surgeworks

Volume 2, Second Arc (Part I) | Table of Contents | Volume 2, World of Remnant
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When we last left off, it was on a note very typical of Volume Two—pissing me off more than I remember. Now we get to the part of the ~~dance~~ prom arc that I actually remember hating. So that will be fun.

V2E7, “Dance Dance Infiltration”

We open up on a panning view of the crowd at the dance socializing, Oobleck and Port among them. We cut to Ozpin and Glynda, just in time for Ironwood to show and offer his hand for a dance, which Glynda reluctantly takes, leaving Ozpin to his devices.

We then cut to Ruby, looking dissatisfied at the punch bowl. Jaune sets upon her, noticing she’s also by her lonesome, and toasts social awkwardness with her, cracking a smile. She says she’s sorry to hear things didn’t work out with Weiss. Jaune waves this off. Neptune, he says, is pretty cool, so he understands why she took him to the dance. Ruby asks what he means. Weiss came to the dance alone, she says.

Ruby says the explanation she gave is that she had “too much to worry about to focus on boys”. The camera shows Weiss, focusing perhaps a bit too much attention on a flower stem that won’t stay upright, but otherwise holding up well. Following her eye, we’re shown Sun and Blake having fun with a goofing-off Neptune. Jaune also follows her eye, and with the air of someone about to go start some shit, he asks Ruby to “Hold. My. Punch.”

I hope you can see where this is going and why I hate it so much, but if you can’t, don’t worry.

Jaune sifts his way through the crowd, but before he can cause a scene, Pyrrha passes by. Temporarily stalled on his mission, he watches her, in her red dress and black heels, ascend a staircase by herself. He decides to change course long enough to go see what’s up with her.

He finds her out on a balcony looking over Beacon, and calls out to her. They make small talk, and after asking if her date won’t beat him up for saying she looks pretty, Pyrrha confesses that she doesn’t have one.

P: Nobody asked me.

J: [confused, some spluttering] But...you’re Pyrrha Nikos! How could nobody ask you?

P: …I’ve been blessed with incredible talents and opportunities. I’m constantly surrounded by love and praise… But when you’re placed on a pedestal like that for too long, you become separated from the people that put you there in the first place. Everyone assumes I’m too good for them. That I’m on a level they simply can’t attain. It’s become impossible to form any sort of meaningful relationship with people. That’s what I like about you. When we met, you didn’t even know my name. You treated me just like anyone else. And thanks to you, I’ve made friendships that will last a lifetime. I guess…you’re the kind of guy I wish I was here with. Someone who just saw me for me.

She walks off. Jaune turns to ask her something, and we’ll have to get to what happens next after I eviscerate this.

Because every word up there I bolded? Was a lie.

A lie straight to the audience’s face. I remember being pretty peeved by this, because it was more than a little untruthful back in the day, but I think I was a bit too embroiled in the fandom and its Arkos segments to understand just how dishonest this was.

First off, Pyrrha’s constantly surrounded by love and praise? No, she isn’t. We the viewers know she’s a famous athlete and that Weiss, at least, knew enough about her to try and get on a team with her. Aside from Mercury feigning some b/s wimp attitude about how she’s obviously too good for him to beat, we’ve seen literally nothing that would indicate Pyrrha accumulating any of this sort of adulation. Hell, being a famous athlete certainly didn’t stop Cardin from trying to get a nest of angry wasps thrown at her.
People assume you’re too good for them and don’t include you? Well, as I just laid out with Weiss, that’s untrue, too. In fact, we’ve seen nobody assume, verbally or through actions, that Pyrrha is too good for them at all. This is the first we’ve heard of it. Not only has her team welcomed her, but so has another team that Jaune happened to be friends with. Not to mention, you showed us the opposite with Weiss, who has every reason to describe a similar predicament. She’s the illustrious Schnee heiress, remember? Rich, high society, definitely of a social class beyond the common masses? But not only do two boys express interest in her, she mentions that she’s had people attracted to her name all her life. While being a pro athlete and an heiress aren’t necessarily the same hurdles, I see no reason why they should have entirely different receptions. If anything, you’d think Pyrrha would get the tighter-knit circle.
And Jaune somehow treated her differently despite this? Uhhh, no. See, not knowing her doesn’t make him different—it just means he never had a chance to engage with someone he thinks is outside his social class. You can’t use the basis of “he didn’t know my name when we met” to say that, once he became involved with her life, he treated her differently. Because guess what? He doesn’t. In fact, he treated her worse than others because, as I documented, he was excessively rude in his flirtations with her purely because she was attractive. That’s not good! He didn’t just “see you for you”!
- Oh, and, Pyrrha? He also puts you on that pedestal. You’ll notice that Jaune didn’t ask you out either, purely because he assumed that, being so illustrious, you had a guaranteed date! When Jaune’s thing with Weiss didn’t work out, he didn’t even glance your way as a possible option! He assumed you were off the table, too!
But now we come to the part that really pisses me off: “And thanks to you, I’ve made friendships that will last a lifetime.” Both parts of that sentence are lies. First and foremost, because Pyrrha has no friendships outside of Jaune, much less “ones that will last a lifetime”. As of now, we’ve seen nothing of her relationships with Ren and Nora, her teammates, nor her other ‘friends’ in RWBY. She was part of a food fight, and beyond that, pretty much her every moment of screentime has been linked back to Jaune in some way. As far as we can see, Pyrrha, you’re friends only with Jaune. But the second and worse part is, say she did have those friendships. Why is she attributing them to Jaune? He brought her the opportunity for long-lasting bonds? How?! When?! When did this happen?! In what way can these imaginary friendships have anything to do with him??? He didn’t bring the team together—Ozpin did that, and promptly made him leader for no reason that I can discern. That doesn’t equal being the pillar of the group!

