RWBY General Discussion

It's interesting seeing people speculating on if there's more to the Imaginary friend thing on the Roman Holiday novel.

I've seen speculation Trivia has some sort of split personality, Or more interestingly, that Trivia is a Decoy Protagonist and the 'Imaginary friend' is, in fact, the Actual Neo.

And my personal favorite, that there have just been 2 Neos the entire time. And soon the one not Yeeted into the Void shall soon Pounce Cinder.

Edited by Snoketrope on Aug 7th 2021 at 2:52:30 AM

That or Trivia dies or leaves in a way that won't affect the show proper.

Whatever happened to Yang's friends

Also, Trivia is an... odd name.

Like what the actual hell.

Edited by FOFD on Aug 7th 2021 at 6:51:18 AM

Her parents were playing trivial pursuit while deciding on the name. The dad suggested it as a joke and they were just too lazy to change it.

It is an actual name in real life, believe it or not, albeit one that is very rarely used. It's connected to the Roman goddess, Diana.

I ran through a small bit of the history of it in this post.

Yeah, Jinn indicated that the reason people were too terrified to come to see him was because they knew that's where the Grimm came from, and they were too terrified of the Grimm to go anywhere near there.

We use her words because that's what we've got. However, yes, I do think it's healthy for us (the audience) to bear in mind the distinct possibility that she does have some flexibility in how she responds to a question — depending on how open-ended the question is. For instance, the sheer amount of gaps in the information she provided in response to "What is Ozpin hiding?", makes it very clear that she didn't tell them everything. Meanwhile, the information she provided in response to the question "What have Ruby and her team-mates planned?" was far more complete — but it also came with hesitation and sadness on her part.

I think it's now clear that Jinn does have personal opinions. She gave Ruby free knowledge because she thought relying on Jinn's time-freeze was clever (even if the information was just a warning that she won't allow herself to be used without a question again), she seems quite fond of Ozma, and she very clearly didn't like the question Cinder asked her.

What we don't know is how free she is to act upon her opinions. The fact that she liked Ruby's action shows she can loophole, at least a little bit (she allowed Ruby to get away with it under the premise that she needs to inform Ruby to never misuse her again, which she further states without a question being asked). However, the fact that she gave Cinder all the pertinent information despite looking alarmed and sad, indicates that her freedoms are also quite limited.

That still leaves us with a very ambiguous range of possibilities.

My feeling about Jinn is that she is the opposite of Ambrosius. With Ambrosius, it's the words that matter, not the intention. With Jinn, I think it's the intention that matters more than the words. In both cases, people can end up asking a question they don't realise they're asking and so being given a result that doesn't seem to match what they thought they were asking, but it's being done in different ways and for different reasons.

The other problem with Jinn is that it does seem like there's very little she's allowed to give away 'for free'. A valid question to ask is therefore whether even Ozma knows the full truth about how Jinn works. I say that because I suspect that, to find the full truth of how she works (in terms of limits and loopholes), would require asking questions. Ambrosius can freely state that there will be a difference between what he gives them and what he wants because of how words get used. However, that's a form of offering knowledge. All Jinn says when she manifests is to state how many questions are available and ask what knowledge they seek. She does not volunteer information about how she functions.

As a result, it begs the question of whether Ozma's ever been in a frame of mind to ask her such questions, or whether he's never bothered because he thinks he knows everything he needs to know about her and has never thought to 'waste' a question that way — it's pretty clear that he does worry about wasting questions because that would be the main reason for him (as Big Good) to lie about the availability of them... it's part of his Too Awesome to Use problem that he's implied to have going on.

Yes, exactly. I think "You can't" is the stand-out example. The fandom is already highly suspicious of that, and it's clear that this has left a lot of people feeling utterly powerless about dealing with her. It's even restricted how Ozma deals with her, and he's the one that refuses to give up (even if he sometimes needs a time-out for an emotional collapse along the way).

I know most of the fandom immediately interpreted it as 'someone else can destroy her', but my immediate interpretation was 'she can be saved' — because that's what the terms of her curse include. The fact the characters have finally mentioned the possibility of someone else destroying her makes me more convinced the point is about saving her.

There was clearly supposed to be something there. If you notice, pre-Maidens, the term that kept being used was Guardian, and that reference goes right back to Salem's narration in the pilot episode.

