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30 – Volume 5 Shorts and Premiere | Table of Contents | 32 – Volume 5, Episodes 4, 5, 6, and 7
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We open with Watts walking into Lionheart’s office, asking “Are we ready?”
Lionheart, filled with shame, hesitates, before taking him through a secret passage. In this passage is a Grimm much like the one we saw ‘speaking’ to Salem before, a crystal ball-like thing with dangling tendrils.
Salem’s face appears in the other crystal ball Grimm back at her headquarters, asking if Leonardo has something to report. Watts interrupts the two all for the sake of getting a dig in at Cinder, who tells him to shut up, voice regained.
Salem is quite pleased to hear that Leonardo has found the spring maiden, and attributes some praise to Watts before he corrects her, as he had nothing to do with this discovery—the person in charge of the spring maiden just happens to be Qrow’s sister. Cinder wants to know if Ruby was there, which she was. When pressured to hurry, Salem glares and the orb Grimm, quick as a flash, has a tendril wrapped around Lionheart’s neck. Salem takes the long, reminiscing route when it comes to telling Lionheart she doesn’t appreciate being spoken to, err, disrespectfully? Absent pants-wetting fear to the point of excessive courtesy?
I have to say, by the time a pointed spike makes its way uncomfortably close to Lionheart’s eye, I’m feeling this is a bit of an overreaction to Lionheart just trying to speak a little too hastily. Maybe Salem is more volatile than expected?
Aloud, Salem orders Cinder and Watts to make their way to Raven’s tribe and convince them they need to join up with Salem’s side. Furthermore, once the spring maiden is in their grip, they’re to use her to get the relic, then contact Hazel, who will let the White Fang have their rampage at Haven. While all this is going down, Watts has been assigned to get Tyrian a new tail.
End call!
Back at HQ, Salem invites Cinder to speak her mind, whereupon Cinder protests against working with bandits and leaving Ruby alive, when they could just steamroller everything instead. Salem reminds her that espionage and patience tend to work out pretty well, and further reminds her to be extra cautious around Ruby, should the latter have learned to use her bullshit silver eye powers properly. Before Cinder can leave to sulk, Salem tells her to send Tyrian in, with an angry look on her face that promises to punish failure.
We cut to Weiss on her cargo ship, which is now passing over a lake over which are hovering a vast amount of floating islands, all of which have black crystals sticking out of the bottoms. Marveling at the scenery, Weiss inquires of the captain, and he says they’re passing over “Lake Matsu’s” floating islands. The gravity dust holding the islands up sometimes provides problematic turbulence, and furthermore many of the islands hide Grimm.
(I like this. This is a good example of worldbuilding in the physical, natural sense.)
As a matter of fact, the pilot is hoping said voracious Grimm are preoccupied with the vessel from earlier, which just so happens to be on a collision course with their ship, unnoticed until it’s almost too late by Weiss:
The pilot swerves to avoid it, and the flaming passenger ship crashes into an island, whereupon another nearby ship’s mayday transmission reaches Weiss’ ship again. Out the window, it can be seen being pursued by a swarm of flying Grimm.
These wasp-like creatures, called Lancers, are attacking the civilian skiff, piercing it with anchor-like barbs shot out of their tails where stingers would be. They begin tearing the ship apart, and the captain calls for everyone to abandon ship, right before a detonation is set off.
The skiff destroyed, the lancers set their sights on a new target: Weiss’ cargo ship.
Before you ask, no, it has not gone unnoticed by many of the fans that the latest Grimm are swarms of wasps attacking Weiss’ ship.
Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 5
Yeah, you’re outta your mind if you think there’s no way that was on purpose.
The cargo pilot kicks it into high gear, and tries to tell Weiss to get secure, but she’s already making her way to the cargo hold. When asked over the intercom what she’s doing, Weiss responds:
W: What we should’ve done in the first place!
It happens that the pilot is (illegally) carrying dust, which provides Weiss a nice supply of ammo. She orders him to open the rear door. The drastic evasive maneuvers the pilot is having to take force Weiss to apply gravity dust to a glyph under her feet, steadying her and locking her in place.
Casting a wave of wind dust outward, her attack creates some distance, but doesn’t successfully repel the horde. Selecting her fire chamber, Weiss casts a series of fireballs that mostly miss, but do down one hostile.
