The way some people talk about Tai is honestly really getting kinda uncomfortable for me. Canon is very clear on where is faults lie and none of the stuff people are coming up with is supported by that canon. I just do not understand how he became such a controverial character when we barely know anything about him and what we know is just a caring dad who messed up in the past

yeah, and it's like. the time he messed up was also the time he was grieving the loss of his significant other with zero reliable support system that could help him handle that and to adapt to being a single father of two young kids; all we know is that qrow 'cheered on him from afar', the rest he had to manage on his own juggling bunch of things that before he would have shared with summer.

and the fact that some people don't have any sympathy for that is really weird to me. idk, maybe it's because when i was young, my mom lost her brother unexpectedly and yeah, after she wasn't really in a good place to take care of us, but we still had our dad, so like. idk, having that perspective makes me feel bad for the whole family. they were dealt a shitty hand with summer's disappearance, and they didn't handle it perfectly--wouldn't expect them to--but they pulled through and they all still love each other despite any difficulties, as seen perfectly in beyond.

besides they had a perfect opportunity to address all things people are making mountains out of in V4 with all "i'm an adult now" but all it amounted to was tai's reluctance of talking about raven--which also prompted it in the first place--so either the writers aren't very good at telling their own story ooor it's simply not about that and fans have blown it out of proportions. pick one lol

God. What if when Ruby picks up Summer's weapon and sees bits of Summer's life flash before her eyes. What if the tree doesn't allow her to ascend in that form? What if it's like "here's a taste of being Summer. But that's not what you REALLY want" and Ruby chooses herself after seeing that?? What then?!?

i know i'm hyping myself up way too high and i'm going to crash and burn by the end of it, but when the blacksmith says this:

"the only thing that can happen to you here is what you want to happen. the choice of what you become and where you end up is yours to make."

and then we get ruby reaching for summer's weapon and white light and. well. last time this volume when white light flashed over ruby she got transported elsewhere

so thanks to that "where you end up" part, i'm fairly certain ruby is going to live through summer's life, to actually get to know what her mother was like and what her life was; "she was the best of us." says qrow. "we've been telling ourselves that failing means we're no-good, but i can guarantee even the best huntsmen in history... they've all lost." says weiss. and now everything feels just so heavy to ruby, the feeling of never being enough never going away.

"i wanted to be the hero. like the stories my mom read to me." says ruby. "you never were the hero." says summer. the blacksmith offers ruby all these weapons and asks her: "can you feel the woman who might hold it? the weight of who she is?"

like. the thread is there. ruby is going to get to see through summer's eyes and feel the weight and how it's not going to feel any lighter to carry. she's going to learn what happened to her mother and it's going to change everything, but more importantly it's going to make ruby realize that she is enough just the way she is and that trying to live up to summer is impossible bc the summer she's trying to live up to in the first place doesn't exist.

i really do believe the tree is going to offer a taste to ruby, bc like. if you're going to make a choice then that choice needs to be an informed one to actually count, and that requires ruby to actually know what summer was like.

and she's going to come out of it wanting to be herself but also with The Deeds to share.

Do you still believe in Cinder's redemption or that they can do something similar with Neo? Because I think RT is more willing to fulfill fans' disgusting fantasies of killing Cinder than working on one of the best redemptions that would be Cinder's. I hope I wasn't rude or annoying, I just wish I had a little hope.

this is such a well timed ask bc i just finished collecting quotes from the finale to say that yes, cinder will have her villain -> hero arc / she gets a happy ending.

"one small kindness, in one small moment, led to such a marvelous transformation. much like one act of dishonesty caused an unfortunate change."

"alyx broke her promise to the cat."

"a terrible thing to have a broken heart."

like idk how anyone can hear that, not see the similarities between what happened with cinder and rhodes + despite everything neo did personally to ruby not even 15 minutes ago, ruby still looks back at her, still asks the blacksmith what will happen to her, still shows concern for her, and somehow come out of it with "yeah cinder's going to die :)"

the biggest question is how it's going to happen, bc cinder's backstory was for audience only, but considering the conversation between ruby and maria—"you said the light only reacts to grimm, but... i used it during our battle at haven. it reacted to cinder." / "interesting... perhaps there was something you just weren't seeing?"—ruby will definitely play a major role in it. she's going to face cinder in vacuo again and immediately go "broken heart spotted."

