#ruby rose defense squad

[punkeropercyjackson]

I am SO sick and tired of white Rwby fans dismissing Oscar as an important character to have on the show just because he's a boy and ESPECIALLY when they put him on the same level as Jaune(who i don't hate but you get what i'm referring to).Let me reiterate common knowledge:The creator of Rwby was a multiracial asian man.He made Ruby and Yang wasian because of this and same goes for Ren being japanese/chinese mixed by virtue of being a combo of both irl cultures.Monty didn't limit his rep to just asians because he loved ALL his siblings of color so he also gave us brown characters and black characters-And one of them is Oscar himself.Oscar is not 'just a boy',he's BLACK.No ifs or buts,he is in every way from his design to his personality to his story and i can tell you because i'm black too and in fact,the biggest reason he's my favorite Rwby guy and always has been is that he looks exactly like me when i was a kid and i'd never gotten that in a character before.Don't you dare try to whitewash him because you have no sense of intersectionality,especially on a show literally starring a biracial girl.Get a fucking grip!!!

[asimplersoul]

I am once again reminding you that if you hate Jaune, you can meet me behind the nearest Dennys and catch these hands.

Ruby and Jaune have both gone through plenty of horrible shit. Neither of them is right (or wrong really) for snapping at each other. No one "deserves" to have a mental breakdown more. They both need help, not just Ruby

[bestworstcase]

I don’t know what it means but.

Ruby talking with Qrow (I believe) in V7 when she compares herself to Oz, and Qrow saying “No you’re better than him you’re waiting to see who you can trust vs never giving anyone the chance to be trusted”

And now Ruby saying what’s the point of anything if Salem has the relics now and Yang saying “That’s how Ironwood thought. You don’t mean that”

The WAY Oz and Ironwood carried out their plans was Bad but they didn’t start at the deep end. Their thoughts didn’t spawn all of their actions. Ruby having doubts and seeing Oz’s perspective of being wary of who to trust doesn’t mean she’ll turn out like him. Ruby showing she’s upset and mad that things seem to be turning out useless despite their efforts doesn’t mean she regrets saving the people they saved. Or trying to save them.

The way Ruby hasn’t been able to openly doubt herself around others or say things that others see as “thinking like Ironwood” or “you’re better than Oz” is so prominent in episode 7. And I’m not saying she was wrong in anything I’m on her defense squad rn from ppl who are doing what the characters in the show did. They are Hearing her words but they aren’t Listening. WHY is she better than Oz when she thinks she’s doing the same thing. WHAT has caused her to Think like Ironwood. Why can’t she mean what she says why can’t she be negative. Where is the person to lift her up about herself. Not the plan not the team but just Ruby Rose

I don’t think I’m explaining this properly I’m not mad at anyone bc they didn’t know how she felt. I’m just trying to point out connecting things in the show and how “We’ll be better than blank”, in Ruby’s mind, can’t just be something to say when Qrow is mad at Oz (rightfully) or Yang is worried she sounds like Ironwood (the man they just had to save a kingdom from)

V9. Misinformation. Miscommunication. Blinded by your own emotions. Resistant to change. Not listening. It’s felt so Real it’s been so good I hope what I said makes sense it’s just the Be Better Than The Old Mentors vs just bc we won’t do things the same way doesn’t mean we won’t ever feel like they felt or have the same doubts or worry that what they did might’ve been The Best in their mind at the time. Lack of perspective. How you can be the villain to those you’re trying to save. It’s a lot sorry I rambled so much

pushing pause real quick here, anon, the anxiety pouring out of this ask about being misinterpreted as bashing this or that character is really palpable and bc of that i just want to like directly affirm that analytical discussion of character flaw or the narrative construction of a conflict isn’t accusatory or condemnatory of the characters themselves. in this household we go buckwild for characters whose human imperfection is fully and honestly realized by the narrative <3

anyway yeah yeah exactly like

ever since these kids got looped into ozpin’s cult they’ve just been in this emotional vortex of—don’t be negative, don’t spread negativity. salem wants to divide us. we can’t let salem divide us. LOOK at how terrified they were in V8 of not being in unanimous agreement about whether to prioritize a long-term or short-term goal, how much jaune’s proposed compromise scared them. it’s profoundly dysfunctional. they don’t know how to differentiate normal, constructive debate and infighting, or critical self-reflection and harmful negativity, so they are constantly hyper-vigilant constantly monitoring and policing each other for the smallest sign of bad thoughts, bad feelings, because this war they inherited isn’t a war against salem, not really, it’s a war against this nebulous idea of division, of conflict, of negativity, of the bad things that will see humankind condemned to extermination when the gods come back.

and like:

YANG: Okay, Ironwood wants Penny, otherwise Mantle is done for. So, how do we stop him?

