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Last time we left off, Volume 9 had finally decided to stop playing around and just become flat-out unpleasant. Let's see if we can somehow top it in the volume's last two episodes.
We open up on a black screen with an unknown female voice stating "The door opened for Alyx at the tree..." As we see a glowing silhouette of a door opening, leading us into a white screen, the voice says that Alyx, before going back home, had a great many questions. A shot of the Great Tree transitions to a storybook image of the same, the page of which turns, and the person turning it is…
S: After all the lessons she'd learned, and the friends she'd made and lost, who had she become?
Yep, that's Summer Rose. Told you we'd be getting that reveal this season. And as a bit of an unfortunate reminder for Miles and Kerry,
NO ONE CARES.
Seriously! What is the point of this reveal if it's linked to some absolute balls-to-the-wall filler season with no logical flow from prior seasons?
Summer Rose continues reading the story, as we observe Yang and Ruby as children in their beads. I've got no idea how old they're supposed to be in this particular flashback. Summer reads out that Alyx heard one more question on the wind: What are you?
The scene shifts to a shot of Ruby Rose, made of wood with tree leaves floating down onto her, eyes closed, before this itself cuts to Jaune bolting out of the Neo Mansion on his rabbit deer, WBY riding behind him. Dramatic and suspenseful music full of trombones is playing as Jaune frustratedly years to know what "this place wants". They stop at the still-flooded village of the Paper Pleasers, bless their souls, and Jaune repeats that he doesn't understand.
W: [placing a hand on his shoulder] We can figure this out.
I don't think you can, Miles.
There's gotta be a way to the tree, she says, just as a familiar digitally-layered voice rings out.
???: Hello there. You appear upset. Would you be so kind as to tell me how I can help?
It's a Paper Pleaser, except it's not made of paper, but gemstone. Red gemstone. You know, like a ruby. *sigh* Really should've had a SLEDGEHAMMER OF SYMBOLOGY count for this one... It holds out some fruit from its basket, supposing they might be hungry. Jaune asks what they are, and as we get cuts of more of this new species, they are identified as the "Genial Gems", and the ruby gem says that they've arrived to clean up this desolated place and make something great. We're shown a shot of the gems working some magic on the water that flooded the lake...
transforming it into a gleaming tower of ice or crystal or something similar as Casey vocals begin to layer over the mystical-sounding track, which is again reminding me of a specific game I once played...
B: This is them, isn't it? They're back.
W: It's...just like they said. They came back from the tree better.
Y: No flood or fire will ever hurt them again.
J: ...By trying so hard to save them, I stopped them from becoming what they needed to be...
*two fingers to forehead* Okay, we gotta talk. Rooster Teeth? And by that I mean everybody who keeps letting Miles and Kerry do this shit without saying anything to stop it? Let's get one thing straight.
Yes, there are plenty of places and cultures where what we typically consider suicide is not considered such. Some of you undoubtedly have examples popping up in your head, more than likely the same ones in mine, which are certain rituals originating in Hindu and Buddhist beliefs. We would look at a sokushinbutsu and see a dead body; the people who pursued or endorsed the ascetic mummification process involved would not. That practice was, culturally, a means of ascending to a higher plane. I'm paraphrasing a lot here, the wiki link is there if y'all wanna explore that topic for yourselves.
That is not what happened to Ruby, though. Just because we know Ruby is almost certainly not literally dead, as in deceased, as in no longer alive, does not clear this latest plot development of being effectively suicide. Ruby was in extreme mental, emotional, and physical distress, and actively chose the "ascension" as a means of escaping that. Whether literal death or 'ascension', she desired to end her specific attachments to the world as they were. She, driven to complete despair, chose not to pursue living as Ruby Rose anymore.
That is suicide. She was not pursuing anything except 'no more of this'. She wanted an escape. You cannot remove the framing and the connotations and say "Well, Ruby didn't self-death after all!" just because she's not actually gone forever.
I have no real point to give this, because somehow I never fathomed Rooster Teeth would do something so offensive as to have their main character commit suicide and then try to cast it as okay because she didn't die. If I need to, I'll make one.
J: I was being selfish because I... I wanted the rush of rescuing someone.
That is getting a point.
Jaune: 87
Because we get it, Jaune sucks and can never save anyone and is a terrible hero et cetera, et cetera. There's no reason we need to be having Jaune time, because as I last recall, we were kind of in a rush to get to the tree and un-death Ruby Rose, were we not?!
W: I think you're asking too much of yourself. We've been telling ourselves that failing means we're no good. But I can guarantee, even the best huntsmen in history... They've all lost.
