What Defines Us - Commentary - Ch. 37-38 (Patreon)

Anddddd we’re back!  Does anyone else feel like we never left?  I’ve been busy with real life stuff (darn real life stuff) so the past couple of weeks flew by.  I’m excited to get back to another commentary though, because I’m sure I have lots more to talk about!

One funny thing to point out - Chapter 37 is the first chapter in the 4th Google doc file I have the story spread between.  (The story took too long to load when I kept it in a single file).  So I’m scrolling through all my stories in search of the 4th document...and I couldn’t find it!  *cue major freakout here*  

Thankfully, that only lasted for a few seconds because I did find a very similar story called Eternity that happened to line up perfectly with What Defines Us.  I was set on that title for such a long time that I never changed the title of the document, and then I couldn’t find it.  But it’s changed now, so we’re good to go!

Chapter 37 picks up with Weiss waking up after she finally told Ruby the truth (and they might’ve kissed, no big deal or anything).

At the beginning of the chapter, Weiss makes a reference to Summer - how she was so happy, she could fly to the moon and wanted to thank Summer for such a wonderful daughter.  This thought was added to jog people’s memories that Ruby considers Summer’s soul to be part of the moon, which was, in turn, supposed to hint towards Summer being responsible for the broken lights.  Really tangential, but again, I never wanted to come right out and say that Summer was the one keeping the lights on all this time.  I didn’t want to make a huge deal of the situation - like this was some powerful, supernatural force interfering in their lives.  It’s nothing like that.  It’s more like...a guardian angel.  (This was also supposed to tie in with one of my other potential titles - Theory of Angels.)

Back to Weiss as she wakes up - she’s super happy, but suffers a moment of...overanalysis.  That’s probably the best word for it.  She struggles to enjoy what’s happening in the present because she’s so focused on all these questions she wants answered.  This trait of hers has been a pretty consistent theme throughout the story so far, but something different happens in this chapter - she stops herself.  She tells herself that she can’t focus on the future right now.  She’s circling the drain of never-ending questions but has the strength and fortitude not to go any further.

I wanted this to be another contrast between present Weiss and Weiss from earlier in the story - which we’re seeing several of as we enter the last quarter of chapters.

She’s regaining her self-control.  She’s sleeping better.  And more of her personality is shining through.  She’s less hesitant, more honest, and she’s even willing to tell jokes and pull pranks on Ruby.  It took a long time for her to find that side of herself again, but we should see this more playful, open side of her showing up more often.  

I hope I was able to show the changes she went through in a smooth manner, because that transformation was one of the most important parts of the story (at least, to me!).  She’s making progress healing from her injuries - finally.  Sometimes, all it takes is accepting that those wounds are there.  

On a lighter note, did you catch the Beauty and the Beast reference in this chapter?  You probably did, but then thought that it couldn’t possibly be a Beauty and the Beast reference.  Well, it was!  Here it is:

“I had a dream I was teacup,” Ruby mused as they headed down the wide staircase towards the kitchen.  

I wrote this before I wrote Living Fiction, so it wasn’t at all related to the Beauty and the Beast chapter in that story.  It wasn’t even supposed to be a reference to anything - I just thought to myself…‘What’s the most random thing Ruby might dream about?’ and that’s the first thing I came up with. 

It was only after it was on the page that I realized it could be a reference, so I made it a stronger one by having Ruby mention that she thought she got chipped in the dream - a reference to Chip, the cutest character in the movie!  (Ok, no, the dog/footstool was actually the cutest, but Ruby didn’t dream about being a footstool.  That’s a little too random, even for her!)

Ruby - most random dreamer.  But Yang - most awesome cooking instructor?

That was literally the entire first lesson - Yang using the word ‘cook’ in different tones until Weiss couldn’t even tell if that was the right word anymore.

Would you take a cooking class with Yang?  Cook.  Cooook.  Cook. Cook. 

First lesson complete!  (Again, no idea how I came up with that.)

I like imagining that Weiss learned how to cook because of Ruby’s love of food, because that’s a very sweet and caring gesture for her to make.  Plus, she probably isn’t very good at cooking due to her more lavish upbringing.  There’s nothing like struggling through something you’re horrible at to prove your love for another person!

Of course, with Weiss being Weiss, she’s now a pro at cooking - but notice that she knows how to make all these...kind of simple recipes?  (Maybe because she has a simple writer picking her meals…)  Spaghetti, pancakes, french toast - her repertoire is tailored to Ruby.  She didn’t learn how to cook and then master complicated recipes that would impress people with her social status.  She learned to cook and mastered the recipes Ruby loved, regardless of how simple they seemed.

In the midst of making breakfast, Weiss does something else that shows how far she’s come in a mere...36 chapters.  

“Have you ever made french toast before?” Weiss asked while cracking eggs into a bowl.  The answer was ‘yes,’ but that was another first they’d shared at Beacon.  What she was really asking was whether Yang or Blake had made french toast for Ruby during the past year. 