BLAKE: Qrow and Robyn are still in his custody, and May said that the Atlas security drones are watching the crater, so they’re trapped too.

OSCAR: And Salem isn’t going to stay gone forever.

RUBY: So then it’s impossible.

EMERALD: See? If Miss Hero with all the answers doesn’t have an answer, then we have ours.

WEISS: Shut up.

YANG: Why don’t you just leave?!

OSCAR: Can we please just give each other a chance? Emerald’s not with Salem anymore, and Ozpin is back. All this doubt and worry and distrust, it isn’t getting us anywhere—

RUBY: Then nothing has CHANGED! We’re in the exact same spot we were yesterday, arguing what to do while the kingdom waits to die.

^ she ran away then, too. and yang went after her thinking that ruby needed a pep talk, needed to be told that sure things are bad and risks don’t always pay off, but the mom who abandoned them both for the world’s sake is still her hero—when what ruby actually, desperately needed to hear, what she’s PLEADING for now, is for someone to tell her it’s okay to feel bad, it’s okay to have doubts, it’s okay to just be overwhelmed. that it ISN’T FAIR for the fate of the world to sit on her shoulders and that the world will not end if she admits that it’s too fucking heavy, if she asks for help, if she puts it down.

and that’s what makes it sting so much when her doubts and fears and frustration get brushed off like those feelings don’t matter or aren’t true or, worse, like it’s wrong for her to feel this way at all—it’s a manifestation of this, like, existential terror of Innate Badness that lurks in the heart of ozpin’s cult, don’t feel bad don’t think bad thoughts or else—or else what? “salem will divide us” but it’s so easy for that line of thinking to shade into “only bad people have bad thoughts,” because feeling bad IS bad in and of itself, right. like fundamentally this is how the strict ideological delineation between hero, villain, and passive narrative object enforces itself: the villains surrender to negativity and so become themselves agents of this Badness while the heroes stand as beacons of hope and inspiration to the defenseless masses—who otherwise would of course succumb to negativity (“panic”) and be obliterated. baked into the cult’s ideology is an unspoken but perilously thin line between feeling bad and being bad.

you don’t mean that. that’s how ironwood thought. (you can’t mean that. only bad people think that way.)

and the real world just doesn’t fucking work that way—the world of remnant does not work that way—so this is an emotional poison, it’s toxic, they’re swimming around in a noxious soup of unspoken ideas that seeped into all of them to varying depth but percolated right down into the very bedrock of who ruby is—and while it killed them slowly it ate ruby alive. and now the bones of her are poking through the cracks and she has nothing left to give so the only way to move forward is to claw herself out of the soup!! (<- this metaphor ran away from me a bit.)

which somewhat ironically given what the first layer of her crisis is about, means ruby is going to lead the way out of this festering mess of a fairytale cult. by way of the desolate howl that this way of thinking is dehumanizing and inhumane

[thenerdyindividual]

10 characters, 10 media, 10 tags--tagged by @flight-of-fantasy

1. Arthur Pendragon — BBC Merlin

(It was so hard to pick between the main four and Gwaine. I was not originally an Arthur stan, but then I wrote an entire data driven essay on him and I was left with no choice but to join the Arthur Pendragon defense squad.)

2. Jet Rocks — Dimension 20’s A Crown of Candy

(I am an Emily Axford lover first, and a gremlin second)

3. Rose Tyler — Doctor Who

(Can you believe I almost forgot her? Shout out to the first character to ever leave me properly sobbing over a heartbreak, and a character who treats the entire galaxy with dignity and respect, even if it means fist fighting those who don’t. Also Bad Wolf did something to my brain.)

4. Jaskier — The Witcher

(Choosing between him and Yen was so hard but the sing songy twit won out)

5. Andhera — Dimension 20’s A Court of Fey and Flowers

(I don’t care that it’s dimension 20 again, it’s a different season with different cast members and DMs. Plus I love my socially awkward asexual non-binary fey guy.)

