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hitlikehammers · 4 months ago

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AVOIDANCE: the only real solution to all of Eddie’s your falling-in-love problems!

(0 out of 10 participants in this approach have proven its INeffectiveness; talk to your ✨love interest✨today to avoid this heartbreaking waste of your energy!)

It’s not like they were bosom buddies for years and years. A week at the outset, a couple months since, and now they’re all back in their own homes living their own lives and Eddie can avoid the way he’s most definitely, one-hundred-percent certainly in love with Steve Harrington. Very effectively. By simply avoiding Steve Harrington.

rating: t ♥️ tags: post-s4, eddie munson and his newfound obsession/unprecedebtedly-close-to-love feelings for steve harrington, answer: avoid steve harrington like the plague, excellent and emotionally-mature ways of dealing with your problems! /s, primary hiccup in existing plan: forgetting steve harrington doesn’t take well to failure, (oops), miscommunication, boys so dumb, confessions, hint of angst (because eddie is a very silly boy with very silly ideas sometimes), self-confident!steve, steve harrington facing the issues head-on, feelings confessions, peak eddie dramatics, happy ending♥️

for @steddielovemonth day fifteen: “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”―Jane Austen, Emma

True fact: Eddie thought he was playing things cool. Thought he was totally copacetic, in, you know, keeping it all subtle. He can do subtle, y’know: being loud and proud, shouting on tabletops and shit, screaming at drunks—that was a choice, not a…a rule. He’s a freak, he’s an outcast, he’s a weird-ass motherfucker: he’d have had far more brushes with his actual-factual demise in this podunk town if he was literally incapable of blending in with the background, and not just kinda sickened by the concept, let alone the effort involved to appease fucking…normies.

So yeah, he’d…he’d thought he was flying under the radar. And anyway; why the fuck would Steve Harrington even notice eddies absence in his day-to-day? They were apocalypse ‘friends’. Hospital buddies at best.

They’re back in the real world now.

Eddie supposed Vecna or whatever the fuck his name is will come crawling back in the foreseeable future, but brighter minds than his are preparing for that shit. The sheepies will let him know if they need his assistance—pending what that assistance may or may not be worth dependent on how far along his PT journey he stands at that point.

But it’s not like they were glued to the hip. It’s not like they were bosom buddies for years and years. A week at the outset, a couple months since, and now they’re all back in their own homes living their own lives and Eddie can avoid the way he’s most definitely, one-hundred-percent certainly in love with Steve Harrington. Very effectively.

By simply avoiding Steve Harrington.

It’s kind of a foolproof plan, really. He starts wrapping Hellfire earlier, tells the little shitheads he’s gotta run, Wayne needs a hand with a revolving door of household projects now that they’ve got their own place with more than one bedroom. Gotta mount that hangers for that ball cap collection just right, you know, yadda yadda.

He thinks they gave up being suspicious without a week or two, now just hit him with annoyed eye rolls. God bless the scourge of self-centred teenage bitchiness playing directly into eddies hand.

What he failed to account for, however, about eleven weeks into his up-to-now flawless scheme, was…well. The leading man himself.

Showing the fuck up at Eddie’s door, which Eddie answered for once like a fool and now can’t back out of cleanly because there’s no truck in the drive—it’s clear he’s here on his own.

Motherfucker.

One thing can be said for the plan, in terms of like, general side quest observations—absence definitely made the heart grow fonder. Or at least didn’t contribute at all to the opposite. Which Eddie hadn’t been entirely sure was possible, because the speed and strength of how he fell with every fucking cell in him had honestly terrified the shit out of him on its own. But after avoiding Steve, nodding at best if he canoed paths and sneaking away when the man called out like he was gonna snake through a crowd at any of the number of the family dinners for interdimensional-trauma-survivors-anonymous that Eddie couldn’t weasel out of: it’d been clear pretty fucking quick.