https://youtu.be/J8zH4ca18CY <clip of the whole rwby epilogue on youtube if you need it

thought this would be the same thing but apparently it's recorded from a different angle and much clearer audio! thank you ♥

i think abt it a lot too ngl, between downfall where adam rlly tried to kill everyone AND himself. his quote “People hurt me long before we met... All sorts of people in all sorts of ways...” and amity arena being canon to storyline where hes confirmed a child slave….this guy was so messed up, its not surprising his semblance manifested into moonslice

i guess the answer to the question "how much?" is, unfortunately, A LOT, then.

what also gets me is that, unlike nora or yang, adam can't just tank the damage as long as his aura holds, he needs to block it. moonslice really manifested and said it's time for SELF-DEFENSE!! ( and a little bit of are you ready to face the wrath of the one you just tried to hurt bc boi do i have some news for you :) )

no but LITERALLY im so worried about like. The first time ruby has let herself be honest and vulnerable with her team and she was met with recrimination/shock/anger like. how does she come back from that kind of rejection after struggling to hide those parts of her for so long??? my poor girl

and the thing is it's been a LONG time coming. ruby is the rose who was never allowed to flourish; tai 'kind of shutdown', he avoids talking about things that hurt (including summer), he's overprotective and we've seen how sheltered ruby was when she didn't even know how long a trip from vale to mistral would actually take; qrow spends months on missions and comes back with overexaggerated stories, he talks a lot about the difficulties of the real world trying to prepare ruby and yang for it but when ruby actually goes there, he's in the background killing grimm, still hiding that real world from her; and yang says how ruby didn't really understand what was going on, she couldn't even talk!! to verbalize how she was feeling!! so yang assumed she didn't get it and was okay, i guess, that ruby wasn't affected in the long run, and when ruby airs out her frustration even a little the first thing that comes out of yang's mouth is "you don't mean that".

ruby doesn't get to be sad, she doesn't get to have negative feelings, she's the one who's 'okay'. and speaking from experience... when you grow up as the 'okay' one, you never learn how to ask for help. you never learn how to say "i'm not okay" even when you're not, even when you're asked. because your whole personality, your whole being, is to be the one who's 'okay'. to not be a burden for others who are already struggling, bc they think you're fine even when you're not, and you don't want to add to their burden and make it worse for them. it feels selfish when you've been 'okay' for so long, even when you're really not.

so you bottle it up—i'm okay, i swear—but eventually it boils over and you snap, or you shut down. and it's not pretty or fair to others, it's ugly, and you're not being 'yourself' but when you've never learned how to ask for help it's the only cry for help you have left.

and to be met with shock and anger and dismissal is... it sucks. it reinforces that feeling that no one really cares. that they care enough to ask "are you okay?" but never push more than that even when it's clear you're not okay. it reinforces the idea that you need to keep bottling it up bc everyone expects you to be okay and clearly they don't like it when you're not.

ruby grew up being the 'okay' one—"gotta stay positive, right?!"—and it's incredibly difficult to part with that part of yourself, especially when it's something everyone around you expects you to be as well.

i really don't know how she can come back from this. it depends how the others will react when they meet again, and like. everyone needs to change. they can't keep going like this, they can't keep brushing all the negativity under the rug like it doesn't exist, they need to face it head on and get it out. no more "you don't mean the bad things you just said", no more "this is actually fine, right?", no more "things are bad, but..." no more toxic positivity, it's time for airing out all of their feelings in a healthy manner when they actually happen instead of bottling them up.

Do you have any freezerburn headcanons floatin' around? I'd love to hear them!

idk if these count as headcanons or just fic ideas that i've had over the years, but uuuuuuhhhh

– weiss sometimes hums / quietly sings while she's doing stuff, and yang is absolutely mesmerized by it; so much so that she will pause whatever she was doing atm (or about to do) (which may or may not be an issue. if something caught on fire then that's just how it goes okay)

– yang rating weiss' unintentional jokes / puns with a completely nonsensical rating scale.

– inspired by canon: weiss being inspired by yang and that leading to experimenting with her semblance more like the sword? concept art freezerburn 2.0 attack? sorry ruby and blake but i think weiss "i know we're not as close" schnee has a favorite lol

– can either of them cook? no. will they still try to cook together? yes. 9 out of 10 times it's a complete disaster and the remaining one is food that only the two of them can stomach.