You know, about ten minutes ago, Ruby Rose was tortured into self-death-ing and an evil cat possessed Neo to go try and do even more awful shit to her. You do remember that, right? Because the tension that should be running high right now is completely absent. Fuck Ruby, I guess, let's all stop and have a sweet little moment to make Jaune feel better.
And, again, that's fucking RWBY at its finest, again. Miles, shut up. There is a difference between failures being a normal part of life and growing from the experience, and failing because you doomed hundreds of thousands of people to die because you stranded them in a monster-filled desert and blew their home countries off the fucking map!!!!
Miles wants RWBY absolved of this "failure" because it theoretically absolves him, too. But it doesn't. He's still an absolute moron for writing that as if the in-story consequences weren't a hundred times bigger than could be solved by some stupid fucking moralizing about failure being a part of life.
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 116
W: [to Jaune] But they were still incredibly brave...and good.
I guess this duty falls to Weiss so we can now all marvel at how things have changed since those days of Jaune's ill-fated crush on her. If Yang and Blake are busy being each other's twoo wuv, Miles might as well get the White Knight he always wanted that everybody has hated since day one.
Yeah I wasn't exaggerating, Jaune tears up and says her name and then she touches his arm and they hug all tender-like even though they've never been particularly close. Fuck it, have another point, considering up until recently Weiss was supposed to be heartbroken because her fucking home got destroyed.
Road to Nowhere: 44
Jaune: 88
Then the girlfriends join in because why stop at only one wammen comforting this tiresome character? We're a third of the way into this episode, are we planning on resolving literally anything today?
J: Maybe that cat was right. I just needed to accept it. It's not a place you go.
And then the group are all swept up in a wave of tree leaves, because now that Yang and Blake have accepted their romance and Jaune has accepted that he sucks and Weiss has accepted...erm, that sometimes you irrevocably change the course of human history and doom countless people, I guess... Well, now that's out of the way, they can find themselves at the tree.
Weiss leads the way and strides right up to a wood-ified Herbalist.
Yang somehow detaches herself from her girlfriend long enough to spot Ruby's wood-grown statue, and in distress, begins breaking branches off of it, attempting to free her sister.
J: This is why the tree brought us here.... Acceptance.
W: We've done everything we can. Now it's up to Ruby.
*swelling and turning red*
Did you?! Did you really do everything you could, when you sat there for thirty seconds and watched Ruby drink the tea?! Were you doing everything you could when you sat there and did nothing despite seeing a murderous enemy standing over her?! Were you doing everything you could when you hemmed and hawwed about your own damn problems and treated Ruby like part of the fucking wallpaper?!
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 117
You shit-brained idiots at Rooster Teeth don't even care, you just have shit happen just because!
W: Whatever happens next, we have to welcome that.
Including cancellation? I'd welcome that.
The chick in the black wig that people keep calling "Blake" touches Yang's face romantically as Yang tearfully asks, what if Ruby isn't Ruby anymore when she comes back out?
How To Piss Off Gay People: 109
Just then, in a glow of light, the Herbalist's tree cracks and breaks open, with the caterpillar body now replaced with blue butterfly wings. He flies up and off into the light. Symbolism like that made me vomit, so I'm not showing it to you.
There's like five whole seconds of just a shot of Yang crying with Blake holding her face like she's afraid her head might roll off her shoulders. Yay for face-touching. I know y'all love that, the height of romance, right?
How To Piss Off Gay People: 110
As JWBY wait outside, there's a close-up on Ruby's wood statue that transitions to the real Ruby, floating in some vaguely space-like void.
Between that and the horrible fixation on suicide we've been up to for a few episodes now, I'd say that RWBY is dangerously close to becoming Persona 3. Mock suicide was also a good thing in that game, too, because hey, it means you're facing the inevitability of death!
The dangling plot point of that armored blacksmith woman from the market stall finally comes back as Ruby follows the sound of the hammer striking metal through the starry void. She looks up from the mask she's crafting to say she wasn't expecting Ruby so soon.
Ruby says she wasn't expecting to be here and asks if the blacksmith, herself, is the tree. Sort of, is the rough answer the blacksmith gives, but she says that'd be oversimplifying the tree.
R: ...What's going to happen to me? Am I gonna die?
???: The only thing that can happen to you here is what you want to happen.
*fake brightness* Oh, so she can kill Salem and Ozpin and put everyone's lives back the way they were supposed to go before the train got derailed? *furious* Can it, Miles. I already went over this. Your suidice-as-metamorphosis plot is disgusting.
