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Volume 4, Episodes 1 and 2 | Table of Contents | 27 – Volume 4, Episodes 5, 6, and 7

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This post contains discussions of stalking and abuse. You have been warned.

Last time, we left off on the note of the memory of Pyrrha, both those kept in his scroll and those kept in his scabbard. Jesus. But now that we’ve checked out some of Ruby’s and Weiss’ stories so far, it’s time to check out Blake’s and Yang’s.

V4E3, “Of Runaways and Stowaways”

We open up on a shot of a boat at sea, zooming in until we’re atop its deck. Blake, in a poor man’s version of her Volume Two “Intruder” outfit, is looking out over the water with a very sober look on her face. She turns to see two children playing nearby, and is just about to return to seagazing when the captain happens on her. Blake has scarcely heard his voice when she’s grabbing the hilt of Gambol Shroud.

The following scene, again, has been shot in total silence to emphasize the awkwardness. I like that.

Alarmed, the captain says he just wants to chat, and Blake clearly does not welcome forced small talk with some dude whose opening lines are remarks on how she must be lonely, traveling by boat, all alone.

???: But, I’ve found those that do, tend to have the more interesting stories.

B: [hand curling into a fist, turning away] Maybe it’s just…better for some people to be alone.

I hate people like this. A person by their self, not talking to anyone, is not an invitation to start up a conversation. I’m very familiar with the fact that you can be radiating “minding my own business, please disregard” and someone will still try to engage, unfortunately.

I also hate it from a story standpoint. There’s no reason for the ship’s captain to target Blake for an impromptu conversation about her situation at random.

The noise of the children running by startles Blake again, hinting at the fact she’s been very, very on edge since escaping Adam. The captain picks up on this and says some friendly faces wouldn’t hurt with her paranoia, and Blake bristles, and is then quite happy to find him leaving.

Contemplating as somber piano music starts up, she removes her bow, commenting that she won’t be needing it and letting it fly off onto the water. She then leaves for another part of the ship, and the camera pulls back to show her actions being watched by someone wearing a cloak.

*twisted smile*

*spitting out a ground-to-nub tooth*

The ribbon floats on the water’s surface as something passes underneath, a large dark red fin breaking the surface.

[01]

We cut to Yang, in her home, sitting despondently on a couch and looking at some books as if tempted to read them. Instead, she picks up a remote and turns on the television, where she finds a news broadcast that Beacon is still pretty much in ruins and inaccessible. Another news broadcast confirms the continued absence of widespread signal due to the busted CCT, and Yang changes the channel before we can hear how talks with Atlas officials are going. Another news broadcast lets us know that Vale’s Council decided to ban any air traffic that doesn’t immediately pertain to evacuation. Finally, Yang stumbles on one she’s interested in: rumors of who exactly was behind the attacks at the Vytal Festival Tournament.

The exact machinations and behind the scenes stuff obviously isn’t well known, but Adam Taurus is known to have been in the area. The newscaster says that any and all attempts to bring him into custody have been met with brutal force, before Yang turns the television off.

Just then, Taiyang gets home, met with Yang quietly saying hey. Taiyang has a smile on his face, and asks her to guess what came in today. She slowly takes a moment to compose a smile before meeting his eyes as he walks in, bearing a box. Asked if its for her, he says it’s for her and her only.

[02]

Inside, Yang finds a shiny new robotic right arm.

T: Brand new, state-of-the-art Atlas tech.

As he explains, he didn’t even have to pull any strings. Ironwood already had someone working on Yang’s arm before he even called. That’s quite a thing of him, especially since there had to be a lot of pandemonium to deal with after the attack on Beacon. Taiyang also relays that he wanted Yang to hear that she fought admirably and should be proud of herself.

Yang is unable to muster the appropriate reactions, slow to respond and mostly just staring, and puts off trying on the prosthetic arm, claiming to not feel up to it at the moment. Taiyang was obviously hoping for a more positive response, but allows this without comment. Yang does manage a “Thanks, dad…” as she goes up the stairs, leaving her father slumped and wondering how to better help his daughter.

