History Recap / RWBYV5E8AloneTogether

* KickTheSonOfABitch: When Blake asks Ilia why she joined the White Fang if she can pass for human, Ilia explains that she was raised human to improve her future prospects, even if it meant she could never introduce her human friends to her Faunus family and had to join in with her friends' anti-Faunus rhetoric. When a tragedy struck the Dust mine her parents worked in, Ilia's friends laughed about the Faunus' suffering. Ilia turned blue with grief, outing her as a Faunus and causing her former friends to turn on her. In retaliation, she broke their teeth. This led her to the White Fang's door where she chose to fight underneath its terrorist banner

* DramaticallyMissingThePoint: Ilia argues that the White Fang needs to use violence to achieve Faunus rights because peaceful protest doesn't work. The fact that the violent path has led to Faunus turning on other Faunus instead of achieving equality with humanity is lost on Ilia, until Blake, who is captured and on her knees in front of her, says "Yeah. Look where it gets you." Momentarily taken aback, Ilia ends her conversation with Blake and orders the Faunus to enact the next phase of the plan.

* ParentalNeglect: When discussing Yang's anger over the way Blake ran away from the team without talking to any of them first, Weiss and Yang compare notes on what it's like to grow up too soon because they're not being parented properly. Yang had to hold the family together and raise Ruby from a very young age because her mother abandoned her as a baby, Ruby's mother was killed when they were young, and her devastated father spent all his time at work. Weiss has a father that only married her mother to obtain the family name and has no interest in being a father to his children; meanwhile, her mother was so horrified at discovering she was in a loveless marriage that she crawled inside a bottle and has been far too drunk to have done any parenting for years.

* TheAlcoholic: Weiss outright confirms her mother turned to alcohol as a way of coping with her loveless marriage.
* ABirthdayNotABreak: When Yang assumes that Weiss doesn't understand loneliness because she comes from a large family with a lot of closeness, Weiss tells her what the Schnee family is really like to live with by using her tenth birthday as an example. Her mother shouted at her father for missing Weiss's birthday dinner, causing Jacques' temper to snap and admit that he only married her for the family name. His wife is so devastated that she turns to drink, eventually becoming a full-blown alcoholic who can never be relied on to show up or support any of Weiss' recitals or social events.

** Ilia's statement that humans either hate Faunus or [[ApatheticCitizens stand back and let the hate happen]] calls back to "Jaunedice", where Teams RWBY and JNPR witness Velvet, a rabbit Faunus, being harassed by [[TheBully Cardin Winchester]]. While they strongly disapproved of what Cardin was doing, not even Blake intervened to stop him.

* DespairEventHorizon. When Weiss's parents argue about Jacques not turning up for a ten-year-old Weiss's birthday dinner, Jacques angrily tells her that he only got married to obtain the Schnee family name. Devastated by this admission, Weiss's mother takes to alochol. These days, she doesn't even try to be a parent and spends all day drinking.

* GoldDigger: Weiss's father actually admitted that he only married his wife for her family name when she got mad at him for missing Weiss's tenth birthday dinner. The news devastated her so much, she's been drinking ever since.

* CommonalityConnection: Yang expresses her unhappiness over Blake's absence by stating that Weiss can't comprehend the loneliness of growing up in a broken home that forced her to parent Ruby because the surviving parent became too emotionally unavailable. Weiss comments that her father ruined her tenth birthday by revealing he only married to obtain the family name and company, resulting in her having a dysfunctional, alcoholic mother and an unloving, abusive father. She explains to Yang that everyone experiences loneliness in their own individual way, and that Blake will have her own form of loneliness, too.

* CommonaityConnection: Yang tells Weiss that she has no idea how lonely it is to grow up in a broken home where the surviving parent doesn't act like a parent because of his grief, forcing her to grow up by herself and be a mother to Ruby. Weiss responds by telling Yang the story of her tenth birthday: when her mother confronts her father about his habit of missing birthday dinners, Jacques revealed he didn't marry her for love, only for her family name. Her devastated mother's response was to curl up inside a bottle, leaving Weiss without a functional mother and in the hands of a loveless father. Weiss tells Yang that everyone has their own individual experience of loneliness and she suspects that Blake is lonely, too.

* NotSoDifferent: Yang tells Weiss that she has no idea how lonely it is to grow up in a broken home where the surviving parent doesn't act like a parent because of his grief, forcing her to grow up by herself and be a mother to Ruby. Weiss responds by telling Yang the story of her tenth birthday: when her mother confronts her father about his habit of missing birthday dinners, Jacques revealed he didn't marry her for love, only for her family name. Her devastated mother's response was to curl up inside a bottle, leaving Weiss without a functional mother and in the hands of a loveless father. Weiss tells Yang that everyone has their own individual experience of loneliness and she suspects that Blake is lonely, too.

