#and everything about them at least in terms of AtLA felt like they were a spirit | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

feralkat · 1 year

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🫄2️⃣🚎🛑👖💦

The first build-a-birth prompt that came in and oh my God was it fun to write holy shit lol.

It got so long that I decided to split it into two parts, though 😅 so here's part one lmao. Also there will be twins - Atlas just doesn't know they've got twins in there so part two is gonna be pretty wild for them lol.

Word Count: 2.8k

Characters Used: Atlas (nonbinary afab OC) & Fen (cis-male OC)

WARNINGS: nonbinary character giving birth, birth denial, clothing birth, public birth, orgasm during labor. Also - I do use AFAB terms to describe the characters' genitalia so please be aware of that.

If it weren't already obvious, this is a birth/labor fetish fic so if you are a minor or not into that then DO NOT INTERACT. You have been warned.

Everyone had joked about how Atlas would end up going into labor during their baby-moon despite being only 36 weeks along. By the end of it they were beginning their 37th week, but even so their due date wasn't for three more weeks so it was easy to laugh those concerns off.

Except Atlas had been feeling increasingly more intense contractions since they left their hotel that morning that they were trying to brush off as Braxton hicks contractions.

At least until a small gush of fluid left a size-able damp spot on Atlas' leggings and made them realize they couldn't stay in denial for much longer about what was happening.

They were in labor.

Though, technically, labor didn't start during the baby-moon itself.

No, it started as they were leaving.

Now they were several hours away from the next stop and even further away from home where Atlas had everything set up to have a nice, relaxing, empowering birth with just themselves and their husband.

"Shit," Atlas grumbled, shifting uncomfortably in the seat and pressing his forehead against the cool glass of the window as he felt a contraction start.

"Babe? You alright?"

Atlas glanced over at their husband, hazel eyes peaking out from behind blue and green dyed bangs. "My water broke," they mumbled in an exhale, taking in another deep breath and squeezing their eyes shut as they felt the pressure deep inside their pelvis drop even lower.

"Oh... Oh!" Fen exclaimed, having taken a moment to fully comprehend what Atlas said. "Guess those weren't just Braxton hicks contractions, huh?" Fen chuckled nervously, reaching over to take Atlas' hand.

"Yeah, guess not," Atlas sighed as the contraction passed.

"Do you think we'll make it home?" Fen asked, "If not I can look at hotels around the next stop. It won't be home but at least it won't be on a bus."

"Um," Atlas paused, thinking back to when the contractions first started around 10AM. It was nearly 6PM now, but for the majority of the time the contractions weren't too bad. The last half hour or so, Atlas had noticed growing pressure against his hips and lower back but assumed it was from the not-very-comfy bus seats. But then their water broke and that pressure had gotten worse without the cushion. "I don't know," they answered after a few seconds.

"Okay, how about... I'll book us a hotel near the next stop just in case and we'll reassess once we get there," Fen offered.

Atlas nodded their approval of the plan, grateful for Fen's ability to think logically even in panic-inducing moments.

Over the next two hours, Fen gently coached Atlas through contraction after contraction. The deep rumble of his voice, strong hand holding Atlas', and his general presence helped immensely to keep Atlas calm and focused despite everything else.

At some point Fen pushed the armrest between them out of the way so Atlas could lean on him, making for a much comfier position than sitting upright like they had been.

"There's... a lot of pressure," Atlas said between softly panted breaths. "I don't think it'll be much longer," they added.

"Okay, we should be at the stop soon," Fen reassured, draping an arm over Atlas' shoulders to gently rub circles against Atlas' swollen stomach. "Then we can go straight to the hotel and have this baby like we planned," Fen said, voice dipping into a low purr against Atlas' ear.

It made a shiver go down Atlas' spine, clit throbbing and making them aware of exactly how aroused they already were just from Fen talking to them and giving them instructions - even if those instructions were mainly how and when to breathe.

God, Atlas wished they were home.

A contraction brought Atlas out of their thoughts, making them tense until Fen reminded them to relax and breathe through it.

That was getting really hard, but Atlas made an effort. They took in a deep breath, trying to relax their body as much as they could as they let that breath out slowly.

"Again, babe, do it again," Fen urged, reaching down to massage the outside of Atlas' thigh where the muscles were still all tense.

"Ngh," Atlas grunted as they sucked in another breath, screwing their eyes shut as the contraction peaked and the pressure between their hips increased tenfold. Hardly even realizing it, they found themselves bearing down against it for the remainder of the contraction.

Once it was done, Atlas shifted to reposition so they were leaning back against Fen, one foot up on the seat and the other on the floor. The position let them spread their thighs a bit more and they moaned softly when they felt that pressure drop deep into their pelvis. "H-Hey, Fen," they mumbled, unable to help but rock their hips a little, "I think I have to push."

Fen didn't reply right away, lifting his head to glance around the bus first. There weren't many people, thankfully, and it seemed like they'd be getting to the bus stop soon but neither of them were sure if it'd be soon enough. "Okay. We're almost to the stop and the hotel is just around the corner from there. Try to breathe through it until we get there," Fen instructed, calm aside from a slight tremble to his otherwise even voice.

"I'll try, but..." Atlas trailed off, feeling their midsection tighten in another strong contraction.

"You got this, love. I know it's hard, I know you want to push but let's breathe through it," Fen cooed, his voice low and lips brushing against Atlas' ear as he spoke. "Feel the pressure, notice it and accept it as you breathe," he instructed, taking slow even breaths for Atlas to follow.

"Yeah, 'm feeling th-the pressure," Atlas groaned in one quick exhale, screwing their eyes shut and trying their best to match Fen's breathing. What really got them through the intense heavy pressure urging them to push, though, was focusing on Fen's fingers rubbing their thigh.

"You're doing so good sweet-tart," Fen rumbled, "Focus on my voice and we'll get through this."

Atlas nodded, unable to answer as they tried not to make a lot of noise. They could feel that heaviness shift and move down, knowing the baby's head was fully engaged and working its way through their cervix by now.

"You've got this, babe, doing so good for me," Fen purred as the contraction peaked.

There was only so much Atlas could do, though, when the contractions were doing enough to work the baby down through their cervix even without them pushing.

Just as the contraction was ending, there was a loud 'boom' and the bus jolted, tires screeching as it came to a very sudden stop.

Within half a second of the sound, Fen had both arms wrapped tight around Atlas and didn't loosen his grip until the bus was completely stopped.

"Fuck, Atlas are you okay?" Fen asked, calm facade breaking for a moment as panic crept into his voice.

"Yeah, I think so," Atlas answered, taking a few deep breaths in an attempt to calm their racing heart. "Are you?"

"Yeah," Fen nodded, pressing a kiss against the top of Atlas' head.

"Sorry, folks!" the bus driver exclaimed, "Sounds like a tire gave up on us. The station has already been notified, though and someone should be here within the hour to fix us up."

Fen and Atlas sat in silence for a few seconds as that information sunk in. There was no way Atlas was going to make it through an extra hour - they were cutting it extremely close anyway.

"Fen," Atlas mumbled, tilting their head to look at their husband, "I don't know if... if we'll make it."

A small frown tugged at Fen's lips before he slowly answered, "Should we call an ambulance?"

"No," Atlas snapped, panic rising at just the mention of going to a hospital - especially one that was away from their home town that Atlas had never been to.

They've had enough medical trauma and shitty doctors to give them a lifetime of distrust for hospitals.

"Okay - That's okay," Fen reassured, finding one of Atlas' hands to hold. "Let's still try to breathe through it and we'll see how far we get."

"'Kay," Atlas grunted, hand tightening around Fen's as pain and pressure overwhelmed them.

The next couple of contractions went similarly, Atlas following Fen's instructions while trying to keep themselves quiet even as the pressure kept moving lower. It was getting difficult, though, especially when the intensity of the pressure didn't lessen at all after the most recent contraction ended.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck. Nghhh," Atlas whined, squirming against Fen as they tried to find some sort of position that wouldn't be as terrible. "So much pressure," they complained, arching their back a little before collapsing against Fen with a defeated whine.

"I could give you a distraction, if you want," Fen offered, one of his hands trailing down over Atlas' swollen stomach to rub against the inside of their thigh before gently trailing over the seam of their leggings.

"Ah!" Atlas gasped at the unexpected sensation, their clit already swollen and sensitive from how Fen had been talking before. "Please," they said in a rush of air, thighs twitching open more.

Taking a glance around, Fen slipped his hand into Atlas' leggings once he was sure no one would see. "There you go, sweets, just focus on my hand and my voice," Fen encouraged, quickly finding Atlas' swollen clit and slowly rubbing circles over it.

Dropping his head back against Fen's shoulder, Atlas bit back a moan. It did help, though, able to focus on a different sensation rather than pain and pressure. "Sh-shit," Atlas groaned as another contraction hit and Fen sped up his fingers as it peaked. The pleasure took the edge off of the pain but stood no chance against easing the pressure and urges to push that Atlas felt. "Ngh! Ah, f-fuck," Atlas grunted as the contraction peaked.

Fen was telling them to pant through it, suck in air and then blow it out, do whatever they could just so they weren't holding their breath. That was hard, though, and Atlas found themselves giving little pushes with every forced exhale.

They didn't have a choice in the matter and fuck did it feel good to give in a little bit.

It was only after the contraction ended that Atlas realized on top of the pressure there was a new sensation just below their cervix - like they were being stretched and filled to their breaking point.

Everything was so intense, though, Atlas couldn't even say anything about it. They were reduced to a squirming, whimpering mess as the pleasure warred with the discomfort and that urge to push completely overtook them when their abdomen tightened again.

And Atlas was right - it felt so good to finally do what their body wanted them to.

Between that and Fen's fingers moving expertly over their clit, Atlas found themselves on the verge of an orgasm as they gasped in a breath and pushed.

That's what did it, Atlas unable to help but cry out and buck their hips as the orgasm washed over them even as their body kept bearing down.

By the time Atlas was coming down from that absolutely incredible orgasm, they could feel that that heaviness had completely filled their cunt and they were sure if they pushed just a little more that their lips would start to bulge and part.

"Oh my God, are you having a baby?!"

The shrill voice of a concerned stranger made Atlas' face go bright red, realizing she probably had heard them cumming just now.

Fen didn't remove his hands from Atlas' leggings which made Atlas' face burn even brighter as Fen tried to reassure the worried passenger.

Atlas was past the point of being able to speak coherently, though, especially as another contraction started not even seconds later.

"Oh - Ah - Nghh - No," Atlas whined as quietly as they could, their body now pushing without their consent. "Oh God, oh God. Fen!" Atlas gasped, feeling their hole start to stretch as the baby's head started to inch out.

But Fen was still trying to convince the lady - and now several other worried passengers - not to call 911 because they had it handled and that Atlas didn't want to go to the hospital.

Groaning through gritted teeth, Atlas felt the baby's head slide back in as the contraction ended. But they didn't get that relief for long, their contractions almost on top of each other by now.

Atlas hardly even noticed the small crowd that had gathered around their seat, all of their focus on trying (and partially failing) not to push again.

It didn't make much of a difference, though.

The baby's head was slowly making its way through. Every contraction brought it out further and further even though it always slipped back in as soon as the contractions were over.

At least until it didn't.

Unable to speak, Atlas grabbed Fen's wrist and moved his hand down just enough that he'd be able to feel the way Atlas' lips were bulging and the baby's head peaking out through them.

Atlas felt Fen's whole body tense for a moment, words faltering as he tried to soothe everyone who was trying to call an ambulance.

Then, he regained composure and with two fingers spread Atlas' lips just a little further so he could press his hand against the baby's head. With that position, Fen incidentally had the ball of his hand pressed firmly against Atlas' sensitive clit which sent entirely conflicting sensations through their body again.

As the next contraction came, Atlas found themselves unintentionally grinding against Fen's hand as they moved their hips in little circles like they had been this whole time.

And it felt so fucking good but also way too intense at the same time and Atlas couldn't hold back their moans, grunts, and whines anymore.

When that contraction peaked, Atlas gave a series of little pushes each accompanied with a small grunt.

It wasn't doing anything, though, and Atlas soon realized that Fen was keeping the baby from progressing more with firm but gentle pressure against its head.

"Hey, they're transferring us to a different bus, sweet-tart, it just got here," Fen's voice right in Atlas' ear was the only thing Atlas could hear outside of their own harsh breathing and pounding heartbeat. "The aisle is too narrow for me to pick you up but as soon as we're off the bus I'll be able to carry you, okay?"

Fuck.

There wasn't any other choice, though, so after Fen removed his hand from Atlas' leggings, Atlas slowly adjusted so they could stand.

Fen supported them the whole time but with every step Atlas could feel their labia bulging and spreading more and more. Not to mention the way their hole was starting to burn with the stretch as the baby began to crown.

The step down from the bus was the worst and the baby was nearly at a full crown by the time Fen was picking them up to carry them over to the other bus.

Thank fuck the other bus was a little bigger so Atlas didn't have to walk to a seat. Especially since a contraction started just as Fen was stepping up into the bus.

All Atlas could do was bury their face against Fen's shoulders and sob as that burning sensation just continued to get worse, their body pushing even though they were actively trying not to.

"Fen!" Atlas squealed as the rest of the baby's head popped out all at once, making their leggings bulge obscenely. "I-It's - Oh God - th-the head is - it's out," they stammered, clinging to Fen even as their husband gently laid them on the row of seats in the back of the bus.

"Okay, okay - Babe, just, I need you to let go of me so I can - uh - look and help," Fen said in a mumbled rush, standing once Atlas let go before kneeling between Atlas' feet. "We need to get these pants off, okay?" he asked, already reaching for the waistband of the leggings.

"Wait - waitwaitwait," Atlas gasped, keening as their abdomen cramped and tightened again. They could feel the baby turning and a shoulder trying to come out but their leggings didn't let that happen.

At least until Fen managed to pull the legging down - ignoring Atlas' pleas because they needed to come off - and several things happened all at once.

The first shoulder slid out, closely followed by the second one and, before Fen even had Atlas' leggings to their knees, the baby was born with a large gush of fluid.

#birth kink #labor kink #giving birth #childbirth #nbpreg #oc - atlas #clothing birth #public birth #birth denial #part one bus birth #my writing #feral answers

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bridgyrose · 3 months

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Days had passed since her friends had arrived and Penny was still no closer to finding out what Ironwood had wanted with them or why he wanted to keep everything quiet. Walking to his office to try to listen in only managed to get her pulled away to take care of some grimm, any attempt to talk to Yang or Blake was met with empty promises to tell her what was going on, and Ruby… seeing the way that Ruby was used as a weapon to clear out grimm from the mines reminded her of how the General had used her before Beacon fell, only to nearly toss her away when she couldnt live up to what she had been built for.

Penny sighed as she stood up and started to make her rounds around Mantle with Weiss, taking to the streets to look for any grimm that made it through the wall.

“Everything alright, Penny?” Weiss asked. “You seem… distracted.”

“I… I am worried about Ruby,” Penny answered. “We hardly get to see her and I want to make sure she is safe. That she is not becoming like how I was.”

“A machine?”

“A weapon. A tool. Something for the General to use and to put away when he is done. I do not want her to go through the same thing I did.”

“I worry about her too, but there’s nothing we can do. If the General needs her, then it has to be important, right? And the next time we see her we’ll help her get her memories back.”

“If we get to talk to her,” Penny thought to herself. It was going to be unlikely that they were ever going to be able to talk to her again, and even if they did, there was no guarantee they’d be able to undo anything that was done to repress Ruby’s memories. Dying wasnt easy, and coming to terms with that death takes time. And time felt like it was running out. Beacon falling, Atlas cutting off all trade and putting up a blockade to keep people from coming and going, her friends suddenly showing up… something was coming and she needed to know what. “Have you been able to talk to our friends?” she asked. “I know that you have missed them dearly.”

“Only a little,” Weiss admitted. “They’ve been kept busy so I havent been able to see Blake and Yang much. And Jaune… he’s worried about Ruby too, but he has other things on his mind.”

“Have they told you what they’re here for?”

Weiss shook her head. “Not really, only that it was important and that they were told not to bring us into it. Though, they wouldnt say why.”

Penny nodded and sighed. “Maybe we will find out more.”

“I hope so. It feels strange to be this close to my friends and be so far away from them.”

Penny nodded and stopped in her step as her scroll picked up the alert of grimm entering into Mantle. She looked out in the direction the alert had told her the grimm was, frowning. “That cant be right, it seems like its almost near the crater.”

“Maybe its a flying grimm?” Weiss suggested.

“Maybe, but we would have gotten an alert sooner if it flew over us.”

“Unless the alert system was tampered with.”

“I’ll meet you out there,” Penny said as she took to the air. She took a breath to try to calm herself as she flew over Mantle and scanned for any grimm as she made her way to the crater. There were no signs of grimm having run from one of the holes in the wall towards the crater, and if it was a flying grimm, then it should’ve been sighted earlier or at least taken care of by the airships that patrolled the air.

As she made it closer to the crater, she spotted a lone sabyr near the crater, though it seemed different from other grimm. Less stable, an ichor dripping from it that led to a nearby crack in the street. It was almost as if the grimm had just suddenly appeared on its own. Still, she started to charge her laser to blast it.

“Fiona, block it from running away! May, get the civilians away until we know if there’s more here. Joanna, you know what to do!”

Penny paused and lowered her hand as she watched a group of huntresses take care of the grimm with ease. Once the grimm was taken care of, she lowered herself to the ground, eyes still watching the huntresses as she scanned them to find their identities.

“About time Ironwood’s toy shows up,” the leader of the huntresses, who she recognized as Robyn, said without looking at Penny. “I take it he’s finally going to deal with the grimm showing up.”

“I am not sure I understand what you mean,” Penny said as she walked over. “This is the first time I have gotten a warning about any grimm this close to the crater.”

Robyn turned around and offered a hand to Penny. “Then what are you here for?”

Penny reached out to take Robyn’s hand for a moment, pulling back, and then taking her hand. “I had gotten an alert for a grimm out here.” She paused when she saw the aura around her hand turn green. “My partner and I are supposed to keep Mantle safe, but seeing a grimm out here without any other alerts sounded off.”

Robyn pulled her hand away and motioned for Penny to follow. “Then maybe the two of you can help us out.”

“Help out?”

“Grimm like that one have been popping up around the crater without warning. We thought they were coming through the wall and tearing through the soldiers left to keep the grimm out, but after today, we dont think that’s the case anymore.”

Penny followed Robyn, almost curious about what Robyn had meant. “I still do not think I understand. Grimm do not just appear out of nowhere.”

“These have. We actually watched one crawl up through a crack in the ground.”

“Why have you not told General Ironwood about this?”

“We’ll tell him whenever it is he finally opens up about why supplies for the wall are being moved towards Amity Arena out in the tundra.”

“He… he said he was going to take care of the wall,” Penny said quietly. “I was just supposed to protect Mantle until then.”

Robyn shrugged. “Guess he keeps some things closer to his chest than I thought. In the meantime, I’ll need you to help out around here. And maybe you can help us find out more about what Ironwood is doing.”

“I… I will need to think about it.”

“You know where to find me.”

Penny nodded and started to make her way to Weiss. Grimm appearing out of cracks in the streets, repair supplies getting pushed to Amity instead of the wall, none of it made any sense. Much less that the General would allow for anything like this.

“There you are!” Weiss called out as she ran over to Penny. “Sorry I’m late. A few grimm appeared without an alert and I had to stop them. You’ll never guess how they appeared though.”

“Through the cracks in the ground,” Penny said more than asked.

“Y-yeah, how… how did you know?”

“You are not the first to notice. Robyn said the same thing.”

“Robyn… Robyn Hill? You actually spoke to her?”

Penny nodded. “She seems to trust me and is hoping that I can work with her to find out what the General is doing.”

“He’s trying to keep Mantle safe, isnt he?”

“Robyn said he is moving supplies from the wall to the tundra to help with Amity.”

“But the wall… we were only supposed to protect Mantle until he could get that repaired.”

“That is what Robyn wants us to find out.”

“Then we should do it!”

Penny paused for a moment, almost thinking everything over. She trusted Weiss and her judgment, but she also trusted the General. Still, if Robyn was right, then they had to do something to help keep Mantle safe. “Alright, but if we do, then we cannot tell Ironwood that we are working with her.”

Weiss smiled. “That wont be a problem.”

#rwby #penny polendina #weiss schnee #robyn hill #drabbles #protectors of Atlas au #protectors of atlas

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theatrevelyan · 7 months

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Ok, I’ve binged the new ATLA live action and I have feelings about it so here are my incoherent thoughts! (SPOILERS btw!!)

I’m a fan of the original show and I approached this show with low expectations (namely the only expectation I had was “this can’t be worse than the movie, right??”) but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised!!

I mean sure some details have been changed to flow better in this rendition of the story but I’m fine with that so long as the heart that made the original special is still there and I know some people didn’t felt like it did but I had the feeling that it was.