We cut to a montage of Yang doing ordinary tasks such as sweeping the porch, getting the mail, and washing the dishes, showing us how much different it is to perform said tasks without the benefit of both arms. As she makes to put away a clean glass, she accidentally drops it and it shatters against the floor. Her post-traumatic stress disorder kicks in, the loud noise triggering a flashback as Yang remembers the glow of Adam’s mask and the slash that left her this way, yelping and staggering backward into the counter.

[03]

She slams her hand on the counter, taking a deep breath to regain control. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by Taiyang, either, whose concern is evident on his face as he turns away.

Back on the ship, it’s now sunset. Blake has returned to her solemn seagazing over the deck. A faunus couple walk past, and Blake’s expression turns a tad bitter as she looks away. She decides to walk a little ways, and we see the cloaked person standing atop a higher deck, looking down on her. Blake notices this, and draws her weapon, demanding an identity. The cloaked person flees.

[04]

*spitting out more teeth*

The red fin of some mysterious creature breaks the surface again, and the waves from its increased activity buffer the ship. The passengers’ attention is drawn to it as it rises out of the water with a growl, its shadow falling over the ship. A crew member calls “Red alert!” and raises an alarm.

The captain lets out a rather suspect “By the gods…” as he sees the monster:

[05]

The captain yells “All hands to battle stations!” The first mate says they’ve never fought a Grimm this big, and the captain affirms that this is the first time they’ve ever seen one this big.

Blake, who would appear to be the only one on board with combat experience, leaps into action. She takes a flying leap off the deck of the ship, casting a clone of herself to grab her own arm and fling her even further, enough to close the gap and throw Gambol Shroud’s kusarigama. It embeds in the armor of the Grimm dragon’s face, allowing Blake to swing past it and retrieve it, firing down on its hide. Naturally, it doesn’t do anything but irritate the Grimm.

[06]

The creature shakes her off and she lands aboard the deck again. It tries to crash down on her, forcing the captain to turn the ship sharply in order to avoid it being damaged. The beast circles the ship, and as the ship captain unveils a row of cannons on the side of the boat, Blake tries a head-on approach again, but Gambol Shroud’s blade isn’t any more effective than its bullets, and she staggers when she lands. The cannon fire does at least hurt it enough to force it back underwater for a moment.

07]

The captain notes it isn’t finished yet, and orders the “heavy cannon” loaded.

With a bristling noise, the dragon’s dorsal fin splits into two and unfurls into a pair of wings, and it takes flight. The heavy cannon’s substantially stronger fire proves no good against the creature’s improved mobility. As it realigns for a new attack, its mouth glows with electricity.

[08]

Blake prepares for an onslaught, but is jerked forward when someone lands on her back and leaps off of her—it’s the cloaked person, and who should leap up and unveil themselves but…Sun?

Sun Wukong, in all his monkey-ish glory, leaps high, landing atop the dragon’s head alongside two glowing gold clones of himself, grabbing the moustache-like tendrils on its face to force it to redirect the blast of energy that comes out of its mouth.

[09]

I… What the hell?!

I have said before that Sun should be more centered in the civil rights discussion had by RWBY, because he can’t easily hide his faunus attribute like Blake can. He has three feet of blond furry tail that isn’t going unnoticed unless he dons some thick-ass cloak or something, like what he was just wearing. But you can’t explain this with Sun hiding his faunus heritage to avoid racism—we see that Blake outright removes and discards her bow because both the boat she’s on and the place she’s headed on said boat are places faunus aren’t discriminated against. So what, on God’s green earth, was he all cloaked up for?

This gets creepy, too, what with how he was eyeing Blake from afar and fled when she noticed him. It looks as though he is intentionally trying to avoid being exposed to Blake, but there really isn’t any reason why, since these two are friends and on the same side. We already know Blake is trying to be separate from friends so that Adam doesn’t hurt anyone else in his pursuit of her, and Sun will (some minutes from now) be revealed to have followed her with the explicit goal of making sure she doesn’t wind up in trouble, which is admittedly likely given the homicidal lunatic after her. But I don’t understand why they had to do it this way—why follow her without her knowledge?

