#red like roses part 3

[rubyfunkey]

YOU WERE BORN TO HYPNOTIZE THEM!!!

[vaelerys-targaryen]

Yup, I put them on their own special playlist 🥀🥀🥀

[chatterkat]

Saw you in a dream

Are you who you seem?

Was it always in the cards for me to be aimless?

No direction

Nothing pulling me down from the sky

It seems like I always get too high

Ruby in a bit of shock from the vision she got from her mother, questions who she really was. She lied, she wasn’t perfect. Ruby’s been idealizing her mother her whole life , and been trying to be just like her, but Ruby has also struggled with what that means for a long time as well. She thought she needed to be like her mom, but how she doesn’t know what to think.

Oh, the air is cold

I don't know how to breathe

I'm begging, can you

Guide my way out

Of this place?

Ruby wants answers, but she isn’t going to get them from the person she most wants them from.

Red like roses fills my dreams

Calling back to the previous red like roses, we know that this refers to Ruby’s nightmares of her mother’s bloody demise. However it’s also again just representing the nightmare that is Ruby’s struggle with her own identity.

Open wide

You were born to hypnotize them all

They said their prayers

(Can you, can you)

Can you hear me up there?

Now this is interesting! It sounds like a response from Summer. Much like how she responses in Red like Roses II. In that song it’s unclear whether it’s a Summer from elsewhere feeling those regrets (I think there is surely a good chance she had become like the hound) or if it was an imagined response by Ruby. It was almost ghostly, like the dead trying to answer the living but unable to actually communicate with each other.

It’s possible it is Ruby still in this lyric since the can you hear me up there part, might make sense from Ruby having fallen down though the world talking back up towards Remnant. However the other lyrics in this section don’t make sense as much sense then. I think it could easily be Summer again speaking from wherever she is dead or alive? Perhaps she is part of the tree and that is what she means by up there.

Open wide might be a reference to Sky is Falling(as it may be a song for the hound) as the opposite of what the song there says which is to “close your eyes my friend” (and the hound is a SEW so…)

Anyway the usage of the word hypnotize is interesting. It’s not just their silver eyes that hypnotize, it’s their whole self. They may hypnotize their enemies(“they said their prayers”), but also If it’s indeed Summer talking about Ruby, then she has certainly hypnotized the world with her message given what we see in Vacuo. Ruby has that spark that charisma that gets people to follow her. It works too if it were a Ruby to Summer lyric in the sense it could represent Ruby’s idealization of Summer, but again it makes more sense IMO to be from Summer to Ruby.

Alternatively it’s Ruby talking about herself trying to hype herself up. She could be saying “can you hear me up there” as a threat to the cat or to Salem, that’s she’s gonna get them, but it seems too early in the song for that confident conclusion about herself

What survives

After all the dust is gone?

Were you there 'til the end?

(The end)

Were you at least called a friend?

These seem to directly call back to the volume 7 song Until the End which seems to be about Ruby(either from her POV or Summer’s) declaring she would be there until the end. It seems to refer to Ruby giving up briefly this volume with the tea. Would she be called a friend by others after giving up?

Or it could be Ruby questioning if her mom was there until the end, if she was a good person a friend in the end?

Otherside,

Did you mean to make me half or whole?

Will I ever be

(complete?)

When will I become all of me?

This is obviously back to Ruby’s perspective, as she questions whether she can ever truly be herself or always in her mother’s shadow. Ruby questions “otherside” and I’m unclear if that mean the otherside where her mother is or if otherside refers to the Ever After. Where the Ever After has both broken her and pushed her to become something new.

Guide my way out

Of this place

I can't define

Would it even be enough

To change my mind?

Your memory everlasting

At war with my foolish pride

What is left?

I know it's you and I

When I look inside

I'll be who you were

And I'll be even more

Ruby looks into herself and now realizes her idolization of her mother doesn’t gel with reality and her “foolish pride” of trying to live up to a standard that more illusion than reality. Interestingly she realizes she still carries this will or memory of her mother, but she no longer wants to be just like her, but rather both her and something greater…herself. She chooses herself.

