![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
19 – Volume 3 World of Remnant | Table of Contents | 21 – Volume 3 Episodes 9 and 10
____________________
So last time, we ended on a rather dramatic note. Pyrrha found out the whole “magic is REAL shock gasp horror” bit, and also had placed on her the burden of being the ‘hero’ who will allow another person’s soul to fuse with their own with unpredictable results. Also, Yang and Mercury fought, and Mercury is now seemingly injured…due to what appears to have been Yang shooting him in the knee after winning the fight, but we know she saw him attack her. Why didn’t anyone else?
Before this episode aired, a warning was posted from Rooster Teeth. As of this episode, they wanted people to be aware that RWBY was heading to some dark places and to maybe keep in mind that this will not always be a show for kids. That is to say, this is the ‘villain’s flashback’ episode. It contains physical and emotional abuse and generally disturbing content, along with very large parasitoid insect creatures, so if that’s not your cup of tea, skip this.
Also, I found video reposts on YouTube. So until those get taken down, we have video links. Huzzah!
After the opening cards fade to black, Cinder’s voice is heard in the void, stating her motivations.
C: “I want to be strong.”
Just after, we hear a specific sound we’ve heard before…
In the darkness, we hear more voices.
???: “A beautiful ring, for a beautiful woman.”
???: “…I’m sorry?”
C: “I want to be feared.”
???: “What?! Impossible! Where did it—?”
[sounds of running footsteps]
???: “She went that way!”
[sound of pursuing footsteps]
C: “I want to be powerful.”
???: “Someone, call the police!”
???: “How did she do that?”
???: “Aah!”
The black screen finally cuts to a scene of Cinder, wearing one of her typical Ada Wong-esque red and gold dresses and with a shorter haircut, smiling ominously. She asks the woman who yelped just now how she did “that”, the woman being Emerald—whose outfit is also much the same, but simpler, and who has had her Cleopatra-style cut horrifically tied back into a ponytail.
Emerald is backed into an alley, and is noticeably looking for some means of exit that isn’t blocked by Cinder. Both women are armed. Emerald goes for her guns, but Cinder warns her off of it—after all, the men pursuing her will hear the gunshots.
Emerald asks what Cinder wants.
C: “I’ve already told you, and I don’t. Like. Repeating myself.”
E: “I didn’t do anything, just leave me alone!”
But Cinder’s smile grows wider as her eyes narrow. She knows her fair share of crooks, she says, and she calls theft an “art of patience, coordination, and in a pinch, sleight of hand.” But Emerald, she notes, didn’t steal the ring in her pocket, she was handed it from the smiling jeweler himself. Emerald asks Cinder who she is.
The camera zooms in on Cinder’s unsettling smile as we fade to black again. We hear more voices in the darkness.
C: “You will question everything you know.”
[Grimm growling]
E: “This is impossible.”
[odd sound indicating scene shift]
C: “I wish to take on an apprentice.”
???: “He lives in the mountains, with his son.”
C: “Follow me, and you’ll never be hungry again.”
E: “Thank you…”
This is another one of those “almost” scenes where Rooster Teeth, trying to establish something, royally fuck it up with one or two lines.
Okay so, we’ve got something sort-of good. As I’ve already said and which this episode will make clear, Emerald’s the one with the Semblance that is causing Yang grief right now—she can get inside a person’s head and control what they see and hear, essentially making them hallucinate.
That is a hilariously broken power, is it not? But Cinder spots the thread. She calls Emerald’s bluff when the latter goes for her guns, since others would hear her. For all Cinder knows, nobody would hear a thing given the display of Emerald’s power that she saw. But once Emerald backs down, Cinder knows she can only trick one person at a time, or can only trick people in her line of sight, or both.
They also showcase Cinder’s manipulative qualities, as she strong-arms Emerald into coming with her, presumably gives her some sort of information to induce doubt in what she thinks she knows about the world, and then makes Emerald dependent on her by promising her food as long as she stays loyal, seemingly painting Emerald as a thief who picked up her trade due to poverty and not wanting to go hungry.
Which is where the fuck-up lies. Emerald’s hallucination Semblance may have a notable flaw to keep it from being overwhelmingly overpowered, but it is still a devastatingly handy power to have. Case in point, very little of what Cinder accomplishes over this episode (and really, over the whole season) is due to her own power—much of it would not be possible without help from Emerald and only Emerald.
You cannot tell me someone with the power to casually snag priceless jewels right out of people’s hands is going hungry on the streets, dude. If she were stealing food? Sure. She’s not, though—she’s stealing high-value jewels. Emerald shouldn’t going hungry. She should be rolling in it! She should be a smug, self-assured con artist who gets what she wants with absurd ease! If she can just stroll right up and make off with thousand-dollar jewelry, she should have absolutely zero money issues!
Okay, yes, the inevitable “but wait” feature: while RWBY is so far totally the kind of world in which that would go off without a hitch, you can think a little further on it and realize it wouldn’t work in the real world. Nobody with the cash to actually trade in real jewels and precious metals would just buy them off of some street rat with no shop or any reputable company backing her, it would be obvious they’re either fake or stolen. She wouldn’t get very far.
Solution? Follow a guy going to make a jewelry sale, and work a little hallucination magic so either the buyer hands the physical cash to the wrong person, or so that the seller charges the sale to the wrong card—hers. Boom, thousands of dollars (or lien, if you will) right into Emerald’s pocket.
There is no feasible way Emerald should be poor or dependent on help. In fact, she should easily be able to steal and re-sell jewels to reputable sellers because she should be a kingpin unto herself.
Ill Logic: 34
Furthermore, thank God Cinder is apparently really good at keeping Emerald dependent. If that chick ever decided to act on her own agenda, Cinder would be very screwed. She can’t know what she’s really seeing or hearing around this girl. I’d call this a very dangerous choice for an apprentice.
