#that line from pyrrha to we suffer haunts me. 'maybe i just like being around other people that knew her'

[harrowharkwife]

you ever think about wake's notes? about how her revenant wrote that "THE ONLY THING OUR CIVILISATION CAN LEARN FROM YOURS IS THAT WHEN OUR BACKS ARE TO THE WALL AND OUR TOWERS ARE FALLING ALL AROUND US AND WE ARE WATCHING OURSELVES BURN– "

" –WE RARELY BECOME HEROES."

only to end up a hero herself? 'cause i do. i think about that a lot actually

[rwbyconversations]

100 Follower Special- The Scattered Leaves of Autumn (or: Why Amber is Awesome)

First off, I’d like to thank everyone who made 100 followers possible (it’s 120 as I write this). For a blog I really just started on a whim, this thing has taken off. I’ve got a post that’s racked up over a thousand notes in under two days, I’ve dipped my toe into serious analysis and felt my mind fracture as I imagine a RWBY fan ask the question “What’s your favorite ship?” 

So to celebrate, I thought I’d do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time now, and that’s tell everyone how much character Amber is given in six minutes, one fight, and one line of dialogue.

First off, required listening is this loop of the music that plays at the beginning of Amber’s scene. This is, in my opinion, the best instrumental Jeff and Alex have ever produced for the show. It has this haunting, almost ethereal quality to the violin, a soft vocal element that almost feels like it’s part of a dirge for both Amber and the happier times of Volumes 1 and 2. After all, Chapter 7 is where the tone begins its radical shift in preparation for the Fall of Beacon and one of three major points of no return for the show (the other two being Yang crippling Mercury and Pyrrha vs Penny).

We’re introduced to Amber after several still shots of a field with a gloomy cloud cover, setting the stage for what’s about to go down. She’s alone with nothing but a horse and a bag for company until in the middle of nowhere (likely in Vale given the scenes with Adam are immediately before and after the Black trailer) she spies a lonely child with a wrecked bicycle, crying her eyes out.

And what does Amber do? Get off her horse and give the kid an apple while flashing a reassuring smile. Amber is kind, gentle, nurturing and cares for children.

But she’s also razor-sharp. She immediately notices the dust that Emerald kicks up (”Not a foot out of place,” Cinder warned them), and once the illusion vanishes, Amber immediately leaps back and gets her horse to run off. Her cloak is removed, staff out, she’s combat ready in the time it takes to blink.

We get a quick look at how Amber fights, and it seems that she’s fond of hiding in plain sight when it comes to power use- she casually blocks Emerald’s gunfire with her Maiden powers and uses her powers to augment the Dust crystals (wind and fire, I believe) embedded on her staff. Alternatively, Amber is more lax in using her powers in public since this is a brazen attempt on her life and she cares more about staying alive than preserving Ozpin’s masquerade. Regardless, Amber likely fights like this as a way for her to use her powers in public without causing a scene, as thanks to the widespread abilities Dust can provide, Amber kicking up a gust of wind or firing off a flamethrower blast isn’t out of the realm of possibility- just look at what Weiss and Hazel can get up to with their usage of Dust.

But when Mercury arrives and powers through her flamethrower, Amber takes off the kid gloves. At this point, she’s realized that they’re trying to take her powers and they’ve landed a serious hit on her. So she decides to let them see properly what they’re up against.

And we as an audience get to finally see the real power of a Maiden while a choir begins to resonate and then in comes Jeff Williams with a guitar to shake the damn earth.

This was the audience’s first glimpse at just what a Maiden can do, and it’s a masterful first showing. CRWBY have stated that Amber’s fight was meant to showcase that Maidens could use all four elements and weren’t bound to one (unfortunately the fanbase didn’t get the memo, considering that M&K have had to say this three times now). One of my personal favorite moments of the fight comes from Amber improvising a flechette storm out of leaves that she flash-freezes and fires at Emerald and Mercury. Amber’s power is shown easily through one simple shot, where she looks almost disdainfully down at Mercury and Emerald as they fire desperately at her, not even bothering to deflect the gunfire. 