The creators did say that slotting the Maidens into the story didn't require too much reworking (Volume 3 needed to be reworked a bit, but it sounds like the setting and the plot accommodated the new addition pretty easily).

My guess is that they replaced these 'Guardians' with the Maidens; since the Guardians hadn't been explained to the audience (the term had just been tossed in here and there), changing what the Guardians were would not have had a massive effect from the audience perspective. In Volume 3, the language being used shifted from Guardians to Maidens over the course of the volume. The first use of Maidens was in a statement directly linked to Guardians; it was the episode before Pyrrha learned about Maidens, where Qrow asked Ozpin if he'd chosen the Guardian yet, and Ozpin responded by saying that Maidens choose themselves. The scene then shifted to Pyrrha entering the lift with a smile, and the fandom spent the next week speculating madly that Pyrrha was really Neo in disguise. After Pyrrha and the audience were introduced to Maidens, the reference to Guardians died off and the use of Maidens picked up. Since Volume 3, I don't think 'Guardians' has been used at all.

Since Ozpin's back story was established, as were the Two Brothers, before the show ever started, my guess is that the original plan was to have chosen Guardians whose role it was to protect the Relics. The Relics have been a thing from the beginning (right down to the initiation test being about recovering "relics"). If the Maidens were slotted in to either replace or increase the power levels of the Guardians, that might explain why they didn't need to rework the entire storyline to fit them into the setting and the plot.

This is all completely speculative, of course. Other people might have different ideas.

And, yes, I think it could still have been connected to the four daughters.

It is, however, interesting to note that the concept of four-person Huntsman teams doesn't come from the four daughters. That comes from the Hunter's four children, and the Hunter was clearly one of Ozma's incarnation (this time, it was two daughters and two sons). So, the supernatural inspirations seem to come from the four daughters, while the unity inspirations seem to come from the second set of four children.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Aug 7th 2021 at 12:13:24 PM

Well unless we find out there's a Loophole and that she can be summoned just not asked Questions or that there's another means of finding out, we're out of luck for the next century thanks to Cinder using the last question, meaning Jinn is pretty much out of the story for the foreseeable future.

I would Joke that Trivias parents hated her, but from what the chapter showed, that seemed to literally be the case so it's actually plausible.

I've seen those theories, but honestly they feel to me like reaching too much for a Shocking Twist!1! and don't make much sense. I mean "Imaginary Friend Neo is real" would require the parents to not know how many children they have. Likewise on Multiple Personalities would be stumbling into a huge potential mess with Mental Health advocates.

Looking back at the lyrics for her theme song, it's pretty clear what is going to happen.

https://rwby.fandom.com/wiki/One_Thing

Trivia was so lonely that she created an Imaginary Friend to cope with her situation, and ends up reinventing herself to become Neo (an idealized version of herself) after meeting Roman.

I'm almost sad that the Book debunked the HC that Roman Named Neo because she reminded him of the Ice Cream.

This is making me wonder more and more if Neo's appearance is even her real one, or if it's just an aspect of her Semblance making her look more like her Imaginary Friend.

And for that matter, how much of Neo's behavior these past few volumes been genuine, and how much of it has been an act. The only part certainly genuine is her grief and rage over Roman's death. Even her being a sadist though is suddenly called into question as to whether it's genuine, or if she's just forcing herself to act like that to be like her Imaginary Friend.

Prediction: Volume 9 will have Neo reveal how she looked as Trivia to RWBYJ, in the midst of crying Broken Tears, and use her Semblance to show them why she's doing all this.

...

I'm actually starting to hate this book the more and more I hear about it. :/

Based on the cover and the introduction, it seems like Trivia is a natural brunette and everything else about her current identity is adapted from "Neo". Which I think is kind of wish fulfillment for little Trivia, a friend she'd dreamed up that is a pretty graceful Princess that is also basically acting out all the things she wants to do but is afraid to do. Sneaking into the room she's not supposed to go into, further smashing the pieces of the vase in anger, fully embracing being silent instead of the pressure Trivia had to learn to speak out loud.

Based on the pressure from her parents and the mention of a Doctor handling her condition, I'm guessing there was no (obvious) biological cause of her being mute. I wonder if they'll actually address the cause or simply leave it as ambiguous exactly why she cannot speak.