6. Alexis Rose — Schitts Creek

7. Catra — She Ra

8. Fia Boginya — NADDPOD C2: Eldermourne

(No GIF because NADDPOD is audio only. But remember what I said about being an Emily Axford lover?)

9. Toph — Avatar the Last Airbender

(It was so close between her, Zuko, and Sokka. I literally typed out Zuko and changed my mind.)

10. Kugrash — Dimension 20s The Unsleeping City

(Look, just be glad it wasn’t all dimension 20 okay? I love me a pathetic literal rat man, and it’s in an entirely different universe to A Crown of Candy, which are both different from A Court of Fey and Flowers. Sue me.)

Honorable mentions go out to Ruby Rocks, Rosamund Du Prix, and Evan Kelmp. I could have made this list so heavily Dimension 20 if I included them.

Tagging: @anarchycox @plantboy-elliott @feuxx @kairenn-n @lightasthesun @arthurpendragonns @calloutnevvegas @countrygalxfandom @kitkatqueen1 @oceangenasi

[x-branwen]

Protect Ozpins smile at all costs

(ง'̀-'́)ง

[tsuklns]

(((i miss my boys)))

[theangelofangst]

“James is what my friends call me. You? It’s General.” — James Ironwood, Rwby Volume 7, chapter 13, The Enemy of Trust.

(I know that James thinks he’s doing the right thing, by casting out his heart as to the opposite of the character on who he’s based on The TinMan, he thinks it’s the right thing and that his sense of logic will prevail, see I get that. But him shooting Oscar? How would that benefit anyone? He shot a kid, sure Oscar is around 15 years old but he’s still considered a kid. And Ironwood shot him at point blank range, with the full intent to fucking kill him, without any shred of remorse or guilt on his face as he watched him fall to his death, if Ozpin was watching everything play out then he probably isn’t too happy with what James tried to do)

[edenszerofan33]

Guys, the intensity from V7 c11 is off the charts. Salem is on her way to Atlas, Ironwood is panicking, RWBY is under arrest, we got more flashbacks of Summer and Ruby crying, and Oscar has been kidnapped.

We find out that Ironwood no longer trusts them with the Relic of Knowledge after finding out they lied to him, and is gonna use the Staff of Creation to push Atlas high into the sky away from Salem.

Right now would be a great time for Ozpin to come back.

Ozpin watch squad, where ya at??!!

[finerclassofcrows]

the latest episode

the way ruby lied to ironwood.... her arc of coming into her own as a leader may cross paths with ozpin’s this volume. i’m excited to see where they take it.

[fandomsallaroundme]

And amidst the drama of Yang’s continuing battle with PTSD and Qrow’s likely worsening drinking problems, V6C5 gave us the first look at the one thing Oz’s secret keeping was, in all likelihood, trying to prevent the most:

Doubt.

Weiss is the first one shown to start questioning whether there was any point in taking the Relic of Knowledge to Atlas when all of their hard work so far seems to be for nothing.

Salem is an unbeatable goddess, what’s the point of hiding the Relic again when she’s going to get it and win in the end anyway? It’s a rather bleak outlook, but not inaccurate, and I can’t fault Weiss for thinking like that after the avalanche of new information from the last two episodes.

But, I just think it’s fair to point this out: Oz’s lies were never told with any intent to do harm or to intentionally trick anyone into anything.

Yes, keeping important secrets like Salem’s immortality was a Bad Thing To Do, but something you all seem to be forgetting is that False Hope, while it can be cruel, can also be the best thing to have in an honestly hopeless situation.

Qrow is not wrong to feel betrayed by Oz. The girls aren’t wrong to be frustrated with the lies and dangers they all face.

But Oz likely knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if he’d told his inner circle members everything about Salem, everything would have fallen apart just the same. He likely expected Qrow to follow Raven’s example, or to end up drinking himself to death (and in all honesty, I’m not seeing anything to counteract either outcome). Ironwood likely would have raised Atlas’ entire army in a bid to destroy Salem in one fell swoop if he didn’t collapse in defeat first, which would have wasted the lives of all of Atlas’ soldiers and cost them all of the mechs as well. Glynda... Glynda has always been shown to be a strict, practical person who does not let emotion cloud her judgement.If given the time to process and plan, she likely would have been the only person who still would have stood by Oz and listened to his plans on the matter rather than charging in recklessly like Ironwood. Lionheart, of course, would have either had a meltdown or turned tail and aided Salem just like in canon.

