#blake or weiss being the one to take down roman would also be interesting but i think the most effective dynamic is ruby and roman

[constantvariations]

gimme your top 5 hot takes about rwby

I'm afraid I don’t have an accurate gauge of what qualifies as a “hot take” (or even what it actually is. Is it merely a controversial opinion?) so if any of these are ice cold I apologize

Adam and the Rose family should be connected in some way. Visual cues are important and there's so much spicy potential, especially if the dynamic originated with Summer

For Roman, the best and longest standing villain of the show, to be one of the few on-screen Grimm deaths is borderline parody. Personally, I think Ruby should’ve had a more active role in his death, even if by accident or setting up circumstances like she did Neo

Ozma’s situation is far more horrifying and sympathetic than Salem’s. The gods proved that they could bring Ozma back to life in his own body, but instead he’s forced to be a body snatcher? That’s fucked up in so many ways. She may be able to die again and again, but I think it’s way worse to die knowing you’re dooming several people at once

May Marigold isn’t that great of trans rep. She’s so unmemorable and inconsequential to the plot that the only reason I remember her at all is because she’s The Trans One. Like, glad they made her trans, and the reveal was respectful and clear and not even plot-relevant!, but maybe make her a good character first?

If we’re going by the show’s queer golden rule of blushing = romantic feelings, then Ruby had a crush on Emerald in V3 and it should have been explored way more for angst purposes

[doomalade]

Would you like to elaborate on Yang being the real protagonist? I kind of like the idea and I am highly intrigued.

Hello and yes I would!

Most people would say that Ruby is the protagonist, I mean the show is kinda named after her.

But I think that Yang is more involved in the plot and has much more development and interest about her. I’ll breakdown why I think that volume by volume.

V1: Yang is accepted into Beacon, this is very exciting for her especially since Ruby has also been accepted. Yang is excited for her little sister and reassures her that Ruby will love it at Beacon. She has confidence in Ruby, including her leadership skills but still worries for how her sister is adjusting. Jaundice happens, now getting to the important part. With Blake revealing she’s a Faunus and running away, Yang is actively helping out to find Blake while confronting Weiss about her bigotry. Ruby is having her fun times with Penny but Yang is actively attempting to solve the conflict of finding Blake and making Weiss apologize for what she said.

V2: Yang starts to take an even more active role this Volume with RWBY trying to find leads on the White Fang. She goes to Junior’s Bar to get info on Roman’s involvement last Volume which also calls back nicely to the Yellow trailer. Meanwhile Ruby was just kinda hanging out with Weiss. RWBY bring down the mech and stop Roman before Neo appears and gets Roman out before he’s arrested. Before the dance, Yang would be the one to talk to Blake about not letting her goal of stopping Roman and the White Fang destroy her. Once more, Ruby is just hanging out with Weiss. Yang reveals more about her character along with Summer and Raven. Ruby has only really been seen at Summer’s grave, but Yang seems to remember Summer and be deeply affected by losing two mothers. (Also I will die on the hill that is “Red Like Roses II is a Yang song”) During the train fight, Yang gets a nemesis in Neo, and further mystery is grown about Raven. Not to forget the maybe sorta no longer canon post credit scene that had Raven talking to Yang. Not any hints of Summer being alive with Ruby. Raven and Yang.

V3: It’s Yang that progresses through the Vytal Tournament, not Ruby. Yang is the one that 1v2s FNKI, and gains nemesis #2, Mercury. She’s framed by Emerald and has to come to terms with not being believed and eliminated from the tournament. During the Fall, Yang searches frantically for Ruby but ends up going to Blake where we get the scene of Adam cutting off her arm. Ruby makes it out of the Fall with a headache, Yang lost an arm. This restarts Yang’s hero journey going into V4.

V4 is Yang’s Call To Action, Refusal of Call, Mentor, and Crossing the Threshold. While Ruby has adventures with JNR, Nora and Ren take center stage for character development. Yang struggles with her PTSD and learning how to live with her disability. The Call to Action is Yang’s robotic arm, but she promptly Refuses the Call and gives into her depressive episode. As the Volume progresses, Tai serves as her Mentor and pushes her to get out of the house and find Ruby. This is the Crossing the Threshold.

V5 is Yang and Raven’s volume. Ruby might be giving Oscar inspirational speeches but this Volume sees Yang completing her mission and tracking down Raven. Yang finds Raven, reunites with Weiss, and is given what is arguably the most important advice in the show. Always question others so you can make your own choices. This applies to Ozma, and the concept of Oz’s magic, war against Salem, and reincarnation are all revealed to Yang. Ruby only gets a bit of magic and the reincarnation. At the Battle of Haven, Yang is the one to chase after Raven and confront her about being a coward. Yang completes her arc with Raven and is the one to walk out of the vault with the Lamp.

I’ll try to get to V6-8 later but that’s all I have for now.

[skye-huntress]

RWBY Panel 2021 Reaction

I figured why not. I was up at three in the morning to watch the panel just for even the smallest sneak peak or news of Volume 9 so I might as well throw out my reactions and thoughts into the void of the internet.

Let me start off with the biggest non-news, the lack of date for Volume 9. In the back of my mind, this was something I feared to expect. Between the pandemic, the blackouts, and probably a lot of other disrupting forces I am not aware about, it’s not reasonable to expect CRWBY to be at the same place with every upcoming volume every year. Similar for the Volume 8 Soundtrack, though for that I wasn’t expecting to hear any new updates on.

I am interested in the new game, Arrowfell, though I will admit that side-scrollers are not a style of game I’ve ever found compelling. It’s RWBY though, so of course I am going to check it out. They never said anything about what platforms it would be on though.

Now for the sneaky peak:

I’ll admit, that first half of it was intense. It really brought everything back, the anxiety, the near-panic, the anticipation of what would happen. It felt fresh seeing it from Ruby’s perspective.

Maybe seeing Yang’s fall happen in realtime will get people to lighten up on Ruby and realise that she couldn’t have really done anything, but I doubt it.

It is interesting to see how the edges of Ruby’s vision light up when she’s trying to call on her silver eye powers. I’d wager she experiences other sensations as well when its working and not just the sudden fatigue we see her go through after the fact.

So Neo is still attacking Ruby on sight despite the fact this path may have already sealed both their fates. I feel I should say this, I don’t think there is any reasoning with Neo. If she’s half as smart as she thinks she is, there’s no way she genuinely believes Ruby is responsible for Roman’s death. She went after Cinder first for a reason. She’s angry and in pain, and she needs someone a little easier to stab than a rogue maiden to take out her frustrations on. Ruby’s just a convenient scapegoat for Neo. One way or another, it will end this volume.

Oscar, Yang, Penny. These are all people Ruby has failed recently. Oscar was captured and tortured and Ruby didn’t even hear of it until afterwards. Yang took the blow meant for her and was the first to fall. Penny is the Maiden and it was Ruby’s job to protect her but now she is at Cinder’s mercy and that bitch doesn’t even have the word in her vocabulary. I feel this is the volume where Ruby has to confront her failures and increasing doubts about her leadership. We’ve been building up to it for a while

All alone and unarmed on a shore, in a strange place in another world. Nothing to do but keep moving forward.

At the very least, that she landed in the same realm we saw Crescent Rose suggests all or at least some of the Fallen have ended up in the same place.

Predictions

For Ruby, I think this will be a critical volume for her. All sorts of negativity has been building up with her for a while now and with her current situation, the fate of her friends, and when the news of Penny’s death inevitably reaches her, something is going to give. This might be a break from the plot but it is also a break for Ruby to reevaluate her leadership, her choices and how she’s been handling basically everything. How this changes her will likely determine the direction of the show and how the protagonists confront Salem going forward.

For Weiss, this could also be a big volume for her. For one, she’s gained and lost a lot this volume. Atlas, for all its faults which caused her to leave it twice, was her home, and now it is rubble and those of her people that survived are now refugees in a Kingdom they are not necessarily welcome. She confronted her father, and was working on her relationship with the rest of her family, but is now separated from them. She wasn’t as close with Penny as Ruby, but she lost her, too, and now her sister has the same target on her back and is probably doomed to suffer the same fate sooner or later. She also thought she lost her other family and it will be bittersweet to find herself stranded with them if when she can find them again. It’s been a rollercoaster for her.

While on this note, I think we are due for a heart-to-heart between Ruby and Weiss. Ruby recently had a talk with both Blake and Yang about her leadership, but I think Weiss has the best chance of actually reaching her. After all, Weiss was the first one to openly express doubts about Ruby being a leader, and it was also a position she once coveted for herself. Weiss is the sceptic turned believer, and she’s not afraid to call things as they are, so I think she is and always was the best one to talk to Ruby about this, which is why I think they never had this conversation before. Now that Ruby is in this critical stage, of course this is the perfect time for her once reluctant and now devoted partner to put in her two cents.

Since everything went down with Adam and her relationship with Yang improved, I haven’t been quite sure where Blake’s character arc will go from there. When Yang fell, she nearly completely lost and it clouded her judgment. After her talk with Nora, I wonder if Blake herself needs to reevaluate if perhaps there are parts about her own life and wellbeing that she has neglected since she and Yang have gotten closer. Perhaps it’s a time for her to reevaluate her priorities, which doesn’t necessarily mean distancing herself from Yang but it could still mean she puts more effort into herself and her other relationships, especially with Ruby, Weiss and Jaune.

Yang was the first to fall and everything went to shit after the fact. She stopped a sneak attack on Ruby but she couldn’t stop Neo or Cinder, and she was not there for her team or Penny. That moment is probably also too familiar to what happened with Adam at Beacon for Yang’s comfort, not that I think there was anything she could do better in either situation besides simply being faster. I don’t know what Yang’s response to everything will be, what effect this will have on her. Plus I can’t forget that she’s probably suffering a concussion right now.

As for the Bees, despite all they’ve been through and even with the split that happened last volume, they were still closer than ever. There’s a mutual respect there for each other’s decisions. If one is going through something, the other will be there to talk them through it or even simply be a shoulder to cry on. If this is a situation that they’ll be stuck on for the foreseeable future, at least they have each other and there are worse places they could be stranded in. Despite everything that happened or maybe even because of it, it might seem the perfect setting and timing for some confessions and more.

Now to Jaune. He certainly hasn’t had it easy. From the start, he was the furthest behind among his peers, and now he’s been licensed earlier than most of them. Pyrrha helped him a lot with that, and was the first to believe in him and she was taken from him, and it seems he came to terms with that since Argus. He didn’t let his grief blind him and he stayed on task with the evacuation, and he wasn’t reckless when he did confront Cinder. He did everything right, but it wasn’t enough to save Penny and in the end he had little choice but to respect her dying wish. It had to be done, I don’t blame him for being put in that position, but it’s still got to hurt. It’s also so appropriate that his weapon, one of his most important tools as a Huntsman, was broken after spilling innocent blood, almost like a punishment(?) for his “betrayal” to what a Huntsman is suppose to be. He’s going to carry this until the day he dies, and now he has to face his friends, especially his best friend whom was the closest of all of them to Penny.

Finally Neo. Like I said, I don’t think she can be reasoned with. She abandoned any sort of rationale a long time ago, and it will take more than words to shake her out of it, if it’s even possible anymore. I doubt there will be a peaceful solution to this conflict, it feels too similar to what went down with Adam towards his end. He also refused to back down, he too insisted on making Blake his scapegoat, and despite being given every chance to walk away, he persisted until his death. Time will tell if Neo can avoid that fate, but my doubts about that have only strengthened since the sneak peak.

As for Oscar and the others, I already had my doubts about whether we’d see them at all. The way CRWBY talked about this volume, it seems clear that this is our break from the main narrative so I doubt we will be seeing much of Vacuo yet. I am more than okay with that, it’d be good to take a break from the main plot and focus and our main girls again and we’ll get more of that with a significantly reduced cast.

[rwbybutincorrect]

I have some suggestions for your RWBY pokemon AU

I think Absol makes more sense as a pokemon either for Ruby, or, what I think is more fitting, for Qrow. Absol in the pokemon world is considered a harbinger of disaster because of its ability to sense oncoming calamities, and Qrow considers himself a bad luck charm and his weapon is called Harbinger, so I can imagine it being like, his signature pokemon, and maybe Ruby, wanting to emulate her Uncle, catches one for herself.

I also think Ruby and Yang's starters make more sense swapped around, Blaziken fits more with Yang (a hot headed fighting type) rather than Incineroar (a Dark type meant to emulate Heels in wrestling I.e the bad guys). Incineroar also fits better with Ruby's v1-v3 colours, though I also don't think a fire starter would fit Ruby, I think Sceptile fits more, as it's a fast pokemon that uses its leaves on its arms as blades, which I think fits Ruby better.

I'd also pick Rosarade over Florges but that's just my purrsonal preference.

Now for Weiss, my only suggestion  would be changing Corvinkight with something else, and I'm thinking Glaceon. I love the idea that Weiss as a child finds an injured Eevee in the large family garden and secretly takes care of it, but her father finds out and forces her to take it back to the wilds, but while out there it saves Weiss from several Beowolves and in the artic climate evolves into a Glaceon which Weiss then adopts.

Blake, id replace Absol with Greninja for aesthetic, but otherwise I would change Gallade's past, Ralts' only show themselves to trainers with strong positive emotions, so I can't see Adam ever having one, but I like the idea of maybe Blake and Yang being helped during the forest exam at Beacon by two Ralts/Kirlia's who they then take (Yang saying its the sign of their new partnership), and otherwise I would change Gallade for Gardevoir for Blake and have Gallade be Yang's pokemon, since it's a pokemon with strong morals and I feel fit Yang better.

Now for Yang, and other than the previous suggestions of Blaziken and Gallade as hers, I would replace Tyrantrum with Hitmontop, storywise I'd say that, when she's recovering post Beacon and on her way back from visiting Summer's grave, she encounters a Tyrouge rushing headfirst into fighting a stronger pokemon and getting seriously hurt, so Yang saves it and takes it home to recover. Despite all its injuries it still insists on training, Tai seeing this starts encouraging Yang to train with it, hoping it'll help her out. As both Yang and the Tyrouge bond and train, learning not to rush headfirst into battles and to adopt a more balanced fighting style, it evolves into Hitmontop to symbolise Yang's recovering and training.

And thats just RWBY, I have plenty of suggestions for JNPR, Sun, Ilia, Adam, Salem's forces, STQR, the Ace-Ops, Happy Huntresses and Neo~

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submitted by @ladydevoir thank you :EYES:

[for reference, this is about this post]

treating this like an ask because i assume that's why you submitted it, because of the text limit but :EYESY:EYES:EYES

my choice of absol for blake is because i knew about the lore implications of absol and thought it would be a tragic detail if an absol appeared before her trying to protect her from the travesties she's repetitively had to face. i might give one to qrow anyway because I'm not afraid of duplicates!!! i didn't think about any supporting adult pokemon teams quite yet!

i will be honest, the blaziken choice for ruby was mostly self indulgent :3 i love chickens and blaziken's aesthetic. notable moments in the anime stuck with me, like during xy's series when there was a vigilante "blaziken man" protecting luminous city - that's a big reason why i chose it for her, that kind of over the top kind of heroism i thought worked. as opposed to incenroar who fights dirty. early in rwby, yang is a very backhanded and not exactly noble kind of hero. just look at the "yellow" trailer, fucking shit up for self motivated reasons (good for her.) i thought it fit her! --- but i can absolutely see what you're saying with sceptile, that is another favorite of mine and i'd love to see her with a sceptile that could mega evolve!

roserade, yeah i can see that fitting too! i forget it exists sometimes- my bad - and i like the grass type a little bit more to some extent than the fairy type because ruby has less of an association to the balance of nature~ that fairies do

i like the glaceon idea a lot too!!! the concepts of potential and direct reflection of her cold home - not to mention it's my second favorite eeveelution :D corviknight, yeah, it's my weakest link and i wanted to add it purely on the basis i'd like the snow queen to have her knight - but i think a glaceon would be much cuter, considering she already has plenty of stand ins for her glyphs!

I'm also interested about the greninja for the aesthetic! I'm not all that attached to the kalos starters so i tend to forget about them a lot more, i leaned on the "dark" type for blake but definitely didn't consider the. actual ninja pokemon. but i also tried to hold off on giving her a proper starter because in this little hc concept of mine, starters come specifically from pre-huntsmen schools (like signal in yang and ruby's case). i liked having the narrative of some students being "othered" by lacking starters - a visual tool when displaying their teams that they didn't have the opportunity to start where others did. not to say greninja couldn't have been a wild encounter or something else - fun to think about and really fits!

i DID not know about the kirlia lore though, i thought it was pretty weak when i was coming up with it and that is so interesting to know. i enjoy the idea of a pokemon switching allegiances from adam to protect blake but with this new information, I'll probably rewrite it in a way where the bee duo's ralts evos are more exclusive to them :3 i do like your idea of switching them, though, i tried to switch them to divert expectations, right (yang being a bit more masc than yang yet having a gardevoir, blake having the more showmanshy evo) but i might switch them. or i can just say the pokemon are practically shared and will switch up who they're paired with by their own choice. gf things <333

the hitmontop concept is really interesting for yang! it really does fit her - and i never paid attention to the line because, i will be honest, it never aesthetically pleased me, but narratively it works super well. i liked tyrantrum because i loved giving yang dragons and i also thought if she restored a tyrunt herself, it would be a nice indication of yang's genuine intelligence and wisdom. i don't like people boiling her down to a bimbo, haha funny stupid lesbian, but i feel like people also fail to recognize her genuine technical and social intelligence that she's portrayed throughout the series. then again, a hitmontop could show that emotional and protective instinct and intelligence she carries. it's sweet!! I'm torn!!!

AAAAANYWAY LONG STORY SHORT thank you so much for your opinions!!! i love the feedback and second opinion. i did a little bit of brainstorming with few friends in our discord server and its nice to hear an unrelated voice's takes!

feel free to send us more ideas if you'd like!!! :D as of right now I'm working on (the original) jnrp's post, and have penny, oscar, roman, neo, emerald, mercury, and cinder's teams planned! (I'm not sure how to section them off atm so their posts are coming later!) I'm curious to hear your ideas for when i get around to these other characters

[itsclydebitches]

After reading the Roman Holiday preview... *long sigh*. Why is domestic abuse the go-to tragic backstory for rwby villains? And why is it always more than what our heroes have to deal with? Weiss was abused by her father but was able to escape to Beacon. Meanwhile, Cinder was a literal slave and was alone after killing her abusive family and Rhodes. What is going on!?

