#i think it still ends basically the same way ani is just mad at nevermore for a while because they knew it was going to happen. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

longroadstonowhere · 4 years

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yeah, okay, so what if rwby was still rwby but ruby’s partner was blake and weiss’s partner was yang

(this is ridiculously long and also really just barely touches on what i’ve been thinking about, but it’s been sitting in my drafts without being touched for at least a few days now so i might as well publish now)

obviously everything up to initiation is the same, but when we get into the forest, blake ends up closer to ruby than yang, so she decides to follow the girl whose optimism seems more motivated by grief than naivety, but she’s not able to sneak up on ruby at the end of a fight - instead, a grimm forces her out of hiding and she has to fight alongside ruby for a few monsters

they meet eyes and ruby waffles between rambling and telling herself to shut up, which prompts blake to laugh a little and tell her to relax, she doesn’t bite before walking off all cool-like - ruby just sorta sighs because she feels like she’s already messed up

meanwhile, weiss is facing off against her own group of grimm, who she’s actually doing pretty okay against, only to have her perfect form set off course by a grimm thrown through the woods by yang, who apologizes but calls her princess or ice queen or what have you in the process, which gets weiss mad but the middle of a grimm fight is not the time to argue with someone else so she just blows way too much dust to freeze the remaining enemies

yang’s kinda impressed, but in a ‘i didn’t think you could actually fight’ sorta way, which just pisses weiss off more, so she tries to leave yang behind, only for yang to mention she’s going the wrong way, and they get into a fight about it that gets interrupted by jaune’s scream (because yeah, all the jnpr stuff would still go like normal)

blake and ruby make their way to the temple no problem, but also no talking - ruby tries to start a few conversations but they’re all shallow enough for blake to give single word responses (maybe a short sentence here or there), so when they get to the temple ruby zips ahead excitedly to grab an artifact, only to get beaned by jaune as he falls from the sky

weiss and yang end up meeting pyrrha getting hunted by the death stalker and they try to help her take it out, but their styles keep getting in each other’s way and all three of them just run a fighting retreat in the direction pyrrha saw jaune fly

everyone meets up at the temple, where they’re able to temporarily halt the death stalker long enough for everyone who didn’t have one yet to get an artifact, but weiss and yang are still pissed off at each other and they attract the nevermore

ruby kicks into leader mode, directing jnpr to handle the death stalker while rwby takes down the nevermore, a fight which basically goes the same as canon probably, except i might would have blake give a shocked look at how capable ruby is under pressure, which yang would see and just be like ‘hey, if you’re her partner, you better make sure you appreciate her skills’

anyway, team creation ceremony happens, ruby is named leader, they go through their first day of classes, and weiss is still pissed at how unleaderly she sees ruby being, but instead of complaining to a teacher about it, yang pulls her aside for a sparring session

they have a fight-talk about giving people chances, weiss complains that ruby’s still a child, yang reveals summer’s death and says she’s happy ruby can still be so child-like because everything in the world says she shouldn’t be, she wins the sparring session against weiss and is like ‘don’t think everyone else has had an easy life just because you have’, to which weiss is like ‘that is not true but i understand the point you’re making, i’ll try to be nicer’

meanwhile after her chat with ozpin ruby goes to the library to try and cram knowledge into her brain to be a better leader, where she finds blake, who assumes ruby’s there to find some comics or novels or whatever, but ruby reveals her plan and asks for blake’s help

blake is actually surprised by this request, but she asks what kind of leader ruby wants to be, when ruby’s confused she explains ‘do you want to be someone fearless and strong, who’s followed by those with the utmost faith in your infallibility? do you want to be the wisest, followed because your words can move even stone? or-’

and ruby just says ‘i want to be the kind of leader you can trust to have your back no matter what’, which blake didn’t actually expect to hear because she still thinks ruby would only have immature concepts of leadership, but she rallies herself and says ‘you’re well on your way, then’

i think weiss and ruby still have their nighttime reconciliation as well, just maybe a little different based on the circumstances leading up to it

all the jaune stuff is basically the same, nothing interesting to change there

and you know, i think blake’s identity reveal mostly goes the same as well - pretty much the only difference i can imagine is when penny’s asking about blake, ruby mentions she’s her partner as well as her friend, and maybe blake’s dialogue with sun changes a bit as well

the fight against roman goes as before, but after the fight you get more of a scene between ruby and blake where blake tries to start explaining but ruby just hugs her and is like i don’t care about any of that you are my partner so i am ride or die for you and i’m so glad you’re safe, which blake takes a second to like compute being hugged? but then she accepts it, and that’s when weiss shows up and they get their moment of reconciliation

i think in second season, the only thing i’d really change is burning the candle (as much as it pains me to change it because it’s such a good episode as is)