Ill Logic: 23

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 9

The major problem with this is the last bolded part. As you can very well tell, this is going to become the basis for the burgeoning Arkos relationship, the very first canon relationship RWBY will ever pioneer. We’ve just seen that the foundation of that relationship is to be built on lies.

I don’t get a break, so neither do you. We’re done with the Jaune and Pyrrha scene, but now it’s time for the Jaune and Neptune scene, as that’s exactly who walks in as Pyrrha is leaving. I suppose Neptune following a random guy he’s met all of once out to a lonely balcony makes sense, or at least spares Jaune from having to actually seek him out.

The Arkos part wasn’t the part I hated, guys. This one is.

N: Hey, uh, Jaune, right?

J: *sigh* Yeah.

N: This party’s pretty lame, right? I mean, ballroom dancing, pfft.

J: Yeah.

N: Cute girls though, huh?

J: Grr. Is that all you think about?

N: Huh?

J: Do you even care about the girls you’re hitting on, how they feel about you?

N: Whoa, where’s this coming from?

*starts to swell ominously*

Your eyes do not deceive you. Jaune really said that, to Neptune. Jaune. Jaune, as in, the guy I have lambasted repeatedly for the way he hits on girls. Jaune, who has been trying to act like a player and pick up girls since Day One. Jaune, who has been hounding Weiss constantly for a date despite repeated “no” answers.

To think, we only had one Hypocrisy point so far! I would give it ten for this abysmal and disgusting display, but we’re not done awarding the points yet, so I won’t worry about the amount just now.

Hypocrisy: 2

As you can see, Jaune has decided to take Neptune to task for having the balls to turn down Weiss’ offer to the dance. Before we move on with that (and I will roast it! I will!), we need to go a little further in the conversation these two are having.

J: How could you just turn her down like that?

N: Wait, wh-who?

J: Weiss!

N: *putting a hand behind his head, obviously uncomfortable* I uh… It uh… It just didn’t work out…y’know?

J: *still visibly angry* What? You think you’re too cool, too many other options? Weiss Schnee asked you to the dance. What in the world could possibly keep you from going--?

We’re going to stop short here, because I have a confession to make.

*raising right hand a la Alcoholics Anonymous* On Friday, September 12^th, 2014, I, Surgeworks, was successfully gay-baited.

I mean, think about this for a second the way I was. Jaune is turned down by Weiss, who insists she’s already got a date. We see earlier that Sun, who asked Blake to the dance, was turned down. Neptune, who Weiss goes so far as to ask to the dance, turns her down, this just before we see Sun going to the dance, all suited up, and struggling with a tie. Blake walks up and changes her mind. Cue the episode continuing the dance itself, we see that not only did Weiss show up alone, but by all appearances, so did Neptune, even though he had been asked out.

The conclusion I came to was that, since Sun was given the cold shoulder in full view of his teammates, and Neptune turned down Weiss, and that Sun was going even though his date initially didn’t pan out...was that Neptune wanted to ask Sun.