A moment of quiet is all it takes

To reclaim a life and a promise made

I am the reflection of who prevails

I'm what inspired the fairytale

The emblem symbolizes the promise made, which Ruby never said what it was when she traded it away, but I have the feeling she thought it was a promise to come back, but in reality it was “I love you, just the way you are” Ruby reclaims the promise, hearing that echoed again from her mom is what let her finally be able to to choose herself. So Ruby also reclaims the emblem when she returns from the tree. I also think it symbolizes that part where she is who her mom was but more. Summer surrenders the emblem, and Ruby is truly defining it as hers now.

A moment of quiet is all it takes

To reclaim a life and a promise made

I am the reflection of who prevails

I'm what inspired the fairytale

(I'm what inspired the fairytale)

I think what is meant by this like is that Ruby is now being the one that would inspire a fairytale, she is being who she wants to be finally, and defining her own story her own fairytale instead of just living through others(her Moms, Alex’s)

Guide my way out

(I'll be free)

Of this place

(I'll escape it, I will guide my way out)

Guide my way out

Of this place

In the end Ruby will guide herself out, with this new understanding of herself and her mother. Her mother still helped guide her in the end with her promise and her truth that broke Ruby’s image of her, but now Ruby is breaking away from that and doing it her way.

If you got his far thanks for reading my analysis. Let me know what you think! I’ll be doing a rewatch soon if the series and hopefully more song analysis so stay tuned!

[real-jaune-isms]

The MOMENT I saw that red glow and heard Summer tell Ruby she loved her as she is, the VERY MOMENT…

And when we got that original tune again…

[gachagon]

Me listening to Guide My Way with tears in my eyes because its a song about Ruby finally being able to move on her own without her mother and being able to finally let go of the pain that her mothers death left in her and how the song is a perfect ending for Red Like Roses part II because it finally shows that she's secure in her own identity and and and-

[but-a-humble-goon]

I've listened to Guide My Way at least once a day for the last several months. I'm beginning to think I have a problem.

[violetren]

Music starts up:

Me:

[isgates]

HOLY FUCK RED LIKE ROSES PART III IS FINALLY OUT

[sandyca5tle]

Idk how well they’ll all go together, but when we get the full song of ‘Guide My Way(Red Like Roses Part 3)’ I’ll be really interested to see if/how people make songs combining RLR Parts 1-3.

[sillysayaka]

we finally have red like roses part 3.

[starwarskawaii]

Gosh. It's been weeks and I'm still so proud of Ruby.

[spacetimeaccordionfolder]

hey next time I want to make a complicated piece of fanart with two characters from different favorite media some one stop me. that or maybe I should have done this over a few days instead of an afternoon

Ruby and Kendal sure are characters. Trying to live up to the legacy of someone, trying to carry a great burden, choosing to be themselves and grow with their friends. I love them.

I was going to have Penny's sword also in the background, but thought that might throw off the (supposed symmetry) of summer and vash. Also the City of Vash was supposed to be in the background, but my brain said you either draw all the grass and mountains or you do a blue background and I went with blue.

[vaelerys-targaryen]

I'm what inspired the fairy tale 🥀🥀🥀

[chatterkat]

I think upon further reflection the line “can you hear me up there?” Is actually still from Ruby’s POV.

She’s saying this to Summer and herself trying to hype herself up, I think based on how later she says she will be her(mom), but more, and that she’s “the one that inspired the fairytale” Can you hear me mom? I will hypnotize the world and defeat my enemies”.

I had thought it was Summer saying this to her like in RLR part 2, but I think it makes more sense at this point for this to just be Ruby’s POV because her mom is gone and can’t give those answers. If RLR part 2’s Summer part was Ruby’s imagination of what her mother would respond with Ruby no longer knows who Summer really was anymore and her image of her is shattered so she no longer imagines her response and instead takes charge of her own life’s direction.

[madeofvoid]

They have the same angry face lmao

[pokeattorney]

i am the reflection of who prevails

i am what inspired the fairytale