#tftponders

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It’s interesting that the tree grabbed Ruby and Little at the same time and not one after the other, they both fell in the hole made for Ruby after drinking the tea. Is the tree going to fuse them or keep them separate? I mean, Little is supposed to be hope incarnate right, it’s what Ruby has been missing lately...

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They had Neo imply PENNY LOVED RUBY through illusions.... and Ruby’s face I can’t fucking do this!!

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Well... maybe it’s just a coincidence these shots align but still... NND and Oz/lem parallels with them holding a weapon of a loved one, anyone?

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The fact that Miles, the one on the writers' team whose favourite ship is Nuts and Dolts, got to write on THIS episode with THAT Penny scene inside? Oh I'm keeping an eye on that.

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What does it mean... This specific shade of teal/water green for the souls in V9C9 being extremely close to Penny’s eye colour when in cold lightning and Ruby being in both this scene and one with fireflies (V4) that’s EERILY similar. And fireflies also bein associated with Penny (Chibi) and again Ruby being there.

Penny’s eyes (top left in cold lightning - rest I assume to be warm lightning)

Colour swatches for both scenes

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I think it’s a pretty sad takeaway from V9 but sensible one. While Penny was good friends with everyone by the end of V8 (and I’m a big advocate of Penny having friends other than Ruby), their friendship was too fresh and shallow for everyone else to feel really sorry about this loss, aside from Ruby.

JN_R had proper moments of mourning, and also discussed Pyrrha when Jaune was at a low point in V6 in front of the statue. But they were all relatively close to her before her death, she was a teammate, a student at Beacon, they shared classes everyday and a dorm bedroom. The loss affects the whole team and their bond evolves with it.

Put that in perspective with Ruby mourning Penny and WBY saying almost nothing to her. There was an attempt to reach out and bring Penny up by Weiss but that went nowhere as deep as Jaune’s discussion of Pyrrha with Nora and Ren. Ruby is mourning Penny alone, and the only one feeling as sorry as her is Jaune, precisely because he knows how deep Penny’s connection to Ruby was. When Ruby gives her eulogy while holding Penny’s blade, WBY seem surprised more than anything. They didn’t realize how much this girl represented to Ruby.

I’m not blaming WBY and the rest of the gang for Penny not being close enough to them, I’m mostly blaming the environment she was put in V7-8. In V7 during the truck scene, she admits to Ruby that Ironwood tells her she doesn’t have time for friends. During the montage sequence, we only see Penny when she wakes RWBY up, talking enthusiastically with Ruby. It’s easy to assume Penny had 0 allowed free time and the only occasions where she could bond with others were when she was on duty. Heck, Ruby uses her day off to go see Penny at the rally, presumably because she was on duty with Marrow while everyone else her age were allowed a day off.

Then shit went down and nobody had time to hang out for the next volume and a half. She wasn’t given the chance to bond with the gang beyond a surface-level, at all. The narrative was against her. We see her interact a bit with Yang and Nora in V7, and slightly more in V8 with the whole gang comforting her post virus. One could argue Nora trully started to care about her during this volume and frankly I wanted to see more of that friendship myself. But aside from Ruby and her, there wasn’t a lot of developped interactions.

And now, we’re in the ever after. No Pietro, no Nora, just WBY and a very different Jaune. Ruby’s alone to mourn her dearest friend.

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Love how NND potentially pulled a reverse Romeo and Juliet, people may be right. Their roles may have been mixed up contrary to the original, in true RWBY allusions fashion.

1) Romeo drinks the poison (2) thinking Juliet is trully dead 3) Juliet then wakes up, sees him dead and (4) stabs herself with his dagger. In comparison, if you isolate some NND scenes out of their general context of Salem vs the World yadda yadda, and try to think of them in the context of their relationship alone, it goes:

Thinking Ruby has fallen to her death in the void (2) Penny stabs herself first (4) by using Jaune’s sword THEN when Ruby acknowledges Penny trully died (3) she drinks the “poison” (1) (Tea from the tree) ...

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Holy shit - does that mean that when Ruby encountered the blacksmith in one of those earlier episodes she had ALREADY reached the tree by herself?? Because of her mental state back then?

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Hey, want a “fun” fact? :)

Now that Ruby is ascending she won’t be able to mourn Penny because she won’t have her memories anymore to do so!! Yay!! *guttural screaming of anguish*

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I think V9C10 + V9C9 gave us the missing puzzle piece for the Penny 3.0 revival theories through Winter and I’ll be writing why I think so below. Be warned, this post will be mildly long.

To start off the explanation - if you’re unfamiliar with the Penny/Winter theory that sprouted two years ago after the V8 finale I’ll try to summarize it as much as I can but i really recommend you to dig the OG posts because they’re much more complete and explanatory.