My guess is it's the subconscious belief that good people are born of good circumstances and bad people are born of bad circumstances. There are obviously some exceptions like Weiss and Qrow, but notably both of them had significant figures in their life who helped lead them down better paths: Winter and Ozpin. And, as you say, they both had the opportunity to go to Beacon, an escape from their living situations and the chance to be surrounded by more people/opportunities. There's potentially a message here about people flourishing when given external support (hey there, Good Place), but RWBY makes it far more about immediate circumstances than it does working to change over time:

Ruby has an adoring father and a mother who, while dead, also greatly loved her. Ruby is good.

Yang has a mother who abandoned her, but an adoring father and a an adoptive "Super Mom." Yang is good.

Blake was in an abusive relationship, but also has two parents who adore her and, despite the fandom's frustration with storytelling logistics like, "Why didn't they go find her after she left?" (because they weren't a part of the story then), they're presented as good people. Blake too is good.

Weiss has an abusive father and an alcoholic mother, but crucially an older sister who acts like a mother figure. Weiss is good.

Weiss becomes that good figure for Whitley. Whitley is now good.

Winter started this movement, so who was her good, supportive figure? Ironwood. Ironwood who welcomed her into the military, seems to have acted as a father figure, and became a respected peer. By the time Ironwood is made bad, Winter is already considered a hero by the narrative (despite the moral inconsistencies there), so it's fine.

Ren has a loving mother and father who die for him. Ren is good.

Nora is an orphan, but at a very young age gets Ren. Nora is good.

Jaune presumably has loving parents and seven sisters, one of whom we say doting on him with his extended family. Jaune is good.

Pyrrha presumably had a loving mother who visits her statue. Pyrrha is good.

Penny is a literal military weapon, but has a loving father. Penny is good.

Salem was locked in a tower by her father. Salem is bad (even before the grimm pool).

Cinder was a child slave and though she had Rhodes similar to how Weiss had Winter, her backstory arrives eight years late, after we know she becomes a villain. So Cinder is bad.

Adam was also a slave and, regardless of whether it was truly an accident or not, was branded with the logo of his abusers. Adam is bad.

Mercury seems to have just had an abusive father. Mercury is bad.

Emerald's family either died with her having no one to turn to (unlike Nora), or they abandoned her. Emerald is bad. Until the plot shuffles her into the heroic group. Then she's good. Emerald doesn't do something to become a part of that group, she's moved to the group first and then is seen as good.

Neo seems to have had abusive parents. Neo is bad.

Tyrian we don't know much about, but we do know he was already a killer before Salem. What little we've got of his backstory doesn't seem good. So Tyrian is bad.

We're given no information about Ironwood's backstory. Ironwood is good and then quickly becomes bad.

And Ozpin's stuff is such a mess it's unclear what the story even thinks of him at this point. That's a whole other post lol.

As said, there's some nugget of decent writing here in the form of unpacking the idea that people are more likely to make good decisions when given the opportunity and encouragement to do so, as well as the emotional support need to develop that moral compass and believe in yourself enough to follow it... but it's buried under RWBY's black and white worldview, the same worldview that's hurting the other, morally driven aspects of the story. We're not really shown instances in which characters who had everything still do terrible things, nor do we see characters who go through comparatively horrific circumstances and still do the right thing. The good people, while still going through horrible things, have benefits that the villains don't — Weiss' loving sister and wealth compared to Cinder's slavery and part-time visitor, for example — and the villains' experiences overall tend to be, well, more shocking in some respects. Lost legs, a shock collar, a brand, literal slavery, all happening at that formative young age... compare that to the heroes' struggles that, as said, are mitigated by some other good, or happen later in life after they're already established as good people. Blake is already trying to help the faunus when she enters a relationship with Adam (and is said to be mislead. Unlike villains Adam, Sianna, and Iilia, heroes Blake and Sun perform the "correct" kind of activism). Yang is already training to be a huntress when she loses her arm. Oscar is already fighting Salem when he's tortured, etc. We could include Ironwood's turn here too, regarding the shock value. Yeah, everyone is going through horrible stuff in Volume 7 and 8, but only Ironwood had the skin and muscle of his arm stripped off, resulting in a complete loss of the limb. And unlike Yang who was taken home, supported, and given months to recuperate, Ironwood is tossed back into a war with 8+ of his former allies now fighting against him. So RT literally says, "Of course he's bad now," except the argument is this ableist (and, given Yang, contradictory) idea that losing the arm made him bad, rather than the idea that abandoning someone during the worst moment of their life is going to leave them floundering — because that would put at least some of the blame on the heroes. And, as said, the morality is so black and white that there's no room for that nuance. It's not a matter of excusing the villains' actions, but rather examining how they came about and, if we're meant to feel sympathy, tying that to their good traits. Emerald's supposedly "kind" comment comes when she's helping Cinder destroy Beacon. Raven cries while she's deliberately allowing her daughter to be Salem's target instead of herself. Cinder cries because she hasn't successfully killed our heroes and gotten the amount of power she's after. Hazel mourns his sister while trying to kill a 14yo. These are all the WORST times to try and get the audience to feel for the bad guy. The story doesn't acknowledge that horrific circumstances can lead to bad decisions, but that people who commit bad - even truly horrific - acts can still do good in the future, or even do some good alongside the bad, the story says that these circumstances automatically lead to bad people and that you should feel bad for them despite what they've done. If Cinder cried because being in Atlas had triggered the worst memories of her life, that's an avenue towards seeing your villain as a complex human. Having Cinder cry because Watts points out what a shit job she's done at being The Worst Person Ever and expecting the audience to feel bad that Cinder has failed to, idk, take over the world or whatever is... stupid.

Honestly, it feels like another example of how RWBY is very much a simplistic fairy tale, no matter how much the characters insist its not. If you're good, you're good and if you're bad, you're bad. There's no middle ground, leaving characters like Ozpin and Ironwood to be abandoned and Ilia, Hazel, and Emerald forgiven the moment they switch from one side to the other. Now toss in the question of how people become good or bad and, well, surely good people lead good lives and bad people lead bad lives, right? So all you need to do is give your bad characters horrific, abusive, shockingly violent backstories while your good characters have, if not completely stable homes or perfect lives, at least a lot more than what the villains seem to have gotten. And the story isn't interested in acknowledging that motivation and morality aren't that simplistic. It can be offensive on its own, this theme of abused children becoming crazed murderers, but even when you try to follow that logic with something like, "Hey, Weiss our abused hero is threatening a defenseless minor to get what she wants, along with everything else the group as a whole has done. Is that something the story is going to unpack if you honestly believe these circumstances produce bad people?" the answer is always no. Because Weiss is Good™ and there's no interest in grappling with any storyline that might undermine that.

[warsmith-38]

How I would do RWBY pt. 2

Season Two

Emerald and Mercury go to book store.

Try intimidating ex-White Fang owner.

He’s tense, but not impressed.

Adam walks in.

He shits himself.

Tries fighting.

Dies. Painfully might I add.

Emerald and Mercury banter. Adam just seems bored.

Cinder (teenaged, not adult) scolds them for 86ing the guy in such a public and possibly trackable way.

Adam assures them that they weren’t seen. He has practice in that sort of thing.

Torchwick is annoyed at working with these people but at least he’s getting paid a mint.

Cinder says that, with all of the stolen dust, phase two of plan can to be started soon.

Neo give her a look of ‘get over yourself, you chuunibyou.’

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.

More guests arrive.

Ironwood talks with Ozpin about world affairs.

Grimm populations and attacks are getting worse, but are still manageable.

Says that he has brought plenty of extra security in the form of Penny and a big amount of security robots and mechs.

More bonding scenes because reasons.

RWBY + JNPR have food fight because funny.

Velvet and Blake are closer than earlier and give little ‘anti-racism’ classes for Weiss.

Blake is friendlier with everyone now that she knows they wouldn’t kill her since she’s a faunus.

Ruby has taken on the role of mechanic for everyone’s weapons.

Jaune dominates wargaming night.

Ren and Fox try to help Ruby with her hand-to-hand skills (Yang is not a great teacher of such things)

Scene of properly meeting team SSSN.

Nice guys, but a little too uncoordinated in style.

Ruby ends up having a frustrated breakdown.

Gives WBY speech of how they have to get involved and screw the people telling them to sit down and let them handle the problem instead.

Blake is the first to go along with what she’s saying.

Yang and Weiss argue that this is not a good idea, saying that this sounds like Ruby just wants to go play vigilante again.

Blake says that Ruby has a point, nothing will get accomplished if they sit around doing nothing.

Weiss is the one that cracks next. Agrees that the authorities aren’t exactly inspiring confidence since the run in with Torchwick.

Yang finally gives in, if only to make sure Ruby doesn’t get herself murdered.

Ruby, in her excitement to actually be doing something, rushes out the door to get snacks and runs into someone.

That someone is Cinder.

Cinder, Emerald, Mercury, and disguised Neo (Team CEMN (Cinnamon (work with me here))) keep up the façade of Haven guests from canon.

Ruby almost immediately starts gushing over their cool weapons before being reined in by WBY.

Emerald pickpocket’s Weiss’ wallet and snags rich girl’s cash before putting it back.

Mercury and Yang have a very clear stare-down of ‘punching vs kicking, who will win?’

Neo and Blake…stare at each other (Adam is Blake’s Rival/Foil. Blake v. Neo is just pair the spares).

RWBY has made new friends. (The poor dears)

RWBY start their investigation.

Team SSSN turns up to help at the last minute.

Okay, sure, free help.

Blake and Sun try to find local White Fang schmucks.

Scarlet and Sage go off to do random shit.

Yang drags Neptune to Junior’s club to check the pulse of the criminal element of the city.

Ruby and Weiss dig up information at library place-thing.

They encounter Penny on the way.

Penny acts weird(er) and tries to bolt off.

Weiss agrees that Penny is suspicious as hell and, with all the happenings, that means that she could be a potential lead.

She lets Ruby go after her while she about her investigating alone.

Penny reveals to Ruby that she’s a mechanical maiden (Persona 3 is best Persona).

Ruby is VERY interested now.

Ruby already liked her as a person and now she knows that Penny is a person who is also a weapon.

Zero downsides.

Penny, happy to be accepted, let’s slip that she knows some crazy stuff is happening in the world.

Says that that’s why she was allowed to come to the tournament, as extra back up just in case.

Says that the communications tower is the most obvious target but might not be the actual target.

Can’t elaborate further because of Ciel and her bodyguards showing up.

Ciel gives Ruby the third degree on encouraging Penny’s truant behavior.

Ruby gives her the finger.

Ciel takes Penny away and Ruby gets back to work.

Weiss gets whatever information about the White Fang and Torchwick that isn’t classified, and a little that is, transferred to her.

Her older sister is a high ranker in the military and her father bankrolled a good chunk of said military.

Ain’t nepotism a bitch?

Yang and Neptune come up empty handed, but Yang got to pick another fight at the club before the cops showed up so she’s all good.

Neptune thinks that that’s all Yang went there to do in the first place.

Scarlet and Sage get captured by the White Fang. (They said they had fresh cookies, what were S + S going to do, say no?)

Blake leads Sun along a trail of breadcrumbs to a White Fang hideout.

Sees a recruitment rally going on.

Blake has a heart attack seeing who’s giving a speech.

It’s Adam.

Speech is an emotional call to arms against the cruelty of humanity.

Crowd is skeptical but still listening.

Reveals his brand.

Crowd is now enthusiastic to sign up for the White Fang.

Adam reveals newly stolen war-mech.

Says that they’ll test its power by executing Scarlet and Sage.

Blake spoils his moment by covertly revealing that Roman is the pilot of said mech (Neo is co-pilot).

Crowd turns against Adam for his hypocrisy.

Adam cheeses it.

Roman takes it on himself to attack Blake and Sun.

Scarlet and Sage are freed and take on the rowdy crowd.

While running, Blake and Sun encounter RWY and Neptune.

Sun and Neptune get good hits in but are btfo’d.

Scarlet and Sage find them and all is good for team SSSN.

RWBY has quasi-rematch against Roman + Neo.

Fight goes well.

Team CFVY shows up and stomps the mech.

Looks like Team Rocket’s blasting off again!

RWBY celebrates a fight well won.

CFVY are pissed that RWBY would do something so dangerous and make them promise not to do things like this again.

RWBY lies through their collective teeth about not doing it again.

Get put on probation anyway.

Pyrrha and Jaune are having a moment together before Jaune ruins it.

Jaune admits that he lied and cheated his way into school due to impatience and lack of immediate combat skills.

He confesses all of this out of guilt and plans to turn himself in.

Pyrrha is actually rather angry at him.

1. for cheating to get what everyone else fought tooth and nail to earn the right to and 2. Putting the rest of his team at risk due to his inability to keep up with them in a fight and for associating them with a cheater/liar.

Not to mention lying to her face.

Says good riddance.

Cardin overhears and blackmails him into doing what he says or else he’ll narc on him and say that NPR knew and thus were complicit in the crime.

Jaune goes along with it while creating plan to oust Cardin and get him kicked from school.

Has conversation with Ren and Nora, both of whom are pissed at him.

Of course Pyrrha told them.

Jaune tells them that he knows he’s a piece of shit but also has Cardin to deal with.

Ren and Nora begrudgingly agree to help him get rid of Cardin.

Tells them his plan.

Plan proceeds to fail and Jaune ends up fighting all of CRDL alone.

Loses.

Grimm outside of their power-level shows up.

Jaune’s quick thinking and tactics get it killed.

Cardin is grateful and promises to keep quiet about blackmail. Even means it too.

CRDL is never a real issue again due to them actually realizing that it’s a very cuntish thing to bully the guy and/or the friends of the guy who actively saved their lives.

Jaune plans to give one last apology to his team before he turns himself in.

NPR say that they deliberated amongst themselves.

They have decided that Jaune doesn’t get to take the easy way out.

His penance is to train his ass off, night and day, to catch up to them on the physical level.

Jaune’s role is to be the strategist and that it’s his job to make plans that keep them all alive.

If he fucks up, they work his ass harder until he doesn’t fuck up.

They haven’t fully forgiven him, but they’re giving him a chance because they genuinely like him.

Jaune is touched by their compassion and promises make up for his mistakes.

Sparring day in class.

Jaune has match against disguised Neo.

Neo wins but Jaune starts to have suspicions.

Pyrrha and Mercury spar.

Pyrrha wins but Mercury now has valuable data on her overall fighting style and semblance usage.

Cinder and Ruby are last match of the class.

Cinder has fire powers as a semblance.

Has second semblance giving her bullet time.

Bullet time doesn’t work all that well against Ruby because of her super-speed.

Ruby gets some pretty good hits in. Kinda kicking Cinder’s ass.

Cinder then decides she’s done playing nice and goes on full offensive. Even starts to scare the crowd.

Times up!

Due to technicality, Ruby won the fight.

Aura cohesion (health bars) Cinder:48% Ruby:51%

Emerald and Mercury are blue in the face with fear of what Cinder might do, having officially lost a fight.

Cinder helps Ruby up, apologizes for going overboard, and offers to buy Ruby lunch the next day.

Ruby happily agrees to hang out with her newest friend.

Cinder later explodes at her hideout and incinerates a White Fang member that got a little too close.

Adam pretends to care. Doesn’t actually.

Ruby and Cinder become shockingly good friends (as far as Ruby is concerned).

Cinder explains the concept of a second semblance, confirming to Ruby that she’s a ten-percenter.

It’s somewhat rare, but it’s common enough that people know how it works and why it unlocks.

Great emotional duress.

She was raised in an orphanage that REALLY sucked.

She awakened both semblances pretty quickly and was snatched up by the authorities as soon as possible to be a huntress.

She’s mostly lying about the details but there is still the base truth.

Ruby tells her that she lost one of her parents too.

Summer just didn’t come home one day, being told she was killed in the line of duty by a lucky grimm.

She’s always thought that there’s more to this story, but doesn’t have the means to follow up just yet.

It’s part of why Ruby wants to be a huntress, to do her best to make sure that some other kid never experiences that kind of loss because of the grimm.

Cinder tells her that that’s not the worst motivation. (she means it more than she thinks)

Since Blake saw Adam at the rally she has become obsessed with analyzing all the data gotten during investigation.

RWY is worried.

Yang talks to her about it, giving the speech about her mother and the problems with obsession.

Blake talks about how dangerous she knows Adam to be. Is vastly terrified of him.

Yang reassures her that the team can handle that punkass.

4 on 1, let him try it. They’ll put the boots to him. Medium style.

Blake reluctantly snaps out of her funk.

Dance comes.

Everyone’s having a good time.

Pyrrha decides to properly forgive Jaune.

They kiss and, after a wacky JNPR argument because funny, so do Ren and Nora.

Insert the cool JNPR dance scene here.

Ruby is happy for her friends but notices some bullshit going on near the comm. tower.

Cinder is infiltrating it wearing something that actually makes it difficult to tell who it is.

Makes a big show of knocking the guards unconscious.

Places real obvious hacking device onto console.

Ruby comes in and shoots at her.

Cinder pops smoke and disappears.

Authorities arrive and (as far as they can tell) disable the hacking device.

Ruby is given a commendation for her actions and her team is taken off probation from earlier.

Upper echelon is pleased that enemy plot was foiled.

Exactly as the bad guys wanted.

Ozpin presses the doubt button.

Teams gets chaperone assignments.

JNPR requested a special Grimm bounty mission.

RWBY gets put on simple observation mission.

JNPR spends time tracking and eventually fighting nuckelavee grimm with Prof. Port.

Ren comes to terms with fighting the grimm that killed his parents.

Y’know, sub-plot stuff to relieve some main plot tension.

RWBY is sent with Dr. Oobleck into ruins to observe and document the growth rate of the non-hostile presence of the local *loud snoring*.

Actually sent near suspected White Fang supply depot with hope that they uncover it and fix problems.