???: ...You don't know what you want, do you?
Yeah she does. She wanted to die. That much was pretty clear.
Outside, amongst the tree's woods, JWBY's attention is drawn by some kind of clanging, clamoring noise. Right ahead of them, when they turn around, is a grand door, opened wide, white light spilling from behind it. It's the way out! And who should be trying to go through, except Neo Cat! 
Hopefully both these characters go the way of Adam Taurus and are given a merciful excision from this show, there's not much to be done with either of them.
The meeting is tense, and Jaune sums up that Neo can't go through the door. The Cat clarifies that Neo has no attachments to Remnant and nothing to return to, which a) you would think it would've thought about before trying to hitch a ride inside her esophagus and b) isn't true considering she pretty clearly has ill feelings towards Cinder.
???: She has failed me, just like Alyx did.
Then we get exposition, because god knows we haven't heard e-fucking-noughtabout Alyx yet. The Cat says that Alyx promised to bring them back to Remnant with her, and as they describe, had a change of heart after "talking" with the tree, and decided to fix all the shit she broke in the Ever After (Jaune included) while Lewis left for Remnant. Given the way the scene plays out, with the cat turning on her and a blade dropping to the ground, it seems that the Cat killed Alyx for this change of heart.
RSVP: 74
Which is still that point, because we traded the Evil Black Girl for the Dead Black Girl.
The Neo Cat brandishes holographic blue claws,
as Jaune calls it a monster, but then the cat notices the Ruby statue, which thrills it because yay, it might can still bodyjack her instead. It seems like the fight will start in earnest, but we cut back to the starry void where Ruby and the blacksmith are before that can happen. There's about three minutes left in the episode.
In case you were unclear about the suicide metaphors, there's a bunch of fairy lights flying past the two, which the blacksmith identifies as souls, moving on to whatever is next for them. Ruby asks if they get to choose what that is, and the blacksmith wonders whether she's asking for them, or for herself. Then we cut back to the fight.
The battle with the Neo Cat progressed, with it manifesting zombified clones of Ruby Rose to try and take advantage of Yang's fears that what Ruby comes out as could be terrible. 
My fears are realized as it becomes clear they're going to cut back and forth from the conversation Ruby's having to the fight with the Neo Cat and back again, like an even worse version of the way Jaune healing Weiss was chopped up and sprinkled out over two or three whole episodes of Volume 5 like a poorly-dropped line of coke.
Ruby laments to the blacksmith that she tried so hard, but failed to realize her ambitions as a huntress.
R: And... [crying] I may have just done more harm than good.
'May have'. May have. Atlas is gone, Mantle is gone, the citizens of both are being eaten by Grimm in the desert right now.... This is a bit more than doing 'more harm than good', Miles.
There's yet more dithering about who Ruby is and who she's going to be and yes, it's very much a broken record at this point. Let's cut back to the fight.
Jaune is raging at the cat for lying and letting him think Alyx was a bitch when she'd really gotten killed by the Cat, and the Cat's just like, eh, sometimes people lie, saying Jaune's not exactly a brave knight either.
Jaune looks poised to land a deathblow on the Neo Cat, which it prevents by shapeshifting into Penny, causing him a critical moment of hesitation before a cloned Pyrrha comes in to attack from behind. Jaune is floored, and Weiss tries to assist by casting a fireball at the Neo Cat, which just vanishes and causes it to hit Jaune instead.
Thereby knocking Jaune off the tree, which I didn't realize was a thing that could happen because they never showed us any boundaries while they were exploring all this solid ground earlier, and I just assumed the tree was its own little pocket dimension. Just more of shit happening if and when it needs to happen, I guess.
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 118
Back in the starry void, Ruby explores a circle of a hundred or so glass cases that the blacksmith has manifested around her, each bearing a weapon. She asks who these belonged to, and the blacksmith dismisses this question, simply asking if Ruby feels the woman who might hold it if she were to take it.
There's a triple close-up on Ruby's face as she laments that all she can feel anymore is heavy, and it isn't a feeling that goes away. Dissatisfied with not being enough, Ruby's eyes settle on the axe blade that we all know belongs to Summer Rose, as her voiceover from the Volume's first few seconds plays, Ruby remembering the story of Alyx in the Ever After as told to her by her mother. As "What are you?" echoes out again, she takes the axe.
The episode ends.
All that's left now is the finale. How are my predictions looking so far?