Her next attacks involve her favored ice dust, and she is moderately more successful in striking down the bloodthirsty wasps. However, more lancers have pierced the hull and attached, slowing down their escape.
In an effort to shake the wasps off, the pilot flies directly at one of the larger islands, making an utterly brutal turn downward at the last second that shakes the hooked wasps loose when they’re jolted into it.
Weiss asks if he can find a pair of islands they can fit through. As it happens, he can. Passing inbetween the two largest islands, this allows them to bottleneck the remaining wasps, and Weiss sends a few combustive fireballs up into the cliff face above them, causing a rockfall that takes out the rest of the lancers. Unfortunately, it appears she did this atop the nest of the queen:
Who is now in hot pursuit.
Weiss sends forward a salvo of ice blasts, which collide harmlessly with the oversized queen. Opening up hatches on her abdomen, the queen sends out thorn-like spikes, which Weiss defends against, but which hit one of the engines.
Ordered to act by the desperate pilot, Weiss pulls out her trump card. Rather than play around with any more pathetic dust shots, she instead levitates every crate of dust in the hold, and sends them all hurtling out at the queen. She detonates them, producing a massive explosion!
…That just pisses the queen off. Shit.
“This Life is Mine” starts up, complete with guitar, as the chase becomes serious. The shoreline is close, but they won’t make it, will they? Weiss decides it’s time to cut the crap.
She summons her faithful knight, not to scale, but big enough. Then she orders the pilot to fly straight up.
Her knight climbs out onto the hull of the ship as it turns over in the air, and we get a beautiful a capella from “This Life is Mine” as the knight freefalls and manifests its sword.
It takes a page from both sides of the Link vs. Cloud Death Battle, and before it lands its strike, it vanishes. Manifesting out of several glyphs appearing around the Queen Lancer, the Knight leaps and slashes, disappearing and reappearing and carving that hornet from hell to pieces. A long note from Casey closes out the fight, with the Knight’s final strike again done in freefall before it and the Grimm vanish.
Stunning, astounding. Now that was a fight scene truly worthy of Monty Oum’s legacy.
It’s a shame that it comes at a price.
The wasp queen is dead, but her retaliation, her barbed harpoon stinger, took out the other engine of the ship, and now it and Weiss are about to crash!
She notices this, and tries to slow and stop the ship’s descent with several huge glyphs charged with gravity dust, but it doesn’t work. The ship crashes.
Before we find out what happened to Weiss and that helpful pilot, let’s cut to Mistral real quick. No, not to check up on RNJR and their creepy drunk uncle, but to see what Adam is up to after a whole volume gone!
We appear to be in some White Fang stronghold. The actual leader of the organization, Sienna Khan, is the one that’s talking.
S: Adam, I’m not going to repeat myself. So I want you to listen, when I tell you that the White Fang will not attack Haven Academy.
Reason? Logic? Restraint? Holy shit.
A: High Leader, I am begging you—
S: You should beg for forgiveness and nothing else!
Damn right.
She says that he’s wrong to regard Beacon as some sort of victory, and should be grateful his punishment wasn’t more severe. I’m going to guess said punishment was making him downgrade to a substantially less stylish outfit.
LuLaRwe: 10
She remarks on Adam’s sway with the White Fang, and he says he was only trying to follow her example. This ticks Sienna off, and he clarifies he meant “strength, and unwavering conviction”.
Sienna Khan disagrees. She advocates for violence when it’s necessary, she says, but not whatever the hell Adam is up to. She points out that the White Fang is now more of a target than ever before, and without the CCT, they can’t mobilize or communicate as easily. She castigates him not only for this, but for his playing around with humans, humans they know nothing about—meaning Salem’s faction, or at least Hazel and Cinder.
S: These are not examples of strength, Adam. They are examples of your talents being diminished by short-sightedness.
Adam says she should just talk to the humans he’s working with if she wants to know more. He calls Hazel into the room. Sienna bristles and stands up, her guards brandishing their weapons. She says bringing a human to this location is grounds for execution, and Hazel pipes up, asking for calm.
On the topic of working together, she says that she begins to think they don’t get what she wants at all—she wants respect, even if it has to come through fear. She does not want to start a race war, especially one the White Fang can’t win.
