#i love mom schnee just so much

[scham-wcan]

Mum and Son

Whitley: Mother- Sorry, Mum?

Willow, working: Hmm, yes Whitley?

Whitley: I was wondering, following dinner tonight, if you’re not busy, there’s a new show which has come out which I think you and I would enjoy

Willow: Oh? And what is it called?

Whitley: Vale Mind Hunters, it is a documentary series b-but… I was hoping we could watch it together?

Willow, standing suddenly: Of course! H-how about we skip dinner, I could ask Klein to pop some, shoot how did Winter describe it, popped corn?

Whitley: I would really like that, ma’am!

Willow, holding her son close: Oh, it’s still mum dear. Now, I’ll go tine Klein if you get our night all prepared in the theatre.

Whitley: I-it’s a scary production mother?

Willow: … I shall ask for Klein to produce extra popped corn and… perhaps sweets for us?

Whitley: That would be good mother, we shall make sure the sisters rue the day they mocked us for being awful at scary productions!

Willow: That is right, my boy!

[diaryofamadsunwukongfan]

Case file #101: Adam Taurus

Race: Faunus

Nationality: Atlas

Ethnicity: Mantlecean

Weapon: Wilt & Blush (note: resembles a SDC weapon prototype that was stolen about 5 years ago. The blade stores kinetic energy that is then released in the form of harsh destruction rays.)

Gender: Man

Sexuality: Gynephiliac (This information was obtained from a double agent in Menagiere)

Current Age: 21

Aura Color: Red

Handedness: Right

Complexion: Pale

Eye Color: Pale blue

Faunus trait: Bull horns (Adam has both the strength and Endurance of a Bull, according to reports.)

Occupation: White Fang Vale branch leader

Previous Occuppation: White Fang Black ops commander (Classified)

13 years ago, Adam Taurus (note: last name constructed) became the subject of a world known, yet private court case against the SDC where a brand over his left eye was used as evidence of several claims of Faunus workplace abuse. The accusers in the court case were the two leaders of the White Fang, Ghira Bête & Sienna Khan. The White Fang won the court case and an anti neo-slavery bill was passed throughout Atlas-Mantle as a result. Adam, who had recently lost his mother at the time and was a still a minor, was adopted by Sienna Khan who took him to Menagiere.

... unfortunately, 5 years ago Ghira and his wife Kali Bête were assasinated at a Faunus rally somewhere in rural Sanus. They survive by their only daughter, Blake Bête. Since then, the White Fang has cultivated a [CLASSIFIED] organization under the leadership of Sienna Khan. The leaders of the White Fang under Sienna include Adam (Vale branch leader) and Fennec & Corsac Albain (Religous leaders). Attempts by the White Fang to establish an Atlas branch have been stopped by the council (note: countinue to stop them. watch all WF gatherings in Atlas).

WARNING: ONLY MEMBERS WITH LV.5 CLARENCE ARE ALLOWED TO READ BELOW

The White Fang has a Black Ops organization being used to carry out robberies and assasinations in all of Renment. The leader of the Black Ops is Adam Taurus, with Illia Amitola (note: needs a case file) and Blake Bête (has carried out 8 known assasinations on Faunus hate groups, currently missing, needs a case file) as sub commanders. All three serve as de-facto leaders of the White Fang in the event Sienna Khan is killed (note: Do NOT assasinate Sienna Khan, it will lead to race riots. Limit anti White Fang activity to covert operations).

Adam is wanted for the murders of 64 individuals in Atlas, all of whom are connected to the SDC (note: at least 20 were family members). If spotted, do NOT kill him, he is to be captured alive under all circumstances. Allow him to flee if he cannot be captured.

[The writing below is a transcript from a page recovered from a mansion attacked by the White Fang. It is believed to come from Adam Taurus, written by him and then stabbed to the wall.]

"...your father is a white demon. He told me he loved me and would take me to Atlas, but after I gave him what he wanted he left me down here in his mines. Adam, I need you to find your father. And when you do, I want you to kill him. And his wife. And their children. Kill every human on this earth so I can forgive giving birth to a half-"

"I WILL DO IT MOM"

[End of paper dialouge]

[todds-rwby-liveblog]

Ruby really just fucking went into the Ever After finding out just how badly all of her plan with Amity and getting help fast failed on top of the knowledge that she will always be a target for Salem to Grimmify her or worse for the rest of her life and also the way she has NO idea whether her mom is dead or worse anymore and having it left up to her imagination. AND on top of finding out that Atlas fell and so many people died and in the end it was quite literally all for nothing. AND on top of that Penny died anyway despite the fact that everything that she’d ever wanted (finally being seen as more than just a war machine and making new friends) was finally coming true. Everything has well and truly gone to all shit possible in her mind, Penny dying wasn’t even a last straw for her it was like half the payload getting dropped on her at maximum velocity. I’m gonna go to bed <3

[arc-misadventures]

BMI Jaune: Willow, Summer, and Kali?

BMI: Jaune II

Juniper: Jaune~!

Jaune: No...

Juniper: What?

Jaune: No. Whatever it is, the answer is: No.

Juniper: But, I never said anything?

Jaune: But, you're going to ask me something, and whatever the ask is about, the answer is: No.

Juniper: ...

Juniper: BMI...

Jaune: AHHHH?! Not this shit again!

Juniper: Your chose for this BMI, are Willow Schnee.

Willow: Hello, Jaune~!

Jaune: Hi...?

Juniper: Kali Belladonna.

Kali: Oh look, it's my favourite human~!

Jaune: Why did you say it like that...?

Juniper: And, lastly we have, Summer Rose.

Summer: Hello, Daddy~!

Jaune: Excuse me, what...?

Juniper: Are you ready to choose who you going to, BMI, Jaune~?

Jaune: The hell are you making me choose between my friend’s mom?!

Juniper: Well, as one woman/mother to another, they told me about their... pitiful sex lives, or lack there of in some cases...

Summer: Juniper?!

Kali: How could you just say that?!

Willow: Considering my ex-husband size or, more accurately the lack there of... Honestly, there isn't much to brag about. There is certainly plenty to complain about however…

Juniper: What? Both of your husbands are dead, so you haven't had much, if any action since they died.

Kalli: Well, that's true...

Summer: It's not like we did it much after I had, Ruby...

Juniper: And, Willow... I'm sorry you had to go through that so often...

Willow: While, I love my children with all my heart, and I wouldn't trade them for the world. I do sometimes find myself wishing I had my son sooner so I didn't have to have... relations as often as I did.

Juniper: See! They have sad sexless lives since they lost their husbands. And, Willow had...

Juniper: She had, Jacques...

Juniper: So, Jaune please, BMI these three woman, and help them ‘fix’ their dry spell?

Jaune: ...

SKW: Please~?

Jaune: ...

Jaune: Haaaa...

Jaune: I would Marry, Summer.

Summer: And, why do you want to do that, Husband Dearest~?

Jaune: 'Husband dearest?"

Jaune: Okay? Okay, I say that because you look like you would be a wonderful housewife to come home to.

Summer: Naww~!

Jaune: Plus you look like the woman/wife who would do the, "Hi honey, welcome home! Would like a bath, dinner, or me?" Type of woman, and I...? Ahem... yeah that...

Summer: Oh; Is that so~?

Jaune: ...

Jaune: I Would, Breed Kali.

Kali: Why?

Jaune: Well... You have large birthing hips... and I want to give those birthing hips a run for their money...

Kali: Oh, I hope feel like we're going to enjoy that~!

Jaune: Hahaha...

Jaune: I would impregnate, Willow.

Willow: Oh, why would you do that?

Jaune: ...

Jaune: I hate you ex-husband with a burning passion. A lot of people think that killing him, or torturing him to death would be the best sort of revenge for what he did. But, I think... taking his woman, and making her mine is a much more tantalizing idea~!

Willow: Y-Yours?

Jaune: I’ll make you my woman! By the time I’m through with you, you’ll fit around me perfectly, no other man will satisfy you, you’ll come begging for more, and I’ll be all to happy to oblige~!

Willow: Y-Y-You promise…?

Jaune: Uhh… Well… T-That is of we… did do it…

Summer: Do you think he could do that?

Kali: Maybe? My daughter did say he’s quite big.

Willow: How big?

Kali: Six when soft, ten when hard, and plenty thick as well~!

Willow: Heavens, say it is so~!

Summer: Are you really that big~?

Jaune: WHAT?! How the hell do you know that?!

Willow: He is~!

Summer: Hmm… Juniper, please be a dear, and leave.

Juniper: Why?

Summer: Because, the sooner you leave, the sooner you’ll have grandchildren~!

Juniper: Good luck, Jaune! Remember to not use a condom!

Jaune: W-W-What?! Wait… hold on!

Kali: Don run, Jaune: The fun is about to begin~!

Willow: Come on, Jaune… it’s time to continue the, Arc bloodline~!

Summer: So what will it be, Jaune; Will you take, Kali, or do you want, Willow, or perhaps me~?

Jaune: Ohhh…?!

Jaune: P-Please be gentle…?

SKW: Fu-fufu~!

Kali: No promises~!

[novankenn]

The Fundraiser

Jaune was a little nervous. It had been four months since he had seen his twin sister Joan. He knew she had taken his running off... extremely badly, so he was worried about how she was going to react when she saw him. As the bullhead landed, Jaune swallowed nervously. His knees actually started to quiver as the hatch opened.

????: JAUNE!

Jaune was bowled over by a blond haired missile, and when his head stopped swimming he found himself looking into the blue eyes of his twin sister, who was firmly seated upon his chest.

Jaune: Hi Joan.

Joan: You stupid, ignorance, disloyal, jerk! How dare you!

Jaune: I'm sorry?

Joan: Sorry? You WILL be sorry! You left me alone... with them, how could you?

Jaune: I'm sorry... but Belle and Bella really like you! They couldn't have been...

Joan: I'm talking about mom and dad! Dad was convinced you had been eaten by grimm, and mom spent four weeks crying about how she lost her baby boy to some cradle robbing skank!

Jaune: Well... neither of those things happened, so...

Joan: And you NEVER did once write me! I had to reach out to Auntie to find you!

Jaune: You didn't... please say you didn't!

????: She did.

A ominous shadow fell over the two siblings. Who both looked up to see the grinning face of Glynda Goodwitch... their mom's twin sister.

Jaune: What have you done...

Glynda: So as you can see Joan, Jaune is fine, I've been keeping him safe.

Joan: Thank you Auntie.

Glynda: You are welcome. Now... you BOTH owe me a favor and tonight I am cashing it in.

Joan/ Jaune: And the favor is?

Glynda: You are going to help me with the Annual Beacon Charity Auction. I have your... uniforms in my apartment.

Joan: That doesn't sound so bad.

Jaune: Don't jinx it!

Joan and Jaune were hot and exhausted. Neither was happy with the Holiday elf outfits they were having to wear, that included bell topped pointy hats, and curly shoes. Though the short skirt that Joan had to wear was a little better than the nearly pained on shorts Jaune had on.

Joan: I'm tired. Is this almost over?

Jaune: Yeah, I think so. That was the last lot we had to move.

Joan: Good. I want a shower and to cuddle you, like we used to.

Jaune: Soon, Joan. Soon.

Glynda: Thank you all for your support of the Vale Orphanage and Food Bank!

Crowd clapping politely.

Glynda: Now for our last special client only lot... lot double J.

Joan: I though you said... ?

Jaune: It was.

Joan: Then where is this Double J lot?

Jaune: I... HEY!

Joan: EEP!

The Pair felt themselves lifted into the air and pulled through the curtains, finding themselves in front of the several of their friends and strangers.

Glynda: Now before I start the bidding, here are some of the details. Lot Double J is of a set of Arc twins. Jaune and Joan. They are and I quote "Perfect House-Husband and House-Wife material".

Joan/ Jaune: Mom SOLD US OUT!

Glynda: While their combat ratings is at E rank, that is of little concern. They both have Baking Skills at Rank A. Rank B Housekeeping. Rank B Laundry. Rank S Cooking. Rank A+ Child rearing...

The room was filled with polite clapping.

Glynda: AND Rank SSS Stamina... you know what that means...

Once again the room filled with clapping... very loud and aggressive clapping.

Glynda: This lot is to be sold as a set, and yes the marriage documentation is ready for signature. So do I have an opening bid of...

???? 30,000!

Jaune: Weiss? What the hell?

Joan: Whose Weiss?

???? 45,000

Jaune: PYRRHA!

Joan: Was that you're partner?

Weiss: Back off Nikos! Those blond angels are mine! 55,000!

Jaune: So you want him now? Pathetic Schnee. 75,000!

Weiss: Pathetic? Who was too much of a coward to admit her feelings? 85,000!

Jaune: Feelings?

Joan: I think she likes you.

Jaune: Great, but right now she's trying to buy OUR hands in marriage!

Joan: Oh, yeah right.

Pyrrha: I was scared! I didn't want to drive him away... but I can't not take this chance! I LOVE YOU JAUNE and I'll LOVE JOAN just as equally! 100,000!

Joan: Awe, that's sweet.

Jaune: Joan their trying to BUY us!

Joan: You trying to tell me, you don't want someone who is interested in us, who can provide for us, and all we have to do... is the shit mom and dad had us do all the time?

Jaune: Well...

Joan: Plus... you do know what Husbands and Wives get to do... and do a lot right?

