/popcorns

RWBY Fans: Oh em gee, Jen Brown is in the Justice League/RWBY movie could that mean we finally get to see Maya!Engine Pyrrha?

V9-8 Neo!Pyrrha: H̶̨͓́̏̌̓̾̔́̿̚͘̕̚͝ͅe̷̘̘̦͗̎l̵̡̤̹͓̹̻̘̦̻͖̀̔̔̃́l̵̩͕̉̏̅̈́͐̂̐̍̏͗̂̀́̚͠ͅơ̵̗͖̥̣͙̹̥̹̯͒̋̾͛̾́͜ ̷͇̝̫̈́̄͆̈͑̾͘͝å̸̤͔̲̌͐g̶̨̢͚̙̙̖̤̱̫̑͒̍̎̑͗̒̀͒̓̓̆ą̷͖̘̗̈́͐̅̾̽̓̑͊̾͘͘͜͠i̷̘͉̞̮̘͚̿̈̅̐̒͐͆̀̇̀̊̾͠͝͠ͅn̶̡̰͉̮͈͔̱̲̗͚̫͖̏͂͂͒̒̒̾̇̿͆̇̇͊̕

I shouldn't be laughing but I have to manic laugh at something so the pain can't hurt me.

CRWBY loves them some good Monkey Paw. Let's give them Maya!Engine Pyrrha. Better yet! Let's give them Maya!Engine Roman Torchwick.

Also Billy Kametz as Torchwick's voice weh????

Just steam-roll me why don't you.

Speaking of steam-rolling, Neo's sincerely lucky the Cat got her because as soon as Yang snapped out of her own personal hell she was probably going to mash her into a bloody pulp.

Honestly though, can't even fault Ruby for being Eff this Shit I'm Out at this point. Like literally just take me someplace I can have some peace and quiet even if it's 6 feet under like geeze wtf?

I went from this cat is neat to

Idk if she even knew those were her actual Teammates and not like Neo's illusions still.

Oh boy though, now I get to see if I was right on the money when it came to Yang witnessing assorted Ruby "deaths" in the jamjars I played her in, I told you this season was a big jamjar dream- /SHOT

I bet Yang feels like she failed completely as a sister.

OH INTERESTING IMAGERY-RELATED STUFF.

That also coincides with things going on with Ruby and the Cat.

We keep seeing butterfly imagery being associated with Ruby throughout this volume, starting with around...Episode 3? There might have been one in the first episode, I'd have to double-check.

But we start seeing these blue butterflies, which also showed up as a potential association waaaaay back in V6.

When Maria and Ruby have a conversation about the Silver Eyes as well as a brief mention that Ruby seems to be shouldering too much hmmmmm.

Anyway, cut to V9-3 and there's this long shot of this butterfly floating through the Red Prince's castle, which like...conservation of animation tells us this is Significant enough to be left in.

Butterflies can symbolize death...

We also see The Cat specifically hunting down these butterflies throughout his time with RWBY.

The Blacksmith was working on a butterfly wing-like thing of some sort on her anvil.

And in this episode, we saw a blue butterfly literally leave Ruby as she walked towards Neo's House of Horrors.

So there was definitely some kind of long-game association being built up between Ruby and butterflies.

Now whether the Cat hunting/destroying those butterflies also played a part in his working to wear her down or if that was a tangential thing, I'm not sure yet, but the imagery through-line is fascinating.

The Cat's motive is fascinating as well because it's sort of a Diet Salem.

He's cursed to roam Ever After always asking Why and for whatever reason, can't escape that.

Now by "his creators", I'm not necessarily sure he means the Tree. I do think the Afterans are correct that the Tree isn't Death or at least that the Tree isn't inherently Evil/Harmful.

Now this is going waaaaay into WMG-territory but I've been thinking a lot about this the past couple of weeks and I've been wondering if either Alyx and/or Lewis didn't have Semblances that like...literally allowed them to create Ever After.

Either by writing it as a story and then basically being able to "step into" it or, if the theory about Lewis being an Oz is right, it could be Magic BS.