- Everyone very noticeably did not use their semblances at all during this episode; even Neo only used hers in the void above Wonderland—oh sorry, the Ever After. I’m going to guess there’s going to be some inhibiting factor that keeps them from using it and handily allows them to not have to animate anything remotely complex. [JOSSED]
- The Jabberwalker is obviously going to be an underling to either Neo or Alice or whoever the Red Queen expy is. [🗸]
- Jaune will, undoubtedly, be way more important than advertised so far. [🗸] And he’ll fuck something up. [🗸]
- The Crown of Choice will pop up somewhere. [PROCESSING...]
- The Bumbleby kiss. [🗸]
- Summer Rose reveal, perhaps? [🗸]
V9E10, "Of Solitude and the Self"
We open up, again, with Summer reading to her toddlers, which has had absolutely zero relation to anything that's been going on this volume and has about twenty minutes to fix that.
S: And on the wind, Alyx heard one more question: 'What are you?' [closing the book and looking at her sleeping children] ...I love you. Just the way you are.
Summer takes the book, sets it on the bedside table, and drops her rose pin on it. So that's the promise Ruby was talking about in Episode 5, I guess, despite the fact we can see that she was asleep and this has still never been alluded to in eight prior volumes.
Ill Logic: 201
We're shown Summer on the first floor of the Xiao Long home in Patch, staring out the window. Taiyang comes downstairs and says it's not like her to rush off on a mission in the middle of the night. The two of them make light of Ozpin's, uh, apparent habit of sending them on pointless patrols? I mean, Summer says they 'know how Ozpin is', Taiyang says it'll turn out to be some ordinary patrol again, and then they parrot something he says a lot about preferring discretion. Weird.
Summer touches a hand to Taiyang's face and promises she'll be back soon, and the two of them hug. 
We cut to Summer walking through a forest, her axeblade in hand. Who should leap down from the trees but Raven Branwen?
R: No one suspects anything?
S: No. They think it's a typical mission.
R: Summer Rose telling lies. First time for everything. [pause; Raven looks uncomfortable] And uh, what about... You're just going to leave them?
S: [disapproving] You're one to talk.
R: It's... You're better at that life. Better than I was.
Wow. Raven Branwen, of all people, gets to stay in character. But I must say, her dipping off back to her Icky Bandit Tribe rather than stay with the family she started with Taiyang does look all the worse given she apparently maintains contact with Taiyang's current wife. Eh, who cares, Summer's better at parenting and shit anyway, right?
S: [bumping Raven's shoulder as she passes] If I do this right, then there's nothing to worry about. Trust me.
R: [sighing and drawing her sword] Let's get it over with, I guess.
Raven opens a portal, and the two of them step through it. We cut to Ruby, back in her starry void with the blacksmith, staring at her reflection in the case holding her mother's axe, and asking what that was. Ruby is distracted by this, wondering how and why her mother could've lied and just left with Raven. The blacksmith responds, asking hey, who knows why people keep the secrets that they do? Surely Ruby's not the only one suffering under the weight of expectations, right?
A frustrated Ruby pushes the case over, and it breaks on the floor of the void, asking if she's just being told it's all useless and not worth trying.
R: Is that the big lesson I'm supposed to learn? [falling to her knees] Just give up...become someone else?
B: Is that what I'm telling you?
Kill her, Ruby, just strangle the bitch. See if straight answers come out faster on short notice.
Meanwhile, Jaune has fallen into a smoky void of his own that, last check, was the sort of thing that resulted in the Herbalist putting the tree's leaves into a potion, not just falling out from under its summit. But I guess Jaune, like Ruby, is now undergoing some kind of metamorphosis.
Ill Logic: 202
Flickering back and forth between his past and current selves, he finds Alyx waiting for him.
A: You were never the hero...
J: Alyx...
A: You couldn't save me.
J: I...couldn't save a lot of people.
A: Maybe it's time for a change. To be the kind of man you've always wanted to be.
Alyx extends her hand, and Jaune takes it, triggering a flash of light that sends Jaune back into the vicinity of battle. He takes note of some of the tree's branches catching fire. I'm going to generously presume that's what knocked him out of the tree dimension and kept him from undergoing death of personality, because at this point I don't think Miles is keeping track of anything he actually writes.
The battle with the NeoCat is still ongoing, 
Not much headway is being made. Blake displays far less melee proficiency than she did in early volumes as usual, and Weiss and Yang do their combo powers thing that makes a thick mist of water vapor that fails to hide them enough to land a hit.