Adam disagrees with this.
A: We can win a war with the humans. Not just because we have the support of Hazel’s master, but because the faunus are the dominant species of this planet. We’re better than humans. We have everything they have and more. Humans shouldn’t just fear the faunus. They should serve the faunus.
Whatever you’re doing here, Rooster Teeth, it could probably have been achieved without taking a member of an oppressed minority, with a lot of reasons to hate the oppressor faction, and making him effectively advocate for “white genocide”.
Five. Five RSVP points. It would be ten, but the other five are already coming, so…
RSVP: 37 (+5)
I hope I don’t need to tell anyone why this is fucking stupid and insanely offensive, but I’m going to anyway. It makes Adam unrealistic and distances him from his own plight as part of the race rights allegory. Adam was already a goddamn lunatic, but even sociopathic misogynists who try to kill their exes have some root in reality.
And perhaps this might too if it weren’t coming from a very explicit parallel to race relations in America, and terms like “dominant species on the planet” weren’t being thrown around. Very few people are likely to hear that without thinking of the second World War and the Nazi party’s embrace of such demented logic. But we aren’t meant to think of that. In RWBY terms, this is an American black dude saying black people should rise up and destroy white people because black people are racially superior, like some absurd fantasy had by a Klan member.
Wrap your head around that, and you start to see why this is the point where a good portion of RWBY’s fanbase just became too disgusted with this subplot to stay with the show any further.
And I apologize if this is confronting the allegory a little too bluntly, but that’s what it is! And the biggest issue is that this wasn’t necessary! You could’ve just had Adam say he was convinced a race war, stupid as that is, was the only way to secure faunus rights! Why go this route?! Was there nobody saying this was a stupid idea?!
Sienna, holding back a lot by not calling Adam a foaming crazy person, says this conversation is done and orders her guards to take Adam away. They do not comply.
Cue the ominous music and the twist: Sienna’s guards are in Adam’s pocket. More of them enter, brandishing weapons evidently meant for Sienna. Even Hazel has to call out the bizarreness of this latest course of action:
H: …What are you doing?
Adam declares himself High Leader of the White Fang, and every weapon but one is aimed at Sienna.
She tells him she won’t just stand down and fall under his rule, but she’s barely finished her sentence before Adam has shoved Wilt though her body.
He thanks her for her service to the community and then tosses her down the steps to the floor. She dies.
RSVP: 42 (+5)
*sigh*
Again? Really?
Guys, you almost had it. You had the cure for the major problem with your racial rights allegory! You had a way to convince fans you weren’t basic writers with such one-and-two world views as to think any nonviolent form of protest immediately disqualifies racial equality activists! Sienna Khan just spent the entirety of her screentime drawing a thick, indignant line between violent protests as activism and the terrorism Adam has been endorsing up until now!
And Adam—meaning Rooster Teeth—just stuck a sword in that, because that's not something they have time for.
The enormity of this blunder isn’t the only thing warranting the five points, as Sienna is very noticeably a dark-skinned character, cut down by a white dude.
Also?
Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 34
*bellowing at the top of his lungs*
AURA, YOU DINGBATS!!!
Man, you guys really did receive some major budget cuts this season, didn’t you? Because immediately after that lovely extended fight scene between Weiss and the badly-behaved shippers, you had a likeable character just skewered without a fight!
There is no reason Sienna Khan shouldn’t have taken some modicum of effort to kill! This is like when you’re playing a video game and instead of a boss fight, you just get a cutscene where the boss kills your character! Except this isn’t a video game, this is a web show! Where the fuck is Shinjiro, he’s gonna need to start ripping this show apart with me, man.
Ill Logic: 63
Because that didn’t make sense within the established rules of the universe.
Fauxminism: 24
For taking a quickly-likable female character with an interesting worldview and chucking her in the garbage.
Threatening Enemies: 16
For how Adam organized a coup with no apparent purpose since killing Sienna was evidently as easy as walking up to her and sticking her.
The fandom hated this scene, man. They were in an uproar, and I’m right there with them.
