something. something. the girl who fell through the world, the underground child. what’s your title, what’s your purpose. (“the title always reveals itself at the right time.” -> the girl who fell through the world reveals herself at the right time?) heroes, a eulogy. you can’t turn back time. (<- maybe another point in favor of jaune not being de-aged, especially as he’s already ‘died;’ alice very much cannot save the white knight using the watch, that’s the point. & it’s about confronting her fear of loss. everyone’s afraid of something, that’s how you know you love, if you’re afraid of losing.) “we wait” becomes “why wait?”—i could almost see an argument for jaune dying from this, but jaune is literally the knight and his narrative, symbolic death has already happened. hm. there’s a lot of symmetry here though with “for the people we haven’t lost yet,” all we have is here and now, the future can’t change the past. ooh, also, “time was running out and you were running late; you were due a good twenty or thirty years ago,” there’s some dots to connect between jaune and stetson. it’s similar to ruby’s holographic alice-and-chloe setup and like, i think there’s maybe something to the fracturing of alice like this. jaune the weary skeptic who feels helpless to help himself. ruby the little girl who grew up too fast and needs to find her way back to herself. notably, neither of them is the dreamer of the dream. and the cat is a chloe whom alice left behind, clawing their way into the hatter. the queen of hearts exiles the hatter, alice reaches out to say come home to me. rwby’s allusion to this narrative is recursive, tripling in on itself (…houston, the tryout, broadway. three very different variations on the same story. question mark.). there’s a chloe without an alice who is also the hatter, and the queen of hearts isn’t here yet. there’s an intuitive sort of sense to the queen of hearts also being the alice who dreamed the dream. (& of course the cat’s mother would be the queen of hearts; they’re the heart of the ever after.) the hatter lures both the queen and alice through the looking glass using chloe as bait. now all that’s left to erase is dear alice and the queen. alice becomes a queen by making it to the eighth square—i almost hate how well the pieces fit together. it feels almost too good to be true. but fuck me if it doesn’t tie itself off with a neat little bow.