Jaune collapses a tree branch and gets their attention, ordering them to set the leaves of the tree on fire. Without question, WBY follow his orders, causing the cat to cackle. What they say next is difficult to make out, but I think it's "taking a page out of the Callows book", which would be a reference to Tyrian? I checked the transcript and they allegedly said 'caterpillar's book' so it's just the voice work sucking. But then the Neo Cat inhales some of the resulting multicolored smoke and says it has no effect on them. 
Jaune acknowledges this, but says that it will affect Neo. Cue the Neo Cat spasming and falling to their knees, as Neo's various motivations and attachments flash in the background and the music starts to spiral downward.
Aaaaand just like that, the Cat is forced out, Neo gains control over her body back and books it, and then something weird happens.
The Cat is still there, and now gigantic. I am sure Neo will have some role to play in its defeat, and you'll never guess how I know. Looking for all the world like a furry artist's rendition of any feline snack or cereal mascot you'd care to name, it pounces on the group and we smash to black.
We're about four minutes into the episode. We fade back into the starry void, with Ruby kneeling in existential confusion. The blacksmith says her time is running out and that she must choose. Ruby must choose, she says, a self that will either leave her burdens behind, or will be enough to bear them.
We get a flash of the fight as the smith is speaking, which is getting a point for being more gifset gaybait.
How To Piss Off Gay People: 111
Look at how they end up strewn across the ground in a pose perfectly mirroring how they looked when struck down by Adam, with no Jaune or Weiss to clog up the clip.
The cat, who is no longer able to use Neo's powers, doesn't appear to be using its own, and for all intents and purposes is just a very badly-colored Grimm at this point, somehow has the team on the ropes and successfully breaks Jaune's aura.
Your Fight Scene Sucks: 162
In the void, Ruby passes by multiple weapons that don't seem to connect with her. But then, a red light begins shining from behind her, and she hears Summer's promise, saying she loves her just the way she is. Behind her glows the shape of her scythe, Crescent Rose.
R: This one. What happens...if I choose me?
Well, you'd be choosing nothing of any real worth to the viewer, that's for damn sure. As we've understood it so far, choosing "you" would mean choosing everything you hated that came along with it, would it not? I mean, we all knew this was coming. There's not nearly enough time to give these things the weight they need, nor do Miles and Kerry have enough writing ability to make that happen anyway. Ruby's journey here was always going to finish with her just deciding to be okay.
B: Then maybe...that girl is enough.
A lengthy torture scene and a suicide attempt says she isn't. *sigh* Ruby doesn't hate herself anymore because...well, just because, I guess. The new and improved Ruby'll just take her failures as they come, civilization and civilians be damned.
Dragged Kicking and Screaming: 57
You're still getting that one out of spite, though.
A music box version of Red Like Roses plays as Ruby takes her scythe and descends through the darkness, the wooden carving of her cracking with light glowing from within.
Her friends marvel at how she's back and seemingly unchanged, and Jaune says that it's because she knew what she needed to be. We are going to totally ignore the part where the tree's ascension process completely wipes the victim's memories on the way out, because that would be inconvenient.
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 119
Dragged Kicking and Screaming: 58
But there she stands, triumphant, because what the hell else was going to happen? I mean, c'mon.
The cat runs forward to engage, and Ruby fights it.
The Cat can't keep up with Ruby's speed, which she actually uses in conjunction with her scythe for quite literally the first time in the show's history and which has never been something she can't do to fight effectively.
Oh, you hear that? It's the sound of the Too Little, Too Late bell ringing.
Shockingly, Ruby's scythe isn't rendered as a simple spinning disc, which is nice, though she's still getting a point for that ugly-ass semblance blob as per the norm.
LuLaRwe: 77
And unfortunately, despite every die-hard stan saying that yesss, the fight quality is back, it's not. And you know why? Because Ruby is still using her scythe like a sword, trying to slash with the outside wall instead of the inside blade! Miles and Kerry still do not understand that a big giant fuck-you scythe of death like Ruby's is meant to hook around the body in a fight, and doesn't cling-clang off of enemy weapons like a tap-tap sword fight! You don't block huge weapons like that!
But yipee, whatever, Ruby's back.
Angered, the Cat unleashes more cat energy blasts from its mouth, but it's too late. Surrounded, RWBY take the Cat and smash it into the ground by combining all of their powers, which gets one basic LuLaRwe point for Yang's ugly-ass semblance hair,
LuLaRwe: 82 (+5)
and another five for the climactic blow, which is just red, yellow, and purple streaks all bouncing off of some glyphs, because that monkey's paw has arthritis and won't stop curling.
The Cat, defeated, wails that Ruby's supposed to be weak and miserable and confused and broken and whatnot, and WBY says she's not and that's why they follow her.