Amber also showed how quick thinking she was after Cinder knocked her down. Before she sees CEM running towards her, we hear the trademark sound of Emerald’s Semblance and Amber gasps at that. She’d heard it earlier when Emerald set the trap, and after Emerald appears she immediately realizes it; Emerald has an illusion Semblance. And based on her behavior later in the fight, Amber subscribes to the Tamora Pierce school of combat.

But first Amber has to deal with Cinder and Mercury. And despite both of them flickering in and out of visibility thanks to Emerald, Amber proves why Cinder had to stack the deck so thoroughly to beat her.

Because she kicks their asses. Even without her staff or using her Maiden powers, and even outnumbered as she is, Amber wins every 1v1 close quarters encounter in the back half of the fight, mostly using raw CQC to wipe the floor with them (you know what they say about never bringing a knife to a fistfight). Mercury only lands a few hits on her when she’s distracted with Emerald, and every time, Amber makes him pay dearly for it. Let me remind you at this point that according to Qrow in Volume 4, Amber only had a year’s training with her Maiden powers. She was a natural-born prodigy. 

Even after Cinder breaks Amber’s Aura (and you guessed it, it wasn’t through direct combat, she had to wait for Amber to be distracted before she could do even that), she still keeps fighting like a determined little spitfire, blowing CME away. Amber uses this chance to finally get rid of the thorn in her side and immediately wastes Emerald with a fireball. And despite needing to limp on her staff, Amber slowly but surely makes her way to where Emerald fell, and before Emerald can pull any more tricks, Amber goes in for the killing blow. Rather than waste time on Mercury or Cinder, Amber used her head and went for the person who could cast illusions. With Emerald out of the way, it would have been much easier to neutralize Cinder and Mercury. It was also personal at this point; Emerald had ambushed her, manipulated her conscience and used her own morality as a distraction. Amber had no more mercy left for Emerald, and had she been just a second faster, Emerald’s skull would have been split wide open.

But she wasn’t fast enough. Based on where it looks like she got shot, Cinder’s arrow struck Amber in the spine or may have even pierced one of her lungs. Her eyes widen for a second, mouth struggling to say anything or maybe even breathe, and then Amber falls. She put up a hell of a fight, managed to beat around three very talented fighters, but Emerald’s Semblance was the trump card in Cinder’s deck. Add in some dastardly sneak attacks, and Amber ultimately never stood a chance.

And at this moment, her eyes widen as that realization settles in. That she is about to die, in a random field, to a bitch in a red dress. She tries to stay defiant as Mercury and Emerald grab her arms, but once the parasite bursts out of Cinder’s palm, Amber loses it.

Amber doesn’t scream bloody defiance at Cinder, doesn’t curse her name or provide a quip. Amber is terrified when she dies, shaking in abject fear, which makes her suffering even more tragic and ultimately realistic. She wasn’t just some hardened Huntress who stared death in the face. Unlike Pyrrha, she didn’t get a cool one-liner. Amber begs for mercy and is horrified in her last conscious moments. She was already gone by the time Qrow came to save her, and when she finally started to regain consciousness however many moons later...

There wasn’t a bright light at the end of that tunnel, unfortunately. After months she’s emaciated, pale from the lack of sunlight, and scars still riddle her face. And just as something may come of her suffering, Cinder plunges an arrow into her heart, and Amber dies in a cold, dark vault that serves as her tomb. She got no burial, no grave to mourn at, while Cinder stole a power she never deserved.

To conclude, Amber is one of my favorite characters in RWBY and I can only hope I did a good job covering why. In a lot of ways she laid the groundwork for Sienna Khan’s fandom in volume 5- a dark-skinned woman voiced by a big-name VA who only really had one scene before their tragic demise, but dominated that one scene and made it their own. Amber in six minutes shows multiple facets to her personality- a friendliness and willingness to help children, a smart and ruthlessly powerful fighting style that lets her draw on Huntress and Maiden training, a lack of mercy to those who cross her, and perhaps most human of all, pure unadulterated fear. She dies scared and alone, looking into the amber eyes of a monster, which only makes the tragedy of Amber’s short life all the more painful.

