#eyepatch ruby

[anthurak]

I've seen you repeatedly bring up that you expect Ruby Rose to end up with an eyepatch to cover a missing eye, but why the confidence it'll happen in canon? (I'm trying to further my understanding as this is one of those topics where the potential hints fly completely under my radar and have gone undetected.)

Yeah, this has become a rather interesting question to dive into lately. I will freely admit it can come off a bit odd, particularly if you weren’t around for the early days of the RWBY fandom.

Because yeah, Eyepatch!Ruby is a very OLD theory, dating back to Volume 1 and particularly the first round of the old ‘Future AUs’ where I recall it first got really popular.

And while I’ll also freely admit that a lot of the theories appeal to me is simply the fact that Ruby would look really cool with an eyepatch, I do nonetheless think there is still a canon presidence for it happening.

Namely, the subtle but notable detail that Ruby is at this point the only member of her team that HASN’T suffered any kind of big, dramatic injury that has left prominent physical scars. Yang obviously lost her arm, Blake was stabbed in the stomach, and Weiss has her eye-scar (and was also stabbed in the stomach, but her eye-scar has always been more prominent), but nothing really for Ruby aside from all the psychological scars.

At least, so far…

And if Ruby is due to suffer some big, dramatic injury, then losing an eye does feel the most likely. It’s been alluded to a couple times courtesy of Cinder and Tyrian. Plus I think it would ultimately play very nicely into RWBY’s overall themes of Defiant Optimism. With even suffering such a terrible would ultimately NOT stopping Ruby one bit and even playing into a bit of ‘Glass Half-full’ mentality. Namely in the form of losing an eye not actually diminishing the power of Ruby’s Silver Eyes one bit, given the hints we’ve gotten about how that power if FAR more than just having ‘special eyes’.

Also, while we haven’t exactly gotten many direct ‘hints’ towards Ruby losing an eye, I would argue that’s not really relevant? Given that something like this would supposed to come out of nowhere and be actually shocking. I mean if you think about it, the only foreshadowing we got to Yang losing her arm was how the introductory line in her trailer seeming incongruous with her character design.

[symph5683]

I wrote an eyepatch Ruby fic d;alkfjdlskfl

https://archiveofourown.org/chapters/43245734

[anthurak]

A while back I went through a bunch of your RWBY posts and a few of the concepts you discussed ended up merging into a specific scenario that has been haunting me for months, so I'm going to share it in hopes of finally getting it to quiet down rather than continuing to bounce around my skull:

Drawing on reading Ruby as an Odin allusion, the Silver Eyes being more expansive than only the eyes, particularly the idea that she'd end up trading one of her eyes: when making that trade, the entity isn't asking for the eye, but for the silver in in it, so after the trade it can no longer channel the power, and takes on the colour it would have had had she not inherited the Silver Eyes from Summer.

As you might expect based on what I was reading when the idea started forming, the colour my mind suggested to be revealed was a (perhaps to Ruby unexpected) red.

(This is not something I think would be remotely how any component of this would go in canon, but it is fun to think about.)

Oooh, this is a fun idea. Ruby with red and silver eyes is definitely a pretty cool image.

Though I do have to admit I personally still prefer Eyepatch!Ruby lol

[anthurak]

Why Ruby with an Eyepatch is Awesome

So a lot of people like to freak out about the all the potential angst that could come out of ‘Eyepatch Ruby’, ie: Ruby loses an eye (likely to Cinder) and it’s all very dramatic/traumatic and is probably the moment where Ruby has her long-brewing mental and emotional breakdown. Basically, lots of that good ‘rip your heart out and show it to you’ emotional angst we’ve come to expect from RT.

But consider this: That’s not (exactly) what happens.

The thing is, we’ve already gotten an arc wherein a Main Character suffers a horrific, debilitating injury that permanently scars her both physically and mentally, leaving her an emotionally broken wreck. And likewise, followed (and are still following) that character on her long road of recovery. With all the focus RT has put into Yang’s recovery from loosing her arm, I think it’s strange to think that they would simply do the exact same thing again with Ruby.

So, what if that isn’t what happens? What if loosing her eye doesn’t break Ruby?

Now of course I don’t mean something cheap like Ruby just brushes off this horrible injury like nothing happened. Rather, Ruby handles losing her eye in a different way than Yang, and in turn serves as a contrast to what we saw with Yang.

Simply put, what if Ruby just does not break? Sure, she goes through the initial pain and shock, and the lose of her eye is shown to have a clear effect on her. But whereas Yang was completely emotionally and mentally destroyed by what happened to her during the fall of Beacon, which is the reaction we would reasonably expect from any normal person who went through something that horrific, Ruby simply… isn’t. She copes. She recovers. She gets a nifty cybernetic eyepatch from Pietro. And she gets right back into the fight.

I think this would be a perfect way to display just how truly indomitable Ruby’s spirit is. Show her go through the sort of experience that would break just about anyone and leave them permanently scarred and diminished. And show that this is just not enough to break this girl.