Do I love absolutely everything about the show?

Nope.

I have some issues with the first episode being too stiff and some shots were outright weird?? Like the tilted camera when Grangran was speaking was a really odd choice??? Was it to signal that the world changed when the fire nation attacked? If so it missed the mark, it just felt weird… to be honest Grangran in general felt weird. Idk man, she felt like an exposition dump made flesh. Also I did like it better when it was Katara’s unchecked emotions that led them to Aang.

In general, the dialogues were… uhm, how to put it…? Too rigid? Not the acting mind you, but the actual script felt a bit stilted, I felt it more in the first few episodes but to me, the first episode is by far the weakest of the season in this regard which is odd since it’s your hook and most of the time you want to make sure the hook is if not the best at least a really solid opening.

I did not like Bumi, like at all. He was never a favorite of mine even in the original but still I found him annoying in this version and the fight in that episode was not the best to say the least but the rest of Omashu was good even if they changed it to include both Sai’s and Jet’s storylines. Too bad they didn’t include the loss of culture subplot for Aang but I get there was no time/place for it in this version of events and the rest was handled well… except for Bumi lol

On the more serious complaints… they butchered my boi HeiBai!!! That episode was all over the place in sense of scripting. I didn’t mind putting Koh and the owl there but we just forgot about the HeiBai plot along the way and we never got a resolution about it???? Like just two lines about healing the forest would have been enough, not good mind you, but enough.

Also I did not get why they changed the motivation for going to the North Pole from going there to train to go there bc of Kyoshi weird premonition thing or why Roku didn’t tell Aang about the comet????

Like ok the Kyoshi thing I can just wave it away like a minor change to flow better with the new structure of the episodes but I can’t ignore the fucking comet!!! That’s like a really important timeframe for the gaang to follow and maybe they will get to it next season since it was addressed on Ozai’s side of things but it felt still like a weird change.

Oh and why didn’t Aang learn water bending??? I mean I guess they probably wanted to elevate Katara’s skill level and have her be recognized as a master before she started teaching him besides him having still to come to terms with having to accept that he is the avatar and that he has to fight sometimes something that he doesn’t really do until the season finale and I can get behind that, I really can… but man… let him water bend just a little. Maybe in just one scene to show that he is picking up something from Katara even if she’s not his teacher yet. To show that despite all the doubts he’s actually trying to do what he’s supposed to. I guess this is a “wait and see” kind of change though so I’ll let it go… for now.

All that said, do I think the show is a good adaptation of the original?

Fucking yes.

It has its flaws for sure but there is also a lot of good things in it.

Sokka was the highlight for me. I really liked him in the original but i feel like he’s been elevated in this version of the story and the actor did a really remarkable job with him, despite my worry with the changes in his initial story arch they managed to give him another layer that I liked.

Actually all the actors did a very good job! Aang was spot on and Zuko had a lot more humanity in him from the start without losing his rough edges. And while I stand by that Sokka’s actor is the one that surprised me the most, Zuko’s was the one I had more fun watching. A really great performance in my opinion.

Iroh was a fucking delight and an emotional gut punch as always and while he was a bit more somber I really liked this version of the character.

They did Azula and Ozai justice showing how cunningly terrifying and utterly toxic they can be and I really liked that we got to see more of them in season 1.

Hell, even Zhao felt the right balance of unhinged cartoony villain and actual threat for the pov characters.

Katara was more of mixed bag for me. She’s my favorite character in the original (with Zuko being a close second) so I have higher standards for her and overall all she still feels like the Katara that I know and love but idk sometimes she felt too poised?? It’s more evident in the first few episodes to be fair and I don’t think it was the acting, the actress was great! Maybe it was the direction or the writing?? Idk man I still loved her, mind you, but in the original, Katara, while being kind and loving, was still a force of nature that you do not want to anger exactly like a raging river that can both be a source of life or a force of destruction. In this it felt like they softened her edges a bit too much. That might be a me problem though, as I said she’s my favorite so I have higher standards for her.

Ti be honest though, it seems that they softened everyone’s less palatable traits. Zuko isn’t as ruthless, Sokka isn’t sexist at the start of the season, Aang isn’t as goofy and so on. I didn’t mind it actually and most of the time it works really well in showing us new sides of these characters without losing who the are but idk man… while I still loved Katara it felt like she was missing something. And same with Suki! She looked fantastic and she was fierce as I expected her to be but she also felt more naive and love struck that she should have. Nothing terrible but enough to notice.

The bending was fantastic and it really felt… well real. Especially air bending! Appa and Momo were really well animated too! Big win for the VFX team!

The music too! It just felt right. And I’m still not over those scenes when you faintly hear leaves from the vines play in the background. Curse you and your great choices that made me actually cry my eyes out like a baby!

In the end I’d give it a solid 7/10. It was a nice watch and it brought me back to my childhood and I can see it’s potential to be something special on its own.

Mind you, this could still turn into a dumpster fire along the way. It wouldn’t be the first time it happened to a really promising Netflix show (I’m looking at you Voltron and the Witcher) but I have to say, I’m gladly surprised and mildly optimistic about this show!

#atla #avatar the last airbender #avatar #atla netflix #I’m optimistic about this guys #never been more happy to be pleasantly surprised tbh

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apollo-gate · 2 years

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What Christmas gifts would the ROs want the most and how would they react if a romanced MC got them the same?

This is intresting.

I love it but I'm also adding our three students and Noah.

Now, this is what they would want.

Alice, she would want a pendant that her father was supposed to give her. Sadly he never had the chance.

Helena would want to feel again like actual contact. Her skin has made it impossible. But there is a short-term fix that will only last a couple of hours.

Lisa, she just wants the Mc that's very simple. She regrets that she never told the Mc her true feelings.

Becca wants the first edition of Alice in Wonderland. She almost got it once at an auction but someone outbid her. Becca thought about stealing it but decided she lost and it might appear again.

Daniella wants this recipe from Miss. Johnson an old lady who runs a bakery. Miss Johnson does not like Daniella. Because the day they meet Daniella messed up the shop by accident. She still helped clean up and visits regularly to eat the baked goods.

Vanessa isn't easy she has everything she could possibly want but this is one thing. A moonstone from the Moon. The government won't allow anyone to buy it and the black market can't get its hands on it. She thought about asking the Thrallens since they have access but Vanessa felt like that would be taken advantage of them.

Azalea don't laugh ok. I'm serious. They want a hot bath and their back scales to be touched. Look this is very intimate VERY. Still not laughing well. Now, this is dangerous on several levels and would require the practice of MC psych.

Kent wants to cook and get to know your friends and all the other ROS. He was an ass but wants to start building bridges for you. And wants to watch your favorite movie for Christmas. That's it just to spend time with the MC.

Naamah can have anything at the snap of her fingers. But what she would really want is a day with the MC just to herself. No interactions no meetings just alone time. And a lot and I mean a lot of S*x. Have fun with that one.

Blaze to see his mom. Blaze has been on the run so long he can't see his mom. Blaze's mom is in prison. She did all the crimes she's charged with but she never was a bad mother. He resents himself for not visiting her.

Zero would like to find the family in the village in Poland that took him in when he was younger. Before he was captured and before he became a hacker. He wants to help them but could never find them even with all his connections.

Now for our other 4 non-ROs and our newcomer Atlas.

Noah wants this picture he had of his wife and child (The child is the same gender as Mc always.)

Lena wants to dance again to perform the ballet dance that she ruined and destroyed her career as a dancer.

Jenny wants to meet her parents. She was left at the adoption center and all that was left was neckless. She keeps it with her always.

Scott wants to thank the doctor that saved his life. Scott never got the chance and has been focused on becoming a better man than the selfish prick he was.

And for a bonus

Atlas wants to see the Northern light with the Mc.

Now for the reactions wow that was a long list.

Alice the moment she sees the pendent tears stream down her face. The last thing she has of her fathers is the pendant. Alice will clutch the pendent and hug you tight. She will be forever grateful for this.

Helena the second she sees the temporary fix. She will go ridged. She used it once because the doctors said it would help it didn't at least not for her. She will ask you to give her about 10 minutes. She will take it and disappear to her bathroom. The moment you see her again she jumps in your arms. She's so happy to feel you not that she could before but the fact you get to see the real her and real skin. Tears will be pouring but she is so happy you just gave her the moon.

Lisa, when she found out, all she could do was look at you. Your eyes were there but when you took your mask off she froze. She cupped your face. She couldn't breathe. "Your alive" Is all she could say hell it's all she could think about. She shifted back to human form and looked at you with love. "I won't waste a single moment ever again."

When Becca sees the book she unwrapped she smiles. Not her fake ones but her genuine smile. She doesn't know how you got it but knows it must be difficult. Her thank you is low. She walks over and places it where she planned on putting it. Her smile is still on her face. She now owns all the first editions she wanted. She moves in front of you and says "I'll pay you back with whatever you want."

Daniella squeals at the sight of the notepad. She already cooking before you get a word ou. By the time she's done she sitting and waiting for you to take the first bite. You share the baked goods together and Leon even eats a plate full.

Vanessa can't breathe at the sight of the stone. No not just one stone three stones. A neckless, bracelet, and ring. She tries them on. Her skin glows pure white essence. She is beaming. She hugs you. You don't feel the cold touch. "I can touch you MC." Vanessa cups your face and can't get over touching you.

When you mention what Azalea wants they blush. Azalea only nods. When you touch her scales they glow and a fragrance comes out. When you smell it you know you will smell like them. Your eyes start to get heavy. When you wake again you are in bed in Azalea's arms.

Kent looks around at the people smiling and laughing. You stand beside him. kent managed to get everyone to smile and laugh. He is happy. When everyone leaves and you put the movie on, he asks you questions about it. And when it's over it's now his favorite as well. He tells you a story of how he and the other agents tried to have normalcy.

Naamah blinks when you tell her your plans for the day. And she can't stop staring at the outfit you wear. "So your mine for the day" You nod. "MC you shouldn't have but Ok fun time." You see darkness then feel her hands and then the bed.

Blaze looks at where you two are. Lady Justice stares with daggers. Then he sees his mother. You smile as you walk in with his mother. They hug for a while. Soon you get introduced. She wants to know all about you. You eat dinner and at the end of the night Blaze hugs you and say thank you.

Zero looks at the man and woman in front of him. You tell him that their parents died 4 years after he left. Zero looks heartbroken. He signs he's sorry and wants to help them as they did him. They go back and forth for a while. But Zero wins. He tells you he will visit them twice a year and help their village. He asks if you want to help him do it.

Now for the others

Noah takes a photograph out of your hand. He thanks you. You leave to give him privacy. When you close the door you see Noah take off his mask. He has glossy eyes looking at it.

Lena starts to breathe erratically at the sight of the stage. "Fuck No, Do you have any Idea what I did." You make contact with her arm. "It's just you and me Lena." You look at the stage "Go dance your last dance for yourself." Lena looks down. "Ok." Lena comes out 30 mins later dressed in her outfit. She dances the most beautiful ballet performance you have ever seen.

Jenny looks out the car window. Two parents and a little child. "That's them." You nod. "Mc I don't know what to do or what to say." You smile ressuring her "It's up to you. You don't have to go now, Jenny." Jenny looks at you. Then back to them. "I'll go." Jenny ends up talking to them for a while when she comes back she says she didn't tell them but wants to get to know them.

Scott stands at the OR door. He already thanked you. The doctor comes out Scott catches them. They talked then Scott sent you a message to meet him in a couple hours. When you pick him up later he is happier.

Atlas looks at the northern lights in awe. You smile at her. "You know Mc. A friend of mine said they would show me the Northern lights." Atlas gets silent. "They never got the chance. They would have liked you." Atlas's hands fade then shimmer "I'm glad we meet Mc. If only you knew." Atlas stops talking you turn to see a shimmer. In place of Atlas.

Alright, that took a while sorry but here you go enjoy.

#ZeroRO #BlazeRO #NaamahRO #KentRO #AzaleaRO #VanessaRO #DaniellaRO #BeccaRO #LisaRO #HelenaRO #anonymous #cute #AliceRO

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reformedvoid · 3 years

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Okay I know that it’s been almost 13 years since the release but I’m talking about it now. And I’m also not very good at talking so if I made any mistakes I’ll correct them.

I decided to give James Cameron’s Avatar a watch. And..I liked it, however here is what I’d think would’ve made it better. And what the problems are.

But before I go into that I want to say what I enjoyed about the movie. I love the atmosphere and scenery of Pandora, it’s an absolutely beautiful place and if it was real I’d definitely visit. I love the creatures and I especially love the Na’vi. Those are the elements of the film that drew me in.

Now, like any film it needs to have a drawback, and I feel like the biggest drawback for me and probably for many others was the story itself. To simply put it, “white man mingles with the indigenous people, earns the trust, realizes that the white people are shitty and ruining everything, joins indigenous peoples sides as the saviour.” The white saviour archetype being Jake Sully. Who basically does just that, engages with the Omaticaya Clan, earns their trust, fights against who he was working with (RDA), and then happily ever after, he joins the Na’vi for long terms days. Thanks for that Jake.

Something else that pissed me off was the almost lack of accountability Jake took when he exposed himself as a spy working for the RDA, I mean yeah The Omaticaya bounded Jake as punishment and Neytiri barred him from coming back for a hot minute. But literally he earned back the trust of the Omaticaya simply because he could ride the Great Leonopteryx and that earned him the title of TORUK MAKTO. And you can’t get mad at the Toruk Makto right? Also, the Toruk Makto in Avatar is kinda like the “Avatar” in ATLA. Just thought that was interesting. But literally Jake “simp” Sully had outed himself out as basically a traitor, but it’s all okay now because he earned a godlike status simply by jumping on the back of the Leonopteryx. Dude could’ve at least done something more and had more responsibility to take for his wrong doings. I felt for Neytiri in that scene, imagine putting your trust into someone and then that’s broken. It would take more than something majestic to earn me back.

Now, when the humans who came to Pandora were sent to Earth again. It was almost like they made it seem there wouldn’t be any need for defense anymore, Toruk Makto was no longer needed and everything was peaceful. But is it really? I mean they could come back at at any given time to do everything all over again simply for that Unobtainium lust. But nope, it all seems well after the Pandoran War. And I know they were exiled but is that really going to stop them?

One last thing I disliked was Tsu’tey dying, man I hated that.

Now, what could’ve been done differently?

With the plot I feel like I would’ve preferred that from the beginning that Pandora was a place that was freshly new to anyone, no one had even made it there yet. Because it seems implied that Pandora was already known to the humans. But what if from the start Pandora hasn’t even been stepped on by anyone from the outside world. And there was a first person to ever step foot on Pandora and make contact with the Na’vi, that being Jake, his brother (if he was alive), or even an entirely different character would be interesting to see. They go to Pandora and they meet the Na’vi for the first time, and the story can go on from there. I’d like to go in a way that the main character learns about the Na’vi’s culture and then there’s a conflict of some kind but in the end it is resolved and the character becomes an ally to the Na’vi, kinda like how Grace was. Or even a story about a Na’vi character native to Pandora and the journey they are faced with. Either being contact with the humans or something else entirely. If someone to make an alternate plot with either one of these in mind I’d love to see it.

Also I just prefer to forget Tsu’tey is dead. So if it was up to me I would’ve kept him alive, along with Eytukan. Like, we barely got to know those two.

Overall, the other things I had mentioned basically explained themselves and I wouldn’t know how to describe them, my main issue was the story. I still think it was a good movie, but I would change a lot of things. I’ll give it a 6/10

Oh and by the way, who remembers those McDonald’s toys? CURSED ASF!!!

#avatar #na’vi #avatar 2009

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seyaryminamoto · 3 years

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Hey! Hope ur doing good. I wanted to ask ur opinion on Korra and what ur thinking of her story and how she’s like as a avatar. I’m asking because I’m always really interested in ur posts where ur analysing characters and their traits yk. Especially when they’re long. I just love reading them! I don’t think anyone has asked u this before at least not that I’m aware of. I’ve been scrolling through ur latest posts and haven’t seen that much asks about korra.

Oof... xD what a question.

People generally don't talk about LOK with me because that's... not really my area of expertise, for one thing, let alone of personal interest. I actually unironically loved LOK Book 1 when I first watched it, I binged that whole season in like 2 days or so, and I was sooooo eager for more...

... But then I got more and I ended up not enjoying most of what I got at all @_@

Because I didn't enjoy it, I generally don't touch LOK and don't bring up my grievances with it since the people who do love the show are within their rights to enjoy it without people like me talking about everything the show got wrong and everything it should have gotten right. I outright had in mind to make a huge set of posts to explain my takes on LOK, episode per episode... and then I didn't do it because it was going to take me waaaaaaay too long and I wanted to do stuff with my time that actually made me happier than that x'D

But anyway, with this in mind, if you really want to know my take on Korra, her story, her role as an Avatar and just... everything about her show? I'll put it under the cut.

Concept-wise, I loved Korra. Hell, I still remember how I first came across the character, got to know her in that first episode, and thought she was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. I am one of those allegedly rare souls who absolutely vibed with Book 1 Korra and who ADORED the character to the point where, back in my not-so-fond time of being an admin in an ATLA group on a social media site I would rather not name (?), my admin identity was based on Korra herself :'D

This, I hope, should explain that I was not, unlike a lot of people, an insta-hater of LOK. I actually gave the show a chance and, on first glance, I loved Book 1 completely and I was so HYPED about the show's future based on this starting point. Later on, however, I discovered my creative juices were just... not jogged at all with LOK, whereas they were going completely bonkers over ATLA XD hence, I focused on creating content for ATLA, which slowly led me to treat the original show with a little more distance than I did at first. That helped me put a lot of things into focus, things that I didn't notice or acknowledge right away, both in ATLA and LOK.

The problems I ended up seeing in LOK upon later rewatches were problems a lot of people saw on their first approach to the show. They totally went over my head the first time xD but after acknowledging said problems, I genuinely thought that these unresolved issues would get better over time, that the show's upcoming seasons would patch up what hadn't been addressed properly in the first season and all such complaints would be unnecessary...!

... Boy, was I wrong.

First things first, what I loved most about Korra was how spirited she felt. She was so charged with personality and with life that I couldn't get enough of seeing the character reacting to the world around her. It was masterful in terms of animation and voice acting, more than anything, and I just LOVED the first episode of the show in particular because it introduced us to a wholly different concept for an Avatar, opposite to Aang in virtually every way that mattered. While I had no objective problems with Aang and his development, the way a lot of people did, I couldn't relate to Aang personally... but I could with Korra. She was a sheltered girl who had no real experiences beyond the world she had been locked inside and raised in... something I felt was terribly relatable to my own personal experiences :'D she was a severe social inept due to that upbringing, something slightly more extreme to relate to xD but even then, I struggled befriending people as a teenager and I found it pretty interesting to see a character facing a similar struggle.

It wasn't, at all, the same with Aang. He made friends relatively easily and quickly, bonding with people and becoming friends for life with them no matter how different they might be from him. He had all this worldly knowledge, even if outdated, and he had a huge trauma that was not relatable at all for me, despite I absolutely could empathize with his pain and loss. In Korra's case, her problems felt slightly more mundane and they resembled my problems, to some degree.

Seeing Korra grow and become a better person would have been, of course, my ideal concept of what this show would shape into. From the moment we're introduced to this character, she's not at all an ideal person. She's a child at the time, recklessly and carelessly breaking her own family home's walls simply because she discovered she has powers and nobody can stop her from wielding them. It's a fun choice for a character introduction, and yet... later reflection on the subject made me realize that this is indeed how Korra's problems as a character started. She could break a wall, she could make a mess of her own home, and her parents would only stand by and smile awkwardly, zero discipline enforced on her, zero consequences to be had.

Hence, it's no surprise that she neglects and dismisses discipline once she's older (with Katara's approval, too, which isn't completely surprising but certainly not helpful), and continues to dismiss it often in the rest of the season. When you introduce a character who has a flaw that can be SO detrimental, not only to her growth but to her relationships with others (her lack of discipline can absolutely cause unnecessary chaos, and it does very often in the show), the ideal course of action would be for the show to make the character reason with said flaw and realize she has to get a grip and not act like this anymore...

... But technically? The show doesn't do this with Korra at all. If anything? The writing in LOK just enables her, continuously, and holds her accountable for very few things, constantly praising her to infinity and beyond, disregarding the disasters she leaves in her wake. And it's not just with discipline, but with everything.

When you see a character like Korra butting heads with another stubborn character like Tenzin, it can be easy to sympathize with Korra if you have had authority figures in your life who were unyielding and barely ever were open to listening to you. But see... Tenzin is forced, constantly, to change and adapt to Korra. Korra, in turn, never has to do the same with Tenzin. Even when Tenzin is right, the narrative makes him wrong. Even when Korra has done things she shouldn't have (like the infamous destruction of the spinning wooden gates during that training exercise), she does nothing to make up for it. I'm still bothered, to this day, by thinking about how she destroyed something EXTREMELY valuable for the Air Nomads... and then it was Air Acolytes fixing it, and Tenzin supervising them, and Korra only showed up to say a couple of things and didn't even OFFER to help out with patching up what she broke, something that ends up feeling symbolic of Korra's journey altogether.