Find it fairly easily after a little bonding moment or two with everyone.

Torchwick and Adam are in charge of train depot. (Torchwick gets the train, Adam gets the depot)

Ruby goes in on her own because she was told not to do things like that.

Ruby gets double-teamed by Roman and Adam. Neo watches like a little shithead.

Ruby fights like a demon but still gets bested.

Adam says that he is now bored and leaves Roman to finish up.

Oobleck and WBY show up.

Roman starts the train, tries to cheese it.

RWBY + Oobleck board the train.

Yang fights Neo.

Weiss fights masked White Fang member (later revealed to be Ilia).

Ruby and Blake fight Torchwick.

Oobleck fights the stormtroopers.

Neo, the crafty, dodgy, dexterity style, sly-bitch, kicks Yang, the brutish and blunt boxer, in the ass.

Raven pops up through a portal.

Neo am-scrays after almost getting her shit pushed in.

Raven says a scant few things to Yang and leaves her a trinket and a map, telling her to follow it when she can before leaving.

Weiss wins her fight.

Blake and Ruby kick Roman’s ass.

Discover train is full of dust explosives to blow up a chunk of Vale and let the grimm through in droves.

Was originally intended to be deployed before explosion but Roman decides ‘fuck it’ and tries to turn it into a kamikaze run at the last minute out of spite.

Oobleck disconnects the explosive cars.

Train still rams hole into central Vale.

Grimm incursion.

RWBY fights as best they can.

Almost get overrun when Teams CFVY, SSSN, and CEMN show up to help.

CEMN only involved because evil plan failed and they want to try and clean up any possible evidence.

Neo (in disguise) tries not to be obvious that she’s still tired from earlier.

Horde battle with large hydra (or something) grimm being final boss of season.

They kill it, of course.

After the battle RWBY thinks that the problem is more or less solved.

Adam is still loose but his plan is foiled and his co-conspirator, Roman, is in prison.

All they have to do is hunt him down.

If he’s going to try something, it’ll be at the tournament. RWBY will have an extra eye open during.

JNPR returns triumphant from their mission and wonders what the hell happened while they were gone.

Cinder is livid that plan-A failed and they lost their best chance to kill Ozpin.

Yeah, their plan is to fuck up Vale and get and chance to kill Ozpin.

Is reassured by the mysterious figure she’s talking to (Salem) that plans can change and still succeed.

Adam is looking through security footage taken from depot.

Sees Blake.

He smiles.

Season two done.

[kingbennyboyyy]

benny’s RWBY rewrite: the white fang

so this is something that’s been on my mind for a while, and i’ve been trying to formulate my thoughts about it. the white fang in RWBY, as it stands now, is a really poorly thought-out approximation of the black panther party, an actual organization that fought for the equal rights and the equal treatment of black people in the united states. the black panther party’s actions have been long pathologized by white society and academia at large, and have been falsely contrasted with the ideals and teachings of MLK. the false dichotomy of violent and non-violent action is reductive at best, and blatantly racist at worst. while there is a whole fuckton to be said about the real-life consequences of these discourses, i’d like to focus on their impact on the writing of RWBY. i’d also like to talk about how i’d change how the white fang looks in order to make things a little less uncomfortable.

content warning for real and fictional racism, antiblackness, violence against marginalized people, and discussions of white supremacy under the cut.

so, the white fang. the RWBY wiki describes the group as “ a Faunus organization in Remnant. Founded following the Faunus Rights Revolution, the White Fang was initially a peaceful activist organization created to improve relations between Humans and Faunus and improve the civil rights of the latter.” more concisely, i would describe the white fang as a faunus rights activist group, whose modes of operation have changed over time. within the story, after the peaceful leader ghira stepped down, the faction as a whole took a notable nose-dive into violence. but why did this happen? why was the white fang written like this?

first of all, all of the following talk comes from the subjective opinion of one black genderqueer writer. i am not the voice of the entirety of my community, and i can bet that there are people who disagree with me. i’m just here to say my piece.

that said, i think that the white fang’s writing grossly misunderstands what oppression looks like to marginalized people. the RWBY writing team obviously wanted to handle racism in some kind of way- they wrote racism into the story. however, it’s incredibly clear that most of the writers don’t really understand how deeply racism runs in given societies. the oppression of the faunus is clearly mirroring the oppression of black people in the united states, and yet there’s little to this oppression other than surface-level discrimitation. ghira’s direction of the white fang doesn’t seem to understand that personal prejudice is a very small aspect of the continued oppression of the faunus. alarmingly, it’s only when “radicals” such as sienna khan and adam taurus take control that actual, structural avenues of racism are acknowledged. this has several issues.

- whether the RWBY writers intended this or not, attributing the acknowledgement of actual systemic issues to violent radicals is inherently a really bad call. the dismantling and destruction of racist structures is the baseline of most avenues of anti-racist thought, but by only assigning these beliefs to people like adam “kill all humans” taurus, you’re telling the audience that only people like adam “i’m gonna kill all my ex’s loved ones b/c she hurt my feelings” taurus think that these things are a reality. make no mistake, institutional racism and structural violence against marginalized people is a thing. by giving these ideas to violent actors, you’re sending a really shitty message. 

- another thing to note is the role of fear in the white fang’s activity. blake is quoted as saying that under adam taurus, people only pretend to respect the faunus because they’re afraid of the white fang. this is also bad. there is an actual line of racist thought that thinks that people who just want equality are a bunch of thugs using intimidation tactics to get special treatment, and by affirming this in-canon, you’re giving credence to these beliefs. in addition, adam’s literal desire to put humans in cages and make them go extinct is also an actual white supremacist talking point. actual fucking white supremacists go on about how the white race is going extinct as a means to manipulate otherwise well-meaning people into committing acts of violence against marginalized people. but RWBY says, “no, the white fang actually wants humans to be wiped off the face of the earth.” i shouldn’t have to tell you how buck fucking wild this is. 

- there’s also the role of violence in activism. the black panther party has long been attributed with senseless and anger-fueled violence against white people, but this assessment of the party is completely false. in truth, the arming of black panthers was a direct response to overpolicing and police violence against black people. the black panther party advocated self-defense, and acted as its own protective force for black americans. they had guns so that they could protect themselves from the cops, who were assaulting and killing them in absurd numbers. if the RWBY writers wanted to draw parallels between the white fang and the black panther party, they could have very easily done so by actually doing their research.

the question becomes, is it at all possible to have members of the white fang as actual villains within the RWBY universe? i’d say that it is possible, but it has to be done very carefully. there’s several things that have to be kept in mind here, and the entire understanding of faunus oppression has be to restructured in order for this to work. i’ll outline what i would change below:

- firstly, there needs to be more evidence of faunus marginalization past the surface level. this could be evident in a phethora of ways, anywhere from the trend of faunus hiding their animal traits being more common (an important thing to note is how accessible passing as a human is to the faunus), to beacon actually having much more bias than humans are aware of. blake highlighting these biases would be extremely helpful in establishing how deeply anti-faunus sentiments run. the only racists being cartoon bullies and shady billionaires rings too closely to the sentiments that white people have about racism. this is also a comparatively minor gripe, but the whole “becoming the monster people think they are” mask thing is just so... dumb. there are legitimate reasons for faunus to hide their identities during protests, and pathologizing this is just such a shitty thing to do.

- next, the white fang as a whole cannot be a terrorist organization in actuality. people can believe that the white fang are a bunch of terrorists, sure, but this can’t be the truth. for example, it would make perfect sense for weiss to think such things. her being the heiress to the schnee dust company, being fed stories about scary faunus with weapons trying to hurt her and her family would make sense. but the stereotypes humans have about faunus activism can’t be true. in addition, there should at the very least be more than one faunus activist party. the fact that there’s only one in the entire continent of remnant is so fucking stupid. you don’t think that some group of people would be dissatisfied and go and do something else?

- adam and sienna cannot be the leaders of the entire white fang. i’m sorry, but it’s just way too fucking easy for racists to say “oh, the entire thing’s just an excuse for (insert minority here) to ransack property and hurt people!” ilia could have been promoted after ghira stepped down. it would be interesting to see how she uses her ability to pass as human to actually make some changes for the people of menagerie, and the power structures that led to its creation. sienna has the potential to be someone disillusioned by strictly pacifist ideals of ghira, but she can act more in accordance to the actual black panther party, advocating for self-defense and knowing one’s rights. the arming and training of faunus, as frightening as it may be to the humans in power, cannot and should not be depicted at the beginnings of terrorism. there’s potential for actual discussion of the effectiveness of pacifism and respectability politics in activism, but all of that was overshadowed by the gross villification and oversimplification of the white fang.

- finally, adam. i think that adam is able to remain mostly the same, with a few adjustments to the environment around him (along with the previously discussed changes). i don’t think that adam should be the only person whose violent oppression is readily visible. the trope of the oppressed person going “mad with vengeance” is just adding fuel to the fire of the belief that those who speak out against their oppression should be put down. as satisfying an arc blake and yang beating the shit out of blake’s abusive ex was, it did just kind of feel like two people being like “yeah! violence wrong! pacifism good!” the unification of faunus SDC workers shouldn’t be attributed to adam. the advocacy for faunus to be able to defend themselves shouldn’t be attributed to adam. adam needs to be labled extremely clearly as an outlier, and even then this is risky. i think that adam’s group should be miniscule in comparison to the other sects of the white fang, and i think it would be interesting for his dealings with roman and company to be based on the distribution of android soldiers. adam shouldn’t come from a good place. yes, he suffered atrociously at the hands of his oppressors, but as a character and as an element of the story, he should be uniquely evil. for the few actual people in his group, he should rule through fear and violence, and defectors should be common. his brand of violence should be unique: rather than actually aiming to make changes to help the faunus, he should be solely focused on revenge. blake’s leaving him makes more sense in this way: rather than her leaving because of the inherent evil of violence, she should leave him because of his twisting the good intentions of the white fang into a self-serving cruelty. this all has to be contrasted against the well-intentioned actions of the actual white fang. the terrorist logo that appears universally on white fang regalia should either be solely adam’s, or his group should have a different name entirely.

so there. there’s my thoughts on the white fang and the stuff that the RWBY writers were trying to do. what should be taken away from this discussion is this: it is possible to write racism into a fantasy story without it being an absolute garbage fire, but it takes work. it takes understanding racism, the fact that it’s not just cruel people, but people complicit in the structures that uphold it. it takes being mindful of actual racist talking points, and making sure that your work doesn’t play into them. finally, if you’re going to make a main antagonist a member of the fucking civil rights movement, please for the love of god make it abundantly clear that they aren’t the villain because they want equal rights.

i’ve read so many stories where this defanged, platitude-ridden form of activism is treated as the only valid form of activism. in reality, it’s the form that people in power are most comfortable with. people approve of the idealized version of MLK because his activism was one that made white people feel good. the MLK we read about in schools is an illusory one. the real man kept a gun on him because he knew that as much as white media would have you believe that people liked him, he knew that people still wanted him dead. 

[gainaxvel3o]

A Miraculous Tale of Rubybug and Cat Blake Chapter 4

Previous / First / Next

The Scorpion and the Frog

"Today, students, we are going to be picking partners."

Everyone groaned. Glynda had expected this reaction from years of experience. She also expected them to get with the program once she laid out the rules.

"It is true that fashion is a competitive industry," She continued. "However no one gets to the top by themselves. Designers and models need to be able to work together in order to get anywhere. I will be picking out the teams for the rest of the semester."

Ruby Rose shook nervously in her seat. She knew that something like this would have to happen. Bringing her hands to together she prayed to get a good partner.

"Let's see here… May Zhedong and Nolan Porfirio…"

Darn, she was looking forward to teaming up with May. She looked so cute with the jacket and beanie! Okay let's see who else was up.

"Coco Adel and Velvet Scarletina, you two worked together very well I'll admit."

Another missed opportunity. Maybe she could ask them tips on fashion? They've done work in the industry maybe she can-

"Ruby Rose and Weiss Schnee."

Oh no. Oh noooo.

Ruby slowly turned her head to the girl next to herself. Weiss stared at her, her eye twitching in annoyance.

"…"

"…"

"…"

"… heh heh, hi?"

Weiss looked away, passing her judgement towards the smaller girl. It was going to be an exhausting assignment it seemed.

_______________________________________________________________________

They've been at this for hours.

Roman's bruised face swelled in pain from the baton that had been used to torment him. The cop, a dark-skinned woman with platinum blonde and brown hair shaved on the sides, had been interrogating him for information. Her name was Harriet if he heard right.

"What do you know about the bug?" She yelled at him. "Where did you get that power?"

Roman chuckled darkly, in spite of the agony he was in now. "What's there to know? She beat my ass. I don't remember what I did. That's what I told you."

"Fuckin hell no one gets powers and then forgets!"

"I did. Now quit whining to me."

"Enough Harriet." A pale man came over. He grabbed Harriet's arm. "We're not going to learn anything about the situation by beating him up. Let's move on to more pressing matters."

Harriet scoffed. "Fine. You got lucky pal."

"Yeah I feel soooo lucky right now…" Roman wiped the blood from his face. "Take me back to my cell so I don't have to deal with you animals."

Harriet roughly picked him up. Vine and herself opened the door and escorted the prisoner back to his cell. They passed by several guards who saluted them.

"The Chief isn't going to like this," Harriet said. "With Mayor Ironwood's campaign in question the city's going crazy. If I could get my hands on that ladybug…"

"Now is not the time for that." Vine said. "When they show up, they'll show up. For now we gather information."

"Yeah…"

As they were enveloped in their conversation, they didn't notice one guard fidgeting nervously. Travis Cornetto pulled out a loaf of bread from his pocket, passing inside of the cell.

"I couldn't get more," Cornetto said. "Sorry."

A pale hand took the bread. He examined it a bit, before immediately devouring it. Tyrian Callows hasn't had food in a while."

"You're such a gracious host…" Tyrian ate the food gladly. "Maybe there's a chance you can be made beautiful yet."

_______________________________________________________________________

"Relax Ruby, this isn't so bad."

"Not so bad! This is terrible!"

Ruby paced back and forth in the bathroom ass Tikki tried to calm her down.

"I'm teaming up with WEISS SCHNEE, the crabbiest girl I ever met even though she's a model and she could be really helpful to me but I made her mad on the first day so my career as a fashion designer might even be over before it began-"

"Ruby."

"-and she's my roommate so what if I show up as Ladybug and she finds out it's me? What if she uses me for some evil nefarious purpose like shining her shoes or taking her places even though one of those bad guys attack-"

"Ruby."

"Oh my goodness this is the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen to me!"

"RUBY!"

She let out a tiny gasp as Tikki got right up to her line of sight.

"Listen Ruby," Tikki said. "You're gonna ace the assignment and be fine. Nothing is going to happen. Now we need to talk about Nooro."

Ruby nodded quickly. "Yeah, yeah you're right. I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do?"

"We need to figure out where he's being located. I can sense darkness sometimes, but not himself. Do you think we have time to patrol today?"

"Sure!" Ruby said. "I can make time. I mean, Weiss might try to go to the teacher to get a different partner so during lunch break I can sneak away. A magnificent plan if I say so myself hohoho!"

Ruby pointed her finger at no particular place as she puffed her chest out. She posed as if she was a sea captain out on a maiden voyage. The image made Tikki sigh a bit in fond exasperation.

"Oh Ruby," Tikki's ears started vibrating. "I hear someone coming! Return!"

Tikki disappeared into Ruby's earrings. Just as she did, the door opened. Blake Belladonna came through the door, looking up in surprise to see someone was already inside.

"Oh it's you Ruby."

At the sound of Blake's voice, Ruby jumped.

"HOLY CRUD IT'S BLAKE!" She nearly screamed. "Sorry. I was uh… thinking? Out loud? With my lips? Human beings have lips I think."

Blake chuckled. "They certainly do. What seems to be the problem?"

"Well today is supposed to be the day we partnered up for the semester." Ruby explained. "I got teamed up with Weiss Schnee!"

"Ooof, I wish you the best of luck with that." Blake then blinked. "Wait she was in your class?"

"Yeah. She missed the first class due to a scheduling slip up." Ruby sighed. "Now what am I gonna dooooo?"

"It might not be so bad. A partner who's also your roommate can be very useful, especially someone like Weiss. She probably has a few fashion tips?"

"But she's so crabby! I want a non-crabby partner…" Ruby then realized. "Why don't you be my partner?"

"Me? We don't attend the same class and… I'm not pretty enough."

"You're very pretty! But you're right, not the same class. Daaaarn."

"Maybe you should to get along?" Blake tried to ignore the blush that was on her face. "You might be able to get something interesting done. If worst comes to worst just ask the teacher to pair you up with someone else."

"Uggghhhh why are you so right Blake?"

"I'm just experienced I think," Blake brushed a few hair strands away. "Sorry Ruby I need to um…"

"Oh oh! I can go!" Ruby laughed. "I need to go find Weiss anyway! Thank you!"

Ruby ran back out of the bathroom. Blake watched her go, letting a smile form on her lips. As she did so Plagg emerged from the ring. His smile was a little bit more mischievous than Blake's.

"Someone called you were pretty~ When's the wedding?"

"Shut up Plagg."

_______________________________________________________________________

Tyrian Callows was not a murderer. He was a serial killer.

Why distinguish the difference? Because a typical murderer is too broad, too plain to describe a being such as himself. To put it simply, Tyrian was beautiful. His hands twitched with powerful uncontrollable desire. He waited to snap the neck out of anyone who would get close to him. He wanted to take knives and stab them into someone's face. He wanted tear open insides and spread them around himself. These are the things that made him feel beautiful.

Tyrian was not insane. Insane would imply Tyrian didn't know what he was doing was wrong. He knew that he was a being of evil and did not care, because in those moments where he butchered and murdered he felt beautiful.

Cornetto was… fine. Another meat puppet alongside other meat puppets. He at least brought the food. They've been starving him for days, so someone keeping him alive is something commendable. He'll still die of course, but Tyrian will make sure he goes out beautifully.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a pretty little purple butterfly floating towards him. Tyrian remembered one time as a kid where he managed to capture a butterfly and slowly sliced off it's wings. He wanted to see what a butterfly looked like without it's wings. Tyrian took the butterfly in his hand.