Ever since I saw the first fanart depictions of Ruby with an eyepatch back in 2013/2014 (that was back when we were still on Volume 1 BTW. This theory’s been around for a while), I’ve always loved that image. Not just because Ruby had an eyepatch and that looked cool, but because so many of those pieces of fanart also showed a Ruby who still had that bright, friendly, optimistic smile.

You see, a character having an eyepatch is almost always a visual shorthand for ‘this person has seen some serious shit’. People with eyepatches are almost ALWAYS the gruff, dower, edgy and cynical types. And how often have we seen that an eyepatch-wearing gruff badass used to be all bright and optimistic, but then the bad shit happened, they got their eyepatch and now they ‘see the world how it really is’ and ‘aren’t that naïve idiot anymore’?

So think about what it says to have a heroine with an eyepatch, that universal symbol of ‘I’ve been through some bad shit’, who still has a bright, optimistic, friendly, even goofy or adorkable smile. It means she has faced down the kind of horrible events that have broken so many before her.

And it couldn’t break her.

[anthurak]

Does anyone else ever think about the fact that Ruby is the only member of her team who hasn’t suffered some dramatic injury that’s left her permanently scarred in one way or another?

At least... not yet.

[anthurak]

Don’t mind me, just thinking about how this could be Eyepatch!Ruby foreshadowing...

[anthurak]

So as something of a companion piece to my various ‘Eyepatch!Ruby’ posts, I thought I’d discuss a few related points. To start, how Eyepatch!Ruby could tie into a certain other theory I’ve discussed about Ruby:

Ever since Volume 8 revealed the true mechanics of Ruby’s Petal Burst semblance (teleportation via molecular deconstruction/reconstruction), I’ve been VERY intrigued as to where else Ruby could go with this ability. And one of the ways that has immediately come to mind is that Ruby could very well have a healing factor to rival Salem. If Ruby is capable reconstructing herself at a molecular level, then that leaves her able to bounce back from pretty much ANY injury. Lost limb? Impalement? Diced to pieces? Incineration? One petal burst to put herself back together and Ruby is fine.

Which of course begs the question: How does Ruby manage to permanently lose an eye if she’s got a healing factor this busted?

Well, this is one of the reasons I think Ruby won’t be losing an eye, but rather voluntarily giving an eye up in exchange for knowledge, Odin-style. Ruby’s eye being sacrificed in some arcane ritual would mean it is well and truly gone, with not even Ruby’s molecular reconstruction able to bring it back.

It also provides a poignant bit of symbolism and a sobering reminder that even Ruby’s incredible healing factor is NOT infallible. And also provide a stark bit of irony: That the one wound Ruby cannot heal is the one she inflicted on herself. Which I’d say displays the dangers of Ruby’s self-destructive tendencies fairly perfectly.

The other idea I’d like to touch on is one that I’ve actually been thinking about since the early days of Volume 7: How Pietro might factor into Ruby’s recovery from losing an eye.

Given how Pietro is the foremost robotics and prosthetics expert on Remnant and already made both a prosthetic arm for Ruby’s sister AND built and maintained prosthetic eyes for Maria, I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that if Ruby were to lose an eye, Pietro would be pretty much immediately offering to build her a prosthetic replacement.

So why do I think we’d still get Ruby with an eyepatch rather than a prosthetic eye? Well, I think that will be by choice.

Imagine: Pietro offers to build Ruby the best, most advanced prosthetic eye he’s got. Promising that the replacement will be so good, it will be like Ruby never lost that eye in the first place.

But something about that doesn’t sit well with Ruby. She’s clearly mulling something over in her head, before she asks Pietro if they can do all of the cool cybernetic perks of the prosthetic eye, but putting it all behind an eyepatch instead of something that tries to mimic her old eye.

Because I have a pretty good feeling that Ruby giving up her eye is going to, at least partially, represent a mistake on Ruby’s part. Something she’s had time to mull over at this point, and probably get called out on by her teammates. This is a Ruby who gouged out her eye with barely a second thought at the time, and has since realized just how seriously messed-up her hero complex is. And now looks back on her giving up her eye as a major low-point.

So Ruby doesn’t WANT to try and pretend what she did never happened. To try and just sweep her mistake under the rug. Ruby wants to live with the reminder of the mistake she made. Ruby certainly likes the idea of having binocular vision back and whatever other cool stuff Pietro might be able to fit into an ocular prosthetic, but she also doesn’t want to try and hide the fact that she lost an eye.

Hence, we get Ruby sporting a neat little cybernetic eyepatch. Possibly even with her rose-emblem emblazoned on it.

(Also, since I have a feeling some people are going to suggest that maybe Ruby refuses a prosthetic altogether; I think that’s feeling way too much like ‘self-punishment’. Like Ruby’s saying she doesn’t deserve the prosthetic after what she did. Which I think we can all agree is putting Ruby right back into the self-destructive mindset that got her into this mess in the first place.)

[jaspell]

EYEBALL IS MY FAVOURITE, I”M SO EMOTIONAL