Anyway, moving on. Cinder’s next choice of apprentice, who apparently lives in the mountains with his son.
We cut to a close-up of Mercury. It’s nighttime, in the wilderness somewhere, and he’s breathing hard. His lip is bloodied and his eye is blacked. We then get a shot of Cinder and Emerald, some distance away, looking on. Thanks to the camera angle, we also see that his legs are bloody and bandaged around the knees. He demands to know what they’re looking at.
Emerald is wary, and Cinder, with a frown, says she’s looking for Marcus Black. Mercury, again wearing the same outfit and general look with minor modifications to show that it’s different because this scene is set in the past, gestures behind him. A man, apparently Marcus and Mercury’s father, lies dead on the ground, face-down.
Cinder was looking for an assassin to hire, and that’s why she came looking, but she and Emerald caught the fight between Marcus and Mercury from the treeline. She smiles as she comments that Mercury was taught well. Once properly introduced, she asks him: is he anything like his father?
Fade to black, with another accomplice under Cinder’s belt.
M: “So what’s in it for me?”
E: “We don’t need him. Everything was going fine—augh!”
[Sound effect indicates Emerald was struck]
C: “Do not mistake your place.”
M: “My dad always said, if you need to know a city, ask the rats…”
Tw: “Well, hello gorgeous, heheheh…”
Of course. Because Cinder is Evil, she has to be physically abusive as well as emotionally. I mean, that really sends some mixed signals when you remember Winter walloping Weiss, but whatever. Also, that was Torchwick’s voice. He doesn’t get a scene, because all he needed to come along for the ride was apparently Cinder being hot and stronger than him.
I’m not mad about it, we’ll talk later. But another voice rings into the darkness, just before the scene opens again.
A: So, let me get this straight…
When it opens, we see Cinder, Mercury, and Emerald standing in a clearing in some forest, the latter two kneeling, while Adam’s voice continues over shots of a White Fang encampment full of armed militia.
A: “You could’ve gone to anyone for help. You could’ve gone to a gang leader… Paid off some Huntsmen who strayed from their…righteous path.”
The camera pans lovingly over the White Fang Lieutenant with his bigass biceps that I love so much as Adam says this. I’m only a little distracted by the fact that Adam is pointing out the sort of associates Cinder already recruited, in Torchwick and (if I were guessing) Mercury.
A: But instead… you choose to seek an audience with me.
Adam is introduced again feet-first, for his first proper appearance since the Black Trailer. The mere fact that they had waited so long for him to reappear drove some fans into glee at this, but I digress.
Cinder is plying:
C: “You’re the one we need. Your skill. Your ability to lead those beneath you. You’re an exceptionally valuable man, Adam. And we’ve put a lot of thought into—”
A: “Then you’re clearly not thinking straight.”
Adam says that if Cinder truly knew him, she’d have known not to come here. The White Fang, he says, isn’t up for hire. He describes them, instead, as “a force, of revolution!” and Emerald and Mercury share a sarcastic look in the background. Cinder tries again, claiming that her plan would benefit everyone here. While Adam silently paces, she continues that she has an associate in Vale (that is, Torchwick) and says they’re working on a revolution of they’re own. She tries again to plead their aid, but Adam cuts her off again, demanding they leave—and putting a hand to his sword to make the point extra clear.
She’s asking his men to die, he says, for her cause—a human cause. And that doesn’t fly with him. Cinder gets the message and bows out. Cinder and her company leave, while Adam watches them go, and a voice behind him asks what “that” was about. Blake walks up from the shadows, with the background behind her too dark to see if she’s wearing her bow or not. Nothing, Adam says, and just before the fade to black, he tells her they need to get prepared, as the train will be there at dawn. Thus, this takes place the night before the Black Trailer, a matter of hours.
Before we move on to the next scene, let’s discuss this one.
We’ve seen the end of Volume 2, so while we know Adam might not be budging right now, we know he comes to work with Cinder eventually, and given her methods, we can probably guess force is involved, and the rest of the episode will confirm this. I would, however, like to take a moment to point out what this invoked in the fandom.
Adam was, at this time, still popular with the fandom, being cast as a fallen hero to a minority civil rights fight who had turned to a darker side, but had understandable ideas, and perhaps could have even been redeemed. It was thought, at the time, that this was what the road was actually leading to. I’m not complaining that it didn’t turn out that way, because I felt early on that this was kind of a bullshit take.
We’ve already seen, at this point, that Adam will take lives he doesn’t really need to in the course of his missions, or at least is coldly unconcerned for collateral loss of human life, and later on we saw that he was relatively unconcerned for the loss of faunus life as well—his response to Cinder’s forces worrying that the casualties the White Fang sustained would erode their loyalties to the cause was brushed off by Adam, as his sway over them would remain—begging the question of what Adam has that can make them face death and keep going, with the reasonable answer being that Adam punishes insubordination harshly. That was already confirmed, as deserters to the White Fang were shown to be marked for death at the beginning of Volume 2 with the hit put out on Tukson.
People didn’t really keep this in mind, if you ask me. There was a specific line that they latched on to, if you will notice:
A: “You’re asking my men to die for your cause. A human cause. That is not an idea I am willing to entertain.”
People took this to mean that Adam held a protective attitude towards his men and wouldn’t risk their lives for a cause he can’t trust. However, I think the operative word here is the underlined one. They can die for his own causes as much as is required, but human causes are gross.
But I get why people were attracted to this character type, since reading that far between the lines isn’t common and often not practical when watching RWBY. That said, neither I nor Adam fans could’ve anticipated the ultimate way this would turn out.
On to the next scene.
M: “So now what?”
C: “There’s another task we must attend to.”
E: “Excuse me? I was looking for a friend of mine.”
???: “Ah, yes. She was just here yesterday.”
C: “Remember the plan. Exactly as discussed. Not a foot out of place.”