Adam gives the official story the others are to repeat: Sienna was struck down by a human huntsman, and is now a martyr for the cause. Hazel, who seems generally disgusted with all this, asks when Adam was going to mention this part of today’s schedule. Adam wipes the blood from his sword and simply says it was none of Hazel’s business. Hazel objects, and Adam simply says that now, Salem doesn’t have to worry about Sienna’s willingness to work together.
The episode’s almost over, so what’s left?
On the Mistrali shoreline, the wreckage of Weiss’ cargo ship is in flames. Weiss herself is alive, though not in good shape. Before she can get up, she’s set upon by strangers, who she begs help of. But these strangers don’t seem like the helpful sort.
R: I think we just hit the jackpot.
The episode ends, but unfortunately, we can’t go ahead to the next one yet. There’s some stuff we need to talk about. Most notably, the unnamed Atlesian pilot dude that Weiss owes her life to.
This character is allegedly named “Fenix Atar” in commentary, and it’s confirmed that the crash killed him.
Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 36 (+2)
(The extra point is for the White Fang Lieutenant, who I just remembered left the show without one of these points. If Fenix here is worth one, mister jacked chainsaw dude sure as hell is.)
I’m gonna write a fic about him. It’s gonna be one of those dumb, self-indulgent fics that focuses almost exclusively on ignored background characters with whole personalities crafted from nothing. I don’t know what it’s gonna be about besides that, but I’m gonna do it.
Alright, enough funnying around. I wouldn’t ordinarily use a point like this for a one-off character that didn’t even get named in-story, but Fenix here was unusually involved in the plot, with rather unprecedented amounts of dialogue and even his own little moments of badassery, so it’s a shame they killed him off so quickly. You know why else it’s a shame?
How to Piss Off Gay People: 9
*literally shaking with anger*
Okay, you know what? I was going to save this for later in this volume, because the big points aren’t until then, but I guess I have to say this now.
It should go without saying that if you aren’t gay, shut up. If you are gay and think I’m being overbearing, you’ll live. Because yes, Fenix, aka Background Gay #2 and Dead Background Gay #1, was confirmed to be such outside the story. They were going to have him talk about a boyfriend back in Atlas, but cut it since they didn’t want to land in the Bury Your Gays graveyard.
Miles Luna? Kerry Shawcross? Every single writer out there who wants to have gay characters in your story? Every one of you facing pressure from an online crowd who’s taken notice that all of the main characters happen to be straight and cis? Every one of you wondering how to write gay people into your story for any reason?
Here are the four things you don’t ever do with your gay characters. Your gay characters do not count for “representation” if they fit into any of the following criteria:
- They die/are dead.
- They exist in the background
- They are a villain
- They exist to suffer and be miserable
Breaking any of these rules means that you don’t have “representation” you have homophobia.
And before ye of the comments guild open your mouths, I don’t wanna hear it. I don’t wanna hear how this is too restrictive a list, about how it’s not realistic, I don’t wanna hear the arrogantly exasperated responses acting as though this list comprises some unreasonable set of demands.
Because guess what? Straight, cis characters get to avoid all of these bullet points all the time! The number of straight characters who live the lives of upright protagonists who don’t die and don’t live as miserable shells of themselves is literally innumerable—it’s most of fiction!
Are there clauses and contexts and exceptions to these rules? Sure, but it will be gay people telling gay stories who make them—you, straight writers with a financial investment in the published world, can shut the fuck up and stick to the lesson plan.
I’ve coined the term (I think) “wokeaphobia” to refer to incidences of this, which all too commonly prove that the financial investment comes before and often absent the actual respect for gay audiences that representation is supposed to come from. Fulfilling any one of these conditions turns your “ripperzentayshun” into homophobia, and you can flush the accolades down the toilet. And if you run afoul of all four of these conditions? You’re Voltron, which I think we can all remember to have died with more gay people angry at it than fondly appreciating it.
And regarding the specific case of this “Fenix” character, I’m just sitting here looking at this wiki page for him, blinking dumbfoundedly at the bullet referencing the commentary that clarified his sexual orientation.
- “Miles Luna has stated that there was cut dialogue of the Pilot mentioning having a boyfriend back in Atlas. While they wanted to have more LGBTQ+ representation, they were concerned that their first confirmed LGBTQ+ character would be killed off so quickly.”
