This is a post where I will attempt to explain the literary devices used to present Ruby’s role as the main character, including details of her personality and motivations, and why Jaune matters in relation to her. This is not about liking or disliking Jaune or the screen time he is getting. I am merely explaining why the writers have chosen to give Jaune so much blatant attention recently, and why this decision does not detract from Ruby’s standing as the main character. My main goal is to explain why it feels like Ruby doesn’t get a lot of attention, and why that narrative choice actually serves her character well. One of my other goals here is to convince you that the focus on Jaune actually serves to reinforce that Ruby is the main character.

To explain why Jaune’s existence matters, we have to start with Ruby’s characterization, or rather, the narrative techniques the writers have established to tell us Ruby’s story, because the techniques themselves tell us more about her than she herself does. This is going to be quite long and only mentions Jaune at the end, as he relates and contrasts to Ruby. So even if you hate Jaune, you may still find this interesting.

[Cut for length, 3.1k words]

Now, what do we know about Ruby’s life and motivations? Her mother was a huntress who died when Ruby was younger, and she has always wanted to be a huntress so she can help people and make the world a better place. That’s pretty much all we know.



Let’s talk about how the writers presented this information about her:

First, how do we actually know that her mother is dead? We see Ruby visiting her grave in the Red trailer. This is one of exactly two times that Ruby shows anyone that her mother is dead. The other time is in the song Red Like Roses Part II, in which she has an imaginary discussion with her mother and expresses a lot of unresolved emotions surrounding her death, including emptiness and sadness, but more importantly, confusion and denial. More on that later.

These two instances are strikingly similar in that the information is revealed only to the audience. She does not tell her teammates. In fact, Yang is the first person to speak about Summer Rose. And judging by Blake’s reaction to hearing that their mother is dead, we can infer that, even off-screen, Ruby has not spoken of her. And then, Yang says something to Blake that gives a hell of a lot of context to Ruby’s personality: “Ruby was really torn up, but I think she was still too young to know what was going on, you know?” Ruby was a child when Summer died, young enough to not understand death and grief.

Second, this knowledge of Ruby’s age at which she experienced this massive loss brings me to the other thing we know about Ruby: she wants to be a huntress because she wants to help people and to make the world better.

And what narrative device do the writers use to tell us this? They use dialogue. That’s right. Ruby outright tells Ozpin that she wants to be a huntress because her parents always said to help people, but she says one thing specifically to him that should give everyone pause: she says that the police are cool but huntsmen and huntresses are more romantic. This tells us something HUGE about Ruby right off the bat: she is idealistic and has a naively optimistic and childish view of the world. Later on, she tells Blake essentially the same thing she told Ozpin, that she wants to help people and fight for what’s right. When Blake tries to temper her naive optimism by saying the real world isn’t like a fairy tale, Ruby says, “Well that’s why we’re here: to make it better.” Contrary to deterring her from being so optimistic, Blake’s warning seems to strengthen her resolve.

….

So why does it matter so much that the only two things we really know about Ruby are told to us in two very different ways? Well, it tells us literally everything about who Ruby is as a person and why.

First, the tragic event in her life, Summer’s death, is *shown only to the audience*, and is not verbalized by Ruby herself. It is told through the act of Ruby visiting Summer’s grave, and later through a song that narrates her internalized thoughts and feelings. This narrative choice, to tell the audience indirectly rather than by telling other characters, establishes that Ruby doesn’t talk about her problems, and that she is still grappling with unresolved emotions, even many years later. It tells us that she does not know how to grieve, how to cope with suffering, and how to accept loss.

Second, the lasting impact of her mother’s death is something *she tells to both the audience and the other characters*: “I want to be a huntress to make the world better.” Blake is amused by her naivety because she doesn’t know the darker half of why Ruby is so determined to be a huntress, because Ruby doesn’t tell people why. But we know why, because the writers showed us. And the reason?

She has a lot of misplaced guilt over her mother’s death, and she is mentally stuck at the age she was when Summer died. She has not been able to move through her grief and is still deeply in denial, and she clings to childish optimism as a maladaptive coping mechanism. Her naivety is a mask that allows her to hide her inner turmoil from the people around her. It basically boils down to this: “A cruel and uncaring world ripped my mother from me when I was at a very vulnerable and impressionable age so I’m going to dedicate my life to a romanticized and idealized version of being a huntress to make the world less cruel as a way of not actually dealing with the harsh reality that sometimes bad things just happen and there’s nothing we can do about it, and to distract from the fact that my mother is dead and nothing I ever do will change that.”

So to summarize, the writers’ presentation of the two major aspects to Ruby’s story (her mother is dead and she wants to be a huntress to make the world better) tells us that she has a ton of internalized conflict, but she doesn’t let it show, instead choosing to put out an image of determined optimism. The narrative techniques they employed are what tells us all these deeper things about her, not Ruby herself or any of the people around her. That’s some seriously good writing if you ask me.

