#yangalysis

“Anonymous said to yangingaround:

was his friend and he just betrayed him to salem a short time ago and he has been betrayed many times in the past so why should he immediately trust team rwby who he doesnt know as well ( and given how they reacted to salem being immortal saying it was pointless it shows ozpin was right in keeping salems immortality a secret   the entire reason they kept salem a secret was to prevent the loss of morale ,feeling it was pointless etc  )(not to mention yangs hypocrisy 2/2

Anonymous said to yangingaround:

I am sick of the whole oz kept secrets so we cant trust anything he says ignoring that team rwby have kept secrets and told lies many times and they like to pretend its different when its not . ozpin isnt at fault for summers death her dying on a mission is not oz’s fault . ( oz protected humanity  this attempt to paint oz as a manipulator or like dumbledore   or taking away peoples choices ( check itsclydebitches tumblr she made a post on that )  is bs ( and salem always blames other people ½

Anonymous said to yangingaround:

for her actions like going the deaths of the people who fought against her are somehow oz’s fault  or claiming ozpin is a coward for going away after just seeing the worst moments of his life and his friends turning on him and what qrow did to him  he was stressed out  and needed to go back inside  giving qrow what he wanted   he was crying and the claim that this was cowardice is utter nonsense he needed to escape from the abuse  so he left the only way he could  2/2

Anonymous said to yangingaround:

also the claim that ozpin never tried to unite humanity is complete and utter bullshit his entire plan was to unite humanity and by rwby v1 he was close to achieving that goal  the closest he had ever been ( ozpin was the king of vale)

—

okay, briefly coming out of semi-retirement on here because this just dropped in

this was kinda the wrong blog to send this to, because none of the mods are on Oz’s side

but let’s start from the top:

on my rewatch of volume 5, i noticed that ‘Strength’ comes up quite a bit

in Dread in the Air, Adam makes it clear that he sees his actions at Beacon to be following Sienna’s example, of “strength, and unwavering conviction”. Sienna refutes him moments later, after giving him a short speech on the reasons he sucks and why the Fall of Beacon wasn’t the grand victory he sees it as, capping it off with “These are not examples of strength, Adam. They are examples of your talents being diminished by shortsightedness!”

it next comes up in Necessary Sacrifice, when Blake is talking about people being the personifications of certain words, the one she sees in Yang is strength

in True Colors, Ghira expresses pride in Blake’s forgiveness of Ilia. “She’s learned a lesson that evaded me until I was much older: That there is strength in forgiveness.”

finally, in Haven’s Fate, there’s Yang’s callout of Raven: “Oh, shut up!! You don't know the first thing about strength! You turn your back on people, you run away when things get too hard, you put others in harm's way instead of yourself!! You might be powerful, but that doesn't make you strong.”

what’s interesting is the four characters involved

Adam and Raven have both been notably paralleled but ultimately contrasted against Yang and Blake respectively in earlier volumes - Adam sees his actions as proof of his strength (but is called out on it for being short-sighted arrogance) while Blake sees Yang as the embodiment of strength. Raven sees her continued survival as proof of her strength (and is called out on it for just being bluster she hides behind) while Blake’s forgiveness is seen by Ghira as an example of her strength

in previous volumes, focus was put on how Yang contrasts with Adam (most notably in volume 3), and this volume put focus on Blake contrasting Raven; she actually works on her flaw of running away and in the end, chooses to return to her team now that she’s bumped into them, while Raven chose to run away again

additionally, while full forgiveness is probably some ways off (though pretty much a guarantee, as they need to repair things before the team can truly be back together again), Yang is willing to accept Blake back - and as mentioned, “there is strength in forgiveness” - while it’s pretty much a given that Adam will never forgive Blake

while these parallels and contrasts have been set up throughout the show (but really came into force in volume 3), this recurring use of the word ‘strength’ ties the Adam-Yang contrast and the Raven-Blake contrast together

oh yeah

like, first off, either she’s gotten worse at manipulating people or she’s projecting hardcore because she keeps insisting Neo has a grudge against Ruby, as if the repetition makes it more true, when Neo shows no actual indication of wanting to go after Ruby

like she’s just getting herself setup for being stabbed in the back here by Neo

second - trying to rules lawyer Salem’s commands isn’t gonna work because Salem knows where she is and what she’s doing (she knew Cinder was alive and knew specifically that it was Cinder’s own ego that screwed up what should’ve been the easiest mission ever, so that arm she gave Cinder likely gives her a direct connection to her mind). she’ll know that Cinder trying to pull “well i was going to capture Ruby but then this halfpint came out of nowhere and murderised her. shame that” is a load of crap and that she deliberately engineered it

Cinder’s doing exactly what Salem warned against in episode 4, putting her desires above Salem’s own

so she’s not getting out of this without severe punishment

well i preface this by stating i am by no means educated on the subject of depression or self-medication so my understanding is limited and very likely incorrect in places

now, from what i do understand, the Apathy basically sap the will to keep going out of you, it’s very difficult to feel anything, you’re just tired, working up the energy to do anything is a pain and you’re, well, apathetic

all of which are apparently reflective of symptoms of depression

(and so might well explain why Yang was so shaken up by it, she’s been there - we saw her post-Beacon, she was very numb to it all and we see her just trudging through the day to day, and it’s almost certain she’s still dealing with it even after pushing herself to get going for Ruby’s sake. she’s just been forced back into that state - a worse version of it even - and it’s not a place she wants to be. add onto that she’d just been forced to watch Blake almost die and she literally couldn’t care and of course she’d want to get out of there as quickly as possible - especially when you factor in how broken up she was about Blake leaving in 3x12 and even lied about not caring why she left. now she’s been put in a situation where she couldn’t care about Blake, and that terrified her)

as for self-medication:

