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slendergiant-cosplay · 5 years

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RWBY Brain Dump

11/7/19

Ok, so this post is just a brain dump of various thoughts and theories about RWBY that hopefully I can come back to in the future to compare if they came true or not, or if new things develop to alter these theories.

First is regarding the structure of volumes. Since V4, it seems to be a travel volume and then a relic volume. In V4, RNJR were traveling to Mistral and in V5 they obtain the Relic of Knowledge. After everyone is reunited, V6 became the “traveling to Atlas” volume. Based on the fact that the Relic of Creation is shown at the ending of the opening, I’m gonna take a wild guess and say they obtain the relic by the end of this volume before V8 becomes the “traveling to Vacuo” volume, etc…

That being said, let’s move on to the Winter Maiden who is needed to obtain the Relic of Creation. I have three people in mind as to who this might end up being:

The first is the obvious choice of Winter Schnee because of her namesake. I personally think this may be too obvious seeing as they tried to trick us in V5 by presenting Vernal as the Spring Maiden and then the twist of it being Raven all along. However, Cinder Fall became the Fall Maiden so it’s not entirely out of the question that a person could have the same name as whichever Maiden they are.

My second guess to the Winter Maiden is Robyn Hill. Still don’t know too much about her but based on the posters in Atlas she seems to be running for a position on the Council, probably representing Mantle to make it a better place to live. Based on her name, she probably alludes to Robin Hood which would make her campaign to represent the lower people make sense. From the intro it looks like her weapon is also a crossbow that doubles as a shield. This could be where the Maiden turns out to be someone who’s not as obvious but also still fairly important.

My third theory is Weiss’s mother. We haven’t seen her yet and don’t know a lot about her other than she became an alcoholic because of her marriage to Jacques. I literally just came up with this idea after previously only thinking it might be Winter or Robyn, but it would make sense. Schnee semblance is passed on generation to generation, but Weiss asked Whitley if he was jealous of her and Winter’s abilities which leads me to believe that only the Schnee women inherit the semblance. This lines up with the rule that only women can become a Maiden. I think that the Schnee semblance might be residual magic passed on from mother to daughter and that the Winter Maiden power is eventually passed on from Mother to Daughter.

My next theory involves the Maidens. I believe that eventually Team RWBY will each take on a Maiden role in order to defeat Salem. Maybe V7 will be the first volume to show this where at the end, someone (banking on Wiess) inherits the powers (which would make Winter or Mama Schnee the optimal choice for the Winter Maiden). Yang will probably inherit the Spring Maiden powers from Raven at some point down the line because Raven’s story is far from over (more on that later). That leaves Blake to inherit Summer and finally Ruby with Fall.

Here’s my reasoning behind Ruby inheriting Fall from Cinder. I think Cinder will die either before or during the final battle against Salem. Since her revenge against Ruby is literally all she can think about, it would make sense that Ruby would be in her last thoughts, thus passing the power on to her, completing the quartet of RWBY Maidens who then take down Salem.

Now, back to Raven. At the end of V5, she’s last seen crying and apologizing before flying off where we then see her fly past Taiyang who looks up and grimaces. I think back on Patch, she’s reconnecting with Tai and going through her own character development after Yang gave her a wakeup call down in the Haven vault. I think that she and Taiyang will decide that they need to help in the fight against Salem and set off on their own journey before showing up to the final battle against Salem (again, more on my thoughts on that battle later).

I think at some point (again, before or during the final battle) Raven is going to have some sort of redemption and end up sacrificing herself to save Yang one final time. Then there’ll be a big emotional moment between the two where Raven expresses her remorse and regrets about leaving, saying how much of a better person Yang has grown up to be than herself, etc… Yang, who has been growing more and more each season, may take a page out of Blake’s book and forgive her even after the terrible things she’s done (a la Blake towards Ilia). Raven dies with Yang in her final thoughts, passing the Spring Maiden powers on to her.

Now, my theory (more like hopes) for the final battle. First, there’s the fact that the battle against Salem will wait until the very end of the series. That seems pretty obvious as she is the overarching villain of the entire series. It would be kind of dumb to kill off your main villain early (looking at you, Rian Johnson).

Second, more of a hope because there’s no real evidence to support this, but I hope the final battle is reminiscent of Avengers Endgame in that we see all of the characters we’ve met through the entire series coming together to defeat Salem, much like all the teams came together at the Fall of Beacon. Just imagine all the teams from the Vytal Festival making a comeback in shiny new character models and outfits, seeing Team _TRQ in action, the teachers, the faunus, the Atlesian army, and other important characters coming together as one, united as one people of Remnant, fighting for their lives.