We open on a lonely dirt road out in a field, trees lining the pathway, with storm clouds covering the sky. Wind blows through leaves as we spot a white horse bearing a hooded rider come slowly clopping down the road.
There’s that sound again, though. The one that played just before we saw Cinder cornering Emerald, and the one that played before Coco and Yang saw things that weren’t there.
This lone rider, by appearances, has come across a small, crying girl, next to a busted bike. A panning camera shows us the clear presence of Emerald right in front of the rider, but she doesn’t seem to notice. The rider dismounts, removing something from the sack strapped to her horse, and approaches the girl. The hooded woman approaches her, and she looks up, big eyes staring innocently. The rider, whose hair marks her as Amber, the Fall maiden that we know was attacked, takes an apple out of her pocket.
She presents it to the child in a bid to make her feel better, but of course we see that she’s holding the apple out to empty air. 
Emerald, a few feet away, reaches for her guns and steps closer—unknowingly kicking up some dust she fails to hide from Amber’s view. Amber, seeing dirt move on its own, is instantly alerted, and the child vanishes as she leaps back. The jig is up.
Before we continue, I’d like to praise the genuinely chilling atmosphere here. The camera angles, the music, the sound design. It’s all very unsettling.
Amber unfolds a telescoping double-ended staff, startling the horse so that it flees, and Emerald rushes her, both guns forward and firing. Amber blocks her shots with her hand in much the same way Cinder has been shown to do, before swinging the staff and using the white dust crystal at the end to launch a wind gust that blows Emerald back.
Mercury runs up towards the site, leaping off of the small fence and trying to land a kick, but Amber blocks with her staff. Amber swings to repel Emerald again just in time for Mercury to land against a fence post, and kick off with the firing of the guns attached to his feet. Amber is too fast, and swings around to blast the oncoming Mercury with a torrent of fire.
But surprise! 
Mercury’s propelled through the fire and remains unharmed as his legs were in the way—which, when his pants are burned away, reveals them to be made entirely of mechanical parts from the thigh down! He kicks Amber straight on her ass and Emerald follows up by stomping on her.
…What?
Alright, you, reading this. If you’re in an appropriate place to do so, do me a favor: try lifting your legs, both of them, as though you were in mid-air. Try, I don’t know, sitting back on a chair. Just position your legs in front of your face. And, while you’re doing so, try and tell me how confident you would feel that a huge blast of fire would not burn you, supposing of course that your legs were metal.
I mean, unless you’ve got some Randy Orton thighs, and Mercury doesn’t, I don’t much think you’d be getting away without significant burns to your upper body.
Your Fight Scene Sucks: 35
That’s not getting an Evisceration point, because it’s not a huge swerve around a whole building just to dodge some blood splatter, but it is getting the general point for that just not working as a defensive tactic.
Oh, and hey, while we’re on this subject, look at Mercury’s legs! They’re mechanical now, isn’t that neat and WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!
Hang on a second, hang on a second! What on God’s green earth happened to his legs?! Don’t answer that question, I know what happened to his legs—they were injured in the fight with Marcus. As usual, I get what Rooster Teeth is trying for and am just bamboozled by how they fuck it up.
What the fuck did Cinder do, just chop his goddamned legs off at the mid-thigh?! Mercury was still standing up the last time we saw him. Hell, he was still walking. His legs, accordingly, should not have been losses requiring total amputation and mechanical replacement! Jesus Christ, if you can walk, your legs are not so badly injured that they won’t heal!
You know how if a person is obviously breathing, you should not be doing CPR? Same principle! If the legs are still carrying him, don’t just fucking lop them off and go for metal ones! The amount of time it would’ve taken for Mercury’s knees to heal from whatever damage Marcus inflicted on him would be paltry compared to the amount of time it would take Mercury to recover from double limb amputation and then getting used to cybernetic implants and re-learning how to walk, let alone run, let alone fight with the damn things. This makes no sense!!!
Ill Logic: 40
Six points, three for each freakin’ leg.
I mean, if you wanted me to believe that Cinder had Mercury indebted to her for giving him the ability to walk again, you shouldn’t have shown him surviving the fight with Marcus and still able to walk! All you had to do was position Mercury laying on his stomach, obviously having barely survived and in need of serious surgery to ever be of use to Cinder. That’s all!
It Was Right There: 5
If I were Mercury, I’d seriously want to stay around the chick who helped me that way. But if I were Mercury, and this lunatic just chopped off my functioning legs because they happened to get injured, I’d try and kill her as soon as I was physically able.
Anyway, the rest of the fight.
Amber realizes she’s on the losing end of this fight if she doesn’t change up the game, and decides to unleash her maiden powers.
Her eyes burn with the same fire we’ve seen in present day-Cinder’s eyes, and she rises up in the air as a massive windstorm begins blowing around the skirmish site.
As she rises into the air, the stormclouds above begin flashing with lightning, which she pulls down to blast her adversaries with, forcing Emerald and Mercury to begin dodging for their lives. In the background, a pair of glass high heels enters the scene.
And while the atmosphere and sound design here is still doing the most to convince me of the material, the material itself is still failing for an obvious reason: everything Amber is doing right now, and everything Amber will continue to do for the rest of this scene (and her life) is nothing that can’t be replicated by someone with enough dust or enough skill when using it.
I’m serious. These are the big bad maiden powers—wind, fire, ice, electricity, and flight. All stuff that can be accomplished by series regulars through the use of dust.
If you really wanted these powers to be so much more impressive than the average fighter, Rooster Teeth, you might should’ve taken them a lot higher. Space, or time, or reality. Stuff that is, by its nature, beyond the standard realm of super-power.
Again, just so nobody forgets: Weiss can slow down time. Just saying.
Your Fight Scene Sucks: 36
And that point is for the fact that Amber is still here. While her powers are nothing we haven’t seen other characters do, there is admittedly something specific she can do here that Emerald, Mercury, and Cinder quite noticeably cannot: fly.