And I need you guys to know how badly this devastated me, because Sun is my favorite character, and I’ve already told you of the harassment I endured from Bumbleby fans for that. From the second Sun appeared, they called him things like a player, a harasser, a stalker—things he really wasn’t, but which were easy to see if you were predisposed to dislike him, especially with his (again explicit) romantic interest in her. Considering that I defended him with my life against some of that nonsense, seeing him be portrayed as a stalking weirdo come Volume Four was like being stabbed in the back. And then hit by a meteor.

Ill Logic: 50

That point is because this goes completely unexplained and uncommented on. Oh, don’t worry, Sun following Blake gets addressed quite promptly, but the bit with the cloak and the weird behavior literally never gets an explanation.

And it’s not like I can think of one, either. …Unless, of course, this is just a dumb reveal for the sake of having a reveal. The stupid old Assassin’s Creed 3 way of handling things. I suppose in light of Volume 3, we could have been shown this in an attempt to make us worry for Blake, thinking that oh gosh, what if Adam has tracked her down again? Before revealing that it’s okay, it’s just Sun—which would be colossally dumb writing because, again, this doesn’t make sense for Sun to do and would make us wonder why he seems to be attempting to scare Blake with his getup and behavior. Either way, it’s bad.

An explanation is exactly what Blake asks for when she gawks that Sun is here and asks what he’s doing.

S: Oh, ya know… [hanging onto the dragon’s tendrils as it flies around trying to shake him off] Hangin’ out!

The dragon flies high and electrocutes Sun, who falls. Blake takes action, using Gambol Shroud’s ribbon as a slingshot to launch herself into his path and catch him, landing on some rocky shore nearby.

[10]

Sun cheerfully refers to her as “my hero!” and she brusquely tells him he’s not supposed to be here, and Sun simply points out that it looks like she could use all the help she can get right now. She drops him and tells him to just shut up and fight.

They both run back into the fray to defend the boat. The captain is having trouble with the dragon, and asks if they’ve still got the heavy cannon. They do, but they’ve had no luck hitting the thing. When asked if the engines are still good, the crew replies that they’re still working fine.

The Grimm dragon is continuing its blasts of electric energy beams. Blake jumps to take the next blast, which seems rather unwise. Sun jumping in front of her to do the same also seems unwise, but he whips out Ruyi Bang and Jingu Bang in their staff form, successfully blocking the blast unscathed, just as he did with Torchwick’s firework so long ago, which makes me smile. That gun-gun didn’t break a sweat.

[11]

The captain of the ship draws Sun’s attention, saying that if they can de-wing the dragon and get it around towards the boat’s bow, they can kill it. Sun, for his part, defers to Blake, who just responds with an exasperated huff—so, as close to an affirmative as we’ll get.

Unlike “Not Fall in Love With You”, “Like Morning Follows Night” (another Sun/Blake song) does at least have the decency to play over more than five seconds of significant Sun and Blake interaction. Sun’s latest bo staff twirl gets the red blur disc treatment, which is getting points again because it’s pissing me off—a) Sun’s weapon doesn’t have nearly the polygons and moving parts that Ruby’s scythe does, b) it’s in the relatively static bo staff form, and c) it’s not even a necessary twirl, so again, there’s no reason to be taking shortcuts for an animation that isn’t important.

I'm thinking about moving non-fight-scene instances of that nonsense to the LuLaRwe count, but for now, we are technically in a fight scene.

Your Fight Scene Sucks: 47

Sun runs forward, creating three solar clones of himself as he leaps sky high, all three of whom help boost Blake to the same heights, and he holds his arms out as if to catch her—but she just uses him like a spring board.

[12]

She gets as high as she can, and the Grimm notices, firing lightning blasts up at her which she dodges as she freefalls, pulling out Gambol Shroud and slashing down on the wing as she passes.

[13]

Sun is ready to catch her as she did for him, again not breaking a sweat as she lands in his arms just hard enough to depress the ground (figuratively and literally). He reminds her that it’s her turn to make the sappy quip, but she brushes him off.