So if he knows all of these terrible reactions are likely to happen in a group of grown, trained adults, do you really think he would have any faith in this truth being accepted by a group of emotional teenagers without everything falling apart?

Jaune and Yang would try to kill him and everyone else will probably follow Weiss’ line of thinking and give up because everything is pointless, in the end.

The only one who would probably stand up for and understand him would be Ruby.

So. He’s left with Glynda, an old friend who is a skilled Huntress who can fight equally alongside him when the time comes, and Ruby, a teenage girl who is incredibly talented, but still has not finished her training and is still a child who shouldn’t have to be fighting in this war in the first place. A single woman and a single young girl does not an army make.

And all of these scenarios are honestly a bit too optimistic, as it’s also possible no one would continue standing with him and he’d be facing Salem alone once again.

He didn’t lie out of malice, or any intentional cruelty. He was being as kind and hopeful as he possibly could be in his situation, while knowing the world is on the brink of the end.

False Hope is better than No Hope At All.

Maybe it was wrong. But what else was he supposed to do?

[punkeropercyjackson]

Sequel to prev post's tags and what actually made me come up with it is that Bumbleby antis ARE lesbophobes for saying Blake should've ended up with Sun for queer m/f rep and that Yang's not a lesbian because she could be bi seeing as they exist

[thenoob0308]

I wanna see a fanfic

Where Ozpin delivers the relics to Salem, because he's tired of not fully dying and just wants to gods to come and kill everybody because at that point I would probably do that.

[ffiamgoku]

Posted chapter 9 of my story A new Team (Done Right)

The story is a Marvel/ DC story, set in a mashup of the MCU and DC shows/movies. it is NOT Steve or Wanda friendly. The story is Team Iron Man!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/19166689/chapters/45557644

[atlasifyllm]

Find the Word tag

Thank you @writing-is-a-martial-art ! My words are: sun(shine), silly, brave, and beast

All I Needed To Know (DOTS:DR):

Ruby watched as the paramedics slowly surrounded Cobalt, both them and Lavender yelling medical jargon she didn’t understand or simply blocked out of her mind for the time being. Her mind felt hollow as she saw the ambulance slowly carry him away, off in a hurried rush to the hospital. No longer feeling welcome or needed, Ruby began her slow, silent walk home. The ambulance sirens grew fainter and fainter as she walked out of the accursed area. Dawn had begun to break through the clouds, and the sun peeked its head over the horizon of the city. The fog was clearing up, though it suddenly hit Ruby how cold it was. Maybe fall was drawing near. Still, the streets of Neocity were devoid of life. The silence was as deafening as ever.

Wait, How’d You Get In Here? (J:MON):

At this moment, they had come to a quiet understanding of one another; they had both escaped from horrific danger, and now Jack needed companionship while Veronica needed a purpose.

Veronica fed some peas to their goose, while Jack hauled himself down next to her outside for the first time in months. He watched her lift her hand up and allow the goose to peck at the peas in her hand. Veronica giggled at the silly animal and gave it a pat on the head. Seeing her joy at the little goose, Jack placed a hand on the goose’s back and slowly petted it. The three of them sat quietly in the yard, all satisfied at the constant affection.

DOTS:DR Plot Map:

[SPOILER] gets to the end of the labyrinth, but is surprised to find that [SPOILER] isn’t there. Instead, she puts on a brave face when the RGB squad and Lavender reach the end of the labyrinth.

I drop kicked that child in self defense (DOTS:DR):

The orbs seemed to taunt her, flickering on and off in the darkness. Their faint lights shone for no one, just barely visible in the darkness. Hardened by years of sentry training, Yin rose to defend herself from her silent captor. No matter what it was, the creature would know not to mess with a sentry. Especially not the most elite of the Blake siblings. She almost raised her foot to drop kick the beast into submission, until… "Hi Yin." Oh. Cobalt stepped out of the darkness and into the light of the open refrigerator. Only 15 years old, he was a gangly teenager who was only beginning to show signs of a growth spurt. He spoke almost in a whisper, his voice barely keeping the high timbre of childhood. He still insisted on his hair being an uncontrolled mess, his eyes barely visible under his long, two-toned bangs. The only evidence he had any eyes at all was the blue glow emitting from them, which he rubbed at in front of Yin. "Cobalt, what are you doing up?" she questioned. "I had a bad dream... Where's…" he said, pausing in the middle of his sentence. "Where's water?"

