What Defines Us - Commentary - Ch. 19-20 (Patreon)

Welcome back to another commentary - this one for Chapter 19-20 of What Defines Us.  We’re almost halfway there!  Ok, technically I could say that for the next two commentaries...but we’re almost almost halfway there!  

Is it just me that feels like this story has been around forever?  Probably just me...I started writing this over a year ago, and it’s only almost almost halfway posted by now.  But we’ll get through this eventually, so let’s dive in!

Chapter 19, to me, is the first chapter where we get to see Weiss loosen up a bit.  Not at first, of course.  At the beginning of the chapter she’s thinking over the events of the hunt, and how she saw them unfold.  Because the hunt was from Ruby’s POV, we only saw Ruby’s excitement, nerves, and then more excitement at the end. 

From Weiss’ thoughts at the beginning of Chapter 19, we see that to her the hunt was very...nostalgic might be the right word?  To Ruby, it was new and exciting.  To Weiss, it was familiar and taxing.  And, to top it all off, she’s worried that she was the one who attracted the Grimm.  Is that really so much of a stretch for her to think based on what we’ve seen so far?

Fortunately, after shaking off that disappointment in the beginning of the chapter, Weiss is able to relax a tiny bit for the rest of this chapter.  I hope that you enjoyed it!  I really enjoyed seeing her spend more time with Ruby, trying to impress Ruby with the fancy car and fancy badges and fancy experiment at the Dust factory.

And we get to see a little more fun being had in the Xiao-Long/Belladonna/Rose residence.

I don’t know why I think it’s so funny to write that Yang can’t find her shoes because she has so many of them, but it became a recurring joke in this story.  The more I had Blake and Ruby tease Yang about it, the more I knew she had to get her revenge eventually - there's no way Yang would let them tease her forever!  So I came up with the idea that she hid their shoes to get back at them for all the jokes.  Of course, Blake finds hers immediately (you don’t hide anything from a ninja) while Ruby has to search everywhere.

Once I had the idea, I had to put it in the story.  Thankfully, I found a moment where it could fit in!  I already had the Dust factory tour planned as an event that would happen, but when I looked at it more closely I realized that Weiss could go pick her teammates up instead of meeting them at the factory.  And when she went to pick them up...why couldn’t Yang have played her little trick then, making them a little late in the process?  

Just like that, the Dust factory chapter became Dust factory plus hidden shoes.  And, because they now needed a way to get between the house and Schnee Dust, I also added in the part in the limousine.  So this chapter, which was initially a more detailed tour of Schnee Dust, became a more complete outing.  I like to think it turned out better this way, but of course I’d like to think that as the writer!

Oh!  And did anyone notice that Weiss touched Ruby’s boots?  Do you remember how personal Ruby’s boots are to her?  (Chapter 8…)  Ruby doesn’t want anyone to touch her boots - her feet go in those!  But she has no problem with Weiss giving them a good once over before handing them back.

Ok, this is the commentary, which means I need to admit when I was being a juvenile.  I wrote that entire part about boots, but it’s really, kind of alluding to something else that’s spelled almost like boots.  Something that’s pretty personal to Ruby and she doesn’t know how she’d feel about people touching them.  But, she’s ok with Weiss touching them!

Please tell me you got that.  I don’t want to be any more specific - I’m already embarrassed.  I didn’t realize I’d be writing commentaries when I wrote this though…so I never thought I’d have to admit to what I’d done!

*Ahem*  

Moving on to one of the most important parts of this chapter!  I hope you saw it...that Weiss actually found a silver lining in Ruby’s injury.  When Ruby is having a blast playing around with the cool features in the limo, Weiss realizes that she gets to see Ruby experience new things - enjoy new ‘firsts’ - a second time around.

It might not seem like a big moment, but Weiss’ mind has been caught on how horrible everything is for the story so far.  The fact that she found one small thing to consider a blessing seems like a huge deal.  These are tiny instances that show how she’s beginning to grow, just a little bit.  There’s another one of these moments a little further into the chapter, when she speaks with Winter. 

I’m sure I’ve mentioned how much I love Winter in this story, but I really love Winter in this story!  I know that she and Weiss have a much different relationship than Yang and Ruby, but they’re still family, and Winter loves Weiss just as much as Yang loves Ruby - they just have different ways of showing it.