Of course, I'm predicting that Honey is going to be a major player in the story. If not the primary antagonist of the story, someone very significant in the events that bring Neo and Roman together as a criminal duo. It's really quite interesting to contrast Neo with a character that uses a powerful vocal Semblance.

Which of course, it make the question of what exactly roman backstory is, how a criminal get with the daughter of someone famous.

I really do have a suspicion that Jinn isn't out of the storyline yet, and that we've got a 'surprise' coming from that end (a 'surprise' in the sense that we think she's now useless to the plot unless the four Relics are used to summon the gods, but it turns out that she can actually come back into play).

For one thing, we don't know how the 'era' counts. Does the hundred-year wait start from the last question being asked? Or does it start from the first question being asked? Or is it independent?

I personally like the idea that the era begins from when the first question is asked or that it's independent.

If it's based on when the first question is asked, that means that if a hundred years passes from the first question without any other questions being asked, Jinn resets and you've effectively lost the opportunity to ask the two questions from the previous era. They've been wasted, so to speak. That gives her a 'use it or lose it' aspect.

That would also mean that the era will end much sooner than in a hundred years time. For example, if Ozma used the first question at the end of the war to ask (for example) about how best to hide the Relics from Salem (hence the otherworldly Vaults — or perhaps he asked how to reach the Void to create the Vaults), then Remnant is waiting just twenty years before the era ends and questions become available again. That's still outside the scope of the story, of course.

If Ozma asked the first question 99 years ago, then there's only 1 year left of the era, and the Relic could come into play again within the scope of the story — probably just in time for show's ramp up to the story's climax.

If it's independent of when the questions are asked, it could be, for example, based on when the Relics first appeared on Remnant in physical form. Let's call this day the Relics' 'birthday'. The era therefore resets every time Jinn's centennial birthday occurs. If that's the case, Ozma could have asked his question many years into the current era, resulting in the other two being asked right at the very end of the current era, just squeezing into the era in time to be asked before they're lost in the reset. When you approach it like that, the era could end tomorrow, and suddenly we've got three questions back in play.

Then there's the possibility of loopholes or 'hidden' questions: this is where the three questions are used up, but there's a secret rule that allows for a fourth question to be asked (after all, four is the Arc Number of this entire show — so, why three questions in a show where it's four that matters?).

That actually means that Nora's 'can we ask for more questions' joke — dismissed by Ren as not being wishes, and by the audience for being comedy (Nora does Nora) — is a plot clue. Since this show does like to make use of comedy to slip in plot information, what if Nora's question is designed to be a hint that there is a way to get an extra fourth question out of Jinn?

So, there are several possibilities for how Jinn could come back into play despite the three questions having been asked. I do believe we'll eventually learn what Ozma's question was because I think it's relevant to what's happening now. I am suspicious that Jinn can come back into play. And I am suspicious that the option for a secret fourth question can be unlocked... and that even Ozma doesn't know that's possible.

I'm not sure it's hate. Dad seems to be 'strict' (re:abusive). Mum seems to be afraid of him. However, the way Dad reacted to Trivia, I'm wondering if he's the kind of abusive where they don't understand they're abusive, and just think they're using "tough love". There are, after all, two types of abusive parent — the ones who know they're abusive and the ones who don't. It's incredibly ambiguous as to whether Jacques genuinely loved his children, but I'm getting the vibe that it may not be so ambiguous with Trivia's father.

To clarify: that does not absolve him; if you love the child you're abusing, that's no better than if you hate the child you're abusing. In some ways, it actually might be worse.

The vibe I'm getting is that Trivia is a disappointment to her parents. She's not the child they dreamed of having and has therefore failed to live up to expectations (she's not 'perfect'). Her muteness definitely comes across as a 'disappointment', putting pressure on her to talk and making the problem worse; that also makes her condition ambiguous — is her muteness physical or psychological? Can she learn to speak if given the right environment to develop? Her reliance on imaginary friends also seems to be a source of disappointment for the parents, too. There seems to be no sense from them that it's a phase may children go through, it's just seen as a problem. Of course, that could just be plot set-up for it to have reached 'problem' proportions, which can happen in real life but in this case would be about Trivia's developing abilities rather than a true 'problem'.