The Grimm dragon interrupts their moment. Still with enough wing to move in and out of the water quickly, it attacks them and they flee, leaping from rock face to rock face to avoid its angry jaws.

[14]

In response, the ship captain guns the engines, firing on all cylinders to gear the boat to its highest speed and catch up. The dragon corners Blake and Sun, and it looks like they’ll get a lightning blast straight to the face, only for the ship captain to smash into the dragon, pinning it against a rock face!

[15]

–And blowing its head clean off with the heavy cannon. Everyone celebrates, including Sun, and he offers a high five to Blake. Blake gives him one alright—did you catch that? She slaps him right across the face.

I’m still very sour about all this, but at least this time, it was a relatively warranted reaction. I just wish that were the last time Blake struck Sun, is all.

The scene continues at this location, but before we go on, outfit talk time!

[16]

Poor Sun. You are finally free of those weird, gross Sharpie black lines across your abs that plagued you the last two years, but at what cost? Was that six pack so ruthlessly stripped from you?

Actually, it hasn’t been. It’s just been modified so that they don’t show up clearly unless the light hits him right, such as right here:

[17]

Which is also the only full shot of Blake’s outfit I found where we got a good look at the whole thing. Unlike Sun, whose only notable change is the modification to the blue in his eyes, Blake’s look has changed quite a bit, and for the worse.

I called this a poor man’s version of the Volume Two “Intruder” drip, and I was right. This is abysmal.

The thigh strap for weapons is pretty nice, as is the holster for Gambol Shroud’s magnet, and so is the clean white belt. Blake’s leggings are now coated in Stuart Semple’s Black 3.0, but at least she’s not wearing high heels anymore, right?

[18]

She totally is, you sons of bitches were just hoping I wouldn’t notice.

But aye yae yae, what is covering her top half? Or not covering it, I suppose. Blake is now showing waaay more midriff than before, with the white undershirt gone and its only replacement being black straps criss-crossing her chest as if to draw even more attention to it. She’s basically wearing one of those overly-strappy bras, just connecting to another choker around the girl’s neck that makes it look like her head is floating away from her body.

And that white longcoat, yeesh! What the hell? Who saw Blake’s crisp, sharp uniform in Volume Two and thought “yeah, just unbutton the whole thing, put the ribbons over her collar,” (mega yikes) “and give her full-length sleeves and an ass cape that goes down to her ankles!”

Why are we doing the ass capes again? I hate the ass capes!

LuLaRwe: 8

And the purple inside lining, urgh. The previous white top in Volume Two, while it did also showcase a lot of midriff, at least looked minimalist and crisp. The clean white was a good offset from Blake’s usually rather murky combo of black, purple, little bit of white, and more black, trading it out for a very simple contrast of black/white. This one still has that, it’s just the shape of it all clashing so badly that doesn’t work, not helped by the white-on-purple-on-black all concentrated on her torso.

Anyway, the scene continues.

It’s now dusk, and Sun is waving off some thanks from other passengers, before striding casually back towards Blake. When Blake asks what he’s doing here, he tries to compliment her outfit, but she will have none of it. Demanding to know if he was following her, Blake finally gets an appropriately ashamed look out of Sun, who says he saw her run off the night Beacon’s tower fell.

S: Once we landed in Vale, you made sure everyone was okay, and then you just took off, without saying anything.

She had also recently been stabbed and was noticeably extremely stressed out about this (understandably so).

B: …I had to. You wouldn’t understand.

She does smile a tiny bit when Sun says he knows exactly what she’s doing—only for it to drop off her face when he excitedly states that she surely must be going on a one-woman rampage against the White Fang.

He does accurately point out that Blake has always considered the White Fang her fight, while declaring that her mission shall not be undertaken alone, for she shall have a fellow faunus looking out for her and backing her up…but Blake turns away and finally explains that no, she’s not on a mission, she just wants to lay low and find safety from Adam. Or, that’s what she should be explaining. Rather, she just says she wants to “sort some things out”.

Girl. Your friends cannot help you if you won’t tell them what the problem is.

