Ice Queendom C8 Where You Belong
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michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Previously on Ice Queendom: Negative Weiss rescues Jaune and Dream Pyrrha from Nightmare Renora, then summons Big Nicholas to judge the intruders. This has been the easiest 2-and-a-bit minutes of analysis I've ever done.
Team RBY flee another punch from the animate skyscraper and consider their options. Blake has a point that they're safe if they get inside, but Yang has a point that it's going to be difficult to get there. Ruby volunteers to get inside - much easier with her Semblance - and then place a Breadcrumb for the others to follow. Blake goes along with it, volunteering for distraction duty.
Yang thinks Ruby's being reckless, which I don't entirely agree with. Ruby retorts that she's best-equipped to pull this off and doesn't have to be coddled all the time. Yang is, expectedly, taken aback. Blake urges her (Yang) to have faith. Yang takes a deep breath, and does.
As the Bees™ make a distraction, Big Nicholas finds a distraction of its own, sticking a hand out over the third tier and activating antigravity to vacuum up most of the Weiss Insurrection. The insurrecting statue is immune to this, being a fixed statue, so Negative Weiss has to handle it herself. By, uh, creating a suit of Trailer Armour around it. That also manifests on Ceiling Jacques in the dining room. I have questions that I don't want answered ever. The armoured Jacques starts beating up the remaining insurrecting robots. That answers one of my questions and I was absolutely correct that I didn't want it answered.
Meanwhile, Jaune and Pyrrha flee. Jaune, now fairly sure he has a spare moment, spends a coin to summon a telephone, calling Shion to panic that "the dream is out of control!". Get a hold of yourself, sir, it's literally a dream. Dreams are weird.
I thought this teaser segment was just going to be recapping the previous Chapter, but it's gone on for longer than any other.
Shion tells Jaune - and us - what's wrong there: "If the changes are too much, her heart will start to resist them.", the same wording as what happens if a non-friend goes in. Furthermore, the Nightmare is taking advantage of the resistance Weiss is already putting up, details not yet given. Time is ticking.
Back in the dream, Big Nicholas has a handful of the Weiss Insurrection (...are they the resistance Weiss is already putting up?), and eye-lasers the big ones to death. He then drops the normally-sized ones; a Negative Glyph catches them and portals them back into their jail cell.
Okay, update, Mega people aren't being killed, they're being popped to reveal their normally-sized versions, as revealed when Armoured Jacques does it to Inexplicably Mega Ren. Inexplicably Mega Nora also tries charging at Armoured Jacques and Negative Weiss. Is Mega just a thing that happens to uninhibited dream actors? The latter has a very easy time popping her as well, then sends both back to their cell by Glyph: Captivity is freedom (literally Orwellian), and "It is the only way for you to remain pure.", which is exactly the point of people who say that love can lead to negative actions.
As Blake and Yang continue to distract, Ruby tries to make a break for it, but is intercepted by Whitley. Ruby bats (yes) him into the distance with Crescent Rose, pauses to consider that Whitley said "sister" which would make him Weiss' brother, then gets back to the job at hand, Semblancing to Big Nicholas' base and firing a flare round to tell her teammates that they can disengage.
Ruby enters the live-in trophy cabinet's entrance hall and creates a Breadcrumb to let Blake and Yang link up. With Negative Weiss and Grumpy Klein distracted in the city, they travel through the underground hall and over the snake-heart (aided by the relic) without interference.
Armoured Jacques finishes defeating a small armada of robots, which Negative Weiss then Glyphs away. Jaune reckons this is a good time for him and Pyrrha to go somewhere. Cue Negative Weiss with the jump scare again.
Jaune resolves to not be put in the cell, urges Weiss to wake up, and adopts a fighting stance. Cue Jaune and Pyrrha being Glyphed into the cell. Negative Weiss tells them to "Remain there for eternity or face my judgment.", by which she is previously established to mean death/equivalent/worse.