Thank you for reading. 

[ruffsficstuffplace]

The Keeper of the Grove (Part 76)

Winter sat in her cell, conserving what power she had left in her suit, watching the minutes go by.

“… We’ll go get her...” Weiss had replied, before there was nothing but silence from the other end—no doubt as they figured out just what exactly to do, what to say to Winter, who to actually send in.

She never thought she’d have this chance: to see the very real terror that had been haunting her for almost all her life, the one that had been terrorizing all of Avalon for over a millenia, the one that had caused so much suffering and loss of life from all those poor souls that just didn’t believe the stories, thought they wouldn’t become th elatest victims, or just had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And now, she had the chance to finally kill her.

She knew that she probably wouldn’t fear her weapons as her decoy Qrow had. In hindsight, it should have been much more obvious that the figure under that cloak was lankier and taller than the one on stage last night, and she would have noticed if only she hadn’t let her rage blind her judgment, let that one permanent flaw of Shepherd Suits get to her:

The feeling of limitless power, and the oftentimes lethal overconfidence that came with it.

But maybe, just maybe, even if she wouldn’t flinch at the sight of her weapons, they would vaporize her all the same. All she had to do now was wait, pray that these “Fae” were honest about their claim, or that they were stupid enough to send the real Keeper in.

“We’re sending the Keeper in!” Abner called out.

Winter stood at attention, watched as an all too familiar figure popped into the room through a tear in reality.

Ruby smiled and held up the sack she had in her hand. “I brought cookies!”

Winter started screaming and firing everything she had.

From the control room, reactions varied as the live-feeds exploded with white-blue magic, rendering them all but blind.

Weiss stared in open-mouthed horror as she strangled the Eluna plushie in her arms.

Abner slowly put his hand off the giant button that had teleported Ruby into the cell.

Lying in a gurney with his arms still in the tank, Taiyang watched, his face neutral, his mouth a hard-line. Beside him in a wheelchair, Qrow did the same. And on his other side, Yang scowled and struggled to break the bindings strapping her into her own wheelchair.

Pyrrha stared with wide-eyes, one hand squeezing Penny’s as tightly as she could.

Zwei whimpered in worry, Blake nervously rubbed one of his necks, all three sets of their ears pulling back in fear.

Between an armed Ren and Nora, Jaune sheepishly eyed all the people around him. “Is she going to be alright…?”

“Without a doubt,” Ozpin said as he and the other Council members attended by holo.

“Like the rest of her ancestors, Ruby has an impressive record of surviving and succeeding against much worse odds and situations—complete with evidence from whoever were the Keeper’s personal chroniclers at the time!” Oobleck added.

“They’re from hardy stock, they are!” Port hummed. “And though Winter certainly isn’t no slouch herself, well, the Keeper bloodline is hard to beat!”

“Even with the might of Soul Eaters,” Glynda finished.

Jaune nodded and turned his attention back to the live-feed.

Winter’s screaming turned into desperate, frantic sobbing as she kept firing, her already low reserves went ever lower, and Ruby kept on dodging and temporarily disappearing from reality, not a single one of those shots landing, or her being so far away from the center of the explosion that the damage was negligible.

Eventually, her suit could take no more, all of her weapons systems powering off lest she risk killing herself from exhaustion. She was blinded by the smoke of her leftover magic, before etherite hummed and glowted as it quickly absorbed it and healed itself, the blocks looking pristine in moments.

Winter panted for breath, sweat pouring down her body, her life-support systems trying its damndest to stabilize her levels, until it just gave up and settled for keeping her alive.

Ruby waved some of the leftover magic from her face. “You done…?” she asked.

Winter cried out as she threw her emergency combat knife at her.

Ruby caught it in her hand.

Winter threw the second one.

Ruby caught it in her other hand.