The next part pisses me off severely. Sun asks why she wouldn’t bring her friends along, her teammates, Weiss and Yang and Ruby. Blake rightly points out that he’s one to talk, since she doesn’t see his team anywhere. Were this a better world, Sun would state the most obvious and sensible answer: his team knows where he is and what he’s doing, so they’re not worried, while Blake appears to have deliberately vanished from her own team’s lives.

It Was Right There: 11

Instead, he just jokingly responds that ha, as if he could get Neptune out on the water.

Yes, you could. You could because that stupid fucking ha-ha kwomedy nonsense about Neptune being afraid of water (Get it? D’you get it?) did not happen, or at least that’s what I’m going to pretend from here on out, lest I start shooting lasers from my eyes.

S: They flew back to Mistral! I told them I’d catch up! Not the first time I left them to take a boat!

Hypocrisy: 18

Are you guys deliberately trying to make Sun come off as a horrendously bad friend and leader? ‘Cause if you are, I’m going to kill someone. Don’t write in rather significant character defects purely to excuse the fact that you don’t want Sun’s team in this story for some weird fucking reason.

Sun hung out with Blake for almost two days so that a girl who was upset and vulnerable wouldn’t have to be alone in a city that hates people like her. I have a hard time believing that when it comes to his own team, that same character would just say ‘eh, fuck ‘em, they’ll live without me for a little while’. Because that’s what he’s saying, instead of having literally any other reasonable response.

Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 30

This is out-of-character and it’s out-of-character because Miles Luna apparently has some weird visceral hate-boner for Sun and his team and will take any route available, no matter how ill-conceived, to keep them from being in the story. It doesn’t even make sense—if Sun really thought that Blake were going on a rampage against the White Fang for their actions, it would make sense to bring his team, because she’d need as much help as possible, wouldn’t she? A little thought put into this, please.

And guys, once the story reaches Haven Academy, every episode that Sun’s team don’t appear is getting a point. All of them.

S: So, if you’re not going after the White Fang, where are you going?

I would think you’d know, considering you’re on the damn boat with her. It’s headed to Menagerie, which Blake states is her home. Sun again insists on going with her, making a good point as he does:

S: The Grimm are getting worse, you saw it yourself. And just because you’re not going after the Fang doesn’t mean they won’t be coming after you.

Again, raising the question of why he ditched his team instead of bringing them along.

Fun fact, guys: Around 2020-ish, Miles Luna finally relented enough to have E.C. Myers write one of those dubiously-canon comic books about side characters. Velvet’s team got one first, and I’m told there was some ill-received twisting of characters there, too, but regarding Before the Dawn, Myers had to work with what M&K supplied them, so SSN—well, just Neptune, if I’ve heard correctly, Sage and Scarlet still being bizarrely background—are largely concerned with Sun just running the fuck off like that. Sun apparently comes off quite dickish, which is another reason I won’t be reading that dreck. We’ll go into that more when we get to it, though.

Sun then remarks that it’s a little bit late to try and stop him, since he’s already, ya know, on the boat. Blake almost can’t seem to stop herself from smiling as she remarks that there’s no stopping him, and looks over to see Sun giving another one of his goofy dork smiles.

[19]

Lovely, Rooster Teeth, now stop fucking with his character for the sake of dumb twists and bad jokes.

Sun references his story of origin, Journey to the West,

Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 2

when he states that he’s never been to Menagerie before, and we get a view of the ocean as the boat smoothly powers along it, with the shattered moon so thoroughly linked to Blake reflected in the water.

Cut to Salem’s headquarters!

Salem and Cinder are alone at the long table, while Mercury and Emerald hover near the door. Cinder is dramatically gasping and wincing, apparently holding back pain as something makes rather odd creaking, fleshy noises.

S: You feel it… Don’t fight it, girl.

Oh dear god that’s creepy.

Salem says that “it” can sense her “trepidation”, and says that she must make “it” dread her. “It” is most likely not the Grimm creature that enters the room a second later: a bizarre, floating orb with a glassy surface, with tendrils dangling beneath it as it floats through the air. Mercury and Emerald, unnerved, lean back and hug the wall as it passes, approaching Salem.

