Winter was never as good a singer as Weiss, but she LOVES singing, and one of her favorite things to do that she absolutely cannot admit to ANYONE is... karaoke. Winter goes to karaoke bars in Atlas to unwind (she probably wears a scarf or something to hide her hair and be there incognito), she has absolutely organized many karaoke nights when she was a student at Atlas Academy, to various degrees of success, and she FOR SURE owns a karaoke machine. If you’re a soldier posted at the Academy, and you happen to walk by Winter’s quarters, and you hear someone belting out “I NEED A HERO” or the remnant equivalent of this song, well. Either you have the common sense to never mention it to anyone ever, or you’ll probably find yourself inexplicably deployed in Argus for a while.
Anyway, all that to say: I want a post-canon victory party where Winter teaches Penny karaoke, and they do a duet and it’s such a terrible rendition Weiss has to resist the temptation to plug her ears, but everyone claps and cheers at the end because it’s a very wholesome sight <3
When I first saw the notification out of the corner of my eye, I misread this as Weiss Schnee, so I was forming that answer in my head and now I have to recalculate.
Obviously I absolutely love Winter Schnee and I feel like my love for her is a really nice parallel with Cinder. I know a lot of people like to compare them as narrative foils, now especially, but what’s so great about the two of them is they do have really similar backgrounds but incredibly different outlooks. Cinder’s desires are driven by self-interest, because she feels you can’t rely on other people and although most things will end in destruction and violence, it’s best to elevate yourself as high above the bloodshed as you can, to outlive and outlast.
Winter on the other hand does not see any value in herself. Most of her actions are self-less, as really exemplified by the time she flew right at Cinder fully expecting that if her summon were to be destroyed she would plummet to her death. In fact, she even scolded Penny for risking herself for Winter, because she didn’t consider herself to be of the strategic value to be worth saving. I think a lot of people then extend this view to how Winter must see others, but then we see her willing to disobey and break orders for the sake of doing the right thing when it comes to the lives of other people she knows.
This makes it pretty clear that Winter does not view all people as dehumanized cogs in a machine, unworthy of concern; that’s just how she sees herself. And it’s not really surprising when you consider how many years she’s spent repressing and hiding her real emotions in any shared space. The first time we see her interacting with Weiss, she’s cold and detached and I think this first impression stuck with a lot of people in a way that formed their view of her so completely she’s never completely broken out of it.
But then when the Atlas soldiers aren’t around — people who might easily be reporting back to either the General or her father about Winter’s actions, mood, demeanor — she is much more relaxed. This is one of our rare glimpses of what Winter is like alone with someone she trusts, and we can clearly see later that this same trust extends to Penny too. It’s not just about the Schnee name or Atlas, as much as I think people want to paint her as a nationalist. She’s dedicated to a cause because she has to believe that even someone like her can be of use and of value, but the name of the cause is less important than the goal of protecting other people, no matter the risk to herself or her feelings.
Which is all to say that I love her.
I love her irrational anger just as much as I love her calmly considered revenge. I love her impulsive hardheadedness and how much harder it is to control those emotions in her father’s house, but especially how much shame rises up inside her when she breaks. (It’s a lovely contrast with Robyn’s utter lack of shame at being baited, how gleefully and eagerly she puts her feelings on display in shared space, even when it’s not strategically sound. She has no similar impulse to hide herself, or to let others hide, and so she knows so fully who she is in a way Winter might never come to grasp.)
I love that she pushes her body to the brink, beyond any normal expectations, because she does not expect anything good or easy in her life. I love the way she loves her sister, the fact she dyes her hair to look less like her father, the way her hand still shakes from the pain, yes, but also all the emotions and anguish at the slowly dawning realization of a life wasted on such beautiful lies.
While Cinder seeks to destroy the world in order to elevate the self, Winter is willing (and almost too eager) to destroy herself to elevate what might remain of the world. Sometimes she resents other people for not having the same perspective — that they would dare to have self-esteem and self-preservation instincts — when those people are not one of her chosen, but all in all she’s a soldier because she doesn’t believe she has any other use. She’s spent so much time hiding who she is, even from herself, that she doesn’t think she still knows how to choose.