I mean, these two go everywhere together and do everything together. The events, chronologically, lined up just right for me to assume, as this scene was playing out, that Neptune turned down Weiss because Sun was miraculously free and he was planning on asking him out, only for Blake to show up and nip that in the bud, leaving him dateless and with egg on his face. Neptune’s visible discomfort with answering Jaune’s questions didn’t discourage me from that. It was totally possible for Neptune to be bi, or even for him to be gay and maintain his closet by acting like a player around girls.

To this day, I still wonder if I was just assuming too much, or if this really was in the cards and got cut out at the last minute. Maybe it was all the fandom drama at the time about the sexuality hurdles that had been asked of and promised by Rooster Teeth. Maybe it was Kerry Shawcross and Michael Jones going on Twitter around this time and accepting the fandom name “Seamonkeys” for their characters’ ship. Maybe it was the little ha-ha-funny Jaune had with Ren that was so homo-leaning (or “gay-coded” if you’re dumb and don’t know what coding means). Perhaps it was a variety of factors that led me astray, or maybe my hunch is right and this was supposed to be an LGBT moment that got nipped.

Because Neptune’s answer to Jaune’s question?

N: *in a high-pitched voice* I can’t dance.

J: …I beg your pardon?

N: *still higher pitched* I can’t dance, man.

J: …But, you’re sooo cool.

N: Thank you, I try really hard.

*deflates just like a balloon*

He...can’t dance. That’s what this is about. This whole farce that we’ve been dealing with for a very agonizing ten seconds is about Neptune not being able to dance.

I…I don’t think that’s cool. I’m not having fun with that. I don’t know another way to express my extreme disappointment with this. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. Words are actually failing me.

But we’re not done. Jaune has yet more to piss us off with. See, this is how the rest of this conversation goes.

J: You would rather break a girl’s heart and go to the dance alone...than just admit to everyone that you can’t move in rhythm to music?

N: That about sums it up, yeah.

J: Well. I suddenly feel a lot better about myself.

N: Please don’t tell anyone. Look, you want Weiss? She’s all yours. I don’t wanna get in your way.

And this is about where I hit my breaking point, and also where I have to speak before this convo gets away from me.

At the time, the fans lost their minds over this and turned against both Jaune and Neptune (well, they were already sort of against both these characters on principle, buuut…) largely due to the bolded words, claiming Jaune and Neptune were treating Weiss like an object to be owned. That’s not what’s happening here.

While the phrasing itself lacks tact, the fact remains that Neptune is trying to do the right thing here. He may have enjoyed flirting with her, but this guy he’s talking to is clearly interested in her, so since he either isn’t interested in a full relationship or doesn’t see one panning out, he’s not going to continue pursuing her. And that is the right thing to do! He may have flirted, but if he wasn’t planning on pursuing, it was a good thing that he cut it off! Neptune’s not two-timing, he’s not stringing anyone along, he’s not cheating on anyone, and most importantly, he’s not in a relationship. If Neptune just enjoys flirting for its own sake, that’s fine! In women, we call that being a ‘tease’. It’s okay to enjoy some playful flirting and not want anything more so long as you’re not hurting anyone!

Which brings us to the other side of why this is so fucked up: what Jaune is doing, and how wrong that is.

J: You would rather break a girl’s heart and go to the dance alone...than just admit to everyone that you can’t move in rhythm to music?

What Jaune is doing is angrily confronting another guy about choices he made involving his own comfort zone and his own relationship status that do not affect Jaune at all. And no, framing it as concern for his lady love, Weiss, doesn’t make it okay! This isn’t any of Jaune Arc’s goddamn business!!!

Remember what I said about how Weiss can turn down Jaune’s, or any guy’s, invitation to go to the dance with him, for any reason whatsoever, or no reason at all, and still deserves to have that respected?! That applies the other way around, too! Neptune doesn’t have to go to a dance, doesn’t have to take a girl to a dance, and doesn’t have to answer to some jackass like Jaune about why he chose not to! He deserves to be able to say no and do what’s comfortable for him! Jaune has now refused to respect Weiss’ choices in her dating life, and Neptune’s!

Don’t think I missed that framing from Jaune about how Weiss’ heart is just so broken, how could he do this to her? Number one, that’s manipulative enough when girls do it to make the guy a villain. It’s not any more welcome when it’s another guy doing it. Number two, does this look like the picture of a broken heart to you?

Remember, this is Rooster Teeth. Subtlety is not part of their skillset—we’ve seen evidence of that before and will continue seeing it down the line. There’s obviously been some kind of disconnect here, because as far as I can see, Weiss looks a tad downtrodden but otherwise okay. For outspoken, choleric, prickly, and overall emotional Weiss Schnee to handle her own rejection better than some douchenozzle off to the side did, speaks volumes about just how immature Jaune is being right now.

