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Posted on Posted by lacependragon

reminiscentrevelry asked: The juxtaposition of Ren refusing to talk to Nora and the Bees coming to a compromise was really interesting. Ren didn’t back Nora up like Ruby did but his “Yes, sir,” implies that he’s agreeing with Ironwood, whereas Yang and Blake took account of each other’s feelings and found a middle ground for their next course of action.

(This took me a while to answer because this episode took a lot out of me, and this chapter of Silver Rings hurts a lot, and it’s just a Lot to exist right now)

Ren and Nora have been together their whole lives, and I think this is the first time they’re properly disagreeing. Nora wants to fight for Mantle, Ren wants to fight for Atlas. Ren’s comment that he’s bad at talking rings so, so strongly for reasons that I didn’t consider, last episode.

Ren is going through a lot, maybe he has been since Kuroyuri, since the Nuckalvee fight. Or maybe it goes back further, to V3, to throwing himself between the Paladin and Nora. Regardless, he is traumatized. But he is traumatized in a way that I think only Ruby is, in the series.

Jaune’s trauma is loud. It is angry. It is self-hatred and angst and wanting to scream and telling Cinder he is going to stop her (kill her). It is in blaming himself as he screams that he doesn’t matter.

Blake’s trauma is violent. It is lashing out at people who care, whether physically or verbally, to push them away. Because the pain she causes them by pushing them away is less than the pain she will cause them by drawing them in.

Yang’s trauma is cold. She retreats, turns off her emotions, becomes a machine, a fighter, a calculated warrior. She becomes Raven , but not the Raven with a voice. She becomes the Raven with the mask. The maiden who pretends to be fearless.

, but not the Raven with a voice. She becomes the Raven with the mask. The maiden who pretends to be fearless. Weiss’ trauma is biting. She fights with her mouth and her words and her semblance. She pushes forward with biting remarks and disobedience. Her trauma is in the curled upper lip that shows her teeth while she stares at someone in disgust. Her trauma comes out in destruction. In controlling the world around her.

Qrow’s trauma is loathing. He sinks into himself, into blame, into doubt, into anxiety and depression and addiction. He drops into his mind, into his hatred, and he stews there until he destroys himself.

There were three main cast members missing from this list: Nora, Ruby, and Ren.

Nora, we’re learning about now. She is argumentative and angry. She makes comments about how she feels even when it’s not relevant. She takes everything personally and she lets nothing stew. She attacks. She argues. She fights. Every bit of the soft, sweet, genki girl that we’ve come to know and love is gone.

Ruby and Ren are harder. And, to me, it’s no mistake that they’re the ones we’re dealing with, this volume. Ruby has always hidden her trauma. It’s always quiet. Other people point it out, not her. In V5, we see her falter. In V6, we see her falter, again, at the farms. Ruby has been hiding how much this has been getting to her for volumes, and every time she starts to crack, she cracks a little further. I mean, this isn’t even getting into the fact that she’s probably going to crack this volume.

Ren is in a similar position. At first, I was going to say that I think his trauma has been subtler than Ruby’s, but the more I think about it… it hasn’t been much different. I think the general assumption was that, post V4, he was okay. But he’s not.

Ren faltered just as badly as Nora and Jaune after finding out the truth, in V6. Ren cracked long before they got to Atlas. Fighting Hazel with Nora; sensing Tyrian in the abandoned city… There’s so much going on that I stopped thinking about. Because I assumed he was okay. But he’s not. Just like James, Ren was triggered on screen - the Nuckelavee. We saw it happen. We saw him shatter. You don’t just get over that.

And I think that has stayed with him, ever since. Ren hasn’t talked about it, either, because I think, he thinks, that everyone else thinks that he should be over it. But he’s not.

To summarize all that, though, I think that a big part of why Ren and Nora aren’t talking is because Ren is shutting himself down, and he’s blaming himself for everything. I think he’s starting to go the way of Qrow, bar the alcohol. He’s following orders because then the mistakes aren’t his own. He’s following orders because he doesn’t know what else to do.

He’s following orders because he’s scared. And he can’t stop thinking about everything he, and everyone else, has been through because of Salem.

And I can’t help but wonder if the Nuckelavee would exist without Salem. To me, it looks like an Apathy mixed with a horse Grimm (and lord, do I want to talk about the implications of it being an Apathy, especially since they have nigh identical screams/visual effects for them, some day), and we know, from the V6 post credits scene, that Salem an amalgamate Grimm. So would Ren make that jump? Does he think all of that was solely Salem? Has he joined James in “nothing matters but stopping Salem, screw our own humanity”? Because if so, that’s such a vast contrast to Nora, whose emotions are actively driving her further into her humanity and away from the “goal” of stopping Salem.

As for Blake and Yang’s compromise, I think what interests me there, too, is this isn’t so much a compromise as a distinct, separate action that they can agree on. They are telling Robyn one piece of the puzzle, perhaps making things harder for James or for Robyn, we don’t know yet. But what they did has nothing to do with telling James the truth, or solving their disagreement over what they did to Adam (I have another discussion on this, relating to Yang’s character development, and how I think it’s perfect that the bruiser, the only true hand to hand fighter on the team, is the one who is fine with having murdered someone, even if that someone is a monster, but that can wait until later, as well).



Blake and Yang communicate because when their communication broke down (V4-V5), they were lost. They know they want to be together, and so even if they disagree, they want to talk. They don’t want that to happen again. Blake closed off from her trauma, but her parents, and Sun, convinced her to open back up again. Same with Yang, Taiyang taught her to open up again, and Weiss helped a ton with that in V5, as we saw.

Ren is doing the opposite - closing down. And that’s causing this rift with Nora, which is further spreading into the rest of the teams. It makes me wonder what Ren and Nora are going to do, because right now, it looks like Ren is going to try and turn himself into a perfect soldier, and maybe a Specialist, while Nora looks ready to go join the Happy Huntresses.

Yay, character development!

I mean, all of this is to say: Ruby’s right. Salem’s goal has always been to divide. But she’s not even trying, right now. RWBY+JNOR are dividing themselves. And something has to give before the final fight this volume/arc, or something really bad is going to happen.