stay alive.

The VAs for Team RWBY from RWBY swap roles.

Today I want to share with you my newly aquired knowledge that Blake and Yang have never lost a fight in which they actively partecipated together (aka they fought together at the same time).

And there's many more instances of group fights where Blake and Yang do their own thing flawlessly and give their contribution, even though they don't get the finishing move 🤷🏽

I’m thinking about how whenever Yang went through something fucked up - something that would stop any other regular person in their tracks and it would be completely justified if it did (See: Maria), Yang has always kept going.

It’s been a part of her characterisation for so long, that she’s ‘strong enough’ to get back up and, well, keep moving forward… no matter what she has endured.

i’m your older sister and our mom is gone and our dad is also gone but in a different way so now i’m your mom and the only way i know how to be that is by emulating the cheeriness our mom taught us. i’m your younger sister and you think i don’t understand what’s happening but i do i just don’t know how to stop it so i’ll make myself easy to cheer up.

i’m your older sister and there is so much wrong with me but the last time i tried to fix it i took you with me and i put you in danger so now i’ll just keep that part of me separate. i’m your younger sister and now i’m old enough to process the grief our mom left behind but i can’t do that because you never share any of your grief with me.

i’m your older sister and the person i could actually turn to for help is gone and i can’t muster up the energy to help you with your trauma so i’m shutting down. i’m your younger sister and i don’t know how to help you heal because you never taught me how so the best thing i can do is keep you from being responsible for my healing by making my trauma nonexistent.

i’m your older sister and being apart from you helped me grow into myself. i’m your younger sister and being apart from you left me stagnant.

i’m your older sister and i gave up everything for you and i’ll keep giving up everything for you i’ll throw myself off a bridge and leave behind the girl i just found and healed with just so i can keep you safe. i’m your younger sister and i’ll come after you.

It would be so easy to misinterpret Yang’s protectiveness over Blake here, but that’s not what’s happening. We’ve always seen Ruby as happy-go-lucky, follow-your-heart and do-the-right-thing, and it’s easy to forget that Yang raised Ruby, and the implied subtext there is that it *wasn’t* always sunshine and rainbows.

Yes, Yang is protective over her newfound relationship. Yes, she’ll maybe feel a little wounded that her sister is lashing out. But what we see here is Yang shifting ever so subtly into mother-mode. Yang knows this isn’t about Blake, or her and Blake’s relationship, she’s stepping in front of Blake to protect her before Ruby can say or do something she regrets. In essence, protecting both of them and trying to control the situation from escalating. Yang is stepping in front because she can take it, because god knows she’s probably had to, at some point, take some lip in the past while the others have only ever known her as a strong, positive leader. She doesn’t shout at Ruby, she’s calm, lets her get it out and just looks sternly with a simple “Hey!” as in, ‘hey, that’s enough now’. 

Yang has expressed concern, and is concerned, but this is 100% Yang shifting into parent mode. This is brilliant because earlier in the episode and even last episode we’ve seen examples of Yang’s ‘concerned big sister’ side which is soft and supportive. There’s no malice in Yang’s expression, and it’s difficult to catch it because we haven’t had the best representations of ‘good mothers’ in the show, especially not ones that have had to chastise their kids at some point, but you can bet your ass that this is Yang’s parental mode stepping in to bring calm and stability to a chaotic situation. And that doesn’t always present as ‘let’s hug this out’, sometimes it’s stern, tough love and recognising that the younger one isn’t in the space to receive comfort, so the best you can do for them is diffuse the situation and be an authoritative voice of reason because she recognises her sister’s fragile mental state.

This is without going into how amazing Ruby’s portrayal was. Going after your sister’s new relationship is RAW, and personal, but it’s also what siblings do - they lash out sometimes when they’re under stress. The way Ruby says ‘we’re sOoOo happy for you by the way good for you’ - just SMACKS of younger sibling cutting loose and saying something they don’t mean, which makes Yang’s response all the more realistic for me. She recognises the tone, the almost-petulance and steps in before it can go any further.