#because it doesn’t… feel like… there’s a trajectory here toward (romantic) reconciliation. and that’s rly interesting

[bestworstcase]

You ain't wrong about fndm's lady/dude crit imbalance. I've noticed so much whataboutism & overlapping insistence that Oz/Qrow/Tai did their absolute best given [magic special forces duties], [hell world full of hell beasts] and/or [Salem/Raven's Selfish Dippage/Supermom's Loss], often with a side of 'you're just being blinkered stans who can't accept when ur waifu mains have flaws that need a-fixin' or should Get Over Themselves & Stick With The Program'. I mean, no denying the STRQ guys would be leagues less dysfunctional were it not for their situation's unique pressures and the immortals' contributions thereof (ditto for Ozlem thanks to the Bros), but I still don't think that causality chain fully corroborates this 'naught but vindicated put-upon sensei figures, the Bad Moms Doing Badness exonerate everything, it's Just How This World Works, we've been over this, STFU already' perspective nursed by long-haul fanposters and tons of general watchers.

truly. although i will say i Don’t think it’s fair to judge qrow as a parent because he wasn’t one, in either the biological sense (uncle) or legal (did not have custody) or familial (not a member of the household). so while certainly there are things he could have done better (gotten sober) (quit taking missions from oz for the sake of being around more to help out) (confronted tai about the wagon incident—tho we don’t know he didn’t do that tbf) short of either moving in to take over parenting or like flat out getting whatever passes for child services involved to force tai to get help or foster the girls himself for a while qrow didn’t really have a lot of material power in this situation. & both options he did have posed real risks (misfortune + the compounding trauma of a messy custody fight while everyone was still grieving summer). so

but yeah what gets me is "they really did try their best" and "their best was in fact inadequate and caused lasting harm" are not incompatible statements. Sometimes Your Best Sucks. that’s life. & sometimes when you’re deep in the throes of a traumatic situation or a depressive episode or alcoholism or what the fuck ever You Will Hurt People because you Don’t have the capacity to support others or practice empathy; you can’t draw from an empty well. that’s life!

it’s just also where the "intentions don’t negate consequences" principle applies; qrow trying to Be There for his nieces whilst struggling with alcoholism doesn’t make the harm done by his alcoholic behavior not have happened, tai’s depression doesn’t make neglect not neglectful, salem… existing at all doesn’t justify the choice to rely almost solely on child soldiers to defend his relics. etc

this is also the most compelling thing to me abt tai (potentially) staying near vale because of summer, at the expense of his kids; as soon as you bring "summer is alive and well and chose to leave him" into this equation you bring the implicit blame to the surface: is this woman responsible for his actions because she chose to end their relationship?

consider that the one thing we know with 100% certainty about these two is that summer did not trust him with her real self; her reaction to hearing him down the stairs is.

this, followed by slipping on a mask and lying through her teeth with practiced ease. (in comparison, when ruby is feeling acutely distressed she shuts down and gets quiet, which has the effect of making her distress visible but also small and easy to ignore or easily shunted aside by louder more apparently urgent problems. ruby tries to put on a happy face most of the time, but when she’s Feeling Bad the best she can do is small, strained smiles. summer turns around with a relaxed grin and makes a casual joke at ozpin’s expense.)

so—yang remembers "supermom" and ruby thinks her dad "misses adventuring with [summer]" and for eight volumes there isn’t anything to contradict this impression the girls have that their parents were deeply in love and happy with each other… and then our introduction to the Real Summer Rose is:

reading bedtime stories to her girls

the lies come out of her so easily!

she planned her rogue mission in secret with raven, who also left tai for hitherto unknown reasons that are now strongly implied to be that she felt like a failure as a wife and mother.

leaving aside the question of why summer chose to join salem (and why she faked her own death to do it)… this does not imply a happy or functional relationship. if nothing else whatever problem summer had that drove her to plan this suicide mission with raven was something that she, for whatever reason, did not feel like she could bring to her spouse/partner—and that in itself speaks to a fundamental absence of trust, but taken in conjunction with a) this Extremely well-practiced emotional disappearing act and b) how tai handles emotional vulnerability in v4 (NOT WELL!) it’s kinda…

well. the blacksmith shows this to ruby then remarks "maybe you’re not the only one who has felt the weight of others’ expectations. like alyx, like your mother," and the only character summer performs for in this flashback is. tai.

and—while the silver eyed warrior paragon-hero fairytale cult nonsense was undoubtedly the greater burden—i think the narrative is inviting the question here of to what extent perfect mother/perfect wife was one of those expectations, to what extent Raven Leaving was a shadow cast over summer’s relationship with taiyang, and how she might feel about all this with fourteen years of hindsight.

wrapping back around to the point about tai and culpability, you have on the one hand this implicit blame put on summer for tai having neglected the children after she left him and on the other this nascent question rising to the surface of: was summer even happy in this relationship, if she felt like she had to perform happiness often enough for it to be this easy? there’s the asterisk of course that what we see in this flashback was outside of the ordinary but the ease and confidence with which she slips on that mask bespeaks habit.

so tai fourteen years later is still pining for this partnership in which summer may or may not have felt an expectation to Be Happy (perfect huntress, perfect mother, perfect wife) and in which she certainly did not feel like she could bring her Desperate Suicide Mission Problems to her partner… and his parental neglect is all rooted directly in the intensity of his anguish after she left him… and she’s spent those fourteen years with salem and if they’ve not already crossed paths offscreen they’re certain to do so now that tai is like alone on patch with salem / summer / cinder for neighbors.

there’s an interesting reckoning being set up here, i think, with the unspoken implication that summer was the load-bearing pillar in this family and by removing herself from it she Made tai into a neglectful father—that’s the family narrative, dad shut down after mom left (died), but the narrative arc is beginning to culminate with "okay, why did mom leave?" and it seems to me that the natural trajectory from there is to really interrogate that question of blame.

#i am rly curious to see how summer feels abt tai these days #because it doesn’t… feel like… there’s a trajectory here toward (romantic) reconciliation. and that’s rly interesting #the fandom will of course be ridiculous about it but what else is new.