Things go from bad to worse as Jaune banging on the door to be let out is answered by Nightmare thorns beginning to rapidly infest the space. Jaune has no idea how. At the back, he discovers that the signpost-tree is similarly infested. I reckon the relic was keeping the Nightmare out. Jaune soon concurs.
Nightmare thorns likewise infest the replica dorm room. Maybe that's because Ruby took the relic originally, but I'm starting to doubt it - I think it's the Nightmare's increasing control, which is also behind Weiss' worsening prognosis.
Jaune, backed into a corner with the cell population, thinks of using a Breadcrumb, which mostly works - except, unnoticed, the last young Weiss is caught by the thorns on the way out. That's either great or terrible depending on which of young-Weiss or Nightmare mentally influences the other more, so probably terrible. They flee to the train station and board the train as thorns encroach upon it - but the thorns reach a minimum distance from them and refuse to encroach any further, forming a perfect circle of safety. At the centre of that circle? Jaune's impractical sword. Remember it? I didn't! But the writers had a plan all along.
As Team RBY walk through the courtyard plaza near the centre of the dream, which is in a strange void location that I didn't really notice before (and covered in more thorns than before), Jaune calls Ruby. The signal is terrible.
Ruby again uses the relic to light and clear the way to the theatre that serves as the Nightmare's nest.
It should be noted that Weiss' performance dress is ensnared near the Nightmare's core.
Team RBY enter the theatre and are immediately beset by thorns which Ruby clears away. Look, "oversized gardening tool" useful for oversized gardening!
And just like that, a Negative Glyph appears in Yang's path and she can't stop before hurtling through it. Negative Weiss replaces her, followed by Armoured Jacques. The former says concerning words before siccing the latter on Ruby.
Meanwhile, Blake gets some altitude by ribbon trick off the theatre's chandelier, dodges Negative Weiss' magic multimissile barrage, and inflicts considerable damage on the thorns around the core with a plunging attack that she must surely have wished she could replicate in V09C01. Blake sees the dress at the top, internalises it, doesn't say anything, has her next sword swing absorbed by a Negative Glyph, and is dragged through it screaming.
Ruby can't help because she has her own problems. She gets a bit of distance from Armoured Jacques, reasons the key would help, takes it out, drops it, wonders why her hand cramped, and realises that it's thorned. So yeah, it's going great in here. /s To make matters worse, her next dive to escape Armoured Jacques knocks the key around into Negative Weiss' proximity.
Negative Weiss makes clear her intentions to banish Team RBY (and probably Jaune too) from the city for good as she destroys the relic in front of Ruby. You fool, that only makes it respawn somewhere more convenient! Ruby, who hasn't made that connection, is pulled through her own Negative Glyph of banishment, protesting all the way.
And that's the end of that.
Or is it? Because that cloud of petals wasn't Ruby making a futile attempt to escape, or even a visual metaphor for death; it was Ruby making a successful attempt to escape. She's now back in the hallway outside. And so is Jaune, somehow.
Ruby theorises that Blake and Yang are outside the city. I'd say that jail or expulsion from the dream is more likely, but it's a good guess from the word "banish". Jaune says he'll go look for them, but changes his mind and vetoes Ruby going back to fight the Nightmare's core again alone.
Instead, a Breadcrumb takes them back to the train, where Pyrrha and 10 Silly Weisses remain. Jaune will have to explain that to Ruby.
Snow falls. In the distance, lightning strikes. Blake and Yang have indeed been sent well outside the city. The location to which they've been banished looks, from the outside (which they are currently on), the exterior of the Schnee live-in trophy cabinet plus a great deal of urban decay. Or just a haunted house. Actually, given all the faunus imagery on the front fence, this has to be the White Fang base.
Whitley flies over the train and might or might not have noticed the impractical sword.
Inside, Jaune explains to Ruby that that's probably what's Nightmare-proofing this place. I'm thinking, if they can carry it with them ever, they can have a much easier time fighting the Nightmare core. Jaune's thinking that he placed the Sillies in Nightmare danger by letting them out of jail. The logic there is that, as Pyrrha said, Weiss was protecting them. Also that Weiss has only heard half a sentence of C.S. Lewis on being an adult, specifically the first half of the last sentence:
This is the part where Ruby wonders if being childish herself might have made Weiss conflicted and thereby made everything worse.