[20]

Emitting an odd light and clicking unsettlingly as it passes, it hovers near Cinder and Salem. Salem seems to consider it for a moment, before turning to Cinder and calmly demanding a clear answer to her next question: did she kill Ozpin? She becomes angry when Cinder tries to summon Emerald to translate, saying she wants to hear Cinder say it—a cold twist on the words Ozpin spoke to Pyrrha when he was still alive.

Yes, she says. She killed Ozpin.

S: Reinforce our numbers at Beacon. The relic is there.

She says this to the strange floating orb Grimm, which wanders off back the way it came. What “relic” is this, now?

Piano notes from “Divide” play as Salem wonders to herself: “What are you planning?”

The episode ends.

V4E4, “Family”

The episode opens on that random-ass freckled farm kid we got to see in episode one. His work for the day finished, he approaches a sink installed on a wall, complete with mirror even though they appear to be in a shed full of hay and dirt. Something’s caught his attention, and he leans forward towards his reflection curiously.

???: …Hello?

[silence]

???: [In Shannon McCormack’s voice] Hello, I’m Professor Ozpin— [the kid yells in surprise and falls backward]

Yep. Ozpin is still here. Toldja.

This development is already bad and is going to lead to some dark, dark-ass places.

The voice of a parent or guardian can finally be heard as someone, who must have heard the crash into the hay he took, tells “Oscar” to be careful with the tools.

We cut to a nightmare Yang is having. She stands alone, one-armed and defenseless, in a dark, war-torn battlefield. She looks down to find both arms intact before her, before looking ahead and finding Adam, striding towards her ominously. She readies her fists, now bound in Ember Celica, but her shotgun shells do nothing against Adam’s slow walk of doom. His hand finds the grip of his sword…

[21]

Yang, fearful, tries to shoot more shells, only to find her left arm bare, and her right arm gone, a stump capped off by a metal seal. When she looks up again, Adam is inches away from her face, a cold grin on his own, and he draws the blade of Wilt…

[22]

Yang jerks awake. Looking to the side, she finds the silver robotic arm she had earlier avoided, and though she is silent, her thoughts are very clear: anything to not feel this fear and helplessness anymore.

But before she can make a decision, she hears laughter from downstairs.

Walking down, she finds Taiyang hosting for Professors Oobleck and Port, the latter telling a hilarious story about a student Qrow arriving to a class of his wearing a skirt, to his bafflement. Ha. Ha. Ha. Taiyang clarifies this to be an absolutely riotous prank they played on Qrow, who had apparently never worn a uniform before and didn’t know the difference.

Seriously, cut that shit out. Do I need homophobia counts here? Transphobia counts? Do I?

The joke goes on for way, way too long. Yang giggles, and everyone finally notices her standing in the doorway, prompting Oobleck and Port to compose themselves. Smiling, she denies need of a chair and sits at the same counter Taiyang is leaning against.

More into the story being told than any depressing talk about Beacon, Oobleck says the “Branwen twins” have always been “interesting” people. Port says that their quirks don’t seem to have stopped a younger Taiyang, and if this hadn’t been preceded by garbage, (and if I still had faith in RWBY by now) I’d almost want to believe that to be a subtle confirmation that Tai is bi and did indeed fuck all three other members of his team bow-legged. But no, it’s probably just about Raven.

Taiyang does not find this last bit funny as his daughter is in the room. Yang considers herself as having been through enough to be considered an adult at this point, an odd remark to make as I’d think she wouldn’t be eager to hear about the time her teenage dad fucked her teenage mother. But maybe she is—Raven crumbs come so rarely, after all.

It’s a rather odd way to segue into Yang arguing with her dad about whether she’s ready to take on the world or not. What is worth some notice is Taiyang’s response:

T: Well, I guess you lost some braincells along with that arm.

Don’t say things like that, Tai. If Yang loses her braincells, that’s everyone in the show acting stupid.

Naturally, everyone gawks that he just said that, prompting myself and some other like-minded individuals to consider bloody murder before Yang and the others laugh it off.