Actually, let me elaborate on that. What the cat actually says is:
C: You're broken! You break everything you touch! Like all humans... Weak! Confused! Incomplete!
W: No, you're wrong.
Y: She's never been any of those things.
B: That's why we follow her.
After this episode aired, the RWBY cast and crew--most prominently Kerry Shawcross--were all over Twitter, just living it up, playing up the whole thing as some big super-meaningful work of art they put their whole selves into, featuring the over-arching message of 'you are enough'. And they can all kiss my ass, because they know that's not what they wrote.
But it does strike me as missing the point just a bit to have the Cat declare all of these flaws, and have WBY essentially respond that he's wrong about her, and that they follow her because she isn't broken, weak, confused, or incomplete. You would think that what they'd actually respond with, in line with the alleged theme of the volume, they would respond like so:
W: Yes, she is. And that's okay.
Y: No one's strong all the time. We don't need her to be perfect.
B: All she has to be is Ruby.
Which works much better, does it not?
The cat naturally tries to stop them as they proceed past it to the exit to Remnant, of course only to be stopped by Neo's intervention. Damn, my psychic powers just don't quit.
Her vengeance is as gruesome as you'd imagine, with her summoning a group of Jabberwalkers that all devour the cat (bringing her total of defenseless animals she's murdered to two) and, thus, prevent it from ascending. The sounds it makes as it dies are very unpleasant. She then collapses.
This being about the point where the seasonal boss fight is done with, that means we have a whole lot of talking ahead. Behold another Miles-and-Kerry-ism: wrap everything action-related up in the first ten minutes and then drop a bunch of implicating crap for the rest of the episode that's largely told through dialogue.
RWBY run to Jaune's side, Ruby looking back hesitantly at Neo as she goes. There's a big group hug, and Neo looks somberly on as she unconsciously manifests Roman next to her, who marvels at the power of this team's friendship. She wanders to the edge of the tree's platform as the music box tune returns, and looks down into the trees, and bids Roman goodbye with a silent hand against his cheek. He dissolves away into pink glitter.
This chick tortured a teenage girl into killing herself, just a reminder.
Neo takes her bow, and quite literally just exits the whole show, the same way she originally exited it in Volume 3: drifting away on her parasol.
She descends into the tree's branches and therefore ascends, growing into a wood carving extending out from a nearby branch, a decision Ruby gives her blessing to. 
According to everything we discussed, that means she will be erased and come back as someone entirely new, or at least someone with no evil motivations. While functionally a death, this is closer to a redemption than I really care for, so I'm giving it the same points I gave Emerald's titty-redemption in Volume 8.
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 120
Ruby turns back for one last look at the Neo carving, which Yang notices. Ruby is down about how, when she was inside the tree, she never saw Little.
Well, why would you? You never saw the paper pleasers, either. What we've been led to believe so far is that ascension is a rather individual experience.
Ruby says she wishes she could thank Little, and Blake wonders if their stay in the Ever After has made things worse for its denizens. Ruby is just saying she'd like to think they did at least a little good, before someone comes running up, and who should it be but Little? Because actually keeping your memories post-ascension is for Ruby only, Little, now in the body of a larger, more anthropomorphic mouse, does not recognize them, begging the question of why they arrived here or called out for them to wait.
When they ask for RWBY's advice on what they are, they receive such answers as 'a friend', 'a guide', 'a protector', and 'a-dorable'. New Little likes these, and says the following:
???: Yeah, somewhat. I'm not one thing, I'm somewhat of a lotta things!
*tired* Gurl, we get it. We get it. We got the point. The point was made.
Ruby tears up as New Little (who will hereafter be addressed as Somewhat by fans and official material, despite never choosing that as a name onscreen, and being a terrible name besides) says that they do seem familiar, like a happy dream they can't remember. She says she's glad she got to meet them, and is sure they'll help lots of people, and then says it's time to say goodbye, a title drop for a song title that opened a prior volume. 
The two hug, and Jaune gets Little's--sorry, 'Somewhat's'--attention and asks them to look after Juniper, the rabbit deer that's been his steed up til now. They then mount and ride away, clip-clopping along. 
The five then join hands as they ready to walk through the gate, which of course means you-know-what.
How To Piss Off Gay People: 112
We have about six minutes left to wrap this up, now, c'mon people. Walk through the fucking light already.
Rather than going to remnant, when they jump through, they all land in the starry ascension void from before. They stroll forward and find the blacksmith at her smithy, creating little wooden carvings of every character we've seen so far. *sigh* We're not going back to Remnant, are we?