Ruby moves right on to playing up how well she thinks Team JNPR, and in particular Jaune, are doing. I'm waiting for the reveal that Jaune had exactly the opposite thoughts about both teams. Let me tell you all a secret. The secret is that every team - every person - is at least slightly dysfunctional somehow; the pursuit of perfection at all costs is its own severe dysfunction, so apparent perfection can be a red flag that somebody's gone authoritarian.
Ruby is disappointed in herself for not noticing Weiss' Nightmare symptoms (like Pyrrha noticed Jaune's), and in the process continues to not notice her own. Sometime soon would be a great time for Jaune to notice Ruby's. This would leave a bit of a mess of Ruby, but cleanup would be easier - and possible - once she stops being negatively influenced by her own infection.
Shrugging off Jaune trying to reassure her, Ruby mutters that Weiss' criticisms of her were right, tips over, and stops responding. Even the Sillies panic a bit, and rightly so.
Blake and Yang start noticing the White-Fang-inspired imagery around the place. Then Bashful Klein, the building's door, introduces himself. They work out that this is where faunus get imprisoned. Blake seems to now think that Weiss still actually thinks that. I choose to believe that the "Negative" was implied.
The plaza on the second tier is covered in Nightmare thorns, tying down all the robots still in it. They're creeping up the inner tier wall. The Breadcrumb is infested too, which can't be good.
Once more, Negative Weiss enters the dining room. This time, Armoured Jacques is here too, which does not detract at all from holographic Jacques. Shadow Willow (there's some Interesting™ psychology)'s laughter is increasingly evil-pitched.
Candle-Klein reports that order has been restored in "the empire" (it's only the imperial core! get it right!), and then suggests, chillingly:
Negative Weiss looks back to said coffin. There is what looks like a large mildly-shrivelled-up apple on the door. It's opaque and obscures the relic (white knight chess piece) within, at least until she stands from her chair.
"The true sleep?" she asks.
Nightmare thorns appear and approach the relic as the clock advances one minute. They clutch the relic (clock advances), and shatter it (clock advances, strikes midnight). The coffin is now full of thorns. Negative Weiss contemplates it. FOR THE LOVE OF THE BROTHER GODS DON'T GET IN.
Ruby awakens on the bed of dream-filament. There is nobody else in the room anywhere for any purpose. I'm guessing this is Ruby's recursive Nightmare.
My hypothesis is supported by Team WBY entering the nameless hall. Weiss is uncannily supportive to the extent that I'm suspecting a lotus-eater scenario by the Nightmare to keep her occupied and buy time to finish Weiss off. Does the death of the dream-host kill anyone currently dream-diving? I'd guess so.
And then everyone, quite literally, clapped. At first just Team WBY, but here's Team JNPR, and Sun, and Ozpin and Goodwitch and Shion... It's creepy and I hope Ruby realises that soon.
And Tai and Zwei... And the crowd of Silly Weisses... And some of those white guard robots... Ruby, increasingly unsettled, searches for a way out, fails to find one, and starts succumbing to rising panic, which seems entirely reasonable under the circumstances.
And suddenly they're all Shion-style voodoo dolls. From which emerge Nightmare thorns. Ruby has gone catatonic and hasn't noticed. They're coming for her.
Have fun with that cliffhanger!
Wait a minute... Is that last credits scene foreshadowing a final battle against Negative Weiss? Yes, I am this stupid.
Today's post-credits art is Ruby snowboarding, just 'cause.
Next time: Just roll with it.
Team RBY flee another punch from the animate skyscraper and consider their options. Blake has a point that they're safe if they get inside, but Yang has a point that it's going to be difficult to get there. Ruby volunteers to get inside - much easier with her Semblance - and then place a Breadcrumb for the others to follow. Blake goes along with it, volunteering for distraction duty.