This is yet another moment where Weiss speaks to this Ruby, not the previous version of Ruby.  She doesn’t even think about it either - it flows naturally (I hope).  The memory loss isn’t something she trips over.  It just...is.  She’s even finding more silver linings in Ruby’s lack of memories, as we see when Ruby thinks that Weiss was called ‘Ice Queen’ because she’s good with ice.  What used to be an insurmountable obstacle is now a regular piece of the background - nothing to get worked up over.

Pretty early on in writing this story, I knew I wanted the two of them to go back to their old home together.  That’s something that just has to happen, right?  

On the way there, Ruby points out that their home is near the shopping center - the same shopping center where they got ice cream earlier in the story.  Weiss replies that they were frequent customers, which is why the owner of the ice cream parlor recognized them and knew their favorite orders.

Oh my god...I just realized that I wrote two house tours in a row.  TWO house tours in subsequent chapters.  Why did I do that to myself?  House tours are so...bleh.

At least this house was more interesting because of the history attached to it.  This is the same house Weiss went to in Chapter 3, where she hardly stepped through the door before running out and going to Winter’s place instead.  If you remember that chapter, Weiss’ intent was to stop by and grab some clothes, because she knew all of her old outfits were there.  Instead, she dropped the vase that was/was not filled with roses and left in a hurry.

Thankfully, the cleaning crew went through and cleaned up the broken vase.  That would’ve been a rather awkward conversation with Ruby right off the bat.

“Why are there broken pieces of a vase all over the floor?”

“Oh, I dropped it because I couldn’t handle being here.”

Yeah...that would probably lead to a pretty quick exit and end of the chapter…

But that didn’t happen!  This time, Weiss has something that she didn’t have in Chapter 3 - Ruby.  She has Ruby there to help her through the house, regardless of the pain associated with the life they lost.  When they make it to their bedroom, we learn why it might be more painful than we expected:

Everything was exactly how she left it - exactly how they left it - the morning they’d set out for the hunt.

The house - especially their old bedroom - is like a painful time capsule.  Weiss didn’t move anything, so everything just...stayed the same.  Their last moments frozen in time.  I actually got really sad in the process of writing this chapter, but I was really glad that Ruby was there -

“I’m ok.  I think this is a lot harder for you than for me...”

It’s little statements like these that show how caring and intuitive Ruby can be.  She’s smart without realizing she’s smart, and - in this case - she hits the nail on the head.  To her, this is a new house that she’s never been in before.  To Weiss, this is everything.  Everything they had, everything they lost.

But Ruby understands how big of a deal this is for Weiss, and helps her through it.  That’s what partners are for, right? 

Last part - and best part - of the house is in the basement (because what awesome houses don’t have secrets in the basement?).  In this case, Ruby probably lived in the basement before her injury.  A combat room - how cool is that?  (In what other story do they also have a combat room similar to this?  Could it be...The Fire Within?)

There’s a tiny easter egg here - Weiss creating the big and small Beowolves is a reference to one of Ruby’s thoughts in Chapter 2.

Which would she rather face - a small Beowolf or a big Beowolf?  The answer was any Beowolf, but first she needed Yang’s approval.

Wondering how I remembered such an obscure line and pulled it back into the story way, way later?  The power of editing!  

While editing Chapter 2, I read that phrase again and thought it was funny - then I remembered that Weiss and Ruby had a room that could simulate Grimm.  If the room could simulate Grimm, why couldn’t the Grimm’s characteristics be changed?  And why couldn’t we have a big and tiny Beowolf just like Ruby asked?

This is just another tiny thread woven into the fabric of a larger story.  Now, I think about stories as spiderwebs - the prettiest ones are super intricate, but there are lots of threads that are unnecessary to the whole.  The most important ones (your main plot) are the thicker strands that hold the web up (most likely connected to your house or somewhere else you don’t want it).  But within the web are smaller threads that can be removed, and the web still functions like it should.

I’m not sure I explained that very well, but I’m sure you know what I mean!  The big and small Beowolves don’t matter in the grander scheme of things, but it connects the story together, in a weird way.

If you’ve read all these commentaries, I think you should have a good sense of when I’m setting up for a reference to be made in the future.  This normally happens in moments where questions are posed and left unanswered - and there’s one in this chapter that I’ll point out (but not give you the answer to!).  When looking at the locker stations in the basement, Ruby mentions that Yang and Blake’s are missing, and Weiss doesn’t know what they did with them.  Keep this in mind for later chapters!

One last thing about this chapter before moving on - I’d like to point out this small part one more time:

Ruby knew about Weiss’ mistakes - her past, her lies, her cowardice - yet still wanted her company.  As if none of that mattered as much as she thought it did...