Jaune: Oh...

Weiss: The Arc and Schnee name must be joined! With those two at my side I will fix the SDC and with their loving support, I'll make reparations to all the people my father has hurt! 250,000!

Joan: Arc-Schnee?

Jaune: Schnee-Arc? Nah. Arc-Schnee, sounds better.

Joan: Right?

Pyrrha: No... I will NOT lose to some spoiled princess, using her daddy's money! 500,000, and I'll sign over the Royalty Rights for Pumpkin Pete's to Beacon for administration to local Vale charities! That's another 200,000 per year!

Glynda: Um...

Looks over to the lawyers, administrator and observers.

Glynda: Can we accept that?

The lawyers, administrator, and observers all shrug their shoulders.

Joan: Pyrrha seems nice.

Jaune: Oh she is. She saved my life at initation.

Joan: Really?

Glynda: Okay... 500,000 upfront, pl;us 200,000 per annum... going once!

Murmurs from the crowd.

Glynda: Going twice!

Weiss just crosses her arms over her chest, and shoots Glynda a wink.

Glynda: SOLD!

BANG BANG BANG

Joan: Wow... that's a lot of money to help the needy.

Jaune: It is. But are you okay with this? I mean we're going to end up jointly married to the same person...

Joan: It was bound to happen... considering mom and auntie.

Jaune: True. Ture.

Glynda: Lot Double J goes to Pyrrha Nikos for the sum of 500,000 lien and an annual contribution of a further 200,000. Congratulations! To everyone, thank you for attending, and your support.

Joan: Jaune... why am I feeling scared now?

Jaune: I don't know... but I'm feeling it too.

[tequiilasunriise]

"Blake, are your parents dating my mom?"

"...Meow."

@min3nc's post about Snowleopard ripped open the Pandora Box that is some of my headcanons about this throuple (and the subsequent Bellaschneeblings interactions in my post here) so sit tight y'all this list is gonna be long because I absolutely adore this healthy bi4bi4bi poly pilf couple that foils whatever the fuck Divorce Mcgees Summer, Raven, n Tai had going on (don't get me wrong, I adore str-crossed lovers, especially whatever the fuck Rosebird had, but cmon you could power a small nation off of their Divorce Energy alone)

-They have zero in-canon interactions but the thought of Willow slowly healing and learning to love again from two characters shown to be incredibly sweet and patient and understanding and oh so gentle and tender and earnest? Guys this alone should sell you on the ship like!! LIKE!!!

-WILLOW HEALING FROM HER ABUSIVE MARRIAGE TRAUMA WITH THE HEALTHIEST COUPLE!! GHIRA AND KALI TAG TEAMING TO VALIDATE AND SMOTHER THE SHIT OUTTA THIS ENDEARING MILF WITH SO MUCH LOVE AND SUPPORT!!!

-Takes a deep breath. Wowie. Do y'all get it though do y'all understand the vision?

-I need me vulnerable Willow asking the Pilfadonnas fer parenting advice and the pair to be more than happy to help their girlfriend just so eager to help!! They're so reassuring and tender with her, making sure she doesn't feel like a terrible shit fer asking fer help about this like, "Oh, oh sweetheart. You've been through so much, and it's a good thing you're fighting fer your second chance to be the mother your children need and deserve. It's alright, darling, we're right here with you."

-Furthermore, Willow would feel so much guilt eating at her for her ex-husband's crimes against the Faunus as a whole and the Pilfadonnas, the leaders of the Faunus themselves, would help talk through her guilt and affirm that Willow is not to blame fer bullshit Jacques pulled and help her with the process of finding a good therapist like like like!!! There's so much shit here guys!!!

-"It was by marrying me that Jacques gained access to the resources tied to the Schnee name and carved out the world. I didn't do anything to stand up to him and stop him from ruining my family's name, and so by doing nothing I'm a part of his sins."

"....Babygirl we love you so much but there's SO MUCH wrong to unpack here."

-Also Willow deserves to be bisexually panicked by two hot cat people bc I said so she just deserves okay trust trust trust

-Anyways, the Schneeblings are mad sus of the Pilfadonnas at first because they ALLLLL know what kinda abusive bullcrap their mom went through in her dead marriage with Jackass Schnee but all eventually coming around to really love Ghira's and Kali's seemingly endless unconditional love (Weiss was the quickest to adapt, then Winter, and finally little Whitley)

-The Pilfadonnas are so sweet and loving to their new kids and see 'em as their own straight up but don't pressure any typa connection and respect the Schneeblings so much like, "I would prefer just Kali, but if calling me Ms. Belladonna makes you more comfortable then go right ahead sweetheart" LIKE THEYRE JUST THE BEST STEPARENTS EVER SO MUCH VALIDATION AND PATIENCE AND SWEETNESS!!!

-"Chieftain Ghira, sir, it's good to see you."

"Winter, while I won't stop you from calling me by that title if that's what makes you the most comfortable, you don't have to be so strict with yourself. There's no need to address me like you're a military subordinate, sweetheart."

"...I would die for you, sir."

"Oh! Um! I'm very grateful for that, but, uh, let's also not huh? Wouldn't want you dying anytime soon ahahahaaa."

"You're right, sir, the Maiden powers should not be so carelessly tossed around."

".....Alright so we're going to go find you a good therapist and start working on your sense of personhood-"

-The Pilfadonnas introduce the concept of therapy and healthier coping mechanisms to all of the Schnees REALNESS

-"But OP wouldn't Weiss already have learned that from her super supportive friends?" Weiss' found family is incredible but healthy coping mechanisms are NOT part of that package deal holy shit hypertraumatized child soldiers left and righttt baby

-Anyways, one time Whitley slipped and accidentally called Ghira "Hey dad-" and everyone FROZE before Whitley rushed his question and then ran the f u c k off as Ghira started wiping tears with Kali holding him close and Willow being so emotional at the her son finally has a solid, good father figure in his life oMG HES STARTING TO ACCEPT THE PILFADONNAS!!!

-Eventually, the Schneeblings graduate to calling the Pilfadonnas just Kali and Ghira (and Blake calling Willow by her first name was already established back when she was crashing Schnee Manor in V8 so we chilling) but Whitley, oh my heart, sometimes slips with a 'mama' or 'dad' to his stepparents and down the line he even stops getting embarrassed over it and GOSH does it melt the Pilfadonnas' hearts everytime he calls 'em that it doesn't matter if it's the tenth or the hundredth time they're sosossooo soft

-One time Weiss was practicing her fencing stances and didn't realize the Pilfadonnas were watching her, and then when they started to praise how amazing her swordsmanship is? Babygirl actually starts to cry a little because it was always, "You need to be faster, Schnees aren't supposed to be so slow" and "What would your grandfather say if he saw such sloppy forms? Again!" and never, "Oh, Weiss, honey, you were wonderful out there! You must have trained very hard to be so good!"

-If you give any of the Schneeblings a fucken shred of unconditional praise they will crumple faster than a stale cookie. On a daily basis, Weiss jokes and asks Blake how the FUCK did she not end up more well-adjusted (she knows about the bullshit with Adam but Weiss also knows that Blake is aware she's just messing around)

-So we've established some headcanons of the Schneelings interacting with the Pilfadonnas, but hear me out awkward as fuck Blake and Willow interactions bc Willow has NO IDEA how to interact with her daughter's teammate turned stepdaughter???

-Because, you know, "Oh uh hey my ex-husband exploited and abused the shit out the Faunus for years on end and you were one of the people heavily affected to the point where you, as a literal child, turned to a life of vigilante terrorist justice as a form of fighting back for your own basic rights"

-Blake, like her parents, completely understand that Willow had nothing to with Jackass' cruelty and instead gives her new stepmom an easy smile and starts talking small talk about Weiss' adventures with Team RWBY and!! Yeah!! Willow genuinely wants to know what's been going on in her daughter's life since she was so absent from it during her alcoholic days

-The pair bond over a shared loved of Weiss, and at one point Willow says, "If it isn't overstepping, can I just say I am truly fortunate that Weiss has someone like you in her life to support her" and Blake chuckles softly and replies, "It wasn't easy at first, but yeah, I'm glad she's in my life too" AND ARGAGRGRHRH THE BONDINGGGG

-Speaking of bonding, imagine the Pilfadonnas vibing with Klein and bonding over tea together, and seeing their adoptive dad figure Klein vibe with their new steparents may or may not have sped up Whitley and Winter warming up to the Pilfadonnas justttt a litttttlleee

-When Kali and Ghira see their stepkids flinch at loud voices or innocently raised hands, when they notice the low self-esteem Winter still carries or Whitley's facade of maturity so that adult figures actually acknowledge him, in front of the kids they're very respectful and apologetic of accidental triggers without being patronizing, but when they're alone? Straight fucking murder in their eyes. The Pilfadonnas are fucken e n r a g e d they're fucken seething because how dare Jackass Schnee hurt these sweet kids so fucking much

-They make sure neither the Schneeblings nor Willow are around when they let out their furious vents to each other absolutely slandering Jackass' name with clenched fists and bared fangs because they don't want their anger to trigger anyone but yeahhhh. Yeah, if Jacques is still out there we're adding two bisexual cat pilfs to the waiting list fer ripping his head off

-ANYWAYS, on a lighter note, can y'all imagine the Belladonnas are vibing and purring together all comfy and shit and the Schnees see them and are like, "Shit man they're so HEALTHY and FUNCTIONAL what the HECK??"

-Blake groaning, "Dadddddd!!" when her dad pulls up with family albums to talk about his precious daughter's childhood and, "Not you too mom!!!" when Kali excitedly joins in. As Blake is play wrestling with her parents to get the photobooks away, the Schnees are just witnessing this in various levels of amused but also kinda like, "Damn wow is this what a healthy family's supposed to look like dannggg that's crazzzzzyyyyyyyy"

-Vacations to Menagerie where the Belladonnas playfully make fun of their sunburnt as all hell white family members, and even though some Faunus are wary of the visiting Schnees, others are more open to giving these guys a chance and hey!! Turns out the SDC is actually going to be a good company after the shit Jacques Schnee pulled. Imagine the healing between Faunus relations and the Schnee family name when Willow and her kids pull up to help wherever and however they can

-I'm just saying family dinners would be so healthy and healing fer Willow and her kids after years filled with so many isolated, lonely, suffocating as hell dinners when Jacques still walked these halls. Instead of stiff etiquette and barbed questions throw their way by a spiteful bitchass with a clip-on tie, there's warm laughter and jovial banter thrown about; genuine inquires about their day/interests that lead to invested conversation and freely given praise; large, beaming smiles from three dark color-schemed people who radiantly glow like the sun. It's like the Belladonnas breathed back life into the hollowed out Schnees who barely survived all the different ways jackass had hurt them, and that's just so fucken lovely to think about

[allthejoeks]

RWBY Chibi-esque antics I want out of Volume 10:

Ren, Nora, and Oscar having to navigate the emotions of 'Holy shit, our leader is back and alive, which is so great, but now he has even more trauma so we need to be extra good to him.' with the fact that he's now planning their daily schedules down to the minute and they need it to stop.

As RWBY's doing the rounds of introductions to all the important people, since they're the face of this whole thing, Yang introduces Ruby as 'our homophobic leader' every time.

Finally, they meet the Belladonnas, and Ruby just WON'T stop with horrifying and embarrassing stories. At one point, Yang drags her into another room, begging her to cut it out, and Ruby shrugs her shoulders. "I dunno, Yang, seems like it'd be out of character for a homophobe like me to let this go smoothly."

While the sisters are having an increasingly loud brawl in the other room. Blake's having an actual heartfelt conversation with her parents. Her dad admits that Yang still has made a better first impression that Sun did. A chair flies through the wall. "Barely."

Bumbleby showing off to the rest of their friends, we get ecstatic Nora, so on and so on, and Illia cracks an innocent joke about how she's cool with it only if she gets to be Blake's maid of honor, and Weiss, slightly less innocently and much less jokingly says, 'Obviously I'M going to be Blake's maid of honor." Which begins a season-long running gag of them trying to out-friend each other. Usually Illia wins these bouts because as everyone discovers, the magic words to make Weiss go away are 'Ruby seems lonely today, don't you think?'

A complete reversal of White Rose's dynamic. Ruby's trying to do important leader stuff a lot of the time, so Weiss (still a bit nervous from V9 Ruby) is trying to be the nonsensical bubbly one to take her mind off things. "Ruby, paperwork is such a drag, right? How about we *checks her Scroll* go... skiing with friends?" "In Vacuo." "We've done stranger!"

The Schnees, still trying to wriggle their way out of dysfunction junction, start thinking of Ruby as some sort of guru. Winter's partially jealous that Ruby's getting all of Weiss' attention, and they all wish to learn her secrets to having healthy family dynamics. She gets invited to dinner with them a lot. It is rarely fun.

Eventually Qrow starts inviting himself too just to piss off Winter, but he unironically hits it off with Willow as they bond over being recovering alcoholics and trying to be better family people. Which leads Winter into going absolutely insane trying to ensure that Qrow isn't sleeping with her mom.