She’s flying, guys. She’s literally levitating in the fucking air and remains out of the reach of non-projectile weapons, and has already shown projectile weapons themselves to be useless against her. Amber could literally just leave. And unlike in other scenes in the series, where there is an immediate reason as to why Weiss doesn’t answer unwanted combat by simply saying ‘fuck this’ and making a glyph stepladder into the sky where her enemies can’t reach her, or when Ruby doesn’t just speed-zoom away, Amber is most emphatically not supposed to be in this situation. This is an ambush and Amber has powers that she needs to keep out of the hands of others.
But she stays, and Cinder arrives on the scene while Emerald and Mercury are comically dodging lightning bolts in the background. Mercury and Emerald try fruitlessly to shoot Amber down, while Amber blocks their bullets again, this time without even raising a hand. Summoning a fierce cyclonic wind, she strips the leaves from a tree and pulls them around her, freezing them in the air before hurling them down on Emerald and Mercury like a hail of blades.
Emerald and Mercury look to be outmatched, but Cinder comes running down the road. Amber notices this and makes to intercept her with a large fireball, but Cinder dodges it. Raising a hand, she flexes her Semblance, pulling the debris from the attack into form and heating it until it turns to glass.
*snrk*
There it is. Cinder’s big bad Semblance—dirt manipulation. *snicker* Actually, I don’t think that’s true anymore—in the time since I last posted, I think her Semblance got updated into actual heat manipulation. Either way, she still loses out on cool things to do that are distinct from dust.
Cinder hurls the glass shards upward, successfully landing a hit and knocking Amber to the ground. When Amber starts to recover, we hear the hallucination sound again, and her enemies have vanished.
For reasons unknown other than “this fight scene would already be over if Emerald used her power properly”, she only manages to hide them from Amber’s view for a moment, causing Cinder to seem to “glitch” from one place to another as she closes in on Amber and become fully visible as she attacks head-on.
Your Fight Scene Sucks: 37
The three villains charge her, and Cinder’s melee attack with her dual swords is repelled. Emerald and Mercury try to back her up, but Amber proves to be too skilled in hand-to-hand for them to overwhelm even two-on-one. However, they can hold her off for long enough for Cinder to deliver the coup-de-grace.
Locking her swords together to form a bow, Cinder launches three arrows. While none of them hit the mark dead-on, they reveal themselves to be explosives, and detonate with Amber caught in the middle, knocking her aura out and effectively ending the fight.
However, as the three stooges prepare to move in for the kill, Amber falls back on the single, sole benefit maiden powers have over Semblances or dust: you don’t need aura to fuel them. She blows Cinder and Mercury away, blasts the latter with lightning, and hurls a fireball at both a fake Emerald and the real Emerald, dispelling any further illusions. Injured and using her staff as a crutch, Amber tries to make her one smart decision of the day: Emerald is obviously the most dangerous person here, so she needs to die ASAP.
Just as it looks like the end for Emerald, an arrow strikes Amber in the back, putting her down for good.
Cinder drops her weapon and ominously reaches for a small satchel strapped to her waist. Emerald and Mercury take Amber by the arms and restrain her as Cinder reveals what she brought with her to be a white glove. Cinder slips it on, revealing an odd eye-like symbol on the back. She approaches Amber with the palm flat towards her, and…
Oh god what the fuck is that?! Get it away, get it away!
Some kind of hideous...bug-thing Grimm manifests from the palm of the glove, hissing and spitting. Amber, eyes wide, begs of her “Please, don’t!” but too late: the creature spits some kind of webbing that attaches to her face. Amber screams as a pulse rings out and her maiden powers seem to activate, her uncovered eye alight with fire. A yellow glow trails up the line of webbing and up Cinder’s arm as the maiden’s power is forcibly drained out of Amber and into her.
Cinder smiles evilly, her own eye now alight, and it seems like she’s won.
But then! Someone emerges in the distance, running for the scene!
Where the hell have you been?!
No, seriously: where has he been?! There are two scenarios here. One, Qrow was in charge of watching Amber so she didn’t get dead-ed on the way to wherever the hell she’s going, or two, Qrow was in charge of finding Amber so she didn’t get dead-ed before the Big Good Conspiracy could safehouse her. I’m much more inclined to believe he was already here and tasked with protecting Amber, as if Amber didn’t have any knowledge of what the maidens are or how their powers work, I doubt she could’ve attained the proficiency she has with them. But even if Qrow had literally never seen Amber before, I should’ve expected him to locate the maidens sooner than this given the benefits of a spy network that the BGC would’ve provided him. Hell, in the last fade-to-black we saw, it was implied Amber was tracked down by the villains simply by Emerald asking around.
Either way, he should’ve been around way sooner. If he was placed in a position to escort her from one location to another, why is he only just now showing up, and if he was trying to track her down, why did it take him this long to see a large-scale battle involving a cyclone and several lightning strikes concentrated in one area?
Reliable Leaders: 11
You know, actually, hang on—that begs another question. Remember back in Volume Two, when Yang was giving her mom-related backstory to Blake, and she mentions Qrow showed up just in time to save her and Ruby from the Grimm? Why exactly did it take him that long to show up?
He obviously wasn’t at work, or he wouldn’t have shown up at all. It’s unlikely Taiyang would’ve been so careless as to leave two small children alone unsupervised, and if their uncle’s around, he’s a logical choice for babysitter.
As someone who had to go through family separation due to alcohol-related parenting failures, the dots are connecting and the picture they paint isn’t pretty.
Anyway, Qrow arrives and severs the webbing, swinging on the villains and grabbing hold of Amber. The glove vanishes from Cinder’s hand and a symbol appears on her back. Qrow looks around, but the faces he sees are obscured by Emerald’s interference.