"Gotcha," Tyrian smiled. "I needed a distraction from this shitty cage."

"Would a distraction really be enough to satisfy your needs, Mr. Callows?"

He got up startled. "Who the fuck are you?! How'd you get in my head?!"

"Allow me to introduce myself. I'm your Monarch, here to fulfill your wish."

"My wish?" He laughed, utterly bewildered. "My only wish is to be beautiful! Someone like you wouldn't understand what I've been searching for."

"Oh but I do. I've seen the way you work. That death, that chaos, those things make you a most magnificent specimen. I wish to see more of it."

"You… you do?" Tyrian said in a small voice. "You understand?"

"Indeed. Such beauty is what I seek as well. However, may propose something to you? Something you may not have considered?"

"Hmmm… go on. You peaked my interest."

"I'm glad I have. You do what you do to find beauty for yourself. But what if you could make the world around you beautiful as well? What if I can give you the power to cave out your desires?

Tyrian's eyes widened at that. Beauty for the world? He had thought such a dream was impossible to fulfill. A foolish desire! But here the voice in his head had offered him a chance to fulfill it?

"You're certainly being tempting," Tyrian bowed. "What's the catch? What do you need me to do?"

"Oh not much. I only require a set of earrings and a ring from a pair of teenagers unworthy of your talents. Other than that… you can bring as much death and destruction as you want. Why keep the world from seeing beauty for what it is?"

"Yes… yes yes YES!"

Tyrian got onto his knees and bowed. He held his head low in gratitude and awe.

"I'll serve as your Huntsman, my Queen, and bring you what you desire! It is my thanks for allowing me to find what I seek!"

"A Huntsman… I like the sound of that… Go my partner. Bring me the miraculous!"

Outside the cell, Cornetto had been hearing Tyrian whisper to himself over the past few minutes. He was disgusted as much as everyone but the crimes Tyrian committed, but he was not a man who wanted to see people suffer. That was why he brought food for the criminal.

"Tyrian please keep quiet the others are trying to-"

The cell door was destroyed right away. A slash from a tail incapacitated Cornetto, dropping his carved body to the ground.

"What the hell!?" A guard yelled. "This shit is happenin' again!"

They tried attacking with batons, but the villain was quick. He used his new pincers to stab their throats with bursted with blood. He raised his head towards the ceiling.

"I have a calling to fulfill, an order to complete!" The newly powered villain screamed across the prison. "I'm Scorpio, one of the Monarch's fine Huntsmen, here to bring beauty to this world!"

Cornetto for his part clutched his chest. He looked at Tyrian weakly, trying to form a single sentence.

"But… why…?"

Tyrian heard the question and grinned maliciously.

"Because I'm beautiful."

_______________________________________________________________________

Okay this was going to be hard.

Ruby had been heading to the table with Yang and her friends (she assumed they were friends, they wouldn't all sit together on the same table if they weren't right?) until she spotted Weiss sitting by herself.

She had the same demeanor that she had in class and the past few days. Indifference. Annoyance. The threat to murder anyone who dared to talk to her. Ruby was reluctant but she figured there was no better time to take Blake's advice. It was here or in their room, where Weiss could shut her off by slamming the door to her part of the dorm.

"Here goes nothing…"

She steeled herself. Ruby walked over to Weiss with the best smile she could muster. She sat her hand on the table, ready to say something hopefully awe inspiring, something that will get Weiss Schnee to finally-

"No."

Ruby blinked. "But I didn't even say anything."

"I knew what you were going ask." Weiss said. "No, I don't want to work with you, I won't work with you, I will not be working with you. An obvious upstart like yourself has no place in a University like this one."

Ruby blinked again. "Oh. Well thanks for making it easy then!"

She started moving away, which made Weiss' eye twitch in annoyance.

"That's it? You just give up immediately?"

"Yeah," Ruby shrugged. "I mean, you don't like me, I think you're a jerk, I'm not gonna sit through a million rounds of you putting me down while we work. Go ahead and get another partner. I don't mind at all."

"Hmph," Weiss crossed her arms. "If you fold like that so easily you won't make it far in the fashion industry."

"And if you act like a jerk then the only people in your fan club will be your butler. That you probably paid for." Ruby stuck her tongue out. "Have a nice day!"

She skipped a few steps away from Weiss, who had been left sputtering at this act of defiance. Internally Ruby was screaming at herself.

‘HolycrapIjustinsultedWeissSchneemycareerisoverbutthatfeltsogoodbutsobadbutsogoodbutsobad-’

"Hey Rubes!" Ah, Yang was waving at her sister. "What's the deal with you and Ice Queen?"

"Oh not much I was partnered up with her and then I may have just insulted her."

"Ooooohhh," Nora bopped Ruby's nose. "Tell us how it went! Were her schnees broken in despair?"

"I think Ruby would end up suspended if she did that," Ren said. "Ruby, you should be covert in your revenge. I have plans I can share."

"Can we not talk about revenge at the table?" Jaune said. "I'm trying to eat my bagels."

Pyrrha offered up a bagel of her own. "Why not have this?"

Jaune took it, looking rather funny as he devoured the bagel. "You're a life saver Pyrrha, an angel among this Earth."

Pyrrha smiled, an action that made everyone on the table skip a beat due to how pure and sweet and wonderful it was. Ruby herself would be entranced by it if it weren't for her earrings suddenly vibrating.

'An alert? Oh not now, I haven't eaten lunch yet Tikki couldn't you wait a minute-?'

The TV interrupted the thought process. Lisa Lavender appeared on the screen to give the news.

"We interrupt this program to bring you a breaking news report! Another super powered being is on the loose in the city, maiming and doing worse to civilians down on the street!

The camera switched to footage on the scene. A shaky, barely medium quality of a scorpion creature attacking people appeared. The camera was shaky

"He is calling out for Ladybug and Chat Noir to find him, the connection between them uncertain. Could they be in league?"

"Now that's bulloney!" Nora slammer fists on the table. "Ladybug wouldn't be in league with any bad guys! Didn't she save everyone from dumb bowler hat guy and his donkey army?!"

'I most certainly did Nora, and I have to go over there quick!' Ruby thought. 'I gotta get outta here!'

"Uh I need to…" She said out loud. "Find materials for my project!"

"Already? You just got here though?" Yang raised an eyebrow. "Don't you have class later?"

Ruby was already making her way to the exit. "I do, but if I hurry up I can make it! Bye!"

The group watched their youngest leave, Yang already feeling sad she left. She felt a hand on her shoulder.

"She'll be fine." Pyrrha said. "I'm sure she knows what she's doing."

"Yeah Yang," Jaune laughed. "I mean, It's not like she's gonna go fight the guy on the tv or something."

_______________________________________________________________________

The quest for beauty was going surprisingly well.

These ugly, dirty people stared at him and ran, terrified in the face of himself. Scorpio was now true beauty. Not that anyone would understand of course. No one except, of course, his Queen. The Monarch offered him a chance to bring true beauty to all. He just needed to get the Miraculous.

"Hey! You brats!" Scorpio yelled. "Show yourselves Ladybug and Chat Noir! I want the Miraculous you got!"

A shadow dropped from a rooftop. Chat Noir narrowed her eyes at the creature before her. His skin was scaly, looking less human and more armor-like. He had a trench coat with a white sleeveless jacket underneath it. Leather belts were strapped to it, along with white pants. A bright red amulet around his neck stuck out like a sore thumb if offset by golden eyes that shimmered with sadistic glee. His tail slithered from side to side.

"Who are you?" Chat Noir asked. "What do you want with Ladybug and I?"

One of them was here. Good. Scorpio grinned.

"The Monarch wants your Miraculous, kitty cat." He said. "As her Huntsman, I came here to take it for her!"

"No thanks," Chat readied her staff. "You'll have to work for it."

The battle thus began swiftly. Tyrian lunged at the cat themes heroine, but she slammed her staff into his head, slamming him head first into concrete. Chat narrowly dodged the tail strike to the face. She kept her distance as pincers bursted fresh from Scorpio's hands.

"I know plenty about work," Scorpio grinned. "I'll get the miraculous and then carve you up into something truly beautiful!"

As the pincers came close to her face, Chat used the staff to block them. Scorpio was pushing her to the defensive, forcing Chat Noir to step back bit by bit.

'Think Blake, think!' Blake thought to herself frantically. 'I need to keep him busy until Ladybug gets here.'

Where was Ladybug? Blake really wished she had asked for her phone number or something. Only Ladybug had the power to de-grimmify this… Huntsman he called himself? The whole business is getting more insane the further Blake delved into it.

"What's the matter kitty cat?" Scorpio called out again. "Need a pound of tuna?"

"Sounds delicious but no." Chat said. "I'm in the mood for some tail though."

She swiped the staff towards his left leg, knocking Scorpio off balance. At another swing from his tail Chat jumped above the man, avoiding it slamming the staff against his stomach. Chat kept the staff ready as Scorpio clutched his stomach.

"Ugh, not bad not bad." He said. "I've never won a fair fight to be honest. Maybe that's why-"

He jumped away from Chat, flipping around to catch a civilian in his arm.

"-I like pull a fast one!"

"H-help!" The woman's neck was held tight, cutting off her words. "Hck-!"

Chat Noir found herself in a tough bind. Scorpio was not someone to be trusted. If he had his way, he would kill that woman and herself as soon as the miraculous was in his hands. But could she risk this woman's life for a gamble?

"Come on! Give me the ring, or whatever you use to make that trashy suit!"

Blake gritted her teeth. She moved her fingers towards the ring-

"Hold on Chat Noir!"

Ladybugs are often said to be creatures of luck. It seems it held true to the costumed heroine, who caught the villain's hand with her yoyo, pulling him away from the civilian. Ladybug landed next to Chat Noir, standing up to retrieve the yoyo.

"Hope I'm not too late Chat."

"Could have been a little faster honestly." Chat said. "Otherwise thanks for coming."

Due to the distraction the civilian ran away from the scene. As soon as Scorpio recovered and saw the two heroes, he knew he was in trouble. One against one was one thing, but two against one is a bit much for his brain to compute.

Yet he knew couldn't disappoint his Queen. She had given his life purpose! There had to be something, ANYTHING he could do.

"Seems you got me cornered." Scorpio said. "I'll take a page from the cat's example, I'll make you work to get to me!"

He made a jump, surprising the heroes by how high he could get. He made it to a rooftop and ran.

"We need to go after him!" Ladybug prepared her yoyo. "He might be up to something, so don't split from me okay?"

Chat Noir snorted, as if offended by that remark.

"Like I was going to leave you out my sight, my lady."

_______________________________________________________________________

Weiss Schnee stomped the hallways with purpose.

That annoying upstart… not only were they roommates, not only were they attending the same class, but she had to nerve to insult her like that? It was madness. She had to get another partner immediately. One who knew better.

She made a turn to the left of the hallyway, in the direction of Ms. Goodwitch's classroom. That teacher better have an explanation for her pick-

"Huh? Miss Schnee!"

Weiss had almost bumped into the Headmaster. Salem Ozpin recovered, and sighed upon noticing who bumped into her.

"My apologies. How is your day going?" Salem asked warmly. "Is Beacon to your liking?"

"It's… fine." Weiss said. "I'm trying to exchange partners."

"Oh I won't be keeping you. Who is your partner?"

"Ruby Rose," Her name came out so bitterly on Weiss lips it's like she's choking on poisoned air. "That upstart is an insult to this school. She comes here thinking she knows better than me, a model in the industry? I wouldn't be surprised if she got here through connections!"

"Oh I see…" Salem said. "Miss Schnee, do you know who recruited Ruby into this school?"

"A dope I presume."

"Well admittedly I can be that sometimes, but I think my decisions have turned out for the best."

Weiss blinked.

"That girl is quite remarkable. She was the class president for three years, arranged banquets and parties while designing truly impressive fashion work. Ruby had posted some of the work on her blog, which was how I found her out."

Weiss blinked again.

"If you give her a chance, Weiss, I think she can be really useful for your career as well as her own." Salem's smiled never left her lips. Not once. "Was there anything you needed?"

"… no ma'am." Weiss said quietly. "I think I just remembered something."

"Oh I know what that's like. Just one more thing before you go though…" Salem crossed her arms. "You are not the only one who works hard Miss Schnee. This is a privileged academy and few enter here without a skill of some sort. You cannot operate alone as you are now. My husband believed in strength in numbers when he was around. I think the same way. Do you understand?"

At that, Weiss nodded. "I will take your words into consideration, Miss Ozpin."

She walked off. It was less of a stomp and more of a gentle click clack of the heels that made noise on the hallways. Salem's smile became slightly more mischievous as she saw her student go.

"I bet you're proud, Ozma. She and Miss Rose certainly have potential."

_______________________________________________________________________

Scorpio was fast. But Ladybug and Chat Noir were pretty fast too.

"He's entering the warehouse!" Ladybug threw the yoyo at a nearby pole. "He might try to isolate us while we're inside."

"Right. Let's stick together."

With that exchange, Chat wrapped her arms around Ladybug's waist (which didn't make the red and black hero blush in any way, no siree). Once secured, Ladybug swung them both across the street, smashing through the windows. They landed squarely on the floor.

"Should we have broken through the window like that?" Chat asked. "We're probably going to get fined for that you know."

"Eh, I can fix it with a Miraculous Cure anyway." Ladybug said without worry. "Not like either of us have superhero insurance. Or would it be miraculous insurance?"

"Beats me." Chat just shrugged. "What do you think we should do?"

The two inspected the area. Several boxes were stacked together, a forklift still having boxes on the lift implying that work had been done here recently. No sign of Scorpio… yet.

"Stick together. Did he give any hint about where his possessed item could be?"

"Hmmm…" Chat tapped on her staff thinking about it. "No hint I'm afraid but I think his amulet could be it. We should focus on disabling his tail."

A pair of eyes peered from behind a box, gazing down at the unsuspecting duo.

"Good idea. If we can take that down, we'll be able to search for his object more efficiently. First we gotta find him."

The duo jumped when they heard a sinister laugh echo across the room. They kept their guard up.

"How cute. Just taking out my tail and you think you're enough to beat me? Not in a million years will you be able to take out a prized Huntsman of the Monarch!"

"Monarch huh?" Ladybug seized the moment. "Is that who you're working for?"

"Yes… She is a Queen among queens, a goddess to be revered! She understands the true beauty in death and chaos, she completes me! With the miraculous her ultimate plan will be fulfilled! HehehehehehehehehBWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

That laugh made both heroes shiver in fear. Ruby had heard it on the news, but it was here in this moment she remembered she wasn't dealing with a regular villain but a serial killer who would do whatever it takes to kill her.

'I need to trick him somehow.' She thought. 'How did Yang always trick guys into giving away whether they wanna get into her pants or not? Oh wait, it's reverse psychology!'

"If she picked you the Monarch's clearly off her rocker." Ladybug said out loud. "I mean, Scorpion guy? How uncreative can you get?"

"Tch, I see what you're doing but it's not going to-"

"No she has a point." Chat continued. "For someone all about brining beauty to the world you are simply ugly and disgusting. You never belonged in a world like this one."

Scorpio's eye twitched. "I am beautiful."

"No. Jewels are beautiful. Cats are beautiful. Butterflies are beautiful. You though? You're an ugly scorpion guy who can only make ugly things."

"Do not listen to them Tyrian," Monarch whispered into his ear. "They are trying to trick you!"

"OH YEAH?!" Scorpio- no, Tyrian, yelled. "JUST YOU WAIT, I'LL CARVE YOUR BODIES INTO THE MOST MAGNIFICENT SCULPTURES THE WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN!"

His purpose forgotten, the villain lunged at the opposing duo. His tail struck nothing except the ground where they originally stood.

"Ladybug, we have a chance now!"

Tyrian felt a yoyo wrap around his tail. He realized quickly what they were trying to do.

"No," He panicked. "Not the tail not the tail not the- AAAAAAHHHHH!"

Tyrian missed it as soon Ladybug decapitated the stinger. She. Cut. Off. His. Stinger. The beauty he possessed had been ravaged into disgusting ugliness.

"We got him Chat!" She yelled. "Search him!"

No. Scorpio could not allow this to stand. Tyrian will not allow this to STAND.

"YOU'RE DEAD MEAT NOW KIDS!"

The amulet glowed red. With speed the heroes had no time to react to, Scorpio slashed at their abdomens, then elbowed them to the floor. He turned around, grinning at seeing Ladybug in pain. The girl took her away his stinger, now he'll take her life.

Or would if his pincer hadn't been blocked by the staff.

"You seem to be forgetting it's two against one." Chat said, panting hard. "Come and get me."

Ladybug swiped at his leg. He pulled it back to avoid the attack, but Ladybug kicked his stomach in the mean time.

"Come and get us." Ladybug said. "Grab the amulet, Chat!"

Scorpio swung his tail around, trying to hit them with anything even without the stinger. However, Ladybug and Chat were quicker. Ladybug threw the yoyo at the villain's chin as Chat readied her hand.

"Go for it Chat!"

"No… no please!" Tyrian pleaded. "I want to be beautiful!"

"CATACLYSM!"

As soon as the words were spoken, the amulet was destroyed. A glowing violet butterfly flew out from the broken object.

"Right then!" Ladybug captured the butterfly in the yoyo. "Miraculous…"

"NO PLEASE STOP!"

"… LADYBUG!"

A red glow came and went, an army of ladybugs swarming the area. The damage from Scorpio's pincers were undone, as were the windows repaired from the heroes' breaking into the place. Tyrian no longer had the scaly body he possessed before. Instead, he wore his prison uniform, his dark hair and desperate face visible for all to see.

"No… no I disappointed my Queen…" Tyrian dug his nail into his head. "I failed, I failed, I didn't bring beauty like I was supposed to!"

Ladybug and Chat Noir could only stare at each other awkwardly as the now de-powered serial killer sobbed pathetically onto the floor. In spite of everything he had done and tried to do Ruby couldn't help but feel just a little sorry for him. Only a little. Pity was not the same thing sympathy.

The doors opened. A pair of cops stormed in with guns pointed at the heroes

"FREEZE RIGHT THERE!" Harriet yelled at them. "You're under arrest for vigilantism!"

"You have the right to remain silent." A female officer with short brown haired and dark skin said. "Resist and we won't hesitate."