The blacksmith welcomes them to her workshop, and Blake asks if this is the tree, and Jaune steps forward. Welcomed by the blacksmith, who says she's been waiting a long time, Jaune asks if it's true that Lewis went through while Alyx stayed behind. She confirms that this is the case, and that Lewis wrote the resulting story as what he wished had happened.
The team notices two particular wood carvings that look like rather familiar dragons. Lifting her carvings, the blacksmith says that the brother gods--who I repeat, no one cares about--who were previously thought to be the ultimate deities, were the first to inhabit the Ever After, and that the tree did not anticipate what they would become.
B: Back then, the Ever After was overgrown, wild and dangerous. The Brothers were made to tame it, and build the world that was to come after.
Whatever you're doing, Miles, please stop.
I swear to you what you're seeing is not a fever dream, this is actually happening onscreen.
As the blacksmith describes, the Brothers were first given the power to destroy, to clear away the overgrowth, and then to create, to facilitate civilization. I am having terrible flashbacks of Baby Ridley from Metroid: Other M. That is not a game you want to make me think of.
Weiss asks for the tea on Remnant, and the blacksmith essentially describes the Brother Gods as outgrowing their original roles and looking to create their own world, and by creating the Curious Cat, they manufactured a creature that could do their Ever After jobs for them, finding the broken parts and fixing them--demonstrated via the cat's "heart" being given to other creatures. The Jabberwalker was another such creature, designed to work roughly the same process, but was an abject failure and then the Dark God was pissy about this being acknowledged.
There's some moralizing about what balance is and isn't, which leads us to this shot:
which looks like something out of a much less interesting Ib. The blacksmith continues to exposit, saying the tree created an exit to Beyond once the Ever After could no longer contain the Brother Gods, one that would remain open for their return one day and OH MY GOD WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING?!
*ripping own hair out* I don't care about this! No one cares about this!!! Vacuo's full of displaced citizens getting eaten by Grimm and Ruby and Neo both committed suicide, why the hell would I care about the objectively least entertaining bit of bullshit Miles and Kerry ever cooked up for this show?!
The blacksmith praises the effects on the Ever After that RWBYJ have had, and that Alyx and Lewis had even though we have no idea how Alyx or Lewis originally got down here and probably never will. Ruby making friends with Little, she says, caused a wonderful change, while one terrible mistake (Alyx breaking her promise to the Cat) had consequences, as the Cat was not designed with its own ascension in mind and thus was not able to get 'fixed' after becoming unhappy, retroactively turning the cat from an evil manipulative bastard to an evil manipulative bastard with essentially the same tragic backstory trappings as Neo, only he got viciously torn apart and permanently killed for it while she got the prettiest death-but-we-aren't-calling-it-that ever. Ruby asks what'll happen to Neo, and the blacksmith brandishes Alyx's knife as she says that Neo will have the chance to come back as something new.
B: When Alyx's life ended, she chose to leave a part of herself behind, a wish to fix what she had broken.
So the blacksmith gives Jaune Alyx's knife, and he magically turns back into his old self but with white streaks still in his hair. You know, to really let everyone know he's the true protagonist of the show, and also that nothing will ever really change even if they have to resort to hand-wave stuff like this.
So, ultimately, Alyx's death still somehow circled around to benefit Jaune somehow. Lovely. Combine that with Neo bowing out of existence a few minutes ago?
Fauxminism: 69 (+2)
Jaune: 89
The blacksmith conjures up a portal, and when Ruby asks where it'll take them, the blacksmith corrects her.
B: Not where. When you are needed most.
Oh my fucking god, please just stop avoiding the Vacuo issue.
Naturally, Blake and Yang hold hands and go first.
How To Piss Off Gay People: 113
Weiss and Jaune go through next because that's a thing now, and Ruby leaves after thanking the blacksmith. What do they find when they exit the portal on the other side?
A rocky desert landscape with airships floating through the sky and what looks to be something akin to the Amity Colosseum floating in the distance.
The implications of this aren't something we're given time to consider, as the credits play immediately thereafter.
Once those are over, we get an advertisement for that dumb RWBY x Justice League crossover movie (it ended up being two movies and apparently they both made very little noise), aaaaaaand...that's it.
That's seriously it. That might very well be the last thing we ever see from RWBY. And in any case, we have to hope so.
Is there anything else to say about Volume 9 in particular? Well, I don't know if anyone noticed, but I kind of forgot my promise to award a Road to Nowhere point for each episode that didn’t check back up on Vacuo. So here’s that now.