I don’t really mind Yang being able to laugh about her own injury, or Taiyang making cracks about it if she can indeed laugh at them, I just think maybe this should’ve come with some sort of modifier or a little more detail to let us know that Tai is trying to help with humor rather than just openly mocking his daughter’s dismemberment.

This was supposedly set a few months after the fall of Beacon, so it’s believable that Yang’s grown accustomed enough to her injury to talk openly about it—even if the very same subject also recurs in her nightmares. It’s not exactly something you can avoid talking about for months on end.

Port finally gets to the point of the scene: is she planning on wearing that robotic arm soon? A lot of people would like to see Yang trying to return to normal. Yang quietly admits that she’s scared, and she explains that this is normal for her now. Taiyang remarks that “normal” is what one makes of it. Yang angrily but patiently explains that hey, she kind of lost a major fucking part of her. Taiyang says she’s right, but this shouldn’t stop her from continuing on to be the person she wants to be.

T: You’re Yang Xiao Long. My sunny little dragon. You can do whatever you put your mind to. So whenever you’re ready to stop moping, and get back out there, I’ll be there for you.

This is the line where fans started to really bristle against Taiyang. That’s the “fuck Taiyang I hate him” button right there, referring to her obvious post-traumatic stress disorder as “moping”. And this is rather like the thing with Neptune saying “you want her, you can have her” to Jaune about Weiss, in that while I understand why people are angry, and think they’re right to be, I don’t think that this scene is worth the particular amount of anger spent on it because the context is Taiyang sincerely trying to help. Rooster Teeth just really, really suck at dialogue.

Whether it’s PTSD or moping, the fact remains that Yang does have a road to recovery available to her, with opportunities that wouldn’t be available to others, whenever she wants to take it. She just has to want it.

Port is of a similarly encouraging tone, and the serious nature is rounded off with some more laughs as Oobleck whispers to Yang that Port is afraid of mice. Taiyang looks on, happy to be able to see his daughter smile again.

Yang, still tired, goes upstairs to bed, and the silver arm glints there on her bedside table, as if waiting for her. Hearing noise from below again, she goes over to her window to watch Oobleck and Port leaving. Down below, the two ask Tai if he’s heard anything from Ruby, but he responds sadly that he hasn’t. Hasn’t he thought about going after her, they ask?

He can’t. He has to be here for Yang. Hearing this reminds Yang that her little sister is out there somewhere without her big sis to help her, and her father, in his duty to look after her, essentially has to choose which daughter to ensure the safety of. She grasps her right limb in somber acknowledgement.

We cut to Ruby then, with JNR. It’s foggy, and Ruby is looking forward to finding the next town, Higanbana, a major center that should hopefully still be standing. Jaune remarks that they’re doing pretty decently despite having to sleep outside, and that they haven’t seen nearly as many Grimm as they thought they would. The reason for this is revealed as the camera pans up to a nearby cliff, showing Qrow with sword out killing a lot of the creatures that would otherwise be accosting them.

Qrow silently notices a red-eyed raven on a nearby tree, which wings off. He scoffs at RNJR’s “luck” as the raven flies over them, with the rumbling of thunder in the distance.

We cut to the inside of Higanbana’s inn later that night, as the storm pours down. RNJR are purchasing a room, and in the bar across the street, Qrow sits at a table. Footsteps announce a visitor, and we see a waitress bring Qrow a drink on behalf of “the woman upstairs”. The waitress flirts with Qrow, who grins, and takes his drink upstairs.

We behold Raven Branwen, Qrow’s sister and Yang’s mother.

[23]

When asked what she wants, Raven asks if a girl can’t just catch up with her family. Her abandoned spouse and daughter, the latter dismembered, would probably answer “no”. Rushed to the point, Raven asks:

R: …Does she have it?

We don’t find out who “she” or “it” are. Qrow just asks if Raven is caught up on the ‘Yang’s arm’ news. She is, and Qrow merely uses this to remind her that her ideas of “family” are bullshit.

R: I saved her!

Q: Once. Because that’s your rule, right? Real mom of the year material, sis.

R: [angry, grabbing Qrow’s arm] I told you Beacon would fall, and it did. I told you Ozpin would fail, and he has. Now, you tell me: does. Salem. Have it?