Ladybug and Chat held their arms in the air. Ruby was confused by this turn of events.

"Um, we just stopped the bad guy?" She said. "We even fixed the damage, so what the problem?"

"My lady, I don't think they'll take anything but our surrender into account." Chat said. "We need to make a break for it as soon as possible."

"Try anything and we'll fire!"

Tyrian didn't hear the police's words. How could he? The butterfly's beautiful voice had disappeared. The quest for beauty was in vain. Now… he stared at Ladybug, who had his back turned to him.

He will have revenge.

"I really think you're being a bit unreasonable officer," Ladybug continued. "Perhaps if you lower your weapons we might be able to have a conversation-"

Suddenly a pair of arms surrounded her neck and stomach. Tyrian snarled.

"I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU FOR RUINING EVERYTHING! I WON'T EVEN TURN YOU INTO A WORK OF ART, I'LL JUST USE YOUR SKIN TO WIPE MY ASS WITH IT!"

Chat looked on in horror as Ladybug struggled against his grip. If it weren't for the police holding guns at them she would do something. There was one trick, but Chat wasn't sure she was fast enough to try it. She reached into her pockets.

"L-let go of me!"

"YOU TOOK AWAY MY POWER! I WAS SCORPIO! I AM SCOR-"

His words were cut off. Whatever they would be, Ladybug only heard a loud sound and felt the arms around her slip away. She turned to watch Tyrian fall to the ground. A bullet wound on the forehead bled across the face. There was no peace in his eyes. Only shock.

"If you move then you're gonna end up like him," Harriet pointed the gun at them again. "Get down!"

"NINJA VANISH!"

Smoke bursted from the shell Chat threw onto the ground. It was thick and instantaneous. One… two… three… Harriet fired the gun into the smoke but she didn't hear anyone get hit.

"Damn it!" She looked around. "Find them!"

As they searched the warehouse from top to bottom, Chat helped Ladybug up to the rooftop. Ladybug let out a sigh of a relief.

"That was a pretty cool trick you did Chat. You really pulled us out of a jam."

"I didn't know if it was going to work. Glad it did." Chat put a hand on her partner's shoulder. "You alright?"

"Y-" Ladybug caught herself. Her eyes grew wide. "No. No I'm not okay. They shot a man in the head! I know he was a killer but- but what the hell?!"

She felt arms wrap around her. Ladybug hugged back.

"It was a difficult situation, my lady." Chat said. "It was shocking, wrong even. If had to be his death or yours I'm not shameful over it but it goes to show we need to be more careful from now on."

"I… I should have been better. I could have sensed him or-"

"No. That man jumped you. It was unexpected. You are not at fault for what he did, just as you are not at fault for what the officer."

"But-"

"But nothing. We got away and prevented another disaster. There is nothing more to it than that."

Ladybug held onto Chat tighter. Five minutes were spent like that, trying to make sense out of the freak accident they fell into. Blake had been afraid about what would happen during an encounter with the police. She thanked her stars that neither herself nor Ladybug got out of there without much of a scuffle.

A moment later, Ladybug let go of Chat. "Thank you Chat. Glad to have you as a partner I can count on."

"Heh, same for you my lady." Chat smiled. "See you around?"

"Sure!" Ladybug returned the smile. "Thanks again Chat!"

_______________________________________________________________________

As it turned out, Ruby had been pretty lucky to avoid her next class. Judging from what she had heard, Professor Port's lectures had only gotten more rambly and pointless.

She returned to her room and shut the door quickly. The image of the man's head exploded from a bullet was still burned into her memory. Ruby breathed in and out repeatedly. She needed time away from people.

"Ruby Rose."

That was a person. That was definitely a person Ruby just heard. Weiss Schnee was sitting on a chair in Ruby's workspace. She had been inspecting a paper detailing a new design idea.

"Weiss, please not right now." Ruby waved her away. "I'm tired and anxious and the last thing I need is you coming in and putting me down again-"

"If you would let me talk you might hear something different." Weiss said. "I am willing to be your partner."

Ruby blinked. "What?"

"I'll help you Ruby Rose." She got up. "I realized that I was being unfair in my assessment of you. Clearly you have some skill in order to get into this University. This design?" She handed the paper to Ruby. "It's not a bad one. With sharpening it could be brilliant."

"… thanks?" Ruby was definitely surprised to hear that. "So what? You want us to remain partners?"

"Yes. I will be critical, but if we can put aside our differences we just might be able to get through the semester. I will try to give useful advice, and you have control over how the final project will turn out."

Weiss stretched our her hand. "Deal?"

Ruby looked at the hand. Then back to Weiss. Then back again. She took the hand and shook it.

"Huh. I guess you're not all bad Weiss."

"Shut up dolt."

[remnantoforario]

RWBY Chapter 16

Since the next chapter is (supposedly) coming out tomorrow, what better time to look at the current chapter...a month after its initial release. Better late than never. Here we go.  

It starts with the White Fang about to do whatever it is they were going to do to Ruby, when her team arrives at the nick of time. I do like how Yang is the one to have the big entry line. Gotta protect little sis. 

One thing I don’t think I’ve mentioned before is how menacing the WF looks in this manga. Yeah they are mostly still glorified jobbers, but at least they LOOK intimidating. As opposed to the series where every member but Banesaw looks like they recruited from the local liberal arts college. Roman is also looking nice here. I’m going to miss this portrayal of him when he’s gone (That is if this manga goes through to Volume 3).

So Roman reveals his grand plan, which is the same as in the series. He’s going to take the train into Vale and cause general havoc and destruction. Obviously RWBY isn’t ok with this, but it does lead to one of the best moments in the chapter. 

It’s obvious that Torchwick is playing them, but he brings up an interesting point that is never really touched on in the show. Are Hunters really THAT good for the world? They are supposed to be helping people and safeguarding the planet from Grimm, yet they all around ignore the plight of the Faunus. 

The way the manga describes it is kind of flimsy, but it’s not like we haven’t seen corrupt Huntsmen or those who act outside the law in the the series proper: Dee and Dudley (though on a very minor scale) extorting train passengers, Raven, that chick from the Team CFVY novel, Lionheart, The Happy Huntresses are essentially vigilantes, and Ironwood (At least that’s what the writers want you to believe). Hunters are pretty much glorified mercenaries.

Not every hunter is good and out to save mankind like Team RWBY. Some just do it for the money, others are easy to extort and blackmail, and some are just plain bad people. From a certain point of view, the WF are essentially the Faunus version of the Hunter Organization. A group of individuals out to protect their own kind from those that would harm them, namely humans. 

Like I said, the manga doesn’t really portray it as THAT deep, but it would an interesting thing to explore down the line. 

I also like RWBY’s various reactions to this declaration: Yang is shocked, Weiss is stern, Blake is apprehensive, and Ruby is unsure. It fits with each of them. Yang is still wrapping her head around the idea of people being evil as Torchwick, Weiss has already made her mind up about the WF but still has doubts after what happened with Blake, Blake can’t look because she used to believe the same things the WF did (and still might), and Ruby is stuck somewhere in the middle. 

Also, points to Torchwick’s shit eating grin. 

This leads to the BEST moment in the chapter and possibly the manga so far. 

 In a fit of anger, Ruby attacks Torchwick and says this:

Look at that! Honest to God emotion and character development. We had to wait until the second half to V3 to see this in the show. Yes, in the grand scheme it’s typical shonen protag stuff, but it’s a breath of fresh air in RWBY whose main character was a wasteland of personality until V4. 

From the beginning of this adaptation Ruby has been shown as eager to help, but at the same time unsure of herself. She wants to do her best, but there are a lot of obstacles in her way, most of them her own insecurities due to her young age and overall experience as a fighter. This is a step in the right direction to her becoming a better Huntress and leader. She doesn’t know much about the morality of her actions, or even if what she’s trying to do is right in the grand scheme of things, but that doesn’t matter. In the end, people are getting hurt and she has the power to stop it. That’s what makes her a hero. 

Now we FINALLY get to the MVP of this chapter:

Torchwick unleashes his horde of Atlesian Paladins (as usual Atlas security is lacking) when Oobleck and Zwei arrive to save the day. Even though he’s only been here for about two chapters, I already like Oobleck in the manga way more than I do in the show. 

He had a couple cool moments in the series, but other than that he’s mostly used for his “I drink too much coffee” quirk more than anything else. Here he is still eccentric, but also comes off as a much more serious teacher when needed. He looks like someone you would not want to fuck with. Which should be the norm in a school training the future protectors of the world. 

Also, Zwei is still best doggo. 

Check out that glare. Could make your blood run cold.

Nice end page, but that’s nothing new for this series. 

This is definitely one of the best chapters in the series, imo. It wasn’t perfect (the girls just standing around while Torchwick explains his master plan didn’t really make much sense to me), but it gave us plenty to chew on as we go into (what I assume) is the finale of V2.

Ruby was easily the highlight of the chapter, which is a good thing because it makes her feel important. She’s not just window dressing she IS the team leader, this is HER story. She should get a majority of the focus. 

That being said, I wonder how Kinami will handle the train fights. Will Weiss still fight Banesaw? Will Yang and Neo still fight? Will Raven show up? Blake didn’t really do much here, will she still get her one on one fight with Torchwick? Guess we won’t find out until tomorrow, but I’m kind of excited to see what happens.  

[prokitty101]

002 Iceberg because why not uwu

Hohooo! My number 2 RWBY OTP! Alright, strap in boys and girls, mama gonna tell you why I love this ship.

When I started shipping them/My thoughts/What makes me happy about them: (I’ve clumped these bullet points together to make it easier and sound less repetitive) I’m gonna be honest with ya’ll. I couldn’t stand Neptune the first time around, because he came off as another “The cooler Daniel” meme. However, what truly sold me to the ship was Weiss’s feelings towards Neptune. 

She is known as the Ice Queen amongst her companions (And Roman lol) and it is expected of her to act like that from time to time. Neptune’s appearance was the beginning of the trope subversion. She doesn’t just harrumph at Neptune because he slightly did a better job at flirting than Jaune, no, she downright falls for him, HARD. And that is NOT a bad thing for her character. 

I am all for character subversions because it adds another palette dynamic to their personality. Yes yes, we see her tone her tsundereness down a notch towards Ruby earlier, but that’s different. It was so damn refreshing to see Weiss openly express her attraction to Neptune; someone who didn’t utter anything about her background being an Heiress to the Schnee Dust Company during their initial meeting. He saw her for her, not her money or title. (like Henry Marigold did.) 

I enjoyed watching the build-up between Weiss and Neptune. It’s small but their mutual attraction had always been around. It was natural and (free to tell me if I’m wrong) Neptune was the first person she met who was actually nice to her. Granted he also didn’t say anything to piss her off.

Weiss crushing on Neptune is great because it is one of the very few things she has complete control over without her family’s interference, especially father. It is something Weiss wants and can do, not what her daddy told her to do. Her mustering up the courage to ask Neptune out was so freaking rewarding to me. Weiss is incredibly sweet and cute, and it warms my heart knowing there was that special someone she could just completely gush over. 

After watching RWBY the second time around, Neptune’s character grew more and more to the point he is my #1 favourite character now. He’s balsy, a tease, flirtatious and get’s straight to the point with his words, but he’s also hilariously unaware of how stupid he sounds sometimes. I LOVE dumbasses like that. Although, Neptune is quite similar to Weiss in regards of having to mask his true self for arguably the entertainment of others. Weiss is known as the Ice Queen so she begrudgingly sticks with it. Neptune is the cool dude and he keeps it up.

You can probably argue I’m giving the ship too much credit or thinking to deep into it and you’re probably right. This is not me saying there were some stupid “coding” or subtleties you need to dive in and search for, it’s just me having this thought about Iceberg makes me really happy that it could’ve been more. (If that makes sense.)

What makes me sad about them: The refusal to develop the ship and Neptune as a whole. It really cuts me deep because there is clear potential in Neptune to be a valuable secondary member of the RWBY gang. Like how Sun is to Blake, Neptune could’ve been that to Weiss. BUT NO. It feels like the backlash Neptune had gotten after V2 - 3 stunted the idea of making the ship work.

I’ve been told there were a lot of Neptune/SSSN scenes cut out for team CFVY and that saddens me. Even the Neptune & Sun vs Pyrrha & Nora fight was cut. Apparently, there was going to be a part in the fight where Neptune had to take off his jacket and reveal his inflatable armbands, then Weiss would go into a laughing fit. COME ON THAT WOULD’VE BEEN SO FUNNY AND CUTE.

Also, people saying Neptune didn’t care for Weiss, especially because he was teasing Team NDGO. C’mon man, the dude was clearly joking. Y'all saw how the crowd reacted when team SSSN entered the grounds. What would’ve been damn disrespectful if Neptune had continuously teased the girls throughout the match, spouting a lot of sexist comments. Despite his obvious distraction during the match, he does take his fights seriously.

Yes, Weiss’s reaction was slightly justified but it’s just the typical “I wanna beat my crush’s his ass because he’s stupid and useless” gag in anime. He’s basically a blend of Yuu Kashima and Mikoto Mikoshiba from Nozaki-kun.

Then there’s the whole Dance conversation with Jaune and Neptune. Some of y’all are so quick to assume Neptune was objectifying Weiss with the “She’s all yours.” line while conveniently ignoring “I don’t want to get in your way.” line that immediately followed up. Look, he knows Jaune likes Weiss too and was willing to back out believing it was the right thing to do, but Jaune is the one encouraging Neptune to keep going after his blunder, understanding how much Neptune indeed likes Weiss. Brofist.

Neptune reappearing in V6 and contributing nothing again got on my nerves. That was a great moment for the writers to put in a small moment between him and Weiss after the Beacon incident, BUT NO. The fuckers only remembered he’s Sun’s friend. Seriously what the hell man. Are they trying to bury the fact the ship happened in the first place? Mean.

And to make things worse, you make him talk to Ilia? For gods sake WHY.

Another is saying Weiss is better off with Sun or Jaune because Neptune doesn’t deserve her. If that ain't the definition of objectification then I don’t know what is. Also, that weird reasoning of Weiss isn’t interested anymore because she had a gay awakening IS SUCH A DAMN REAAACH LMAO BITCH WHEREEE?

Iceberg is truly underrated.

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: You’ll be surprised to hear I don’t read a lot of Iceberg fanfiction. Just not in the mood right now. But I do hate the idea of fanfic writers amping up Neptune’s personality to make him seem like a complete douchebag. Yo, that title belongs to Henry Marigold. Quit mixing the two up, please.

Things I look in a fanfic: NEPTUNE AND WEISS BEING HAPPY WITH EACH OTHER, PLEASE. Or Weiss being a cute tsundere to Neptune. Just cute things!

My wishlist: Oh boy do I have whole buncha posts about that already.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: Okay, this is a little tricky. I don’t like Whiteknight BUT I can’t ignore there was some potential between them. Especially after the abomination that is volume 5. Weiss and Jaune could’ve easily had a meaningful conversation about her injury and how he saved her. It’s never brought up again and it baffles me.

As for Neptune? I don’t know. Seamonkeys is my top OTP of all time but holy fuck am I against it becoming a thing. So maybe like during the Vacuo collaboration of SSSN and CFVY, Velvet genuinely stars crushing on Nep and he is adorably oblivious to it.

My happily ever after for them: Ahhh you know what I didn’t really get that far lol, get back to me on that.

[longroadstonowhere]

yeah, okay, so what if rwby was still rwby but ruby’s partner was blake and weiss’s partner was yang