The almost-indefensibly-absurd affection he’d developed for the King of Hawkins—it wasn’t just reign over the high school if the parents were so charmed, if the fucking hospital has cowed into acting and quick when they tried to hesitate in treating an accused murderer, as Eddie’d been regaled with by everyone but Steve, who shrugged his kinda crucial role in saving Eddie’s ass with a shrug and of course, man, like there was ever even a question—but his indefensibly overwhelming and absurd infatuation that spent every month expanding further to try and crack his fucking ribs, well.

It was chronic, at best. He wasn’t gonna shake it…any time soon.

Any time soon.

So: best to at least keep the catalyst at bay, stop it from causing the condition to worsen.

He’d made the mistake of thinking it couldn’t get worse already. Learn from your mistakes, and all the shit.

So what if it’s been months now and not only has the malady of being ass-over-nipple in-fucking-love persisted, but got so much fucking worse? Deeper? More, when that shit should have even been possible?

No. He just has to be persistent. Keep at the plan. Eventually, it’ll die off. It’ll whither and blow away. It’ll fucking fade—

He does, however, fail to calculate all contingencies.

Namely Steve Harrington’s incapacity to accept defeat.

He’s also too fucking scatterbrained to check the door before opening it when there’s a knock, just after Wayne’s left for his shift. When Eddie has no excuse to slam it back shut on the exceptionally exquisite face waiting when the hinges swing open.

Exquisite, but looking…pinched. Sour.

Pissed the fuck off.

And worst of all of it—because so far the list only server to underscore that unfortunate state of being fucking beautiful, on every possible level—but worst of it all, because it’s worst on its own but also because it twists, distorts all the beauty, and it’s so clearly Eddie’s fault because Steve is standing right here, and not elsewhere, after all this time.

Looking hurt, under everything else.

“I’m done with this, yeah?”

Eddie could run. He’d only make it to his room; Steve would probably be able to break down the door and get to him before he could slither through the window and run, but he’s still not 100%, right, he’s physically at a disadvantage anyway, it’s not even gonna be a question—

Steve’s got him cornered.

So he just stands. Blinks.

Doesn’t…know what Steve’s ‘done with’, but he feels his literally twist, wring like a dishrag, when he figures out the most likely answer is just:

Eddie.

Even trying to keep the maximum distance, he either knows, and hates it, hates him, or…

He doesn’t know, and doesn’t need to. He just is over Eddie and his bullshit.

It’s in the heart-piercing distraction of either and both possibilities that Steve pushes past him into the front hall.

“What the fuck is your problem, man?”

Steve crosses his arms as the door latches closed, caging them in.

Eddie’s heart starts kicking hard, which is painful. He assumes that’s because it’s been pierced by the hurt still on Steve’s face.

“I thought we were, like, that at least we were friends?”

He says it like he also has maybe had thoughts like there’s something else they were, or could have been. That by association and context would be somewhere more than friends?

Eddie’s pieced-through heart switches to a double-thumping sort of thing that’s really just as confused as the rest of him.

Hurts like a motherfucker, too.

“Did I do something?”

Steve asks, finally sounds more defeated than any of the other things Eddie can pick up in how he holds his body, and honestly that’s what breaks Eddie’s resolve, of everything; after everything. After holding out this long and failing for the entire fucking effort, after hurting Steve, the last thing he could ever want, probably the main underlying reason he’s been running from him the whole goddamn time—to not hurt him.

He’s suck a fuck up. He’s such a fucking fuck up.

“You know how sunflowers grow?”

Steve startles a little, grows the slightest bit.

“They find the sun, and the grow toward it,” and Eddie’s not stupid enough to think the whole disaster that’s unfolding in front of him, from his own chest, his own fucking mouth—he’s aware.

He can’t do nothing, but he also doesn’t think he can sugarcoat this in a way that goes down easier; sand the rough edges to make it make better sense.

He has to wrench it raw and bloody from his ribs, caught on the jagged bone like the messy fuck he is.