The more these things happened, the less relatable Korra became. The harder it was to feel that she was someone I could understand, even if the traits through which I had first bonded with her were still very much present in the character. But then the infamous love triangle/square/disaster started, and she became even less relatable, and a more unflattering character, than she ever needed to be. Her social ineptitude I mentioned earlier was slightly endearing at first, such as not knowing she needs money to buy any food, fishing in ponds where it's forbidden, and so on. But it wasn't quite so endearing when the show doesn't make her face true consequences for it in far more serious situations than the ones in the first episodes: people constantly focus on how wrong Mako was in the Makorrasami mess, and I won't pretend he's not wrong because he absolutely messed up too... but Korra was far from blameless. Korra absolutely shouldn't have experienced any sort of territorial jealousy over a guy who, yes, she liked, but with whom she has no established romantic relationship and who was well within his rights to date whoever he pleased. For all she could have known, he could have had a girlfriend BEFORE meeting Korra: what right did she have to be jealous of Asami's relationship with him, under any circumstances? It felt wrong, utterly. I've had brief crushes on people who happened to have other people in their lives, or who weren't interested in me, and I NEVER pretended they owed me anything or had led me on somehow... and yet that's 100% how Korra acts over Mako in Book 1, with no justification.

Then the show makes things worse when the whole subplot of Hiroshi's membership with the Equalists comes up. Korra's attitude around Asami not only feels terribly unfair for the most part, but when she's finally trying to put aside her childish jealousy, suddenly Hiroshi is a bad guy and Korra has evidence, only she doesn't, only she maybe does! And in the process, she keeps pissing people off in her constant pursuit for "the truth" at the cost of antagonizing her new friends, all of which ends up rewarding her, in the end, with Asami being dejected and depressed over her father being a piece of shit, while Mako concedes Korra was always right and he totally should have listened to her. Yeah, let's not count in the fact that Korra started out feeling frustrated and jealous that she couldn't get Mako and Bolin to come live with her in Air Temple Island, and that now she got exactly what she wanted at first, at the cost of uncovering a very dark and horrific secret that makes Asami's life pretty much a living hell.

The thing is... it's all convenient for Korra. It all falls perfectly into place for Korra. It's not fair to the character... because it doesn't challenge her in any way that counts. When Korra's character gets challenged in Book 1, it's usually by Tenzin or by Mako and who gets the final victory in any of these circumstances? Typically, Korra :'D it's always Tenzin and Mako realizing Korra was right all along and that her way of going about things is better or acceptable or agreeable...

... and as awful as it feels to say the words every Korra hater said and that I used to be in total disagreement with, the truth is that the show as a whole proves that the haters were right: Korra learned nothing.

It's frustrating because of how much potential her character has. She GENUINELY has that potential! But the writing, of course, is biased as fuck and that bias saw to it that her very agreeable and fun character traits would become actively detrimental for her character growth. Where it takes work for Aang to achieve certain things (like unlocking the Avatar State or connecting with his past lives), Korra could pull off those things whenever the plot required her to do so. Hell, even in the case of her "airbending punch", she unlocks airbending because according to the creators, the lock on her other three bending abilities somehow cleared the path for the airbending :'D it was not, like in Aang's case, a matter of being taught FORCIBLY how to connect with the earthbending side of his nature when given no other choice by Toph. It was not, like in Aang's case, a situation of learning firebending and accidentally going too far with the skill, causing him to swear off it out of fear of causing harm to other people. No, in Korra's case, it's just that the plot requires her to airbend and her airbending is NOT the kind of airbending we're used to. She didn't do what she does in episode 2, where she uses airbending motions to dodge attacks at the last moment... she didn't do anything she hasn't ALREADY been doing constantly: Korra just punched something, and a burst of air came from her fist. That's literally it. There's no real character growth required for her to reach this point, all she needed was for Amon to block her other three elements for her airbending to come through.

This is why Korra's arc fails. It's not because she's a bad character from the core: she absolutely IS NOT. She's got sooooo much potential and capacity for growth, and the writing just squandered that potential constantly, never challenging her with anything other than bending, constantly making adverse characters back down because she was too cool not to back down for, and never giving her a chance to deliver on the premise of her own show: this is the story of an Avatar who was an Avatar before being her own person. Aang is the exact opposite concept. Aang is in denial about being the Avatar when things start out, he doesn't even want Katara and Sokka to know who he is right away because "he didn't want to be [the Avatar]". With this as a starting point, what could have been a more interesting character to develop than someone whose ENTIRE life revolves around her role, her skills, her power... to the point where she has NO IDEA who she really is?

But the thing is... this show never delivers on that premise.

No, in fact, it constantly seems to think it delivered on it, and yet it never did.

It's not chance that Korra herself tells Tenzin she feels her story is unfinished in Book 4. That there's still so much for her to do and that this doesn't feel "over". It's a ridiculous and ironically brilliant thing for the writing team to feature because it seems to hint at and suggest that we WILL see more Korra adventures in the future, in comic book form! (as we did)

But... Aang's adventures were also brought to us in comic book form after his story was done. And there was no Aang mournfully thinking "wow this feels so unfinished" right before the credits rolled.

Gotta wonder why that's the case, huh? :')

Basically, the show had no purpose. And why didn't it have a purpose? Because Bryke and company were so busy trying to make people respect their show and their new protagonist that they didn't ever slow down to think about what kind of story they were telling. It's no chance that Book 1 feels like the strongest entry to me, to this day: it's the only one where they weren't constantly fighting the fandom by trying to prove that their show was worth our time. The fact that Book 2 has a literal scene of Tenzin telling Aang he's trying to be like him but failing, only for Aang to give the most obvious speech to him (you're your own person, you're valuable because of you, you don't have to be me, blah blah blah) tells us more than enough about the priorities of the showrunners when they were creating the overarching story of Legend of Korra: they had no idea what they were doing. All they wanted was for people to like it, and people didn't like it, so they doubled down on trying to make them like it by bringing out EVEN MORE fanservice and more characters consistently claiming Korra was THE BEST and that everyone should worship her.

Honestly, think about it: Tarrlok tried to cajole Korra into joining his gang and she actually agreed to it at one point, manipulated easily as she was. Unalaq wanted Korra on his team and manipulated her to get her to be his ally in opening the portals (and the worst part is he got away with everything in the end :'D). Zaheer outright wanted to kidnap Korra so she would be a Red Lotus member for whatever reason and he tells her, in Book 4, that "her potential is limitless", ergo, he admires her. Kuvira constantly tries to tell us she's "so much like Korra", and tries to convince Korra that she's right and that Korra should be on her team too. Every villain, with the exception of Amon unless I'm forgetting something, tried to convince Korra that she was "super special" (which, you know, water's wet?) and that she shouldn't be their enemy but rather, she should be helping them achieve their goals.

Aang faced a lot of villains in his own time, too. The first one was Zuko, who simply wanted to capture Aang to get rid of his banishment. The second one was Zhao, who wanted to capture Aang for his personal advancement and the Fire Nation's success in the war. The third one was Azula, who wanted to capture Aang, Zuko and Iroh for the Fire Nation's sake and because her father would approve of her, if she did. The fourth one was Long Feng, a manipulative bureaucrat who wanted to continue to hold absolute, tyrannical control over a city and thought the Avatar would be an obstacle for that. The fifth one was Combustion Man... who just wanted to kill Aang because that's what he was hired to do. The sixth, of course, is Ozai, who simply wants to kill Aang because he thinks that will guarantee his absolute victory in the war.

Of course, there are other lesser villains, but these are the ones that come to mind: not one of them tried to recruit Aang to their cause because he was powerful. Not all of them are notorious examples of great villains or antagonists, no... but Aang was an obstacle in their way. Aang was a problem to be rid of. Aang wasn't someone they could charm into joining their ranks: he was a problem. He was a kid who messed up their plans and ruined their biggest goals.

Korra, though? Korra, for most her villains, is an asset. She's capable of so many great and grand things that they think they'd be better off with her on their team than on the opposing team, which of course means that Korra has to prove she's "a good person" by not joining them no matter how compelling their arguments might be! (even if, in the end, she might wind up doing whatever they want her to do, as was the case with Unalaq). This would be interesting and it might even hold some sort of narrative momentum if only this tendency of villains who are actually Avatar fans ever broke its own, persistent and annoying and repetitive cycle: if Korra, at some point, was genuinely compelled to join one of them, the story would have been more interesting. Conversely, if any of them had eventually laughed off the notion of joining forces with Korra, for instance, then at least we'd have someone like the ATLA villains who simply thought Aang was a problem to get rid of. But the very tendency of writing villains who VALUE Korra is just another symptom of the same illness: Bryke and company wanted the whole fandom to worship Korra and had no idea how to achieve it, so they made even the villains get in on the Korra-worship agenda and they're constantly praising her to hell and back because that way maybe the fans will think Korra is great!

And it's just extremely sad... because they didn't have to TRY. They barely did. All they had to do was take her character seriously and build her up in a coherent way, without destroying the traits that made her loveable, relatable and interesting!

And yet that's exactly what they DIDN'T do.

Book 1, like I said, already had a lot of problems. Even then, this season is literally the only bit of LOK that I would look back on fondly, TO A DEGREE, because it actually had so much more potential than its own creators recognized. We're faced with writing problems that consist of Bryke thinking the key to creating a powerful female character is to pretend she's entitled to everything ever, no matter if she hasn't earned it, and to give her anything she could want. You know, only for her to conclude, later on, that she feels like she hasn't done enough and that she hasn't made enough progress :>

Book 2 doubled down on everything negative about Korra in the first season. It freaked me out to see it because I was genuinely telling people to not worry about Korra's development in the first season because it would get better in the next ones :'D that everything left unresolved and mishandled from the first season would be better in the future!

... And then it wasn't.

When I started Book 2 and the first scene was Korra abusing the Avatar State for... a game? It was about the worst sign pertaining what was coming in the future. After an entire episode, and a season-long arc, where Aang COULDN'T trigger his Avatar State because of his inner conflicts and his locked chakras and everything we know about, here's Korra taking advantage of the past lives' power for something as meaningless as a race against a bunch of toddlers. It was far from endearing, it was virtually outrageous for me, and I couldn't understand why the hell this was the first thing we're shown when starting a new season of the story that ended with a girl finally coming into her own as the Avatar by helping people with, yet again, a power-up granted to her by the sheer essence of plot convenience in the Book 1 finale. I didn't even HAVE a huge problem with that finale, personally, despite it felt too easy to sort things out that way... but seeing that this was how Korra was taking advantage of her fully-fledged Avatar powers was the strongest red flag they could have given us that early on.

Then, the rest of the episode continued and I was more than a little shocked to see no sign of the Korra I actually liked from Book 1 there. The playfulness was reduced to that single scene that was very unpleasant for the reasons I explained above, the enthusiasm was nowhere around... hell, most people used to find her pouting tendencies from Book 1 hilarious and I was one of them: no pouting, though. It was such a simple, casual design choice... and it's a choice they tossed aside because, what, the toxic fans who hated Korra had made fun of it, maybe?

The Korra in the first episode of Book 2 attempts to feel more mature. She's not. She's more soulless, though, she's definitely less herself, and she's got none of the spirit I used to love about her. Can I blame the animation for that feeling? Well, I can acknowledge that they didn't do her any favors, Studio Pierrot soooo dropped the ball with Book 2's many episodes they had to animate... but it's not only the animation, it's still the writing. There's this persistent need, through the first half of Book 2, to worsen Korra... in order to make Mako look better, most of all. And I've never been a Mako hater... but this is fucking bullshit xD you can't "better" a character by ruining the other one deliberately so that the one you picked looks better? The only thing you'll convince people of is that they both suck. And of course, doing this with Korra right after spending two years whining because people didn't like their main character is just absurd. Her character growth did NOT need for her to become a civil war advocate with nothing but violent reactions and responses to EVERYTHING.

Look, I know it has turned into a meme in the fandom and all... but the whole "I'm going to threaten this judge by holding his head between my very dangerous dog's open jaws" situation is appalling to me. This is NOT heroic behavior. And what the guy confesses is so stupid and pitiful it's even more pathetic to see Korra having to reach such extremes just to hear... that her uncle hired a bunch of criminals so he could somehow cause his brother to get himself banished? Like... for real? Are you serious? It's yet again an attempt to whitewash a "good" character (Tonraq, in this case), all be it to show how BAD the bad guys are, when there's absolutely no need for that. Tonraq could have messed up and been responsible for his mistakes. Unalaq could have just as easily taken advantage of that matter and become chief because the catastrophe his reckless brother unleashed just happened to play PERFECTLY into his convenient set of skills. I mean, the concept still feels bad at its core, but it's not quite as bad as "I paid a group of criminals to induce my brother to fuck up and awaken 'dark spirits' that will attack the city so that only I can save everyone and I will be the hero, haha!", like... as usual, there's no accountability. There's nothing the heroes can be held accountable for, because the bad guys are always to blame for everything. Even with a concept quite as baffling and STUPID as hiring a bunch of criminals just to fuck with your brother.

Anyway, back into the subject... Korra continues to act like she's possessed by some rage demon throughout Book 2, all the way until she gets mind-wiped, conveniently. Have I ever mentioned I HATE memory wipe storylines, more so when they're just a temporary, simplistic resource to generate cheap drama? :'D well, I hate memory wipe storylines, more so when they're just a temporary, simplistic resource to generate cheap drama.

The fact that Korra's whole insane behavior is somehow twisted into a finding a solution because "she connected to Raava" is, yet again, a way to see how no developments in this show makes the slightest bit of sense because they're in fact NOT related to character growth in the slightest. It's sudden random events that happen and that characters react to in completely unnatural ways: suddenly, after this random loss of identity, Korra regains her senses and she's a perfectly agreeable normal human being again (... though still devoid of many personality traits that made her fun in the first season, because they're gone forever :'D). She loses her connection to her past lives in yet another obvious metaphor of LOK being its own thing and not needing ATLA to build itself upon (which is fundamentally stupid considering THIS IS A SEQUEL ergo IT NEEDS THE ORIGINAL which ISN'T A BAD THING!!!), and we're somehow told that Korra doesn't NEED to be connected to the past Avatars because she's super powerful all on her own: there's zero build-up for this development, zero warning that she's going to turn into a giant blue spiritual Megazord and go punch Unavaatu in the nuts. Remember back in the day when people said energybending came out of nowhere, and that the lion turtles were too convenient, and that just featuring them in pictures in books at the library or in Piandao's mansion as statues was NOT build-up? Well, Korra's big spiritual transformation makes ATLA's last-minute deus ex machina MASTERFUL in comparison. This was such a jumble of random resources with no connection between each thing and the next that I just... I can't understand it. I seriously can't.

Then there's zero attempt to regain the bridge between Korra and her past lives. It's practically framed as "she's better now if she stands with her own strength". Korra's diehard fans went wild because look how STRONG our girl still is without the other Avatars! She's the BEST!

... When the truth is that there's no worldbuilding explanation for this extremely convenient power-up, let alone is there any SENSE in all these characters just briefly mourning the death of the connections only for it to be ignored and forgotten in the blink of an eye. It's a super artificial way to kill the chances for Korra to grow the way Aang did, to learn based on the wisdom of her past lives the way Aang could (and that as far as I know, Kyoshi did too in the novels). The past lives were NOT a crutch, not an obstacle, not a problem. They were actually pretty damn helpful when they wanted to be... hell, Aang bailed Korra out in Book 1 because the plot decided it was convenient! How exactly are we acting like her loss of connections to her past lives is a good thing now? It's honestly absurd, especially when they never did anything to fix this or restore it, or for Korra to properly mourn it after it happened. It doesn't feel like that much of a tragedy because it just has no bearing on the events of ANYTHING past Book 2's finale.

But then Book 2 ends with Korra deciding somehow that Unalaq, the uncle she killed and whom she was fighting all along, was right :> that the division between spirits and humans needs to end. Look... the concept is not that bad, I'll grant you that. But the delivery? The "I won't be the bridge between spirits and humans anymore!" concept? That's outrageous. Visualize the barrier between both worlds as a dam: Korra tore down the dam and said she wasn't taking responsibility for whoever got slammed by a massive tidal wave in consequence of her choices. That's what it feels like. Korra's entire experience with spirits so far is "I can waterbend them out of being evil", a concept just as outrageous as taking away the barrier itself... and she thinks that, as Vaatu is gone, by declaring they'll all have to learn to get along, everything's going to be peachy? How does anyone reach this conclusion? Spirits and humans have been shown to be fundamentally different. We've seen spirits in ATLA and they weren't cute and cuddly. Spirits can be DANGEROUS. Humans can be DANGEROUS. Let humans waltz into the spirit portals willy-nilly and vice versa, and it can be disastrous!

But no, Korra does this because Korra felt like it, on a last minute reflection on something with zero build-up until then, because it never occurred to her that Unalaq might have a point until that very final moment of the Harmonic Convergence. And then Book 3 begins...

... and we find her choices backfired on her stupidly because there's some crazy spirit wilds in the middle of the city she's sworn to protect :')

The show proceeds to show us the consequences of Korra's actions for the FIRST TIME, consequences she is grieving about and that she doesn't know how to sort out...!

... Only to then excuse the whole thing by saying that airbenders are suddenly a thing in the world again BECAUSE the spirit portals were kept open! :D oh YAY! Korra's choice was the RIGHT ONE! She fixed everything wrong with the world and the spirit wilds don't matter at all!

This is basically the way this show handled every challenge thrown at Korra. It's what they did with Korra's jealousy over Asami back in Book 1, which spiraled into all that drama and into Korra still being in the right in the end. Was it at a cost? A cost that didn't affect Korra personally at all, so who cares. Same goes for this: she doesn't fix the wilds, she just takes off on a trip to collect airbenders everywhere! And ironically that becomes the most dynamic moment of later LOK seasons for me, the very few episodes where Korra and her crew are looking for airbenders. Then that period ends bluntly when the true evil to end all evils, AKA Su Beifong, shows up for the first time and decides to take over the whole show just because she can :')

But as we're focusing on Korra, the truth is that Korra in the middle of Book 3 feels a little less unpleasant (USUALLY) than she does in Books 2 or 4. She's not greeeeat, but she's not that bad. Still, I don't entirely appreciate the whole bullshit Beifong family drama, so everything that shit splattered on is garbage to me xD Lin's constant efforts to keep Korra safe from a madman and his gang who are perfectly willing and eager to kill Korra are completely dismissed by not only Korra herself but by the very damnable Su... and Korra seems to have no moment of self-reflection about how wrong that is, about how Lin is actually trying to do her duty of keeping her safe, even if in a way Korra doesn't really like. There's nothing of the sort, she just does whatever is convenient for her, no thoughts or fucks given.

The true horror of Book 3, though, is when the new airbenders are taken hostage by the Red Lotus. This is truly the moment, the scene, where all my respect for Korra withered and died: Aang had known Katara for like 5 hours when Zuko showed up and terrorized the Water Tribe. In order to keep Katara and her people safe, Aang turned himself in to Zuko, no doubt hoping to escape when the right chance arrived, but he turned himself in anyway. He knew that, if he hid, if he resisted, Zuko could do WORSE to these innocent people than he already had. His personal fears were never important: Aang marched into that ship and asked Zuko to leave the Tribe alone in exchange for his surrender.

In contrast, Korra hears about the whole "Air Nation" being in danger of extermination in the hands of a creep like Zaheer, and she HESITATES. She DOUBTS. She is DRAMATIC and WEEPY... over turning herself in to save the airbenders, aka, the single thing she got right when she kept the portals open. AKA, the one nation EVERYONE has been hoping could be restored someday. The last thing left and necessary for balance to start coming back to the world for real and for the Hundred Year War's toll to finally decrease, if just a little, since the damage that period caused will never truly go away.

This was the very first population to be a victim of genocide at the hands of Sozin.

And Korra DOUBTS about giving herself up in exchange for their safety and freedom.

Look... it's just embarrassing. It's just insane. You can't present this as such a horrible threat, so much worse than the Fire Nation was for Aang, because it's not. Korra is already ten times as powerful as Aang is in ATLA's second episode, the show is CONSTANTLY telling us what a powerhouse Korra is: now, is she going against a team of four crazy bastards and she has NO IDEA what they'll do to her? Then at the very fucking least she could have come up with a plan to help the airbenders escape while keeping Zaheer and his crew distracted with her own extremely powerful bending, since the show has reiterated non-stop that no one is as cool and strong as Korra! SHE is what they want. How is it that hard to at least TRY to think outside the box and do something interesting for a change? How is this Avatar meant to be loveable and wonderful when she's unwilling to take risks and chances if they'll put her in danger, when other people she should value ARE in danger already, and she seems to prefer to stay safe herself? How are we supposed to root for this "hero" when her top priority seems to be... herself?