Winter threw her third and last knife.

Ruby deflected it with the first, caught it out of the air with the second, before she held all three blades in her hand, handles out in a fan. “Uh… do you want these back, or…?”

Winter whined as she curled up into a ball, and began to let out bitter, broken sobs. “What do you want…?!”

Ruby paused. “… For you to stop crying so we can actually talk…?”

Winter looked at her, before she broke into another round of tears.

Ruby turned back. “Guys…? Little help here…?”

Weiss sighed. “I’ve got this...” she said as she stepped up to the teleporter pad.

Abner looked back at Glynda.

“Let her in,” she said.

Abner pressed the button, and through a rip in reality Weiss went, until she emerged beside Ruby with the Eluna plushie. Ruby reached for her, until Winter desperately blubbered out something, unintelligible through her tears and hiccuping.

Weiss reluctantly stepped away from Ruby. “Later,” she mouthed.

Ruby nodded. “I love you,” she mouthed back, before she stepped aside.

Weiss smiled, before she turned to Winter and carefully stepped up to her, holding the Eluna plushie out.

“Winter…?” Weiss asked.

Winter turned to her, shivering and sobbing still.

“It’s me, Weiss!” Weiss said, smiling. “I’ve got Eluna—your Eluna! The one we got from Velvet last month, I swear.”

“You can tell because it still smells like tears, snot, and despair!” Ruby added.

Winter sat up, whimpered as Weiss got ever closer to her.

“Do you want her back?” Weiss asked. “I think you really want her back.”

Winter sniffed and nodded.

Weiss kept on smiling. “I’m going to give her back to you, but I need to promise me that you’re not going to attack Ruby again, or anyone else for that matter, okay? We just want to talk, answer all of your questions, and answer plenty of mine, too!

“Can you do this for me, Winter? Please…?”

Winter slowly reached up for her helmet with shaking hands. She disengaged the seals, threw it off to reveal eyes red with tears, snot pouring down her nose, her normally meticulously fixed hair everywhere in sweat-matted strands, the bun on the back of her head just barely holding together.

Weiss slowly knelt down to the floor, and placed Eluna between them.

Winter sniffed, warily looked at her, then at the plushie.

Weiss gently pushed her forward, then smiled.

Winter reached out and snatched her up, pressing her up to her face with shaking, nervous hands. She rubbed her bare face into the plushie, felt its ridiculous warmth and softness once more, inhaled the faint smell of her tears, snot, and despair.

It was mixed with the smell of freshly turned earth, chocolate chip cookies, and sadness, but she could still tell it was hers.

Winter let out a whimper of happiness as she nuzzled her face into the Eluna plushie.

Most everyone in the control room smiled.

Then Winter mopped up her tears with it, before blew her nose on it.

Most everyone in the control room weren’t smiling anymore.

“Well...” Ren muttered. “Very glad I was forced to handle that with gloves...”

Weiss and Ruby stayed with Winter in her cell, sitting in a triangle with Abner teleporting in filtered water, cushions, cookies to replace the bag that had been vaporized earlier, “and some milk to go along with it, because really, what’s biscuits without milk, tea, or coffee?”

Winter clearly had her reservations about eating and drinking food from the enemy, but at Weiss’ insistence that it was safe, and reminding her the Fae had proven that they would do exactly as they said they would, she began to eat.

“Wow...” she muttered as she chewed. “This is actually really, really good!”

“Yeah, the recipe’s--” Ruby started.

Weiss subtly glared at her.

“--really, really good!” she finished awkwardly.

Winter noticed, but decided the delicious chocolate chip cookies could be ruined after she had enjoyed them at least once.

“Are we good now?” Ruby asked after she finished the last of the bag. “You won’t try to kill me anymore, and we can talk?”

“I’m on emergency reserves, it’s clearly going to take a lot more than what I just used to kill you, and I’m trapped behind enemy lines, in an inescapable cell, with reinforcements capable of dropping in at the drop of a hat and utterly annihilating me.

“What do you think?”