But basically, it would explain why Alyx was completely unconcerned about anything going on in Ever After because it really was literally something they made up. Stories and characters they'd created that they decided to Escape to and enjoy.

Because who hasn't read a story and gone, "Man I wish I could be in that world"? Or had OCs and gone, "Man I wish I could meet them/interact with them for real".

It might also explain the imagery of the literal Ever After book burning in the OP.

Anyway, I need to re-watch this episode to double-check some things but BOY OH THE NEXT TWO WEEKS GONNA BE BREAK-NECK.

Also as always, kudos to the animators because the animation for this season continues to be absolutely astounding.

OH Something else hilarious. Waaaaay back in V2, there was a theory going around that Neo was an allusion to the Cheshire Cat because of the design on her parasol and CRWBY said no she's not, there's a different character that's the Cheshire Cat.

Looks like everybody was Right.

Okay coming back to this and I gotta say there's something very Old-School Disney about Little and Ruby.

Like Little is such a quintessential and classic Animal Companion character?

And Ruby sincerely hits a lot of classic Disney Princess/Disney Hero traits, but like...taken very seriously if that makes any sense?

So even Neo killing Little and that basically being Ruby's "Nope I'm Done" final straw feels very...idk, it just feels so Disney/Fairy Tale-ish to me in a way that's hard to articulate. Like it's definitely darker than Disney tends to go, especially lately, which is where the Classic Fairy Tale feel comes in because dang those stories be dark sometimes.

Like I definitely get Princess and the Frog vibes from Little's "Death" (and I put that in quotation marks because we've established that Dying is not Death in Ever After excepting the Jabberwalkers) because it's like...literally what happens in Princess and the Frog.

And "We" the Audience know that Ruby is fine. Not, you know "Fine" in that she's Doing Great right now just like, that this isn't a literal character death, so this feels like a very classic "Darkest Before Dawn" moment for everybody.

...Anyway, I'm having trouble braining exactly what I mean by all this but like, suffice it to say "Hero (and Companion) appears to Die/Fail as a Big Bad Rises" is a very classic trope and it's interesting that they're invoking it here and now as opposed to say, in a battle against Salem.

Which is making me wonder whether there will actually be a battle against Salem. Particularly since we've established that that'd be pretty pointless at this juncture.

Also just realized this retroactively explains why the Cat was needling her about Salem/the Relics in a way that felt kinda objectively mean. Like true it's just "spitting Facts" but it also was obviously not helpful and now we know Why.

And honestly at the risk of sounding callous I'm kinda glad Ruby has a nice safe Tree Space she can mcfreaking at least take a breather in for a few because good lord. Method of getting there was Umm but like, legit, Let Her Rest.

The Dream would be Ruby having flashbacks through her childhood and we get to see Maya models of Young!Ruby and Young!Yang because SIBLINGS and Ruby might have to dig extra deep to figure out what she really wants to be/do at this point and I'll die if it relates to Yang and their bond in any way.

HONESTLY JUST WAITING FOR THE METAMORPHOSIS if we're doing butterfly imagery

All the declarations that Weiss, Blake and Yang made to their past selves - they could all apply to Ruby

Becoming more than just her name (because she's Summer Rose's daughter), accepting all parts of her instead of opting for a simpler life, being broken but hopeful to find the pieces that will make her whole

I HAVE NO IDEA how this is all gonna wrap up in the last two episodes but they might spend the next one with Ruby and if we're lucky she returns in time to help defeat Neocat

CURB STOMP NEO ALREADY I'VE BEEN WAITING and I actually like Neo - I like her but she deserves to get curb stomped now

auste Yeah, I definitely think the theme is more Change/Metamorphosis than any of the random "Death" associations with butterflies.

And YES that is a great point. All of the things her teammates have come to learn about themselves all apply to Ruby.

And rofl, Neo's been cruising for a curb-stomping since V3 but I'm pretty sure her stepping on a small animal is CRWBY letting us know "Y'all ready for this beeyotch to die?"

"Cool motive, still murder" applies to her just as much as it does/did to Cinder although I'd argue it isn't even that great a motive (then again, neither is Cinder's equally petty vendetta against Ruby).