It's horrible. It's terrible xD I wish it weren't because like I said at first, Korra has SO MUCH potential, SOOOOO MUCH... and the writing team just did her so dirty. She didn't develop at all. She was stunted and stuck in this pitiful state of whining about nobody liking her while everyone worshipped the very footprints she left in her wake. She was unable to make the difficult choices that needed to be made because she was so wrapped up in her own selfishness and fears that she spent an episode making sad faces because "oh I guess I have to sacrifice myself to save all those people I supposedly am fighting to protect, woe is me". This is just... insulting, outright, for a character of this caliber. I know she's not supposed to be a genius on any level, but this is just more than that: an Avatar who hesitates to save others in the face of danger is an Avatar who thinks THEY are more important than the people they're supposed to protect. And they wanted us to think she was a fully developed Avatar when she acted like this? For real?

Finally, Book 3 ends with Korra poisoned, fighting a very weird, violent fight against Zaheer, flying around just as he did, while being close to death. The incoherence in Su pulling the metal out of Korra's stomach when it entered her body through her skin rather than via ingestion still gets me to this day. Like... you're saying Korra's bloodstream pushed most of that mercury into her stomach, dragging it all the way there, EXCLUSIVELY there, I don't know, at most maybe a bit in her lungs too? XD I mean, come the hell on. It was almost funny to see Toph pulling it out through the skin in the next season because the minute I watched that incoherence in Book 3 I just screamed everywhere that it made no sense to extract skin-based poison through a stomach pumping, and then Toph completely validated me xD still, Korra's Book 3 final struggle was very important for a lot of people because she was effectively handicapped for a time. She was depressed, she lost a lot of things, she seemed incapable of speech even, if I recall right... she was very badly wounded, that much is a fact and nobody can deny it :'D but... you know, it's kind of sad for Korra's whole grieving process over her wound to be as self-centered as it is. She's gone through a terrible thing, there's no denying that... but we see absolutely no sign of Korra saying or believing that she made the right choice, or that she's relieved the airbenders are safe, even if the cost was so steep... no. Basically, it's all Korra grieving and mourning her ability to move around and be her old self.

At this point? Korra effectively has been broken by the writing team to SUCH AN EXTENT that she doesn't even feel like herself anymore. I'd call it a destructive character arc if there was sense and purpose to it at all, but there isn't. It's all for EXTERNAL purposes, really, and that purpose is to make people feel bad for Korra. Which is just the most detrimental thing a writer can do in order to make their character likeable. Didn't we start out with a confident, clumsy, enthusiastic girl who had no concept of what the real world was like, but that innocence of hers was just outright endearing? And now... we're with a girl who finds the real world is pretty much shit on top of shit, a world that beats the everloving crap out of her, that destroyed her confidence and that left her feeling she was worthless just because she can't move around or bend.

... As a slight plug/side table thing, I literally have been posting a couple of arcs in Gladiator where Azula struggles with a pretty severe health problem. While she definitely would rather be back to herself and even has moments of serious panic upon finding she can't bend blue fire anymore, let alone with the strength she could before, she's not quite as self-involved as to think that this is a horrific tragedy. No, she's pulling through gradually, actively looking for ways to get better, and keeping a relatively positive mindset so she can confront this whole recovery without causing extra trouble to the people who are taking care of her. Granted, this comes after a massively long arc of character growth that also includes Azula having acted terribly, sooooo long ago, when she caught a simple cold and she refused to acknowledge it as such. She was reckless, she was careless, she wasn't listening to her healer's orders and did whatever she wanted, even if it nearly killed her. In her growth, she has learned better progressively. She's no longer as rash and reckless as she used to be, and she understands she has to be patient and show restraint with certain things. Her sacrifice, her physical suffering and impairment, is terrible... but the wound she took, and the severe damage her body suffered, helped her save her nation. When the alternative was an actual massacre of her hometown, the Azula I'm writing would never think her life is more valuable than ensuring her people are safe.

Thus my absolute shock upon seeing that Korra falls apart in such a self-involved bubble of misery because she can't be as strong as she used to be anymore. Like... I'm not saying this is BAD as a concept? But it doesn't look good when she managed to defeat the big bad AND succeeded at saving a whole population of an endangered nation with her sacrifice. Should she be dancing around happily? No. Should she be acting like her personal tragedy is more important than the salvation of the airbenders? I honestly doubt it. It's not a good look. A lot of people actualy really enjoyed this arc because they felt that it spoke to how hard disability can be, to how much a person can struggle to feel useful after they lose something they thought they needed... but instead of going on a journey of acceptance and growth, of understanding that she is MORE than her bending (something that this damn show has constantly implied she'll learn but she NEVER does), Korra just grows even more dejected and miserable than she ever has been, and we're just along for the depression ride.

It's not WRONG to depict a character depressed over a disability. What's wrong is for this character to have been on a potential journey to find who she is and she still doesn't have a clue, three whole seasons later. It's WRONG for this character and all her true, core traits to get beaten into submission by a mix of ruthless criticism by an extremely unforgiving fanbase and a staff of writers who were so desperate to please those fans and to bring them back to watch their show that they did ANYTHING to make them happy. Who, exactly, was happy to see Korra like this, though? Those who despised Korra and said they wanted her to die, basically? Is that the target audience they were going for, the people who dropped the show in episode 2?

Korra didn't need to go through what she did. She did because the writers had no idea what they were doing, as far as I can tell, something I've reiterated throughout this post. They had no true journey for her, no actual charted path for the character, and they made mistake on top of mistake and then pretended it was character growth: it was CRUEL. Giving Korra all these brutal beat-ups and taking away so much about her core traits, and I don't mean bending and past lives, but her SMILES! Her JOY! Her ENTHUSIASM! Her INGENUITY! Everything about Korra gets killed systematically, season by season, until we're left with a husk of a character who has no idea who she is after three seasons of attempting to find out the answer to that question.

And that same show ends without her having found that answer at all.

Why else would she think about how she feels like she has so much left to do? Why else would she feel her story is unfinished? Because Toph's lessons in the swamp are not enough. Because Zaheer's pep talk (which is such a stupid concept, my god...) is not enough. Because everyone's constant assurances and support are NOT enough: Korra has no idea who she is because this show DIDN'T LET HER DISCOVER IT. It's really that simple.

Her entire identity revolves around violence and fighting. Around conflict and bending. That's really the core of what they've let her build herself around, and then all the show did was constantly, consistently, reiterate that this WAS her and that she was great exactly as she was. When you have a whole story built around an imperfect protagonist who has every right to be as imperfect as she was, and you spend every waking moment telling her that she is PERFECT and that everyone who says otherwise needs to go down? The story sounds more like propaganda than an actual narrative journey xD it's what I'd expect to see if a dictator decides to make a movie about his life. It's NOT what I'd expect to see in the growth journey of a young woman finding her place in the world.

Book 4 then introduces us to a wholly new character, Korra-sans-personality, who happens to look a lot like Korra but has lost her sense of self and purpose to such an extent that she has become the B plot of her own show :> That still gets me to this day, man...

Korra then proceeds to try to figure out who she is in underground fighting rings. Because that's indeed where you find out who you are, I suppose, I should know considering I keep writing gladiator fights, right? xD but the kicker is that it's useless. Korra is haunted by visions of herself, posessed by the Avatar State and driven mad with grief and pain. She gets haunted by that vision all the way until she meets Toph, and then she has a Luke-Yoda situation going on with Toph that, yet again, gets us nowhere because Toph, where we would expect her to actually deliver proper wisdom and slam Korra with blasts of reality, just ends up being so irrelevant to Korra's growth that I can't remember any dialogues they had other than the time Toph explained the Gaang's adventures in the most disjointed and ridiculous way possible. It was a fun team-up, don't get me wrong... but it was pointless. Korra learned how the banyan tree connects with the whole WORLD?! Well, gee, that's great! And did she have to do something special to figure that out? Did she have to undergo trials and give things serious thought to be able to connect with the tree's spirit?

Oof, I don't even know but upon returning to the transcript (because nobody can bother me to actually watch this again, my god, no xD), I find that Toph actually also gave Korra the stupidest monologue in the show (or one of the stupidest anyways): the one about how she should LEARN something from her enemies! :'D

... When the fuck did anyone expect the Gaang to learn something from THEIR enemies? This line of reasoning is just... so outrageous. It's connected completely to the LOK obsession of making the villains these complicated, tortured souls (... except Unalaq) who had something of value to do and they just went about it the wrong way! But they were cool, though! They totally had the right idea, that's why Korra left the portals open! And that's why the Earth Kingdom has to become a republic! And that's why there should be a non-bending president in Republic City!

Aaaaaaand that's why this show sucks.

Like... Amon was interesting, I won't deny that. But see... Amon was WRONG. Amon wasn't just "going about things the wrong way", he was WRONG. People all around our world, without bending, are not born equal. The world does not provide them with equal opportunities. There's thousands of people who have everything they could hope for and MILLIONS of people who can't have anything they want. Inequality is bad. We are not arguing that it's good. But what we are arguing... is that the equality Amon advocates for is an equality DOWNWARDS. It's an equality that TAKES rather than giving. He's not unlocking non-bender chi-paths in order to let them bend so that this single factor that apparently gives benders a social advantage can be accessible for EVERYONE: nope, he's blocking bender chi-paths so that THEY can't bend. He's not empowering non-benders, he's depowering benders. And when you actually look at Republic City in Book 1...?

Just what do we see nonbenders doing? Going by the logic that benders constantly showcase their power so that most the people who don't do that AREN'T benders, we see one non-bender, presumably, selling a phonograph. We see one living as a hobo in the street. We see two living it up as the richest people in Republic City (three, presumably, if we count the cabbage cart heir whose father went from being a tortured soul in ATLA to being rich enough to start a company). We see a whole group of them living as completely ordinary people who got rounded up by a Tarrlok on the verge of insanity. We see a bunch of them being SUCH GREAT FIGHTERS that many benders can't even compete (as in, the Equalists). We see one as one of the top leaders of the United Nations' Armed Forces. Does this sound like an unequal society? Does this sound like ALL non-benders are living in dirt and suffering from the constant, persistent oppression of the VERY EVIL BENDERS?!

... And what about the benders?

Criminals. Working as base level blue-collar workers in factories. Entertainment, and getting paid very poorly even in success, going by Mako's reaction when his supposed payment arrives and his boss takes it all away right afterwards. We see them as part of the army, as part of the police. We see them as part of an admittedly very unequal council.

What does this tell me? Yes, politically, non-benders deserved representation, but it's not like they NEVER had it: Sokka existed! :'D and we know for a fact that he was the outright LEADER of this council in his time! So it's not like the city had some tradition along the lines of: "Hey, non-benders are not allowed to be in the council because you're inferior beings, go fuck yourselves," otherwise Sokka wouldn't have been part of that council, let alone its leader. Compare this situation to the actual, real-life situations of discrimination of people of certain communities and groups of people, be it racial or sexual or ethnical or religious minorities: how often do you see any of them in positions of power? When did we start seeing them there? It wasn't that long ago. But here? Here we know a non-bender was in power in this city at the very least like... 40-50 years ago. Hell, let's not even stick to Republic City: all the monarchs we know from the BIGGEST city in the Earth Kingdom are NON-BENDERS. Princess Yue in the Northern Water Tribe also was a non-bender, and there's no sign that her father was a bender either. Again, compare this to our real world: how many members of minorities in nations that oppressed them EVER held positions of power the way the non-benders did in ATLA AND LOK? Let alone 70+ years ago?

Ergo... it's just more of the same problems with worldbuilding: Bryke just cannot help but tell, don't show. It's bad, yes, that the council in Korra's time is just benders... but that's literally the only thing people can point to as evidence of inequality. It's literally the ONLY thing that gets resolved because it's the only thing that's a true issue. Amon basically turned bender-on-non-bender violence into his war standard because... his bender father abused him, sure. But he was a bender too :') hell, his father WASN'T a bender anymore by the time he's abusing him. Doesn't this say enough about how the problem is NOT the weapon, or the ability, but the specific individual who wields it? A non-bender with a sword can kill just as many people as a firebender can. Was he going to advocate for taking away all weapons from non-benders too? Honestly, Amon turns something into a huge problem by completely misinterpreting his own society, he victimized thousands of people, whether they were guilty of misusing their bending or not, and then the show wants us to think HE WAS RIGHT :') He was just extreme about it! That's really the problem!

Apply this to literally every other villain, only, Amon is the only one whose cause made at least a little sense despite a close inspection of the issue proves it really doesn't. Unalaq's crusade with spirits NEVER got an explanation and it's the stupidest plotline the franchise ever gave us. Zaheer and his nihilistic anarchic bullshit was basically just a terrorist doing fuckall and causing disasters, murdering as many important leaders he could under the banner of "liberating people" from whatever fictional chains Zaheer said existed around them. Sure thing that the Earth Queen was a piece of shit... but does that mean Zaheer's approach made any sense? :'D no, it doesn't. Does that mean Zaheer's solution was reasonable at all? No, it doesn't :'D But Toph says "he believed in freedom", and that's just fine and dandy, isn't it? His entire ideology is absolutely absurd, it's not even something worth breaking down the way Amon's is, and we're supposed to think "he had a point". Kuvira then is the anti-Zaheer and she wants ORDER, ABSOLUTE ORDER. And yes, that evidently is wrong too, just as Zaheer demanding for absolute freedom, zero societal structure, let people do whatever they want, is fucking ridiculous. Both are wrong! People don't deserve to be forced to be anything they don't want to be, the way Kuvira did, and people shouldn't be given the chance to do ANYTHING they want because, heh, next thing we know the entire world would be burning down when some really bad folks decide they can just kill whoever they hate because hey, why not? No consequences, after all! And so on and so forth, steal from anyone you want to steal from, do whatever you please and if you hurt someone in the process, that's not important. That's basically what Zaheer champions.

It's even childish, frankly, and the show's insistence that it's valid is even more childish. But the real reason all of this sucks is because these villains, boring and lame as they all are, ALWAYS WIN.

No, it's not because Korra didn't defeat them, she always does and saves the day :') but then she decides they had a point. Then she thinks maybe they were wise. Then she thinks maybe they were doing something useful for the world and she has to give it a chance even if most the time they're just exacerbating worse problems than the ones that actually existed. And the thing is that this obsession the show has with its own villains being justified... makes Korra something Aang never was.

It makes Korra a counterattacker.

It makes Korra a character who REACTS, rather than a character who ACTS.

She has NO initiative, not really, because the bad guys need to show up and step up for Korra to take them down.

Therefore, all the initiative in the narrative is with THEM. And Korra is only here to react and respond.

This turns Korra into a character with next to no agency. She's not a hands-on leader, she's not someone who inspects the city she's supposed to be dealing with and figures out solutions for mundane problems. She's not someone who gets called to help out with problems internationally when something unpleasant is going on. Nope, she's just reaction-girl, and she only gets to react to whatever's going on around her. Zero initiative, zero agency, at least as far as her narrative function is concerned. Because yes, Korra totally picks fights and does things when she wants to... but when it comes to the NARRATIVE? The villains are the ones who carry the narrative in this show. We're just watching how Korra will eventually stop them but they're the ones doing things constantly, often getting away with them or nearly doing so, and she keeps getting pummeled and wrecked by the enemies in the process, constantly going on depression sprees because everything she does fails, every choice she makes is wrong, she can't get anything right, and so on and so forth.

Thus why Korra's character arc just can't feel right. Thus why Korra is not the same character I grew so fond of the first time I watched this show. She still is in the position of reacting to Amon in Book 1, but her arrival in Republic City IS a sign of agency... and probably the only actual one she ever displays. Everything else she does, on broad narrative strokes, is responding to something else. She's never ahead of the curb, she's never choosing enterprises to undertake to help in important stuff like getting the city more organized after the plant mess happened, or investigating dangerous leads and complicated operations herself... no, she has to respond to whatever the villains did or whatever her own choices in responding to the villains result in, and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, Aang and his group take the initiative from the get-go because the Fire Nation IS the status quo at this point in time. They're the subversive elements who are fighting and contesting the Fire Nation's control. They're traveling the world, getting Aang some lessons in all the bending arts he doesn't know, making allies and enemies in the process, helping people pretty much everywhere they go, setting people free of Fire Nation tyranny in a myriad of ways...

Meanwhile, Korra is the enforcer of the status quo. Korra is the one who has to defend and protect it at all costs. The villains are trying to alter things, she has to stop them. Then, after stopping them, she ends up realizing they were right in some way or another, so by all means, the villains win the war even if they lose the battle. Again... how are we supposed to root for a hero like this? Why would we?

Anyway, back to Toph... Toph apparently taught Korra to let go of her fear of her previous enemies. There's no actual thought given as to why Korra fears them at all. What is she so afraid of? Why are they haunting her at all? Nope, she just has to deal with it which, as we know, is Korra's motto since she was 4. But then there's no reasoning given to why these villains scare her so much, why she's so worried about them even when they're not a threat at all anymore. Obviously someone is going to come here and say PTSD and psychological disorders do not obey logic... but see, neither does this show, so why is it pretending it does? :'D Korra supposedly works out her fears but she really doesn't, as far as I remember she gets another vision of herself back during her battle with Zaheer when fighting Kuvira and that makes her useless all over again... so, in short, this nonsense wasn't sorted out with Toph, hence the lesson was a waste and a failure. Korra is still afraid.

Fast-forward to Zaheer and Korra's latest misstep in the chronicles of her depression: he tells her she's still afraid and she says it's his fault, blah blah blah, Korra then proceeds to trust this dipshit to help her meditate past her blockage and oh my, it works! She has to ACCEPT what happened to her! Which, yes, is a difficult process that I'm not mocking... but this doesn't even get anywhere CLOSE to the ten thousand things Korra should really be pondering and meditating on. There's SO MUCH Korra has to resolve, so many things she has to deal with, and this whole subplot was brought out just to give her one thing to do that, ultimately, did NOT help her find the path into discovering who she was beyond the Avatar, beyond the extraordinary bending :'D As usual... how does this make any sense? How is THIS what we're supposed to be thrilled about in her growth process? If she can't even deliver on the very premise of the show at its very last legs, how could this show EVER reach a triumphant, glorious conclusion...?

Oh. By making Korrasami canon, of course.

Thus comes the time for the rant that was always meant to be:

KORRASAMI DESERVED BETTER THAN BEING CANONIZED THE WAY IT WAS

No, I'm not saying that mainstream media was ready for Korra and Asami to make out in front of the audience when the curtain was closing. No, I'm not saying that we needed more kisses and outwardly displays of affection. No, I'm also not saying it's Nickelodeon's fault that we didn't get that, because someone DID compile a resource a few years ago showing how Nickelodeon was actually pretty surprisingly progressive by even featuring documentaries and stories about kids coming out and pro-LGBT content in order to encourage young kids to accept themselves and each other as they are. Something Disney didn't do. Something I suspect Cartoon Network also didn't do. Hence, Nickelodeon might not have greenlit a fullblown Korrasami romance due to the complications of parents being twitchy and harebrained about the way cartoons are "indoctrinating" their children, but if Bryke had taken this concept seriously since day 1, I honestly don't think Nickelodeon would have responded to it remotely as badly as people think they might have.

Seriously, Asami being an equalist was an old concept they had for the character and it would have been AMAZING. Better redemption arc than ANYTHING the rest of the franchise ever did. I would have loved everything about it and I probably would have been shipping Korrasami like FedEx if Korra had been the one to give equalist Asami a chance to do better, to be her friend, even though Asami did all the things she did. It would have been a million times more powerful as a concept than ANYTHING LOK put forward.

But then they scrapped that concept and we wound up with what feels like a half-finished story when it comes to Asami. Korra and Asami's interactions largely take place in Book 3, where they finally start feeling more like they're friends... but look at any shonen anime, and tell me you cannot write a story, a friendship, between two characters of the same sex and inject it with as much romantic subtext as possible. Look at Naruto, where the whole lifeforce of the show was the relationship between two boys who were friends, rivals and everything they could possibly be, as they grew older and their bond continued to be what basically motivated them to do just about everything they ever did. Naruto was a huge story, insanely popular in a country with a generally terrible relationship with anything to do with homosexuality... and yet this manga was published there, the anime featured two kisses between these two characters, even (admittedly, they're not intended to be romantic but comedic), and it still went on to be one of the most successful anime and manga of all time. How, exactly, does anyone justify that Korra and Asami get like 3 palpable scenes of lead-up to a romantic relationship when there's so much content out there in media that features what feels like build-up for a romance WITHOUT going into romantic territory at all? It's really absurd to me. Korra and Asami could have had SUUUUUCH a good friendship, absolute goals friendship, with really fun dynamics... and they just didn't because the show was constantly sleeping on Asami and making her a satellite for every other character (Mako, her dad, Korra, hell, maybe even Varrick).