– they would adopt a dog together and it would be the most spoiled dog in the universe.

– yang plans to built a house—a small log cabin in the middle of the woods listen it runs in the family—for them as a surprise but gets too excited about it that she shows it to weiss when it barely has a foundation in place just so that they can built it together exactly like they want. (yeah yeah when i'm with you i'm at home the house doesn't really matter but it's still nice thing to have when their work takes them all across remnant.)

also a little canon-divergent definitely-a-fic-idea-i've-been-meaning-to-write: weiss feeling down during the vytal dance bc as much as atlas is. well. atlas, she was still feeling a bit homesick and she thought planning the dance like it was a gala in atlas would make her feel a little better but it didn't and tbqh there's a lot more to it than that BUT. yang notices, talks to her, and eventually offers that they could 'sneak out' (idk if it's really 'sneaking out' when it's just a dance but they also planned it and kind of acted as hosts so i'm counting it ✌) to vale—there's a festival fairground there that they could spent the night in and have fun—and weiss is unsure but also, yang is already halfway through climbing down from the balcony and it would be really awkward if she had to climb back up and well, weiss really, really wants to go. so they go. and have fun, completely unaware of the goings at beacon's cct tower :)

i think that's all for now. i'm not a huge headcanon person bc i like them to be at least somewhat rooted in canon so i'm always struggling with them like "is this a headcanon or just a fic idea?" no one knows. least of all me.

the focus on silver eyes and red eyes always made me think of ruby n yang being parallels to the grimm brothers, like….if GoL gave ruby silver eyes whos to say GoD didnt give yang(branwens)red eyes, and theyre so reversed too bcs like…GoD is darkness, yang in a way was born from darkness but she imbues light. same with ruby, born from light, yet vol9 shows she had so much darkness in her. and if we apply this to summer n raven like…summer is light who fell to darkness, raven is darkness who Hopefully finds her way to the light etc ect like, i dunno i think these parallels n the yin/yang of it are neat

both of the gods appear from their pools and GUESS WHO are seen next to salem when they do that!

it's the sibling duo of team rwby!!

which is to say, i think you're onto something. especially if ruby and yang's relationship is going to get more focus in the future, since the brothers have their own problems and disagreements that have been going on since before remnant, and the little storytime at the end of v9 definitely points towards this being an important part of their relationship that needs to be dealt with.

and what's a better way to work towards that than having ruby and yang go through something similar? learn by experiencing it yourself and imbue that knowledge to others. something something learning to relate to others.

If Raven is going to be working together with the gang there needs to be a talk about how the gang behaved about the Spring Maiden during V5. The way they, specially Qrow, kept talking about her as sth to be "handed over" still drives me up the wall and I feel like once Qrow learned Raven is the real Maiden he must have facepalmed because he was basically driving his sister away every time he talked to her trying to get her back.

and it's wild when the spring maiden already ran away because everything proved to be too much for her and not a single moment is given to consider what she wants. no, too busy planning an attack on the tribe to get her back, "hand her over", it's all just.

that's not how you speak about a person.

in general there's this dehumanizing factor to the maidens that almost strips them of their free will because they're also keys to the vaults and as long as those vaults are home to the relics, it doesn't matter what they want etc, the most important thing is to keep the relics safe.

( which always did make me wonder: if there was a maiden who wasn't willing to cooperate but didn't work for salem either, how would ozpin and his inner circle deal with her? would they let her be, or would they get rid of her in hopes of the powers passing over to someone more cooperative? )

either way, i hope this topic is brought up during the vacuo arc. it's the first time there's going to be more than one maiden present, and if raven shows up, there's two maidens whose relics are already out and about + the summer maiden whose relic is still locked up so like. before the maidens have been so alone in their struggles and what it's really like to be one, but now there's an Opportunity™ and if there's an aura transfer machine in vacuo then that might—

actually. does raven even know such thing as Aura Transfer Machine exists??? someone's going to bring it up all casually like yeah, there's always this option blah-blah-blah and raven's going to be standing there like "the what now."

i lost the point i was trying to make, but yeah. i really really really hope this gets brought up and how fucked up it actually is and now that there are more maidens present in the same kingdom so like maybe this time around there's more people on the summer maiden's side or something.

