So basically. Alyx regretted what she'd done to Jaune and the mess she'd caused at the Ever After. So she let Lewis go back to Remnant but she chose to stay, because she wanted to make up for her mistakes. And that fucking cat killed her for that.
So after all, it really was Lewis who wrote The Girl Who Fell Through The World. He went back to Remnant, saw that Alyx never made it back, and erased himself from the story so he could write one in which his sister had a happy ending. And he wrote the Cat as an ally because... well... he never knew.
I mean we’re screaming but we did get confirmation that the Ever After was sort of a prototype Remnant huh?
“I need to know why my makers left me here. Only to leave and make all of you.” That’s what the Cat was going to say. It’s what they wanted to know.
The Brother Gods created a world so sectioned and divided and rigid that even they deemed it a failure. And then abandoned it to it’s dysfunction while they created Remnant.
I also love how they used Jaune and our perspective on him to warp the audience’s view of the Cat.
At first, the Cat is genuinely helpful, and doesn’t really gain anything from helping besides knowledge that satisfies their curiosity. They’re cleverer than the average Afteran, have more freedom, but they seem good.
Jaune enters and casts doubt on that, especially when he brings up Alyx and Lewis. But…we don’t believe him for long. Because he’s so clearly unhinged, so clearly resents the entirety of the Ever After when we’ve seen good in it from Little and the Paper Pleasers. It becomes likelier than Jaune is being irrational, that his distrust and hate for the Cat is just another form of his trauma and paranoia.
And then Chapter 8. There’s one brief moment where it seems that the Cat really does care for Ruby, really does intend to help….
But no. They try to hollow her out and possess her, and when it succeeds on Neo it’s horrifying. Jaune was right not to trust them. We just didn’t realize that, because we couldn’t trust Jaune.
#ThankYouCRWBY present and past for bringing us this this beautiful, heart-wrenching, and insightful volume.
Definitely my favorite volume yet and it’s not over.
Here’s to getting volume 10!
Keep moving forward. And beyond.