Qrow’s response to the Apathy’s influence is to self-medicate, he starts drinking himself into oblivion and numbs himself to everything. from what i’ve just read up on, alcohol isn’t an effective antidepressant but it provides mild relief from depressive effect. Qrow’s an addict, so the more the Apathy effects him, the more he’s gonna drink and it’d just keep cycling til he drank himself to death

another thing on the subject of drugs; we learn from Bartleby’s journal that he’d lured the Grimm in to effectively drug his settlement. keep them compliant and calm so he could save money, all without their knowledge (influencing and manipulating how people feel is... kind of a hugely messed up thing to do), and of course it all went horribly wrong to the point that an entire settlement no longer had the willpower to take care of themselves or even wake up, they just laid down and waited for the inevitable

but yeah honestly as Grimm go this is one of the more frightening ones because it can just

force this very real thing on you - like it has the paralytic screaming which speeds up the process but just being in the area of it messes with your head and drains you to the point where it’s difficult to care about anything, but pushes the effect so far up to eleven that you eventually just give up and die

yeah, and given her reaction to Ozpin turning up in his new body less than a year after his ‘death’, she wasn’t expecting him to be an issue this soon

so she wants Cinder to verbally confirm she killed Ozpin, and her response implies she thinks that Ozpin likely would have survived a regular duel with a Maiden, so if he did let her win, why? what’s to be gained from being out of action for an extended period of time while she can still put things in motion?

While I disagree that Blake and Sun would be toxic relationship (I don’t personally feel they’d make a good fit but I wouldn’t call them toxic by any means) I’m also stumped why people say Sun is a foil to Adam.

First of all though, being a foil isn’t a bad thing: foils are similar but ultimately different in very important ways. When we look at the foil to Adam we’re looking at a character with some similarities on the surface but who ultimately proves themselves to be very different and in this case better.

Sun just doesn’t have enough in common to be a foil with Adam, especially because any similarities between the two are very shallow: they’re both male Faunus with a connection to Blake. That’s pretty much it without getting into speculation of romantic interest. Sun has no connection to the White Fang so that’s out, the basis of his relationship with Blake is completely different (as in they met by chance as opposed to working together in a more work-type scenario), and the narrative has done nothing to parallel the two even the slightest bit. It’s telling that his brief encounter with Adam is incredibly low stakes and that the two show zero interest in each other specifically.

Now Adam and Yang on the other hand? Both serve as partners to Blake, though Adam is more of a mentor and is in a position of power while Yang and Blake equals. Both have a moment/s where Blake believes they’re going down the wrong path, but where Adam truly was becoming a monster Yang was not (hell, Blake explicitly compares the two so it’s very intentional here), and that’s without getting into seeing how differently they both handle a similar situation: Adam turns it on Blake while Yang is heartfelt and honest and doesn’t question Blake’s distrust once she explains herself. Both have songs talking about their strength, but while Adam’s is intent on making everyone around him out to be weaklings in order to boost his own ego Yang’s are more about saying she’s stronger than her opponents, not her allies. Even their semblances are similar yet different: both use damage done by their opponents to increase their own damage and are represented visually by glowing hair. Adam’s though absorbs the damage through his weapon and he’s shown hiding behind others to charge it while Yang actually takes the damage herself and both can’t and wouldn’t let someone distract her opponent so she can charge (Adam’s also seems to be unleashed in one hit while Yang’s appears to last longer).

Any evidence for why Sun and Adam are foils is either incredibly shallow or working on the assumption that Sun is meant to be Blake’s canon love interest (which is not confirmed at this point), and even then it pales in comparison to the mountain of parallels Yang and Adam have that are important enough for Blake herself to bring up.

okay - here’s a quick run-down of the number of times team RWBY have cried and why

Ruby

 - “you’re just three moves away from conquering Remnant!”, 2x02

- cried when she was too late to save Penny, 3x09

- cried when she remembered she was too late to save Pyrrha, 3x12

- cried when reuniting with Yang in 5x06

Weiss

- “i hate this game of emotions we play”, 2x02

- cried when she was disinherited and told she would be essentially kept prisoner for the rest of her life

Blake

- shed a tear while looking at the statue outside Beacon’s entrance hall after running away from her team following the reveal that she’s a Faunus, 1x15

- cries and sobs apologies to an unconscious Yang (while holding the latters hand with her own left hand, which would have likely aggravated her own wound) in 3x12

- not crying, but she sounds about on the edge of it when she says “not again” after Sun gets wounded in 4x09

- cried while begging Sun and Ilia to stop fighting in 5x10

Yang

oh boy - Yang has probably cried, or come close to crying, more than any of the other girls (and though Blake has been the reason more often than not, there are some exceptions)

- cried when she believed Blake didn’t trust her in 3x08

- tears in her eyes when she tried to attack Adam and save Blake in 3x11

- eyes and lip quiver when she says she doesn’t know why Blake left in 3x12 (you can tell she’s on the brink before hiding behind a lie of not caring). she’s seen wiping her eyes after Ruby leaves

- comes close again in 5x06 when things get heated with Raven, she sounds like she’s on the brink of tears again, eyes quivering as they snap back to lilac and she asks ‘why?’

- cries when reuniting with Ruby, 5x06

- breaks down crying over how she needed Blake to be there while she was recovering during her talk with Weiss in 5x08

- eyes quivering again when she sees Blake again in 5x13, first time she’s seen her in months (27 episodes if we don’t count the character shorts)

- breaks down crying in the vault after her confrontation with Raven, 5x14