Yang thinks Ruby's being reckless, which I don't entirely agree with. Ruby retorts that she's best-equipped to pull this off and doesn't have to be coddled all the time. Yang is, expectedly, taken aback. Blake urges her (Yang) to have faith. Yang takes a deep breath, and does.
As the Bees™ make a distraction, Big Nicholas finds a distraction of its own, sticking a hand out over the third tier and activating antigravity to vacuum up most of the Weiss Insurrection. The insurrecting statue is immune to this, being a fixed statue, so Negative Weiss has to handle it herself. By, uh, creating a suit of Trailer Armour around it. That also manifests on Ceiling Jacques in the dining room. I have questions that I don't want answered ever. The armoured Jacques starts beating up the remaining insurrecting robots. That answers one of my questions and I was absolutely correct that I didn't want it answered.
Meanwhile, Jaune and Pyrrha flee. Jaune, now fairly sure he has a spare moment, spends a coin to summon a telephone, calling Shion to panic that "the dream is out of control!". Get a hold of yourself, sir, it's literally a dream. Dreams are weird.
I thought this teaser segment was just going to be recapping the previous Chapter, but it's gone on for longer than any other.
Ice Queendom C8 Where You Belong
You may now panic.Shion tells Jaune - and us - what's wrong there: "If the changes are too much, her heart will start to resist them.", the same wording as what happens if a non-friend goes in. Furthermore, the Nightmare is taking advantage of the resistance Weiss is already putting up, details not yet given. Time is ticking.
Back in the dream, Big Nicholas has a handful of the Weiss Insurrection (...are they the resistance Weiss is already putting up?), and eye-lasers the big ones to death. He then drops the normally-sized ones; a Negative Glyph catches them and portals them back into their jail cell.
Okay, update, Mega people aren't being killed, they're being popped to reveal their normally-sized versions, as revealed when Armoured Jacques does it to Inexplicably Mega Ren. Inexplicably Mega Nora also tries charging at Armoured Jacques and Negative Weiss. Is Mega just a thing that happens to uninhibited dream actors? The latter has a very easy time popping her as well, then sends both back to their cell by Glyph: Captivity is freedom (literally Orwellian), and "It is the only way for you to remain pure.", which is exactly the point of people who say that love can lead to negative actions.
As Blake and Yang continue to distract, Ruby tries to make a break for it, but is intercepted by Whitley. Ruby bats (yes) him into the distance with Crescent Rose, pauses to consider that Whitley said "sister" which would make him Weiss' brother, then gets back to the job at hand, Semblancing to Big Nicholas' base and firing a flare round to tell her teammates that they can disengage.
Ruby enters the live-in trophy cabinet's entrance hall and creates a Breadcrumb to let Blake and Yang link up. With Negative Weiss and Grumpy Klein distracted in the city, they travel through the underground hall and over the snake-heart (aided by the relic) without interference.
Armoured Jacques finishes defeating a small armada of robots, which Negative Weiss then Glyphs away. Jaune reckons this is a good time for him and Pyrrha to go somewhere. Cue Negative Weiss with the jump scare again.
Jaune resolves to not be put in the cell, urges Weiss to wake up, and adopts a fighting stance. Cue Jaune and Pyrrha being Glyphed into the cell. Negative Weiss tells them to "Remain there for eternity or face my judgment.", by which she is previously established to mean death/equivalent/worse.
Things go from bad to worse as Jaune banging on the door to be let out is answered by Nightmare thorns beginning to rapidly infest the space. Jaune has no idea how. At the back, he discovers that the signpost-tree is similarly infested. I reckon the relic was keeping the Nightmare out. Jaune soon concurs.
Nightmare thorns likewise infest the replica dorm room. Maybe that's because Ruby took the relic originally, but I'm starting to doubt it - I think it's the Nightmare's increasing control, which is also behind Weiss' worsening prognosis.