I notice that Neo is described as pink. We haven't had much description of Trivia yet, but I'm thinking she's the 'brown'. So, at some point, Trivia and Neo will 'merge'[1] into one being, and that's where the split pink/brown comes from. My big question is what the 'white' means. Unfortunately, the show hasn't given us any sign of Neo's eyes changing colour the way they did in Volume 2 (especially during the Yang fight), they seem to be 'locked'. What I'm hoping is that this 'lock' is a consequence of her grief and character development in the Void will restore that aspect of her character.

[1] By 'merge', I don't mean the sort of thing that's going on with Oscar. I'm not talking about two separate souls. I'm talk about a soul that's effectively split itself in half (personality-wise) from the stress of her situation: Trivia is the person who is trapped and Neo is the person she wants to be. When she becomes 'whole' (almost certainly due to Roman coming into her life), the merge will occur, her Semblance will ignite, and she will become Neo, the person she always wanted to be[2]. The big question here is how she gets the appearance we're so familiar with; I've actually often wondered if the black-haired, green-eyed girl is her original appearance and the form we're so familiar with is something else; however, her eyes remain 'locked' when her Aura breaks, so they could either be contacts, or I'm wrong — which still begs the question of how she ends up with the split colour scheme.

[2] I have a sneaking suspicion that this is actually the person she thought she wanted to be, but that this will change during the Volume 9 detour as she realises she now has expanded horizons (of the self) that she can explore.

Even before the preview came out, I was suspicious that the timing of this novel coming out means it's basically set-up for Volume 9. The preview makes me certain of that. We're going to see the 'real' Neo in the Void — things the book mentions, explores or hints at will probably be involved. I've also been suspicious about whether we'll see a 'speaking' form of Neo or not (something I'm in two minds about — it would be interesting, but I'd also be nervous about whether giving her a voice actor might destroy that unique way of communicating with her body and Semblance that she does so well).

Neo going through the Void with the heroes, is a very strong flag for the possibility of her switching sides and joining the heroes by going through something that makes her confront her grief, how she wants to handle that grief, and what she wants to do with her life now that he's gone.

Her song all by itself suggests that she's in a similar boat to Nora: both girls have defined herself by the person who came into their lives and 'saved' them, and therefore don't really know who they are as an individual. The difference is that Nora came to that realisation while helping Ruby get Amity up and running, while it's looking like Neo needs a big shock to her system (the Void detour) to reach the same conclusion.

Ruby has no idea why Neo is doing what she's doing, and she tried to understand why Roman was siding with the villains in Volume 3, too. Roman actually made it clear that he didn't want to be siding them, he could just see which side his bread was buttered on — he was helping because he had no choice, because he thought that was his best chance for survivor. Given the events of Volume 8, I feel confident in saying that Roman's survivor instinct means he'd would have actually switched sides had he learned that Salem was trying to destroy the world.

The fandom felt his death removed the opportunity to explore that aspect of Roman — and that was before the show confirmed Salem was trying to destroy the world. However, I'm getting the feeling that this may now become important in addressing Neo's character. When you combine Ruby's need to understand villain motives, Cinder turning on Neo (and Salem not going to be happy with the Relic theft either), the reason why Neo is dependent on Roman, and Roman's survival philosophy, there are some very compelling reasons to think that the heroes are going to learn more about Neo, and that Neo will realise that switching to the heroes' side will both honour Roman's philosophy, and give her a chance to explore who she really is (consider this an expansion on my note [2] above).

It's certainly the argument I can see Ruby making to convince her: Roman said there are some bets even a gambling man doesn't take, which feeds very nicely into Volume 8's theme of embracing risk; Roman made it clear he'd been told Salem was going to remake the world (which is what all the villains seem to have been told); Roman also made it clear that he was choosing the side that gave him the best chance of survival rather than the side he wanted to be on.

It makes sense to me that, once she knows what's going on with Neo, Ruby will point out that, if Roman knew Salem was trying to destroy the planet, he'd probably be helping the heroes because he's someone who wanted to survive. That belief was so strong, it's what got him killed — by a Grimm that wouldn't have been attacking Vale in the first place if not for Cinder carrying out Salem's plan to destroy; that her original instinct of going after Cinder was the correct instinct, but that she should help the heroes because it's the right thing to do, and not because she is consumed by vengeance in an unhealthy way.