I’m always confused when writers and directors fess up to shit like this. I mean, what are you expecting, appreciation? “God bless Rooster Teeth for being so socially aware”? Let me just get into the mindspace for that, see how it works:
*ahem*
“Oh thank god! RWBY was going to have an actual gay character, but he was going to die! And because Miles Luna respects me so much, he decided to axe the part about the guy being gay, so he’d still die but wouldn’t be gay, and we’d be left with the same amount of gay characters as before!”
You’re just trading out Bury Your Gays for Hide Your Gays, my dude. The fuck do you want, a medal?
And guys, you’re not gonna believe this. I couldn’t think of a place to put it, since this is literally never relevant, but I guess this is the best place to talk about Unimportant Gay Characters since that’s the subject.
Between Volumes Five and Six, guess what? Remember that RWBY manga-slash-comic book series, that started up around Volume Two-ish? Written and drawn by some not-MKG dude (E.C. Myers), and declared “canon until it isn’t” so they could approve anything useful that came out of it and toss anything that ended up contradicting them?
Said manga, which has been almost completely unnoticed since it started, is where we got the magnanimous reveal that…Scarlet is gay!
Don’t “who’s Scarlet?” me! Scarlet David! You know, the red-headed dude on Sun’s team?
*laughing despite mind-melting rage*
Yep. Scarlet David, the shortest, least overtly masculine member of his team, who has had exactly one line in the show, and has been famously (as exhaustively documented by myself) ignored, skipped over, and shoved to the background for the entire duration of his stay in the show so far. In that same manga, he gets a boyfriend later on, Nolan Porfirio, a stunning character who’s so involved in the story that I don’t even have to tell you what dumb acronym his team had.
*laughing, and holding several sharp objects*
Allegedly, Miles Luna suggested the idea to Myers or whoever the hell it was, which I totally believe at this point given how things have progressed so far.
How to Piss Off Gay People: 10
You know, I’ve occasionally wondered if I’m being too hard on these guys. Must be a lot of pressure to get shit right, with a sizable portion of the internet breathing down your neck over this kind of thing. But I just can’t be lenient. Miles, Kerry, this isn’t that hard.
It’s Volume 5 now! People have been asking for gay characters since 2013! Legend of Korra’s twist relationship upgrade that closed out the show might have been arguably out of left field, but it still took a decent amount of balls—and that was back in the last weeks of 2014. When this volume of RWBY was airing, Colton Haynes was taking it up the ass for American Horror Story!
(Okay, not the greatest example—Haynes’ season of AHS has some wild homophobia of its own going on, but that’s not the point).
It should not be like pulling fucking teeth to get a gay character we can actually enjoy out of you guys! If you’re sitting here handing us out Plant Guys and Pilot Boi and Scarlet Fucking David (comic book only), what exactly am I supposed to think except that you don’t want gay characters in your story? What am I supposed to think, except that you view gays as icky and a burden set on you by the mean internet that you feel should be fulfilled with the least effort possible?!
That concludes today’s remarks. I’m gonna take some Tylenol and go eat my fucking weight in cake to get over this.
*sigh* Except I can’t leave yet. We still have another episode to get through. 
No. Fuck you, I’m not ready yet. 
Here’s the fucking points for SSN and Winter.
Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 38 (+2)
V5E3, “Unforeseen Complications”
*muttering darkly*
Ghira Belladonna is stalking around the foyer of the Belladonnas’ house and staring at a paper in his hands watched by Kali, Blake, and Sun. No one says anything for a minute, until Kali asks if he’s ready. The paper is a speech, and he will be addressing the people of Menagerie today. Kali hugs her husband, joined by Blake, and Sun offers a supportive clap on the back.
Ghira opens his front doors, confronted by hundreds of faunus all making their way down to his front lawn to hear him speak. Several humans with press passes are in the audience, recording, as are Fennec and Corsac. In the audience, I mean, not recording.
Ghira clears his throat and speaks:
G: Thank you all for assembling here. I wanted to take time to address some of the rumors that have been circulating around our island. I believe that it is important for the people of this territory to understand the truth. No matter how you feel about the human race, I think we can all agree that the event now known as the Fall of Beacon was a tragedy. A tragedy that will set both man and faunus-kind back. While the main aggressor is still unknown, we do have official confirmation that Adam Taurus... [glaring at Fennec and Corsac] ... the leader of a powerful splinter group working inside the White Fang,
This is technically true, though we all know he’d like to call it for the bullshit it is.
was partially responsible for these attacks. His actions not only tarnished the reputation of an organization originally created to bring peace and equality to all, but to our entire race. With each day that this man remains unpunished, it becomes increasingly difficult to condemn those that look down upon us.