(this is ridiculously long and also really just barely touches on what i’ve been thinking about, but it’s been sitting in my drafts without being touched for at least a few days now so i might as well publish now)

obviously everything up to initiation is the same, but when we get into the forest, blake ends up closer to ruby than yang, so she decides to follow the girl whose optimism seems more motivated by grief than naivety, but she’s not able to sneak up on ruby at the end of a fight - instead, a grimm forces her out of hiding and she has to fight alongside ruby for a few monsters

they meet eyes and ruby waffles between rambling and telling herself to shut up, which prompts blake to laugh a little and tell her to relax, she doesn’t bite before walking off all cool-like - ruby just sorta sighs because she feels like she’s already messed up

meanwhile, weiss is facing off against her own group of grimm, who she’s actually doing pretty okay against, only to have her perfect form set off course by a grimm thrown through the woods by yang, who apologizes but calls her princess or ice queen or what have you in the process, which gets weiss mad but the middle of a grimm fight is not the time to argue with someone else so she just blows way too much dust to freeze the remaining enemies

yang’s kinda impressed, but in a ‘i didn’t think you could actually fight’ sorta way, which just pisses weiss off more, so she tries to leave yang behind, only for yang to mention she’s going the wrong way, and they get into a fight about it that gets interrupted by jaune’s scream (because yeah, all the jnpr stuff would still go like normal)

blake and ruby make their way to the temple no problem, but also no talking - ruby tries to start a few conversations but they’re all shallow enough for blake to give single word responses (maybe a short sentence here or there), so when they get to the temple ruby zips ahead excitedly to grab an artifact, only to get beaned by jaune as he falls from the sky

weiss and yang end up meeting pyrrha getting hunted by the death stalker and they try to help her take it out, but their styles keep getting in each other’s way and all three of them just run a fighting retreat in the direction pyrrha saw jaune fly

everyone meets up at the temple, where they’re able to temporarily halt the death stalker long enough for everyone who didn’t have one yet to get an artifact, but weiss and yang are still pissed off at each other and they attract the nevermore

ruby kicks into leader mode, directing jnpr to handle the death stalker while rwby takes down the nevermore, a fight which basically goes the same as canon probably, except i might would have blake give a shocked look at how capable ruby is under pressure, which yang would see and just be like ‘hey, if you’re her partner, you better make sure you appreciate her skills’

anyway, team creation ceremony happens, ruby is named leader, they go through their first day of classes, and weiss is still pissed at how unleaderly she sees ruby being, but instead of complaining to a teacher about it, yang pulls her aside for a sparring session

they have a fight-talk about giving people chances, weiss complains that ruby’s still a child, yang reveals summer’s death and says she’s happy ruby can still be so child-like because everything in the world says she shouldn’t be, she wins the sparring session against weiss and is like ‘don’t think everyone else has had an easy life just because you have’, to which weiss is like ‘that is not true but i understand the point you’re making, i’ll try to be nicer’

meanwhile after her chat with ozpin ruby goes to the library to try and cram knowledge into her brain to be a better leader, where she finds blake, who assumes ruby’s there to find some comics or novels or whatever, but ruby reveals her plan and asks for blake’s help

blake is actually surprised by this request, but she asks what kind of leader ruby wants to be, when ruby’s confused she explains ‘do you want to be someone fearless and strong, who’s followed by those with the utmost faith in your infallibility? do you want to be the wisest, followed because your words can move even stone? or-’

and ruby just says ‘i want to be the kind of leader you can trust to have your back no matter what’, which blake didn’t actually expect to hear because she still thinks ruby would only have immature concepts of leadership, but she rallies herself and says ‘you’re well on your way, then’

i think weiss and ruby still have their nighttime reconciliation as well, just maybe a little different based on the circumstances leading up to it

all the jaune stuff is basically the same, nothing interesting to change there

and you know, i think blake’s identity reveal mostly goes the same as well - pretty much the only difference i can imagine is when penny’s asking about blake, ruby mentions she’s her partner as well as her friend, and maybe blake’s dialogue with sun changes a bit as well

the fight against roman goes as before, but after the fight you get more of a scene between ruby and blake where blake tries to start explaining but ruby just hugs her and is like i don’t care about any of that you are my partner so i am ride or die for you and i’m so glad you’re safe, which blake takes a second to like compute being hugged? but then she accepts it, and that’s when weiss shows up and they get their moment of reconciliation

i think in second season, the only thing i’d really change is burning the candle (as much as it pains me to change it because it’s such a good episode as is)

so while weiss and yang are focusing on the dance, ruby sits by worrying about blake, yang offers to try and talk some sense into her but ruby says ‘she’s my partner, i’ll take care of it’

so instead of the laser pointer bit, ruby just puppy dog eyes blake into a private conversation, and i think we get more of how ruby felt after her mom died - ‘yang thinks i was too young to remember or understand, but i remember dad shutting down for a long time, yang having to take care of me, qrow poking his head in but he never stayed for long’, moral of the story is sometimes people leave your life long before you expect it so do your best to enjoy the time you have? something like that

that hits blake hard because she’s the one who’s done the leaving thus far, she tries to hold onto the outrage but ruby just holds onto her hands and says please, and blake gives in

so yeah, the rest of second season goes as canon, the campfire conversation might have some minor differences but the heart of it is the same - big thing is raven still saves yang, but i don’t think we’d have a conversation with yang before this time where she reveals that raven was her birth mom, so it’s more of a mystery who she is

so we swing into the third season, which again i think would stay mostly the same - like if it was getting animated the fights might be different because the partners are different and so their strategies might change, but the big events still happen as they did in canon mostly

when winter arrives, i think yang might be with weiss instead of ruby because, you know, partners, and besides weren’t they going to talk about their second round strategy.... weiss where are you going

so when qrow and winter’s fight gets stopped, yang greets qrow happily but mentions ‘i have to talk to you when you’re done’, which like he doesn’t understand but oz is still waiting for him so he goes ‘okay firecracker’, weiss rolls up like ‘he explains so much about you two’ and yang is just all ‘you’re just mad cuz he was wiping the floor with your sister’, and they bicker happily

so while ruby and yang are hanging out with qrow playing video games, yang convinces ruby to leave for a second (grab snacks?) and she mentions ‘i think i saw my mom’, so now we get qrow and yang talking about raven (which yang still hasn’t actually told ruby about, so she thinks ruby doesn’t know, whereas qrow suspects she’s aware but isn’t sure and it’s not something ruby needs to know really? there’s something there in that regard at least) (ruby totally knows, she found the same photo yang did and realized just how similar raven and yang look, and she’d picked up on a lot of half-sentences the others had all been using around her, but she didn’t want to pry)

so things continue apace, yang has her fight against mercury that gets sabotaged by emerald, and afterwards blake still says ‘i want to believe you’, but it doesn’t hurt yang as much as canon because this is ruby’s partner, not hers, weiss has her back one thousand percent so yang is more confused than anything else, blake still gets yang to swear to her face what she saw, but before she accepts it she gives ruby a quick glance because blake trusts ruby’s judgment more than her own at this point probably

so then we have the fall of beacon, and i think everything still goes as canon - ruby goes after pyrrha on the roof, yang goes after blake in the cafeteria, but this is more a factor of who is where when locations get reported, because yang hears from weiss that blake disappeared into the school grounds before ruby makes it off the ship, so she tasks weiss with protecting her sister while she collects their lost teammate

so yang loses her arm for her sister’s partner, and ruby’s ascent is aided by a teammate, and she wakes up at home and learns about silver eyes

so here’s where the fun part starts happening - i don’t know if blake would run to menagerie at this point

i think she would feel guilty about causing yang’s injury (because of course she would still blame herself for that), but she would also feel guilty about not having ruby’s back when she needed it, and i don’t know if she could have left while ruby was still comatose

so i think, in this universe, blake secretly follows the family to patch, and the night after ruby wakes up, she sneaks into ruby’s room to make sure she’s okay, she thinks ruby is asleep so she just whispers an apology and turns to leave but ruby stops her, they have a long chat going back and forth about how much of what happened is blake’s fault and how much power they have over the world (blake thinks very little positive power, ruby thinks just enough), ruby ekes a promise out of blake that she’ll stay in touch before blake escapes, now determined to go home and rest

or maybe she wouldn’t - maybe ruby would be able to guilt her into staying, or at least into coming with her when she decides to leave for mistral; i’m really intrigued by the long break between the fall of beacon and the beginning of rnjr’s journey in canon, and it’d be interesting to examine that time period in closer detail

(side note, i just realized rnjr leaves patch in winter and we see them in mistral in spring - is the entire winter season spent in crossing the sanus continent? how have i never thought about this time period before? anyway)

the only other strong thought i have about this is that yang’s attitude toward blake would be way more simplistically antagonistic i think - she would be more likely to blame blake for adam being there in the first place (or at least, she would entertain the thought, as opposed to canon yang who couldn’t even imagine blaming blake for adam’s actions i think), but what would she feel about weiss being kidnapped? i’m not sure, honestly

okay, this is long enough for now i think - we’ll see if i have more specific post volume three thoughts later

[mystech-master]

RWBY Shadows

To go with my BBTAG stuff, I wanted to think of what kinds of Shadows the RWBY characters could get. I will not be thinking of Personas though because that also depends on other factors, and also some characters might continue to reject their Shadow and thus not get Personas, like Mitsuo did.

I’m taking the characters from their Vol 2-3 timeline as shown in BBTAG

Blake Belladonna

Seems appropriate to start this off with the girl who’s theme is called “From Shadows”

There are two things I have in mind for Blake, but one of them is kind of solved by Vol 2′s ending and Vol 3′s beginning.

1. Blake being worried that her status as a traitor to the White Fang might result in her new friends being dragged into her mess and being killed. It’s what she was so stressed about during the Dance arc in Vol 2. But on one hand, in Vol 3′s beginning she was very much more chill and Oz and everyone assumed that the Breach was the big evil plan, but on the other hand even with Roman captured Adam is still out there.

2. and this is more headcanony. Blake is more like Adam than she thinks. THis comes from 3 ideas: 1. In BBTAG her Astral is VERY much like Adam’s Moonslice, 2. Her and Yang killing Adam in Volume 6′s climax, and 3. a little oneshot idea ft. Blake and Kokonoe where Kokonoe calls Blake a coward for not taking off her bow and facing the Faunus discrimination.

Like, Blake saying she wants to be judged by her actions, not her species. To which Kokonoe would reply that by that logic, she thinks that if a faunus stands up for faunus then she’s whining. But if a human stands up for faunus then it’d be true. It’s like a Black person pretending to be white and trying to tell his/her “fellow” white people that it is wrong, since they won’t listen to the discriminated minority that they are currently beiung racism towards.

Then, Kokonoe might theorize that the reason she hides her ears, why she runs, is that she’s afraid that if she’s pushed to the edge she will snap and kill and be no better than Adam, she and the Faunus just want to be left alone and are tired of being pushed around. And we all know what happened the last time someone just wouldn't back off in current canon.

Not too sure on the coward part in option 1, but the killing monster in option 2 might be a beastial cat creature as part of her Berserk form.

Yang Xiao Long

This one is kind of simple. Her Shadow would be part of her abandonment issues. Constantly wondering what is wrong with her that made Raven leave.

Is she not pretty enough? Not smart enough? Not strong enough? Not cool enough?

These subconscious questions are why A. Her semblance could be linked to her hair, and why she gets all pissed when her hair is messed with and when Neon calls her top heavy, B. Why she is a decent student (I recall a few posts where Yang is said to be a good student/pretty smart and I will link them if I find them), C. Why she tries to be the strong juggernaut of Team RWBY, although this is also out of protective insincts towards Ruby.

Before anyone says that this isn’t something she hides, 1. I don’t think telling one person about something means your open about it and ready to change, and 2. Yang said to Blake in Burning the Candle that she does want to find her mom and why she left her, she never opened up about any self-loathing or anything like that.

not really sure what kind of monster you could make out of this.

Ozpin

Of course, the guilt he feels for all the people that have died under his watch not only as a headmaster, but in his fight against Salem.

Who says that the current Ozluminati are the only people he’s had that have helped him, and like he said in V6Ch2 “Do you think Leo was the first?” Not just the betrayal, but betraying because Salem’s power is just so unimaginable. We don’t know if Raven and/or Leo learned of Salem’s immortality or are just scared of her power.

All the people who gladly died for Oz’s cause in their fight against Salem most likely died thinking that their death would be a stepping stone for the next generation to win. But since Oz i just interested in playing defensive and not trying to actually win, all those deaths and sacrifices meant nothing. True, they allowed humanity to survive and live another day, but they died believing that it was one step closer to stopping Salem. And now it isn’t.

Maybe the Shadow is o.g. Ozma wracked with guilt, along with all the other lives he’s lived.

Penny Polendina

Also simple, the fact that she isn’t real. Just a weapon to be used by Ironwood and the fake face she wears is just meant to not be scary to the people.

Kind of simple and almost a resash of Labrys’ shadow but it’s all I got for now.

Shadow is obviously some robotic mosntrocity.

James Ironwood

This I got the idea for from a long post talkign about Ironwood beign close to a dictator.

One must remember, a Shadow is one’s represed thoughts that they don’t want to show others or admit they have.

Ironwood’s Shadow would be a sort of Warrior King, beleiving Ozpin’s peaceful defensive apporach isn’t right and expecting evil to fall before the Might of Atlas’ military and technological power is the way to go.

Him bringing his fleet to the Vytal Festival is part of this, as is his idea to send in a full assault to Mountain Glenn before Ozpin suggests to send “the Scouts”. Of course this all bites him in the ass once Cinder’s plot is in motion, but his systems then get messed with by Watts in Vol 7, where he also plans to use military might to defeat Salem once he unites the world.

The monster form could be a reference to the Greek Titan Atlas, a giant robotic figure holding a globe on it’s shoulders, either struggling (referencing the weight on his shoulders that he thinks justified this behavior) or only needing one hand to hold it (showing how easily he thinks his military might and power will defeat Salem). Remember this is all before he learns of Salem’s immortality.

Raven Branwen

Let’s look at Raven’s life shall we:

She and Qrow were a part of the Branwen bandit tribe, they lived by the “Strong ones Live, Weak ones Die” rule.

They were sent to Beacon with hopes to get the skill to kill Huntsmen rather than just Grimm. But during that time Qrow, who was most likely not popular with the tribe due to his bad luck semblance, was accepted by and made friends wth Taiyang Xiao Long and Summer Rose, which led to him being good friends with them.

We don’t know what Raven was like during her days at Beacon, if she was emo edgelord or if she actually did have fun back then. Either way she did end up married to Taiyang and eventually became pregnant with Yang. But sometime before or during this she and Qrow, after they had been given their bird powers by Ozpin to be his info gatherers, learn of how powerful Salem is and Raven considers how much she may be in over her head.

Qrow, wanting to repay the people who accepted him and gave his a purpose, continues to fight. But for Raven, whatever love or hope she may have had for anyone in her heart, became muffled or eclipsed by the fear in her heart. And once she got rid of the “baggage” that was a child, as she couldn't just run away while pregnant and raise Yang with the tribe because that would be even more problems down the line, decided to bolt back to the tribe where things were simpler, none of this Salem garbage, and unlike Qrow she didn’t have any problem with the tribe because she wasn’t the living jinx.

She does love those three (Qrow, Yang and Tai), but it is all beign eclipsed by her fear. She tries to call herself strong and that what she did was the “smart” choice, because hey, not runnig towards the thing that’ll kill you is usually the SMART thing to do. Since her tribe is all about the strong surviving over the weak, this may mean that both versions of “Stength”, both the good “endure and fight for love and hope even when things are bad” strength and the bad Darwinistic Might makes Right strength that her tribe works under, are both traits that Raven doesn’t have.

To which, the Shadow would claim that “Chicken Branwen” is much more appropriate for her. And come on, a giant black chicken as Ravens Shadow would be kind of funny right?

Some minor Shadow things:

Since I wanted to make Adam how he was before Volume 3 started to slowly turn him into a yandere ex-boyfriend, he’s going to be more focused on his mission in my idea. BUT, maybe the Blake obsession can just be something on the back of his mind, and his Shadow would be the Volume 3-6 Adam. SO we can have Old Adam vs new Adam, with old Adam being disgusted at this, or maybe acknolwdhing this but then cutting out those feelings because they get in the way of his true mission.

Jaune’s self-doubt might be a thing, but I feel like he’s aprtially over it after improving with Pyrrha. If Pyrrha were to die should I choose to go as far as the Vytal Festival and Fall of Beacon in my idea and he gets that “It doesn’t matter if I die so long as the important ones live” thing he says in Volume 5′s climax gets in his head then maybe he’d have this. Or maybe some self-entitlement on beign a hero, but after Pyrrha gave him a talking to and the Bully Arc in Vol 1 he should be over this, or maybe not if him getting in Weiss’ face for the dance is anything to go by, but just like in Vol 1 , he seemes to have gotten over that.

Emerald’s loyalty to Cinder isn’t really a thing she hides, so I guess her desperation for a mother figure would be it, but that might also be shown in her lotalty to Cinder. Same with Mercury, his shit with his dad isn’t really a part of himself he ignores, it’s a personal part of his past. He’s pretty open about his assholeness.

Qrow also doesn’t seem to be hiding any issues except for all the stress on his life. Unless we want to go the easy road and just make it his general self loathign and angst over his sister leaving, one of his teammmates dying, and his brother-in-law being a single father and Qrow is unable to help due to his Jinx.

It’s most likely he was just a teacher at Signal just ot teach Ruby, like how Gran Torino was to All Might in MHA.

[anansislibrary]

All of my thoughts on RWBY: taken from one of my videos here

If you haven’t watched RWBY yet... I honestly don’t know what to tell you. The show is genuinely one of my favorite anime of all time. It’s got an amazing cast of interesting characters, great writing, an amazing world to get immersed in. Every character you meet sticks with you, many of the fights are fast paced and memorable, and being a lore buff like me pays off in this world.

But RWBY isn’t... perfect, and having finished the newest season and rewatched the show from the beginning... I have some issues.

Don’t get me wrong, the new season had some excellent parts. The fight between Blake and Adam was literally perfect, and side note, idk why fans are saying Adam got nerfed for this fight or made weaker, when some of his only notable feats happen during this fight. The man lands hits like mortal kombat combos.

Anyway, I don’t want to just crap on the show so before I go into what I didn’t like, I’ll get into what I did. But before then, I’ll have to give you a brief rundown of the show. But before THEN I gotta give my obligatory plug

So make sure you like and subscribe if you enjoy this video and want to see more like it, and consider donating to my Ko-fi if you’re able to to help support my channel and help me make better content.

Without further ado

Here’s RWBY

Quick basic spoiler full rundown of the show.

Rwby takes place in a world callled remnant, with a shattered moon. Why is the moon shattered you ask? Satan threw a temper tantrum

Anyway

There’s monsters

Schools for people to fight monsters

Except no Because the main character’s school gets blown up by this BITCH NAMED CINDER, SCREW YOU CINDER.

Prompting Ruby and her Gucci gang to go on an adventure.

Got it? Good.

So here’s everything I love about the series.

I really like the character designs. Every single character has an excellent design and I could really do a video on how character design helps develop character and tell a story just using this show. Every person in the show has an interesting and cool design that helps you to remember and understand them.

An easy example is Weiss. She dresses like an actual princess, her color scheme and weapons are all very elegant looking and it hints at her high class status without even having to spell it out for you.

Plus I love how characters names are based off of fairy tales or mythology. For example, Sun, Sage, and the ironically named Neptune. The motif of fairy tales is fun too, for example Ruby being Little Red Riding hood, Ozpin and Glenda Goodwich being wizard of oz references, ironwood being the tin man and Leo being the lion, Qrow and scarecrows and all of that. Weiss and Winter both have names very directly based on snow.

Every name in this show was very clearly thought out, and even abilities too.

Sun can make clones of himself just like in the myth, Blake has issues with running from her problems, so she can make clones, yang has anger issues and can go super saiyan, almost everyone’s power has something to do with their personality.

Salem is such a fun villain. I wish she could do more because she’s really sinister and scary. She’s such a fun villain to watch but she doesn’t do shit.

I also love the fight scenes, I love how bombastic and fast paced they are, and it’s really cool how every character has their own unique style of movement and fighting that vary between them. The fights in this show are quick and stick in your mind, and there’s an emphasis put often on how much a character can move in a short amount of time.

Cinder as much as I hate her is also a great villain, and that’s why I hate her.

Roman Torchwick is also a GREAT villain and The way he dies is satisfying as hell, and seeing Neo again made me scream.

The worldbuilding is my favorite aspect of the show. Now I’m weird and I like info dumps and that’s why I enjoy those World Of Remnant videos that expand on the worldbuilding so as not to bog down story with info dumps. The world is really fun to learn about, how humanity has evolved in terms of technology is fun to speculate on, for example since Grimm attacks are common and destructive, towns outside of major cities are less technologically advance because they often don’t have time to explore that and have to move from town to town quickly in an emergency.