All of that is just how they established Ruby’s characterization and worldview in the first two volumes. What they do in Volume 3 is challenge it and then destroy it.

And how do they do this? They force her to look reality in the eye. And how do we know that she’s breaking? She shows us with her actions, which is why she gets so much screen time in the end of Volume 3 as compared to the other volumes. And once again, nobody else is there to see except the audience.

I’m not going to go into details about the literary techniques used to narrate the deaths she witnesses, but here’s a good post about the symbolic meaning of each character death as it relates to Ruby’s (temporary) identity death.

I want to talk about the way each death affects her, and how the writers express this to us, the audience. Penny’s death shatters her illusion of optimism. She knew something bad was going on the moment she saw Emerald in the crowd and she spent the next few minutes frantically trying to stop the match. By the time she escapes from Mercury, it’s too late. She knew, she knew, that she had to act, but her efforts failed. She shows up just in time to see someone she loves die and there is nothing she can do to prevent it. She fails to be the hero she’s always dreamed of being. And it brings her to her knees, literally. This is the first time we see Ruby actually expressing shock and grief. While everyone is running and screaming, Ruby is kneeling in the corridor, eyes wide with shock, tears streaming down her face. She is overcome, unable to hide from reality as it comes crashing down all around her.

And then something in her changes. Her behavior takes a drastic, and I mean drastic turn for the worse. She rushes to Pyrrha’s defense, taking one of Penny’s swords to attack the giant Nevermore. When she drives it off momentarily, she lands in front of Pyrrha, an enraged scowl on her face, and screams at it, “Leave her alone!” She is fully prepared to fight this gigantic monster, with a weapon she is not proficient at wielding, all by herself. We know Ruby has a penchant for recklessness at times, like trying to take on the Death Stalker during initiation, and then later having Weiss launch her at the Nevermore to decapitate it. But this is not the same. During initiation she was surrounded by people who were prepared to jump in and help, and her lack of concern about her safety was from optimism and confidence. Here, in the Colosseum, her lack of concern isn’t optimistic. It’s self-endangering.

She only continues this suicidal level of reckless behavior when she sees Ironwood’s ship go down. She runs off on her own and launches herself into Grimm-infested skies to land on a ship holding who-knows-what kind of enemies.

After she gets rid of Neo, she chooses to assault Roman unarmed. She pulled herself back onto the ship and left Crescent Rose behind even though she’s already proven herself useless with her hands. She’s tried to fight Roman without her scythe in the past, and he found her laughably ineffective (“You are so much more manageable without that over-sized gardening tool of yours”). Yet when she has the choice to be armed this time around, she forgoes her weapon. She wants to hurt him. Roman Torchwick has been the face of the enemy since the very beginning for her, and she wants to hurt him. And she wants it to be personal. No weapons, just hands. She is so consumed by rage and grief that she can’t even think things through, and she makes the horrifically reckless choice to fight Roman unarmed.

And then Roman makes a speech that embodies everything she has been trying to deny since her mother died. “You got spirit, Red. But this is the real world. The real world is cold. The real world doesn’t care about spirit. You want to be a hero? Then play the part and die like every other huntsman in history!” This speech hits her figuratively and literally, as Roman is quite literally hitting her with his cane to punctuate every sentence. And as if to drive the point home about a cruel and uncaring world, he is eaten by a Griffin moments later.

The next thing Ruby does, after witnessing two deaths and failing to keep the ship from crashing, is seek out her team. She’s worried about them and wants to make sure everyone is okay. They’re not okay. Weiss is the only one unharmed. Blake has a stab wound and her sister has lost her arm. Ren and Nora are hurt and Jaune and Pyrrha are missing. Nothing is okay. She wasn’t there to protect them and now they’re hurt. She failed, as their leader and their friend, but more, as a huntress, to protect them.

Still clinging to hope that she can save the day, she decides to go find Jaune and Pyrrha. Still, still, despite her anger and fear and grief, she is focusing on helping other people so nobody else gets hurt.

And then, for the second time that day, she arrives just a little too late. Twice in one day she witnesses a death she was trying to prevent. Two people she loves, killed right in front of her. And she’s forced to acknowledge that the world isn’t fair. The world isn’t a fairy tale, it’s not romantic, and it’s not okay. The world is cold and cruel and it will swallow you alive.

And then the last, condemning nail in the coffin? Her sister finally drops her facade and is honest and straightforward about the fact that things are not okay. Yang was almost certainly the one who Ruby learned how to behave from. And now, Yang is defeated and dejected. Her mask didn’t just slip, it fell away completely. Yang cannot cope because she doesn’t know how to cope. And neither does Ruby.

Fast forward to Volume 4 and Ruby maintains a relatively chipper disposition towards Jaune, Ren, and Nora. Why? She’s always done it, her whole life. It’s reflex to her, to smile and exude optimism so she doesn’t have to face her terrifying feelings. She broke down for a couple weeks directly after the fall of Beacon, but then she pulled it together (outwardly at least) and set off to find answers, to keep moving, to cling to the idea that she can help make things better. It’s also worth mentioning here that she takes her role as a leader very seriously, to the point where she actually tells Jaune in Volume 1 that they have to put their team first and themselves second. That’s good advice in theory but Ruby took it so far at the end of Volume 3 that she’s incredibly lucky to not have been killed. And now she’s taking it seriously once more, putting her new team and her objective before her own safety and mental health.