[[caption-width-right:350: Thinking of you.]]

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'''Volume 5, Episode 8:'''

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screen_shot_2020_05_20_at_60114_pm.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350: Thinking of you.]]

* TheAlcoholic: Weiss outright confirms her mother turned to alcohol as a way of coping with her loveless marriage.

* {{Hypocrite}}:
** The White Fang have talked about it before, but now they are finally killing other Faunus, despite their constant ranting about Faunus brotherhood.
** Likewise, Ilia says that making the humans fear the Faunus will end hatred. Not only does Ilia hate the humans because she fears them, but the point of killing the Belladonnas (from the perspective of the Albain brothers, at least) is to control the Faunus through fear.

* DramaticallyMissingThePoint: Ilia claims that humans won't have time to hate the Faunus if they are afraid of them instead. Historically, that has ''never'' worked, and that's not even getting into the part where fear attracts the Grimm.

!!This episode contains examples of:

!!Tropes:

* VillainHasAPoint: Ilia makes a valid point when she insists to Blake that humans either hate Faunus or [[BystanderSyndrome stand back]] and let the hate happen. Her words serve as a CallBack to Volume 1 when Velvet was being harassed by [[TheBully Cardin Winchester]]; although both Teams RWBY and JNPR all expressed disgust with Team CRDL's behavior and sympathy for Velvet's plight, none of them intervened to help her -- not even Blake. Blake notably cannot argue against the point Ilia's making, only the actions Ilia has chosen to take in response to that truth.

* WhamLine: Ilia revealing that she's in love with Blake, which marks her as the first named LGBT character in the series and puts their previous close, personal interactions into perspective.
-->... But I guess back then you were just too busy falling for Adam to notice. I was always jealous of the way you looked at him. I wanted you to look at me that way.

* JerkassRealization: Yang, after summarizing her rough childhood to Weiss and her feelings of abandonment over Blake leaving her, accuses Weiss of not understanding her loneliness since she has such a big family, only to be taken aback when Weiss tells her what the Schnee family is ''really'' like to live with, using [[ABirthdayNotABreak her tenth birthday]] as an example; her mother shouted at her father for missing Weiss's birthday dinner, causing Jacques to snap and admit that he [[GoldDigger only married her for the family name]], driving Weiss' mother to [[DespairEventHorizon despair]] and [[TheAlcoholic alcoholism]].
-->'''Yang''': I'm really sorry. I shouldn't have assumed.\\
'''Weiss''': You're right though. I don't know loneliness like you do. [[LonelyRichKid I have my own version]].

** Ilia's statement that humans either hate Faunus or [[ApatheticCitizens stand back and let the hate happen]] calls back to "Jaunedice"; near the end, Teams RWBY and JNPR (including Blake herself) witnessed Velvet, a rabbit Faunus, being harassed by [[TheBully Cardin Winchester]], and while they disapproved of him doing so, they did nothing to stop him.

* NotSoDifferent: Yang tells Weiss that she has no idea how lonely it is to grow up in a broken home where the surviving parent doesn't act like a parent because of his grief, forcing her to grow up by herself and be a mother to Ruby. Weiss responds by telling Yang the story of her tenth birthday: when her mother confronts her father about his habit of missing birthday dinners, Jacques revealed he didn't marry her for love, only for her family name. Her devastated mother's response was to crawl inside a bottle and never climb back out, leaving Weiss without a functional mother and in the hands of a loveless father. Weiss tells Yang that everyone has their own individual experience of loneliness and she suspects that Blake is lonely, too.

Despite development and growth, things are made tense for Team RWBY in Mistal when Ruby brings up Blake. Meanwhile, in Menagerie, Blake agrees to a nighttime meeting with Ilia.

* ABirthdayNotABreak: When Yang assumes that Weiss doesn't understand loneliness because she comes from a large family with a lot of closeness, Weiss tells her what the Schnee family is really like to live with by using her tenth birthday as an example. Her mother shouted at her father for missing Weiss's birthday dinner, causing Jacques' temper to snap and admit that he only married her for the family name. His wife is so devastated that she turns to drink, eventually becoming a full-blown alcoholic who can never be relied on to show up or support any of her recitals or social events.

* ShutUpKirk: When Blake desperately tries to reason with Ilia, Ilia retorts that Blake doesn't know her as well as she thinks she does.

* WhatIsEvil: When Blake demands to know how Ilia can possibly think that attacking innocent people is the right thing to do, Ilia retorts that there's no such thing as innocents or "the right thing to do." She dismisses humans as either being those who hate Faunus or those who [[BystanderSyndrome let the hate happen]], and all that matters is what's best for the Faunus.