The Winter theory itself has several itterations but the one that interests us here is the one that supposes that Penny only sent a fraction of herself to Winter - namely her memories, while she split the rest and stored it /somewhere else/ during the Maiden Power transfer. This last “place” has been debated in revival theories but a lot of us have settled on it to be Jaune’s sword and I believe V9C10 may have comforted this idea. The theory concludes by stating that both parts could potentially be rejoined into a new mechanical body made by Pietro to revive Penny.

Back when it sprouted, this specific revival theory relied on four major facts: 1) The aura color during the Maiden Power transfer from Penny to Winter was wrong. Unlike Fria -> Penny where the aura color was Fria’s color (blue), during Penny -> Winter the color was yellow, with green microparticles escaping on the sides. The only occurences of yellow aura color we’ve seen is the God of Light, yang... and Jaune.

2) Penny’s words to Jaune and the hidden offscreen information. We can hear Penny tell Jaune “but there is one thing you can do” and then later on “Trust me” when she asks him to finish what Cinder had started and there is a very short amount of time where the camera pans to another place of the battlefield, right before we hear Jaune crying. This confidence in Penny and the purposeful removal of the audience from her last moments raises questions.

3) The nature of Penny’s “new body” and how much Ambrosius’s magic and tricks might have affected her abilities, added to how perceptive she is have led a few of us to think she perfectly knew what she was doing when she died. The first to spot Blake was a Faunus, the first to understand perfectly Ruby’s semblance.

4) Each school led by Ozpin’s circle being equipped to relay Maidenhood from a girl to another through aura transfer machines (Vale, Atlas) so far implies Vacuo’s school, Shade Academy also possess an aura transfer machine, which could be the tool used to rejoin both of Penny’s separate parts.

Now that this is out of the way - time to focus on V9C10/V9C9 and the two most important scenes relevant to the Winter theory. Jaune’s youth coming back to him and Alyx’s death by the hands of the cat. 

When the Tree/blacksmith hands the dagger to Jaune, it starts glowing a faded/dirt yellow color.

At first I thought it was reacting to Jaune’s own aura or that maybe it was god-like magic since we learned the origin of the gods in the same episode. But there IS a more accurate faded/dirt yellow color in the episode, Alyx’s eye color as well as the whole color used to depict her spirit helping Jaune. It most likely indicates that the faded yellow was not Jaune’s aura color but /Alyx’s aura color/.

Which means that she managed to imbue her own weapon with her aura. But not only that, considering the effect on Jaune is to make him young again, she quite litteraly imbued her own lifeforce/lifespan into the knife. It would also explain why Jaune kept two streaks of “old hair” - she was far too young to replenish the entire lifespan the old man had spent on the island, she could only give as much as she had herself. That point is the key for the Winter theory.

But before that I can picture some of you you going “but why would Alice do that anyways and throw her remaining lifespan away since she wanted to help afterans”. Because she couldn’t do anything else; litteraly. In V9C9 we learned the cat tried to kill her - and succeeded in doing so and thus prevented her to accomplish her newfound goal. What is interesting is that there is NO time on screen at all between the moment Alyx finds her new goal to help Afterans/Jaune and the cat assaults her in retaliation during the flashback shown to the audience; followed by a deliberate shot on the fallen dagger on the ground - which can only mean one thing. She desperately imbued the dagger with her aura /as she was dying/ - because that’s the only thing she could do to “help” in that moment.

And who else could’ve done the same, with a certain sword?

Now if Penny performed the same trick Alyx did and she in fact stored a whole chunk of aura in Jaune’s sword as she died, this would explain why green particles escape during the aura transfer while the rest was yellow. She may have abused Jaune’s semblance one way or another to bypass the necessity to use up her own aura to pass the powers/memories down to Winter, hence the yellow glow.

And now we’re stuck with another problem: Jaune’s sword was broken in half. Great, does that mean Penny can’t come back because there’s not enough aura stored in the sword anymore? And that’s where another itteration of the Winter theory comes into play - the one where Pietro sacrifices himself/his aura to bring Penny back while Winter gives the memories back. Because he doesn’t have to do that anymore now.

V7 implied Pietro has /just enough/ aura to bring Penny back once more if she were to be detroyed and that it would be lethal to him, because it drains his life each time he does so. Or at least it’s heavily implied considering his health and how much older to Watts he looks now compared to the P.E.N.N.Y project photo in V7. But now - if she’s trully stored half her lifeforce in the broken sword - he might just have to give half of his own aura and remain alive.

Winter, Pietro, Jaune and the Aura Transfer machine are the keys to this revival theory and the fact V9 kept lingering on Penny’s fate only to SHOW us Alyx’s trick in V9C10 makes me think we might not be so dellusional after all. And the fact we see Amity floating above Vacuo in the last V9C10 shot confirms that YES, Pietro is around for this whole thing to be possible. it’s still a theory based on speculations but I hope it was enjoyable to read.

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“We must live with balance. But balance is blind” (lyrics from the V9 OP, “Inside”, speculated to be from Ruby’s POV) versus the GOL:

Soooooo are we disagreeing with the God’s rules and breaking them this volume? Bringing dead people back or something? I don’t know, the “balance is blind part” feels like whoever’s POV the song is from (probably Ruby), they’re not agreeing.