I’m going to stop right here really quick to say something, because…I think this scene is different? I mean, I think the downloaded version I have is different from the one I remember originally watching. In the one I remember, Qrow glanced around and saw Cinder, Emerald, and Mercury, but their faces were all obscured by static-esque disruptions. Here, he only sees Cinder.
I can think of an obvious reason for a patch like this. I remember asking myself why, even if he couldn’t see their faces, he wouldn’t remember Emerald and Mercury, as competitors in a tournament broadcast on national television, by their builds and clothes (and why he then wouldn’t be able to alert someone that Mercury’s legs are fake and he’s not really injured). Here, he doesn’t see Emerald and Mercury head-on at all.
Of course, I could be misremembering. So if anyone can verify in the comments that I’m not crazy and that the original scene really was different, I’ll throw in a Band-Aid Brigade point.
But there is still some other problem that remains. Though he doesn’t see Emerald or Mercury (after catching Amber--he presumably sees them before he lands the strike), and Cinder’s face is obscured, and Cinder wears different clothes during the course of the tournament and doesn’t openly use her powers...he would still know someone can manipulate what someone sees. It would still be apparent Cinder’s faction contains someone who can corrupt visual and auditory facilities, so in the coming episode, he should know exactly what’s going on with Yang, but if I recall correctly, he’ll be as clueless as everyone else. I’ll award a point for that when we get there.
After the fade to black, we hear Cinder’s voice, most likely over a call.
“C: The Huntsman severed the connection before it was complete. …Yes. It’s…an emptiness. It burns… like hunger. I like it. …Yes. I will claim what is ours. …Thank you.”
We cut back to the White Fang encampment. Adam and the White Fang Lieutenant *dreamy sigh* are plotting over a map of Vale, with the latter swearing on his life to find “her”, obviously Blake. Adam dismisses this, claiming he needs to return to Mistral for something, but before he can finish, his attention is diverted by the sounds of combat outside the tent. After sharing a look, the two of them burst out of the tent, brandishing their weapons, and finding their forces being slaughtered by Emerald, Mercury, and the recently-empowered Cinder. 
Adam demands to know what this is, and Cinder answers.
C: “We could’ve gone to anyone for help, but we chose you, Adam Taurus.”
An empowered Cinder tosses her swords on the ground, setting them alight and startling Adam and the Lieutenant. She reminds them, her eye and clothes glowing, that her plan will be beneficial to both parties...or just one, if it has to be that way. Emerald and Mercury open the briefcases they hold, showing off dust crystals and lien they can trade.
Cowed, Adam obviously has no choice.
Thus ends the flashback sequence. We return to the present day, where in the Amity Colosseum, Oobleck is declaring Yang’s victory in the match with Mercury. A shorter recap-cut of the scene from the end of Episode 6 plays, with us now definitely cued in on what was happening, although poor Yang isn’t.
We return to the exact moment where Emerald has rushed the arena and is holding a seemingly-injured Mercury, who is holding his leg in apparent pain. Paramedics are also rushing the place, and Emerald cries out in feigned concern for someone to help him. There’s a close-up of Mercury’s knee as the two paramedics look at it, seeing skin and blood where there shouldn’t be any. Emerald runs with them as they get him on a stretcher and to help.
Yang, watching them go, is clearly still reeling. She insists that Mercury attacked her, but no one is hearing it. When we next cut to Emerald, the paramedics pass a nurse, who is obviously a disguised Cinder, who beckons them to bring Mercury onto a stationed ambulance.
The ambulance leaves the stadium and flies off, leaving Mercury to joke about never walking again, much to Emerald’s annoyance. She’s irritated, as she has a headache. She’s typically only able to manipulate one mind at a time, and dealing with both paramedics at once to cover Mercury’s “injury” strained her. Cinder, in the passenger seat, praises everyone for pulling off their parts excellently, including the driver—who is revealed, via her purple eyes turning brown and pink when she blinks, to be Neo.
They then tune into the news as they make their way down to Vale, and Lisa Lavender is basically confirming that yeah, Yang has been successfully cast as a thug for the entire world to see. There’s a shot of a witness claiming Ozpin is obviously disgracing the festival and not teaching students right, and more importantly, changing the channel, they find news of a huge Grimm activity spike that Atlas’ considerable forces can’t suppress by themselves, and they’re calling on any available Huntsmen to help out.
Mercury, taking a screwdriver to some bolt in his leg, complains that he was watching that when Cinder turns it off. It’s his turn to lay low, she says, while she and Emerald handle the rest. The scene cuts to black and the episode ends.
So, let’s recap on what this episode did for our villains:
- Emerald: Didn’t make sense.
- Mercury: She chopped his fucking legs off.
- Torchwick: Saw hot chick, obeyed orders.
- Neo: ???
- Adam: Initially repelled Cinder until she became too strong.
- Cinder:
“I want to be strong. I want to be feared. I want to be powerful.”
These are our stated motivations for what is, at this point, our main antagonist. Having read ahead, I know that’s not all there is to her backstory, but that’s what we’ll have for a few volumes going forward.
That’s...not much. Cinder is a villain because, in her own words, she just wants to be.
I’m not bringing this up for the reasons some of you might be thinking. I’m actually addressing fandom matters again. See, a common complaint about Cinder is that she’s one-note, basic, and a boring villain. And, with what we just got, there’s not too much room to argue.
However, having been in the fandom all that time, I can tell you that this complaint ran in a lot of the same circles in which Torchwick was praised as the better villain, with many lamentations as to how he was shafted in this episode and in general.
And unfortunately, I have to call bullshit. While we can say differently for characters like Coco or Ren or Sun or Penny, we were already made aware at that point that Torchwick wasn’t actually supposed to appear again after the first episode. That was confirmed. They had no storyline planned for him, and had to make up the rest of his appearances from scratch, and probably on the fly. They don’t have much reason to give him a complicated backstory, but given what we got here—that he decided to work with Cinder simply because she’s pretty—is hardly better than Cinder’s own stated motivations.