RSVP: 43
That point is for the part the bolded segment of Ghira’s speech.
Because that smacks of “Okay, even if we can’t call violent forms of protest morally wrong, surely it’s worth mentioning that it just makes white people humans right to hate ethnic people faunus?”
Yes, you can condemn racists for being racist and a racist establishment for being racist. Even if members of the group they’re racist towards have resorted to violence (and yes, I do still acknowledge the difference between Sienna’s violence and Adam’s…many issues). I’m sorry, but that leaned a little too close to Ghira all but saying “well, if we let Adam run around, we’d deserve to be second-class citizens!”
G: Recently, a spy from the same splinter group set their sights on this very home. My own daughter, Blake, and her friend did their very best to apprehend this individual. While they were unsuccessful after being physically assaulted and seriously injured, they were successful in obtaining the assailant's Scroll. [Ghira takes out the Scroll] With this, we have been able to ascertain that Adam Taurus has plans to overthrow the current leader of the White Fang, Sienna Khan, and take over the reins himself.
The crowd starts to murmur, shocked at this news, and Ghira continues.
G: His radical plans do not stop there. The documents on this scroll proclaim his next target to be Haven Academy and its attached CCT Tower. Their plan is to strike on the last full moon before the beginning of the fall semester, roughly two months from today. I have sent my swiftest messenger to the government of Mistral, but I believe we have a greater responsibility. My relationship with the White Fang has been... an interesting one. Years ago, I led the organization to help try and create a world where I, and every Faunus who wished, could walk alongside the human race. And while I believe we made great strides toward this goal, it was made clear to me that the people both in and out of the White Fang wanted faster results. So I stepped down, and Sienna Khan was appointed as my successor. It's true that I do not fully condone many of her methods. What I do condone is what Sienna fights for: the idea that the Faunus and humans are, and should be, equal. Adam Taurus does not seem to have that goal in mind. What he has done benefits no one but himself. I think it's time that the Faunus showed the world that we are equals! Time that we snuff out this splinter group, and restore the White Fang to what it once was!
Man, thank god for the RWBY wiki for having these transcripts. It saves me a lot of time. From 2:42 to 6:05, Ghira talks for 3 minutes and 23 seconds. So, a little over half of Ruby’s record so far.
Cheers follow Ghira’s suggestion, and emboldened by this, he makes known his plan: go to Haven, and fight to protect it. The audience is…not quite as enthused at this, to no one’s surprise. Sensing this, Ghira throws his daughter under the bus—er, invites Blake to share her story. Before she has a chance to speak, however…
I: TRAITORS!!!
Ilia, wearing her White Fang mask, reveals herself amongst the crowd. Sun murmurs her name warily, and Ilia calls them cowards, and castigates them for asking the faunus to help the oppressors who have put them through so much. Ghira tries to be placating, but Ilia reminds the watching crowd of what the faunus have suffered, including being hunted down.
Ilia continues her tirade, saying the Belladonnas are the worst types of faunus for wanting to work with humans. She calls on the surrounding faunus citizens to flock to Adam Taurus, who she says will bring the faunus the future they deserve.
I: And if you’re unwilling to fight, know that the White Fang will do it for you!
S: SHUT UP!
Ilia, still wearing her mask, hasn’t noticed Sun slinking into the crowd. He gives himself away with his shout, and she dodges his flying tackle, grappling herself out of harm’s way with her whip. She flees, with a nearby faunus calling for her to be apprehended. Fennec and Corsac regard this situation quietly among themselves.
Cut to Oscar, sitting amongst RNJR.
N: Did he age backwards?
J: He’s possessed!
LR: Or reincarnated!
R: Oh, isn’t it weird?
Everyone is crowded around him, and Qrow hints that they should maybe give Oscar space. Oscar locks eyes with Ruby, who gives him a friendly smile, and he shyly notes he’s never met girls Huntsmen and Huntresses before. Ruby responds that it’s their first time meeting someone with two souls.