Speaking of, props to Ruby for going, "LOL NO I AIN'T APOLOGIZING" basically to Neo's face.

I'm also going to be ignoring most of my regular RWBY fandom spaces because if I thought the "hot takes" were bad last week, they're gonna be even worse this week, but I will say one thing and that is that it's completely ridiculous to say Yang should have noticed/known Ruby was this bad off.

Because 1) Yang did notice something was up, just perhaps not the degree, 2) going through depression yourself doesn't suddenly give you Magical Depression Detection powers nor does it give you the ability to know how/outright fix other people's depression because literally everybody's depression is different and doesn't have a Magic Fix-It button.

And 3) Ruby was at the point Yang would have most likely been familiar with at the end of Episode 7. She was angry, she was lashing out, and she was tired of the mission and wanted to stop bothering.

But then Neo came in and Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss'd her right off that cliff.

Like, this would be if Adam, at the end of V3, somehow had broken into Yang's house, summoned visions of Blake, Ruby, Weiss, her parents, and everybody else she felt let down by, beat the crap out of her, and then killed her dog.

=O NOBODY TOUCHES ZWEI!

Tell me Yang wouldn't have been ready to drink that tea after something like that too. Or Blake if like, that whole "we're going to kidnap you, ship you off to Adam, and also kill your parents btw".

We're at a completely different level here guys. It's not fair to hold Ruby's friends accountable when a villain (apparently two villains at that) outright set out to not just push Ruby off the Depression cliff, but essentially slingshot her off it.

Never mind that you could also make the argument that Ruby also drank that tea so the Cat couldn't use her to hurt her friends.

But anyway, that's all I'm saying about that. I'm gonna sit here and roll around in the hope for some Good Sibling Feelings in these last two episodes.

Okay this made me guffaw

THAT'S ALL OF US RIGHT NOW

I actually like the argument that Ruby could have also done it for her friends - that perhaps, in that moment when she saw them burst in, she thought she could do something right after all her perceived failures

I am SO TIRED of all the "Yang is a bad sister" takes, and someone on Twitter made a point that Ruby hasn't exactly been a perfect sister either, yet no one takes her to task.

THEY'RE NOT PERFECT, THAT'S THE POINT. They're not perfect but they would absolutely die for each other (sorry, was it too soon to say die)

auste All of this. They would and, from certain perspectives, both have died for each other because they love each other that much (and need Therapy but working on that).

Yep all true, and the anti Yang stuff mainly seems to come from people who hate Bumblebee for one reason or another.

someone please give them therapy

Honestly therapists would make a killing in Remnant.

Salem must've been offing/kidnapping all the therapists along with the SEWs or something seriously. XD

the only jobs in remnant are stuff to do with huntresses/ huntsmen and dust shop owner

XDXD Lol nominating the Dust Shop Owner for the position of therapist, he'll be great.

I feel like the Dust Shop Owner is the same as the Cabbage Man from ATLA

MY DUST

ROFL he definitely felt like an homage to him in RWBY Chibi if nothing else.

Also ugh, this episode made me remember how bad this fandom can be about over-catastrophizing things.

Like I'm not saying this episode wasn't Dark or that this isn't some Serious stuff going on but the parts of the FNDM going, "Well, they'll never recover from this" or "They can't possibly come out happy after this" is just taking me back to V3 where people were convinced Ruby was gonna become some edgelord hero-type or that Yang was

basically out of commission for the rest of the series because they believed she'd have to re-learn a whole new fighting style or that her Depression was Forever and I'm just like

I admittedly would have been super down for a one-armed fighting technique, but I'm happy with the route they went.

You're doing it again, guys. You do this all the time. You over-catastrophize story beats and then some of you get butt-mad because you don't think the writers are taking things "seriously enough" for you.

malkuthsoldier LOL I actually had a fic I'd started where Yang left home before she got her arm and she was basically fighting one-armed for a while. But like...it was still a serious handicap for her.

But I definitely remember theories flying that Yang was either going to have to learn to be a kick-based fighter like Mercury or legit that she'd just become a home-support role kind of character (I guess like Oracle or something???) and it's like guys...guys what.