If Cinder’s one-note and basic, Torchwick is damn sure one-note and basic. And I’m not sure I’d boil this skew down to open sexism, but it definitely gives a vibe of something akin to it. The only thing Torchwick really has going for him—that fans conceivably mutated in their heads into an interesting character—is style and design. But Cinder also has that, so which one you find more interesting probably just comes down to which type of villain you prefer, a bowler-hat wearing cane-swinging mob boss with a silver tongue, or an elegant dress-wearing high-heel strutting lady of death with a seductive demeanor.
And yeah, they’re basic, but I wouldn’t exactly call that a point against them. It’s a sad truth that, because complexity in a character tends to be a positive, everybody believes a “good” character has to be deep and morally detailed. And yeah, sure, that’s good if you can pull it off right. But it’s tricky to do, and a lot of people can’t, and it’s also no reason to shun a villain who has simple motivations. I’ll take a black-and-white asshole villain who just likes causing chaos over a villain who was obviously written with compelling drama in mind only to make it clear the ones responsible don’t actually know how to write that.
So, yeah, Cinder’s basic, but she passes muster for now.
Moving on to the next episode:
We open on a shot of Team RWBY’s dorm, armed robot guards standing outside. Ironwood’s voice from inside says “I’m sorry, but you’ve left us with no choice.”
Inside, we see Yang protest again that Mercury attacked her. Unfortunately, that’s not what the millions of people watching saw or what video footage shows. Weiss and Ruby both defend Yang, saying she would never attack a downed opponent. Ironwood then says something very astute.
I: “You all seem like good students. And the staff here are fully aware that you would never lash out the way you did…under normal circumstances. But what I believe, and hope this to be, is nothing more than stress and adrenaline. When you’re out on the battlefield, your judgement can become clouded in an instant. Sometimes you see things that simply aren’t there. …Even after the fight has passed.”
Y: “…But I wasn’t—!”
I: “That’s enough! …The sad truth is, whether it was an accident, or an assault, doesn’t matter. The world saw you attack an innocent student. They’ve already drawn their own conclusions. And it’s my job to inform you that you’re disqualified.”
He then leaves.
While obviously, nobody wants to hear that they’ve just been “stressed” into this position when something bad happens that nobody else will believe—see every horror movie ever that involves a woman trying to tell the truth and being told she’s hysterical and hallucinating because she went through something mildly stressful—the fact remains that he’s got a point.
Yang is seventeen. And has been fighting monsters and people for a long, long time. She grew up doing it, they all have. Back in the premier of Volume Two, I railed at Ozpin for letting off the teams with a slap on the wrist over destroying a cafeteria on the grounds that they’re still kids, even though they’re animesque super-powered monster killers who by in-story account should already have more discipline than this.
But also…yeah, they’re animesque super-powered monster killers who are children. None of these teenagers is even done with puberty yet despite the fact that they routinely tear the heads off of bloodthirsty monsters. The point has been subtly made here that this is an intense career, and obviously it has the capacity to damage someone.
Obviously, Yang isn’t suffering hallucinations induced by PTSD (yet), but that’s closer to the truth than it would be in other situations, as she did, through no fault of her own, hallucinate and defend herself against a threat that wasn’t present. Ironwood gives her enough benefit of the doubt to say he’s being more lenient than he really needs to. He could probably have her arrested. Here’s a reminder—this is the guy who said that if Qrow were one of his men, he’d have been shot for his aggressive and needlessly combative behavior.
Which reminds me…Qrow is this chick’s uncle. And since he’ll be entering the scene in this episode, we should talk about that.
Remember a few episodes ago, when Qrow started an altercation with Winter in a public area, which attracted a crowd of people, and alerted Cinder’s faction to his presence? And remember when I said this?
Well, Qrow, you wanna talk about discretion? Subtlety? Here’s some news for you: starting a huge confrontation and a brawl in the middle of a populated area in broad daylight, which had spectators and which almost certainly made it onto the internet under the title “Drunk Dude and Ice Lady Fight” on RWTube, is about the least discreet thing you could’ve done.
Mhm. Yeah, I want you to think about that. Tons of people saw Qrow fighting Winter, and whatever Qrow himself can say about who “started” the fight, the fact remains people saw it—and have now seen this. Yang is Qrow’s niece, and even if you assumed that wasn’t widespread knowledge, I’m sure it wouldn’t take long for that fact to spread given Yang is Ruby’s sister and a lot of people heard Ruby call Qrow ‘uncle’ during that fight scene.
So Qrow acts like an aggressive thug in a public setting, and later on, his niece is seen on global television shooting a defeated combatant unprovoked. It wouldn’t take long for dots to connect.
What I’m saying is, nice going Qrow. If this setting were even remotely realistic, your brash actions would’ve made your niece’s situation even worse.
*sigh* This isn’t a realistic setting, though, and nobody in-story or behind the scenes thought of this because neither of those parties ever thinks.
This reaction disturbs Ruby and Weiss, who share a surprised look. Blake eventually pipes up that she wants to believe Yang, which frustrates Weiss and puts tears in Yang’s eyes.
When Weiss asks how Blake can doubt Yang, Blake spills her guts.
As Yang starts to cry in full, Blake goes on.
Weiss sighs and calls this a mess, and JNPR poke their heads out of their neighboring dorm room to ask if Yang’s doing okay. Blake says she’s doing the best she can. Ruby says that Mercury and his team were rushed back to Haven so Mercury can be with his family, so no one can really question him about what happened. Ren says that if there’s anything they can do, please don’t hesitate to ask, and with that in mind, Ruby asks Pyrrha to win for Beacon.
Oh yeah, Pyrrha’s a finalist, too. She still has to have her own match.