And, one last thing: the fact that Neo's father works for the Vale Council makes me wonder how well he knew Ozpin, who was a member of the Vale Council. It depends on how high up the food chain he was. If he was working directly for one of the Councillors (and that's the impression I get), then he'll almost certainly have been exposed to all the Vale Councillors, including Ozpin. Neo having an unexpected link to Ozpin (even if it's indirectly) would be interesting for her Oscar interactions if she does switch sides.

More significantly, I'm wondering if the book will give us a bit more of an idea about the people who sit on the Vale Council and how they work. That'll lead to the question of whether they're the same people who were sitting on the Council in Volume 2. It depends on how far in the past Neo's story is set (since we don't know for certain what her age is in the current storyline).

Edited by Wyldchyld on Aug 8th 2021 at 12:19:29 PM

I actually thought Torchwick's death was really ironic and impactful to the lesson that Ruby has to learn about huntsmen: that the world is cruel and doesn't care about bravery or courage, his death being ironic since in all his villainy he truly knows how to survive in it, that is until a Nevermore bites him in the ass, literally.

And then Cinder only galvanizes Roman's claims by killing Pyrrha in front of Ruby.

I think that Salem is going to summon the gods to judge humanity... and they simply will judge them worthy of life, using the exploits of RWBY and JNPR (and everyone else who have joined in their pursuit of stopping Salem) as evidence. They'll punch things up and make it actiony, for sure, but I bet that's what it'll boil down to.

I think that Salem is going to summon the gods to judge humanity... and they simply will judge them worthy of life, using the exploits of RWBY and JNPR (and everyone else who have joined in their pursuit of stopping Salem) as evidence. They'll punch things up and make it actiony, for sure, but I bet that's what it'll boil down to.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I think will happen. I do hope volume 9 isn't botched too badly, though.

I just wanted to let you guys know in case anyone wanted to help (please help — I'll beg if I have to; I have no shame).

Stemming from this ATT discussion, there is a feeling that the RWBY pages could use a co-ordinated clean-up. While a lot of work has been done in the past, there are still outstanding issues that often don't make it through existing clean-up threads because it's a niche show that not everyone is familiar with.

Given that the work also attracts Edit War issues when misuse clean-ups are attempted (which has led to the long-term locking of the NightmareFuel.RWBY page) and shipping clean-ups are attempted (which has led to the long-term locking of the Characters.RWBY Team RWBY page), it looks like making a short-term project to organise and formalise this might be the way to go.

If anyone has the time to help (or even just to go through the sandbox I've created and feedback whether anything I've listed in the Minor section is a non-issue or not — that alone would be a big help).

Big disclaimer: I've put this sandbox together by myself, so if anyone feels the issues I've listed are wrong, please post to the project thread. The point of doing it as a sandbox is so that anyone can potentially edit it. I've done it as a starting point, not because I think what I've written is fixed in stone.

Short-Term Project Thread.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Aug 8th 2021 at 8:53:48 PM

https://youtu.be/mxq3r7dD18k

Years later, still hilarious.

So Wyldchyld, did your opinion on "War" change after Volume 8.

Wow, I was harsh!

I had a think about it (and listened to the song again), but... no. If anything, Volume 8 has reiterated my feeling that the song reads like a RTDE fanfic because nothing happened to justify how extreme some of the language is in the song.

Even though Ironwood had to go to insane extremes before the Ace-Ops finally turned on him, and even though Harriet went to extreme lengths before she came to her senses, we do end up with a better understanding of why it took them so long to come round (Marrow needed to realise that Ironwood wasn't bluffing; Elm and Vine needed to realise Ironwood was prioritising buildings and artefacts over people's lives; and Harriet was so busy trying to copy her dead leader's Undying Loyalty that she lost sight of the consequences of her actions). While we don't have to agree with them or the reasons why it took them so long to wake up, it still doesn't reflect how inappropriate some of the lyric choices are.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Aug 10th 2021 at 5:11:31 PM

Fair.

Now that you mention Harriet's Undying Loyalty in memory of Clover, I wonder how Clover would've responded to Volume 8 had he survived.