Jaune, backed into a corner with the cell population, thinks of using a Breadcrumb, which mostly works - except, unnoticed, the last young Weiss is caught by the thorns on the way out. That's either great or terrible depending on which of young-Weiss or Nightmare mentally influences the other more, so probably terrible. They flee to the train station and board the train as thorns encroach upon it - but the thorns reach a minimum distance from them and refuse to encroach any further, forming a perfect circle of safety. At the centre of that circle? Jaune's impractical sword. Remember it? I didn't! But the writers had a plan all along.
As Team RBY walk through the courtyard plaza near the centre of the dream, which is in a strange void location that I didn't really notice before (and covered in more thorns than before), Jaune calls Ruby. The signal is terrible.
Before anything else useful can be accomplished, Nightmare thorns burst from the Scroll. Ruby drops it, and it freezes (as in ice) on the way down. Blake interprets this as that they've been made and need to hurry. Ruby clenches her right fist to hide the tiny little thorn visible on its surface. Stew on that during the ad break, still without its 'usual' score (#12 Tactics) so I think that was just a coincidence. Is she knowingly succumbing to classic zombie-infection stupidity, or did she just not notice? Probably the latter. Probably. Hopefully. Did she get that wound fresh, or is it the aftereffects of the last time she took a thorn to the hand? Well, does it matter?
Ruby again uses the relic to light and clear the way to the theatre that serves as the Nightmare's nest.
It should be noted that Weiss' performance dress is ensnared near the Nightmare's core.
Team RBY enter the theatre and are immediately beset by thorns which Ruby clears away. Look, "oversized gardening tool" useful for oversized gardening!
And just like that, a Negative Glyph appears in Yang's path and she can't stop before hurtling through it. Negative Weiss replaces her, followed by Armoured Jacques. The former says concerning words before siccing the latter on Ruby.
Meanwhile, Blake gets some altitude by ribbon trick off the theatre's chandelier, dodges Negative Weiss' magic multimissile barrage, and inflicts considerable damage on the thorns around the core with a plunging attack that she must surely have wished she could replicate in V09C01. Blake sees the dress at the top, internalises it, doesn't say anything, has her next sword swing absorbed by a Negative Glyph, and is dragged through it screaming.
Ruby can't help because she has her own problems. She gets a bit of distance from Armoured Jacques, reasons the key would help, takes it out, drops it, wonders why her hand cramped, and realises that it's thorned. So yeah, it's going great in here. /s To make matters worse, her next dive to escape Armoured Jacques knocks the key around into Negative Weiss' proximity.
Negative Weiss makes clear her intentions to banish Team RBY (and probably Jaune too) from the city for good as she destroys the relic in front of Ruby. You fool, that only makes it respawn somewhere more convenient! Ruby, who hasn't made that connection, is pulled through her own Negative Glyph of banishment, protesting all the way.
And that's the end of that.
Or is it? Because that cloud of petals wasn't Ruby making a futile attempt to escape, or even a visual metaphor for death; it was Ruby making a successful attempt to escape. She's now back in the hallway outside. And so is Jaune, somehow.
Ruby theorises that Blake and Yang are outside the city. I'd say that jail or expulsion from the dream is more likely, but it's a good guess from the word "banish". Jaune says he'll go look for them, but changes his mind and vetoes Ruby going back to fight the Nightmare's core again alone.
Instead, a Breadcrumb takes them back to the train, where Pyrrha and 10 Silly Weisses remain. Jaune will have to explain that to Ruby.
Snow falls. In the distance, lightning strikes. Blake and Yang have indeed been sent well outside the city. The location to which they've been banished looks, from the outside (which they are currently on), the exterior of the Schnee live-in trophy cabinet plus a great deal of urban decay. Or just a haunted house. Actually, given all the faunus imagery on the front fence, this has to be the White Fang base.
Whitley flies over the train and might or might not have noticed the impractical sword.