There's a side plot the entire season where RWBY is trying to convince a local crime lord with a dedicated and loyal crime family to ally with them instead of Tyrian, and she's more than happy to, being dead is bad for business after all, but for some inexplicable reason Ruby just pisses her off, and the two remain cagey the entire season. Eventually, after Bonding(TM), she admits she loves lacey and colorful things, but it's just a little too girly for Vacuo's underground, and Ruby, finally connecting the dots, weakly suggests, "What about a parasol? Nothing wrong with keeping the sun off you." and the crime lord does a total 180, happy to work with Ruby and her great ideas while Ruby has a crisis of faith.

[princess-of-the-corner]

Okay so, if I could summarize each of the four main characters and what makes them so interesting:

Ruby Rose: She dresses in black and red, has a lot of death motifs, and is the most willing of the four main characters to fight dirty. She's also an altruistic sweetheart who just wants to make the world a better place, is heavily coded as both autistic and asexual, and her entire character arc across the first eight seasons of the show is based around her deteriorating mental health as she holds herself to higher and higher standards until she just can't live up to role she has given herself. She's also seen blushing when talking to a pretty girl in Season 3, and while one boy younger than her is implied to have a crush on her, she has NEVER shown ANY interest in boys outside of the noncanon parody spin-off. Also, while it's never explicitly mentioned in show, analyzing the information we DO have reveals her to be perhaps the SOLE survivor of a HORRIFICALLY thorough genocide, even if Ruby herself doesn't realize until after Volume 5.

Weiss Schnee: Basically Chloe with better writing. She starts out as a seemingly shallow, petulant rich girl with an ego larger than her father's corporate empire. She's also deeply aware of what a monster her father is, comes from a broken home, and even BEFORE her character arc is primarily motivated by a desire to redeem her family name after her father married into the family and turned her grandfather's company into a standard evil megacorp. She's also canonically bisexual.

Blake Belladonna: She's a Faunus, a former member of the civil rights group-turned-terrorist organization known as the White Fang. Her ex boyfriend, Adam Taurus (who is heavily implied to have started courting her when she was 12 and he was 18), has slowly but surely been subverting the White Fang's actual purpose in order to turn it into an instrument of his bloodlust, and thus her driving motivation for much of the first few seasons is to atone for her perceived role in the White Fang's fall (as she unfairly believes herself to be responsible for his fall to the darkside, because he would divert blame to HER whenever she tried to confront him on it), and also try and fight racism. She's also the team's second in command. She was also the first member of the cast to be confirmed queer, and is the closest thing to a harem protagonist the show has, with three characters (not including her abusive ex) all having been confirmed to have fallen for her at different points. Her eyes are the same color as her partner's soul.

Yang Xiao Long: She might wear the image of a hard-drinking party girl, but she has NEVER consumed alcohol on screen, is PROBABLY the best student on her team, built her weapon herself, and is a genius mechanic on TOP of being a berserker who gets stronger the more and stronger hits she absorbs to charge her Semblance with. She's both the tank AND the team mom, because all three of her parents AND her uncle have let her down in some way, shape, or form since she was a child, forcing her to grow up so her sister wouldn't have to. Her birth mom walked out on her when she was a baby, her actual mom mysteriously disappeared on a secret mission, her uncle's too drunk to be much help around the house and is usually absent on top of that, and her father is very clearly not up to the task of raising two children on his own, no matter how much he may try and genuinely loves his girls. Also, she's Ruby's older half sister, and a good chunk of her arc is dedicated to the fact that it takes her until season 9 to realize that she's gay and in love with her best friend. Her eyes' default color is the same as her partner's soul.

GOD that's gay.

[lacependragon]

One of the things I love so much about canon rewrites is taking characters and backstories and tweaking them, slightly, doing the changes I'm interested in, and then butterfly effect-ing my way forward to the first chapter to understand how those changes have affected characters since they first came into their worlds.

It's so much fun to see how it changes people. To see how you can keep their cores but tweak the fine details, play with the public persona, twirl out different relationship threads from the miasma of change and curiosity you've entwined yourself with.

Having Pyrrha be trained by Caroline Cordovin, a character I am likening to a Greek God, a character who takes heavy inspiration from Achilles' mother (in my world) and who desperately wants to be remembered, to create a legacy, in a hero. To be immortalized in her progeny. To never be forgotten. And then to have her be in charge of Argus, to have her push Pyrrha from the start, to take this detail of Caroline Cordovin being in charge of Argus and making her and Pyrrha linked this closely, I've gotten this very interesting Pyrrha. A Pyrrha that is still, at her core, the same kind and loving and loyal and destiny-believing girl we all adore, but who is deeply traumatized, whose insecurities are marked in blood and isolation, and who is desperately lonely to a degree that isn't explored in canon.

80% the same. 20% different. That's what I'm working with, in terms of numbers. It's not an exact science, but it's a feeling - a vibe.

Jaune wasn't allowed to become a hunter because of the death of his grandfather, a trained hunter, when his father was a child. So he had to do things in secret. Different conflict in the family.

Pyrrha's heavy training and the tweaks to the magic system means she recognizes Jaune doesn't have an awakened aura in the locker room. Different starting motivations.

Ruby and Yang have grown up with a four parent household even if two of those parents are gone. Qrow is just as much their father as Taiyang and they treat him as such. Qrow and Taiyang's dynamics, with each other, with their kids, and with the world as a whole, have been tweaked to suit the changes made to STRQ. And considering how little we have of STRQ?

Oh boy did I have some fun.

Ruby Rose has carried around Summer's emblem since the night she left. She took her emblem off her cape and pulled her weapon from it, handing it to Ruby and putting her weapon on her back. She asked Ruby to hang on to it until she got back.

Now Ruby flicks it into the air to summon Crescent Rose. A weapon that protects them better than Mom ever did. But it's bitterness and love and guilt and grief and loyalty and frustration all tied into one. Ruby wonders if Summer knew she wasn't coming back. Ruby wonders if they were the last person Summer ever spoke to. Ruby wonders if they'll ever live up to the legacy of love and kindness and work that their mother left behind.

And as Ruby learns what Summer was to the Ozluminati, as they learn about Salem and Cinder and the Maidens and the Grimm, that weight is only going to grow. Because Summer was thought to be the one to stop Salem. And she's gone.

How do you live up to that?

And how do you convince yourself it's okay to be angry? It's okay to be bitter? It's okay to hate her for leaving you behind while still loving her? How do you choke back those emotions and find a way to speak through them, to explain how you feel?

You don't. So you get a little more frustrated, a little more grumpy, a little more jaded. But you still believe in hope and love and kindness.

And you still want to save everyone. Everyone. No matter what.

"We're here to make it better. So that's what we'll do, no matter how hard it is or how long it takes."

Little changes. A legacy that weighs much heavier from day one. An emblem that represents something from the moment we first see it - literally and metaphorically.

80% same. 20% change.

Jacques went to prison two years ago. The Schnee family is slowly recovering, but a lifetime of trauma can't be undone in two years. Weiss goes to Beacon not just to breathe, not just to find herself, but also to flee the knowing eyes and snide comments of everyone in Atlas. She is protective of her remaining family, fiercely loyal to her mother and her efforts to fix things. She detests her father. Her father is what most people who know about everything see the first time they see her - or so she feels, anyway.

So she's still prickly. She's still got her hackles up. She's still defensive, and frustrated, and a little too caught up in her side of the problem. But can you blame her? She's been picked at and poked at since she was 15 by a world that didn't want to believe her father is a monster. Will always be a monster.

And she carries that every day. Not just in her traumas, but also in the loss of a lot of her eyesight in that eye. In the way she flinches when some men raise their voices and slam their hands on tables. In the way she starts snarling the moment she gets backed into a corner.

Traits Blake recognizes. Traits that slowly get them both to bond. Because yes, they are from opposite worlds, but look at these scars that are the same. Look at these reactions that are mirrors to one another. Bridging the gap through understanding of pain.

80% same. 20% different.

Yeah. That's the thesis of RWBY rewrite changes. That's the vibe.

[bookishjules]

Hi Jules,

Saw your post about RWBY. I have seen up through V8. PLEASE tell me all your hot takes. (If they’re anything like your sohae analyses then they’re going to be immaculate). <3

omg welcome to the list of followers i know watch rwby!! (it's a small list, but it's also one of my favorites hehe) idk that i have any esp hot takes?? but i'd love to talk about something that's been on my mind a lot recently..?

that thing is the schnee family... i personally am a huge sucker for the mechanics and evolution of family dynamics and how each individual functions within and outside of it. and aside from the belladonnas, whose family web has a third of individual relationships as the schnees, weiss's family is really the only one we get the privy of seeing in totality?? which i think is really interesting considering they are also the most public family of any of our mcs--even pyrrha, who was more known for her own name than her family's.. but i digress.

so much of the character of the schnee family really is based around that public persona, the facade they each present to the world. while we aren't very familiar with the former heads of the family, or of the sdc, i'm still inclined to believe a lot of this attitude was brought to the family by jacques, who has been acting since day one. he acted like he was in love. he donned the schnee name. he dyed his hair white. he swept willow aside, took her family's legacy from her, and then spent the rest of his life pretending like he deserved to be where he was and manipulating people into playing along. and of course behind every facade is something worth hiding. for jacques i think there was a lot of insecurity and fear there--youthful desperation that he was never quite able to move past because of his choice to take the cheater's way to the top.

willow, on the other hand, seems to move through life with a lot more vulnerability--loving jacques. loving their children. i'm sure there's probably an amount of safety and security growing up as a schnee heiress that resulted in her never having to form that shell that jacques did, but that's exactly why he was able to get into the power position in their relationship, and making it so she just gave up when jacques showed his cards to her, bc she didn't have anything up her sleeves.

and i think its really interesting to consider the kids growing up in this climate.. each of them learning in their own ways what parts of themselves to control and diminish vs. which strengths were valuable to play to. even with both winter and weiss stepping out from their father's control, the effects of their upbringing still follows them. they saw the powerless position their mom was reduced to because she didn't demand respect the way their father did, she didn't walk into a room with the air of the most important person in it, at least not within the confines of their family--because why would she? meanwhile, jacques, who viewed their relationship as nothing more than a stepping stool, a business transaction, would have maintained that facade and that attitude no matter how intimate the setting. and of course both girls would notice and internalize that at a young age. we see it in weiss, especially during the beacon arc. and even winter's choice to become a soldier, and then her ability to move herself up to the top of ironwood's ranks... they wanted to escape the pressure of their father's thumb, but they just carried his lessons with them, adapting them to their own lives. school and the army. and then that's something they need to unlearn. or rather.. they need to learn to tap into the heart they inherited from their mom as well, to fight against the fear of weakness and collapse that they associate with softness. it's in much of weiss's arc throughout the series, and we see it in winter as well as we reach the end of the 8th volume and she's struggling between her personal beliefs and ironwood's as he continues to devolve. without the rules and control that ironwood brought, winter is then forced to tap into her heart.

whitley on the other hand... whitley fascinates me. since he was younger than both his sisters, he would have had less time to see their mom as her genuine self before she lost herself to depression, paranoia, and alcoholism. for whitley, the only option was to be like his father, which only makes it harder for him to see the distinction between who he is and the controlled front he presents to others. his relationship with weiss, his small bits of character development we've seen so far, are so important to me, because it really shows the possibility for all three of these kids to grow beyond the trauma that perpetuated within the walls of their icy mansion. even down to the one who suffered the worst of it all by himself. willow once told weiss not to forget about her brother, so i refuse to stop projecting hope in his direction.

[howlingday]

Ruby: His partner died right in front of him. He wanted so desperately to save her, but he felt so powerless in trying to. He suffered for so long, quietly seething by himself. He had us, but even his friends were shut out from him.

Jaune: Her mother died before she could teach her anything. She's the last in a long line of ancient warriors, and she's only now realizing how different she is.

Ruby: He felt love. He was so close, but his first kiss was her last, and that broke him. He's probably thought of ending his pain countless times, but he never did. He's probably dreamed of torturing and killing the monsters who took her, but he chose mercy instead. He took his pain and hatred and turned it into kindness and empathy.

Jaune: There's no telling what she can do with her powers. I've seen what happens to the Grimm, and I remember seeing what happened to the people she used it on, too. But it's a power so rare, not even she knows how it works. Can you imagine; having the power to change everything, but never knowing how to use it? But regardless of whether or not she can use it, she still fights every day.

Ruby: I'm just a lucky girl from an island nobody knows. I still have my family, and I have my friends here to help me fight for what really matters. I wanted to be a Huntress because that's what my Mom was. He wants to be a hero because that's what he wants to be, and that's who he is.

Jaune: I know who I am, and I know what I'm capable of. I grew up knowing what my parents thought of me, what my sisters think of me. I have wits and my weapons, and I chose to do this. She has something greater because she has to do this.

Ruby: He's loved and lost, and he still gets back up. He's everything I want to be.

Jaune: She's been through so much and she still wears her cape like a superhero. I honestly wish I was half as cool as her.

Ruby: He started dating again. He didn't even tell me. That's fine, though. I mean, he's still going through his own emotions. He doesn't need me.

Jaune: I can't depend on Ruby because everyone else already is. She doesn't need to know because, well, look at me. Who am I compared to the thousands of other people who are expecting her?

Ruby: He is who he is. He doesn't need anyone. He doesn't... need me.

Jaune: She's Ruby Rose.

Ruby: He's Jaune Arc.

Jaune: Ruby? What are you doing here?

Ruby: I... Same as you! Wait, did you take the elevator?