So. Korrasami deserved better. This ship is not bad, objectively speaking, and fic writers have done marvels with it. Canon dropped the ball with it SO HARD that I don't understand how people still can't have a more critical view of it. A fair number of people identified the "Korrasami is canon" move for the pandering it was, for the shield against criticism that it was, because ultimately, Bryke pretended their whole story was about which ship was going to be canon and effectively distracted EVERYONE from discussing that, oh no, Korra's development MAKES NO SENSE! :'D She got NOWHERE! She achieved NOTHING OF VALUE! :'D she just responded and reacted to everything else that had agency, decided THEY were right in the end and sulked about how bad she was at her job. Korra's growth is just... backwards, damn it. It's just wrong. We didn't see her coming even CLOSE to achieving her potential, if anything I'd argue she constantly did WORSE. And the show constantly pretends she's doing better!

*SIGH*

My conclusion about Korra's growth is a very depressing one. I've recently talked with a friend about another character from another franchise whose personal arc makes no sense. Upon discussing that, I kind of came up with a term that might fit the kind of character arc Korra went through. If this concept already exists, I take no credit for it... but what Korra went through is not a growth arc:

It's a humiliation arc.

This isn't about turning a character humble when she was haughty, it isn't about turning a character selfless when she was selfish... it's about humiliating her at every turn until she's virtually a husk of who she was at first. She gained everything she THOUGHT she wanted when she started out, things that were pretty shallow, all in all, but the tragedy of the character is that she actually never learned what she truly did want. She never understood who she was, and upon getting "what she wanted", she feels like something isn't right. Something is missing. She has all the approval of all her friends, all her mentors adore her, even her enemies think she's SO COOL, she has learned all four elements, spiritbending, metalbending, the Avatar State...! And yet she feels hollow. She knows her journey isn't over, worse yet, she HOPES it isn't... because the person she is, right now, is not who she ever hoped to be. She got "everything she wanted," at a cost she still didn't manage to understand: the cost was her true identity. The cost was her innermost self, the person she thought she'd find at the end of her journey and then she never did. The cost was her happiness, her enthusiasm for life, everything that made her worth rooting for: all of it is gone, and all the rewards, then, are meaningless because she can't even rejoice in her successes without constantly thinking she's a failure.

Hence... a humiliation arc. Why? To please people who hated Korra and compel them to watch as the character they have a hateboner for gets thrown under every proverbial bus the showrunners and writers could come up with. Zuko? Redemption arc. Aang? A solid growth arc. But Korra? Nope, she needs to be humiliated instead. That's where it's at when you're writing female characters, of course :')

Ultimately, LOK is full of wasted potential. Korra is a great example of it, not the only example, but still a great one. I genuinely, unironically loved this character when I first met her, and now I outright told Netflix to stop recommending the show to me because I don't care to revisit it, ever. Korra had so much potential as a character, her world and her setting also had a ton of potential, but everything got completely fucked over by a bunch of mediocre villains, all in all, who were completely sure they were great, and who convinced a LOT of people that they were, and suddenly Korra isn't the protagonist of her own story at all: every villain is more important to the plot of her story than she is. How does this make sense for her character? Why would this be the story we wanted to see? It flat out isn't, at all, at least for me.

So, in conclusion... Korra should have been better. Korra DESERVED better. Korrasami did, too. We could have had the greatest sequel to a pretty damn great TV show already... and we didn't because Bryke spent more time suffering over how to make people like their show than actually thinking about what they were trying to achieve with it. There's no purpose to it. People can talk all they want about Korra's spiritual arc but ultimately, that arc doesn't exist. There's no such thing as a spiritual arc because the last thing Korra learned in all this nonsense was anything spiritual. She never took long enough to really think ANYTHING through, and when she actually had that time (as in, her two years running around the world and escaping from everything), she didn't use it for anything other than struggling to go right back to who she used to be as a fighter. There were zero thoughts given to everything else.

This girl had it in her to be the greatest female protagonist we'd seen in media in who knows how long. She could be a symbol of female empowerment DONE RIGHT. Instead, she's everything done wrong. She's storytelling done wrong. And it's not at all her fault as a concept, as a character... it's, as always, a problem caused by writers with no sense of direction and very amateurish concepts of what storytelling needs to be. Nobody needed to be told Aang was great every ten minutes, the kid outright was going to be set to boil in oil in one episode because a village hated the Avatar and he, being the hopeless dork he is, was ready to face that until providence (or a gang of rhinos, rather) saved his ass at the very last moment xD Meanwhile, LOK is permeated, ALL of it, with people constantly reassuring Korra of what a talented powerful woman she is. Is that what strong female characters are? People with no confidence, who constantly lose more of it, who are humiliated by circumstances they can't ever overcome but then told "no no no, you're really strong and brave and the best!" and that's it? Really?

Korra may be one of the coolest fighters in the Avatarverse. Korra may be one of the coolest concepts in the Avatarverse. But Korra was never allowed to find out whoever the hell she was beyond being a super cool fighter and the Avatar. To this day, I wager, she has no idea. And to this day, her creators surely still think they did right by her when the reality of the matter could not be more different. She deserved better is what I say and what I will always say, and I really wish she could have been allowed to shine in a much more organic way than by turning into a giant Megazord and killing her own relative. Unfortunately, her backwards journey, instead of building her up into greatness, was hellbent on destroying her, and so we find ourselves with a completely demolished, heartbroken and helpless girl in the place of the hopeful, enthusiastic, innocent and charming one we met when the first episode aired. Seriously... is this the journey of a strong, young woman growing into her own? Is that all we have to look forward to? Not the silent, subtle peace Aang experiences at the end of his own story... but the life-shattering misery Korra had to face over and over again until she lost herself even more, despite she never even knew who she was?

It'll never be fair. It'll never be right. I love what I know Korra could have amounted to... but the potential she embodied was not explored in any way through the character we saw onscreen. And that's always going to be the ultimate tragedy in that story: Korra should have been MORE.

#futuristicbelieverjellyfish #oh boy I took forever with this one #I'm sorry #but I have too much to say :>#guess that's the flip side of not talking about LOK in general x'D #when someone brings it up I just start and don't stop #anyway #I hate that I have such a conflictive relationship with Korra's character #I really wish I didn't #but I stand by everything I say here #it's my personal opinion #so everyone's allowed to disagree #but I don't think it's really that wrong for me or anyone to say...#that she deserved better than the deal she got #soooo much better...

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atlabeth · 3 years

Note

Well first off I just want to say congrats on your 200 followers!!!!! You deserve it. In your prompt list I want to do #32. Can you do a Sokka x fem reader where she is Toph’s older sister and they start dating. It can be apart of the ATLA timeline or modern it’s up to you 😊

come back safe - sokka x fem!beifong reader

summary: you and sokka have to part ways in ba sing se, but he’s not letting you go without saying his piece.

a/n: im just gonna assume that you meant 32 from the fluff list, if you meant angst or general then im sorry!! but thank you sm for requesting :-) and a personal thank you for always sending in asks, your support for transferred means the world!!!

also i did this surprisingly fast?? me getting a request done in a reasonable amount of time?? who am i ???

wc: 1.2k

warning(s): some sad sokka moments and some very intense dramatic irony lmao, but mostly fluff

32. “Well, it’s a good thing I don’t plan on doing that.”

-----------------------

Parting from your friends was never easy. Ever since you had run away from home with your sister, Team Avatar had become a surrogate family, and you wouldn’t have it any other way. Toph was a whirlwind in her own way, but Aang, Katara, and Sokka all got her in ways that your parents never had, not to mention how you were finally able to be yourself away from the world of Earth Kingdom nobility. You couldn’t offer Aang any of the earthbending wisdom you sister had in spades, but your skill with blades made you a valuable asset nonetheless.

That connection made it so much harder to separate.

After leaving Gaoling, you had never been apart from the group for longer than a couple of days. But visiting your mother would take at least a week, not to mention everyone else was going off in their own directions — Aang to visit a guru to help control the Avatar State, Sokka to see his dad, Katara staying in the city to aid the Earth King. You would all be saying goodbye for an unprecedented amount of time.

To put it in simple terms? You were freaking out.

You and Toph had gone against direct orders from your parents to join the Avatar, and no sooner had you earned the support of the Earth King when you found out about the letter from your mother. It was.. strange, to say the least.

As Beifongs, you were held to impossible standards, and what the two of you did broke every single one of them. You were skeptical when you first read the letter to Toph, but she was so excited at the possibility of your parents finally coming to accept the two of you that you couldn’t say no.

After taking care of last minute affairs, you ended up back in your room to begin packing. You and your sister would be making the journey on foot, so you wanted to be prepared for anything that could happen — you might’ve just been going through the Upper Ring, but you had come to not discount anything in Ba Sing Se.

You finished folding the last of Toph’s clothes and closed the bag, and at that moment you heard a knock on the door. “It’s open!” you called as you moved onto your own pack. You glanced up to see your visitor, and the corner of your lips quirked up when you saw it was Sokka.

“Hey, you.”

“Hey yourself,” he said as he shut the door behind him. “Listen, do you have a moment to talk? Before you leave, I mean. I know you’re on a tight schedule and all.”

“I always have a moment for you.” You set another article of clothing in your bag and clapped your hands together softly as you turned to face him. “What’s up?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about where you’re going. You know, you and Toph going to see your mom.”

“Oh, yeah. Exciting, isn’t it? It’ll be an interesting meeting.” You chuckled, a notion lacking in mirth. “Wonder what she’s going to say after we gave up our entire lives to help the Avatar without their permission.”

“Just.. whatever goes on, be safe, okay? If you get hurt out there, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

The sincerity in his voice shocked you a bit, but you gave him a light punch on the shoulder, choosing to shoot back in your usual joking manner. “Well, it’s a good thing I don’t plan on doing that.”

“I’m serious, Y/N.”

You smiled and shrugged as you folded another tunic and placed it into your bag. “Sokka, we’re just going to the edge of the upper ring. You have nothing to worry about!”

He sighed and shook his head. “Look. I don’t have the best track record with people that I’m close to. I couldn’t save my mom, and I couldn’t protect our tribe, and I couldn’t save Yue. It’s like the moment I start to care about anyone, something bad happens to them, and I can’t do anything to stop it. And now you’re going off to the city to see your mom, and even though it’s so close, I just can’t shake this feeling, and I— I don’t know what I’ll do with myself if something happens to you too.”

Your brows creased as the full weight of his words hit you. “Sokka.. are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

He stepped closer and took your hands in his, those ocean eyes holding a softness you had never seen before. “I care about you, Y/N, so much that it hurts. So I know it sounds ridiculous, but I need you to promise me that you’ll come home safe.”

There was only a moment’s hesitation before you tugged on his hands to bring him even closer, your eyes fluttering shut as your lips met his.

“I care about you too,” you responded quietly, a small smile gracing your features. “And I promise I’ll be safe. Just for you.”

“Good.” He smiled as well and gave you another soft kiss, one that quickly became more heated as you got lost in each other. You could feel the pure emotion, the sadness, that he poured into it, and that feeling made you want to give this boy everything in the world. You had almost tuned out the world completely until the door was pushed open and Aang’s voice rang through the air.

“Sokka, are you almost ready? I saw you come in h— oh, spirits, I’m so sorry!”

You and Sokka immediately separated, jumping apart from each other so quickly you nearly tripped over your own feet. You quickly gathered yourself and leaned against the table your bags were set on, giving Aang an easy-going smile in an attempt to cover up your breathlessness.

“Aang!” Your voice was unnaturally high as you used your hands to talk. “He was just… checkin’ in on me. Making sure that I was ready. Just.. nothing going on here. Just.. two friends.. bein’ friends. And.. gettin’ ready. As friends.”

You could hear Sokka snort behind you as he tried to keep his composure as well — Aang, meanwhile, was as red as a fire ferret as he began to back away.

“You know, I can just come back later! Or you can come to me, Sokka. Whenever you’re ready. I won’t tell anyone, I promise!” He gave you guys one last slightly panicked smile then darted off, causing the two of you to dissolve into laughter.

You glanced at Sokka with a shy smile as you felt your cheeks burning up, and that just made him laugh even harder. “Think he’ll keep that promise?”

You sighed happily and shrugged. “You know what? I don’t even care. And I think I’ll try extra hard to stay alive if it means there’s more kisses like that in the future.”

Sokka gave you a heart-melting smile and walked over to the door. “Just come home safe, and you’ll get all the kisses you want.”

perm tag list: @dv0412 @siriuslyslyslytherin

#atlabeth 200 #avatar the last airbender #atla #avatar: the last airbender #avatar #atla fic #avatar fic #avatar the last airbender fic #avatar x reader #sokka #sokka avatar #sokka atla #sokka x reader #sokka x y/n #sokka x you #reader insert #sadie writes #tiffanyy-21

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littlemisssquiggles · 4 years

Text

Ruby Alone

As you all have seen, since prior to the last episode, I’ve been sharing my thoughts and ideas on the theory of V8 concluding with the “death” of RWBY after they fall “off Remnant and into a mysterious Other World”, as alluded to by Oscar.

While I’m still inclined to believe that theory may become possible given what transpired in this recent episode, in reviewing the RWBY V8 Opening, I noticed something interesting about the visuals again which caught my attention.

During the opening, RWBY falling was hinted much earlier in the theme during these shots right here. It’s these two shots of RWBY’s signature weapons falling through negative space which is later followed up by the opening ending with the weapons landing together on the ground.

However, here’s the bit that I think is noteworthy that I didn’t take into account before. Although the weapons of all four main girls were shown falling together through space and landing on the ground, not only is Crescent Rose the last one to hit the ground but it is also the ONLY one shown in the final shot of the opening.

It is also worth noting that the weapons fall in this particular order---first Ember Celica, then Gambal Shroud, then Myrtenaster and final Crescent Rose which ironically spells RWBY backwards.

And going back to my theory about RWBY falling in order....with Yang falling first then this is all starting to make more sense.

Going back to my point---Crescent Rose---Ruby’s weapon is the only weapon that landed on the ground but didn’t fade to darkness like the others. Instead, Crescent Rose is the only one remaining in the snow on what appears to be Remannt. Keeping that in mind, it’s making me start to ponder an alternative to my V8 finale theory.

What if…I’m actually mistaken about the whole RWBY team falling prey to the Other World ?

What if…as an alternative prediction, V8 will end with Ruby as the last man standing and the sole surviving member of her team after the rest “die” to the void?

Thus; V9 becomes Ruby’s story as she deals with the depression of losing her whole team; all obviously culminating with her eventually reuniting with them in the Other World. But before that, it’s mostly just about Ruby. Not RWBY. But just Ruby since RWBY started with just Ruby on her own in Remnant, trying to become a huntress. She only ends up going to Beacon and meeting and forming her own team due to Ozpin’s influence.

So imagine if...after everything she’s been through these last eight seasons, things just go back to how they were before. Ruby is on her own again. No team to lead. No big sister to guide and protect her (although ALPNE is there of course). No “BFFs” or “future-sister-in-law” on the same team to fuel her spark of hope. She no longer has her main friends by her side.

Ruby will be on her own for the first time in a long time and it becomes just her story for the most part of V9 as she does her best to figure out things all while the rest of the cast who survived the fall---Penny, ALPNE and their allies in Vauco and eventually Vale---try to provide her with the emotional support that she needs in place of the one she lost.

For the first time, the story is not about Ruby having to be the spark of hope to support others but…her friends, at least the ones she still have, coming together to support her for once in a time when she can truly need it.

Like I said. It would be the story of Ruby. Not RWBY. Just Ruby. If you get what I mean.

...And now for a squiggly rant...about Ruby:

One general complaint that I’ve heard from the FNDM about Ruby including Little Red Ruby fans like myself is that Ruby has more or less received the shortest end of the stick in terms of development over the past couple of seasons since V4…despite the fact that she is our central main character who is the leader of our core team with her name literally being in the title. Not to mention that Ruby is also the face of the RWBY franchise. When RT isn’t promoting the whole RWBY team together, it’s mainly Ruby to represent RWBY since of all the girls, she is the main one as the main protagonist of RWBY. At least…she’s supposed to be?

To be blunter, I’m just going to call out the fat Heffalump in the room---Ruby Rose, despite being the leader of RWBY---despite being our title character and face of the franchise---the one characters in the show always turn to since she’s THAT important---despite all of that, Ruby has NOT felt like the actual main protagonist of RWBY for several seasons. Since V4 as some fans like to point out.

And after closely observing her story over the last few volumes, I can’t help but agree with these critiques and comments of Ruby’s treatment when it comes to her own writing. Even when the CRWBY showrunners DO attempt to do stuff with her---it all falls...flat especially when you compare Ruby to other characters like Jaune Arc, for example, whose stories and overall development were handled much better. At least in my opinion.

Don’t believe me? Take for example, Ruby’s whole so-called “arc” as a Silver Eyed Warrior. First it was introduced as a new idea for Ruby during the FINALE of V3, then it got abandoned for two whole seasons between V4-V5. Then it got reintroduced back in V6 but was then rushed and dropped yet again for V7 only to be brought up again briefly during V8…kind of?

It’s really telling when you realize that Ruby gained control of her silver eyes despite never truly receiving any actual training from Maria in how to control her powers. Not only that but the showrunners really did Maria Calavera dirty. She was supposed to be the wise old mentor who was a badass in her prime meant to pass down her wisdom to her young eager apprentice who knew nothing of her own unique abilities including its mysterious origins.

Instead Maria didn’t know at all about where her powers originated from until she conveniently met our heroes after the Argus Ltd crash and just happened to be present when they asked Jinn about Oz’s secrets. Instead of being a mentor to Ruby which she was initially propped up to be, Maria ended up being relegated to the Granny Uber Driver of the hero team---no longer the wise experienced ex-huntress whose supposed to be teaching our title character but just a form of transportation who provides the occasional comic relief and support for Pietro Polendina, who she was put to work with…instead of Ruby…her alleged apprentice?

Shoot---despite being a Silver Eyed Warrior, Ruby was never even a person of interest for this volume. Despite the main big bad being in Atlas and despite targeting her in the past, Salem…never goes after Ruby again while she’s in Atlas??? Ruby never even meets Salem? Despite…Salem targeting Ruby back in V4? Despite Salem’s history with capturing Silver Eyes? Despite Salem’s connection to Ruby through her mother???

Ruby is never actively a part of the Salem subplot on Monstra…even though… certain developments left over from previous seasons indicated that she should’ve been?

Instead…we got to watch Yang accost Salem for Summer Rose’s death after SHE is the one to be on the rescue party to save Oscar from Monstro. Even though…Yang has neither been a person of interest to Salem before NOR has the Xiao Long girl been shown to be a close affiliate of Oscar in the past prior to V8 NOR has the Xiao Long girl actually addressed Summer Rose as her mother since V2???

Up until V8, Ruby has always been the character of focus with all things Summer Rose and Salem and yet…we NEVER saw her meet Salem in the flesh period for this season…at all…???

Instead; Ruby spends MOST of this season cooped up at Schnee Manor, completely absent from and even oblivious to some of the more dire PLOT stuff that was happening outside of Schnee Manor (such as YJR going into Monstra to save Oscar before the Aces Ops blew up the whale).

Despite her connection to Oscar who became Salem’s prisoner. Despite her connection to Salem through her mother. Despite being a Silver Eye and a former target of Salem. Despite the Hound and what it turned out to be. Despite the showrunners literally teasing Ruby meeting Salem face to face back in V7---WE NEVER GET TO SEE RUBY MEET SALEM IN THE FLESH AT ALL DURING V8 WHILE SALEM IS IN ATLAS???

Salem targets Oscar which makes perfect sense given his connection to Ozma as his current incarnate. But Salem doesn’t target Ruby? DESPITE HER BEING A TARGET OF HERS IN THE PAST? DESPITE HER BEING A SILVER EYED WARRIOR? DESPITE WHAT THE HOUND REVEALED?

Why didn’t Salem send the Hound after Ruby? That would’ve made more sense, again knowing what the Hound actually was? Instead the Hound was sent after Penny which, in my opinion, felt mighty redundant since Salem already had Watts and Cinder Fall dealing with Penny.

THEY EVEN TEASED THE HOUND TARGETING RUBY BUT IT WAS ALL A FLUKE. RUBY IS COMPLETELY OMITTED FROM THE SALEM SUBPLOT EVEN THOUGH SHE IS THE TITLE CHARACTER AND THE ONLY ONE ON TEAM RWBY WITH A LEGIT CONNECTION TO SALEM AND HAS BEEN A TARGET OF HERS SINCE V4???

I DON’T GET IT!

…BUT… with my mini rant aside, those are just a few of the inconsistencies that I’ve noticed in the writing of RWBY in respect to Ruby Rose.

Overall; the point I’m trying to make here is this: for the sake of sounding like a Negative Nancy, I ask this honest question to the CRWBY Writers. How? How can you fumble this much with your own title character? I’m not saying this to come off disrespectful. I’m saying this as someone who has followed the story of RWBY since the get-go and has closely observed the treatment of its characters; particularly the main ones and particularly the ones that I personally love and Ruby is one of them.