The Grimm are excellent monsters with varying abilities that make them scary. I love the Apathy from the most recent season, and how it doesn’t just attack you like a Beowulf, Ursa, or Nevermore, but it drains away your will to fight back at all.

This show also has my favorite trope of all time MIXED TIMELINES

YOU GOT TRADITIONAL CHINESE CLOTHING AND DRESS AND ASIAN ARCHITECTURE ON TOP OF CELL PHONES TOWERS AND ALL OF THAT

this trope is so fun because it really makes a world feel unique.

The world of Naruto has all kinds of modern stuff, but until Boruto it was mixed with older tech and tradition, really selling how this is not our world.

Another thing I love: every weapon is a gun. That is SO fun.

Now as good as the show is, it does have problems. That’s inevitable though, all shows, movies, and books have problems, nothing is perfect.

Except Avatar. Avatar is flawless.

Me pointing out the issues I have with this show is by no means to say it’s bad, just to point them out.

I truly do have love for this series and I still cry about Phyrra and her death.

I love you baby.

But that being said, pointing out the issues a show has can be important for both understanding the pitfalls to avoid in our own writing, and helping creators fix issues later on.

A lot of hard work goes into making this show and I would just be an asshole if I did nothing but shit on the show.

No matter how many issues it has, I can tell the people making it love what they’re doing, and that always shines through a series no matter how many issues it has, just like a show or movie can do everything conventionally right and still be a soulless shit show.

Looking at you call of duty black ops 3.

So here’s the issues

Fight scenes

I love the fight scenes. I’ve said that, they really can be so fun to view and I find myself coming back to them a lot.

But I have issues.

Lemme just say first that I don’t like complaining against animation. Animators go through enough crap already and it feels mean to criticize them at times, but this needs to be said.

One, I hate how people throw punches in this show.

They swing so wide it’s annoying.

Okay listen. If you swing at someone with a punch this wide, and they know how to fight, it will not land. They will block or dodge. I know this because as my subscribers know, I am a martial artist. I know jujitsu and boxing, and I took taeqwondo.

This is a bad punch.

My theory is that they do it to emphasize the impact of a bit, but that’s not necessary. There are other ways to do that.

You could say “they’re animators they don’t know how fighting works.”

But Naruto exists and those animators get martial arts stuff down PAT.

Hell, avatar the last airbender depends on its animators being able to animate fights with consistent accuracy, and those characters use styles most people have never heard of like Baguazhang.

And I know this doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is. It’s hard to really get behind fight scenes at times when the characters can’t throw a simple punch right.

And again it’s not like it’s impossible for animation to animate a fight.

There’s a scene during a fight in Naruto where Obito Uchiha kicks Kakashi, and Kakashi uses his foot to redirect the kick and pull obito off balance.

This is a real move, that people do, and it’s done accurately, but RWBY seems to struggle with accuracy in their fights. Which is fine when a character’s weapon looks like this, but not in hand to hand.

This issue comes up in sword fights too. The way Weiss fights annoys me because her sword is a rapier, and the most important characteristic of a rapier is that often times they don’t have blades, they have points, and when they do have blades, they aren’t meant for slashing. Rapiers were made to exploit the gaps in someone’s armor by stabbing them, and thus it is a thrusting sword, not a slashing one. A sword like a Katana or Khopesh would be good for slashing. Roman gladius can kind of do both, but not as good as either one.

The point is that if they’re gonna give Wiess a rapier, they need to stop animating her slashing with it. Especially when her rapier doesn’t appear to have a sharp edge.

My next complaint is wasted characters.

It’s very frustrating when RWBY takes times to show us a character, but then never uses them.

I didn’t even know sun had a full team sometimes because you never see them.

And furthermore it’s annoying when a fight scene will just stop so that a character can do a cool thing.

Oh no this robot is so hard to beat, how will we beat this dangerous and powerful robot

Oh wait, this character can solo it because the plot needs to pause so she can be cool then promptly never be seen again.

It is so frustrating and it makes it hard to actually know when a character is in danger.

It takes 20 hits to kill a Grimm in one scene, then like two in another.

And the reason for that is because the plot is being pushed aside for the sake of spectacle.

A character’s abilities will be made inconsistent for a chance to make them seem cool.

Like this scene where Tyrion is fighting qrow, he uses his tail to block bullets.

But why?

He has his Aura up, the bullets wouldn’t hurt him anyway! Then when he gets shot later after he looses his aura his tail comes off.

If he was fast enough to use his tail to block bullets he wasn’t even paying attention to, why can’t he do it now!

There is no internal consistency.

Like why are Grimm so strong if they don’t have auras? That’s not explained because they Grimm rarely serve the plot, they spectacle. Adam putting 20 kombo hits into yang to beat her makes sense. He has to wear down her aura to actually hurt her.

But 20 hits to kill a grim that then gets solo’d by a character later on?

No.

Then there’s hazel.

He annoys me.

His villainous motivation is that his sister joined a school for trained soldiers, then died because it was dangerous and now he hates Ozpin.

Dude what?

Like I get why he’s mad, but she knew the risk and someone had to sign off on her getting in for her to be able to go to beacon at all. A child can’t just register for a school especially one where it’s a known risk you could die.

Also another thing I hate is how characters will overreact to stuff in annoying ways.

This is mostly in the most recent season.

Spoiler alert here

But everyone finds out the history of Ozpin and Salem’s relationship from Djinn

And then they just all hate and distrust Ozpin.

Here’s my reaction to finding out about ozpins relationship

It’s just... not that big a deal.

Okay so he was pipping the villain at one point

Nigga so was dumbldore!

It’s just annoying how Ozpin didn’t really do anything but he still was treated like he was just a bad person when he wasn’t.

That whole plot point feels empty, and I found myself more annoyed with the characters for being mad at him and wasting time, than mad at Ozpin for wanting to get laid.

My next complaint on this nitpick fest is

Shit what was I gonna say again?

Oh yea, that annoying ass military lady and her whole reason for not letting the heroes into atlas.

That was so annoying and pointless. She really had no reason not to let them through, and her getting into a giant mecha to fight them pulled me so far away from the story because it was just too ridiculous.

The mecha is for fighting Kaiju grim but it’s taken down by like five kids and their drunk grandpa.

Which like... fine but I hate it.

I hate that whole sequence.

It didn’t have to happen like that, it was another fight purely for spectacle.

It made me mad.

Plus I really really hate mecha anime and mecha fights in general.

God I hate them.

I skipped almost every mecha fight in Voltron because I hate them.

Look the point is that rwby is definitely a good show and I love almost every part of it, but these issues really pull me away from the story at times and you can really sense how much of the story is less about progression and more about increasing drama like the Ozpin thing, or looking cool.

Please watch rwby it really is worth your time, just be aware of the issues it has.

[tonotbelionized]

Character Allusions

The world of RWBY has many influences from our world in its world building, culture and story, and the main influence in the show is the allusion that every character has to a tale. Whether this is a fairy tale, a legend, or mythology, there’s hints to what each character represents not only in their name, but also their outfits and stories.

RWBY has many characters that you are able to figure out, even if it takes some time, and can even have a secondary allusion in regards to other characters. Volume 1 is the easiest to decide in the show, with all the characters having clear influence from their fairy tales so that the audience are able to decide; Ruby Rose is clearly Little Red Riding hood not only from her name and English inspired outfit, but her trademark red hood and the hints given in show, noticeable Roman’s nickname of her being “Little Red”. 

The other characters are the same. We can see Snow White with Weiss or Joan of Arc with Jaune, but it seems that as we go further into the show, a once key aspect of the story telling has now fallen behind.

Characters With Hardly Any Allusions

Carrying on after Volume 1, we still have characters that we can determine their allusion easily enough; Neptune is clearly the Roman God of the Sea, and has a interesting secondary allusion in Zhu Bajie, the pig companion with a shared habit of hitting on every woman he saw, connecting Neptune to Sun’s primary allusion of Sun Wukong. The same can be said about Mercury with his allusion connected to the Roman God Mercury.

However, there are characters that really don’t seem to have an allusion, or at least one that can be determined. Neo’s outfit is based of a gender bent Roman cosplayer, but there’s nothing to suggest what her allusion actually is, with some thinking that she could be Mary Poppins because of her umbrella, or even Tinkerbell. The problem is that more casual viewers who don’t know about this cosplayer, would not know what Neo’s outfit means and the allusion is lost.

Another example is Maria, with her outfit and character taking heavy influence from the Mexican holiday Dias de Los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead. It’s especially seen in her heavy skull usage in her outfit, and the sugar skull mask that she wore in her younger days. However no other character has been based on an actual holiday, so actually determining if this is Maria’s allusion or not can get a bit muddled.

The most noticeable one out of the people in both Kali and Taiyang. Taiyang’s team are all based on poems; Summer Rose from Last Rose of Summer by Thomas Moore, Qrow and Raven are meant to be Muninn and Huginn from the poem Grímnismál, but Taiyang doesn’t have a clear poem that he’s based off. There’s nothing about him besides his obviously Chinese name that would give us a hint on where to start. We can’t even go off Yang’s Goldilocks allusion to decide because Goldilocks didn’t have a father in the tale, nor does Tai fit any of the bears.

And Kali doesn’t even have the same allusion to the Jungle Book as Ghira. Her outfit has nothing unique that could point us in the direction to figure it out, and in all honesty she just looks like an older Blake. This isn’t necessarily the problem given that Summer looks like an older Ruby, but at least Summer had the name to connect her to the poem, and the fact that the last words on her grave is directly connected to the line of the poem. There’s nothing about Kali Belladonna that could point her to be an allusion for the Hindu Goddess Kali.

She has no blue on her outfit at all, her outfit is Japanese influenced rather than Indian with her hakama pants and kimono, and nothing in her story points to the Goddess of Death and Destruction apart from the fact that Kali is also seen as a symbol for motherly love, and RWBY Kali is one of the best mothers in the cast. 

This isn’t the only thing about RWBY’s allusions, as the writers have even gone the other way and made it that the allusion is all that the character is without anything new about it.

Too On the Nose Allusions

The main culprit of this problem is Leo Lionheart. It makes sense for him to be the Cowardly Lion, he’s one of the headmasters and part of Ozpin’s Inner Circle, where everyone else has an allusion that connects to Ozpin’s Wizard of Oz theme. However, the others have their allusions in subtle ways and have more to their characters than just being that allusion.

Leonardo doesn’t. He’s a turncoat yes, but we spend all of his scenes being told that he’s doing this because he’s afraid of Salem, that he feels like he can’t fight against her, that he’s a coward. I don’t hate his character, but there has to be more to Leo than just being a coward and a turncoat, the problem is that the show never show us more to him. The very first thing that is established in Volume 5 is Leonardo getting shocked by Team RNJR and Qrow, and faints in fright.

After that, he seemed to be a reasonable leader that’s doing the best he can given that Ozpin is dead and everyone is at each other’s throats, especially with James’ downward spiral mentally and Glynda being kept at Vale to help with the situation. He’s a perfect counterpart to Qrow’s impatient personality and seemed someone that the group needs to calm them all down, and then every scene afterwards throws it out of the window.

We could’ve learned exactly how Leonardo decided it was futile to fight against Salem. Did he learn by the lamp given it only had two wishes when the heroes grabbed it? Did he see what Salem could do? Does he know about Ozpin’s past if he did use the wish? Not only that, but he’s the only Faunus headmaster of the four and lives in a country that has less than favorable views on the Faunus. How did he rise so far in rank despite the disadvantages set against him? Did Ozpin help him with that? What was their relationship even like?

There’s nothing to his character, so much so that no one even cared about his death at the end of Volume 5, and it wasn’t even a fitting way for him to go. He was caught by the Seer and stabbed to death while pitifully begging for his life. All while Salem coldly calls him a coward. We know. He’s a coward, it’s all that’s ever said about Leonardo, and I wish that they had given him something more than that.

Characters Allusions to Each Other

One thing that RWBY can do well is the characters not only having allusions to themselves, but also being able to connect with other characters too. From Yang’s trailer, we have Junior who serves as an allusion to little bear from the Goldilocks fairy tale, this connects him to Yang and her character. Not only that,  he also serves as the Bear Prince to Melanie and Militia Malachite’s Snow White and Rose Red. This level of detail is very well done and makes the characters feel more connected to each other, rather than just being random fairy tale characters thrown into a world with guns. 

Junior isn’t even a main example, Qrow Branwen is another well done example. While his allusion to the scarecrow mostly on the surface given that he is fairly smart, compared to James’ more obvious character being a man with trust issues having to learn to let people in his heart, there’s still enough to connect him to Ozpin’s Wizard of Oz motif. On top of that, both he and Raven are connected to Ozpin as Odin’s crow and raven; Muninn and Huginn. They were given powers to turn to birds so that they could spy for Ozpin, further leading to this allusion.

However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t moments were the show trips up. the Belladonna family is the most awkward one that comes to mind, especially when remembering that Blake’s main allusion is Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Ghira is obviously Bagheera from the Jungle Book, but that only means he’s connected to Sienna’s Shere Khan, as there’s nothing to point to Belle and Bagheera.

The exact same thing can be said for Kali. As mentioned before, we don’t even know her allusion, and if it is Kali the Hindu Goddess, then there’s nothing connecting the two. It goes even further that nothing connects Kali’s allusion to Blake’s despite being her mother. Neither of her parents share a connection to Blake, and it seems that the writers forgot this as the only person who fits into this story is Adam.

He’s the Beast who never got over his Beauty leaving and as a result was never redeemed, and he’s also the Gaston in the story with Blake and Yang. While Adam can be seen as other legends, such as the Demon Bull King in connection to Sun, his main allusion was made so that he fits in with Blake and the two feel connected. Her parents don’t have that.

This further continues on the last point.

Cultural Inspiration to the Character’s Allusion

With a character that is an allusion to a tale or a legend, the show takes care to physically connect their appearance and name to the origin of the fairy tale. Weiss Schnee is German for White Snow, as the original Snow White tale is German, and this goes further into her family as they all have a snow and a northern European theme. 

Winter Schnee is based off the Snow Queen, a fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen and is Danish. Jacques Schnee - Gele is based of Jack Frost, a French name with a fairy tale that is thought to come from Anglo-Saxon and Norse origins. Even Klein the butler is given a Germanic name and is based off the Seven Dwarves, connecting him directly to Weiss’ Snow White theme. 

The same can be said for Ruby and her mother, with both their allusions being English and Irish in origin. While Yang’s allusion to Goldilocks is different with her Chinese influence, it also adds to another allusion for her being Fenghuang, a Chinese legend of birds coming from the union of a dragon and a raven, heavily playing into Yang’s parents being Taiyang and Raven. This means her Chinese influence makes sense, it also ties her to her parents more.

Blake’s influences are all over the place. Her fairy tale is French, and her Volume 1 - 3 outfit reflects the French aspect, with her coat tails and frills on her shirt. She loses that French aspect in her later outfits. Her pyjamas and weapon are clearly Japanese inspired, she has a katana that can turn into a kusarigama with the help of her ribbon. While this isn’t as bad before Volume 4, the inclusion of her family further muddles it. Ghira and Kali’s allusions are Indian fairy tales, but Kali’s outfit is once again Japanese inspired while Ghira’s has no cultural inspiration that I can figure out.

Then there’s the fact that Menagerie is heavily inspired by not only Australia for its deadly wildlife and past connections of criminals and undesirables being sent there, but also Pacific Countries like Hawaii because of the name of the towns and it’s plant life, like the coconut and palm trees there. However, someone did point out that the houses and architecture of Menagerie are once again Japanese inspired. 

Even Blake’s name further muddles things because Blake is Old English, it’s not even French like Belle’s name, and her surname is Italian. All the other main characters have names that flow with the same language. Weiss Schnee is German, Yang Xiao Long is Chinese, Ruby Rose is English, even Team JNPR follows this, but Blake doesn’t.

Unlike the rest of the girls, this mess of different cultures being mashed together leaves the Belladonna’s lacking that same cohesion that the rest of the families have. It has the knock on effect that people who want to give face claims to Blake simply don’t know what ethnicity she would be. It’s easy to cast Yang as Chinese and White because of Raven and Taiyang, same goes for Ruby, and Weiss is clearly white, but Blake’s is just confusing and can lead to infighting in the fandom. 

I feel like this could’ve been avoided if Ghira and Kali shared at least one of Blake’s inspiration, either the French or the Japanese side, and if Blake followed the same line of thought that her friends do. Give her a French name to connect her to Belle, rather than mixing it all together.

That’s all that I have to say about the show’s handlement of allusions. In all honesty, with the show carrying on, it’s not that big of a deal as it was at the beginning, but I wish that it was still given the same amount of thought because when RT gets it right, they get it really right. We see it in the latest volume with Tock, we know what she’s meant to be, her design is cool and it all connects to the crocodile from Peter Pan. 

Thanks for reading guys!

[calliecat93]

Top 5 Things I Liked About RWBY Volume 3

Those of you who have been following this little series of posts are probably going ‘wait a sec Callie, don’t you do the dislikes post first?” Which, yes I do, but there’s a reason why I’m doing Likes. It’s because, well... there’s not going to be a Dislikes post. I tried to think of things that I genuinely disliked about V3. I tried to think of nitpicks that I had about V3. I tried to see if there were things that I disliked back when it aired.

And I got nothing.

Yeah, I disliked nothing about V3. I had to stretch on Dislikes in V2, but here? I got nothing. I mean sure certain character deaths sucked because... well, death. But these scenes were actually done well, so I don’t dislike them. There’s a couple of little animation errors, but I can’t make a list out of that nor do those bother me since the animation is overall very good. This was my favorite volume up until V6 (and even with that I was able to come up with dislikes for it) and needless to say, this volume out of all fo them is not one that you mess around with. So instead of forcing myself to make a list I’ve got no material for, we’re skipping to Likes. Cause I’ve got plenty of those.