…

Here is where people have really started to vocalize that Jaune is getting a lot of attention compared to Ruby, and I’m going to attempt to explain why.

The most important thing to understand is that Jaune is a foil character for Ruby. This isn’t his only purpose for existing, but it is, in fact, a very important reason. Ruby is the main character, so any foils to herself are inherently going to be major characters as well.

To prove my point, let’s do a quick run-down of what we know about Jaune and how we know about it:

He has seven sisters.

His weapons are family heirlooms, not self-made.

The men of his family have a history of being great warriors, but he was never talented enough to even go to combat school.

He was so desperate to live up to his family legacy that he lied to get into Beacon.

Pyrrha is the first person who ever believed in him.

He is determined to better himself and has dedicated many long hours to training with Pyrrha after class.

He is the leader of team JNPR and has proven to be an effective one.

Just like Ruby, he has something that makes him seem less fit to be leader (Ruby is two years younger, Jaune is very inexperienced), but Ozpin saw something in both of them. They both turn out to be capable.

So how do we know these things? Oh, that’s the easiest thing in the world. He tells us! Jaune is written to be open and forthcoming at every turn. Every single thing we know about him, we know because he told another character. He doesn’t get those enigmatic scenes where he’s staring out the window (looking at you, Weiss), leaving the audience to wonder what’s in his head. He is expressive and upbeat and genuine about those things. This in and of itself, is a foil to Ruby. Like I detailed earlier in this post, we learn about Ruby not through her telling us, but through the writers allowing us to spy on her private moments like visiting her mother’s grave or hearing Red Like Roses Part II. Jaune is exactly the opposite. He tells us everything, and it serves to highlight the fact that Ruby doesn’t.



Enter all the attention the writers are paying to Jaune’s grief over Pyrrha.

There is a reason for this, and it’s not just about his character arc. He is a person who has not experienced loss before. He did not lose someone when he was young. He did not grow up in a broken family. He grew up learning to be expressive and open because that’s how normal families are. His overt and externalized grieving process is completely normal and healthy, and is in stark contrast to Ruby’s internalized and un-dealt-with grief, and that is done intentionally by the writers. They are dealing with it in exact opposite ways and I can pretty much promise that that its going to be Ruby who breaks from the grief, not Jaune. Even though Jaune was Pyrrha’s partner, even though Jaune is the one who reasonably should feel the most guilt over Pyrrha’s demise (he inadvertently asked her to die and then failed to stop her from chasing after Cinder). Jaune will be okay eventually, because he’s actually coping with his grief.

…

Now let’s talk about why Ruby is getting so little screen time in comparison.

The brief glimpse we get into her nightmare is brief on purpose. We are not supposed to be privy to her every thought because she’s not sharing these feelings with anyone. She is actually remarkably like Weiss in that she doesn’t share her feelings (the difference being that she denies herself feeling them in the first place, where Weiss is painfully aware of her emotions at any given time), but now she has infinitely more weighing on her, and she’s trying even harder to hide it. The nightmare and her reaction to it makes it plain as day she’s been suffering from PTSD symptoms, but her complete lack of outwardly expressed grief is intentional. We are supposed to get just a small snippet, a hint that there is something much, much worse going on in her head. It is an effective narrative choice because what little we did see was absolutely terrifying and that nightmare pales in comparison to what she feels when she’s awake. Or rather, what she forces herself to not feel.

That’s why she wakes up from a nightmare and finds Jaune confronting and processing his pain but doesn’t say anything or join in his grieving process. This scene highlights the fact that she is not coping. If that scene were about Jaune, there would have been no reason to show Ruby waking up and spying on him. It’s about driving her characterization forward by using literary foils, because who she is as a person, with all her suffering and associated maladaptive behaviors, makes it impossible to directly focus on her from a narrative standpoint. The only time the spotlight has been well and truly focused on her emotions was during the attack on Beacon, where she was so overwrought that she lost her composure and the ability to withhold her feelings. Now that she’s got the mask back on, she won’t give us insight directly, so the narrative relies on using the people around her to show us.

That is why we are seeing so many of Jaune’s emotions and so little of Ruby’s. That is why they’re showing us nightmares back-to-back with her acting like her usual upbeat self. They’re trying to tell us that she’s suffering but is unable or unwilling to process it. They’re showing us that Jaune is suffering and coping with his grief it as if to point and say “Look at what Ruby isn’t doing.”



Moving forward, my hope is that Ruby actually witnessing Jaune out in that grove listening to Pyrrha’s voice will help her come to the conclusion that she needs to face what’s inside her. Because while Jaune is a foil for her, he’s also her friend, and he would want to help her.