Cinder and the dragon Grimm were both taken out by Ruby discovering her silver eyes, which were a suddenly introduced magic power.

There are two things that made the Fall of Beacon still much more significant than the battle at Atlas. Number one is effort. Everyone was desperate and scrambling to help, everyone was seen fighting off Grimm and the Atlas robots throughout the whole of the Fall, everyone ended the battle exhausted or wounded. The only people who were making quips were the longtime hunters and inner circle members who had seen all kinds of battle before like Qrow, and only in moments of temporary reprieve. Before Roman got swallowed by a bird, Ruby had spent time fighting him and Neo in an effort to stop him from shooting down other ships. It doesn’t feel like she did nothing to earn a victory, because she was distracting Roman and trying to save people and clearly was fighting as hard as she could. Roman even being out of the cockpit in order to be eaten was a direct result of Ruby’s actions. Blake escaping didn’t feel like Adam just let her go without a fight because they did have a fight, Blake put in a lot of work for it. When Blake ran away and Adam didn’t go after her, it didn’t feel like Blake did nothing to earn it because she fought him for a time despite her trauma, pushed down the pain of her injury, and used cleverness to get some distance between them. The second thing that made the Fall of Beacon still feel more significant than Atlas was loss. They were in a situation where it was impossible to save everything and everyone, and the writing reflected that. Ironwood lost a lot of resources, the school had to shut down, there was a ton of property damage, but those are all smaller stakes. What really hit was the injuries and the deaths. Penny’s death started the whole thing, and whether or not she’s back now, she literally was dismembered on screen, leading the audience to be shocked, emotional, sad, and to know this is serious. In the fight against Adam, Yang lost her arm, which was something that her character dealt with the fallout of for the next three seasons. Roman was a villain, but Roman died as a causality to the Grimm despite being on Cinder’s side, which proved just how dangerous the Grimm were to everyone and that no character was safe. We didn’t see many civilians die, but it was obvious that they had to have died.

And then there was Cinder and the dragon Grimm. Ruby triggered her silver eyes for the first time accidentally and took out Cinder and the dragon Grimm at once without even meaning to or fighting Cinder at all. But it still felt earned and significant. Partly because Ruby didn’t know she could do this, so it wasn’t a ‘why didn’t you just use this earlier?’ moment, it wasn’t a ‘so you’ve been sitting on this power for what reason?’ moment. Partly because it came at a cost and directly after the loss of Pyrrha, another emotional loss for both the characters and the fanbase - and a main character. When I was watching this scene, I wasn’t worried about small details because a main character had just had an on-screen death! And Ruby’s emotional reaction, freezing for a second and then screaming Pyrrha’s name was impactful. The cost of Ruby acquiring this new sudden power was Pyrrha’s death, so it didn’t feel unearned for Ruby to use it. And then it clearly took a lot of her, the consequence of acquiring her power was passing out for at least days, likely weeks. The other reason why this scene in particular didn’t feel like a deus ex machina was because it didn’t solve the problems before they could start. They already lost Penny, they already lost Pyrrha, they already lost Ozpin, Yang already lost her arm, Blake already had her trauma reignited and felt like she had to run, the city had already been over-run, civilians had died, the school had already fallen. Ruby’s silver eyes stopped Cinder from continuing and stopped the largest and most dangerous Grimm in its tracks, but it wasn’t a fix. They triumphed, technically. They had stopped Cinder for the moment, taken out the largest Grimm, saved a lot of people, stopped the Atlas robots... But there was still massive cost.

Of course, it doesn’t have to even be that big. Although I’d have preferred it, the kingdom doesn’t have to fall, the school doesn’t have to go down, no main characters need to die. I can’t think of a good example in RWBY, but let’s talk about a part in the Lord of the Rings movies, Helms Deep. The people of Rohan holed up in a fortress to try and outlast the armies of orcs attacking them, but they had already lost a strong number of (nameless, characterless) fighters. So they started pulling mostly nameless and characterless children and elderly men from the civilians to fight to save their people (yes, it’s incredibly stupid that there were able bodied adult women literally asking to fight that aren’t allowed, but we’re not talking about that.) Our hero, Aragorn got in a fight with Legolas where they made it very clear that they both knew that all of these kids and elderly people would die and that if they fought, they’d likely die too. A group of elves came to join in their desperate last stand, and during the large fight, a side character elf from the last movie died brutally, on screen, while Aragorn yelled and fought to try to get to him and held him in his arms as he passed away. Later on, we saw very few live soldiers trying to barricade what seemed to be the last door between the Orcs and the civilians hiding in the caves. The king, Théoden, seemed to have lost all hope, but Aragorn talked him into trying to make one last stand to give the civilians a chance to escape and Theoden clearly thought they were riding to their deaths. Gandalf arrived conveniently just in time with an army of more Rohan soldiers (previously exiled) and turned the tide of the battle. The people of Rohan survived, Rohan itself survived and could start recovering, none of the (very capable of fighting) women or children younger than seemingly thirteen were lost, none of our main characters died or even seemed to obtain severe injuries, and not too long after that, Rohan threw a party. The only named character we know we lost was a side character who we didn’t have a lot of time to get attached to. But this still seemed like a well earned and hard fought victory, where the stakes had been incredibly high.

The Battle at Atlas is completely empty. We didn’t lose anyone other than Hazel, who was killed by his own boss (iirc.) Three of our four main protagonists spent episodes sitting around doing nothing. JRY interjected quips and fun times into even serious moments (like Oscar being kidnapped by the Hound.) The only losses we received were nameless and characterless soldiers that the writing clearly doesn’t want us to really feel for. Ruby’s silver eyes haven’t come at a cost for seasons and have just been an easy way to get rid of Grimm before they can do much damage, which is exactly what happens with the Hound. Ironwood, a villain, is the one who keeps Salem back for episodes, and then Oz just pulls a sudden power out of nowhere to get rid of the whale and temporarily remove Salem from the picture with very little effort and zero consequences. No civilians die, no main characters die, everyone is fine, only Nora is even injured and she still seems mostly fine and like she’s already well on her way to recovery. It’s so disappointing, really. They gave us endless stakes and then had next to nothing come of it. I honestly don’t know if their writing could get any sloppier.