#5. Maiden Twist

I remember when this twist got revealed, and I was in shock... well that and because the same chapter ended in Yang being defamed and they decided to choose then to go on holiday hiatus. That was still mean RT! Okay, yeah the twist. I... really liked it! It made sense, added to the lore of the series, and really ramped upt he tension. Sure we weren’t 100% sure how the Maidens would tie into the overall plot, but V5 fixed that so any issues that I had with it are long since resolved.

I think what really makes me appreciate it is for those unaware, this twist? This was the final thing conceived by Monty before his passing in February 2015 when V3 would have been in pre-production. This was not a part of the original plan for RWBY, but Miles and Kerry decided to keep it and work with it anyone since it was Monty’s final idea. IDK what the original plan was, and we’ll probably never know, but I think that they fit it in very well. It explains why CInder has so much power. Part of why the Ozluminati is so secretive. It makes the world more interesting and as I said, adds to the lore. And the tale itself was very well done and felt like a genuine fairy tale, especially the version in World of Remnant.

The execution wasn’t 100% perfect. Like I said, the importance of the Maidens int he story wasn't made clear until V5. But considering that they had to figure out how to fit it in with the overall planned story, I say that they did very well. The rule also makes plenty of sense, and that I appreciate. I really like to applaud writers who make changes like this work, and nowadays I can't imagine RWBY without the Maidens. Would the original plan have been better? I don’t know. But I’m happy with where they took things, and I’d say that Monty’s final contribution is one that’s impact isn't fading out anytime soon.

#4. Yang Development

Okay IDK if development is the right word, but this was a good volume for Yang! Well okay for her it probably sucked. A lot. But for us watching, it... was painful. But it was good for her character arc!

Up to this point, Yang was probably the least developed of the four girls. She was a pretty girl who was really good at hitting things and was a fun, but caring friend and sister. But otherwise, she’d had little development and imo her motivation to become a Huntress was by far the weakest. But anything that she lacked she made up for in personality and even then, she was by far the fan-favorite. SHe’s... my least favorite of Team RWVY, mainly for other reasons I’ll get to when I do a later list, but I still enjoy her and she’s always been really fun.

And it made what happened in this volume all the more painful.

First, she gets framed and can’t prove her innocence. Her team gets disqualified from the Vytal Festival as a result. Then the Battle of Beacon happens! She can't do anything for her sister and therefore tries to find Blake. She finds her getting attacked by Adam, she tries to interfere, and... she loses an arm. Worst, Blake, the person she just lost a limb for runs away without so much as a goodbye. Weiss is taken away by force, and all of this along with the loss of Beacon and the multiple deaths have left Yang broken and bitter. She can’t even comfort Ruby or accept any comfort that her sister offers, and in the end just tells Ruby to go do what she wants and leave her alone. Ruby leaves sometime later, all while Yang is still sitting in bed with an empty look.

This volume was brutal for everyone, but Yang by far is one of the ones who had it the roughest. It hurts since, in the first half of the volume, she’s her usual happy, bright self and is easily winning all of her fights. She did nothing wrong but had to go through Hell all because of the villains who she did nothing to. It provides a lot of good later, which again I’ll touch on in a later list. But God it hurt to watch this when it aired. Nevertheless, it was very well executed and you just feel so bad for this girl and utterly mortified when she loses her arm just because she tried to save her teammate. A teammate who abandons her, re-awakening her abandonment issues in the process. It was hard to watch, but it was very well done and Yang’s character only goes up from this point.

#3. Weiss Development

While Weiss’ part in the volume isn't too major, her development in the first half of the volume is freakin’ great. While we had heard enough to know that Weiss's father probably sucked, this one made that much more clear and V4 hammered that in even more. We see pretty classic abuse tactics here. Jaques tries to call Weiss, and it seems like this has been going on for a while. My HC is that he receptionist lady that Weiss talked to in V2 likely told him that Weiss called but didn’t want to talk, and that caused Jaques to increase how frequently he called her. Weiss continues to ignore it, so Jaques strips her of her income so that she can't so much as buy lunch for herself. A clear warning to Weiss that even when in another continent, she’s still under her father’s lock and key.

But then Winter arrives. While she’s stern and kinda cold, Winter is clearly a good influence in Weiss’ life and a caring older sister. She not only tries to help Weiss learn her Summoning glyph, but she reveals that Jaques used the exact same method of cutting her off that he did on Weiss. Why? Because Winter joined the military and refused to remain under her father’s grip any longer. She managed to break away, and she encourages Weiss to do so as well. She’s on the right path via attending Beacon and fighting for her right to go there, and now she has the freedom to keep exploring the world and learning about herself. This gets Weiss to once more hang up on her father, determined to cut away from him for good and continue on her own path. 

It’s a powerful moment and really the sign that Weiss has truly broken free of her previous hateful midset. She’s a much kinder person than she was in V3, shown when she rejects the idea that Yang attacked Mercury unprovoked. In the Battle for Beacon, she defends Velvet, a Faunus and that allowed her to awaken her Summoning glyph. Sadly, as we all know, the Fall fo Beacon happened and Jaques took advantage of it to force Weiss to come back home. It is utterly tragic because Weiss finally got her freedom, and in an instant, it was yanked away from her. But because of these events, Weiss wasn’t going to remain a prisoner for long, and Jaques could control her no longer.

#2. Everything From PvP to The End of the Beginning

Yeah, I couldn't narrow it down to just one aspect. These final four episodes of V3 (PvP, Battle of Beacon, Heroes and Monsters, and The End of the Beginning) were just... freakin’ fantastic. It might be the four best consecutive episodes in the series as a whole. These mark the end of the Beacon Era. From this point on, the series changes big time. Things get darker. Characters are forced to mature. The stakes go up and have yet to go back down. The days of wacky school antics end here, and our heroes’ lives change to the point of no return.

IDK what to truly say tbh. All of the fights were freakin’ fantastic. Penny’s death, while heartbreaking, was appropriately dreadful as well as Cinder’s speech. The Grimm attack felt horrifying, but all the students rising up to fight back and act as true Huntsmen and Huntresses were freakin’ amazing. This was Roman’s last hurrah, and he was as fun as ever. Him dying sucked, but he brought it onto himself and Ruby interfering with him one last time, taking out Neo, and destroying the ship and taking out the Queen’s Virus was epic. But of course, Cinder gets the Maiden powers, the Wyvern attacks, and in the end, Beacon falls. But Cinder doesn't get to enjoy it, as it ends with Ruby awakening her Silver Eyes, and Cinder’s victory ends in her being brought down. Brutally. She got her power, but she was still defeated by and made to feel powerless. Which she hates more than anything else. All because of one little girl. 

The end of the volume is super depressing. Beacon is overrun by Grimm. Vale has been damaged. Weiss is forced back home. Blake runs away. Yang is depressed and demoralized. JNR lost a teammate. The villains all escaped. Ozpin is missing. Everything looks bleak. But there is still hope. Despite how she herself feels, Ruby decides that she still needs to fight on and go after the villains' trail to prevent this from happening again. She leaves home with JNR, determined to get to Mistral and make sure that no one else suffers like she and everyone at Beacon did. Dark times are ahead, but our heroes will recover, and they will forge on. But, of course, it ends with us finally meeting Salem for the first time, and we know that things are about to get much, much crazier from that point on.

This was a great series of episodes. It was dark and depressing but also shows how much the human spirit will persist and that there will always be heroes who rise up. It appropriately brought the show into its next stage, and it’s just as great of a watch as it was in 2016. But, of course, there is one thing that I glossed over while going over this. So... let's go ahead and talk about that.

#1. Pyrrha Nikos

This was, sadly, the final volume for Pyrrha. And they made sure to make this her story as much as possible. Pyrrha is recruited to be the Fall Maiden due to her world-class fighting abilities. She is understandably uncomfortable but willing to do it in order to protect people. But then she finds out that it may cost her who she is, and she is understandably terrified. We see how uncertain she is after, and who can blame her? Once again, her famous status has overcome anything else about her. But this time, she not only learned of some kind of mass world conspiracy but if she agreed to go through with the Aura Transfer, she may not be the same person ever again. She felt that being a Huntress and fighting to protect people was her destiny, but now with it standing before her, can she take it when she’s being asked to give up so much? When everything that she thought that she new has been turned onto its head within mere hours?

Not even Jaune could have help her overcome this. In any other scenario, his words of accepting destiny would be the right thing. But for Pyrrha, it just made her an emotional wreck. The poor boy did everything right, but now he thinks that he did everything wrong. Then to make things worst. Pyrrha ended up killing Penny and it broke her. Fortunately Ruby and Jaune broke her out of it, but she ultimately accepted the Maiden deal. After all, with everything in chaos and lives on the line, what else can she do? But of course, it failed cause of Cinder, and despite Oz telling her and Jaune to leave and get help... Pyrrha made her choice then and there. She kissed Jaune, knowing that it’ll be the only chance that she got to revealing her feelings, before pushing him the locker. he looked at the boy that she loves one more time as he begs her to not go back. She launched him to safety, knowing that she will never see him again.

Pyrrha knew that if she went back into the tower, she wasn’t going to come back out alive. She knew that she was going to die. But she was a Huntress. She signed up for that life because she wanted to do good. She wanted to help people. he felt as if that was her destiny. Even though she knew that she couldn’t beat Cinder, it was her duty to fight. Whatever good that she could do, she decided to do. She went back in, and she gave it her all. And she gave Cinder one Hell of a fight. But of course, Cinder ultimately won. Pyrrha remained defiant to the end, accepting her fate. Cinder shoots Pyrrha with an arrow, and the girl that everyone thought was unbeatable, was reduced to ashes.

Pyrrha was a fantastic character. She was kind, caring, strong, and above all selfless. She aided and trained Jaune despite everyone else dismissing him as a buffoon. She encouraged Jaune in his pursuit fo Weiss, despite her own feelings towards him. Despite all the fear and doubt that she felt and Ozpin offering her an out at the very end, Pyrrha accepted the Maiden powers and whatever the end result would have been because it was the right thing to do. And despite knowing that doing so would end in her own death, Pyrrha still faced Cinder, willing to do whatever she could do to stop Cinder. While she died, it wasn't in vain as Ruby’s arrival ensured that Cinder’s victory would cost her. A true pyrrhic victory.

In the end, Pyrrha embodied what a true Huntress should be. Selfless, dedicated, and willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect the people. Even now, the impact of her death can be felt. Jaune, of course, was broken by it and it wasn't until V6 that he began to find closure and move on. Ruby still feels guilty over how she failed to save her and has PTSD from it and V5 and demonstrated. Team JNPR will never truly feel whole again after the loss. But even so, they all have pushed forward and have decided to keep living. For Pyrrha. Even in death, she’ll still always be there with them, and they can continue to honor her memory. Pyrrha may be gone, but her spirit will always live on.

Okay! That’s that! So... on to Volume 4! Which there will be a Dislikes post for that one, but also a Likes post! So be on the lookout for those~!

[strxga]

Stop stoking the fires. Just stop. Please.

I genuinely can’t believe I have to write this post, it’s honestly genuinely surprising how the FNDM hasn’t changed at all from the past years and I’m just so tired of it. So tired of all the drama, the character hate, the toxicity, please just, stop this, stop this already!

Ever since Seeing Red the FNDM has been on a constant back-and-forth between shitting on certain characters while also elevating others to the highest praise, and while usually this wouldn’t be such a huge deal, it is because this has gone way past the point of tolerable but to the point of harassment and blatantly fake accusations. Obviously I’m referring to the whole Adam vs. Bumblebee fiasco that’s been stirring on the pot for far too long, and trust me, this has been going on for far too long and starting to get EXTREMELY out of hand.

Each and every single day I go to the Adam Taurus tag I see nothing but hatred and venom being spewed at Adam’s fans, calling them abusers, misogynists, scum of the Earth, abuse apologists and other far worse things, and the worst part is that NONE of the Adam fans I have spoken with have EVER excused his character. In fact they’ve all agreed he was an asshole who got what he deserved. Some agree the narrative did a good job of handling it while others disagree, and that’s good and all! We all have our different opinions, but when we as a community bundle together to single this specific group of fans who particularly enjoyed Adam’s character for whatever reason and proceed to harassment and take over the character’s tag and just fill it to the brim with hatred? Then we, as a FNDM, are doing something WRONG!

Bumblebee and Blacksun shippers are CONSTANTLY asking their tags to be kept nice and sweet with no hatred in it, so why is it so hard to ask for the same for the Adam fans? They know their character isn’t the most universally well-liked, but when you lunge all these fake accusations and branding and labeling them as something they aren’t? Things are being taken to the extreme and being taken way too far! Especially when these bullies CELEBRATE Adam’s death and shove it in their faces. Imagine if someone did the same to you, if someone went ahead and made FUN of you when your favorite character in not just RWBY but in any medium died. Would you like that? Would it feel good to be on the receiving end of that?

Adam wasn’t the best character or person. He had the POTENTIAL TO BE MORE but he wasn’t - Kerry and Miles settled on writing him that way and they did, but that excuses NO ONE to harass these FANS for believing and wanting their favorite character to be more than just the yandere ex-boyfriend trope. There are soooo many unconfirmed or just plainly false headcanons about Adam being spread about him in the tag or lies being told to new fans that just make him even far more despicable than he already was in canon: A few examples of this is I’ve seen people present their headcanons of Adam sexually assaulting Blake, stabbing her before or even that she discovered her Semblance after he physically assaulted her while they were together on the White Fang WHEN THERE’S NOT EVEN A PROPER BASIS FOR THAT!

As far as we KNOW, he only took advantage of her emotionally, which is bad enough as it is. But Adam is by far NOT the only character with these traits yet he’s the only character I see being demonized further by the FNDM. You want a long list of other characters who are abusive and very much as real as Adam is yet get absolutely no hatred for their actions? Some of which are on Chibi as well: -Cinder Fall -Roman Torchwick -Neopolitan -Hazel Rainart -Tyrian Callows -Raven Branwen -Jacques Schnee -Corsac Albain -Fennec Albain -Ilia Amitola

I could even list a few more but these are the first examples that come to that. Let’s take a look at the similarities between Adam and the other listed characters:

-Adam is the leader of a terrorist organization, the White Fang -Cinder is a member of the biggest criminal and terrorism organization EVER. -Adam killed multiple Humans and Faunus alike. -Raven is the leader of a group of bandits that casually assaults and murders settlements outside of the Kingdoms for supplies to survive. -Jacques leads the S.D.C. and is single-handedly responsible for Faunus abuse and oppression and operating outside the law for his own selfish interests. -Roman is a thief and murderer who cares only about himself and is willing to take as many lives as necessary if it means to survive. -Cinder orchestrated the Fall of Beacon which led to multiple lives from ALL the Kingdoms to end prematurely. -Adam supposedly took advantage of Blake emotionally while they were both in the White Fang and used manipulation to keep her by his side. -Cinder emotionally AND physically has assaulted, threatened and manipulated Emerald. -Raven is emotionally manipulative and tried to take advantage of Yang and make her feel inferior to her so she could maintain the illusion of power. -Adam was on a quest of obtaining power to accomplish his goals. -Cinder desired power so obsessively that she not only joined Salem but allowed herself to be turned into a Human-Grimm hybrid. -Raven’s whole shtick is about being powerful enough to lead her tribe! -Adam has an unhealthy obsession with killing Blake for betraying him. -Cinder has an even unhealthier fixation on Ruby and torturing her, wishing to see her burn to ashes in front of her, even to the point she’s still obsessed with her. -Hazel holds Ozpin accountable for something out of his power and is obsessed with murdering him over and over for his own satisfaction. -Tyrian is just straight-up psychopathic and a mass murderer who delights in killing! -Neopolitan expressed a twisted and wicked delight at the idea of extinguishing Yang’s life. -Adam stabbed and hurt Blake and cut Yang’s arm as a display of power. -Cinder killed Pyrrha and left a nasty scar on Weiss too after piercing her with a spear. -Adam groomed a young Blake into serving by his side as a soldier despite him being much older while Ghira was still part of the White Fang. -Ilia, if we’re going by the Adam Trailer, was around Adam’s same grown age while Blake was, at the oldest, 12. So even if she didn’t groom her, she still felt attraction for a minor, which is pretty bad! -Adam lied to all the Faunus and claimed he cared for them. -Fennec and Corsac did the same to the entirety of Menagerie. -Adam has tried to kill Blake multiple times. -So did Corsac, Ilia and Fennec.

All these fucking characters are based on reality! People like Tyrian are mass murderers that are still frequent! People like Hazel who form a grudge and never let go until the target of their hatred’s life is beyond miserable, people like Neopolitan who take a sick satisfaction in hurting those who are down and enjoys inflicting pain on others. Criminals like Roman who kill and steal as long as it’s for their self-interests, people like Raven and Jacques who form negligent and abusive parents that only hurt their children, people like Adam who are abusive and crave to be seen as a savior in order to retain power. People like Cinder who are not satisfied with obtaining power and using it to crush others but who won’t stop until the people they oppress cannot dare even lift a finger against them like a megalomaniac tyrant! All these characters, not just Adam have real-life counterparts that are just as frightening!

Oh and let’s not forget when Yang was about to be killed by Neopolitan was there outrage for her character? Absolutely not! As a matter of fact, most of the FNDM loved it so much they started SHIPPING these two characters together! Why?! Hell if I know! Because they’re both women I suppose and for some reason the FNDM excused Neopolitan’s behavior, but when it’s a male character the one doing the hurting then he gets demonized to all hell and back. I’ve seen absolutely zero arguments in the FNDM when it comes to women-on-women violence though. But I guess it’s because it’s empowering for the fans for some reason? I don’t know. I just know one thing.

All these fucking characters are real, and they’re terrifying! Yet they’re still in Chibi. All these female villains are dark beyond belief yet they get excused! Why, because they’re women? Because they’re pretty?! Regardless they’re all just as bad as Adam fucking Taurus yet no one says fucking anything! Why are still only the males that get demonized? Why are the fans still so toxic to others? Why has this FNDM not fucking changed since 2014?! I’m sick and tired of it. I didn’t want to write this post yet here I am doing so because this hot garbage mess of a FNDM can’t go at least a fucking day without being wild.

Respect other people. Stop accusing them of shit they’re not guilty of. Just stop. Stop stoking the fires of drama. Just get along with each other! Let people like the characters they want to like and for the love of God stop harassing each other and just be at peace!