Ruby paused. “So is that like a ‘Yes’ or--”

Weiss sighed. “It’s a ‘Yes,’ Ruby...”

Ruby frowned. “Fucking ‘Sarcasm’…” she muttered under her breath. “Okay, so as a show of goodwill, the Council is going to tell you almost everything that you’d like to know! So, ask us almost anything!”

“First and foremost, I want you to know what the hell have you been doing to my sister!” Winter snapped.

Weiss groaned. “Winter, they’ve--”

“I heard your message, Weiss! In fact, I can play it back to all of you right now, if you’d like a refresher!”

“Yeah, what did she say in her super secret post-not-death message?” Nora asked. “I’ve been dying to know!”

“Do it, then,” Gylnda said,

Winter activated her suit’s built-in comm-crystal, and replayed one of the few personal pieces of data she’d been allowed to store in it.

“Winter, it’s me—Weiss.

“I sincerely hope you’re hearing this message personally and that you haven’t done anything drastic, because if you have, I am going to be really pissed off and devastated!” There was a pause for Weiss to take a few breaths, calm herself down.  “… I’m fine, just… needed to get that out of the way… anyway… Winter:

“I’m alive.

“This isn’t a recording done before that disaster of a ransom holo we made. My ‘death’ was faked, and I want you to know… it wasn’t the Keeper that pretended to ‘slit’ my throat with that scythe...

“… It was me.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard of what father has done since you were taken away, but I was sick of it! Sick of him sending all those people to their doom, sick of the Keeper breaking in all the time, sick of how he was treating his own family and everyone around him like they were just business assets, means to an end, accessories to make him look better!

“Jacques Schnee, taking over the Schnee Legacy and the SPC!

Jacques Schnee, Family Man!

Jacques Schnee, ‘Tragic’ Widower of the Sekhmet Scourge!”

Weiss cried out in frustration; there were moments of muted chatter, the other voices modified so they would be all but untraceable and unintelligible, followed by Weiss sobbing and hiccuping from the emotion.

“I’m done being his property—doing everything he asks of me, moulding me into exactly what he needs for his own fucking reputation, deciding everything for me regardless of what I think.

“I don’t know what kind of life I can make here—wherever the hell ‘here’ is!

“But I do know, I don’t want to go back home, if that’s what’s going to be waiting for me.

“Please don’t come find me, Winter.

“And please don’t worry: they’re taking care of me here! They’re feeding me, they’ve given me a warm, safe place to sleep complete with a permanent supply of hot water, and they’re even given me this recorder and books to pass the time with!

“The books are HORRIBLE and I feel my brain cells slowly committing suicide with every predictable plot ‘twist’ I read, but I appreciate the thought!

“What I’m trying to say is: I’m staying here. And I’m never going back, if I can help it.

“I love you, Winter. Goodbye.”

Winter shut off her suit’s comm-crystal. “Did you really think I would believe all that, considering the circumstances?

“Even if you weren’t the face of my lifelong trauma, there was still all the very real people you’ve killed over the centuries for even daring to go into the Viridian Valley, and not to mention all the poor members of my father’s expedition teams that you’ve killed!

“You Keepers are mass-murderers and psychopaths, do you think I would believe anything you were saying?!”

“Err, if I may butt in: the Keepers have barely ever actually killed anyone by their own hand,” Abner said. “Most of the casualties sustained by the expedition forces were largely from the wildlife and the various dangers in the Valley; the Soul Eaters like the one you faced may be the worst of them, but that doesn’t mean that everything else are declawed kittens in comparison!

“Even the Keeper’s scythe was built specifically to be able to non-lethally siphon magic out of its victims, as you were personally witness to.

“We do have blood on our hands, but that’s only if you prove to be beyond reasoning with or subduing peacefully, or if humans are coming in such large numbers that the elaborate, non-lethal scheme we attempted to pull off with you are all but unfeasible!”

“Then what about all the stories?!” Winter cried. “The eyewitnesses, the matching dates and details, the hard evidence corroborating everything that points to the Keeper being real and these people being very, very dead?!”