I tag @whumpymirages and @writing-with-chaos ! Your words are: dream, sky, empty, and happy :]

[fandomdabbles]

where’s my ruby rose defense squad at

[pilot-boi]

Fall For Me: Chapter Two

The Fall

Heroic sacrifice looks good on paper. In practice, it’s much trickier to achieve.

AO3 LINK

“Head’s up!”

Nora landed smoothly, flipping the trigger on her hammer a few moments before her boots hit the crumbling stone. She caught her weight on her hands and continued the count, as Ren dropped down next to her. A few long heartbeats later, the crystal blew out and they matched stares as the aftershock washed down. 

She gritted her teeth at the extra flickers of chill memory that danced under her thoughts, in reply to the shock of it, and she focused on Ren’s reassuringly steady face. Then the pressure released again, back to the almost familiar background horribleness, and she relaxed a bit. Ren nudged her shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

“Always,” Nora nodded, a little more shakily than she would normally have done, and grinned. “Thanks, Renny.”

He held out a hand and she grasped it gratefully. They pulled each other back upright, and Nora glanced up at the stark shape of their now-empty second pillar. To give Weiss the credit, nothing like glyphs for a little boost when push came to shove. Even when the sickening corrupted feeling of this place was playing havoc with their Semblances and Aura.

Another crack of discharging Dust broke across the plain as she turned back, to where the third figure of their squad had set up a position behind a chunk of jutting rock. She was knelt down behind it, sword stabbed deep into the cracking stone with a snow white summoning glyph spinning around her.

Little wisps of plasma rose from the giant ethereal form of the knight, and there were smears of half evaporated darkness fading away from it’s sword. Weiss wasn’t even looking up at it though, her gaze fixed firmly on the battle raging above them. And the Grimm were getting very close.

The too-angular houndlike form of a Beowulf howled into existence a few feet away from Weiss’s distracted form. Growling furiously, its pitch black fur bristling as it lunged-

And it was hit in the face almost immediately by a bright pink shape. The creature and grenade broke apart in a scream, a shower of blackened steam a few bits of falling bone. Nora gave a whoop of triumph, punching the air, as her other arm sun Magnhild back into a hammer.

“Oh yeah, take that!” She caught Ren’s gaze again, and grinned a little sheepishly. “Taking the wins we can get today.”

“I can tell,” Ren said, smiling about as calmly as could be expected. Weiss drew her rapier from the stone and the knight dissipated, even as the heiress loaded her last round of Dust bullets into the hilt.

Nora started to reply, desperate to have some of that familiar reparte in this terrible situation, but her words died on her tongue as the roar came again. She swivelled, looping up towards the distant gleam of blazing eyes that were suddenly visible against the permanently red dusk of the sky.

Icy horror poured down her neck. They weren't finished yet?! She’d been keeping track of the other explosions, and they were only halfway done.

“Oh no,” she murmured and glanced around quickly, scanning the rest of the plain for the other towers. For their other friends. Yang and Blake, Jaune and Oscar, and Ren, Weiss, and herself. 

Ruby was understandably occupied.

Ren and her assigned pillars had been fairly close together. Between the combination of Weiss’s summons, her own grenades, and the occasional lime bright shot from Ren’s pistols, they’d managed to keep the massing Grimm at bay rather effectively.

It helped that the monsters seemed to be confused by the multiple sources of detonation. They flocked this way and that as different towers went off. This, she knew, had been the plan. Cause so many sources of danger for the Grimm that they didn’t know where to go. At least it was going well so far.

There was certainly less appearing just behind them going on than they’d managed before. And she could swear she had seen at least one overshoot in its charge and vanish struggling into the tar pits whence it came.

Which meant that their most defensible place was backed up against the primordial ooze itself. Which was just great, naturally, but it was technically better than nothing when they were dashing between pillars.

But the next nearest pillar was back towards where the dragon was coming in from.

