I see more in you than the rest of them do

they’re never letting go again istg 😭

"No time, right?"

red and green :’]

—

i've always enjoyed the theory that the ever after is salem's (unintentional) creation—positioning her as its author to mirror oz authoring remnant. it's a place that's generally very salem-aligned, so her being its storyteller once upon a time would be cute. even if the place "coming alive" was an accidental side effect, it would still ofc make her the "maker" CC wants to meet and interrogate

ofc CC is transparently another salem mirror (in this 9 season long hall of mirrors all shaped like salem) so the idea of writing a self-insert character that comes alive and realizes they HATE BEING YOU bc your life SUCKS is very funny to me. HRBHDBG

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still incredibly worried about Ruby ascending. Losing her identity is the worst thing that could happen to her at this point

But on the other hand, without reverting back (READ: LETTING GO!!!”) Jaune literally can’t recover from what’s happened to him. At least not in a way that allows him to still be a main player in the story, because he’d literally need to get taken out of the fight to get mental health attention

Ruby is extremely traumatized and mentally crumbling, but she’s still Ruby. On the other hand, Jaune is twenty years older than he was and is literally losing his mind. He was literally muttering that he’s not crazy, and he admitted that “I know I’m not okay. I’m not right”

He’s so afraid of changing (mortal death) that he literally trapped the Paper Pleasers in arrested development with him. He tried to change in Atlas, to heal, but that led to the world falling down, him having to kill Penny, and spending twenty years utterly alone

So I honestly think the healthiest thing for him is coming to terms and ascending back

Because based on what the purple Paper Pleaser said, they do have some influence on what they ascend into. They know that they’re fragile, so they want to become something stronger. Ironically, paralleling Jaune’s character arc