Weiss says it’s what Yang would want, and Pyrrha, obviously still having a lot to think about, turns away for just a moment to compose her face before smiling at RWB and promising she’ll do her best. Ruby says she’ll be sure to watch tonight in case her match comes up, and this makes Pyrrha almost wince. Once JNPR have retreated back into their dorm, Blake says she’s had about enough fighting for the year, and Weiss agrees, offering to get coffee with her. With the minor modification that she wants tea, Blake agrees.
Once RWB have left, we cut back into JNPR’s dorm, where Nora is suddenly up in Pyrrha’s face, gleefully saying it’s time to stop moping around. Cue a cuh-rayzee humor sequence in which Nora, in exercise gear, insists on pumping Pyrrha up and into shape. Said sequence involves Nora lifting a barbell with a ‘1,000’ labeling each end and falling over. Ren is in on the hijinks for once, wearing an apron that says “Please do nothing to the chef”, and getting in on it by saying Pyrrha can’t let concern for Yang hold her back. Cue him cooking up some utterly repugnant-looking “healthy” concoction for her to swallow.
Pyrrha is less than receptive to all this despite her attempts at playing it cool. I’d like to hand it to this scene, especially for being the first (and only) scene in which Pyrrha interacts with her non-Jaune teammates at length. Her friends genuinely want to support and hype her and she can’t tell them about the pressure that’s now on her, which has nothing to do with the tournament. She’s been charged with protecting the world by potentially destroying herself, on the directions of a shady group of adults who operate in secret and who she can’t be assured will look out for her. She can’t share any of this, and she has to smile and pretend everything is okay and that she can handle it.Ren and Nora squabble over the quality of Ren’s algae-ish health drink, and Pyrrha and Jaune share a look. He breaks the two of them up and recommends they get out and get some air, and Pyrrha smiles at him.
Cut to Yang, alone in the RWBY dorm. She’s watching them stroll out along the grounds through an open window, and behind her, Qrow pipes up, calling her ‘firecracker’.
Q: “Huh. So, why’d ya do it?”
Y: “…You know why.”
Q: “All I know is that you attacked a helpless kid. So either you’re lying, or you’re crazy.”
Y: “I’m not lying.”
Q: “Crazy. Got it.”
First: as I said earlier, he’s getting a point for not immediately cottoning on that this is the work of someone in Cinder’s party who can manipulate one’s sight and hearing—he should know this from his encounter with them last episode.
Ill Logic: 41
I wanted to give that a Reliable Leaders point, but this one fits more.
Second, Christ, man, could you maybe empathize with your niece a little more? The dude you referred to as not having a heart showed a good bit more understanding than you are right now.
Hypocrisy: 16
This is the moment where you’re supposed to show that even though you might be unpleasant, you’re at least a warm person to your loved ones. The half a point you scored by playing video games with your nieces is gone.
Yang bitterly says who knows, maybe she is, and Qrow remarks that she’s being as ‘emo’ as Blake supposedly is.…This, too, is a remark I’m gonna revisit later, if I remember to.
Yang says, suddenly, that she saw her mom. Qrow, surprised, stops pacing and looks at her out of the corner of his eye while Yang recounts the events on the train at Mountain Glenn—if you will recall, Neo knocked Yang out cold and was about to kill her, and she was saved by a mysterious masked swordswoman who has since been confirmed as Raven Branwen, Qrow’s sister and Yang’s birth mother.
Qrow confirms that this was her mom in the picture he showed them a few episodes ago.
Y: “…How did you know that?”
Q: “I don’t see my sister very often, but she does try to keep in touch. Whenever it suits her.”
Q: “Yeah. She found me. Had a tip for my most recent assignment. And wanted me to give you a message.”
Y: “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
Q: “I was waiting for the right time. But this sure ain’t it. But I guess you deserve to know. …She wanted me to tell you that she saved you once. But you shouldn’t expect that kindness again.”
[pause]
Q: “Raven’s got an interesting way of looking at the world that I don’t particularly agree with. And she’s dangerous. But you’re a tough egg, kiddo. You shouldn’t let this tournament thing get you down. You had a slip-up. Sometimes bad things just happen. I say, it’s time you move on.”
Y: “…Move on to what?”
Q: [sitting down] “Well, Raven let some info slip, before she took off. If you ever wanna track her down, I think I might be able to help.”
Now, first and foremost, this is a lot. And it’s not good. The first thing I want to draw attention to is this quote from Qrow:
But that’s not what Yang’s upset about at that moment. There is no possible way Qrow wouldn’t know about Yang’s issues regarding her mother, and Yang is seventeen now. Since an age where Yang could carry Ruby around in a wagon, she has had a sense of abandonment (which is not inaccurate, that’s kind of exactly what Raven did) and has felt a strong desire to find Raven, to know why she left their family. Qrow has been in contact with Raven for who knows how long—he may not see her regularly, but he does at least know she’s alive and isn’t coming back to Yang.
Yang deserved to know that. Qrow owed her that. Yang is obviously hurt that Qrow had some idea of what Raven is like and is up to and did not bother to tell her. And then?
Y: “…Move on to what?”
Q: [sitting down] “Well, Raven let some info slip, before she took off. If you ever wanna track her down, I think I might be able to help.”
They did that with Winter and Weiss, too, with it looking like Winter was telling Weiss to eat some humble pie and stop avoiding her father, but then switched to encouraging her to continue defying her father and live her own life.
Conversations in this show are awkward sometimes, to say the least.We cut to the grounds outside the cafeteria, where Pyrrha is sitting against a wall. Wind blows, and a maple leaf falls to the ground and lands next to her. This little leaf seems to disturb her, and we see a flashback to the vault from two episodes ago, with Amber’s pod, showing us exactly what Pyrrha’s thinking about.Just then, Jaune arrives. He’s holding a big wad of cotton candy, and offers it to her. Pyrrha awkwardly takes it and thanks him, and Jaune looks at Pyrrha with concern. Just then, Ren and Nora walk down a nearby sidewalk, but Nora notices the ‘moment’ these two are having, and drags Ren away.