And I'm seeing kinda similarly bizarre theories about "Team RWBY's future" or whatever going on now because of the latest episode and it's just like, I know some of you are new here but a lot of you have been here since at least V3, please calm down.

This series is ultimately about Hope/is Hopepunk in genre, please try to remember that.

Not everything has to be dark and awful guys

(Looking at you, HBO, fucking up Gen:Lock)

Nothing beats that one person during V3 who wrote a fic/theory where Ironwood/the Council put Yang on trial and then sentenced her to Death for breaking Mercury's leg (prompting RWB to rescue her/go rogue over it).

Like shine on you edgy diamond, I have no idea who or where you are but that will always stick out in my brain as my biggest fandom Wat moment.

Also it's funny because they were ultimately right about Ironwood's character, just like...5 volumes too early- /bricked

malkuthsoldier This seriously. (Omigosh thinking about Gen:Lock makes me so smad, that really sucked).

Anyway, obviously I just need to avoid literally all RWBY fandom spaces this week outside of plurk because everybody's lost their ding dang minds (which, again, understandable but not exactly conducive to good theorizing).

I get everyone losing their ding dang minds but can we stop with the "Yang is a bad sister" and "WBY didn't even try to help Ruby" theories thanks bye

No, what I want now is to look forward to how Ruby is going to undergo her big defining character development - will Summer have a role in it, will Little come back (somehow I KNEW Neo was going to step on them but it still hurt), will Ruby actually change her emblem to also include a butterfly

auste This, basically. And lol, when the Cat face-heel turned I kinda thought they would be the one that got Little, particularly when Little bit them (and because I wasn't expecting Neo to recover from being Blasted so quickly) but I knew Little was likely gonna follow to help and it wouldn't end well.

And honestly I'm kinda hoping Summer has like...nothing to do with Ruby's self-discovery. Because I'm kinda hoping that Ruby realizes that Summer...really hasn't had a hand in making her who she is?

Summer went AWOL when Ruby was young. She grew up with Yang and her dad, and (presumably on occasion) Qrow. They're the people who helped shape her childhood, not Summer. And Weiss, Blake, JNPR, all her other friends have helped shape who she is as she approached adult-hood.

They're the people who love/loved her. Summer was a role model, but at some point she stopped being a role model for Ruby and became this unsurpassable paragon of Huntressing which is...Wrong.

Ruby needs to accept that Summer was a human being just like her.

And also that while Summer no doubt loved her, she's ultimately been a non-presence in her life. It's time to let go of that ghost.

sasageyo fjkdsjk Okay all the memes with the Cat this week are at least top-tier.

Obviously the moral of this story is TAKE YOUR DANG CAT WITH YOU WHEN YOU MOVE AWAY CRETINS.

NO NO YOU HAVE A POINT re: not wanting Summer in this and Ruby letting go of Summer

It would be nice to see Summer, maybe, but it would be better for Ruby to realize that she doesn't have to be like her mom or live in her mom's shadow

auste Yeah! Like absolutely I want more of Summer/Summer lore but like, if Yang had to learn to let go of the person she thought her mom was (as hard as that was) it's time for Ruby to do that too. She can't keep holding herself accountable/comparable to this version of Summer she's basically made up in her head.

Existential Lofi City is gonna be the name of my jam band

Sure do hope this means tomorrow's episode might be just the tiniest bit more Chill?

Honestly, I'd even just settle for an episode that doesn't have a Distressing Themes warning in front of it because boy oh does my blood pressure instantly go up when I see that. 8'D

CASEY CAN YOU STOP TEASING US

BUT ACTUALLY after the crazy of the previous episode we do in fact deserve a more chill episode, maybe now is the Ruby Finds Herself ep

auste Ruby having a Therapy Session with the Tree and strolling down Memory Lane or whatever would be a delight at this point, I'll take that in a heart beat.

Especially if it's set against some Lofi!RWBY beats, I am here for that.

Watch us get Ruby on the bridge with her younger self instead

Auste I'll still take it- /SHOT