#grimm are people!

[bestworstcase]

some thoughts—messy ones—abt this beat:

this moment gets brought up with… honestly surprising regularity when people want to make a point about cinder being -redeemable- because she is, obviously, freaked out here. and like i don’t disagree that this scene and this specific beat in particular is doing really critical work to set up cinder’s villain->hero arc (not redemptive) but i do think “see! she’s repulsed by his wanton brutality!” is an odd and kind of reductive way to parse what’s happening here bc

that

is

a

grimm

thats a grimm. cinder reveled in the mass hysteria and violence she authored at the fall of beacon, personally reduced ozpin to a charred smear on the floor, and murdered a seventeen year old child in cold blood and gloated about it later. her first and only coping mechanism for Feels Bad is Killing People. it sparks joy. but she can’t stomach the sight of her coworker mauling a grimm.

ok? context is important. zoom out—

this is how salem’s training her—trying to train her—to mastery of the grimm arm. just throwing grimm at her until she reflexively falls back on her human arm, and then drops.

enough. i thought you were the girl who wanted power. stop holding back. if you want to master your new power, you must—

enter tyrian. and then for the whole dialogue between him and salem cinder gets framed like this:

folds hands.

the point of this scene is that cinder did lie to salem; she is not The Girl Who Wanted Power. what did she tell rhodes after she killed the madame? “i won’t have to run now.” she wants a home. she wants to be safe. she wants freedom. she believes—because the world has never given her a reason to believe otherwise—that becoming powerful is the only way she can ever get what she wants. but she does not, per se, want power.

and salem does not understand this because cinder has hitherto been very careful to keep her true motivation hidden, primarily because the last time she showed vulnerability her quasi-parental mentor immediately drew on her and shattered her ability to trust into a billion itty bitty pieces. cinder is, throughout this scene, very careful not to let salem see any of the stricken or pleading looks that the audience gets to see.

stop holding back.

tyrian interrupts when he does because salem can’t see through the mask cinder has presented to her (and is frustrated because she therefore can’t understand why cinder is being so timid with the phenomenal power she used to, it bears repeating, literally wipe the floor with ozpin)—and because what cinder takes from all of this is that salem wants her to be more brutal, like tyrian. there’s a reason cinder starts practicing on illusory rubys after this and why she’s frustrated and confused by salem’s judicious tactics in V5.

see? the beginning is the end and the end is the beginning; the scene is mirrored and tyrian is the looking glass. this:

is the guilt later renewed as horror:

there’s layers to cinder having this empathetic response to grimm when grimm are subjected to violence. obviously part of it is that cinder herself is grimm, at least in part, and that identification is conspicuously made present in the scene—

—but it goes beyond that. “you turned yourself into a monster just for power”/“look who’s talking.” think about how tenderly cinder says “shh, this is your home now” to the wyvern in V3. grimm are not the monsters in cinder’s story; they never have been. the abuse she suffered from her own kind was so horrific and unrelenting that it engendered a sense of kinship with the grimm. before she got that arm she was stitching grimm markings into the sleeves of her dress.

but insofar as this beat and this scene is integral to cinder’s nascent villain->hero arc the load-bearing pillar here is the contradiction between cinder’s notional aspiration (power) and her true motivation (freedom safeguarded by power), and the way her identification with and empathy for the grimm are tied up in that and the manner in which she tries to give salem what she thinks salem wants from her (i.e. be more like tyrian). which all comes back around with this ->

notably in 8.6 salem not only recants her harsh treatment of cinder since cinder returned but also reverses the things she says to cinder in 4.11. “i thought you were the girl who wanted power […] then stop holding back” -> “you’ve fought your whole life unwaveringly for what you want, and here i am holding you back instead of lifting you up.”

basically the rivalry between cinder and tyrian pulls a lot of symbolic weight because what tyrian represents vis-a-vis the salem-cinder dynamic is their shared misunderstanding of each other; salem accepts the ruthless power-hunger at face value and cinder reads into salem’s frustration a desire for cinder to be more brutal and both of them are incorrect. the framing of the disciplinary/apology scene in 8.6 communicates the shifting paradigm in part by adjusting his prominence in the composition of key shots before and after the pivot. and then salem sends him away to babysit the c-lister in vacuo.