you most likely talked about this, but given that in Beacon, teams are also separated into duos of partners (ruby&weiss, blake&yang), who do you think got partnered up in STRQ? (assuming that this buddy system was already in place during STRQ days)

i know i'm going against the tide with this one, but: summer & taiyang, raven & qrow. for few reasons.

one: the boy meets the warrior in a forest, and says he fell for her the moment he saw her silver eyes <- this is a story tai relates to, and eye contact is beacon's manner of forming partnerships.

two: as fun as all the "qrow's semblance gets in the way of him partnering with raven" scenarios are, i really don't think there's anything that would get in the way if raven wanted to partner with qrow (which i think she would) + qrow, who thinks his semblance makes it difficult to be near his family, would likely see partnering with raven more as a bad luck than he would partnering with some stranger.

and three, and this is what it really comes down, for me: i really do think the emotional core within strq is summer reuniting with tai, and raven reuniting with qrow. like the twins smiling at each other in the epilogue? that's the emotional goodness right there after everything they've been through; the disagreements, the fights, "we're not family anymore"s, learning the truth, finally reaching some sort of an understanding, to standing side-by-side once again.

and while there's less for summer and tai, they still included that scene in the flashback. they could have had summer sneak out with tai none the wiser, but they didn't; instead, summer promised she'd be back soon, and tai answers with a resolute "i know" (and he's still waiting, hoping against hope for her to return) ("no, come back!" <- when ruby's message gets cut short at the worst possible moment, tai's reliving the past right there).

idk really how to explain it, but there's this general feeling too that's like... if i had to split strq in two halves, summer & tai / raven & qrow makes the most sense to me. like, that's where the story is, not to say there isn't any story between anyone else, but especially qrow is like. who else do you partner him with? he doesn't really have anything to do with summer or tai emotionally story-wise, so if partnership is meant to be this Special Bond between two people, with what the show has presented us with, that really just leaves raven.

then there's also the fact that summer & tai went on oh-gods-another-patrol missions ("i think he misses adventuring with you." t. ruby rose) while raven & qrow went on spy missions (probably not on same ones, but i bet they still communicated what they were up to bc that's what intelligence gathering kind of requires). would ozpin separate partners like that? who knows. maybe? would be kind of rude though lmao

...it also makes the naming convention of RW | BY and ST | RQ the same, which doesn't necessarily prove anything, rather it's just a neat little bonus on top :)

(this got longer than i thought lol apologies for rambling OTL)

hey don't think about how ruby and yang are taller than their mothers and are still growing

lol tai genes coming in in a clutch. rip to summer and raven but that's what you get for being mysterious.

but i need them to stop growing i used to be the same height as ruby but not anymore and idk if i can handle it if she gets even taller.

Oh yeah va availability is absolutely an issue. This is a very low budget series (Kerry even mentioned that he personally had to help do the animation) so they're probably going to stick to ones they have in house.

in house or close to the house, at least. besides budget i'm also guessing scheduling might also be causing problems depending on when they started working on these episodes, thanks to the shutdown. because of that they had to change the scope, too, only having four episodes, so for that reason i wouldn't be surprised if the last two episodes had other vas as well--could be these first two are also saving money on va front, you never know lol

it won't take that long to find out, i just hope the remaining episodes aren't all post-V9--unless i get strq lore. then all is forgiven lmao

Qrow building a complex compact weapon with many forms but the scythe form was teased all of volume three and has only been shown again in volume 6

Raven who seems to have a regular sword but also many Disposable swords. Uses them until she’s done and then they break and are discarded.

They went to Beacon together but even if they had their weapons before then they must’ve. They must’ve created their weapons together surely. Raven is smiling in that One Picture

Qrow spoke fondly of their team before “Raven broke them up” heavy quotes on that

Idk twin relationships are always special and seeing them in media and like. I KNOW they were once close they had to be. What happens between ages 22 and now like. Did Raven stick up for him as kids or did she teach him how to hide his weakness. Was he the distraction while she slipped in behind. Did they laugh together after pulling pranks. If one got punished were they punished together or did they volunteer to stay with their sibling

They make me crazy

they had to be close. even if there was a distance between them—e.g. qrow spent more time away from the camp compared to raven, qrow feeling guilty over his semblance, etc—i still feel like... they'd kill for each other, ya know? despite everything, qrow still asks her to come back. despite everything, raven checks up on him after he gets poisoned by tyrian (it's not like she'd expect to actually spy on him to get information she didn't get from him directly; she makes her presence known).