We saw in one of Weiss’ flashback chapters that Winter is trying to help Weiss, but Weiss is stubbornly  insisting she doesn’t need help - that she’s fine.  We all know she’s not fine - and she knows she’s not fine.  But in this chapter when Winter asks her again how she’s doing, she actually answers the question.  She doesn’t say ‘I’m fine’ and expect the issue to go away.  She actually thinks about how she’s feeling and gives Winter an honest reply.

Huge moment!  (Maybe just to me?)  But Weiss is changing.  She’s seeing the good in things, and she’s opening up about how she’s feeling.

There’s one other change we see in this chapter, which I honestly didn’t realize was so filled with them until right now.  But did you notice the way Weiss treats the employee who’s late to meet them?  Compare that with how she treated the employees in that flashback chapter - Chapter 15.  Her disposition towards them is incredibly different.  She’s more tolerant, less prone to frustration and agitation.

Are these changes stemming from Ruby’s influence?  Or could it be a confluence of factors - being back with her team, not being completely shut out, spending time with Ruby and realizing that there’s something that can be salvaged there?  Those are questions for you to answer.  

Heading on to the experiment...Ruby was talking about black Dust all the way back in Chapter 2 when she and Weiss ‘first met.’  I made all of this stuff with Dust mixing up - I have no idea how that works, but I’m not sure it’s been explained very clearly in the show either.

The idea for black Dust is actually from this Choose Your Own Adventure I wanted to write!  Did you know that Choose Your Own Adventure stories are incredibly, amazingly, stupendously difficult to write?  Well, they are!  So that didn’t get very far at all.  I have so much respect for R.L. Stein now and the hundreds of Goosebumps books he wrote.

Ok, I’m going to explain that idea to you guys though!  The idea was going to be that Weiss had a small amount of black Dust that she brought to Beacon (not as highly explosive as in this chapter, but still very dangerous).  One day, it goes missing.  You play as Yang, and when you walk back into the dorm room, Weiss is accusing Blake of stealing the black Dust, but Blake had no idea it was even in the room.

And so our mystery begins!  Yang has to figure out who took the black Dust by talking to people and finding clues.  At one point, the cafeteria has a wall blasted away by whoever took the Dust.  Reaching the ending, you have to name the culprit.  No big deal, but if you name one of your friends and are wrong, they’re not going to like you very much anymore!

I thought it’d be fun, and then that whole incredibly, amazingly, stupendously difficult thing happened...

Back to the real story...Weiss remembered Ruby’s curiosity from Chapter 2 and set up the experiment so Ruby could see exactly what black Dust was.  An expensive piece of machinery was destroyed in order to do so, but that’s the cost of love, right?

Wrapping up this chapter, where they go see the assembly line of bullets (which I personally think would be really cool), Ruby and Weiss get to spend some more time together - and Ruby even plays a bit of a joke on Weiss by pretending that she’s going to blow on that pile of red Dust.

They’re having such a good time together that Weiss actually considers telling Ruby the truth.  Ah!  I just realized this is another first.  For the first time, Weiss is seriously considering telling Ruby the truth.  Everything that they’ve been through recently - the hunt, the factory tour, growing closer and closer - all of these things have started to change Weiss, and now she’s reaching a point she probably never thought she’d reach - where she thinks that telling Ruby about the past might be possible.

In Chapter 20, we find that Ruby’s been hard at work ever since the visit to the Dust factory.  Andddd...I just realized that these two chapters are almost flipped versions of how the chapters normally go.  Usually, Weiss’ end on a sad note while Ruby’s are more upbeat.  This time, Weiss’ chapter ended in a pretty good place (still a little sad, but that’s Weiss), but Ruby’s ended...well, you’ll see next chapter!

Sidenote - I had a blast coming up with names for dangerous Grimm.  The Vanisher sounds pretty cool, right?  And then The Hugger - I really don’t know where that came from, but it’s now a joke around my house to use one of those game announcer voices and say “The Hugger” for something that should be scary or intimidating.

While Yang and Blake are off fighting The Hugger, Ruby’s tirelessly working on a special gift!  Maybe a little too tirelessly...but isn’t she so sweet and thoughtful?

You know who’s also thoughtful?  Weiss.  She made Ruby dinner because she knew Ruby would be at home alone until Yang and Blake got back from the hunt.  Isn’t that cute??  And how coincidental is it that she made spaghetti...and spaghetti just so happens to be one of Ruby’s favorites?

As I think about this now...I just realized how nerve-wracking that must have been for Weiss.  She made spaghetti, which she knew used to be one of Ruby’s favorites, but after what happened with the snakerdoodles...she couldn’t be sure anymore.  