Inside, Jaune explains to Ruby that that's probably what's Nightmare-proofing this place. I'm thinking, if they can carry it with them ever, they can have a much easier time fighting the Nightmare core. Jaune's thinking that he placed the Sillies in Nightmare danger by letting them out of jail. The logic there is that, as Pyrrha said, Weiss was protecting them. Also that Weiss has only heard half a sentence of C.S. Lewis on being an adult, specifically the first half of the last sentence:
C.S. Lewis said:
This is the part where Ruby wonders if being childish herself might have made Weiss conflicted and thereby made everything worse.
Ruby moves right on to playing up how well she thinks Team JNPR, and in particular Jaune, are doing. I'm waiting for the reveal that Jaune had exactly the opposite thoughts about both teams. Let me tell you all a secret. The secret is that every team - every person - is at least slightly dysfunctional somehow; the pursuit of perfection at all costs is its own severe dysfunction, so apparent perfection can be a red flag that somebody's gone authoritarian.
Ruby is disappointed in herself for not noticing Weiss' Nightmare symptoms (like Pyrrha noticed Jaune's), and in the process continues to not notice her own. Sometime soon would be a great time for Jaune to notice Ruby's. This would leave a bit of a mess of Ruby, but cleanup would be easier - and possible - once she stops being negatively influenced by her own infection.
Shrugging off Jaune trying to reassure her, Ruby mutters that Weiss' criticisms of her were right, tips over, and stops responding. Even the Sillies panic a bit, and rightly so.
Blake and Yang start noticing the White-Fang-inspired imagery around the place. Then Bashful Klein, the building's door, introduces himself. They work out that this is where faunus get imprisoned. Blake seems to now think that Weiss still actually thinks that. I choose to believe that the "Negative" was implied.
The plaza on the second tier is covered in Nightmare thorns, tying down all the robots still in it. They're creeping up the inner tier wall. The Breadcrumb is infested too, which can't be good.
Once more, Negative Weiss enters the dining room. This time, Armoured Jacques is here too, which does not detract at all from holographic Jacques. Shadow Willow (there's some Interesting™ psychology)'s laughter is increasingly evil-pitched.
Candle-Klein reports that order has been restored in "the empire" (it's only the imperial core! get it right!), and then suggests, chillingly:
Negative Weiss looks at the clock. It is about 3 minutes to 12. Ah h*ck, that's her life meter, isn't it. Turns out there were at least two levels of 'not joking' to my Dracula-in-coffin joke.
Negative Weiss looks back to said coffin. There is what looks like a large mildly-shrivelled-up apple on the door. It's opaque and obscures the relic (white knight chess piece) within, at least until she stands from her chair.
"The true sleep?" she asks.
Nightmare thorns appear and approach the relic as the clock advances one minute. They clutch the relic (clock advances), and shatter it (clock advances, strikes midnight). The coffin is now full of thorns. Negative Weiss contemplates it. FOR THE LOVE OF THE BROTHER GODS DON'T GET IN.
Ruby awakens on the bed of dream-filament. There is nobody else in the room anywhere for any purpose. I'm guessing this is Ruby's recursive Nightmare.
My hypothesis is supported by Team WBY entering the nameless hall. Weiss is uncannily supportive to the extent that I'm suspecting a lotus-eater scenario by the Nightmare to keep her occupied and buy time to finish Weiss off. Does the death of the dream-host kill anyone currently dream-diving? I'd guess so.
And then everyone, quite literally, clapped. At first just Team WBY, but here's Team JNPR, and Sun, and Ozpin and Goodwitch and Shion... It's creepy and I hope Ruby realises that soon.
And Tai and Zwei... And the crowd of Silly Weisses... And some of those white guard robots... Ruby, increasingly unsettled, searches for a way out, fails to find one, and starts succumbing to rising panic, which seems entirely reasonable under the circumstances.
And suddenly they're all Shion-style voodoo dolls. From which emerge Nightmare thorns. Ruby has gone catatonic and hasn't noticed. They're coming for her.
Have fun with that cliffhanger!
Wait a minute... Is that last credits scene foreshadowing a final battle against Negative Weiss? Yes, I am this stupid.
Today's post-credits art is Ruby snowboarding, just 'cause.
Next time: Just roll with it.