Jaune: It's a few stories up. If I tried any other way, I'd have to break a window.

Weiss: ...Good evening, I'm Weiss Schnee. You must be Miss Politan.

Neo: (Nods, Shakes Weiss' hand)

[bestworstcase]

w. what is going on in the rwby fandom

+ ( @discoursed-dracula )

hgjksdfkj to be clear there's no new or active drama happening it's just that every time i see rwby narniaposting it feels like clipping through into an alternate dimension LMAO i should preface this by saying i am an evangelical apostate and i have extremely strong narnia opinions Which I Am Going To Rant About At Excessive Length Now

on winter schnee as an allusion to jadis

while this was actually not the take that provoked last night's grumbling, this fanon is so ubiquitous that i need to talk about it first.

i've been rwby adjacent for all of five minutes so i admittedly do not have full context for how this fanon proliferated in the first place but based on my efforts to reverse engineer it what i've gathered is. this:

and... look.

ok.

to begin--rwby uses character allusions in two distinct ways, which i'll refer to as "intrinsic" and "contextual" for the purposes of this discussion. every character has at least one intrinsic allusion--the... i guess i would say inspiration behind that character. e.g., ruby rose is little red riding hood. these are often based more in aesthetics and symbolism rather than direct parallelism between the character's individual story and that of their allusion, but the only time you get serious dissonance between the character's story and their intrinsic allusion's is when rwby is asking the question, "what if the trauma this fairytale character endured broke them and shaped them into a villain?" - a la cinder fall.

then you get the contextual allusions, which grow out of a character stepping into a narrative role that relates to the intrinsic allusion of another character. e.g., salem acts as cinderella's fairy godmother through her relation to cinder and the role she plays in cinder's character arc. in contrast to intrinsic allusions, contextual allusions do rely on direct narrative parallels; salem is cinder's "fairy godmother" because salem is the powerful magical benefactor who offers cinder a chance to get what she wants.

to be more concise: intrinsic allusions are "salem is rapunzel and the wicked witch of the west", whereas contextual allusions are "salem is cinder's fairy godmother."

so having established that

#1: jadis as winter's intrinsic allusion

the reasoning behind the winter-is-jadis fanon is as follows:

1. shows up in a fancy sleigh airship for her first appearance. 2. proud and hot-tempered 3. dual-wields swords* 4. there's a stone lion fountain in one scene she's in 5. one of her summons is a (beo)wolf 6. she's from atlas, which is cold and persecutes the animal people

*which is a LWW 2005 invention with no basis in the text btw

all of which... is true, but--i can say the same of weiss:

1. shows up with a fancy sleigh luggage cart for her first appearance 2. proud and hot-tempered 3. wields a sword she uses like a wand 4. there's a stone lion fountain in one scene she's in 5. one of her summons is a statue 6. she's from atlas, which is cold and persecutes the animal people

these are aesthetics and vague tangential similarities at most, and the similarities rely on ignoring a huge amount of context in both jadis' story and winter's (and weiss'). it's paper-thin and nonsensical in comparison to, for example, yang's allusion to goldilocks--which i want to highlight here because i think it's probably the loosest intrinsic allusion out of the entire main cast, and yet:

think about how much aesthetic focus is given to yang's blonde hair, and how her hair is used as a symbolic and visual focal point for her semblance. think about how every major milestone in her character arc involves her finding moderation or balance between harmful extremes. hell, think about her two moms—raven, distant and aloof after her self-interest led her to leave yang behind; and summer, super attentive and loving until her devotion to the cause got her killed—both of them at extreme opposite ends of a spectrum, and think about how yang herself struggles to place herself in that same spectrum—how one of her earliest sources of inner turmoil is feeling rootless and disconnected, and how fiercely dedicated she is now even as the pain of it builds up and builds up because she's trying so hard to be strong for everyone else, and how the natural trajectory for her from this point forward is to figure out how to honor the commitments she chooses without burning herself out.

on its face, yang's arc does not particularly resemble goldilocks, but the thematic core of goldilocks is everywhere in yang's arc.

can we say the same about winter schnee and jadis?

jadis was born royalty in a dying world riven by war. she grew up soaked in upheaval and bloodshed. it mades her ruthless and cruel and cynical; she learned the deplorable word and held it under her tongue until the moment of her younger sister's victory in a pointless civil war, and then she uttered it and destroyed every living thing on the planet besides herself.

she enters narnia at the dawn of time, when aslan begins to sing it into existence; he means to create a kindly, peaceful paradise, but jadis flies into a rage and attempts to strike him down, and upon failing flees, and by her very presence at the beginning the world of narnia is irreparably corrupted. she brings anger and spite and cruelty and hate into narnia, and thus the deep magic from the dawn of time is written. jadis in narnia is the cosmic executioner, not merely owed the blood of traitors but required to spill it, lest narnia itself be destroyed.

(put a pin in that thought. we'll come back to the deep magic later.)

aslan's protection keeps her out of narnia for a very long time, but when she returns she curses the land to eternal winter and rules by violent tyranny until she's defeated. she is a temptress and a corruptor; in LWW it is said that many narnians serve her and spy on her behalf out of fear, and she lures edmund onto a dark path / tricks him into betraying his own family.

(put a pin in that thought also.)

anyway,

none of this harbors any symbolic or thematic or narrative resemblance to winter's story. winter is a victim of child abuse who tried to escape by rejecting the legacy of her cruel father and training to become a huntress... and in atlas academy not only is she subjected to the standard fascist conditioning but she also became the personal protege of the headmaster and general of the atlesian military, who personally grooms her to become his loyal second in command. she thoroughly accepts and internalizes the idea that her own thoughts, her own feelings, her own life do not matter and that her sole purpose is to follow orders without question, and her entire character arc up to this point has been about breaking that conditioning, choosing to follow her heart, and throwing off the shackles atlas trapped her in. winter schnee has fallen into darkness when we first meet her, but the arc of her character is one of survival and atonement and recovery.

it is flatly ludicrous to suggest that she has an intrinsic allusion to jadis. even if she were a kind of reverse-cinder—i.e. a character inspired by a villain who asks the question "what if this evil character had chosen a different path?" the comparison to jadis still isn't coherent, because there's no clear line of thematic connection beyond "grew up in fascist authoritarian cultures on post-apocalyptic worlds" which is a statement that can be applied to literally every single atlas-born character lmao.

#2: winter as a contextual allusion to jadis

so... if winter has no intrinsic allusion to jadis, does she ever fill the role of jadis in the story of a different character who has an intrinsic allusion to a narnia character?

and the short answer is: no, because the only rwby characters who could be plausibly, without convolution, be interpreted as having intrinsic allusions to characters from either LWW or TMN are salem and ozma and winter can in no way shape or form be construed as a jadis figure to either of them. obviously.

(remember how i said to put a pin in the jadis-as-a-corruptor thought? this is that pin. keep it pinned for now.)

#3: winter's actual inspiration/intrinsic allusion

she is kai.

the little boy from hans christen andersen's the snow queen.

you know, the one who gets a shard of the mirror that blinds you to everything good in the world stuck in his eye, which leads to him becoming obsessed with precision and perfection and causes him to behave coldly and aggressively towards his family and dear friend gerda? the one who runs away from home to follow the snow queen, who freezes his heart and numbs him to everything he once loved, then spirits him away to her fortress in the frozen north and forces him to play a cruel game of reason to earn a reward while he slowly freezes to death? the one whom everyone believes lost forever except for gerda—who refuses to give up on him and travels the world, finding friendship and aid wherever she goes thanks to her innocence, kindness, and the strength of her love, and who ultimately walks barefoot into the snow queen's fortress and thaws kai's frozen heart with her tears, leading him to weep for everything he forgot, flushing the shard of the wicked mirror from his eyes and freeing him from the snow queen's thrall at last?

that kai?

LIKE.

absolutely, i get people not picking up on where winter's arc was going back in vol3 but... by the end of vol8 winter-as-kai is so blatant that it's half a step down from cinder "literally actually cinderella" fall.

jacques schnee is winter's mirror shard. his abuse fractures her relationships with her siblings and drives her away from her family, as well as laying the psychological groundwork that makes winter so particularly vulnerable to fascist conditioning. in 7.8 we see how viscerally winter was damaged by the trauma of her childhood--she can't even handle being in the same room as jacques without an emotional outburst. given that winter's emotional repression and habit of hiding it behind a strict, prideful facade is a trait that both her sibling share, it's likely that it stems from her childhood and was merely exacerbated by her training in atlas; and it's not a stretch to extrapolate that winter, as the eldest sibling, had the greatest weight of expectations put on her shoulders before she disowned herself--planting the seed for her preoccupation with being perfect rather than merely good.

ironwood is her snow queen. he's much kinder to her than her own father, but he also took a vulnerable, hurting young woman and sculpted her into a perfect soldier, a weapon, a tool--the perfect, obedient vessel for the powers of the winter maiden. ironwood demands absolute loyalty from winter, and she gives it to him, and in exchange he promises to entrust her with power, with information, and with a destiny; this is the impossible game of reason, trapping winter and crushing the life out of her as it dangles reprieve just reach. she's not literally freezing to death, but she is drowning her conscience and choices in the conviction that she doesn't matter.

and, lastly, penny is her gerda. her closest friend. penny is relentless in asserting that winter matters, that her feelings matter, that her heart speaks true, that her life has value and meaning beyond what ironwood tells her to do. penny and ironwood spend vol7-8 in a pitched battle for winter’s soul, and penny wins, because winter is her friend, and both of them are absolute ride or die for each other, and no matter how hard she tries winter can't stop herself from caring. (winter couldn't sacrifice her life to take the maiden powers as ironwood wanted her to; but to protect penny, winter threw herself into a fight against cinder fall with her aura already broken without a second of hesitation. she loves penny so much.) penny wakes winter up and thaws her heart and sets her free.

i could write. literally so much about penny's and winter's arcs and how closely intertwined they are narratively and thematically and emotionally but for the sake of staying on topic i will restrain myself and close out this section with these observations, because rwby does love its symbols:

1. in the original tale, gerda arrives at the snow queen's castle alone, helpless, without even her boots or mittens to protect her from the intense cold; likewise penny, when she uses her dying moments to bequeath the maiden powers to winter and say goodbye, is barefoot and defenseless, having been stripped of the physical durability of her original body. and also, you know, impaled. 

2. kai's own tears, inspired by gerda's help and his own sudden realization of everything he lost, are what flushes the shard of the mirror from his eyes and restores him to wholeness; similarly winter cries after weiss falls to her apparent death, and it's these tears—this open, vulnerable expression of emotion from a character whose defining trait has hitherto been intense emotional repression—that mark the end of this chapter of her arc and the beginning of the next, wherein she will need to learn to live without silencing her own heart.

3. the snow queen gives kai a sort of game to play, using little pieces of ice, with which she tasks him to form the word 'eternity.' if he wins, she promises him that he will be his own master, and that she will "make [him] a present of the entire world." he tries and tries but is never able to arrange the pieces right; yet when she leaves to spread winter across the world, and gerda comes to thaw his heart and his eyes are washed clean of the mirror shard, he cries out joyously, embracing her, asking where she came from and how they came to this place ("How huge and empty it is here!" hm.); and as they laugh and dance with excitement for the reunion, the pieces of ice move of their own accord into the precise word the snow queen had asked for. kai is set free--and is due to receive the present the snow queen promised him. and, while penny and winter's reunion in the white void is far from joyous, winter is confused at first to find herself and penny there, and they do embrace, and then—well:

IRONWOOD: So. The destiny I chose for you has arrived. WINTER: You chose nothing. This was a gift.

the maiden powers are the reward that ironwood promised to winter for playing his 'game', but when they come to her they do not do it under his auspices, or by his choice, or because he gave them to her; nor does she earn them as he demanded. they are given to her, freely and easily and with love, by penny--just as the game in the original tale was 'won' not through kai's effort or in accordance with the snow queen's will but simply as a natural expression of his love for the friend who came to rescue him.

winter is kai.

on narnia flavor penny resurrection theory aka, the "atlas arc as an LWW au" reading

oh boy. oh, boy, this one is a doozy.

in...brief, among the penny's-coming-back-again crowd there's a specific strain of argument / theorizing that hinges upon reading vol7-8 as an extended allusion to the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe, most often with ironwood playing the role of jadis and penny filling in as either edmund or aslan or both (?!) and also sometimes winter is edmund.

the general thrust of the argument here is this. ironwood is jadis—the cruel, domineering tyrant—and when penny defies him to stand with rwby and jnor in defense of mantle she becomes edmund, the traitor whose life must be sacrificed to appease the deep magic. under this line of reasoning the virus watts infects her with under ironwood's auspices is thus construed as parallel to jadis' demand that aslan honor her rightful claim to edmund's blood, vaguely making the implication that rwby+jnor are acting out aslan's role as penny/edmund's savior; meanwhile under the penny-as-aslan interpretation, ironwood is jadis, winter is edmund, penny is aslan, and penny's death at cinder's hands is construed as a parallel to aslan's willing sacrifice in edmund's stead. a great deal of emphasis is put on the line "narnia will perish in fire and water" and atlas... flooding and burning as it falls, in order to lend a shred of legitimacy to the reading, and i have also seen someone make the claim that the table in ironwood's office represents narnia's stone table and when he smashes it that's parallel to the sundering of the stone table by the deeper magic from before the dawn of time, and on one truly memorable occasion someone trying to argue that the silver apples and the maiden powers are equivalent.

all of this is, to put it gently, Completely Fucking Bananas.

remember when i said to put a pin in the discussion of the deep magic from the dawn of time? IT'S TIME FOR THAT NOW. LET'S TALK ABOUT THE DEEP MAGIC.

as i mentioned before, aslan intends for narnia to be a kindly paradise, but jadis' presence during the act of creation irreparably corrupts it; she gets incorporated into the deep magic at the dawn of time—the fundamental magical laws governing narnia's existence—as an avatar of cosmic retribution. she is the emperor's hangman.