Q: We need to have a talk. Mind showing us your little parlor trick, kid?
What he is talking about is surrendering control of his body to Ozpin—in which he’ll still be present and aware. Yes, that is still phenomenally creepy.
Taking a deep breath, Oscar lets go, and with a greenish flash of light surrounding him, Ozpin takes control, eyes glowing more yellow than before.
Oz: It is so very good to see you again, students.
I’m not so sure. Everyone present recognizes the voice, layered though it is, as Ozpin’s. He says it must be perplexing, and Nora rightly tacks on “alarming”, “bizzare”, and “really kind of hard to believe overall”. Ozpin says they must have all been through tremendous hardship, and apologizes.
R: I mean… It’s not your fault.
It kind of is, though? And Ozpin agrees. He clarifies that he’s “cursed”, meaning that his soul always moves to a new body when he dies. The ‘Professor Ozpin’ they knew him as before was not his first body, and nothing whatsoever is going to be said of who the body originally belonged to. 
He calls himself the combination of a huge number of men who have spent their lives trying to protect Remnant. Ozpin confirms the existence of those Good and Bad god brothers, saying it was them who cursed him, as punishment for failing to stop Salem in the past (this will be completely contradicted later). But they have to stop her now, he says. And the first step to doing that, he says, is ensuring the safety of the relic of knowledge.
So, just staying here and keeping a lookout, then?
We cut to Weiss, who was in the biggest of pickles last time we saw her, although at least she’s not gay and dead like someone we know. Yes, I’m still pissed about that. She’s in a cage, literally, and her hands are bound. Nearby bandits notice she’s awake and mock her questions as to where she is and what’s going on, and the tent over her cage is entered by the short-haired lady we saw in the intro.
???: You know, I never thought we’d see a Schnee in this camp.
The bandits stand at attention, murmuring her name—Vernal. Vernal has Myrtenaster in hand, and Weiss, narrowing her eyes, stands up and coldly asks what she wants. 
Well, trafficking is apparently an effort Raven’s tribe doesn’t find worth the time, Vernal says, but an exception was made for a Schnee. Weiss correctly surmises that they intend to ransom her back to Jacques. Vernal doesn’t like the attitude Weiss takes, and advises her not to make things “complicated”.
W: What’s going to make it complicated is when my sister finds out that I didn’t make it to Mistral.
Weiss warns her that Winter won’t take long to find her, but Vernal fills her in: all of Ironwood’s scouts and soldiers were recalled when he closed Atlas’ borders, so Winter isn’t coming.
There it is, confirmation that Winter’s role in this volume was nothing but a cocktease. I already gave it the Rooster Tease points, and Road to Nowhere points back in Volume Four, and the Someday points are coming at the end of the episode anyway. But it's worth mentioning how this really is just yanking the audience's chains. Per MKG's commentary, the "won't always be around to save you" line from Winter in the Weiss short was supposed to be confirmation that the prior indications Winter would be in Mistral were a "red herring".
That's not a red herring. The Master's knocking in the final season of Tennant's run on Doctor Who was a red herring. The audience was led to believe the Doctor's death would be heralded by someone "knocking" four times, which was teased until finally coming to fruition via the Master, who made the sound in reference to the double heartbeat noise in his head that drove him insane. But the Doctor successfully defeats the Master. The man who knocks ends up being Wilfred Mott, a close friend of the Doctor's who needs to be let out of a glass box...which the Doctor can only do by being exposed to a lethal amount of radiation. The clue is presented well beforehand and the audience believes that they know the full circumstances of the Doctor's death, only to be surprised at who the clue was actually leading to.
You indicating that Winter, a well-liked character who had received precious little screentime, would be coming back in Volume Five and then going "haha, no, she's actually not in this season" is just you lying to your audiences. You assholes.
We cut back to RNJR+Qrow+Oscar.
Nora is excited, since having Ozpin around must mean all their problems are solved, right? Well, apparently not. Even though, as it turns out, all three of the other headmasters (Ozpin says “four”, so I’m gonna guess he’s including Glynda) are supposed to answer to him, Oz doesn’t like how Lionheart is behaving.
Oz: He isn’t just behaving irrationally. He’s disobeying specific instructions I left him.