This next part is a direct rip-off of Endgame so it would honestly be really bad to include in the show, but just imagine Raven and Tai’s side quest is going off to seek out all of these people where Raven creates a bond with them and at the final battle pulls a Doctor Strange and uses her semblance at 1,000,000% opening up portal after portal to let everyone into the battle. It would be cheesy and dumb but also really cool lmao.

That’s about it for now. Might add onto these and other theories later but it’s 2am and I need to go the fuck to sleep.

#rwby #rwby spoilers #spoilers #rwby theory #rwby theories #ruby rose #weiss schnee #blake belladonna #yang xiao long #winter schnee #robyn hill #cinder fall #raven branwen #qrow branwen #taiyang xiao long #strq

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woodworkingpastor · 3 years

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Covid-19 and our faith in ourselves: a question of mental health -- Psalm 88 -- Sunday, September 26, 2021

A gymnast’s courage

At the 2019 U.S. Gymnastics Championships, Simone Biles accomplished something that no one else in the history of the universe has ever done: the “triple-double.” She sprinted across the mat, leaped into the air backwards to do two back flips while twisting three times before landing safely. It is a thing to behold—I suspect most of us would have to watch the video multiple times in slow motion to figure out how many flips and twists are there.

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You probably remember that her experience at this year’s Summer Olympics was difficult. After an early vault attempt went awry, Biles withdrew from nearly every other event because of something called the twisties: a condition where your brain and your body get disconnected, and skills that should be deeply stored in muscle memory suddenly become unfamiliar. During the vault in question, she said, “I lost track of where I was in the air.”

When asked why she thought the twisties emerged, Biles mentioned that there were some triggers: the extra year of intense training due to the one-year delay in the Olympic games; and the pressure of being the public face of the US Olympic team—including the expectations that came along with that. With her recent testimony before Congress about the sexual abuse she experienced by women’s gymnastics team trainer Larry Nassar, one has to think that was part of her struggles as well. As super-human as Simone Biles seems to be, it can be easy to forget that at the end of the day, she is simply a human being who is not immune to the difficulties and pressures of life.

One of the saddest commentaries on her experience came from those who criticized her for withdrawing from her events. No one would have criticized her if she would have landed awkwardly during an event and twisted an ankle. Because her injury wasn’t visible, some missed the courage of the choice she made.

Covid-19, one more time

This is the second of two sermons prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic. We’ve spent focused a lot of energy over the last 18 months on social distancing, because we want to “keep people safe.” But social distancing has created some problems as well. Isolation from other people and the absence of meaningful routines and rituals has presented real challenges for people’s mental health. For people who live alone, for people who live in urban apartment buildings without easy access to nature, to people with existing mental health diagnoses, to people with dementia and their caregivers, social distancing has added a difficult layer to already difficult times.

It has also been a difficult season for those who are carrying extra responsibilities in their jobs: teachers and medical professionals, to name two. Covid-19 and our response to it has added stress to our lives in many different ways.

Mental illness: the “non-casserole disease”

All of this leads me to talk this morning about mental health. Let me be very up front with one thing: I am not trained as a counselor or therapist, so I want to be careful to not speak beyond my knowledge. Within that, pastors are often the first person someone comes to when they’re struggling with something, and I am happy to meet with people and talk and pray about what they are facing. But it also important to emphasize the necessity of mental health treatment, to refer people to trained counselors and doctors who can provide that treatment.

As Simone Biles’ experience revealed, we often treat mental illness differently from physical illness. Some call mental illness the “non-casserole disease.” If someone has surgery, or experiences the death of a loved one, then we respond in particular ways. But how do we respond to someone living with long-term mental health diagnoses? How long after the death of the loved one do we keep taking the casserole, or sending the sympathy card, or checking in? And what if the mental health diagnosis doesn’t have such an obvious cause? What then?

Mental health is a common issue in our society. According to the World Health Organization, it is estimated that just under 4% of persons experience depression (about 5 in our congregation at any given time). That’s just one mental health diagnosis. We could also talk about bipolar disorder or schizophrenia and other psychoses. We might include the challenges presented by dementia—both to the individual and to the one caring for them. There are those who self-medicate with alcohol or other drugs. How many times do we write such persons off as “addicts” without understanding the suffering they experience?

Beyond that, there are plenty of reputable sources that chronicle mental health occurrences and give estimates of how prevalent they are.

As I noted, Simone Biles’ struggles with the twisties was more complicated than just a mental health issue because her story also includes the trauma of sexual abuse. None of us know how the various factors she named work together in her—she might not even know. We do know that the impact of traumatic experiences stick with us. Many of us have had very difficult things happen to us. When we are surrounded by people who love and care for and nurture us, then we can often function well—humans are resilient creatures. But when the trauma is inflicted by someone who was supposed to be taking care of us, it can become impossible to integrate that into our experience. Our minds and our bodies retain that experience, and it can become a source of struggle throughout our lives.