“You were the sun,” Eddie finally says it out loud, and his voice is so small and wondering, he can’t hide it. “You were the sun and I woke up broken, I had to grow back so much and I did, because I had the tools,” he swallows, takes a shaky breath:

“I had the sun right next to me, to do all the growing toward. To…rebuild around.”

Eddie’s always been a weirdo, and outcast—he’s spent a lot of time in libraries; often hiding.

But he’s read a lot of random shit. And enough of it’s stuck to make some sense of this fucking mess.

Steve’s face gives nothing away. It’s usually so…so generous with its feeling, even if there are some feelings Eddie knows Steve’s careful to never let show.

But in the now, he just stares.

“Otters,”Eddie blurts out, fingers twitching, wrists shaking; “they hold hands when they sleep,” and he looks up for a second before looking away again, pulse a mullet in his throat.

“I used to hold onto your hand when I fell asleep in the hospital,” and he says it like it’s a secret, a confession, even though of all people, of course Steve already fucking knows. The part he doesn’t, though:

“I still reach, and how fucked that? Like I deserve it as a rule, like it’s mine.”

Like you’re mine.

He can’t say it. But he doesn’t have it. It rings out on its own.

“But then there are the trees that shoot up all tangled,” Eddie can’t remember what they’re called; “where the trunks split off into one another, or they’re so braided up together the share their bark, whole pieces left Bernal’s, naked but the other tree covers it, makes it strong and safe but only so long as they’re literally fused together indefinitely,” and Eddie hopes that one…that one explains itself.

He pauses, waits for any reaction.

No dice.

“Bats sleep in pitcher plants.”

That at least gets the slightest lift of the chin. Probably because it’s weird, and also…bats.

Right. So Eddie’s gonna have to spell it all out.

Which he kinda knew. The examples are fucking weird. But they’re…they’re true. They’re where he is.

“If I get too fucking close, I will destroy you,” Eddie says, because that’s the fear, right—or no.

That’s the fucking truth. Eddie always ends up with the tatters of the things he loves the most.

“I’ll take too much, I’ll take everything,” Eddie confesses, pleads in his tone to be seen, which Steve’s always been weirdly good at, and understood—the bigger gamble.

“There won’t be any stoplights, there won’t be a barrier or a boundary where I’ll know I’ve gone too far because I won’t even think of what that fucking is, what it could be to even watch for, like the barebones idea of ‘too far’, let alone what it looks like, I won’t,” and his breath runs out, so he gasps, and he thinks he sees Steve move to reach, to help, to steady.

He thinks.

It’s probably just wishful thinking.

“I won’t stop holding on just when I’m sleeping, I’ll,” Eddie licks his lips, because now…now he’sstarting to hurt, closer to what it felt like with teeth ripping his flesh than anything has felt, than any loss has threatened. He has to clear his throat, because otherwise the rest will just spill out like a sob:

“I’ll tear your bark so you bleed, and you’re exposed and you die off slow, because I was selfish, so selfish, I held to close, I fucking…” eddies voice cracks; his eyes fucking burn; “because I fucking demanded the whole of you, and damn the cost because I couldn’t process an end, why would I stop doing to even think to be logical and careful when an end to you was, is, well, fuck,” he huffs, and a tear spills out white hot down his cheek;

“It’s incomprehensible, because that would be the end of everything, that was made real fucking clear for me with the bats, both times,” and Eddie means that—he’s had time to think through the origin of his aching and it was early, it was any hint of being in the world without this person in it, too; “and the end of everything, well,” he shakes his head, some of his hair sticking in the single trail of salt on his skin:

“Tied up in you, so tight we couldn’t physically untangle?” His voice drops to a whisper, and he knows his smile has to look sad, but he means this is the deepest places his heart even holds:

“What better way to go?”

He maybes watches Steve’s throat bobbing. Maybe.

Probably not.