Look: we the viewers know that Lionheart is in Salem’s pocket. Oz and co, however, don’t. Lionheart’s excuses for not immediately going to get the spring maiden, however untrue, do make sense as they’ve been presented. With that in mind, this just looks like more of Ozpin’s pouting that he always does whenever people don’t do what he says.
Not a Reliable Leaders point, but a rather dumb way to get the characters out from under Lionheart’s direction.
Ozpin is suspicious and recommends not letting anyone know he’s “paired” with Oscar. Paired, parasitized, eh, same thing, right? Their first step, he says, is enlisting more Huntsmen, which Qrow says can be done by getting hooked up with off-the-radar Huntsmen who do illegal work, and won’t be employed by the Council.
Hey, remember Qrow’s bad luck semblance that’s always on? I’ll bet you do, since it’s gone completely unreferred to since Episode 8 of Volume 4. It kicks in now, with the leg of the coffee table breaking when Qrow rests his foot on it.
Invisembl: 3
N: Good luck with that.
Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 6
Man, that count was premature for a few volumes, there. Glad it’s kicking in now.
Step two, as Ozpin says, involves the four goobers in front of him continuing their training so as to be ready to fight. Ruby protests that they already know how to fight. Ozpin corrects her, pointing the cane in her face.
Oz: You can only fight so long as you have Crescent Rose, and you’re still lacking in hand-to-hand combat.
Band-Aid Brigade: 7
Yeah, that band-aid wasn’t just a one-off, it gets its own little subplot. As I said before, a totally unnecessary one, because it's trying to appease a complaint that was never actually present. RWBY fans didn't need Ruby to learn hand-to-hand, they just needed her to not be rendered a non-player when parted from her scythe.
Oz’s next criticism comes to Jaune, who has yet to unlock his semblance. Oz does not remark on Ren’s relative fragility and lack of stamina as a fighter, nor his complete lack of offensive options considering Stormflower’s track record. Rather, he just says they all have a ways to go before they’re ready to take on Salem’s lot.
Oscar himself also needs to become a fighter, since without an active aura and no actual fighting skills, Ozpin will be a sitting duck with only muscle memory for aid. When asked who will teach them, Ozpin answers that it will be himself. This involves leaping atop a chair and twirling his cane, which involves a spinning gray disc even though that cane has some of the fewest polygons of any weapon yet seen.
LuLaRwe: 11
Can’t give it the fight scene points, but it’s ugly so it’s getting some kind of point.
They’re on a time slot, he says. Even though Ghira said that it was two months until classes resumed at Haven, here Ozpin says it’s one month, messing up what was supposed to be concurrent events again.
Miles, Kerry… Come on, guys, just focus for a bit, please.
Ozpin then puts control back in Oscar’s hands. Oscar plummets to the floor. The episode is not over, but almost.
We cut to Raven’s encampment at night, where Weiss is still in her cage, but working on an escape. She summons a very small version of her ever-faithful knight, the incarnation of her own drive and determination. 
Then the episode ends.
Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 40 (+2)
Counts:
- Jaune: 31
- It Was Right There: 16
- Fauxminism: 24
- Hypocrisy: 20
- Reliable Leaders: 19 + 8
- Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 8
- Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 8
- Threatening Enemies: 16
- Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 40
- Your Fight Scene Sucks: 58 + 20
- Evisceration Evasion: 20
- Evisceration Evasion: 20
- Ill Logic: 63
- Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 19 + 13
- Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 6
- Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 19 + 13
- Band-Aid Brigade: 7
- RSVP: 43
- Road to Nowhere: 9
- Y.A.S. Queen: 9
- Rooster Tease: 15
- LuLaRwe: 11
- The Lovegood Fallacy: 4
- How to Piss Off Gay People: 10
- Invisembl: 3
____________________
30 – Volume 5 Shorts and Premiere | Table of Contents | 32 – Volume 5, Episodes 4, 5, 6, and 7
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Date: 2024-05-27 02:10 am (UTC)From:(Also I would argue one other exception; when there are more dead hetero characters than gay ones, in proportion to their percentages in the starting cast. But that never happens, except occasionally in stuff written by LGBT+ folks, which you already brought up.)
ETA: Oh, and add to the list that Scarlet is the dude with the traditionally female name. That's a little wince-worthy.