(the emperor-beyond-the-sea, for those of you who don't walk around with a box of narnia lore in your head, is a mythological figure referenced time and again throughout the chronicles of narnia; he is aslan's father and the ruler of all words, and he wrote both the deep magic from the dawn of time and the deeper magic from before the dawn of time. his authority is absolute; both jadis and aslan are stated outright to be beholden to his magic and law.)

all of this is symbolically reflected in jadis' theft of the silver apples in TMN; the apples offer healing and protection, but they are only meant to be given, never taken. jadis violates that rule, and in so doing she secures her immortality but dooms herself to a cold, joyless, spiteful eternity. by her presence she corrupts narnia; by her choices she corrupts the magic of the silver apples, and thus she becomes the everlasting flaw in the paradise.

now, getting into the exact specifics of what the deep magic says:

“Tell you?” said the Witch, her voice growing suddenly shriller. “Tell you what is written on that very Table of Stone which stands beside us? Tell you what is written in letters deep as a spear is long on the fire-stones on the Secret Hill? Tell you what is engraved on the scepter of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea? You at least know the Magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to a kill.” [...] “Fool,” said the Witch with a savage smile that was almost a snarl, “do you really think your master can rob me of my rights by mere force? He knows the Deep Magic better than that. He knows that unless I have blood as the Law says all Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water.” “It is very true,” said Aslan, “I do not deny it.”

moreover we know, because both aslan and jadis confirm as much, that the bar for who qualifies as a "traitor" according to the deep magic is breathtakingly low: edmund, a nine-year-old boy, stumbles into narnia alone and gets lost; he is soon found by an adult who treats him kindly, offers him food and shelter from the cold, and presents herself (not inaccurately) as the queen of this strange magical country. upon learning that he has siblings she asks him to bring them to her home so that she can meet them as well, and then she sends him on his way.

the food jadis gives to edmund is magical. it fills him with a desperate, overpowering compulsion to do whatever it takes to get another taste.

the next time edmund comes to narnia, this time with all three of his siblings, driven half by that magical compulsion and half by the simple fact that he trusts the word of the adult authority who treated him kindly over the word of the younger sister whom his older siblings openly prefer, he slips away at the first opportunity to tell jadis where the other three are.

and for that—just that—the deep magic from the dawn of time mandated that he was a traitor whose life was forfeit. a nine-year-old boy. because the point is not that edmund is a traitor; the point is that edmund is a victim of cruelty and evil far, far greater and deeper than any individual person. remember that the chronicles of narnia are a christian allegory and draw heavily upon c.s. lewis' faith; edmund is innocent eve tricked by the serpent in the garden, he is the original sin that humanity can never wipe clean, he is an innocent victim condemned by his own victimhood.

no person with an ounce of compassion would call edmund a traitor. when the other pevensies discover that edmund has gone to the witch's house, they immediately want to go rescue him, because he's their brother and he's only a kid. even in the heat of the moment when his betrayal is discovered, they don't blame him, they're terrified for him. none of the narnians in aslan's army raise a whisper of protest about rescuing him from the witch. when he's saved, he tries to apologize, and his siblings all say that no, it's alright, and the narration notes that "then everyone wanted very hard to say something which would make it quite clear that they were all friends with him again"--because of course none of them feel any ill-will towards him. it wasn't edmund's fault.

even jadis herself only refers to edmund as a "traitor" in the context of the deep magic's law; when she's making her preparations to execute him, she calls him not a traitor but a victim.

but to the deep magic, that doesn't matter. the deep magic is not human; the deep magic is a cruel corruption of the kindness that should have been, and it says that lost little nine-year-old boys who trusted the wrong adult through no fault of their own deserve to die, and aslan saves edmund because the deep magic is WRONG.

i feel this, and the fact that—however much she relishes the cruelty and bloodshed—jadis no more has a choice in fulfilling the role imposed on her by the deep magic than aslan does, are two extremely important dimensions of the deep magic that get lost in the atlas-arc-as-lww-au reading. jadis does not simply feel entitled to kill edmund the way that ironwood feels entitled to infect penny with a virus or demand absolute obedience from his officers; jadis quite literally IS entitled to kill edmund, and were she forced to renounce her claim narnia itself would be violently destroyed...

...except there's a loophole. jadis is cosmically entitled to take one life every time an act of treachery is committed in narnia... but it need not be the life of the traitor. a willing sacrifice will also suffice.

and if that willing sacrifice is blameless—if they have never committed an act of treachery in accordance with the law of the deep magic, not even something as small as edmund's—and jadis accepts their sacrifice nonetheless and kills them in the traitor's stead... then an even older, even grander cosmic law will be invoked: the deeper magic from before the dawn of time. the deep magic written upon the stone table and inscribed on the emperor's scepter will be undone—the stone table will crack—and death itself will work backwards. thus: aslan, a willing victim who has committed no treachery, is ritually killed on the stone table, the deep magic is overturned, jadis' immortality is stripped away, and aslan is restored to life.

which is to say, what "death works backwards" MEANS in the narnian context is not "aslan comes back to life," but rather "the original corruption of life and death in narnia is undone and natural order restored; jadis' tainted immortality is taken from her, purified, and given to aslan, her victim."

narnia, imperfectly created, remains flawed, but jadis is cast out of her role as the cosmic executioner and the threats of fire and flood, the injustices of the deep magic, put to a permanent end.

(and since i've gone on about the deep magic for this long: while aslan states that jadis knew nothing of the deeper magic, i maintain there's real textual grounds for an alternate reading of LWW wherein jadis and aslan both know precisely what they're doing. her immortality is stated to be a miserable curse, she did not have a meaningful choice in becoming the cosmic executioner to begin with, she does an awful lot of dawdling / fretting about ritual propriety / not just killing edmund when she has the chance. moreover we do not hear her discussion with aslan when they come to the agreement about his sacrifice, and all we know for sure is they speak "earnestly" with each other in private for an exceptionally long time. there is absolutely room here for a reading of jadis as someone who has been going through the motions of her cosmically-mandated role for quite some time without taking any true joy in it, and who sees aslan's trick for what it is and willingly, with genuine relief, helps him carry it out so that she can finally die.)

WITH ALL THIS BEING SAID. BACK TO THE SUBJECT OF RWBY:

as i mentioned, i feel that the way the deep magic is treated / discussed by the atlas-is-a-LWW-au contingent is... er, reductive to the point of not really making sense anymore. narnia takes a... very vague and mystical approach to magic yes but there is nevertheless a lot of specificity on the mechanics of how aslan's sacrifice undid the deep magic by invoking the deeper magic, and i truly think that if the only takeaway from LWW is "aslan (good) dies to save edmund (condemned) from jadis (evil), therefore Mystical Mumbo Jumbo brings aslan back to life and Good Wins," then a) you should probably give, at the least, LWW and TMN a closer read and b) you are not really in a position to be using LWW as lens for analysis of a different text due to the junk in, junk out principle.

the crux of it is this: ironwood makes a bad jadis, winter makes an even worse edmund, and penny fundamentally cannot be aslan. penny can be edmund, but she is an edmund without an aslan; thus she dies, and thus the deep magic goes unbroken.

and, it is emotionally important to me that everyone who read this far understands this: there is only one reading of atlas-as-narnia in which it makes sense for atlas to perish in fire and water. i will circle back to this point in a moment after discussing the previous points.

ironwood is a bad jadis

ironwood is not a divinely-ordained executioner. ironwood is, in fact, cosmically insignificant. the gods do not know or care that he exists. he and jadis share many personality traits—that comes with the territory of being violent autocrats—but he is a mere garden variety dictator. his feeling of entitlement to total control over penny is just that: a feeling, backed by nothing but his own ego.

a jadis without her divine appointment, without her cosmic right to kill, is not jadis at all. she's only a tyrant. she's only human.

winter is a terrible edmund

at no point in LWW is edmund truly the witch's servant. he is a child. he is a child whose behavior has become rather beastly, said to be because he's fallen in with a nasty crowd in school and probably amplified by his older siblings' palpable dislike for him (they don't like him because he's taken to bullying lucy; but edmund is nine, and not quite capable of putting those pieces together yet). but he's still just a scared little boy. he gets lost. he trusts an adult whose intentions are evil. he gets drugged with magical candy that erodes his free will, and does what the adult he trusted told him to do. then she holds him hostage and abuses him whilst making no secret of the fact that she's going to ritually murder him the moment she gets to the stone table. he is NINE YEARS OLD.

winter though? winter is ironwood's second-in-command. she has been serving faultlessly at his side for years. he hand-picked her to be the recipient of the maiden powers, and she is one of the only people he ever trusted beyond a shadow of a doubt. she knows from the moment he orders the dust embargo and closure of atlesian borders that he's on the wrong path ("no—you have sacrificed everyone else. you closed the borders! you squeezed mantle until it broke!")... but it takes months for the protestations of her conscience to grow loud enough, with penny's unflagging encouragement, for winter to reject him. she stands by him without flinching until the eleventh hour.

if ironwood is jadis? winter is the witch's dwarf.

penny cannot be aslan

for two reasons:

first, and most important, is that aslan could invoke the deeper magic by trading his life for edmund's only because he had never committed an act of treachery—not even the slightest, most insignificant one. remember how harsh and exacting and unfair the deep magic is; remember that it condemns an innocent nine-year-old child to death.

and penny? penny who wants so badly to do the right thing? penny, who is innocence and kindness and love personified; penny, who was built to be a cog in a fascist military dictatorship but cared so fiercely about people that she never once hesitated to align herself with the people against the dictatorship; penny, who defies her father's plea to save herself and spare him the worry, who disobeys her general's orders, who by her very existence in vol7-8 is spitting in the faces of the gods who declared that the dead should not return to life—penny is a traitor a hundred times over, because it is not possible to be a good person in atlas without becoming a traitor.

and that means that penny cannot invoke the deeper magic.

(i submit that there are only two—possibly three—characters in vol7-8 who haven't committed a treacherous act by the standards of narnian deep magic: robyn, and (hilariously) tyrian. the entire plot of LWW proves that principled resistance to a leader one has never agreed to serve does not qualify as 'treachery', otherwise jadis would be claiming rights to the lives of...everyone in aslan's army, and of course tyrian's loyalty to salem is absolute. the "possibly" is maria, because i am not sure whether or not "betrayal of one's own principles" counts as treachery, and in vol6 maria makes it clear that she feels her decision to retire and go into hiding after losing her eyes was a dereliction of her duty as a huntress.)

secondly, penny does not die in winter's stead as a willing sacrifice. throughout vol8, penny does show a general inclination to die for her friends, and there is no doubt in my mind that were her position reversed with winter's in 7.13, penny would have acted exactly as winter did—throwing herself into the line of fire to protect winter from cinder—but, penny does not sacrifice herself in 8.14, and when she dies she has no idea that winter is even fighting anyone, let alone that winter is in trouble and dire need of help. (remember that as far as any of the kids in the portal knows, ironwood is safely locked in a holding cell.) what actually happens is cinder murders penny, and penny, with no intentions other than to deny cinder the powers of the winter maiden, uses her dying moment to bequeath them to winter instead. that this action saves winter's life is a lucky coincidence.

penny might be edmund, but there's no aslan to save her

penny is certainly a traitor, and like edmund she is a traitor through no real fault of her own. under the law of narnian deep magic she would, like him, be an innocent victim of an unfair system—which tracks rather neatly with penny's actual place in atlas, that being a good person caught in the jaws of the atlesian machine. she's victimized by deeply corrupt and unfair legal and social forces utterly beyond her control, and the harder she fights to extricate herself from them the harder they clamp down around her...

...culminating in penny being infected with a virus under the auspices of an adult authority figure she once trusted, which robs her of her ability to think rationally about anything but obeying the command it installed into her code. which, yes, we can read as directly analogous to edmund's magically-induced addiction to turkish delight.

and penny does not have an aslan. she has no perfect, willing sacrifice to rescue her from the cruel injustice of the deep magic or the cruel injustice of the atlesian fascist regime; oh, her friends try, but they fail. they find a loophole and keep her alive for all of fifteen minutes before the death she evaded came due.

if atlas is narnia, if ironwood is jadis, if the deep magic is in force, then penny polendina dies because that is what happens to edmund pevensie in a world where aslan does not come to narnia.