So Eddie just sighs. Because…none of that matters. None of that matters in the face of the core truth:

“Those pitcher plants dissolve things inside them, it’s how they eat,” he half-recites, retreating into those deep-heart places, where the feeling is most saturated, but hard to find, somewhere to hide as he whispers, cowers in himself as he flats his own flesh:

“I’ll leech from you for wanting too much just the same. I’ll fucking destroy you, Stevie,” he moans, feels his arms wrap around his chest, protective. Trembling.

“I’ll love you so hard I’ll suffocate you, I’ll tear you to pieces trying to get closer, trying to hold the heart of you closer to mine,” he doesn’t even make a conscious decision to press a palm over his flailing heart where his arm already holds, hugs himself so fucking tight. His lungs are sore. It’s tight, trying to breathe.

“It’s not an overstatement, though, the other plants, the flowers,” Eddie feels overwhelmed, suddenly, with a need to make clear that there’s only one person at fault for this, and it’s him—Steve didn’t deserve to get hurt. Eddie should have found a better way to keep him safe—from Eddie—from the very start. Because—

“You are my sun,” Eddie makes himself look up, look at Steve. “I didn’t realize how little I was growing even before spring break. I didn’t notice, how fucking thriving wasn’t even in my goddamn vocabulary, until there was you.” His breathing shudders again, followed by the rest of him:

“I turn toward you as a rule,” because here’s the thing. All these weeks and months.

Eddie’s been shrivelling. Eddie spends his nights dreaming of sunlight.

It’s inescapable.

He was going to have to find a more sustainable compromise soon, anyway. Might as well…lay it all out now.

He’s already ripped off his bark. He’s already prepared to dissolve in the acid, to burn for what it means to have left the feeling grow so big.

“I hope,” he coughs, starts slow, formal-like: “I hope you can do me the favor of just,” he has to clear his throat again; fuck, it’s hard; “politely ignoring that part. Like, even at a distance, it’s not something I can seem to stop.”

He was aiming for apologetic for that last bit, honest.

He fucking fails spectacularly, so. That’s cool.

“I swear, I won’t bother you,” he tries to convey how he’s sorry, for all of it, save for the core of the loving, because he as granted. A taste, no matter how it’s fallen to ruin; he’s selfish that way anyhow, to have seen some of the sun versus darkness alone for always.

Still:

“I won’t come near, I’ll do what I’ve been doing but better, I’ll be better, I’ll try harder, it will—“

Eddie thinks maybe he’s finally died. Of heartbreak, of whatever the Upside Down did to him. Of living without his sun for a long.

Any. All of the above.

Because the next thing he knows is pressure. Heat.

On his lips.

He barely processes responding before its town away: of course death wouldn’t be a reward. Not for him.

“Are you fucking telling me,” a voice bites out close enough to Eddie’s lips that he can feel how sharp they cut:

“That you have been avoiding me, running awayfrom me,” and Eddie knows that voice—

“Breaking my heart,” and fuck, fuck Eddie knows he knows that voice because when it’s hurting—and those words are irate and disbelieving and they’re hurt—

“Because you’re fucking scared of loving me too hard?”

And Eddie pulls back, opens his eyes: Steve.

Steve’s eyes are fucking vibrant with feeling, so many feelings. He’s…he doesn’t think he’s dead, because a lot of those feelings are ones Eddie’s not familiar with, and how would he know to place them there if he’s never known them at all?

He doesn’t know of it’s better or worse, to not be dead right now.

Because he just apparently got to feel Steve’s lips on his lips.

But then:

“Because that’s what you’re saying, right” Steve raises a brow, demands in posture as much as in tone:

“You’re in love with me.”

And then on the flip side of being alive-or-dead: he has to deal with the consequences of spelling out the answer to…that.

Which he’s apparently broken Steve’s heart over handling…the only way he could figure out. And still fucking it up.

“That sounds less than what it feels like,” Eddie whispers; it’s the only thing he can latch on to.

