“no, that is what you do. i want to know why you do it: the honest reason as to why you became huntresses.”
“what exactly does a huntress do?”
“fight… monsters, i guess? i’m sorry, i don’t understand why this matters.”
“i don’t understand how you don’t understand! i am an herbalist. i make medicines and remedies to help others on their journeys. that is what i am. so, do you know what a huntress is, or do you guess?”
“huntresses are heroes. we protect those who can’t protect themselves.”
“we all have our titles, our roles to play. but in order to help you become whatever it is you need to become, you should really have a better understanding of what you are now.”
“i’m a thrill-seeker. i want to travel around the world and get wrapped up in as many crazy adventures as i can, and if i help people along the way, then that’s even better.” -> “i’ve just kind of always, gone with the flow you know? and that’s fine, i mean, that’s who i am. but how long can i really do that for? i wanna be a huntress... not really because i want to be a hero, but because i want the adventure. i want a life where i won’t know what tomorrow will bring, and that’ll be a good thing. being a huntress just happens to line up with that.” -> “my losses, my failures? those more than anything are what have shaped me into who i am, showed me how i need to grow. if there’s something i’m missing, it’s not because i lost it. it’s because i haven’t found it yet, and the only way to do that is to keep going. i am a huntress.”
“i’m a schnee. i have a legacy of honor to uphold. once i realized i was capable of fighting, there was no longer a question of what i would do with my life. it was my duty.” -> “when i said i wanted to honor my family’s name, i meant it. but it’s not what you think; i’m not stupid. i’m fully aware of what my father has done with the schnee dust company. […] which is why i feel the need to make things right. if i had taken a job in atlas, it wouldn’t have changed anything. my father was not the start of our name, and i refuse to let him be the end of it.” -> “i am the granddaughter of a hero and the child of a villain. i am a citizen of a fallen kingdom and an heir to nothing. i will not be defined by my name because i will be the one to define it. i am weiss schnee, and i am a huntress.”
“there’s too much wrong in this world to just stand by and do nothing. inequality, corruption… someone has to stop it.” -> “all my life, i’ve fought for what i thought was right. i had a partner named adam. more of a mentor, actually. he always assured me that what we were doing would make the world a better place. but of course, his idea of a perfect future turned out to be not perfect for everyone. i joined the academy because i knew that huntsmen and huntresses were regarded as the most noble warriors in the world, always fighting for good. but i never really thought past that.” -> “a simple life wouldn’t be my life. my family, my friends, my culture, i belong to them just as much as they belong to me. to give that all away wouldn’t be simplicity—it would be betrayal. i am a huntress.”
“i see lives that could have been saved. as a huntsman, it is my job to protect the people, and although i am capable of doing it with traditional weaponry, i believe i can make am uch larger impact if i do it with my mind. as a teacher, i'm able to take knowledge, the most poewerful weapon of them all, and place it in the hands of every student that passes through my classroom. i look at this wasteland, and i see lives that could have been saved, but i also see an opportunity: an opportunity to study these ruins and learn from this tragedy, and therefore become stronger. i am a huntsman, ruby, because there is nothing else in this world i would rather be.”
despite what blake told the herbalist, "huntress" does not mean "hero" to her or to yang or to weiss. to yang, a huntress is someone who embraces loss as a reason to change and accepts failure as an opportunity for growth. to weiss, being a huntress means refusing to be limited or defined by the preconceived notions of who she is or what she should be, because her own actions are what matter. and to blake, being a huntress means being part of her community, inseparable from her community, and rejecting simplicity because she understands that the world is not simple. all three of them have made "huntress" the foundation of their own identities, but they have done so by understanding "huntress" to mean whatever it is they find in the core of their selves, without respect for what "huntress" means to the rest of the world. all of them chose this label before they quite understood what it meant, and upon finding its denotative meaning inadequate to define them they simply redefined the label.
but ruby? to ruby, a huntress is a hero who protects those who cannot protect themselves, like a character in a fairytale—except real life isn't a fairytale, so the duty of a huntress is to make it one.
she has never been challenged to define what "huntress" means for her. she has never been asked to truly examine or articulate why she wants to be a huntress, and thus instead of taking the label and tailoring it to fit herself the way yang, blake, and weiss did, ruby tailored herself to fit the label and now, forced to confront how poorly it fits, she can see only a personal failure and cannot conceive of any way out except to stop being herself altogether.
also wby aren't done yet. "i am a huntress" is explicitly not a complete statement; they answered the herbalist's question but they didn't answer oobleck's
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