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I just realized that with Penny’s /exact/ death being purposefully hidden from Ruby, snowballing into a possibly extremely impactful reveal, we miiiiight get a song that answers “Friend” if she gets to mourn her properly during an ep.

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I find it interesting how V9C2 portrayed all of Jinxy’s items being wanted by the crowd (1st item by crowd member and 2nd item by guard/Yang) /except/ for the mannequin. Ruby was the /only one/ to be intrigued and to bid on it, much to WBY’s surprise/annoyance. Exactly like how Ruby was the only one to accept Penny as her friend in V1C15 while WBY were waving with their arms for her to say no.

The only person who accepted Penny as a friend. The only person who bid on the mannequin.

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Not only does the trailer spoils us the fact Ruby gets Penny’s blade back at some point, but also that she brings it to the mysterious blacksmith person who is now confirmed to be “fully” mechanical now that the OP provided a clear front view not in the shadows:

The type of floor and the tile alignment seem similar in both scenes:

Now I wonder if she’s going to ask her to either remake Penny a body since she feels something “drawing her” in the blade (Maybe Penny stored her soul in there or something, since the aura colour was wrong during the Maiden powers transfer) OR if Penny is GONE gone, will she ask her to smelt and integrate the blade to Crescent Rose, since she’s a blacksmith and stuff? I don’t know, I feel like this character being conveniently fully mechanical and /Ruby/ coming to meet her feels not so coincidental.

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I see Penny theories left and right contradicting each other and being conflicted about Winter and Little and frankly I’d like them both to be true. I think it’s possible tbh. A bit long but I had to write my thoughts on that:

When I think back to V7 and Penny’s quote to Ruby during the truck scene “I feel like I wish I could do both the things I need to do and the things I want to do. is that normal?”... It makes me think she did, for once. At that point in time in V8 before her death, Penny had both a duty to fulfill (protecting the maiden powers) and her own free will to fulfill (protect her friends/Ruby).

On top of that, we know she’s extra perceptive with how quickly she noticed Blake being a faunus and Ruby’s semblance in details, so it’s possible that she, and on her own, found a way to concile both her obligations and wants. The show lingered a bit on Penny with a shot of her looking at her hands in her new body right before entering the central location in V8C12, as if she had noticed something about it too.

So my best hope is that in order to protect the maiden powers AND help Ruby & co after their fall, she used her extensive knowledge of both her own nature and Jaune’s semblance (his colour instead of hers during the maiden tranfer) to split herself off into separate parts. Her Maiden powers and memories would have gone off with Winter, as they usually do during maiden transfers, but her soul would have gotten in the Ever After as her body still on the golden platforms of the central location fell down, going in the same manner through a process of Ascension. Reborn anew and cleansed of memories, her soul would wander the land as a nameless mouse whose purpose has not been determined yet because it’s too young, when they met a strange, unknown creature named Ruby Rose.

Little /is/ young, they’ve said so themselves and seemingly don’t have a purpose yet. But actually... right now, they do. They act as a (very sleepy) guide to team RWBY but also as a sliver of hope to Ruby specifically, with the way Jinxy’s empty jar of hope framed Little with the jade mannequin. Personality-wise they’re upbeat, curious, unassuming and full of wonder. Reminds of someone else before shit went down, doesn’t it? Let’s add some lines to this with them stating that hugs are very valuable when in V8C12 Penny was shown to enjoy hugs very much, as well as during past volumes. There is also the mention of Little saying they were Ruby’s friend (?) if I recall correctly, which is an obvious thing to tell the audience but a character who emphasized this fact quite often vocally like that was Penny throughout the series, when talking about anyone remotely close to her who wasn’t family. Oh, and want a fun fact? Penny losing her memories is a scrapped V7 idea for her “rebuilt” return. They had to throw it away because of time issues :)))))

Why was Ruby given a small little guide on arrival on the island, who seems to endorse a role of moral support too? Because that’s probably what Penny /wanted/, to help Ruby in her own manner.

That’s all speculations but I do think it’s not 300% absurd to think Penny, the girl willing to throw her life left and right, would gamble to try and help Ruby + friends AND get the powers to safety. And if it’s true I do think it was the biggest gamble she could’ve done, ever, because she didn’t know Ruby was alive, she didn’t know /what was under the central location/ and that’s why she thought of Winter in her final moments to give the Winter maiden powers away. Her /duty/ would be fulfilled no matter what, but her will was for her soul to go wherever Ruby would go, to help her if she needed it, or to join her in the afterlife were she dead.

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So if Ruby absolutely hates the idea of using Crescent Rose right now because this weapon doesn’t represent her ideals anymore... But she still needs to fight... Maybe she’ll find Penny’s sword once more and use it until she feel like her OG weapon fits her again? She’s fought with one of Penny’s sword in the past, and she praised Penny’s accomplishments while presenting said blade with respects in V9