#ruby is awesome

[anthurak]

Do you ever have this one particular concept for a character that you really like and spend a few years looking for any kind of story/media that uses that concept and/or working on it yourself…

…only for some new show/media/thing to suddenly pop up that does absolutely EVERYTHING you ever wanted for this character concept AND MORE, and also does it so completely and utterly PERFECTLY that after getting into this show, you really no longer have any interest in looking elsewhere for this character concept or even working on it yourself.

It’s like, this one show is doing absolutely EVERYTHING you could ever want with this idea so any and all desire to see it is now being completely satisfied.

This is a story about that.

You see, towards the end of highschool and into early collage, I became particularly interested/fascinated/obsessed with the idea of ‘Badass Little Red Riding Hood’. Honestly I don’t really remember where I got the idea from exactly, it was probably from multiple sources. But for a few years I absolutely loved the idea of a take on Little Red Riding Hood that was some cool, badass fighter and fought the big bad wolf.

It led to me looking through a number of different shows/movies/comics/etc over those few years, particularly a fair few of those ‘Fairy Tales but they’re Dark and Edge’ webcomics that were popping up at the start of the 2010s. But I never found a take that really clicked with what I was looking for…

At this point, you can probably guess where this is going XD

Because on this day, 13 years ago, as I was watching the last episode of Red vs Blue Season 10, I just so happened to watch this:

Which promptly made me think Holy SHIT this is the BEST THING EVER! WHEN ARE WE GETTING MORE?!!

And the funny thing is, ever since I haven’t really felt any real interest in seeking out this concept of a ‘Badass Little Red Riding Hood’. Because for the last thirteen years and counting, I have been watching a show and been fully immersed in a fandom featuring what I would consider to be the absolute, PERFECT, platonic ideal of the Badass Little Red Riding Hood.

If anything, now when I see other takes on the concept, I kind of invariably end up thinking ‘Yeah, that’s good…

…but it’s not THIS good’ XD

[anthurak]

So here’s a REAL fun little idea:

What if over the remaining volumes of the show, Ruby’s outfit and overall character design more and more dark/edgy/goth/emo to coincide with her becoming MORE well-adjusted and mentally and emotionally HEALTHIER? As in, completely and totally INVERT the visual trope of a character’s design getting ‘darker’ as they become more jaded/nihilistic/traumatized.

Like by the end of the show, Ruby is looking like a genderbent Vincent Valentine by way of Devil May Cry with a healthy sprinkling of ‘JRPG Final Boss’, plus an eyepatch… and she also happens to the most confident, open, driven and optimistic that she’s been in the ENTIRE SHOW.

Heck, what if it’s not just her design, but a lot of Ruby’s demeanor as well? Like she’s upbeat and optimistic, but with a seriously dark and morbid EDGE to her as well. This Ruby will freely get angry if something actually pisses her off. Entirely open and kind to her friends, allies and those innocents she’s sworn to protect, yet manipulative and utterly RUTHLESS towards her enemies. Enemies that she will ALWAYS try to talk down and convince to join her, yet will not hesitate to cut down if they immediately try to backstab her. And even that will never stop her from trying.

Ruby has always represented this fascinating dichotomy between ‘upbeat, optimistic cinnamon roll’ and ‘dark, ruthless edgelord’, so I think it would only be appropriate if we saw that only be emphasized further as the story continues.

[anthurak]

I think few things epitomize Ruby Rose’s utterly defiantly optimistic, hopepunk protagonist nature quite like the fact that her two main musical motifs tend to be either soft, melancholic/mysterious solos like the ‘Red Like Roses’ theme, OR utterly hardcore shredding powermetal that often feels right out of a DOOM game XD

[anthurak]

Listening to ‘Guide My Way’ again and thinking about the line “I’m what inspired the fairy tale…”

And you know Ruby’s Message to the World that we hear and see did so much in the V9 Epilogue?

That is only going to be the start of the LEGEND that is RUBY ROSE.

I’m thinking now about how Volume 10 is going to show Ruby doing some insane, awesome shit. How we’re almost certain to see her actually BECOMING this legendary figure.

Like remember how episode three of Volume 7 opened with a big reveal of Team RWBY’s new outfits and letting them show off with a cool action scene?

Yeah, imagine if Volume 10 does something similar… but on a MUCH bigger scale.

Like its Team RWBY having a full-on Big Damn Heroes moment to save a whole bunch of refugees outside of Shade and just slaughtering a horde of Grimm…

All capped off with Ruby facing down like… five giant Grimm Worms and proceeding to VAPORIZE them with a Silver Eye blast in a repeat of Argus, except this time she does it completely on command.

[anthurak]

Okay but, something funny to consider: Jax and Gill's Dad was a fairy tale buff. He taught his kids that all stories are true.

Thus, Jax already KNOWS the legend of the Silver-Eyed Warriors, but also probably has a VERY skewed idea of what Ruby's actual abilities are.

Something to consider about this is that it's pretty clear at this point that NOBODY has any real solid idea what exactly Ruby's, or the rest of the Silver Eye Warriors actual abilities are. Even Ruby and Maria, who have more information on the topic than literally ANY Silver Eyed Warrior in history thanks to Jinn, only have a pretty basic theory as to the origins of their eyes, which itself is clearly only a small piece of the story. I've explored this in previous posts already, but I'm positive at this point that there is a LOT more to the Silver Eyes than just 'anti-Grimm lasers' that Ruby will be figuring out going forward.

But going back to your point, yeah it's pretty fun to imagine what Jax's reaction to Ruby might be. Dude's spent most of his life at this point on an ego-trip in his personal hype-train building up that he's got this big, important noble 'destiny' as the 'true king of Vacuo'.

Buuuttt, NOW he's found himself 'opposed' by someone who isn't just some rival leader with a local cult of her own, but who is uniting the entire world. A girl who seems to have a background steeped in the greatest legends of Remnant's past. A girl who seems to have a heroic destiny so great it likely makes even Jax's delusions of grandeur seem small and petty by comparison. And that's not even going into what Jax might believe the Silver Eyed Warriors to be capable of.

Basically, I get the feeling that Jax's view of Ruby is probably going to be somewhere between 'seething, obsessive jealousy' and 'abject TERROR'. XD

[anthurak]

One of those things I feel a lot of people don’t realize about Ruby Rose is how much she effectively ‘hit the ground running’ as an action heroine.

Unlike virtually every other protagonist of her type, Ruby does not start the series as some feckless bystander attacked by a monster or an inexperienced rookie or even an armature. Instead, when we first meet Ruby Rose, she is already a very skilled, talented and most notably experienced fighter.

The first time we see Ruby she is slaughtering Beowolves by the dozen. In the first episode we see her kick the asses of a good dozen armed goons, and in just her second day at Beacon she clearly had zero problem with the prospect of fighting her way through a Grimm-infested forest.

The fact is, Ruby was training to be a huntress long before the audience first meets her. And not just the half-assed ‘I’ve mastered countless simulations but have no real-world experience’ kind of training. She has fought real, live Grimm many times before she came to Beacon.

Enough times that she can stare a blood-thirsty monster of pure darkness in the face with nothing but a cheery smile...

...before chopping that monster in two.

[anthurak]

Okay, so to hopefully lighten the mood a bit after all the newfound sympathetic angst we’ve been subjected to this last episode, I thought it might be fun to just gush for a bit about how completely, utterly, BUSTED Ruby’s semblance potentially is.

First off, Evasion. Forget Blake’s ‘drop a clone and shift a few meters’, whenever Ruby goes into ‘Petal form’, it is basically impossible to actually hit her. Just about any kind of attack is just going to phase through her harmlessly.

Next, good luck keeping Ruby IN or OUT of just about anywhere. Does your supposedly IMPENETRABLE vault and/or prison have any opening wider than A MOLECULE? Because if so, too bad. This girl is finding a way a in and out.

Finally there is the whole deconstructing and reconstructing matter at a molecular level thing. Because that’s kind of a big deal. Like what if Ruby figured out how to reconstruct objects a bit... differently than how she deconstructed them? Even if we assume that Ruby could only do this on objects she is very familiar with, we could get crazy stuff like Ruby altering her clothing on the fly (what if THAT’S how she gets her Vacuo outfit?), or maybe in a battle at some point Crescent Rose is broken into a dozen pieces. One petal burst later and she’s good as new.

And that’s just the reconstructing angle. Right now Ruby can selectively choose what or who she brings into the proverbial slipstream with her. Imagine if she also figured out how to selectively choose what she brings out of it? Put another way, what if Ruby figured out how to deconstruct something, and then just... NOT reconstruct it afterwards?

Ruby’s semblance is right up there with Pyrrha’s in how completely broken it can potentially be. Right now, the only thing holding it back is simple lack of experience, which Ruby is only going to get more of.

Simply put, I think we are definitely going to see Ruby pull of some absolutely insane stuff with her semblance in the future. And it is going to be AWESOME.

[anthurak]

“We’ve seen that you can’t be killed.

But we’ve also seen you fail.”

The more you think about it, this line is kind of odd, right? Nothing in Jinn’s vision to Team RWBY and co. really showed Salem failing per say. So what exactly is going on here?

Personally, I think Ruby was trying to BLUFF Salem. She is basically counting on Salem knowing just enough about the Relic of Knowledge to know what it’s capable of (can reveal secrets), but not enough to know about it’s limitations (can’t tell the future). Between this and the “We don’t need to kill you to stop you,” line, I think Ruby was hinting to Salem that they knew how to beat her.

Basically Ruby was trying to INTIMIDATE SALEM into not attacking with a ‘we know your weakness’ gambit.

Damn, I mean, DAMN.

Sure, it didn’t work out the way Ruby was probably hoping, but consider Salem’s reaction to this:

Yes, she drops a massive trauma-bomb on Ruby with the reveal that she killed her mother, but compare Salem’s words to Ruby to how she was talking previously. When talking to Ironwood and the rest, Salem speaks with this soft, but commanding tone that conveys complete control over the situation. She delivers lofty rhetoric about everything is going according to her plan, speaking like a Goddess addressing the puny mortals below her.

But after Ruby speaks up, that whole demeanor goes right out the window.

The soft, faux-soothing demeanor is gone, replaced by a tone that actually seems to have some well-hidden anger and frustration behind it. It actually reminds me a bit of Ravens “You sound like your mother” line back in V5.

And after all her lofty words about ‘everything is proceeding as I have foreseen’, it’s rather telling that seemingly the only rebuttal Salem can come up with to Ruby basically saying ‘We know how to beat you’ is just ‘Well, I killed your mom, so there’. 

Honestly, I think Ruby actually DID manage to rattle Salem here. Just a little perhaps, but rattle her all the same.

Ruby basically got into a staredown with the Devil herself. And while Ruby may have flinched harder, she made the Devil FLINCH FIRST.