"...and perish in fire and water."

which of course, atlas does. we see the flames and we see the flood--but that is the price of the deep magic being defied. that is what happens to narnia if jadis is prevented from spilling the blood she is owed, and as discussed if atlas is narnia and ironwood is jadis, that makes penny the only real choice for edmund—she is a traitor and it is she whom ironwood seeks to control, which is the closest analogue for jadis asserting her right to edmund's life.

and penny, of course, dies. ironwood, in accordance with the deep magic, gets what he is due. her friends try to save her, but they fail—and, importantly, LWW gives us a precedent to argue that merely trying to save one of the witch's victim's is alright as long as she is not following the proper ritual protocols, i.e. she's not slaughtering them on the stone table and perhaps has not formally stated her claim; because jadis does eventually go "fuck it" and decides to just slit edmund's throat in the woods, and she is sharpening her knife in order to do so when aslan's army arrives to rescue him, without any consequence besides jadis strolling into their camp the following day to demand that aslan return him and allow her to carry out her execution. from this we can conclude that jadis is entitled to take the lives of traitors, and she is allowed to do so without any rite or ritual, but that anyone capable of standing their ground against her without getting turned to stone is allowed to, in effect, demand that she observe the proper ceremonies and prevent her from taking her kill until she has done so. thus: it is not a problem for penny's friends to act in ways that delay penny's execution as long as ironwood isn't adhering the proper procedures involved in executing her—which in narnia would mean ritually sacrificing her over the stone table, and which in atlas would mean acting through the established legal channels to take her offline, which we know are a thing because doing that was a possibility raised after penny was framed for the attack on robyn's election night rally. i think it is safe to say that allowing one of salem's servants to remotely install a virus with a self-destruct clause into penny is not the proper procedure, here.

the point being: as the traitor, penny's life is forfeit. there is no aslan to save her. ironwood makes his claim on her life. she dies.

the deep magic is satisfied.

atlas, narnia, should therefore not perish in fire and water. it should by all rights go on as it always has, in its corruption and its injustice, until its jadis claims the next traitor and there's another chance for aslan to escape his exile at last.

as for the version of the atlas-as-narnia reading where winter is edmund and penny is her aslan? well... taking that at face value, the result should be that ironwood dies, penny is revived, and atlas is liberated from its oppressive regime. the dire consequences for defying the deep magic cannot be suffered if the deep magic itself has been overwritten; or LWW would have ended, uh... differently.

the only way for the flood and the fire we see when atlas crashes into the ground to make sense in the context of reading atlas as narnia and the destruction as consequent of the deep magic being flouted is if ironwood is jadis, winter is edmund, and penny is an aslan who fails, whether because she 1. cannot invoke the deeper magic, being a traitor herself and not a willing sacrifice, and/or 2. did not secure ironwood's acceptance prior to saving winter through the action of her own death. a significant point is made in LWW of the witch formally renouncing her claim on edmund's life and consenting to take aslan's in his place. aslan is not the only one who must agree to die for edmund; the witch must also agree to the trade—because, after all, it is her claim, and her right to edmund's life, that is being bargained for.

so: in this scenario, penny tries to be aslan, but she does it wrong, and because she saves winter, atlas falls and burns and drowns. the deep magic remains, and death will not work backwards. which makes all the emphasis on the "perish in fire and water" bit among the contingent that likes this reading feel awfully bleak.

but all of this being said,

quite apart from the narnia parallels themselves being as convoluted as they are, i think reading the atlas arc as an extended allusion to or metaphor for narnia also just... undermines the actual strength and themes of the atlas arc in a big way?

the reason the atlas arc and LWW do have some passing superficial similarities is because both of them are stories about children fighting cruel tyrants, which is about as bog standard as you can get with fantasy fiction where the protagonists are children.

but at the end of the day LWW is a quirky christian allegory that literalizes a lot of the more esoteric aspects of christian myth and ends up being largely a story about a god doing what he can to heal his beloved world from the corruption that twisted it into a harsh dystopia at the beginning of time, while the children caught up in the crossfires heal their familial bonds and try to survive.

whereas the atlas arc takes the ideological war between fear and hope that has always underpinned rwby's core conflict and turns it up to eleven. the child soldiers tasked with fighting this war are beginning to crack, all of them staring down their own crises of faith and identity and courage. the leaders and institutions who were once held up as paragons and protectors of hope reveal themselves to be tarnished and rotten inside with fear, until in the end they crash and burn in both the figurative and literal sense. ozpin atones for his past failures, all borne of his fears, and commits himself to trust, and honesty, and in doing so learns to genuinely embody the hope for mankind that he has always strived to represent. an act of hope exposes the ideological cracks in salem's inner circle and inspires not just one but two of her most valuable servants to turn against her. salem herself, the embodiment of fear as much as ozpin tries to be the embodiment of hope, steps onto the battlefield herself for the first time and walks away with two relics and an utterly destroyed kingdom to show for it. we learn precisely what it is that cinder is so terrified of, for her to be as desperate for power as she is. again and again the heroes find things to hope for, and they're slapped back down again, and again, and again, until the arc ends with atlas and mantle obliterated, their whole populations stranded in the desert in the middle of a storm and under attack from all sides by the grimm, penny dead, all of rwby plus jaune stranded in the void and presumed dead, pietro and maria stranded on a derelict, drifting satellite, robyn, qrow, and the surviving ace-ops watching in horror as atlas falls, and salem and cinder flying away from the smoking wreckage, triumphant. fear is ascendant.

(and yet: the atlas arc is also loudly, furiously, unrelentingly optimistic about human nature and the human capacity for goodness. even as the darkness rises, even as the city falls, even as fear emerges from this battle victorious—the narrative celebrates hope. the heroes try and fail and try and fail and try and fail and try, and people come together and fight for each other and pick themselves up and keep trying; ruby does not lose her faith, and ren finds his balance again, and nora articulates a pain so deep she hardly knew it was there and receives a surge of support and love from all her friends, and weiss reaches out to the family she thought she had to leave behind and finds them reaching out for her in turn, and winter turns at last to embrace the conscience that has been screaming at her since beacon fell, and ozpin transcends the failures of his past and proves himself worthy of trust, and emerald finally escapes the nightmare she's been trapped in for who knows how long, and qrow inches into newfound confidence, and the happy huntresses make a difference. their hope, their efforts matter—the risks they take matter—even though they lose the battle, in the end. because people are good and hope is worth the risk and i just have a lot of feelings about the atlas arc okay—)

just... LWW and the atlas arc are different stories with very different things to say about the nature of humanity and the nature of the world and i just don't think they make very good lenses through which to examine each other.

...though with that being said, i do have one more point to make.

on salem as jadis (& ozma as her aslan)

this one is not a refutation but rather a reading of my own; a, "if we're doing narnia comparisons this is the one that makes sense to me" sort of coda to the whole discussion. namely: i submit that salem's character can be read as an explicitly tragic deconstruction of jadis.

(& to be extra clear: can be read as, not intentionally alludes to, everything i'm about to say is analysis of salem using jadis as a lens and i'm not trying to argue anything about authorial intentions in the way that i argued winter-as-kai.)

anyway,

jadis is born to the royal line of charn. she's a formidable sorceress in a world of profoundly powerful magic. yet she is also trapped—everyone on charn is trapped—with nowhere to flee from a planet that is being slowly roasted alive by its own dying sun. she grows up surrounded by war and death and anguish and hate, knowing nothing but violence and power. she finds the deplorable word, and she clings to it until her entire world crashes down around her ears.

and then she is alone. the last living thing in all of charn, untouched by time, waiting for the destruction of her world.

until she meets two children, diggory and polly, transported by charn by magic, who show her a glimpse of escape, of possibility, of worlds beyond her own. she leaps at the opportunity to meet them, and she finds, on earth, an entirely different humanity. smaller, to her eyes, diminished and weak and uncivilized. she is less than impressed; she intends to conquer them, but she fails, and she is cast into the dawn of time before narnia begins. she witnesses the creation of narnia by aslan and flies into a rage, hating everything he represents. she cements her immortality and damns herself in the same breath by eating one of the silver apples, and by aslan's power she is cast deep into the wilderness to live among monsters and beasts for as long as he can keep her at bay.

when his protections decay—as they must decay, in time—jadis storms into narnia with a vengeance, conquers it, rules it by fear; she elevates the creatures of darkness and fear who were shunned by aslan's chosen people. and, by mandate of the emperor-beyond-the-sea—the highest power in all the worlds—she is an executioner of traitors. the flaw in the paradise, the root of all evil in narnia, the corruptor and divider and temptress luring innocents into darkness. a destructive force whose corruption leaves deep, irreparable scars in narnia even after her death at aslan's hands.

(who ever heard of a witch that really died?)

on the other hand we have salem, locked in her tower; salem, who grows up knowing nothing but imprisonment and an all-consuming ache for freedom. ozma comes to rescue her, and the two of them fight their way free. she gets a taste of liberation, a taste of joy—and then it's senselessly and suddenly ripped away from her.

unlike jadis, none of salem's pain is self-inflicted, not in the beginning. she does not choose her immortality, and she doesn't speak the word that wipes out all of humankind. unlike jadis, she can't even sleep through her isolation after the extinction of humanity; she's forced to wander, undying and lonely and grieving and so, so angry, on a broken planet abandoned by its creators and left to rot. her prison is a mass grave, and she cannot escape it even in death.

until humanity evolves anew, but even then she is still isolated. different, in such a tangible way, from these new humans who lack her magic, her culture, her history, her knowledge of the gods, her context; these people who cannot understand who or what she is, who hate her and fear her (and how could they not? she looks like the grimm). diminished and weak and riven by conflict. for ozma's sake, she tries to unite them in the only way she can fathom—by conquest—and he rejects her in the end, so thoroughly that he devotes the rest of his own eternal existence to keeping her at bay and serving the will of the gods who did this to her in the first place.

he forges civilizations anew and dedicates himself to a hopeless quest to redeem humanity in the eyes of the gods while salem rots in her isolation, surrounded by monsters and biding her time until his beloved institutions begin to crumble—and then she strikes, and strikes hard, to crush them out of existence. she’s the divider, the corruptor, the would-be conquerer, and—just as jadis rules by fear and twists the narnians to her side by terrorizing them into submission—salem preys upon people’s most vulnerable weaknesses and deepest-seated flaws to bend them to her will.

(like aslan, ozma is an impermanent, inconsistent fixture in remnant's history; whenever he dies, he takes a long time to come back—but he does return, sooner or later, to pick up the pieces of the things that broke in his absence and to uplift new guardians to carry the torch he's trying so desperately to keep lit. he is wise and melancholy and mysterious and imperfect and loved in spite of it all.)

the fundamental difference between jadis and salem is that salem's story is constructed as a tragedy and an indictment of divine power; she suffers, and then she finds a tiny spark of hope in the darkness and clings to it with all her might, and when it's snuffed out again she moves heaven and earth in a desperate, doomed quest to get it back. every time she tried to escape her fate she was cast into it deeper, until she hit the bottom and decided to wrap herself in the darkness and revel in it instead; the gods found a grieving young woman and tortured her across millennia until she broke, and all of remnant is shouldering the consequences.

lastly,

...for the precious few who make it to the end of this post, congratulations! because it is 8.2 thousand words long.

[arc-misadventures]

Onee-Sama

Jaune: Shit…

Jeanne: Hey, don’t be upset, three out of five isn’t bad.

Jaune: Zero out of five! I may have hit the target, but none of them are on target!!

Jaune gestured to the target board where three of the throwing knives were in the target, but none of them were in the target’s circle.

Jeanne: …

Jeanne: Well you did hit the target!

Jaune: That’s not good enough!

Jeanne: Hey, no need to shout. You’ll get the hang of this. It will just take time.

Jaune: It’s not the fact I’m missing the target that’s making me upset! It’s you, and your damn smug aura you have around you.

Jeanne: What? What are you talking about, I’m not being smug about anything.

Jaune: Jeanne, you’re finally teaching me how to be good at something I suck at that. Of course you’re going to be a smug little shit about it, and hang that over me.

Jeanne: What! No I wouldn’t!

Jaune: Jeanne, you’re an, Arc. We are surprisingly vindictive, smug little bastards when we want to. You are no exception to this rule. Why do you think my nickname is, ‘The Vindictive One.’

Jeanne: I thought it was, ‘Big J?’

Jaune: …

Jaune: Shut up.

Jeanne: Hehehehe~!

Acheius: Jaune! Jeanne! You out here?

JJ: …

Jaune: Seems like, Papa, and Mama are back.

Jeanne: Evidently so. They’ve not even been gone for a week; I thought they might have a mini vacation while they were gone.

Jaune: Evidently not.

Juniper: Jeanne, Jaune? Where are you?

Jeanne: We’re over here mom! Do you need something?

Juniper: We want to introduce you to someone!

Jaune: You don’t think she means…?

Jeanne: It’s highly plausible.

Through a clearing of the bushes that surrounded their little training field emerged four people. Their parents, Juniper, and Acheius Arc, and Willow Schnee, and her lovely daughter, Winter Schnee.

Jaune: Well I’ll be damned…

Jeanne: She really is our sister then, isn’t she?

Acheius: Was there any doubt she wasn’t?

JJ: Yes.

Acheius: …

Acheius: That’s fair… Anyway, may I introduce you to her mother, Willow Schnee.

Willow: Hello, I am, Willow Schnee, and this my daughter, Winter Schnee. And, I mus say, you two look like the spitting image of your parents~!

Jaune: I’m not so sure about me, but, Jeanne certainly takes after our mother.

Jeanne: Where else do you think I got my glorious looks from~!

Jaune: Actually I referring to the fact you’re both perverted degenerates.