Adding insult to injury are the unhelpful ways we respond to persons dealing with mental illness. This includes the way people accused Simone Biles of cowardice instead of recognizing her courage; it might also look like someone saying the answer to your mental health struggle is that you “just need to pray more” or “there must be some hidden sin in your life that is causing these things.” Would we tell that to someone who had fallen and broken their wrist? Of course not. These responses reveal people taking mental illness less seriously than physical illness.

The blessing of a difficult Psalm

The Bible takes struggles like these very seriously. I am continually reminded of the importance of maintaining a regular connection with the Psalms, because when we move past our two or three favorite Psalms and consider the messages and experiences presented in all 150, we discover a Biblical vocabulary for prayer to meet all of life’s circumstances. Psalm 88 recognizes the deep struggles that come to someone who feels that their troubles have left them beyond any source of help in this life and the next.

There is no explicit indication that Psalm 88 describes mental illness—some commentators ponder a connection to Alzheimer’s disease; others wonder if these are the experiences of an abused woman. The cause of the suffering isn’t the issue; what matters is that someone is struggling with an extremely difficult situation and are met with silence from both God and everyone else. But even feeling abandoned by God has not made prayer impossible.

The presence of this Psalm in the Bible is permission to lament and protest. It is OK to bring these things to God in prayer; we need not suffer in silence.

And what a lament it is! The most anguished parts of the Psalm are found in verses 5 and 12. In verse 5, the Psalmist says they feel like those “forsaken among the dead,” of having lost the blessing of living a long life and being properly buried, instead having their body discarded along the road or unceremoniously dumped into a mass-grave to be forever nameless and forgotten.

In verse 12, these feelings of being cut off emerge again, wondering if God’s power is available to those who live “in the land of forgetfulness.” What a lonely sounding place.

The writer of this Psalm is deep in the despair of abandonment: there seems to be no help, there is no one cares, and God is silent. The Psalmist cries out to God, but God doesn’t answer. It might be that the Psalm’s most powerful moment is found in its unresolved ending: the Psalm ends abruptly in verse 18, leaving us wondering—like so many do—if the prayer made it to God’s ears, or if it simply bounced off the ceiling. Were the last verses of this Psalm lost? Or was it intentionally ended here to further communicate the cut-off feeling expressed by the one offering the prayer?

How do we pray when there is no resolution? Life’s issues aren’t normally resolved when we get to the end of the worship service, or devotional reading, or conversation, or even a session with a counselor. The struggle goes on. What this Psalm offers to us is that the recognition that suffering is part of our human experience and talking about it is sanctioned by God in the vocabular of prayer.

Our response: sitting in the silence

One response from the church is to not forget those who struggle in seeming silence and to be a companion for those whose experience seems shrouded in darkness. We can reach out and be present to those suffering in “the land of forgetfulness.”

Someone has written a helpful piece about the importance of supporting others in their mental health struggles, setting it in the world of Winnie the Pooh. Perhaps you’ve read it before:

It occurred to Pooh and Piglet that they hadn’t heard from Eeyore for several days, so they put on their hats and coats and trotted across the Hundred Acre Wood to Eeyore’s stick house. Inside the house was Eeyore.

“Hello Eeyore,” said Pooh.

“Hello Pooh. Hello Piglet,” said Eeyore, in a glum sounding voice.

“We just thought we’d check in on you,” said Piglet, “because we hadn’t heard from you, and so we wanted to know if you were okay.”

Eeyore was silent for a moment. “Am I okay?” he asked, eventually. “Well, I don’t know, to be honest. Are any of us really okay? That’s what I ask myself. All I can tell you, Pooh and Piglet, is that right now I feel really rather sad, and alone, and not much fun to be around at all. Which is why I haven’t bothered you. Because you wouldn’t want to waste your time hanging out with someone who is sad, and alone, and not much fun to be around at all, would you now.”

Pooh looked at Piglet, and Piglet looked at Pooh, and they both sat down, one on either side of Eeyore in his stick house.

Eeyore looked at them in surprise. “What are you doing?”

“We’re sitting here with you,” said Pooh, “because we are your friends. And true friends are there for you, even if you’re feeling sad, or alone, or not much fun to be around at all. And so here we are.”

“Oh,” said Eeyore. “Oh.” And the three of them sat there in silence, and while Pooh and Piglet said nothing at all; somehow, almost imperceptibly, Eeyore started to feel a very tiny little bit better.

Because Pooh and Piglet were there.

No more; no less.

#Youtube

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