She’s my absolute favorite outside of the main four — sometimes even beating them out, let’s be honest — and I can’t wait for her to finally stop hating herself long enough to help save the world, even more than she already has.
Is it just me, or Blake do something with her semblance that we haven't seen before? Looks like she put a copy of herself on that rock that Yang put the explosives on in order to bait Vine into catching it. Or she copied the rock? Or both? It looked like he caught the rock, then caught her. Then the clone disappeared and it was the rock.
from what I saw it’s more that when she left behind her afterimage she also left behind several grenades. Basically using herself as a bait and switch.
I will say that Rooster Teeth is Texas-based. It is pretty normal for our leaves to change late if they ever do, October at the earliest. Remnant isn't Texas, but people are influenced by their surroundings. Our school years start in late August. Idk. If it was late August at the end of Volume 5 then it two weeks later we'd be heading into Fall. My bet is that it's roughly September right now. I agree that it's unlikely to have been 2 years though.
heres the thing
in RWBY, it only starts being visibly Fall in volume 3, which is set within the same semester as volume 2. Ruby says as much at the start of volume 2, the Vytal Festival Tournament is “at the end of the year” said in the same context of “our second semester will be great”, and we know the Fall of Beacon was before October 31st - because Ruby is still 15 when Ciel gives her profile, which given the way she presents it is unlikely to be inaccurate and if it was, Ruby would have corrected her - and we know from volume 1 that semesters cover “months”, so if the tournament is at the end of the “year” - presuming a winter break and then a third/final semester in the new year, which tracks with the internal monologue we get from Fox in After the Fall that CFVY only had a year and a half at Beacon - then its towards the end of the semester, meaning its been “months” since the beginning of the semester
we know the schools have the same semesters because Cinder and her cronies were at Haven during volume 1 so as not to arouse suspicion, so the “Fall semester” naturally would have to track to the “second semester” Ruby mentioned in volume 2 - so for it to have been “months” and still not the end of October by the Fall, that has to place the start of the Semester in the summer
I’m fairly certain I’ve said this before, but sitting in a hallway at NYCC eating lunch, Cuz pointed at one of the RWBY ads playing featuring Weiss and basically said, “She’s the reason you’re going to like this show,” and yeah, she’s right. Schnees are so perfectly my exact thing. Well meaning disaster siblings making the best out of the wreckage that is their childhood is just Peak Character Type.
Weiss as the middle child who is immediately better socialized than her sister but doesn’t even realize the changes taking place in her because exposure to the outside world, to actual displays of emotional intimacy, are so foreign to her that once they start happening and her brain and heart immediately respond in turn she doesn’t even fully process that it’s happening. She doesn’t realize the person she’s becoming or the advantage she’s getting through this exposure to such unconditional love and support until she’s already so far along the way.
Her transformation from aspiring ice queen who isn’t nearly as bitchy as she wants to be to hug monster who has pretty advanced emotional intelligence is a masterclass. What’s great about Weiss is she still has a lot of work to do on herself, but she knows it and that acknowledgement of not only progress but a desire to continue growing and becoming more really aligns so well with the ambition that burns in every Schnee. She used to think that her desire for perfection, for ever greater heights, was about wanting to lead, wanting power, and taking a character like that and making her greatest strength in support roles where her presence makes everyone else more powerful in turn is just magnificent. She’s grown so steadily from someone who wanted to lead to someone who innately supports and reaffirms.
She’s fantastic and as her power grows, so does the hair.
I hope you get more goats soon! On the bright side, think of all that Texas summer you won't have to deal with. It's supposed to be in the mid 80's already tomorrow, and I'm relatively north...
Thank you so much!! 💖 I believe it’ll happen! I’ll have the little homestead I’ve always dreamed about, I can feel it!
Oh YUCK I do NOT envy those temps. I’ll keep my Maine temps, thank you very much. Though when I come back to Texas for RTX, I’ll probably be in for a rude awakening...