Steve’s eyes narrow at him, contemplate him.

“And you think me, of all people,” Steve finally asks, slow, his tone wrenchingly deliberate; “that Iwouldn’t meet someone loving that big and that much,” “and he huffs, shakes his head in searing disbelief Eddie almost wishes he could flinch from, but it’s so warm, it’s his sun:

“That that wouldn’t feel like there actually was a heaven, and I’d died and somehow made it there?”

Eddie’s breath catches, then stops entirely. He can’t seem to properly suck in another one because…

“That finding that wouldn’t feel like I’d won the lottery, like I’d figured out what it meant when people talk about a blessing, and all that shit?”

Because what…what it almost sounds like Steve is saying can’t actually be—

“That finding it, with you,” and oh, oh Steve is a lot closer than he was last Eddie processed the world around him, his chest is grazing Eddie’s chest when he seems to have no trouble breathing, just is doing it really deep and reallt fast—

“That it’d be anything less than a gift,” Steve murmurs half against Eddie’s lips; “a dream come to life?”

And Steve’s eyes flick up, and it’s when they land on Eddie’s and see him that his lungs shiver and he chokes out the only word he thinks his every molecule knows by heart:

“Steve?”

And Steve doesn’t move, neither. Loser nor farther away.

Doesn’t look away; doesn’t blink.

Just asks:

“Do you love me?”

And something in Eddie unfreezes, some string holding him up, holding him back snaps free and he just grabs Steve’s hand and presses it to his chest, like he needs to be tethered now that the string in him’s been cut, and the touch, this touch: Steve is really all he’s been wanting to keep him.

To keep him at all.

And maybe this is the one shot he gets.

But Steve, Steve said…

He presses Steve’s hand to his chest a little harder, because he’s bathed in the sun again. Their hands are linked, and they’re not asleep. He’s peeled off all the pretense, he’s as bare and vulnerable as he can possibly get. His heart’s beating into Steve palm. Eddie will happily fucking drown in this, dissolve and be…

He’s already consumed.

How is it any different, save that maybe, just maybe, beyond all odds and against everything he’s feared—

“More than I can hold in here,” Eddie scarcely finds the air to breathe; “more than I can say.”

“Then share it,” Steve says, the assuredness, the rightness in his gravity that’s always been at his core radiating forth and warming Eddie in a way he’s never known to feel before.

“Let me know it, let that feeling not be alone anymore,” and the words hold more than their syllables, by so much; “let it out to see the sun,” and then Steve’s flipping their hands so eddies the one caught agains this chest, but he’s always pulling them close enough that Steve’s knuckles are still catching the drum of Eddie’s pulse. It feels…

Eddie didn’t know what to expect, to let the feeling be felt beyond his own chest.

It’s breathtaking in a new way. It’s…

“Let it meet its match here, in how I feel,” Steve doesn’t suggest, just speaks, instructs, leads with a match to what Eddie feels, has been drowning in, save where it stole his air it’s breathing into him; where it took his light it’s reinventing the sun as Steve murmurs close, so close to his lips:

“Let it see how it was killing me all this time without you,” and Eddie whimpers for the cost of what he’s done, what he felt so sure he had to do—

“Let the feeling inside here,” and he presses his touch back to Eddie’s chest just a little bit firmer; “know how much sharing it’s like stitching my broken heart back to rights.”

Eddie’s exhales shakes so fucking hard; he can’t be this lucky. It can’t…he can’t…

But his heart’s beating so hard, so fast, so free.

So fucking alive.

“You can’t say it, big enough?” Steve pushes, his breath so goddamn warm, his lashes so thick, Eddie wants to feel them on his skin like a blessing, a sacrament:

“You can’t say it? Then show me, instead.”