Despite being our main girl, Ruby’s writing hasn’t been the squeakiest, admittedly. As a matter of fact, it’s been quite messy since V4 due to the amount of times the showrunners have introduced ideas for her only to abandon them later on thus creating those problems with consistency I mentioned earlier.

Overall, it’s difficult for me to even say that Ruby is the lead character of RWBY since often times; she doesn’t FEEL like the main protagonist despite the show claiming how important she is meant to be. And this sentiment is due in part to how messy her story is handled compared to other characters of lesser importance.

And it’s a sad thing for me to say as both a viewer and fan of Ruby’s character since Ruby is THE lead main character of RWBY. She’s like the Tony Stark of the RWBY-verse. She’s the one who started it all yet her story is one of the messiest I’ve seen in terms of direction and treatment. At least by my observations since this is just my opinion on the subject matter.

It’s one thing to blunder a bit on your side or even your supporting characters. But to slip up on your lead characters, especially your MAIN one who is the FACE of the show, c’mon CRWBY Writers.

And the events of V8 didn’t help change my opinion. After taking away all the bloat this season had for all the stuff they tried to shove into this one season, I realized that V8 didn’t really do much for Ruby. At least, not as much as I anticipated.

I was hoping that Ruby would’ve been a more focal character for V8 since V7 teased some stuff for her in respect to Salem. Instead, I watched a season where Ruby felt more like a supporting character for Penny Polendina since, in my opinion, Penny received much more focus and better development for V8 while Ruby, our LEAD took backstage to her story.

Because while Ruby was stuck playing supporting character, she was actively left out of subplots that she should’ve been a major part of. Not just because she’s the “protagonist” but because of elements to her story that were developed seasons prior but seemed to have gotten dropped for V8?

Ruby’s treatment for V8, to me, is an example of a “build-up with no payoff”. All that stuff between her and Salem and her mother felt like it ultimately didn’t matter in the end because Ruby didn’t even meet Salem.

Yang, to me, had the development with Salem that Ruby should’ve received.

Shoot---Ruby wasn’t even a thought on Salem’s mind…despite the events V4 and V7???

I just don’t understand.

But like always, this is just how I feel about it. I’m disappointed with how Ruby was done for this season. While I liked the moment she shared with Blake in V8CH8 and Yang in V8CH11...that’s pretty much the ONLY thing I liked about Ruby’s story for this season.

Outside of that, it felt to me like the showrunners didn’t do much with her for V8. In a season of so much happening, the stuff that happened with Ruby on her side of the story didn’t honestly stand out to me compared to what I saw the showrunners do for other characters who aren’t the lead this season.

It’s not like I’m trying to say she didn’t receive any development at all for V8. It’s more like most of what was done with Ruby didn’t quite stand out to me so it ends up feeling like not much was done for her.

To me, Ruby falls into the same category as Nora Valkyrie for this season. Despite the PLOT preaching about them getting big developments, if you rock back and actually analyse the narrative, you’d actually see that not much was done for them despite the PLOT “talking the talk but not walking the walk” y’know what I mean?

And going back to Ruby, that’s disappointing since I wanted more for Ruby. I EXPECTED MORE for Ruby as our title lead but it didn’t happened. Instead it felt like some of the major developments that she should’ve received for this season went to other characters while she in turn took a backseat.

Things didn’t really start kicking up for Rubes until halfway through the season when the 100th episode aired and the Hound appeared. And even then the excitement of that reveal was short-lived since...Ruby was NOT the real target of the Hound. PENNY WAS. The Hound wasn’t sent to antagonize RUBY. It was sent for Penny which to me sort of undermines the reveal.

Some Ruby fans have been wishing for the show to feel more about just Ruby again for quite some time now and it is for this reason why I’m starting to dig this alternative theory of mine with Ruby surviving “The Fall of the Central Zone” alone with the rest of her team lost to the Other World.

While the concept of RWBY being trapped together in another world is still on the table of possibilities, I still wish to toss out this other one too.

I like the idea of a more Ruby-centric season where for the second time in the narrative, she’s separated from her core teammates only this time…it’s in “death” or rather “nonexistence” or “nothingness” since from Ruby’s perspective with her limited knowledge of magic (despite what she does know from Oz and Jinn) and the workings of the world that Ambrosius created, she doesn’t know what truly happened to her team.

The only thing she knows is that she watched her whole team dissipate into nothing before her very eyes and that is the last memory she has of them that haunts her for some time.

Imagine if…V9 will be about Ruby dealing with such a huge loss which could potentially touch more upon how she internalizes death in general tying back into probably flashbacks of her time with her mother before she learnt of her death at a young age.

While I understand we’ve had a storyline with Ruby being separated from her main team before back during V4-V5, however a plot line like this would be different this rounds since unlike before, Ruby at least knew that her team mates were alive. Far away. Separated by distance. But still alive and still a part of Remnant with the hope that she would be reunited with them again.

However this won’t be the case this second time. It would truly be Ruby alone since her team would be gone and no one could provide her with the solace of seeing them again---not even the friends she does still have (although that doesn’t stop some of them from trying to be there for the little red rose who has now lost more than her heart could handle)

I know the off-chance of this theory actually coming to fruition might be scarce. But like many ideas I’ve shared, it’s still worth tossing out since you guys know how this squiggle meister likes to roll.

~ LittleMissSquiggles (2021)

#rwby #ruby rose #rwby volume 8 theories #rwby volume 8 spoilers #rwby theories #rwby volume 9 theories

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razorblade180 · 4 years

Text

Interdimensional Moms pt3

Part 2 right here! <-

Team RWBY continue their interesting chat about their respective worlds. After the emotional roller coaster that was Weiss’s, a bit of light hearted stories would be welcomed.

Yang:Okay, does anyone have some real feel good things to talk about for their world? Just run of the mill pleasant life?

Ruby:Guess I’m going last....

Yang:Oh no!

Weiss:We’ll circle back to you then. Blake, I guess you’re up.

Blake:Wouldn’t you want calmer stuff at the end?

Yang:Blake, I would very much like to go at least ten minutes without wanting to cry.

Blake:Hmmmm I can guarantee you like...six I think.

Yang:I’ll take it! Blake Belladonna, tell me about a world where you and Jaune Arc are happily married. How did such stars align?

Blake:You make it sound crazy?

Weiss:Blake, there’s list of people I could see you with. Now I’m not saying Jaune couldn’t be one of them, but he’d have to fight his way up that list.

Blake:You...that’s kinda fair. It’s a bit hard to explain really. It happened back at Beacon initially, or our bonding did. Some days his team was busy and I didn’t tag along for the crazy antics you three wanted to do all the time, so we occasionally bumped into each by circumstances. He’d go to the library for a book, I’d do training and he was there, or sometimes he’d knock on our door and not realize I was the only one around.

Weiss:Was he trying to sing to me?

Blake:That plan did show up at our a few times, yes. One of those times I asked him out of nowhere to sing the song anyways because I just had to know if it was any good. Hehe, it wasn’t sonically pleasing at times, but you could tell it was genuine. Eventually though...he just sort of gave up on you. It was actually a little sad to see, even you thought so. It was strange. Jaune was definitely stumbling through his flirting and it came off as childish, yet the day he gave up, it was easy to see his heart was breaking a bit. Like all his insecurities ate even the faux confidence away.

Yang:Ma’am, it has barely been three minutes and I’m getting sad about thinking of Jaune being sad.

Weiss:Yeah don’t tell me I broke his heart!

Blake:Whoops, sorry. It’s important though. Jaune kinda kept to himself a little more after that. He still chatted pretty regularly but it was easy to tell he dived more in studies as a way to keep his head clear, which lead to us being on a project together. I was the only person in our friend group that wouldn’t actively try to make him open up about how he feeling. At first I thought it was a bit rude when he told me that, but I didn’t room to talk when it comes to socializing.

Yang:One more time for the people in the back.

Ruby:I’m the back.

Blake:*smirks* I was very against socializing about my feelings at Beacon.

Ruby:Yeah you were.

Weiss:I couldn’t even ask if you slept well without a lukewarm answer sometimes.

Blake:I’m better now. That’s all that matters. Romance and feeling love is a personal thing and talking about it is uncomfortable. I think we both recognized that in each other during our project. Trouble is, there’s only so many conversation starters and small talk subjects. Talking only about the project was dry and eventually all the facts a person could say about themselves ran out. Favorite food, color, hobbies, etc. We eventually had to dig a little deeper into those topics. To our surprise, we actually more in common than we thought when it came to how we felt about certain pieces of literature and music.

Ruby:Awwww, bonding over smut.

Blake:*red* It wasn’t all adult literature! Some were poems and stuff. Even when the project ended, we began being less formal around each other and hanging out. We went to the bookstores we mentioned and he even got us tickets to bands I liked. It...it was nice. I never really got to have just a normal teenage experience before without it being political. He always felt bad about being average compared to everyone but average was so foreign to me that I welcomed it. I liked having a normal time out. It was a thing we all took for granted. Especially when Beacon fell.

Yang:Yeah, that probably put a real bind on your relationship.

Blake:Actually....we technically never officially started to date.

Ruby:What? You courted each other all of Beacon.

Weiss:Ruby, who the heck says courted? I’m a Schnee and even I have never used the word courted.

Ruby:Hush, I read a lot of bed time stories to a five year old.

Blake:We were a bit shaky on labels. Me for obvious reasons. As for Jaune, it’s really true about what they say about guys when they get heart broken.

Yang: “Never again.”

Blake:Hehehe, it’s funny to look back at it but he’ll tell you it’s a bit cringy. He was so on gaurd. I could tell all the time when he was mentally telling himself to not be excited whenever we hung out or I complimented him.

Ruby:Hey it takes guts to shift feelings to a teammate of your first crush. That could blow up in your face.

Blake:Yeah...about that. *looks at Yang* you...were another reason why nothing was official. You uhhh, we actually had some jumbled up emotions.

Weiss:*sarcastic gasp* You and Yang, liking each other? Who could’ve seen that coming?

Yang:Was it mutual or...

Blake:Very mutual. Also...intimate at times.

Yang:*red* Oh....yeah. Yeah that tracks.

Blake:That jumbled mess was only more confusing after you got hurt trying to rescue me from Adam. Meeting up with-

Ruby:Question, so was Sun just not on your radar?

Blake:Sun? We’re just friends. He’s cute and I’m glad he was there for me when I needed help but things between us were always pretty calm. I think he noticed how confused I was with other people in my life and chose to not add to it.

Ruby:Bless him. Please continue.

Blake:Learning about Salem and reconnecting with you all was a lot. I’d really been out of the loop and my Yang and I were on....shaky ground.

Yang:That’s what happens when you leave someone who’s been left their entire life.

Blake:Sigh...yeah. It was a trying time, but not with JNPR. It’s funny, Oscar and I also hit it off quite well from the jump. I think we were both glad to have each other learn on the craziness at once. Even with readjusting, Jaune and I fell back into a groove naturally. Instead of doing average things we day dreamed of the things we did. Once again we become this little slice of simple life in this crazy adventure. Still didn’t date.

Weiss:What is this, a slow burn!?

Yang:Weiss, you literally didn’t date your Jaune until Atlas.

Weiss:There’s a difference. I didn’t make any heart eyes at him until around Atlas. I say I may have been a little quick. These two were “courting” for over a year at this point.

Ruby:Stop making fun of me!

Blake:Well anyways, I wouldn’t say much was too eventful in terms of romance with world destroying things happening. Salem, she was way too much to deal with. Every move age did was calculated and unrelenting. Keeping our head above water wasn’t easy. In fact, it was boarder line impossible. Yang and I barely beat Adam after all.

Yang:How’d you two feel about that?

Blake:Relieved. Huge weight off my mind, and yet...a piece of me still wishes things never got so dire. At least now I know that in another world, things aren’t.

Ruby:Sounds like your world was put through their paces? You survived though.

Blake:Not conventionally. I gotta say, hearing the ages and how you beat Salem so far makes me feel more than a little embarrassed. To be frank, we didn’t have this grand battle that involved the entire world making a final stand. We had Atlas, and then we had Haven. With their might and a plan to gain more time, we managed to seal Salem in a vault.

Yang:*chokes on water* Y- cough what!?

Ruby:You put her in a vault!?

Weiss:Thah sounds harder than a last stand honestly.

Blake:No matter what way we looked at things, we just weren’t ready for her, so we locked her away until we were. Two years on constant defense from her followers and grimm until Ruby had trained enough to use her silver eyes and we were all strong enough.

Ruby:Two years!? How old was I then?

Blake:Twenty I believe.

Weiss:Hey, you beat mine by a year.

Yang:Not mine, I think we either tied or just narrowly beat yours by like a year. Honestly it hard to keep track of birthdays and stuff.

Ruby:Wow. No offense to myself, but that’s a little disappointing. I guess being the same person really doesn’t mean we were all at the same level.

Blake:Hey, my Ruby put everything she had into saving the world. There wasn’t a second she wasn’t trying her best to defend it!

Ruby:My point exactly. If that was her at her absolute best then by all accounts, she doesn’t hold a candle to me; at least back then anyways. But I have no reason to believe she would be at my level now.

Yang:Okay little miss prideful, care to tell us when you saved the-

Ruby:Seventeen.

The reaper took a long swig of coffee while the others processed that information. It took a her a couple of seconds to realize she may be acting just a tad bit arrogant.

Ruby:Uhh, sorry. I think I was tooting my own horn a bit there.

Weiss:Seventeen....why so soon?

Yang:Why? Don’t you mean how?

Blake:That’s....almost unbelievable.

Ruby:Really? I don’t think so. I’ll dive into it when it’s my turn but for now all I really gotta say is people needed help, and I was going to answer those cries. I bet your Ruby had a similar urgency in her, but for some reason or another just had different limitations. I got hurt a lot as a kid. Maybe an injury did more damage in one universe than another? Who can say?

Blake:I...wouldn’t know. Odd, I know if my Ruby heard this, then she’d probably be more than a little upset. Saving lives is still what she’s all about. I know when she put everything she had into fighting Salem when the day came. All that training paid off. Her skills were polished and her silver eyes eradicated the grimm essence in Salem.

Ruby:Wait, she’s not dead?

Blake:No. Salem roams Remnant with Oz keeping an eye on her until one day she can finally grasp the lesson the gods wanted her to have.

Yang:That uhhh sounds risky.

Weiss:Yet oddly okay?

Blake:Funny, my Weiss said that too. Those two get checked on in secret. Can’t be too careful. With Salem beaten though, Remnant entered a state of...let’s call it average chaos. All in all, it’s way more peaceful but you know, people will be people. Downside about a secret war is you don’t get the unity of the masses. Atlas and Haven working together was still a great step in the right direction though.

Yang:Woah, I’m a little jealous. My world felt like a race against the clock. The pressure either broke you or made you harder than diamond, with most people crushing under it.

Weiss:Yeah. The tension and meet of extremes I had on the frontlines was beyond imagination. The unity was great, but to feel it on the battlefield against the odds was feeling with way too much adrenaline and stress. Can’t say I enjoyed it. I simply lived through it.

Blake:Well it isn’t like I had a walk in the park. But I guess in comparison, my experience was a tad more mellow. Still, people were lost and hurt. Oscar isn’t himself anymore, don’t have Penny, former classmates and a few enemies turned allies fell in battle. Family.... it took a bunch to get the plan of containing, then it took a lot more to do it. In a way though, the two years of training is time I can’t regret. It tested bonds, strengthening and reestablishing others.

Ruby:I take it since love couldn’t bloom on the battlefield, it bloomed in the training yards?

Blake:*red* You can say that. That’s when Jaune and I got serious. *frowning* But.....

Yang:We fell apart?

Blake:Yeah. I didn’t learn my lesson well enough the first time about the potential problems of dating a partner. Only difference this time was I felt like I was the one being cruel. We had gotten into arguments and apologized more than once. Your fear of being left and my own insecurities just kept butting heads. I’d cry, you’d cry, our friends would be concerned. Then the day came where you put it all on the line. You confessed genuinely how much you loved me and how you felt a bit jealous when it came to Jaune. I had never seen you look so vulnerable; letting your gaurd completely down. And though a piece of me loved you and wanted you in my life for ever....this sense of genuine comfort Jaune gave was something I want-needed for so long. So I did the one thing I didn’t want to do. I broke your heart. I hurt you again.

Yang:Sigh....*leans back in chair* Okay, let’s see how well I know myself. My eyes went red automatically, followed by tears. I lashed out at you angrily out of pain and embarrassment until I was probably blue in the face. But to take make things worse, somebody probably overheard. No matter who it was, I yelled at them too for trying to calm me down and then I eventually run off leaving everyone unhappy. A good old meltdown. Sound about right?

Blake:To the letter. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so distraught.

Yang:Of course not, I’ve never been in love before meeting you. I....did a similar thing with my Blake over the stupid Adam shit. *covers face* of all the things to be similar, it had to be my temper. Please tell me our team didn’t suffer too harshly?

Blake:The good thing about two years of training was it didn’t have to be together all the time. Team RWBY didn’t fall apart, but it didn’t feel comfortable either. Outside of missions, the four of us didn’t hang out as much. It was three at the most. Nobody pinned blame on me or Yang for it but it was obvious.

Ruby:I mean how can you blame someone for feeling sad or not in love with someone? Pointing fingers doesn’t do anything. However, I bet missions were rough.

Blake:Bumblebee was shelved. We did any other team up we could. When push came to shove, Yang and I did put feelings aside. Neither of us wanted our feelings to get anyone killed. That’s probably what kept us connected for awhile, especially with Salem. I don’t think we questioned each other when it came to watching one another’s back. Slowly, our relationship got a bit better. Until....we stopped speaking to each other altogether about a couple years later.

Yang:Wait, why!?

Blake:I got pregnant.

The three listeners’ faces scrunched up and they let in a sharp breath like they just got cut. No one had considered that bombshell.

Blake:Marriage was rough enough. Having Jaune’s kid and starting a family just...cut deep I guess. You didn’t make a scene or anything if that’s what you’re worried about. One day you told me “I just can’t do this” and exited my life. I wanted to keep you close to me, but you wanted to be closer. That was a thing I couldn’t do. Hehe, I can’t tell you how weird it is talking to you like this again.

Yang:So that’s it!? We just don’t see each other at all!?

Blake:Certain events and celebrations have us in the same room, but that’s all. Ruby is the only thing that regularly links us, but she’s busy living life too.

Ruby:Is it a good life?

Blake:The best. You’re the huntress you always wanted to be and a hero to many.

Ruby:*smiles* Really? That’s good. May she ride that high for as long as she can. Though I bet she wished she had a special someone to share that with.

Blake:Huh? Oh, you married Weiss.

Weiss:*red* What!?

Ruby:Aye, nice.

Weiss:Weren’t you upset about thinking of other people with Jaune besides you!?

Ruby:Yeah, but I won’t deny if I am going to be with someone that isn’t him, I’m very happy it’s the other special person in my life. I mean come on, the only reason we don’t get weird in your universe is because I married your brother and you already invited my sister.

Weiss:I mean...it’s mainly the brother portion. The second part...

Ruby:Weiss, that’s weird.

Yang:Eh...

Ruby:IT’S WEIRD! YOU CANNOT TELL ME OTHERWISE!

Yang:*sips coffee* Eh.

Blake:Anyways, Weiss, you’re running your company. The Schnee Dust Company was scrubbed top to bottom to remove as much corruption as possible. No department was overlooked. In times of money, there’s a notable decrease in how much the company used to make.

Weiss:Gee, I wonder if that’s because the other me is doing oh let me guess, paying all their workers and not cutting corners in safety?

Blake:The SDC people approval has gone up considerably, just so you know that too. Turns out people like it when the company they buy from have good morals.

Weiss:Am I happy though? I make time for my social life and hu- I mean wife?

Blake:Yea, you’re happy. In a way I think we’re all happy, but....

Yang:We’d be happier if we were all happy together? Yeah, that’s how it works. You’re only as happy as the most miserable person in a family or group; if you all care about each other that is. Ugh, I wanna punch the other me. I get how she feels but it’s fucking immature to just ignore years of teamwork and family. At the end of the day, team RWBY is a family! Can’t believe I’d runaway from it instead of figuring out...I don’t know! Something!

Blake:*small smile* Well if you feel that way then there’s no reason to believe she doesn’t. My Yang just struggles with it more I guess, but I hope she can come around one day. Not really for my sake, but for her own peace of mind. As well as Lucas’s.

Ruby:Lucas? Your son I take it?

Blake:Mmhmm. My strong and lazy young man. He got his father’s hair but my eyes and ears. I can’t think of a person who warms my heart quite like him. He acts uninterested in a lot of things, but his heart is so big.

Weiss:Ah, so he’s just you?

Blake:More or less hehe. Though I’d say I was passionate about things all my life. Lucas will sleep all day if he could and doesn’t like going out without a reason.

Weiss:Still sounds like you if I’m being honest. Teenager?