Qrow casually simpers that he thought she wasn’t interested in those matters, and Raven says she just wants to know what they’re up against. Raven’s ideas of “we” and “we’re” are as backwards as her ideas on family, and Qrow lets her know it.

Qrow bids her to come back and join them, as unity is the only way they’ll win. Raven says he’s the one who turned away, away from the tribe that raised them, who Qrow dismisses as killers and thieves. Raven says that she’s the leader of that tribe now, and will do all it takes to ensure her people’s survival. Qrow coldly tells her he’s seen that drive firsthand, and so have the people of Shion. Raven, confronted with the knowledge that an attack of hers led to a village’s destruction, is unrepentant, claiming the weak die and the strong live.

Qrow hints that he knows she has someone strong on her side. Raven wants to know where the relic is, Qrow wants to know where the spring maiden is, but neither one is giving up any info. Qrow insists that without the latter, everyone will die. Raven mocks him for this take, donning her mask and leaving through one of her portals. The scene ends.

I’ve seen a few too many people side with Raven a little too much here, so here’s a reminder guys: yes, Raven Branwen is a bad person. Yes, she did have a duty to the family she started with Taiyang, and yes, her leaving them was abandonment and is not defensible.

I don’t usually have to do this with RWBY, because despite what the occasional weirdo online would have you believe, the largely female and female-led cast don’t tend to create any sort of bizarre man-hating sentiment. However, this once, you’re gonna have to try reversing the genders in this situation. And if you do that, guess what? Yep, Taiyang becomes the deadbeat dad who is unquestionably a bad father and a bad person, worthy of no real sympathy because “Daddy had a good reason for abandoning you” is a tired, bullshit sort of plot element. People just don’t seem capable of realizing that Raven being a woman doesn’t disqualify her from being this exact sort of bad person and bad parent.

You can invent all the scenarios you like, but it’s useless to do so. We get no indication—when doing so would be relatively easy—that Raven’s relationship with Taiyang wasn’t a happy one, or that Yang was unplanned and unwanted by a pregnant Raven. By all appearances, she simply decided that her life in Patch didn’t suit her and just fucked off back to her Icky Bandit Tribe. Considerations on Raven’s role in the family commonly put a little too much emphasis on her being a woman who can “make her own choices” and doesn’t have to “live with a man and care for a kid” if she doesn’t want to, when in reality, parental duties don’t vanish just because you’re of the fairer sex and something-something-feminism, and a person who creates a whole life with another person does indeed need to try and work things out however they can before going out to get cigarettes and never coming back.

A lot of this was fueled by the Taiyang nonsense up there, but I’m afraid I’m not required nor inclined to have patience with people who profess that Raven is the preferable parent or even the more likable character when Raven murders innocent people and Taiyang’s sins amount to some bad word choices when trying to help his daughter recover. I’m serious, y’all, the “Taiyang is a terrible parent” cesspool runs alarmingly deep.

So for the remainder of this recap, we’re gonna call Raven Branwen “Ashley Katchadourian”. Because if her getup is anything to go by, she was in Pearl Harbor, seeing the Japanese museum, while a girl was losing her fucking arms elsewhere.

[You Were Supposed To Be Watching the Door.gif]

Cut back to Patch. It’s daytime, and Taiyang is watering sunflowers in the garden outside. He hears the door open and looks up, finding a remarkable sight:

[24]

Yang, wearing her shiny new right arm. Smiling, Taiyang says it’s time to get started.

The screen cuts to black, and the episode ends.

Counts:

Jaune: 27
It Was Right There: 10
Fauxminism: 23
Hypocrisy: 18
Reliable Leaders: 15 + 6
- Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 6
Threatening Enemies: 6
Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 30
Your Fight Scene Sucks: 47 + 18
- Evisceration Evasion: 18
Ill Logic: 50
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 16 + 4
- Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 2
- Band-Aid Brigade: 2
RSVP: 25
Road to Nowhere: 8
Y.A.S. Queen: 7
Rooster Tease: 10
LuLaRwe: 8
The Lovegood Fallacy: 2