Jeanne: Hey!

Juniper: True.

Jeanne: Mom?!

Jaune: Try to ignore them, and their insanity. Hopefully you’ll be able to tune them out.

Winter: I will try.

Jaune: So, she’s actually our sister; Are you going to start calling yourself, Winter Arc Schnee, or Winter Schnee Arc?

Jeanne: Go with, Winter Arc Schnee! It sounds better.

Winter: I… I haven’t given thought to such a thing. I’m only here at the request of mother, and Mr. Arc to meet the family. I have no plan to integrate myself further into this family.

Jaune: Yeah, that’s not going to happen.

Winter: Excuse me?

Jeanne: She’ll be smothered in so much family love, and affection she have a mid life crisis.

Winter: I’ll what?

Jaune: More of emotional break down from being smother with genuine love, and affection.

Jeanne: Meh. Same difference.

Winter: Okay…?

Jaune: So I take it you met your other sisters before us?

Winter: Yes, I certainly have; they were quite…

Jaune: Odd, weird, creep…?

Jeanne: Unhinged, crazy, deranged…?

Jaune: A bunch of perverts?

Jeanne: Hey!

Winter: Yes… My new half-sisters are quite… peculiar.

Jaune: Well, if you’re anything like me, Winter you’ll eventually be able to tolerate them. Just barely tolerate them that is…

Winter: I see…

Jeanne: So, Winter, you up for a spare?

Winter: Excuse me?

Jeanne: We’re a couple of young hunters-in-training, and we could use a new sparing partner to really refine our skills. And, you look a bit wound up meeting your new brother, and sisters. So, how about a little spare to release all that tension you’ve got building up in you?

Winter: I’m not so…

Acheius: Ahh go ahead, Winter. It’ll be a good bounding moment for the three of you. Plus, the two could do with having someone else to spar with.

Jaune: That, and dad is tired of mom beating him up because he took it too far.

Acheius: Hey! I only did that once.

Jeanne: Are we talking about that one time you launched me into a tree?

Jaune: Or, that one time you broke my nose?

Jeanne: Perhaps is was that one time you skipped me like a stone into a lake?

Jaune: Or, the time you lunched me through the wall of the house?

Jeanne: Or, the…!

Acheius: Enough! I think she gets it!

Willow: Did he really do that to you?

Juniper: Yes, yes he did.

Willow: Oh… Oh my.

Jaune: Don’t worry! We’re, Arc’s!

Jeanne: We’ve got aura like a tank! We’ve never been badly hurt in a spare!

Jaune: Except for that time he broke my nose because he didn’t unlock my aura before we fought.

Jeanne: Yeah, except for that time… So, would you like to have a small bout, Winter?

Winter: …

Winter: Very well, it would be nice to let out some steam.

Jeanne: Alright, lets do this!

Willow: Are you sure this is a good idea?

Acheius: Relax, it will be a good training exercise for the two of them.

Jaune: And, a great bounding moment.

Acheius: And, an excellent bounding moment for the two of them, yes!

Willow: Should I be worried?

Juniper: No, Jeanne will be fine.

Willow: But, what about, Winter?

Juniper: …

Juniper: Jeanne! No semblance!

Jeanne: What?! Why not?

Juniper: Because you’ve been using it too much. And, its highly volatile!

Jeanne: Man… I never get to have any fun…

Jaune: Okay! Challenger’s! I shall be the referee for this fight. So, when I say stop you stop, understood?

Winter: Understood!

Jeanne: Okay fine…

Jaune: Understood?!

Jeanne: Understood, sir!

Jaune: Good. Now, you will fight until your aura enters the red. Understood?

JW: Understood!

Jaune: Sync your aura meters with me.

Jeanne: Sync!

Jaune: Synced.

Winter: …

Winter: Sync.

Jaune: Synced. Contestants take your places!

Jeanne, and Winter stood roughly twenty feet apart, each reading their combat stances. Each drawing their respective weapons.

Winter drew her sabre a practice flourish of motion; spinning the blade before here, before slashing it to the ground behind her, before narrowing her profile to point the blade at her opponent.

Jeanne stood before her opponent without her heavy armour, he recent growth spurts into adulthood rending her armour to cumbersome, and tight to wear effectively anymore. So, she just strode out with just her shield, and sword.

Her shield was a simple kite shield, but unlike her brothers, Jeanne’s shield was a single piece. It was layered with an intercept floral weave engraved upon the polished white metal, and golden details. Deep blue gems where imbedded upon the shield.

Just like her brothers blade, so too did her shield also double for a sheath for her blade, she drew two feet of solid steel, and as she flicked it out, the remaining length of the blade shot out, revealing a four foot long longsword.

She levelled her shield in front of her, and adopted a defensive stance, and levelled her blade towards her opponent.

Jaune stared at the two for a moment before raising his hand, and shouting.

Jaune: …

Jaune: BEGIN!

A glyph appeared under, Winter’s feet that sent her flying towards, Jeanne closing the gap between them in seconds. Winter expected her to be shocked at this sudden burst of speed, but she merely moved her shield to the side, and blocked her attack.

Winter’s sabre sang out as it impacted, Jeanne’s sheild. It sounds like if as one had tapped the side of their wine glass to gain everyone’s attention. So soothing, and beautiful that she almost forgot, Jeanne’s that was coming straight for her.

For such a small girl of fourteen years of age she could hit like a jackhammer when she wanted to. A quick thrust with her longsword, and quick flicks of her wrist lead to, Winter being kept on the back foot for a time. She thought she was dealing with just your average apprentice Hunter. But, the cool, and calm steely gaze that she held within her eyes was something she had seen in only the most experienced of, Hunters.

Winter thought, Jeanne would see this fight as a simple training bout, a young hunter trying to hone their craft, or an excited girl trying to show off to her dear older sister, something she had seen in the eyes of her sister, Weiss dozens of times before. But, these eyes, these were the eyes of someone who took this all seriously. For, Jeanne, this was not some simple training spar, this was life, or death, and if she failed, she would be as good as dead.

It was a chilling, and unnerving thought to behold that such a young girl saw the world in such a way. And, yet it sent a thrill of excitement coursing up her spine as she smiled at the younger girl.

Winter rushed forward wither her semblance, sabre held before her attempting to stab at, Jeanne. But before she could get close, Jeanne kicked up a wall of dirt, clouding her presence. Winter shot threw the cloud, and landed softly barely being able to react in time to block a fierce strick from, Jeanne.

Winter was impressed. Jeanne Arc was quick on her feet, and even quicker with her blade. This duel of there changed from, Winter wanting to blow off some steam to testing to see this extent of this, Hunter’s true abilities.

Winter jumped back giving her some breathing room. She half expected, Jeanne to chase after her, but she held her ground. She probably wanted to catch her breath too, too bad she wasn’t going to let her do so.

Seven glyphs appeared in the air before her, and seven small white, Nevermore’s came flying out towards, Jeanne. Her eyes darted side to side, and held up her shield, and bloke the six, Nevermore’s, before turning around, and cutting down the seventh one. Winter realized why her eyes darted all over the place; she was counting the amount of summons she sent at her, and since the seventh one never hit her shield she knew it was coming from behind her.

Clever girl.

Winter was going to compliment her, but stopped as she noticed her sword be enveloped in a golden hue before it appeared in a sphere at the tip of her swords before she flung it at her at a high speed.

Her eyes widened in shock as the orb came closer to her. She quickly dodged to the side as it neared her, and exploded, sending her flying. She hit the ground with a roll, and she had to start running as a second orb came charging towards her.

As she narrowly dodged the second blast she slammed her sabre into the ground, creating a large white glyph appear in the ground, and soon a large white, Chimera Grimm appeared. It roared as it charged towards, Jeanne as she held her ground. Winter view was blocked by the large beast, Winter was looking forward to seeing, Jeanne face down such a monster. And, she wasn’t let down.

A white silver blade erupted from the skull of the chimera. Had, Jeanne jumped, and thrusted her sword through the chimera’s skull? It was an effective strategy to implement, risky, but effective. What she actually did however, was quite interesting.

A five foot long handle, and a four foot long blade. A spear to keep her foes at a distance, and strong enough to dispatch large foes with ease. It was an impressive sight to see the way, Jeanne could wield such a weapon. Although, she spent more time dodging the weapon, then admiring its beauty.

Her sword thrusts were admirable, Jeanne was capable of preforming were now shown the true power of those thrusts. Winter could feel the air fly past her as she narrowly missed the head of her spear. She spun on the spot, driving her weapon crashing into the ground, sending an explosive blast as it tore up the earth.

Winter knew she couldn’t handle her at a close range anymore, so she made several glyphs in the air, and sent over a dozen flying bolts of white energy towards her. Jeanne’s eyes widened in shock for a moment before she used her spear to destroy several of the bolts, but she didn’t stop enough of them, as several came, and hit her in her side. She weathered the storm, but the impact of the blasts dropped her to her knees. As she was about to stand, Winter struck. Using the cross-guard of her sabre she caught the shaft of, Jeanne’s spear. Jeanne struggled to pull her weapon free from, Winter’s grasp, only to notice at the last second as, Winter jab her in the got with a concealed dagger she kept hidden in her sword.

Winter knocked the wind out of her causing her to lose the grip on her weapon, allowing, Winter to wretch the weapon free from her grasp, and send it flying through the air.

Winter smiled smugly at, Jeanne only for her head to dart to the side, she could feel her aura being sliced up as she noticed a silver feather fly past her. She quickly blocked several more of these feathers only to look down, and see that the feathers we’re actually the design given to a serious of throwing knives, Jeanne apparently carried on her person.

She looked back to see, Jeanne placing her shield on her back before reaching back, and pulling out a pair of knives. She held

She held the blades in a defensive stance, preparing for, Winter’s next strike. Winter readied to strike, her blades held before her. A challenging smirk sent towards, the young Hunter appreciate who sent her back one in kind. The two readied up, their muscles tense as they prepared to lung at their foes, when…!

Jaune: ENOUGH! The spare is over! Winner: Winter Schnee!

Jeanne: What?! Why are you ending the fight! I can still keep going!

Winter: I must agree, I could have kept going myself too.

Jaune: Plausible. But, Jeanne your aura is at 27%. One more good hit, and you would have been out.

Jeanne: Oh shit, really?

Jaune: That, and your weapons we’re starting to glow.

Jeanne: Oh…

Winter: Is that a part of her semblance?

Jaune: It’s a visual cue she’s about to, or is using her semblance.

Winter: And, what is your semblance?

Jaune: Nothing of consequence.

Jaune walked over to, Jeanne spear before wrenching it out of the ground before turning to his sister.

Jaune: Jeanne, catch!

Jaune launched her spear at her with a wicked force, Jeanne simply turned to the side as the spear flew past her until she caught the spear by the pommel as a cloud of dirt flew by her. She grasped the shaft with two hands, twirling it in the air as it shrunk down to its long sword form before placing it back in its sheath on her back. A serious of moves, Winter couldn’t help but notice were highly well practiced.

Impressive.

Jeanne: At least tell me I gave, Winter a good beat down.

Jaune: Her aura is at, 42%.

Jeanne: Nice!

Winter: It is?

And, it was then that, Winter pulled out her scroll to see that her aura had indeed been knocked down to, 42%. She was impressed, she had expected her aura to have dropped 30%, possibly even 40%, but to nearly 60%.

Winter: Impressive, that is quite a remarkable feat.

Jeanne: Aww thanks… But, I would have totally creamed you if I could have used my semblance!

Jaune: Which is why mom said no semblance. You’re starting to use it as a crutch. Even against me.

Jeanne: Hey! You’re the aura tank, and it only get ls worse when you use your damn semblance on top of that!

Winter: You have a semblance; what is it?

Jaune: Aura amplification.

Winter: Aura amplification; what precisely is that?

Jaune: This…

Jaune walked over to, Winter, and held out his arm, and a golden light enveloped his arm to be followed by a blue white light spreading across her arm. She was about to ask what he was doing when she noticed that her aura was nearly at 70%.

Winter: You can recharge people’s auras?!

Jaune: Yep. It uses some of my aura to recharge others, but I can also use it on myself to recharge my own aura. Not to mention when I use it on other’s their semblance gains a boost, and becomes far more powerful. For a short while that is.

Winter: That is quite the impressive semblance…

Jaune: Yep, with my semblance I become an aura tank!

Jeanne: And, with my semblance I become the tanks cannon!

Jeanne: And we become the, Arc Tank!

Winter: …?

Jeanne: Jaune, you’re supposed to join me in this.

Jaune: Come up with a better name, and I might.

Acheius: Haha! Well, Winter, what do you think of your siblings?

Winter: Well, I don’t know what, Jaune is like, but, Jeanne is amazing. She will become a fine Huntress in the future.

Jeanne: Naww… Thanks, Onee-Sama~!

Winter: W-What did you just call me…

Jaune: Onee-Sama? It means big sister. Since, we call everyone else sister, we thought we call you something different, yet the same. Since you are our older sister. Is that okay…

JJ: Onee-Sama~?

Winter: Grk?! It’s fine… Ahem! It’s fine. Perfectly fine.

JJ: Yay!

Acheius: Well, then. Lets go inside. We need to start dinner soon, and I am famished!

Jeanne: See, Willow, they’re getting along just fine.