Blake:Seventeen, almost eighteen.

Yang:You said he’s need peace of mind too? I’m not...hostile towards him am I?

Blake:No, not by a long shot. On the occasions you two have meant, you were polite. It’s just he knows why you don’t visit or talk to me. That’s rough, knowing your parent’s closest friend stopped being apart of their life because you were born. I think sometimes he believes it’s actually his fault.

Yang:I really, really want to meet this other me and have a few words. She needs to know she isn’t trying hard enough. I’m proof.

Ruby:Yeah, but you’re only well off because the person that helped you get over Blake, was Jaune. Yeah she still can find love, but who that person will be would be uncharted territory for everyone.

Blake:Also I’m not entirely sure exactly if my Yang is even bi like you.

Yang:Sigh....

Weiss:Love.

Blake:Huh?

Weiss:As long as a person shows your Yang genuine love and a place in their heart where she’ll remain forever, Yang would fall for them. They just have to make it a point to make her feel like they’ll stay. Yangs are softies like that.

Yang:Wow, you an expert on me and all the versions of me now?

Weiss:No, you’re just a bleeding heart that’s super emotional. Let me guess, you fell for Jaune the moment you realized just how relaxed and vulnerable you could allow yourself to be around him.

Yang:*red*.......he holds me when I’m overwhelmed.

RWB:Awwww

Yang:Shut up! Blake, take the heat off me.

Blake:Not too much more. Lucas is a smart kid who generally stays out of trouble. Unfortunately, trouble finds him. Mainly because of his semblance.

Ruby:Don’t tell me...

Blake:No no, it’s not bad luck like your uncle, but Lucas can’t always control it so their similar in that regard. Premonitions, that’s his semblance.

Weiss:Like...the future? You child can see the future?!

Blake:Yeah. *sips drink* it’s terrible.

Ruby:What? That sounds so handy! Man, if I could someone fighting me before it happened, I’d be a monster on the battlefield.

Blake:Lucas isn’t a fighter. Well, he’s not aspiring to fight. He can fight, pretty dang well in fact.; but randomly seeing the future is not a gift. Imagine picking up a book and you suddenly know the ending, or watching a movie and you start seeing the middle of it right after you press play?

Yang:Ahhh, that’s why he’s lazy and unmotivated. His semblance is massive spoiler alert. Half the fun of new things is not knowing what will happen.

Ruby:Oof, you have a point. I’d be paranoid to no end.

Blake:To a point, he was. Ever since he was ten. Disasters happen at the drop of a hat. Lucas isn’t the kind of person to watch bad things unfold, so whenever it was possible or even if it was risky, he’d do whatever he could to prevent said disaster. But.....there’s only so much anyone person can do. There’s only so much information he sees. The constant strain and guilt that came from failing ate him up. The. There’s the incidents he’s seen that didn’t show him how it began or how it will end. *rubbing her hands* It’s bad...

Weiss:Hey, I...I’ve noticed your hands and frankly even your face are a bit....slim. Your skin isn’t as colorful as I’m used to either. Almost like it’s regaining color.

Blake:Hehehe.......I guess you were bound to notice of all people.

Weiss:Of course. I may not run a a company in my world but I keep tabs on my brother and have had my fair share of visits to a doctor. Why wouldn’t I notice.

Yang:So can we talk as if there are people who have no clue what’s going on?

Weiss:Blake has had one of two things happen to her. She’s either worked way too hard to the point she’s not taking care of her health, or she’s fallen very ill and her body is still recovering.

Blake:Yeah, it’s more of the second one, but probably because of the first one as well. Forwarding equality, I was overzealous with it. One day Lucas just started shaking and crying when he was twelve and I couldn’t understand why. Turns out he kept seeing me bedridden and unconscious without a reason. Day in and day out he simply cried and tried his best to get another premonition to learn more, but couldn’t. A week later I started feeling a little dizzy, and then blacked out after vomiting. At first I thought maybe I had the flu or something. Nope, a tumor.

Weiss:What?

Ruby:Blake!?

Yang:Oh shit, are you-

Blake:Perfectly fine! *smiles* I’m fine. Liver cancer, but it was caught early. No more tumor what so ever, but the meds and the entire process was really draining. Got sicker a couple of times. Not once did I feel like I was dying necessarily, more like...slipping? I felt myself getting drained. The whole time Lucas was so scared; blaming himself for not preventing this or knowing how to fix it. Though simply knowing he saw me like was a warning most people wish they got. I know I said seeing the future is terrible, but the scariest part through all of this was not knowing how it ended. Choosing medicine, doctors, surgery possibilities, it made me crack under pressure a little. I think he noticed that. I wasn’t sure if I picking an option that lead me dying or getting better. The stress alone may have killed me. Ever since then Lucas hasn’t been so outgoing.

Ruby:....

Weiss:....

Yang....It was already said, but there was no way this wasn’t going to get sad was there?

Blake:Take it from me, there’s joy in pain. So many people came to visit me when I was recovering. Even Yang dropped by for a bit. After I got out, I don’t think Lucas ever hugged me so hard. Jaune tried to stay calm through the whole ordeal but it was rough for him too. He was all but spent emotionally when I came home.

Weiss:I’m surprised Lucas didn’t become an older brother.

Blake:The last thing a recovering patient needs is a pregnancy, but as far as missing me goes...

Ruby:You can stop right there with that tangent.

Yang:We’ll talk about that in private. I wouldn’t mind that story.

Blake:*playfully rolls eyes* These days I try not to over do things. I’ve only officially been deemed completely cured for about a year. I can feel that I’m still not entirely up to strength. It’s fine though. It gives me an excuse for Lucas to dote on me a little. He’s a mama’s boy at heart. My biggest worries these days is peeling him out of this shell his semblance had put him in. At the very least I want him to smile like he used to and find away to live in moment when possible. His entire life is ahead of him. Hopefully he doesn’t see all of it.

Ruby:I guess too much of anything really is bad. Knowledge included. I hope things work out.

Yang:Me too. A happy life is something you definitely earned.

Blake:Thanks. That seriously means a lot, which is why I made sure to not end this on a sour note.

The happy faunus pulled out her scroll to scroll through pictures and her friends eyes lit up. The first one was a beach photo. This Jaune was different from what they were used to. He let his hair grow a little bit longer and the back went down his neck, but it was definitely still him. This jaune was pretty toned and went for a lean look than bulky like Weiss’s, but a tad slimmer. On his shoulders was an adorable toddler with wide amber eyes and big blonde cat ears. Both men were enjoying the sunset on the waves.

The next photo was more recent with Blake right in the middle of hopping into Lucas’s arms. Weiss noticed the girl still had on the hospital bracelet. She must’ve just gotten cleared. Lucas had grown like a weed. He was now roughly Jaune’s height. His hair was messy and looked like Jaune’s in his younger years. Also like his father, Lucas was jacked! His sleeveless purple shirt should off his biceps as they wrapped around Blake’s torso for a hug. His baggy purple shorts had black and gold trim through the seams and the shorts stopped right below his knees; but showed of his well defined calves. A smile of pure joy and what could’ve been a few tears were visible as he looked lovingly at his mother. It warmed all of the ladies hearts. Still, the girls also could tell under his eyes were a little dark. Lucas must’ve been very tired.

The final picture had to be the most recent. It was Blake and Lucas sparring. Both looked at each other with excitement and ease as their wooden blades clashed. Their clothes mirrored one another by being black and white kimonos. They even wore the traditional shoes and everything.

Weiss:Yeah, that’s your kid.

Blake:Damn right. Unfortunately that makes him a little too stubborn. But I guess that’s okay. Without a doubt, someone’s gonna break through that shell of his.

Yang:Oh? It sounds like you already know who?

Blake:Well....I have a hunch.

xxxxx

RING! RING! RING! Lucas’s scroll chirped, in the middle of the night. The boy let out a long, agitated groan of sleepiness as he rolled over in bed; reaching for his scroll on the nightstand to answer.

Lucas:Hello?

???:Did you know you are mathematically more likely to choke on a hotdog than get attacked by a shark?

Lucas:....Serenity, who gave you my number?

Serenity:Your parents, and it’s Serendipity!

Lucas:Too many syllables. Also a bit ironic given who you are. With the way you act though, my name for you is better.

Serenity:Ooooo so we’re moving on to pet names? How forward of you.

Lucas:Five seconds before I hang up. Three...two-

Serenity:You’re late! You promised to guide me around the beach at twelve. That’s now.

Lucas:.....P.M. Twelve P.M. Serenity. Why in the world would I mean midnight!?

Serenity:It’s romantic and personal. Nobody else is around. I thought you were trying to use that Belladonna magic on me by acting all cool and aloof in the moonlight.

Lucas:.....

Lucas:Please delete my number.

Serenity:Not on your life, my whiskered bodyguard!

Lucas:Don’t have whiskers-

Serenity:If you don’t wanna move that butt of yours to hang out with a pretty girl in a floppy hat and sundress with a bikini underneath, that’s your loss. I’m still going for a dip.

Lucas:Do not go in the water when nobody is around.

Serenity:Pfft, I’m a strong swimmer.

Lucas:Sharks.

Serenity:It’s more dangerous to eat a hotdog.

Lucas:Sharks feed at night.

Serenity:Are you trying to tell me the statistics aren’t as reliable just because it’s nighttime.

Lucas:That’s exactly what I’m saying.

Serenity:Then you better move your butt just in case. Either you get a snack or the sharks do. Either way, I get attention.

Lucas:Difference is one wants to eat you.

Serenity:My goodness Lucas, oh brazen of you.

Lucas:......

Lucas:Tell the sharks I said hi.

Serenity:Okay! Byyyyyyeeeee! *hangs up*

Lucas:(She’ll be fine.)

..........

Lucas:*putting on shoes* This is bullshit. Who thinks midnight!? *walking down stairs* Can’t have a peaceful day or night....

Jaune:*watching tv* Hey Lucas, going some-

Lucas:I’m giving out your phone number to a homeless man the first chance I get! *walks out door*

Jaune:.....(Whatever gets you outside more.)

It took about fifteen minutes of aggressive walking for Lucas to wrap around to the back of his house towards their section of the beach. Where Serenity walked around humming and collecting seashells without a care in the world.

Lucas:The next shell you grab will have a crab in it.

Serenity:Huh? Oh hey you’re finally-ahhhh! Ow ow ow ow ow ow!

Lucas:Should’ve listened.

Serenity:Have a better warning!!!! It won’t let go!

Lucas:Pull it off.

Serenity:That’s hurt!!! Lucas, help!

Lucas:Fine, if you delete my number.

Serenity:*sniffling* Stop being mean!!! This really hurts, it’s breaking the skin. Isn’t a young and pretty girl’s tears payment enough!? I thought you were getting paid to-

Lucas:Oh my goodness! Okay, just shush. I’m too sleepy for this.

Serenity:You’re mean when you’re sleepy. At least your waking up voice sounds handsome though.

Lucas:Please....stop. Stop everything. *removing crab* Happy?

Serenity:No, you’re not happy. Also my finger is bleeding.

Lucas:Yep, looks like you can’t go swimming now for real.

Serenity:Eh, I lied anyways. I’m not getting in that water. There are sharks in that watery grave.

Lucas:So. Why. Did. You. Wake. Me. Up?

Serenity:....*red* I...don’t really, have friends here. Besides you. Umm *points to pail and shovels* sandcastles?

Lucas:*inhales*......I’ll get the water.

Serenity:*smiles* Yes! I’ll delete your number later.

Lucas:*red* You....can keep it of you really want.

Serenity:....Kek, okay Mr. Tsundere

Lucas:You can remove the next crab alone.

Serenity:Don’t joke like that! That was a joke, right?

Lucas:Welp that pail isn’t gonna fill itself. *leaves*

Serenity:What!? Lucas!!! You were joking right!? Right!? *looking around the sand* you’re a lousy bodyguard!

Lucas:Good, fire me.

Serenity:I...you....ugh!

Lucas:Cheer up, I’m happy now after all. *smiles*

Serenity:*pouting* This is why I’m a dog person.

#rwby #the void #jaune arc #ruby rose #weiss schnee #yang xiao long #blake belladonna #rwby knightshade #lucas belladonna #rwby ships #rwby premonition

194 notes · View notes

fishyfod · 4 years

Text

Winter & Yang Parallels and Contrasts

A comparison of Winter Schnee and Yang Xiao Long, and how they are shaped by their society and circumstances.

Or a thinly veiled excuse to gush about two characters I like

[gif by 5by5brittana]

This is split into four parts:

Pre Volume 1 backstory and characteristics

Relationship with younger siblings

Parallel Journeys between V1-5 and V7-8

Rough Speculation for Volume 8

Spoilers for RWBY V8 E1-7. Under the cut because this turned out very long.

Also, take this with a grain of salt? I wrote this for fun. This really is just, me going off the deep end.

I. Childhood and Upbringing

Winter and Yang are both the eldest children of their respective families, and have spent most of their lives growing up in the shadows of their legacies: the Schnee name and the fallout of team STRQ. These legacies are tragedies, and for better and for worse Winter and Yang are in the unique position where they also know the before, the brief time their families were whole (at least on paper). As their families broke apart, Winter and Yang have felt the need to fill the parent role for their younger siblings (more on that later).

This is the curse of the parent-sibling*, in which the lines between adulthood, childhood and parenthood are all blurred together when one is still a child. Winter grew up as Willow and Jacques’s facade of a marriage slowly fell apart and Willow turned to alcohol, leaving Weiss and Whitley under the care of Jacques - a manipulative abuser - and someone had to step up between him and Weiss and Whitley. Klein, it should be noted, was the exception to the rule, as most staff reported to Jacques. Yang never had Raven, she lost Summer and for a while Taiyang after he shut down - someone had to take care of Ruby. Qrow just couldn’t be a full-time replacement to any of them

* [I believe the professional term is “parentification”.]

[RWBY Official Manga Anthology Vol. 4: I Burn]

This is Winter and Yang’s own personal tragedy, and as inspiring as it might seem from the outside - a mature, responsible child that helps parent their younger sibling - it is not at all healthy for the child in question. It does not matter if things might’ve improved later, the damage has already been done. Parent-siblings tend to become caretakers as well, and this manifests in both Yang and Winter, albeit in very different ways.

Which leads me to the next point, which is to emphasize the differences in both of these scenarios. The expectations from the Schnee name are very much a product of high-class society and Atlas superiority, which is very different from STRQ’s private falling out. Winter is roughly 7 and 10 years older than Weiss and Whitley, so she’s about 12 when Weiss (5 at the time) would become more aware of Jacques’s behavior, 17 when Willow began drinking. Yang was about 6 when Summer disappeared and the trek to the woods happened, and it is unknown for how long Taiyang shut down. Willow became seriously depressed just before Winter left for Atlas, whereas Taiyang eventually got back on his feet. Winter was abused by Jacques, Yang was abandoned by Raven.

Winter’s speech often involves doublespeak with hidden meanings, a strict deference to decorum, and a fair share of veiled (or unveiled) insults. She is closed off, and rarely engages in open physical contact. In private with her siblings or close friends, she tends to be softer, and may hug or pat on one’s shoulders. She has learnt this behavior in order to navigate Atlas society and quell her father whilst protecting herself and her siblings. Unfortunately, Klein appears to be the only staff to put the children’s needs before his servitude to Jacques, so even Winter’s interactions with Weiss and Whitley are soured by this prim, and at times, hurtful behavior; even then appearances must be kept. This is why Winter doesn’t act like a typical “Mom friend”, and why her need to take care of others manifests differently: in her conscience and willpower to protect others. Hence, she trains to become a huntress, the personification of protection, a way to help despite her difficulties expressing that need more conventionally.

Yang is open and outgoing, an easy conversationalist and very physically affectionate with her peers. She is upbeat, and also tactful at the same time. Why? Some of it has to do with her severe abandonment issues, making her more prone to bask in her connections to others. Equally important are the experience and circumstances she had growing up. She grew up in Patch, a relatively small community that is at best middle class. She had Ruby - only two years younger - to entertain and to teach, and in such a small household that also means many chores and mundane responsibilities to take on. By all accounts, Taiyang made enough of a recovery from his depression to parent well enough, and seems a fairly affectionate person himself. With all this encouragement and learnt skills, little hinders Yang from caring for Ruby and others openly and proudly. Ergo, Yang acts like a “Mom friend”.

These are Winter and Yang’s main personas, one uncaring and one unreserved. It is only natural that away from prying eyes or when put on the edge, they drop the facade and act contrary to it. For example, when Winter is angry or provoked, she lashes out and loses her composure. Usually, when Yang is angry she acts quite cold and restrained in her anger, and tries to project an unaffected persona. Alone with those she loves, Winter is more open and talkative, where Yang allows herself to be melancholic.

Yang may be open and candid, and could even be described as wearing her heart on her sleeve, but she is extremely reticent when admitting weakness or sharing her own personal grievances. Which is incredibly like Winter, though she is also taciturn in general. They have a tendency to avoid creating truly personal connections with others. They’re both used to putting on mask of strength and reassurance, and are quite adept at controlling their emotions (to a point). This is a defensive mechanism - they emulate the adults in their lives (who know the values of keeping up appearances) since they do not believe they will be taken seriously otherwise. They have internalized that no one will act on their behalf unless they offer something in return. By acting quasi-maternally to their younger siblings, they continue this act because it’s how they think a responsible adult should raise children.

[RWBY Official Manga Anthology Vol. 2: Mirror, Mirror]

The “practice” in home on their sisters developed in them the belief they should put others before themselves, even outside their family. Selfless as it may be, without moderation this behavior could be quite unhealthy. The lack of concern to themselves makes them feel lost and without purpose, with low self esteem and self-destructive tendencies.

Winter gives up the luxury of the Schnee inheritance for servitude in the army, a perfect place for someone who believes herself expendable. She says her personal feelings don’t matter, and is willing to throw down her life for others. Sounds familiar? Yang wants to become a huntress, which conveniently allows her to help others while drifting along life with no true purpose. She has very low self esteem initially, and her semblance literally benefits her taking hits for everyone else.

Intertwined with this, is a desire to find purpose, and to find value in oneself. They seek independence and a sense of control. For Winter, this meant training in the Atlas Academy and abdicating the title of Schnee Heiress. She remembers well when she could no longer rely on her father’s allowance. For Yang, it’s having a bike of her own and going out at night. She becomes protective of her appearance and long hair.

It’s worth noting that particularly a physical aspect of this independence - fighting - was something taught to them by the neglectful parents. Taiyang taught Yang to fight hand-to-hand before Beacon, and the hereditary nature of the Schnee semblance means Willow was most likely Winter’s first mentor.

Part of this behavior is also a need to escape the situation at home. With Winter that goes without saying - Jacques is abusive. Yang wants to leave the home she held together when she was a child; note her desire to travel the world, and her attempts to distance herself from Ruby so she won’t have to be relied upon even at Beacon.

In a sense, they’re both searching for the same thing - a parent to replace the ones who failed them. Ironwood and Raven both offer to be their replacement parent, at the cost of asking the children to leave with them to a new home, the one they’re leading and ruling. This doesn’t fix their family problem, and personally I believe neither Winter nor Yang full-heartily saw it as a solution, but they were both desperate enough to find anyone - anyone at all - that would take a weight off their shoulders and put them first. Yang searches for Raven, hoping she’ll find in her a mother despite everything. Fortunately for her, Qrow saved her from running after Raven prematurely. Unfortunately for Winter, James’s close friendship with Jacques meant he has known her from a young age, had observed how Jacques manipulates her and her family, and eventually offered himself as a savior from her situation at home. He had subtly groomed her into thinking the military - and more importantly, himself - was her only option to escape Jacques.

Despite this major difference, some similarities between Yang and Raven’s relationship and Winter and Ironwood’s relationship persist: the bandit lifestyle Raven offers Yang is militant and violent, similar to Ironwood’s army. Yang’s learnt conditional trust in authority would fit quite well with a bandit hierarchy built on perceived strength. Winter’s authoritarian outlook lends itself quite well to rise up in the ranks of the military.

Lastly, I’d like to point out the “inherited” philosophies of their respective replacement parents:

Raven’s philosophy: The weak die, so the strong survive on their own.

Yang’s philosophy: If I am not strong, I am weak and will be alone.

Ironwood’s philosophy: Every sacrifice is worth the cause.

Winter’s philosophy: I am not worth anything, so I can be sacrificed.

They’re all destructive mindsets, but the children inverted the implied destruction caused to others into their own self-destruction, in concordance with their shared need to put others before themselves. Part of the children’s progression will be to rise above these philosophies.

II. Yang & Ruby vs. Winter & Weiss

In the previous section I explained why Winter and Yang both act quasi-maternal and how it affected their growth and character. Now let’s examine their primary familial relationship, with their younger sisters Weiss and Ruby.