And Steve looks up at him before he grabs around the back of Eddie’s neck, pulls him close enough that speaking rubs their lips together, more combative than affectionate but still undeniably intimate as Steve growls:

“Fucking months, Eddie, Jesus,” and his grip is firm, but there’s no force, Eddie could pull back, Eddie could try to run, and fail, but how could he, how could he ever—

His hand’s crushed to Steve’s chest. The same wild thrum he feels in his veins is there.

Let it meet its match.

“Make up for it,” Steve’s breath trembles on Eddie’s lips, taunts him, begs him, asks so many questions.

Eddie flips their hands one more time, presses Steve’s hand to his heartbeat with nothing less than desperation until his ribs goddamn creak, and then he leans, makes the pressure bigger—

Meets the feeling in Steve with all the feeling in him with their lips on each other like they mean it this time, ready to dissolve in it. To grow themselves to protect around the soft parts. To keep their hands entwined for always.

To come alive inside this sun.

✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @ajeff855 @allmyfavoritethingsinoneblog @anthrobrat @askitwithflours @awkwardgravity1 @bookworm0690 @bumblebeecuttlefishes @captain--low @depressed-freak13 @dragoon-ze-great @dreamercec @dreamwatch @dreamy-jeans137 @estrellami-1 @friendlyneighborhoodgaycousin @goodolefashionedloverboi @grtwdsmwhr @gunsknivesandplaid @hiei-harringtonmunson @hbyrde36 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @kimsnooks @live-laugh-love-dietrich @madigoround @mensch-anthropos-human @nerdyglassescheeseychick @notaqueenakhaleesi @ollyxar @pearynice @perseus-notjackson @pretend-theres-a-name-here

divider credit here

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #post s4 #fluff #boys being absurd #(mostly just eddie)#unnecessary drama and angsting #(again: it’s eddie)#feelings confessions #getting together #eddie munsons’s A+++ plan to solve all his problems: AVOIDANCE! 🎉#problem being: falling in love with steve harrington #solution: avoiding steve harrington post-vecna at all costs #it’s FOOLPROOF #/s #(also: eddie is a first class fool so—this was fucked from the start)#SUCH EXTENSIVE DRAMATICS THOUGH #KING OF DRAMA!EDDIE #eddie putting some of his weirder knowledge-dumping skills on display #but steve’s unfazed; he knows his royal drama well #self confident steve harrington #(that boy didn’t take that you rule/you suck board in stride by NOT being a self-assured queen bitch at his core mmkay?)#stranger things #steddielovemonth #prompt: if I loved you less I might be able to talk about it more #hitlikehammers v words #hitlikehammers writes

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bestworstcase · 8 months ago

Note

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

Sidenote to this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

looks into the camera like im on the office.

like mother, like daughter!!!

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

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

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

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

math.

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

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

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

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

also

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

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

summer rose, maybe.

but in the deeper sense,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

anyway

to the broader question

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

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

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

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

#in general i don’t think rwby gets enough credit for how much gets set up in the first two volumes #or how well the dominoes falling in v3 is executed #like the fandom gets properly excited when things from v1-2 come to fruition but like #i think there’s a really strong tendency across the board to kind of #mentally compartmentalizing the beacon arc as this sort of #experimental prelude to the actual story. the writers figuring out how to write by trial and error #and by extension to treat these long game narrative culminations as just. ''callbacks''#or post-hoc stitching together from the raw material of the early volumes #when really it’s just. the story was planned out from the start! lol!#''oh but the maidens didn’t even exist until v3'' salem and cinder are in the first goddamned episode.#their narrative arcs were planned in advance but probably had a hole (like ‘what is cinder hoping to get out of this specifically’)#that was being actively workshopped while they worked on the first couple volumes #until someone came up with the idea that the keys to the magic vaults salem needed to open #could be people whose magic you can steal and that’s what cinder wants #this is how planning a story works you block things out roughly and refine more and more as you go!!!#ahh!!!!!#there is too much foreshadowing and critical setup in v1-2 for it to be anything but on purpose and planned #nobody has any business being surprised at this point when seeds planted in v1-2 sprout. and yet

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