Well, the team bonding was nice while it lasted.Soft piano music is playing as Jaune sits next to the somber Pyrrha.
Buddy, your family should’ve been well aware that only graduates of a preliminary combat school or otherwise highly-skilled fighters get accepted into Beacon and known that you could not possibly get in legitimately. You’re telling me they supported your fraudulent activities.
That whole subplot would’ve been far better if it just weren’t there. But it is. And then shit like this has to be said.
Anyway, Pyrrha tries to comfort Jaune, trying to assure him they weren’t looking down on him, but she stops short—and drops her cotton candy—when she realizes Jaune’s hand just met hers on the pavement. She looks at him, stunned.
Jaune says he can tell that there’s something bothering her and just wants to know how he can help. Pyrrha finally smiles, and leans her head on his shoulder, saying he’s already doing it, putting much the same deer-caught-in-headlights look she just had on his own face. They sit together, the wind blowing, another maple leaf coming down to rest against the first one.
Man, it’s almost a shame this scene is so good, because it’s not going to be enough.
But as her smile turns back to a frown, Pyrrha leans away from Jaune and confesses that she doesn’t know what to do. When Jaune inquires, Pyrrha asks a simple but poignant question:
Jaune is understandably confused, and Pyrrha gets up and strides off, sounding ready to break down and cry as she says that none of it makes sense. This isn’t how things were supposed to happen, she says. Jaune, apologetic, says he’s just trying to be understanding.
And this is all very good. This is a well-crafted scene that shows the inner emotions and vulnerabilities of characters we love, and allows Jaune a good opportunity to be a proper friend-slash-love interest to Pyrrha by earnestly trying to listen to her problems and help any way he can, while giving us that #drama that Rooster Teeth so often try for but screw up. I have no complaints about this scene and in fact, it’s probably what makes this one of my favorite episodes of this volume, despite it also being the only episode in the whole volume not to have a fight scene of any sort.
It’s also worth noting that this is one of the few times Jaune’s been in the spotlight the entire Volume. Also note, if you will, that the Jaune count has not increased at all since the Volume started. Jaune has had and will continue to have a very limited presence in Volume Three and the few scenes he’s had so far are not to his detriment.
And that’s good. I’m sure it’s not the easiest thing to hear—I’m sure if I told a member of Rooster Teeth, back when Volume Two was going on, that the character they both write and voice was unpopular with the fandom, they wouldn’t want to be told that the solution was to push that character to the background. They’d want to try to fix it in a more immediate way. That’s human nature as a writer.
But sometimes the solution to this is to put the character in the back for a while, let other characters have their own plots and problems, and let the ‘problem character’ react to and assist with those instead of being the center of attention. Jaune’s not out of the woods, obviously, but this was good.
We cut to the Beacon grounds, where an airship is parked and people are mingling. Ruby spots Velvet Scarlatina, who is taking pictures with her camera of Sun, walking by with one of his gun-chucks over his shoulder. It’s like they’re taunting me at this point.
Ruby strides over and asks what Velvet’s up to, and is shown some of Velvet’s photography in response.
Yeah, it looks like she wanted a shot of Sun’s package, but it’s actually his gunchucks she’s after. You’ll see why later and I’m sure if you don’t already know, you can guess.
Velvet offers her condolences about Yang, who she thinks must’ve had a stress-induced hallucination. She mentions Coco went through the same thing, and this gets Ruby’s attention. Coco started seeing things in the middle of a match, too? Yep, Velvet says. Ruby is obviously connecting some dots.
But it’s time for the next match! We cut back to Amity Colosseum. Ruby takes a seat in the stands, surveying the empty arena. But Ruby’s sniper’s eye catches something that shouldn’t be there: it’s Emerald, sitting in the stands across the stadium. Emerald, who was supposed to have been flown home to Haven.
More dots are getting connected, and Ruby decides to ditch the upcoming match and do something about this. She retreats into the Colosseum’s halls, opting for a maintenance hallway. As she strolls off to find someone, Oobleck can be heard over the speakers saying the “randomization” process for the next fight is going down. But she doesn’t make it far before someone strolls out to meet her: Mercury, walking on his own two working legs.
The next competitor match-up is announced to be Penny versus Pyrrha, and Mercury smirks as he remarks that polarity vs. metal is not a good combo. Ruby realizes something very bad could happen, and that she also doesn’t have her scythe. Again.
Girl, will you start keeping that thing with you at all times, please?
Mercury takes a fighting stance. Back in the arena, both combatants have arrived.The episode ends, and as such, I’ll see you all next post, where shit gets very real.
Counts:
- Jaune: 16
- It Was Right There: 5
- Fauxminism: 8
- Hypocrisy: 16
- Ice Cream Queens: 2
- Reliable Leaders: 11 + 4
- Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 4
- Threatening Enemies: 4
- Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 22
- Your Fight Scene Sucks: 35 + 13
- Evisceration Evasion: 13
- Ill Logic: 41
- Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 11 + 2
- Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 1
- Band-Aid Brigade: 1
- RSVP: 25
- Road to Nowhere: 7
- Y.A.S. Queen: 4
- Rooster Tease: 5
- LuLaRwe: 2
- The Lovegood Fallacy: 1
19 – Volume 3 World of Remnant | Table of Contents | 21 – Volume 3 Episodes 9 and 10
no subject
Date: 2022-09-12 04:27 pm (UTC)From:Plus, it's gently romantic, which I like.
Pity it doesn't go anywhere.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-08 04:46 pm (UTC)From:I note also that metal prosthetics directed into a fire ought to be burning the fuck out of Mercury's stumps, and also that his insufficiently protected groin is aimed in that direction. Ow.
Maiden powers could also have worked better if there was a LOT more emphasis put on dust being a limited resource. Show fighters conserving it, running the risk of running out at vital moments, maybe an energy crisis and mention of exploration of mundane power sources since all their tech relies on it.