Willow: Agreed. Uhh… No offence, Juniper. But, those two seem a bit… odd…

Juniper: No offence taken whatsoever! They are weird. Now come along kids! Lets go, and make some hamburgers!

Willow: W-What?

Jaune: Winter?

Winter: Yes?

Jaune: I know we may seem a bit weird. But, you need to remember this; You are a part of our family now. And, we will love, and protect both of you, even at the cost of our lives.

Winter: That’s… Thank you, Jaune, Jeanne.

Jaune: Our pleasure.

Jeanne: Now let’s go eat!

Winter: Yes lets. But, Jaune, can you help me with something first?

Jaune: With what?

Winter: Your… Our sister, Luna said I made it on the list. What list is she referring to?

Jaune: …

Jaune: Imma gonna get my spoon.

Jeanne: Jaune? Jaune don’t!

Jaune: I said if she made her way on to that list I was gonna shank one of you with a rusty spoon! Well guess what; its shanking time!

Jeanne: No wait! Jaune stop! WAAAAITTT!!!

Winter: …

Winter: This really is a weird family…

[palaceofpassion]

here's a concept for ya one i think you'll enjoy. during volume 1 weiss is informed that the Arcs are exceptionally powerful and politically connected. they're not rich, though they do still own their ancestral lands and make a tidy profit from the rent of the farmers/ loggers on it. no what makes the arcs dangerous is that they've saved just about every major family once or twice by this point and being rude to an arc is tantamount to social suicide because everyone owes them.

weiss is not quite ordered but is "strongly encouraged" to get with jaune. she's hesitant but agrees, it should be easy and at least she'll be the seducer. that should save her from ending up like her mom... only jaune turns her down. she demands to know what the problem is is she just not beautiful enough for him anymore?

jaune: "if you had actually chosen to give me a chance i'd have been over the moon weiss. but when you look at me all I can see in your eyes is fear. the thing I always loved about you was the utter determination in your eyes without that... well it's not weiss asking for my time is it, Miss Schnee?

(if you take this up please go as sappy and heartfelt as ya can with it I love that shit!)

"Yes father... I understand father... goodbye father..."

Weiss' call ended on a dour note, after weeks of ignoring her father's calls she'd finally given in and reached back out to him. Oh how deeply she regretted such actions.

"I... I can't do this... this is asinine! Why do I have to do this?!"

She knew why, she just didn't want to admit it.

As it turns out the poor sap that she'd been rejecting all year long had turned out to come from a rather influential family. She of course hadn't heard about them because they weren't rich at least by the Schnee standards. However, they held a lot of power in Vale, considering how much her father had wanted to expand his market... well he'd left it up to her.

She couldn't decline it either! Her position as the heir was on the line, threatened by this terrible situation.

She needed to act fast... and as horrible as it all was, she knew it would be easy. Perhaps... perhaps that didn't sit quite as well with her as she would have liked... that it would be as easy as stealing candy from a child.

She knew of Jaune's feelings for her, knew that he was enamored and would do anything she so wished if she simply asked him. So perhaps because it was so easy that she didn't like it.

This wouldn't be like the time with her mom, this time she was the one engaging, not the one being engaged. She would hold the power over him, she wouldn't end like a lay about she wouldn't end as a drunk.

"Okay, you can do this Weiss, you have this."

She was the one in control she was the one that defined where things went. There was no way this could go wrong.

"No."

And with one single word, everything went wrong in a flash.

"Wha?!"

She was stupefied into inaction, all she could do was let her jaw hang ajar as she watched the young man... the brat have the gall to say no to her!

"I uhm... sorry Weiss I just don't really want to?"

"What!? WHy not?! You were all over me a few weeks ago!"

Now that she thought about it, it had been a few weeks since he'd tried to flirt with her.

"Right... a few weeks ago, then... well I had my eyes opened."

He rubbed the back of his head awkwardly as he tried to find the words. "Look... I want to apologize for that too. I was really annoying and that wasn't right of me. In fact, yeah... I'm not great when it comes to girls, you'd think having seven sisters would work but NOPE I can tell you, it is the opposite, genuine responses are hard to come by. And well then there was that thing with my dad-"

He was droning on, yet Weiss couldn't hear any of it, she was stuck with her own thoughts. 'What am I supposed to do?! Father wants a positive response, he won't take no for an answer!"

Coming up with anything she could, she grabbed him by the collar, "Arc, listen to me. I understand that you're feeling bad, but that's fine. For now we are going to date."

Weiss at the time had never experienced a no she was used to getting what she wanted, even if it was a bit forceful. Beacon had been a rather frustrating situation for her on the whole and now she wasn't going to let things go.

Jaune stared at her, a moment of shock passing over, "No, I already said that Weiss."

"Am I not pretty enough for you?! Is that it? Did I suddenly become less appealing?"

"What?! No no! That's not it! Look."

He grabbed her hands and gently removed them from him. He could tell she was panicking, "I don't know what's going on with you, but I can tell you aren't actually trying to date me. I know I'm a bit dense and all that, and kind of well ya know stupid sometimes. But even I can see that something's wrong here."

She shuddered a little, unable to explain how she felt in that moment as he caught on to something being off.

"I... I see... I don't really..."

Jaune smiled, a gentle warm one, "I would love to date you. But like I said, someone helped me open my eyes, and I can see how you felt. And I know those feelings don't just change, besides... I can see you're scared, you weren't asking me out of your own feelings were you?"

Her lower lip quivered, she hated how these imbeciles could read her like an open book, force her to feel her true feelings. "No... no I'm sorry Arc, I suppose this was rather callous of me."

Jaune then surprised her, pulling her into a hug, "Hey it's alright... again I'm sorry for everything."

For just a moment Weiss let herself be vulnerable, just a few tears escaped as she pulled away and cleaned her face.

"How about this, we start as friends?"

Looking at Jaune now, he seemed far more mature than before. And now that she was calmer... "Yes, I'd like that."

Her father hadn't said that she had to date him... perhaps being on good terms with the Arc's would be good enough.

It also helped that now that he wasn't flirting with her, he was far more bearable to be around.

"Anyways, uhm... I'm going to be late to this thing with Nora and Pyrrha so I uhm... I gotta go. You take care!"

It was only for a brief moment, but she noted the small acute redness rising up his neck.

"Now that's odd..."

[hamliet]

I think that out of all team RWBY (including Oscar and Jaune), Yang is the weak link in terms of plot relevance and semblance/aura.

May you share your thoughts about this?

I don't know that I would consider her the weak link (I like her arc a lot, and I think she’s quite important to the overall plot), but I would consider Yang distinctly different. Particularly, her allusion is more symbolic and esoterically implemented than many of the others in RWB, but there may be a reason for that... but I'll leave that to the lovely and wise @aspoonofsugar to discuss.

I’ll talk alchemy instead and then move to plot/semblance :P 

I’ve talked before about how Team RWBY are each linked to a particular stage of alchemy: Ruby to Rubedo, Weiss to Albedo, Blake the Blackening, Yang to Citrinitas. The order of the process is Black-->White-->Yellow-->Red. However, in alchemy yellow is subsumed into the red stage a lot of the time (hence why she's Ruby's half-sister), so it actually makes sense that she's a little different from her teammates in some ways. 

I’ve also talked about how coding tends to work in alchemy (gender being “traditional” but obviously the least relevant):

Male: sulphur, red, heart, fire, air, gold, moon

Female: mercury, white, mind, water, earth, silver, sun

Plus, Ruby, Weiss, and Blake are all linked to the moon in terms of alchemy, as well as to silver, while Yang is the only one linked to the sun. This is emphasized from the very beginning, in each of their trailers. In terms of other alchemical principles, though, Yang and Ruby are both red, while Weiss and Blake are white; heart to Weiss and Blake’s minds, air and fire respectively to Weiss and Blake’s water and earth. So Yang is unique in some ways, but not as much in others. (Also, hey, Mercury is literally her opposite--hence, why they fight a couple times!) 

I actually think Oscar and Jaune’s codings are just as unique, though. Jaune is the only one who’s transforming from his white/moon/silver coding to red/sun/gold, and Oscar, like Ruby, is mixed: he’s earth and water, which traditionally go with the moon and silver, but he’s gold and sun (Ruby’s air and fire should go with gold and sun, but instead she’s also silver and moon). 

Plot + Semblance

I think Yang is just as linked to the plot as the others and more so than Jaune, actually! Her mother Raven is the spring maiden, and that’s not much different than Ruby’s link with Summer/silver eyes, Weiss with her father and the Schnee company, and Blake with her link to the White Fang. Oscar of course is Ozpin, but Jaune is just fighting his way into the story. 

I am less talented at semblance analysis than Sugar-chan, again. I actually think Yang’s semblance is my absolute favorite, and one of the most relevant to the overall story’s themes . It symbolizes the risk all of them run throughout the story--that of choosing the quick, easy, violence-focused answer (which will ultimately just hurt them too) over the calmer answer that will ultimately heal. We can see this emphasized especially in Volume 5 (fitting because that’s kind of Yang’s volume where she confronts her mom and gets the relic), with the other arcs tying in symbolically. For example, Jaune goes for revenge and violence against Cinder, gets his friends hurt, and only then from his pain unlocks his semblance, which leads to healing. RWBY is gonna have plenty of cool fights, but the ultimate goal is to heal the world, not destroy all evil... because it’s literally immortal in the person of Salem.

[itsclydebitches]

People wanted the early volumes to be re animated. They got their wish it seems. At least the first volume it seems.

My sense at the moment is that we've deliberately been shown only a small, small chunk of the series. Basically, everything taking place in the first 1-2 episodes that deliberately mirror (no mirror-verse puns intended) the original show before we get into AU territory. So it might not but an early volume(s) reanimation so much as a early episode(s) reanimation with subtle nods towards the different timeline — did Yang ever confront Weiss like that? I can't remember — before things really take a turn.

Okay, now pardon me, anon, but I'm going to use your ask to throw out random observations because I'm too lazy to make another post lol.

I like the animation style well enough so far, with the exception of everyone’s eyes. Ngl they kind of freak me out but, you know, presumed dark AU so maybe that’s a good thing for the tone of the story? At least on my end.

The combat also looks good. Ruby’s scythe skills generated a “Nice, nice” but Weiss, like, THROWING the boarbatusk? There’s a hard-hitting intensity in the visuals here that, despite Monty's stellar choreography, the original animation lacks just due to constraints.

BEAR GRIMM

I like that Ruby is speaking to Summer a lot in the trailer. It helps establish a strong tie between them and keeps her motivation—becoming a huntress to follow in her mother’s footsteps—at the forefront, rather than just mentioning it in passing. If this AU takes the time to add onto what we got in the original timelime, something I'd most like to see is Summer development.

It’s so funny having all the girls’ original, basic personalities distilled into a trailer because it’s like: Ruby [very serious]—'I won’t disappoint you, Mom.’ Weiss [very serious]—‘I have a responsibility as heir to the Schnee corporation.’ Blake [very serious]—‘The world is not a fairy tale.’ Yang [vibrating at the speed of light]—‘Oh my fucking god I LOVE MY SISTER’

Whether anything comes of it or not, I like Weiss’ “You’ve done nothing to earn your position” superimposed over her fight against the knight, implying that she doesn’t just think she deserves the leadership role by virtue of being a Schnee, but because she underwent a difficult trial set by her father to get here. It’s a slightly different spin that adds depth to Weiss beyond just being an arrogant know-it-all. Why does Ruby get to be leader when she worked so hard to be here, etc.? The idea of Ruby getting by more on raw talent than work effort—crazy impressive scythe skills she seems to have easily picked up, let into Beacon early, made leader, doesn’t like paying attention in class, etc.—was never explored, but could be a cool angle here.

Weiss also appears a lot more hurt by Ruby calling her “bossy” than she was in the initial show. Of course, that could be largely due to the different animation style, but still. Regardless, it (again) gives us a slightly different reading of Weiss’ character and her relationship with Ruby. Whiterose shippers getting fed tonight.

As is the freezerburn crowd.

“This is about novice girls” oh god slap that on Volume 8 as the tagline.

Funny that the subtitles give Ozpin’s well known “I would not consider your appointment to leader to be one of them” without explaining what “them” is. That is, one of his many mistakes.

More importantly: HE’S BACK. It’s okay, Oz, you can keep your creepy eyes. I’m just glad to see you.

Also...

possibly I’m being very stupid by asking this but what… is this? Salem is talking about dust when it’s shown so I assume it’s dust-related, but it looks kinda fantasy banana-ish? Did a piece of Jaune’s hair fall out? I feel like this is just a matter of me being too tired to think straight but idk I was #confused.

Cool that the music cuts out and the glass of the screen shatters during the credits, like the normality/reality of the original RWBY universe (even as a webseries — now it's an anime) really has been breached. Weiss sees her counterpart, though notably not in the alternate outfit shown on the website. From the back they appear to be identical.

So yeah, we still don’t really know what’s going on. As said, first few episodes (mostly) retelling RT's RWBY before a sudden divergence? That seems the most likely at this point. I do wish we'd gotten some sense of what the AU aspects will be — it's not really a "RWBY: Ice Queendom" trailer is it? It's a "RWBY: Reboot" trailer with the fandom simply knowing better — but given that the early volumes are my favorite, even if this wasn't the case of an AU I'd still be interested in the content.