point being the narrative development toward cinder’s villain->hero arc is also the narrative development toward salem’s villain->hero arc because they are structurally interdependent and constructed as a set; they’re meant to happen together and because of each other. that’s the trajectory. also cinder is keeping the arm and salem is not getting ungrimmed thank you goodnight

[vebokki]

simon and baz still live in my brain. now what

[its-ya-boi-cade]

1 2

[hakunoknight]

have u guys seen that meme

[lamentable-comedy]

obsessed with the fact that baz is so good at seeming cool on the outside that no one notices he's never actually made a friend in his life.

at watford he hung out with his cousin (would have known him before school) and his cousin's roommate (dev made friends with niall and brought him along to hang out with baz). in carry on and after watford his friends are penny (package deal with simon) and shepard (decided he was friends with the group of them regardless of what they wanted).

this man doesn't know how to make friends. he knows how to have the same taste in friends as his relatives and boyfriend. and how to stand around looking cool and aloof so that people think he's mysterious instead of an awkward loser. i adore him.

[i-lavabean]

Tide and Bone scribbles

[sir-adamus]

so much of the hatred rwby gets seems to be rooted in people being offended that what started as an amateur production, started so amateur

like, there was a tiny budget, all the voice acting was done with people with little to no experience, the animation was jank, the episodes were short and the pacing was all over the place with some questionable writing decisions, and it was very clear they were having to learn while doing and improving as they went along

instead of meeting the crew where they were at and respecting the ambition, people got mad that it wasn't a highly polished professional production with 25 minute episodes and nitpicked every little thing about it for ten years

[bethanyeliseart]

The Fantastic Four Family🩵💫

[manny-jacinto]

#jokes on you dana, he actually loves her

MYTHIC QUEST (2020-)

[wesen-grimmopedia]

I don’t see enough people talking about the fact that Nick is a really good artist. He can briefly see a wesen woge and then hours later draw a highly detailed and accurate sketch of what he saw. From what I remember this is just… not really discussed in the show.

[tapakah0]

Why no one told me that I'm not that bad at games. If I had been playing for these 10 years I would have been a beast. Pantheons of Hollow knight - pffffth, watch me, I will beat the 3 ones left, I will beat Hollow knight, I will beat Radiance, I will beat the Path of Pain, I will free this pure creature Gotta train for another 200 years

[linterteatime]

Worst therapist without a licence

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

Salem: How dare you recruit children to fight your war?

Ozpin: Excuse me, how old was Cinder when you told her she'd only be free if she did exactly what you told her?

[alecz-obssesionz]

♦️HK GIJINKAS | HORNET & LACE ♠️

◇ + HORNET ALTs ◇

◇ Original Sketch Page ◇

[silverybeast]

a soppy pathetic man

[dairyfreenugget]

(Alt text under read more)

Attack on @bluegekk0 ! I loved drawing this, but especially the kids, they're so adorable I'd kill for them 😭

ID start: A digital drawing of the Pale King and Grimm from Hollow Knight, and three ocs who are their children, Lewk, Asta, and Milo, on a sunny beach. Pale King is sleeping, one hand resting on his tummy, half-buried in the sand by Lewk, who's shaping a mermaid tail out of sand. Asta is sitting on her father's chest, her muzzle pressed close to his as she's putting her paw in his open, drooling mouth. Her twin, Milo, is sitting next to her and their father, hugging his tiktik plush while looking at what Asta is doing with one squinted eye. Next to them, Grimm is leaning back on his left hand, half in the shade of the umbrella, sipping blood from a tall glass with a cocktail umbrella in it. He's wearing sunglasses with red lenses. The sun shines brigly from above. In the background, there's a calm, rich blue sea and fluffy white clouds going across a light blue sky. End ID.