So, to reiterate and sum up:

Jaune wouldn’t leave Weiss alone about going out with him/to a dance with him.
When he found out a guy he perceived her to be attracted to had turned her down, he got hostile with that guy.
He, of all people, accused that guy of not properly caring about how girls feel about him.
He demanded to know why that guy had the nerve to not go to a dance with the girl he himself liked.
He dismissed the guy’s own reasons for doing so and his own comfort zone (which he will continue to do).
He did all of this on behalf of a girl who doesn’t like him and didn’t ask for his help or confide in him in any way.

Miles Luna, I hope Kerry Shawcross took you out behind the Rooster Teeth recording booth and kicked you in the dick for this. Here, our usual point-for-bullet exchange should suffice.

Hypocrisy: 8

Jaune: 16

Now let’s get this shitty scene over with.

J: Nngh. Do you like her?

N: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know her too well yet, but she seems pretty cool.

J: Then, just go talk to her. No pick-up lines, no suave moves. Just be yourself. I’ve heard that’s the way to go.

N: Yeah but then--

J: Hey! You don’t have to look cool all the time! In all honesty, if you could be a little less cool, I’d really appreciate it.

N: ...Yeah. Okay.

J: Go talk to her. I guarantee it’ll make her night.

N: Thanks. *reaching out for a fist bump* You’re a really cool guy, Jaune.

J: Alright, *connecting fists* don’t lie to my face.

[Neptune leaves]

J: Alright. Only one thing left to do.

*coldly* Yeah, because that’s all we needed—uncool jerk loser giving the cool, successful flirt advice on how to deal with women. Jaune, shut the hell up. I don’t give a flying fuck what you’d appreciate. I’d appreciate if you could stop being such a colossal ass, but we don’t all get our way.

We cut to Yang and Ruby overlooking the dance. Yang says she thinks they really needed this. We spot Blake and Sun still dancing, alongside Ren and Nora. Then, off to the side, a dolled-up Penny dancing among two onlooking guards. Ruby compliments her planning, and Yang mentions Weiss helped a lot. Speaking of, they spot Neptune going over to sit next to the girl in question. The girls now consider themselves ready to handle anything that comes their way, except ‘that’. What’s ‘that’, you ask?

P: …Jaune?

J: *sheepishly* A promise is a promise.

*icily* Ha-ha-ha, everyone, Jaune’s in a dress. Those aren’t my giggles you’re hearing, it’s the crowd around him. And Pyrrha, laughing her ass off.

And then they have a dance.

You know, I might’ve been willing to let this pass. Considering the wholesome scene we just got, I might’ve been willing to let that pass as another expression that sexuality and gender stigma doesn’t occur in Remnant. Unfortunately, this comes in the wake of “Jaune screams like a girl” from Volume 1, “Is she a man?” from Penny in Volume 1, constant emphasis on how weak and unmanly Jaune is, and the astonishing little gay joke from a couple episodes ago, on top of everyone around Jaune laughing at him. I think instead I’d rather just say that this doesn’t make me feel good, at all, and the sooner I can forget it, the better.

Jaune mentions he grew up with seven sisters, and then we cut to Neptune and Weiss sitting together. Weiss asks what made him change his mind, and Neptune says Jaune is the one who made him come talk to her.

*dryly* Mmn, lovely. Yeah, you’ve got “good friends lookin’ out for ya”, Weiss. Not at all total asshats. Aren’t you lucky.

We pan up to another balcony, where Emerald and Mercury have Cinder on the radio, with Mercury informing her she should “be home by midnight to be safe”. Ruby, wandering outside to get away from the partying, spots a figure in a black catsuit running across rooftops. We know it’s Cinder, but despite not being as informed, Ruby follows anyway.

Cinder is intending to get into the CCT, it seems. She sneaks up behind a guard, knocks him out, and then walks straight in, where this happens:

Conjuring two swords of glass in a swirl of flame, Cinder makes short work of...a very small supply of guards, I guess. But for two guards in an elevator, this apparently clears the entire building, or at least everyone Cinder needs to get through.