i just. there's so much past to them, what they've been together. maybe they lost that understanding between them at some point, but i don't think either of them really gave up on one another? they're—or, well. were—still trying, in their own weird ways that didn't really take into account what the other was saying, but it's the thought that counts. to me.

they're just so—branwens!!! i would literally gobble up any backstory for them, but more than anything i need them to have been partners i will ignore canon for this that's how important this is to me. i need the eventual growing distance to hurt even more. like, your honor. they're twins. fuck me up.

love your analysis, but you give crwby writing way too much credit then they truely deserve. half of your analysis are things the writers would never bother thinking of in a million years. i wish you and a couple other rwby analysist were the writers for rwby, you guys actually care about the characters and their place in the story.

maybe. i wouldn't know, unfortunately i'm not a fly on the wall listening to the writers' thought processes behind every story and character choice. what i do know is that all my analysis is based on what i'm seeing on the screen, or reading from the books, etc. does it always match what the writers intended? most likely not, i'm not them and they're not me, and different life experiences affect how you view and interpret certain things, and the chances of those lining up perfectly are rather minimal in grand scheme of things.

but, simply for my own sanity's and enjoyment's sake, that's not really my goal either; i'm not expecting the best, but neither am i expecting the worst, i'm just vibing and having fun with a show that i like :)

and while i appreciate the sentiment, trust me, you do not want me writing for this show, no one should lmao bc no words would actually find their place on any paper or text file. i'd be holding mini talk show interviews with me, myself, and i, talking about my thought process behind how each character carries themselves in the emerald forest during the initiation and what that says about them, how they contrast with each other, and so on, while y'all would be like "that sounds nice, would love to see it one day!" 😂

Raven's mask is fun to poke at because yeah the whole Grimm mask coincides very clearly with her banditry and yet ... It also lets her hide being a Maiden.

raven's mask is my favorite thing especially since they answered a question about its purpose ( is it to hide that she's the spring maiden? ) with Sorry, Potentially Spoilery™ and. yeah. there's something to it, definitely. like, when the white fang's reasoning was "humanity wanted to make monsters out of us, so we chose to don the faces of monsters", how much of raven's reasoning resonates with that? did someone play a role in it, or was it raven herself who felt like a monster for reasons unknown and chose to don specifically a grimm mask, when, if it was only to hide, any mask would do?

Yang who thought she was DEAD clearly has some stuff she needs to work through this volume too. Not that Weiss and Blake don’t but maybe Yang is taking up Ruby’s old “be happy” mantra bc. The Atlas arc was Rough and I don’t think she came out of it on top of the world. So it’s either to contrast Ruby who is deep deep deep in her stuff or it’s a “we show her as happy but that’s a lie she’s telling herself or the others”. It does seem funny how she seemingly hasn’t had her off moments but she HAS so it’s like. Hmmmm

i just can't get over yang being sure she was dead until she met her teammates again, and even after that she still thought it was a possibility that they all were. or how her reaction to seeing ruby was to say "dammit! you weren't supposed to be here." with tears in her eyes. yang, who put on her arm before she was ready because she thought her taking her time healing put ruby at danger. yang, to whom qrow promised he'd keep ruby safe before he left.

yang, who sees ruby in the ever after and thinks she failed at the one job she had: to keep ruby safe.

we know ruby is going to go through some heavy stuff this volume. we know she's going to be the main focus. but i think it's also going to focus on yang and ruby's relationship and how it's not exactly the healthiest one out there—i don't mean it's inherently bad or anything, they clearly care about each other but that care also reaches unhealthy extremes at times that contributes to their own issues. just in the first episode we have yang feeling devastated that she failed to save ruby, and ruby completely ignoring yang's question regarding her well-being after she passed out.

summer left and disappeared, and tai "kind of shut down", most likely emotionally based on how ruby and yang have talked about him and how he was still busy with work to bring food to the table, and i get the feeling this volume is going to really dig into yang and ruby's childhood and how much it's still affecting them, how much it influences their current dynamic and the way it's not working, actually.

which is also why i don't think yang is going to be the one to help ruby or that she even can, because that's... kind of part of the problem. i've talked about this before, but to me, their conversation about summer in v8 is part of why i don't think yang really gets what ruby's problems are and how exactly summer plays into them and she can't, not really, not when summer is yang's hero.