so while weiss and yang are focusing on the dance, ruby sits by worrying about blake, yang offers to try and talk some sense into her but ruby says ‘she’s my partner, i’ll take care of it’

so instead of the laser pointer bit, ruby just puppy dog eyes blake into a private conversation, and i think we get more of how ruby felt after her mom died - ‘yang thinks i was too young to remember or understand, but i remember dad shutting down for a long time, yang having to take care of me, qrow poking his head in but he never stayed for long’, moral of the story is sometimes people leave your life long before you expect it so do your best to enjoy the time you have? something like that

that hits blake hard because she’s the one who’s done the leaving thus far, she tries to hold onto the outrage but ruby just holds onto her hands and says please, and blake gives in

so yeah, the rest of second season goes as canon, the campfire conversation might have some minor differences but the heart of it is the same - big thing is raven still saves yang, but i don’t think we’d have a conversation with yang before this time where she reveals that raven was her birth mom, so it’s more of a mystery who she is

so we swing into the third season, which again i think would stay mostly the same - like if it was getting animated the fights might be different because the partners are different and so their strategies might change, but the big events still happen as they did in canon mostly

when winter arrives, i think yang might be with weiss instead of ruby because, you know, partners, and besides weren’t they going to talk about their second round strategy.... weiss where are you going

so when qrow and winter’s fight gets stopped, yang greets qrow happily but mentions ‘i have to talk to you when you’re done’, which like he doesn’t understand but oz is still waiting for him so he goes ‘okay firecracker’, weiss rolls up like ‘he explains so much about you two’ and yang is just all ‘you’re just mad cuz he was wiping the floor with your sister’, and they bicker happily

so while ruby and yang are hanging out with qrow playing video games, yang convinces ruby to leave for a second (grab snacks?) and she mentions ‘i think i saw my mom’, so now we get qrow and yang talking about raven (which yang still hasn’t actually told ruby about, so she thinks ruby doesn’t know, whereas qrow suspects she’s aware but isn’t sure and it’s not something ruby needs to know really? there’s something there in that regard at least) (ruby totally knows, she found the same photo yang did and realized just how similar raven and yang look, and she’d picked up on a lot of half-sentences the others had all been using around her, but she didn’t want to pry)

so things continue apace, yang has her fight against mercury that gets sabotaged by emerald, and afterwards blake still says ‘i want to believe you’, but it doesn’t hurt yang as much as canon because this is ruby’s partner, not hers, weiss has her back one thousand percent so yang is more confused than anything else, blake still gets yang to swear to her face what she saw, but before she accepts it she gives ruby a quick glance because blake trusts ruby’s judgment more than her own at this point probably

so then we have the fall of beacon, and i think everything still goes as canon - ruby goes after pyrrha on the roof, yang goes after blake in the cafeteria, but this is more a factor of who is where when locations get reported, because yang hears from weiss that blake disappeared into the school grounds before ruby makes it off the ship, so she tasks weiss with protecting her sister while she collects their lost teammate

so yang loses her arm for her sister’s partner, and ruby’s ascent is aided by a teammate, and she wakes up at home and learns about silver eyes

so here’s where the fun part starts happening - i don’t know if blake would run to menagerie at this point

i think she would feel guilty about causing yang’s injury (because of course she would still blame herself for that), but she would also feel guilty about not having ruby’s back when she needed it, and i don’t know if she could have left while ruby was still comatose

so i think, in this universe, blake secretly follows the family to patch, and the night after ruby wakes up, she sneaks into ruby’s room to make sure she’s okay, she thinks ruby is asleep so she just whispers an apology and turns to leave but ruby stops her, they have a long chat going back and forth about how much of what happened is blake’s fault and how much power they have over the world (blake thinks very little positive power, ruby thinks just enough), ruby ekes a promise out of blake that she’ll stay in touch before blake escapes, now determined to go home and rest

or maybe she wouldn’t - maybe ruby would be able to guilt her into staying, or at least into coming with her when she decides to leave for mistral; i’m really intrigued by the long break between the fall of beacon and the beginning of rnjr’s journey in canon, and it’d be interesting to examine that time period in closer detail

(side note, i just realized rnjr leaves patch in winter and we see them in mistral in spring - is the entire winter season spent in crossing the sanus continent? how have i never thought about this time period before? anyway)

the only other strong thought i have about this is that yang’s attitude toward blake would be way more simplistically antagonistic i think - she would be more likely to blame blake for adam being there in the first place (or at least, she would entertain the thought, as opposed to canon yang who couldn’t even imagine blaming blake for adam’s actions i think), but what would she feel about weiss being kidnapped? i’m not sure, honestly

okay, this is long enough for now i think - we’ll see if i have more specific post volume three thoughts later

#i am not joking about the length #take my usual ramblings and multiple it by at least three

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