The simple truth is that much of what I said about Winter and Yang’s childhood is equally true for Weiss and Ruby, which could be explained quite easily - there’s only so much a child can do to replace adults. The important distinction is that for Weiss and Ruby someone did put them above everyone else, and that’s Winter and Yang. Consciously or by instinct, the elder sisters wanted to provide the younger sisters the safety they felt robbed off, and to give them the opportunity to grow and live as children like they couldn’t. In turn, the younger siblings put them on a pedestal and idolized them.

It is heavily implied Winter acted as a buffer between Jacques and Weiss, and was her confidant. Note how fluently they communicate their true thoughts to each other by hiding them in sneers and insults, yet drop all pretense in private and speak clearly what’s on their mind then. Winter worries about Weiss’s health and well-being, and isn’t interested in her studies and ranking; this is a deliberate choice to belie what Jacques instilled in Weiss, to put her happiness before her image. Winter mentored Weiss’s semblance training and is her harshest critic. She was Weiss’s main motivator to rebel against Jacques, and advised her to cut ties with the Schnee name like herself; she warns her of the futility in trying to reason with their father on his own terms. Winter encouraged Weiss to follow in her footsteps as a huntress, and also in her decision to figure herself out independently.

Yang, in her own words, was the one to hold everything together following Summer’s disappearance. She protected Ruby from feeling loveless and alone as she herself felt, by putting herself there where Taiyang couldn’t be. She gave her attention, she read to her and hugged her. She played with her and entertained her, and went along with every joke and scheme Ruby wanted to make. She enables Ruby to let loose and have fun, to take pride in her accomplishments and to stand up for herself. It’s important for Yang to show her support and pride in Ruby as frequently as she does, most likely to compensate the times Tai couldn’t. Among her family, Ruby goes to Yang when she is worried and afraid. Yang truly was Ruby’s best friend growing up.

Note how both Winter and Yang instilled values in Weiss and Ruby that are better than their own, and encouraged them to be better than themselves. They want them to actively search for happiness, although they themselves seem incapable of following the same advise - Winter went to a thankless job with little reward, Yang is afraid of forming friendships that are not just surface deep. The younger, prodigal sisters are assertive and have set themselves clear goals and ambitions in contrast to their elder sisters, who both prefer to follow and dedicate themselves to others.

[gif by deshieart]

The idyllic picture I described here is not complete. Winter and Yang may have significantly improved Weiss and Ruby’s childhood, but in their limited power as children - or perhaps their simple human limitations - there are blind spots in their relationships. There are issues the younger sisters have separate from the ones the elders tried to shield them from.

Winter still grew up in Atlas and under Jacques, and she is not immune from the dangerous influence of both. Early on, Weiss seemed to believe in similar ideas, and part of that behavior is due to Winter’s influence. Although Winter’s escape from home is understandable, it must’ve left some Weiss bitter being left behind. Winter forwent the Schnee name, where Weiss wants to change it for the better, and part of me can’t help but think Weiss’s conviction was affected by Winter leaving home.

As she grew up, Yang had two main caretakers - Taiyang and Qrow - who both experience difficulties addressing and sharing their problems openly. Yang, in turn, learnt not to share her own issues and put on a reassuring facade. She compartmentalizes, keeping her issues separate from what she shared with Ruby. But children are more perceptive than we might think, and Ruby must have picked up on Yang’s behavior and took it in. Ruby has her own version of keeping to herself - she ignores her problems and represses, avoiding the issue altogether with seemingly no healthy outlet. [x]

The narrative of the show tends to juxtapose these relationships against each other, cutting from one to the other and comparing them side by side, parallel or anti-parallel. The most obvious contrast is in their warmth: in Volume 3, Winter and Weiss are polite and reserved even privately, having lunch at an outdoor cafe. Yang and Ruby are loud and brash, playing video games and ribbing each other with their uncle. Winter pushes Weiss to confront Jacques directly, Yang seems content to support Ruby’s initiative by following her.

In volumes 4 and 5, the narrative matches the sisters in opposites: it is Yang and Weiss that are bound home and want to leave, and Winter and Ruby fighting in Mistral. Yang and Weiss overcome their personal struggles, and view their sister as their salvation, but end up finding each other first by chance (incidentally, Yang “returns” to Raven at the same time Winter returns to Atlas back to Ironwood). Meanwhile, Winter and Ruby become aware of Salem and the larger war at play.

When they are united with their sisters, this trend continues as Yang initiates the hug with Ruby and stops her nervous blabbering, and Weiss hugs Winter to stop her alarmed frenzy. Yang and Weiss reassure Ruby and Winter of their well-being.

[gif by sirianhewigxiii]

Come Volume 7, Winter returns as a full-time character and we see how after their respective reunions, the sisters return to their preestablished roles. Winter and Yang support Weiss and Ruby in their decisions and actions, listening to their younger sisters as they did before. Now, however, the sisters are on a more even footing: Weiss is now free of Jacques like Winter, Yang acts more assertive like Ruby. As a result, the relationship is less one-sided. For example, though Winter is not as doubtful of Ironwood as Weiss, she listens to her input and divulges a secret to her, showing that despite having differing opinions they begin to see each other as equals. Yang goes along with Ruby’s plan to hide Salem’s immortality from Ironwood (and even takes it a step further when she reveals Amity to Robyn), but she’s not afraid to tell her she doesn’t feel comfortable with that decision. It’s a step up from what they had before.

In the finale of Volume 7 and the premiere of Volume 8, the bonds between sisters are challenged, and they separate from each other. Winter chooses her loyalty to Ironwood over her trust in Weiss, Yang chooses her conscience over her innate trust in Ruby. Mind, these situations are not completely the same: the split between Ruby and Yang is pragmatic and they still view themselves as united, the split between Weiss and Winter is ideological and they are on different sides of the conflict.

I’ll leave my speculation what will happen to the sisters in the latter half of Volume 8 for the last section.

II.V - Winter & Whitley

A brief aside about Whitley, would be to ask if what I said about Winter’s relationship with Weiss could also apply to Whitley. The answer is of course no, Whitley and Winter clearly have an entirely different relationship here. Frankly, pinpointing its exact nature more precisely is difficult, since the center of the Schnee narrative is Weiss and we have little interactions between the Schnees that don’t involve her. I cannot offer you a definite reason as to why the difference exists, but I have a few guesses.

I’ll assume what we see of Weiss and Whitley in volumes 4 and 7 is similar to what Winter and Whitley had, and take into account Weiss’s statement that Whitley never really liked Winter (or her). As Willow pointed out to Weiss, Whitley was left alone with Jacques, and began imitating him and emulating his hurtful behavior. Jacques took him under his wing, when Willow was at her worst, Winter away, and Weiss in the process of leaving. Deep down he understands he was being abused by Jacques, but with the cards stacked against him his damaging attitude becomes clearer - and particularly, the likely reasons he resents Winter and Weiss for.

[gif by chittychittyyangyang]

So how come Weiss and Whitley turned out so different, and how does Winter factor into this? For starters, I’ll point out again that Winter’s influence on the Schnee household is very limited, and that humans tend to make mistakes. For her to gloss over Whitley, or to presumably ignore him, could be due to several reasons. Perhaps connecting with someone 10 years your junior was just too difficult. Maybe Jacques intervened more often with Whitley, seeing as he was younger and impressionable.

It’s difficult to tell what exactly happened here between Whitley and Winter, and I don’t think specifying here is helpful. I’ll sum up by saying that however their relationship turned sour, I lean towards the reason being human error rather than malicious intent. Family situations tend to be complicated.

III. Yang & Blake vs. Winter & Penny

Here I want to talk about more subtle parallels between Yang’s journey throughout volumes 1-5 and Winter’s journey in volumes 7-8.5. The major comparison here would be between Yang and Blake’s relationship, and Winter and Penny’s relationship.

Before I begin, I’d like to stress that although Bumbleby is clearly romantic in nature, here I’m more interested in their development separate from the romantic aspects of it. As such, it’s not my intention here to argue in favor of romantic Winter/Penny, though I have nothing against it. I view it more as a platonic relationship with some familial undertones.

I explained in the first section how Yang and Winter keep people at arm’s length, so it’s natural to wonder about the exceptions to that rule, their relationships with Blake and Penny respectively. When they meet their new partners, Yang and Winter seem mostly set in their ways, with no real tangible goal beyond wanting to help others where they can. To them, Blake and Penny are a breath of fresh air, determined and purposeful, and they’re challenged by their perspective.

To me at least, how Yang and Blake interact during Beacon is quite similar to what we see of Winter and Penny’s relationship in volume 7. It starts off as a working relationship, but the continuous presence around each other has lead it into easy affection. It’s a give-and-take of differing personalities finding common ground, though here the more apt analogy would be Yang/Penny and Winter/Blake. They begin feeling safe with one another, opening up and sharing intimate details about themselves, and the other’s opinion and well-being matter to them. They even work well together as fighting partners.

[gif by chittychittyyangyang]

Yang tells Blake about Raven and her complicated family life, partially in an attempt to stop Blake from overworking herself. After Winter’s outburst at Jacques, she shares with Penny her vulnerability regarding her family, and tells her she can’t let her emotions take control of her. Neither Blake nor Penny accept their lessons at face value, and question those beliefs. Was Blake’s determination really like Yang’s quest to find Raven? Are Winter’s emotions truly a hindrance and Penny should follow suit? Still, their disagreements don’t stop them from caring about each other, as we see when Yang hugs Blake and Winter holds Penny’s hands.

Blake is a faunus rights activist who fights for what she believes in, and Yang admires her for it, and is also subtly inspired by her. Penny is dedicated to her role as the Protector of Mantle, and Winter is endeared by her devotion to the cause. In both cases however, this beautiful aspiration is soured by Adam and Ironwood, who use Blake and Penny’s noble efforts for their own gain.

Next both relationships experience a “falling out”. Yang fights to save Blake from Adam at the end of Volume 3, and sacrifices her right arm trying to protect Blake. At the end of Volume 7, Winter and Penny fight Cinder, and Winter sacrifices her body (and purpose as a Winter Maiden) for Penny. We have Yang and Winter, defeated and critically injured, left behind by Blake and Penny, both running away from their controlling abusers Adam and Ironwood.

There’s an interesting tidbit here about their natures as characters, as both “falling outs” hammer on a shared flaw between the couples. Yang and Blake are both afraid of putting their trust in someone else, one is afraid of being deemed unsatisfactory and the other afraid of hurting by association. Winter and Penny are both self-sacrificial, the former thinks her opinion and thoughts are worthless, the latter wishes to put all the weight of the world on her shoulders. The finales and aftermaths of volumes 3 and 7 are a cruel display of these flaws.

Yang and Winter are both injured enough to require a replacement for parts of their bodies, a robotic arm and an exoskeleton. The supplier of both limbs is Ironwood, who projects himself onto both women, “rewarding” them for selfless acts of heroic sacrifice like he sees himself. He saw Yang’s fight the the tournament, criticized her harshly for it, then heard about her noble sacrifice and told her he wishes she’d return fighting soon. He groomed Winter to be his second, scolds her when she disobeys him, and after her injury emphasizes her importance to him. It seems to me that Ironwood attempted to make Yang indebted to himself like he managed with Winter before.

The process of recovery for both women is difficult, and in Winter’s case rushed. On a purely physical level it could be argued they have recovered from their injuries, as both eventually return to the field after their recovery. If we consider their emotional state, things become trickier; though Yang was at first offered a fairly lengthy recovery period on her own terms, in Volume 4 her main motivation to recover is not for herself but for other’s sake - appeasing Tai and worrying for Ruby. Similarly, Winter’s recovery is overshadowed by Ironwood’s orders and the current situation’s time constraints.

This behavior on Yang and Winter’s part is not so strange to me, when I consider Taiyang and Ironwood’s roles in their lives. Because of Taiyang’s issues when she was a child, Yang learnt to put others before herself, particularly when it concerns Ruby and Tai. Yang’s recovery becomes less about herself and more about others after Tai subtly insults her intelligence and her “moping”. I view this as falling back into old habits, Yang learning that if Tai is put through too much then she’s taken too much space (she puts on her arm after overhearing Tai saying he has to stay to take care of her), and must compensate by putting Ruby (and in a sense Tai) first.

[gif by sister-ilia]

After accepting Winter to the army, Ironwood acts as some form of surrogate father to her. Winter looks up to him because he offered her safety from Jacques, and looks for his approval constantly. Look at her reactions when she’s scolded by Ironwood for misbehavior. Ironwood offered her asylum in exchange for subservience. When Winter is in her hospital, he first reminds her how reassuring it is to have her on his side, and then proceeds to kill a councilman for disagreeing with him. It’s an indirect threat against Winter, one carefully cultivated throughout their working relationship in the military.

Regardless, the physical recovery is only part of a larger process Yang and Winter have to go through. Volume 5 made it quite apparent Yang suffers from PTSD and emotional trauma from her fight with Adam, and Blake leaving triggered Yang’s fear of abandonment. She faces Raven for the first time, and is haunted by Blake’s mere mention. She struggles against the past - the parent she wanted to put hope unto - and the future - the hope she has in Blake.

Winter faces similar struggles in the first half of Volume 8 parallel to Yang in Volume 5. She is traumatized by the fight against Cinder, most likely with PTSD as well, and Penny leaving as she did has shook her inner beliefs. For the first time, we see her visibly struggling to adhere to Ironwood’s orders with ease, and she’s deeply concerned for Penny’s well-being. She is torn between her loyalty - to Ironwood, the parent she put her trust in - and her moral compass - to Penny, who challenged her to follow her feelings.

Coincidentally, RWBY chose to portray Yang and Winter’s stress with a shaking fist, where they were injured. Having said that, Winter displays many similar physical ticks like that before her injury, but the deliberate focus on the same tick as Yang is too great for me to ignore.

Both of these struggles are also marked by a decisive choice to take action and be assertive, which is remarkable where these two are concerned. Yang forms the plan to find Ruby via Raven and refuses her offer to join the tribe. Winter forgoes Ironwood’s orders to bring team JYR to custody, and instead relies on them to save Oscar from the Whale.

Yang’s recovery does not in Volume 5 either (nor does it end in Volume 6 for that matter), but at the moment Winter’s parallel arc is unfinished. I’ll speculate about this a bit more in the next section.

IV. Rough Speculation

So when I say rough speculation, I mean it in two different ways. One, is that I’m mostly focused on characters arcs, and they’ll be fairly abstract. Two, is that I’m fairly sure most of these parallels are accidental and not intended, so I don’t hold much hope any of these will come true. Instead, think of these as “if I wanted to make these parallels intentional, how would the story proceed next?”

One parallel I do think is intentional is between the sisters. It is the first time we observe both relationships put into the test, and the outcome of this split will obviously change the sister’s dynamic with each other. How will these two relationships compare to one another by the end of the volume, I do not know, the current arc isn’t finished yet. I can only comment on how I want and hope these relationships will proceed. Currently, I see the physical split between the sisters as an opportunity to reevaluate themselves independently of the other’s influence. And, I think this change will be positive for all of them.

Though it’s obvious Yang’s choice deeply affects Ruby and will contribute to her expected breaking point, I think Ruby will come out stronger at the end of it. Yang’s choice to take charge herself is obviously very important to her growth as a person. Given how RWBY framed their split around a mutual understanding both sisters’ viewpoints are correct, I don’t think their reconciliation will be one-sided - they will come to understand where the other is coming from, and their relationship - and team RWBY - will grow from it.

Despite the difference in circumstances, I think Winter and Weiss will echo this development as well. Jacques may be mostly neutralized, but the Schnee family won’t be miraculously healed because of it. At the moment, Weiss is facing that reality now with Whitley and Willow, and I think her arc this volume will lead her to begin healing her family in earnest. Winter will almost definitely leave Ironwood, and for the first time in her life she’ll be free from someone seeking to control her, free to follow her conscience. It will also give her an opportunity to reconcile with her family without Jacques’s influence, which ties in quite nicely with Weiss’s arc - Weiss pulling her family together, Winter letting herself be pulled to them. Weiss and Winter’s bond will come out stronger, and the Schnees will finally have a chance to heal.

[gif by wnterschnee]

You might’ve noticed I put a lot of emphasis on when and where Winter and Yang make choices for themselves, because I think these moments are vital for them to grow as a person. Starting with Volume 5, there’s a been a slow progression where Yang asserts herself more often, which culminates in her decision in Volume 8 to break away from Ruby with her own objective. Like her, Winter in Volume 7 quite often disagrees with Ironwood’s plans, yet follows them anyway because of her loyalty to him. This loyalty is no longer enough to sway her in Volume 8 when she starts disobeying his orders.

Again, I’m comparing two unfinished arcs, but I’m excited to see where this development will lead us. Having Winter and Yang parallel each other like so would really hammer home how similar these two can be beneath the surface. If at some point it involves more direct contact to drive each other, that’d just be icing on the cake. For now I’ll enjoy that their only personal interaction with each other is Yang telling Winter “[she’s] still just following orders?”, followed by a glare - hopefully this preludes a future conversation between them talking about this exact point.

I’ve already touched upon predictions related to the first two parts of this analysis, what about the third? Here we can go a bit wilder, because we already know what happens to Yang (and Blake) in Volumes 5 and 6. How would I mirror Volumes 5 and 6 with Winter (and Penny)? When I think of Yang’s recovery arc, two major scenes at the ends of Volume 5 and 6 come to mind.

The first is her confrontation with Raven in the Maiden Vault, an incredibly powerful scene where Yang properly confronts Raven and calls out her cowardice. One of the reasons it works so well is how difficult it is to realize Raven’s place in Yang’s life is not clear cut; Yang hates her for abandoning her and shirking her responsibilities as a parent, yet there is still love between them. Raven’s reaction itself is both an admission of care when she concedes to Yang, and also another failure on her part by leaving her off with the responsibility, running away again. In simpler terms, Yang reluctantly confronts someone she cares for deeply, yet isn’t on her side.

Who would be the Raven to Winter in a parallel scenario? One possibility is Ironwood, who holds a similar position to Winter as Raven did to Yang. Ironwood is an almost paternal figure to Winter, but he’s making wrong and dangerous choices, and Winter seems to realize it as well. He used her and exploited her, but also offered her safety and stability. Even after Winter defects, I don’t think Winter will want to fight him physically (if she’s capable), and would probably attempt to sway him with her words. Admittedly I don’t foresee Winter’s attempt at non-aggression to be successful like Yang, so it might come to blows anyway.

A second possibility it to put Penny in Raven’s place. Given that Penny’s also Maiden like Raven, and she’s on her way to the Atlas Vault, there’s some potential thematic parallels. Given their established relationship, I think neither would want to confront each other physically, and would rather talk instead. It’s possible here Winter and Penny will switch metaphorical roles, and it might be Penny that gives Winter the final push towards the heroes sides. It’s also possible, given Penny’s hacked plot line, that Winter will instead have to sway Penny back from whatever the hacking did to her. The last interpretation would also fit in quite well with Winter and Penny’s arc focusing on personal choice and feelings winning over.

The other incredibly important scene in Yang’s arc is the Bumbleby vs. Adam fight. Blake and Yang finally liberate themselves from Adam, Blake’s abuser and Yang’s personal enemy, and they defeat him by working together. Yang is freed of her personal demons, Blake of her literal demons, and in the aftermath of his death they mend their relationship. Their trust in each other won over strength.

[gif by sister-ilia]

If a parallel scene to the Nevermore fight would exist for Winter and Penny, I can think of three characters that could fulfill Adam’s role. Cinder already set her eyes on Penny and is fairly likely to fight her again, and in their previous clash injured Winter. It matches fairly well plot-wise, but I don’t think Cinder is enough of a personal villain to either Penny or Winter to match the same gravitas as Adam. For similar reasons, Watts, Penny’s “puppeteer”, can also fill Adam’s proverbial shoes in this imagined scenario, but I fear he’s too inconsequential overall.

Or, it could be Ironwood in Adam’s place. Ironwood seeks to control Penny (like Adam did with Blake), and acts as Winter’s personal demon (like Adam was to Yang) by continuously conditioning her to repress herself. Like the Nevermore fight, there’s a motive for them to avoid killing him, but given Ironwood’s current state of mind he might push them to that edge in self defense. Even if Ironwood’s defeat would not involve death, it would be a liberate Penny and Winter, freeing them from his control once and for all - but a Pyrrhic victory all the same. I’ll admit, this might be my favorite way to defeat Ironwood.

Coda

I’ll emphasize one last thought regarding these character arcs - it is my strong belief character progressions, and healing arcs in particular, do not have a clear and set timeline. What I outlined here are not endings, but steps in the way. RWBY seems to agree with my train of thought, and with Yang in particular we see this in her current arc: yes, she has progressed immensely from Volume 3, but the healing process does not simply end, even if it may seem that way on the surface. I approach Winter’s character in the same manner; I have high hopes of her character and as a person, but change is an ongoing process, and I’ll treat it as such.

Thanks for reading my analysis! I know it’s a bit long and messy, I’ve had to skim through some ideas that could be expanded upon, so send an ask my way if you’d like me to elaborate on anything.