*facepalm*

Guys, this isn’t a freakin’ cell phone tower. This tower controls communication over not just the entire continent, but the entire world should it go down. While I doubt Ozpin has total control over the CCT, being only a headmaster, I will openly doubt that he has no control, seeing as A) his fucking office is situated there, and B) he’s the great and mysterious Ozpin, with eyes and ears everywhere, and…yeah, about that? Where are those eyes and ears, you freak? Turn all your spy cameras off when they would actually be convenient? Between that and leaving an extremely sensitive and important area apparently only in the hands of a grand total of seven guards who can’t stop one armed intruder, when you are aware conspirators are on the move, I’m gonna have to take that out of your hide, Oz.

Reliable Leaders: 5

Ruby, who discovers an unconscious guard outside, calls her rocket locker to the scene with her Crescent Rose inside. Retrieving it, she follows Cinder. The woman in question is in an apparently sensitive (and completely unguarded) room that nonetheless has the power on and all the computers apparently accessible just from the info on a guard’s phone. No passwords are seen being entered or security locks hacked. All she does is plug in some virusware, or hackerware, or something. Emerald and Mercury get her on the radio and warn her that Ironwood is leaving the party, but she’s not concerned—in just a few seconds, she’s hacked the entire place.

*massaging temples* I…hnng. Okay, we’re all aware hacking doesn’t work that way. These days, everyone knows it. Even back then, people kind of knew, but we let it go because hey, it’s fiction, and hacking software is still mysterious enough that we don’t know enough about how it does work to correct it.

But I think even a child could see that this happened a bit too easily. As many dramatized hacking sequences are out there in fictional media these days portraying the mission-critical importance of cracking into an extremely secure device or network, and anyone with a working brain will take that, put it together with how vitally important these CCT towers are, and call bullshit.

Seven guards. An intruder launching a single-woman assault. None of it caught on camera. Jesus Christ, this isn’t just amateur hour, this is hamstringing the plot so that the villains can look like chessmasters.

(and in case any of you want to talk about how easily she hacked the place, considering a character introduced in the future whose initials are A.W., ah-ah, no-no. He’s from Atlas, and this is Vale’s tower.)

Before Cinder can leave, the elevator doors open, and Ruby arrives. Stumbling a bit in her heels while carrying Crescent Rose, she makes to investigate the place. No one seems to be there at first, but Cinder soon reveals herself from behind a desk. In her catsuit and mask, Ruby doesn’t seem to recognize her, which unfortunately makes her rock stupid, and no, that is not the last word I’ll have on that.

Cinder doesn’t go quietly.

Ruby’s inability to recognize Cinder, already leaning on shaky Paper-Thin Disguise Syndrome, is made all the more dumb considering her clothes glow and she blocks her shots barehanded, the same way no one else has ever done since the start of the show.

Ill Logic: 26

Three points for the security fail, two for Ruby being dumb.

Cinder conjures arrows that she launches, barely missing Ruby with their explosion, and dodges Ruby’s scythe strike. Before the confrontation can go any further, the elevator opens, and Ironwood arrives. The day is saved—until Ruby turns around, and Cinder is gone, meaning Ironwood just stumbled on an attacked guard patrol and Ruby in a very sensitive area wielding a weapon. Woops.

Threatening Enemies: 3

Gave it that one because they didn’t even bother to show Cinder jumping out a window or some such nonsense. There’s no way she could’ve vanished between Ruby looking away to spot the elevator opening and said elevator opening wide enough for Ironwood to spot her. That’s bullshit.

Cinder magically changes her clothes on her way back to the dance, and the guards who charge in after her, stepping on her discarded glass mask are unable to spot her in the sea of students. I left the horde of nice, neat, heterosexual couplings in for my readers’ benefit, of course.

Emerald and Mercury, dancing, are intruded on by Cinder, who confirms there’s no need to worry as she pulled off her infiltration without a hitch. We are shown Ironwood preparing to question Ruby, after which we zoom in on a computer screen, on which an emblem of a queen chess piece flickers.

“Shine”, the song JNPR danced to when Jaune was in the dress, plays over the closing credits.

We are ten pages in, which is a good deal shorter than usual but a good place to stop. Next post will be the World of Remnants, and then we start the last arc.

Counts:

Jaune: 16
It Was Right There: 3
Fauxminism: 6
Hypocrisy: 8
Ice Cream Queens: 0
Reliable Leaders: 5
- Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 0
Threatening Enemies: 3
Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 10
Your Fight Scene Sucks: 10 + 2
- Evisceration Evasion: 2
Ill Logic: 26
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 9 + 1
- Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 0
- Band-Aid Brigade: 1
RSVP: 22
Road to Nowhere: 6
Y.A.S. Queen: 3