“Of course it is,” Nora muttered to herself, then stopped. Weiss gave a snarl behind her and spun the chamber of her rapier, unleashing another round of fire. But that wasn’t what was suddenly hammering for focus at the edge of Nora’s attention.

She squinted in through the haze of the air here. Something else was happening, just in front of the returning behemoth.

The scene resolved, with a suddenness of realisation that wrenched down through her in horrible succession as her insides lurched violently. She couldn’t see the grapple wire, too thin at this distance, but there was definitely a distant figure hanging partway between the next pillar and its canyon edges.

And nothing else here was white. Not that pearly white that she’d recognize even with her eyes closed. Dread bloomed, even ahead of the sickening surges of old darkness prompted by the ongoing roar, and Nora’s breath came up short.

“Jaune!”

She was running before she even realised she had started to move. Followed first by the surprised cry of her partner and from their friend, then the thuds of footfall as they came after her. She heard Weiss swear, heard the crack of gunfire going off somewhere behind her, and the squawking otherworldly screech of a Nevermore.

But they were running right on the edge of the central area now, and she could feel the wrongness to the air here, even beyond everything else wrong of this place.

The ground shuddered underfoot more than it should, and a few times she had to jump over narrow chasms that plunged into bubbling nothingness. Or worse, in some cases, when there was a glimmer of Grimm-eyed brightness beneath, right at the bottom edge of her vision.

But she wasn’t going to look down, wasn’t going to look away from that distant point of incorrectly pure white. So when the dragon burst out of the horizon, all wings and smoke and the horrible violet brilliance of a gaze like an alternate spectrum hell, she was looking right at it.

The too thin breath congealed in her throat, clamping her chest down on itself and she stumbled as she saw the creature sweep forward. Saw a beam of twisting light spear into it as it passed over the pillar. Saw the huge tail slice where Jaune’s line must be without even a pause. And she couldn’t even manage a cry as the suspended figure began to fall.

No. No, not here. Not like this-

And he stopped. He swung to slam hard into the side of the pillar, but he stopped. Hands grabbed Nora’s shoulders, pulled her back. She barely had time to realise how close the edge of one of the smaller chasms she had been, as Ren’s voice blurred around her and her own heartbeat hammered deafeningly in her ears.

The grapple was still attached. At one end. It was still attached.

Gods preserve her.

She straightened up, gripping Ren’s arm tightly in reply or reassurance, she wasn’t sure which, and they started running again. Towards where Weiss had veered away from their initial direction, skirting the edge of that pillar’s splintered canyon. She had headed for where Oscar’s distinct figure was now surrounded by a closing knot of Grimm.

Reactionary brilliant shooting stars from Weiss’s rapier tore holes the staff hadn’t managed to reach yet. And by the time the pair of them caught up, the rest of the attackers had been dispatched.

Oscar nodded to them grimly. The boy was pale under his freckles, bleeding in a few places as his Aura struggled to battle the oil slick magic of this place. 

“Going about as well as ever,” he said, but there was strain under his voice. “Any one of you got a way to get him down?”

“I’ll fly up,” Weiss replied firmly, twirling her rapier, preparing to cast the glyphs necessary to complete the feat. Nora didn’t miss the way the heiress’s hands were shaking though, as she glanced up at where Jaune was pulling himself awkwardly back up onto the pillar top. “I can do this, just need a minute to concentrate. I think I know-”

“Look,” Ren cut in. “Your Aura is drained, and there is no guarantee that the connection will even last long enough to-”

His interruption failed as the crystal flared again, hurling a second brilliant ray out to where the dragon had spiralled upwards over the middle of the maelstrom sky.  It was snapping and twisting at the red figure that was slicing desperately at it. 

Closer to it not, Nora could hear the beam. It made a tearing glass screech that set her teeth on edge, and she winced as she ineffectively tried to shield her ears, and squinted up at the crystal.

She wasn’t sure exactly what the beams did. Heal the monster that used to be Salem or something, Jaune had suggested. But getting rid of them was a good idea even just to stop that noise.

Jaune was standing up now, backlit against the shivering light, and… What the hell was he…?

“Nora,” Osacr’s voice was tight as he followed her stare, to where the distant figure had adopted a braced stance, reaching towards the sword still strapped to his side after everything. “Nora, oh this is bad-!”