“Just that: stories—oftentimes highly exaggerated or outright manufactured by us, our human allies, or naturally mutating by virtue of being shared and modified the more people speak of it,” Ooobleck said.

“As the Eldan Council’s Archivist, and the head of both the Orders of the Chroniclers and Seekers: we are very, very, very thorough about our operations, our secrecy, and making you humans believe what we want you to believe.”

“Take me, for example!” Abner butted in. “Most all of my debtors were completely convinced I had become the latest victim of the Valley! It was only because of Blue’s dogged determination and her strong, inexplicable hunch that I was somehow still alive that she ever thought of coming here!

“… And when she did find me and discovered the lie, she found herself unwilling to expose it for her own personal reasons.”

“Like what?” Winter asked.

Abner sighed heavily. “She fell in love with Ilaya, for one…”

Winter blinked. “She… fell in love with her…? How…? Why…?! Oh, sweet Shepherd, are you torturing them like you did with Samaria?!”

Weiss groaned. “That’s not what happened! They’re not brainwashing them! Or me, for that matter! I’m pretty sure that—and please, all of you back there in the control room don’t make me regret saying this—they all fell in love with the Keepers because they actually, legitimately liked them!”

“Oh, yes, all the relationships with the Keepers have been about as consensual as you can get!” Port bellowed. “Oftentimes, the humans were the ones to ‘make the first move,’ which is quite fitting considering the Keepers are of a prey subspecies of Fae!”

Winter paused. “… WHY…?!” she asked, panicked.

“Because they’re not actually cruel, heartless monsters who wantonly slaughter and terrorize humans for the fun of it,” Glynda said. “We only find it most useful for our needs that they are seen as the guardians of a cursed land that only fools who wish for death or are tragically flawed will even think of entering.”

“Ruby’s actually, really, really nice!” Weiss said. “She’s been nothing but kind to me, she’s got zero ill-intent in her whatsoever, and even if she can be kind of a dolt… I… I really like her!” she paused and looked away.

“… I… love her, actually...”

Winter stared blankly at her. “So that kiss on stage…?”

Weiss sheepishly looked at Winter. “… was totally consensual, yes.”

“And you two are…?”

“… Girlfriends.”

Winter eye’s slowly widened as her mouth fell open in horror.

“We haven’t”--Ruby made a sexy animal noise--”yet, if that makes you feel any better!”

“...”

Weiss handed Winter her Eluna plushie.

Winter took it and nodded. “Thank you.”

She began to make a long, continuous noise, starting as a quiet whine, gradually growing louder and louder to a wail of pure anguish, occasionally broken by hysterical sobbing.

“Why?!” she wailed. “Why are you doing this?! Why have you been kidnapping humans and keeping them here?!”

Weiss opened her mouth, before she paused, and turned back to Ruby. “… Why have you…?”

Ruby frowned. “Okay, one: we don’t kidnap humans.

“All of those Keeper stories are meant to scare you off, but your species is so crazy you keep coming back here anyway! We try and capture then send back as many as we can, but if they die, or come back to you guys ‘frothing at the mouth’ crazy, it’s not our fault!

“We are literally telling you that if you go into the Valley, something terrifying and awful will kill you—horribly and painfully!”

“Two: all of the Keeper’s mates were like Abner and you—they all stayed here because they all had their reasons, then they found they really liked living here and didn’t want go back!

“The ones that don’t work out we can easily smuggle back into human territories with a new identity and all the incentive in the realm not to spill the beans. You’ve seen the Plushie Palace, and how no one found out about our fake IDs until the Heralds attacked, right?

“That should tell you how good we are at this!

“And three: we need humans and mostly human hybrids to make more Keepers like me.

Weiss blinked. “Wait… you ‘need’ humans…?”

“What the hell is going on in this Valley?!” Winter cried. “What are you Keepers, really?!”

Ruby raised her hand. “For that, we’ll need my Uncle Qrow—he can tell this story WAY better than I can...”