Road To Nowhere: 53 (+9)
So that's one for each episode since the premiere, and no, that last parting shot of what might be Vacuo and what might be a time period that actually connects the plot to Volume 8's events does not count. We can also look at my predictions from the Volume opener.
- Everyone very noticeably did not use their semblances at all during this episode; even Neo only used hers in the void above Wonderland—oh sorry, the Ever After. I’m going to guess there’s going to be some inhibiting factor that keeps them from using it and handily allows them to not have to animate anything remotely complex. [JOSSED]
- The Jabberwalker is obviously going to be an underling to either Neo or Alice or whoever the Red Queen expy is. [🗸]
- Jaune will, undoubtedly, be way more important than advertised so far. [🗸] And he’ll fuck something up. [🗸]
- The Crown of Choice will pop up somewhere. [JOSSED]
- The Bumbleby kiss. [🗸]
- Summer Rose reveal, perhaps? [🗸]
Other than that, I guess all we can do now is go to the Final Thoughts and sum up the Volume as a whole.
Counts:
- Jaune: 89
- It Was Right There: 64
- Fauxminism: 69
- Hypocrisy: 57
- Reliable Leaders: 80 + 17
- Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 17 (RETIRED)
- Threatening Enemies: 59
- Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 106
- Your Fight Scene Sucks: 162 + 35
- Evisceration Evasion: 35
- Ill Logic: 202
- Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 120 + 108
- Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 50
- Band-Aid Brigade: 58
- Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 50
- RSVP: 74
- Road to Nowhere: 53
- Dragged Kicking and Screaming: 58
- Y.A.S. Queen: 20
- Rooster Tease: 37
- LuLaRwe: 82
- The Lovegood Fallacy: 17
- How to Piss Off Gay People: 113
- Invisembl: 14
- Broke-Ass Clowns: 79
- Shut the Fuck Up: 24
____________________
57 – Volume 9, Episodes 7 and 8 | Table of Contents | Volume 9 Final Thoughts
no subject
Date: 2023-11-29 04:49 am (UTC)From:Ruby's journey here was always going to finish with her just deciding to be okay.
This whole thing is so goddamn awful. Oh yeah, Ruby TOTALLY made a conscious, informed decision. She tried to kill herself, we'll have to welcome that. She might be GONE, we'll have to welcome that. Jesus FUCK.
People kill themselves because they feel trapped, and like it's the only way to end the pain. It's not magical, not profound, it's extremely sad.
Ruby should have accepted that she wasn't okay. That she needed help, and that it is okay not to be invincible, to be vulnerable. But noooo, mental illness is something that you can think yourself out of!
Her vengeance is as gruesome as you'd imagine, with her summoning a group of Jabberwalkers that all devour the cat (bringing her total of defenseless animals she's murdered to two) and, thus, prevent it from ascending. The sounds it makes as it dies are very unpleasant.
I watched this on Youtube, and it's so horrible. At the end of the day, it's a CAT. It's a domestic animal that's being eaten alive, and wanted to go to another world after its creators abandoned it. This isn't fun to watch. This isn't cathartic in the least. It leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.
Weiss and Jaune go through next because that's a thing now, and Ruby leaves after thanking the blacksmith.
So they're not going to ask how to defeat Salem or prevent the gods from destroying the world? They're literally talking to an ancient being that's been around since who knows how long.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-29 05:42 am (UTC)From:If the tree god didn't care to keep the gods from blowing up humanity the first time, I doubt she cares about stopping it a second time.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-30 02:28 pm (UTC)From:The characters didn't even bother to ask. Of course, it's probably a good thing that the lore dump didn't go on for longer. (Seriously, who does exposition at the end of a season/volume? It isn't even relevant to the rest of the volume.)
no subject
Date: 2023-11-30 04:45 pm (UTC)From:What it does slightly better, I think, is the other aspect of this kind of exposition which is that it can recontextualise moments from earlier on in the story: once you learn who the murderer is then you see all their words and actions a little bit differently when you reread. And to an extent this works: knowing that the Brother Gods are making the rules up as they go along, and that the only reason for this whole 'balance of life and death' thing that caused all of the trouble with Salem in the first place was as a failed attempt to keep the peace between the two of them does make the Lost Fable look a little bit different, and it does make the gods look even worse than they did in Volume 6. But again, you're still left with the problem that the gods aren't relevant enough to RWBY's overall story to make it worthwhile to stop and find this information out about them. How does it help? It doesn't change anything.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-01 03:55 am (UTC)From: