If y’all don’t mind, I’d like to take a second and talk about what is, in my opinion, one of the best scenes in Summer Rose Court and why it works so effectively in and out of context.
Spoilers below
Going into my first playthrough of this game, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what it was going to be like. I had played through the demo about four times and had seen enough early-build screenshots to feel confident in my expectations of what I would be getting into.
To put it plainly I was expecting a dating sim visual novel that leaned pretty strongly into the dating sim aspects that would be backed up with a conventional, if unobtrusive plot. And if that’s all that SRC turned out to be then I would be totally satisfied with it, I mean, I definitely got my money’s worth out of it; you can’t exactly beat free.
But about an hour or so into my first playthrough I came upon this scene, and all of my expectations about the overall story and tone were tossed out the window like so much dead weight.
Just look at those screenshots, Ozpin, shriveled and wizened, clutching to a throne that is literally draining the life from him with sentient thorns. Fuck man, how much farther could you get from a fluffy, low-impact dating sim?
Now there are a handful of reasons why I think this scene works so well at subverting expectations, so let’s get right to it.
One: Ozpin
This point only works because SRC is a fan-game and really doesn’t make much sense if the audience hasn’t already watched at least a little bit of the original source material. As a fan of RWBY for a few years now, I’ve seen Ozpin, kicked around, betrayed, surprised, literally killed (its fine though don’t worry about it), and generally just had a real rough time of it, but I’ve never seen him as far out of his depth as he is here.
Ozpin has, to a certain extent, been a bit of a reassuring figure throughout the show. Sure, we can argue about just how moral his actions are, but you can’t deny that at the very least, he knows what’s going on. He’s been overpowered by Cinder and others, but trying to use Crescent Rose is just a completely different caliber.
We’ve always known that Ozpin could swim in deep waters, but during this scene, he might as well be in outer space.
The fact that its Ozpin on the throne throws all the reassurance that normally comes with him off kilter. His answers may not have always been the ones that we’ve liked, but at least he had answers. This however, is something totally beyond him, giving us a pretty solid idea of just how powerful Crescent Rose is going to be.
Two: Crescent Rose
Let’s take a second and step away from the minutiae and describe the scene. We have a young protagonist, newly forced into a demanding journey, who upon the completion of the first leg of their journey, meets a kindly older mentor who shares a connection with the mystical power that is integral to the hero’s story. But before the mentor can really aid the hero on their journey, they lash out, face distorting into a reflection of the grotesquerie manifested by the magical force.
You know what that sounds an awful lot like?
Its not a perfect metaphor, Bilbo reaching for the ring out of the primal need for it is a lot different than Ozpin’s taking of the throne out of a sense of duty, but let’s play this out for a second.
Turning a beloved/relatable character into something so viscerally horrific and then saying, ‘oh its all because of this power that the hero must now handle is a pretty intense way of building the overall tension surrounding that power. I mean, I still have a hard time watching that bit in Fellowship and I’m a grown-ass man.
Crescent is a force to be reckoned with throughout the entire story, but introducing her like this is an extremely forceful way of showing the audience exactly what she’s made of, a tactic used again to similar effect the first time she takes over Ruby’s body.
Three: Recognition
“It isn’t fear or confusion that strikes me at the look in his eyes, but a deep jolt of recognition.”
This point goes hand in hand with the previous one.
As the Lord of the Rings trilogy ramps up, one of the ways Tolkien builds tension is through the gradual corruption taking hold in Frodo. In effect, Bilbo’s little jump scare in Rivendell is a reverse time capsule, showing what the end effect of Frodo’s journey could be. Recognizing the same lust for the ring in Frodo is genuinely one of the most terrifying things about the final trek towards Mt. Doom.
But enough with the Lord of the Rings references, I promise I’m getting to my point. The fact that Ruby recognizes the power sucking Ozpin dry as the same one her parents used and the one that is inextricably linked to her and her bloodline is more haunting the more you think about it. It also definitely gives her some hero points when she chooses to use the throne anyways.
Now this isn’t totally substantiated by the game, but I also like to believe that not only is Ruby recognizing Crescent, but the reverse is happening as well. Even though she’s asleep, I think Crescent could definitely sense the presence of the next Rose heir and a new chapter in her story, a thought which doesn’t exactly engender a sense of safety.
Conclusion: Setting the Stakes
Okay, so we’ve talked about some of the components of this scene, but what’s the overall effect they have when you put it all together?
Early on in the game, you watch an attack on the Xiao-Long tribe by a pack of Grimm, and while that’s a fairly brutal inciting action, its far more important to Ruby than it is to the audience. For us, this scene with Ozpin, is the moment when we become just as invested as Ruby.
Honestly, the first time I played through this, I literally had to set my laptop down and pace around my apartment for a few minutes before I could go back to the game. Every expectation I had about the game had been proven wrong in the space of a few seconds, and I had to mentally reorient myself as to how I was going to experience this story.
Gone were my ideas about a fluffy dating sim with light coming-of-age themes. This was going to be a story that I had to engage with on a completely different level and this was exactly the moment that proved it to me.
By setting the stakes miles higher than I had expected in a single scene is something you can only really pull off once in a story, and this particular moment does it more than brilliantly.