But she did it anyway.  She made another nice gesture with the information she used to know and was successful this time.  How’s that for another step forward?

Huh…

To be honest, I never thought about how Weiss felt in that moment.  All I knew was that she brought Ruby a meal as a sweet gesture because she knows Ruby can hardly cook.  This goes back to what I said in the last commentary about the characters having a life of their own.  She brought spaghetti because she can handle it now.  She knows that Ruby might not like it anymore, but she was prepared to deal with that new reality.

Way to go, Weiss!

Do you ever wonder how their past relationship is shaping their current relationship?  I mean, if you think about it, Weiss is still completely in love with Ruby, so she treats Ruby in a way that’s far more intimate, caring, or familiar than what one might see with new friends.  Ruby is Weiss’ world...and she can feel that, can’t she?  When Weiss says that she’ll ‘always’ make time for Ruby, it makes Ruby feel really special.  And who doesn’t like to feel special?

I’ll tell you who should also feel special in this chapter - Weiss!  Ruby stayed up all freaking night making that ring for her!  Possibly to the detriment of her own health, but the thought does count in this case.

Sidenote - when Weiss asks how Ruby knew the right ring size, Ruby makes another callback to an early chapter (Chapter 5) when she says that she figured Weiss’ hands were more ‘delicate’ than hers.  Remember when Ruby is teaching Weiss how to throw a punch and calls Weiss’ hands small?  Weiss’ immediate response is “I prefer delicate.”  Ruby remembers this, so she doesn’t call Weiss’ hands small anymore.

I guess you could probably ask why Ruby didn’t make Weiss a bracelet, or some other piece of jewelry that didn’t have the connotations that a ring does.  To which I reply - this is Ruby we’re talking about.  Plus, as she explains later in the chapter, the ring on her necklace is incredibly important to her.  If a ring is something important to her, why wouldn’t she make one for Weiss? 

If only we could have listened to Weiss’ thoughts upon receiving such a gift...I bet they went somewhere along the lines of “A ring?  Does she - why a ring?  What does this mean?  Does it mean what I want it to mean?  No, probably not - but she spent all this time making a ring, for me?  Why would she do that?  She’s just being friendly.  She’s always been really thoughtful like this.  But could it mean something more?  Or is it just a spur of the moment idea?”

Yeah, probably something like that.

My favorite part of this chapter is when Ruby gives Weiss a little pep talk.  In my mind, Ruby is really good at pep talks in a weird, kind of rambling and incoherent way.  She doesn’t exactly know what she wants to say before she sets out to say it, but she somehow manages to hit all the right points.  And how much does Weiss need the encouragement right now, from Ruby of all people?

Ruby even brings out the big guns - another Mom-ism.  But we’ve heard this one before, haven’t we…

“Mistakes don’t define you - your reactions to them do.”

Can you remember it?  Do you remember hearing this before?  

It was in the very first chapter.  This is the quote Velvet told Weiss upon returning to Atlas.  It’s the quote that Weiss was upset that Velvet had the nerve to use, and now we see why - that’s Ruby’s quote from Summer.  For Velvet to know of it, Ruby must have used it all the time throughout Beacon and beyond.  

In one of Weiss’ darkest moments, Velvet used a piece of Ruby, along with a photo, to reach out and try to pull Weiss away from the brink.  It worked.  It got her back to Vale, didn’t it?

And now Weiss learns that there was a piece of herself helping Ruby all along.  The ring - a gift from Weiss - was Ruby’s secret source of power.  And Ruby even guesses that it has something to do with her partner, who’s not around anymore.  Can you imagine how that must have felt to Weiss, who thought that she left Ruby with nothing but a mountain of money that would provide for her care?  But that wasn’t it - the ring was left behind, and it became important to Ruby in ways that neither of them could have ever imagined.

This revelation, combined with Ruby’s prior encouragement, are enough to convince Weiss that it’s time for a pretty big secret to be put out in the open.  

Of course, it wasn’t meant to be...at this point in time, at least.

Any guesses as to what happens next?  I don’t think I normally end on cliffhangers, but I managed to this week.  I’m actually a little proud of that.  Maybe I should have all of my chapters end on cliffhangers?  Just a thought for the future!

I can’t wait for you to see what happens next!  We’re heading into a stretch of chapters that I really like.

If I ever don’t talk about a particular moment in the chapters that you have a question about, feel free to message me!

Until next time, 

Miko