This little statement weaves into a larger web (I’m really stuck on spiders today…).  It’s an important lesson that I wish to learn myself, which is why I wrote it into this gigantic story.  Weiss is just starting to learn the lesson herself - that she’s not perfect, but that’s ok.  People are allowed to make mistakes, even big ones!  That doesn’t make them unworthy of friendship, love, or happiness.  It just makes them...human.

I don’t think I can say enough how proud I am of her!

But I’m also proud of Ruby - in a different way, though.  She’s a ball of sunshine, and nothing can keep her down.  While Weiss had most of the internal struggle in this story, Ruby has figured out what she wants from life, succeeded in her comeback, and is now learning what it means to fall in love.  She kind of got the better part of the story, that’s for sure!

Chapter 38 is a culmination of several sequences I really enjoy.  (I pretty much always enjoy the moments when Bumblebee gets involved…)

First, Yang checks on Ruby to see how her night with Weiss went.  Notice how easygoing she is about it though?  She’s very much like ‘I just happen to be flouncing through and - oh!  That reminds me, how’d it go?’

She seems nonchalant, but - from what we’ve seen from her in this story - we know that she’s probably not.  She was probably waiting for the sound of the door to open so she could check and see how things went.

The importance of a promise comes back in this chapter, and, again, we see the different dynamics between Yang and Ruby’s promises versus Weiss and Winter’s promises.  Frankly, Weiss is more willing to lie to Winter - whereas Yang and Ruby won’t lie to each other.  This means that when Ruby promises to tell Yang if all these new memories are too much to handle, Yang can relax and be assured that Ruby won’t hold everything inside.  Weiss is much more of a ‘hold everything inside and try to handle it by herself’ type of person…

Oh!  I wanted to point out a little mistake Ruby made.  You might or might not have noticed it, but she thinks this to herself at the beginning of the chapter:

“Way to not fill in the dots, Ruby Rose.” 

Do you see it?  It’s subtle!  

It should be connect the dots!  Or, alternatively, fill in the blanks.  (In this context though, connect the dots is what she’s going for.)

Why am I pointing this out?  I wanted to show you the types of little mistakes I make all the time!  When I’m typing really fast, I make weird mix-ups like that - however, I feel like Ruby would also make these little mistakes because her mind is buzzing along so fast.  So, while I caught this error during proofreading, I left it in as part of Ruby’s personality.  You don’t want the characters to feel too perfect, you know?

In that same vein of thinking, I love the idea that Blake is secretly ticklish, but people don’t know because they’d never dare tickle her.  And she’s probably the type that could force herself not to react, so people give up even if they did try to tickle her.  At home though...she’s just as susceptible to tickle attacks as the rest of us!  She knows she’s safe with Yang and Ruby though, so she loosens her usually-firm grasp on her emotions and becomes this...adorable giggling ninja.

Speaking of giggling...I thought it was hilarious to write the other half of Bumblebee’s ‘getting together’ story.  Blake told us earlier how Yang asked her out, and her version of events was very...beautiful?  Poetic?  Well-explained?  Yang’s version, however…

“I set up a whole elaborate thing in the forest and asked her out.  She said yes, finally, and then she kissed me.”

You set up that entire thing in the forest, Yang?  No help at all?  Uh huh…

(Also, raise your hand if you think Yang randomly carrying Blake around the house is super cute.)

*raises hand*

(Another also, this story will end, and the shoes in the closet will never be organized.)

Alright, on to the subject of memories - Ruby’s memories, to be specific.  First, please re-read these few lines:

Maybe subconsciously she remembered?  Maybe there were lingering emotions that hadn’t been knocked out of her head?  Or maybe Weiss was just so amazing that Ruby easily fell for her twice?

Throughout the story, I’ve sprinkled a few hints about what Ruby ‘remembers’ and what’s new to her.  I mentioned before that I don’t normally research for my stories, so I didn’t look up what’s most common for people with amnesia to remember.  I’m just spitballing based on what I think and feel to be true.

In Ruby’s case, I believe that certain tendencies/reactions/deeply-rooted feelings remain.  Her body remembers what her mind cannot.  I think that’s a reasonable assumption, right?  Why would her body forget when it was her mind that was injured?  And what reactions can our bodies hold without our minds being involved?

To give you better insight into how I write, I’ll sometimes use a bit of reverse psychology in a story (I’m positive that’s the wrong term for it).  Basically, the characters ask themselves questions, but the questions are actually my answers.

In this case, yes, I think Ruby subconsciously remembers (in a way).  Yes, I think there are lingering emotions.  And yes, I think Weiss is so amazing that Ruby would easily fall for her twice.

One of the fun things about these commentaries is telling you these little tricks and stuff I use.  I want you to read future stories and be like ‘ah, Miko’s probably doing that thing again - giving us answers by asking questions.’  Or ‘oh, I bet Miko’s setting up a reference that will show up later on.’  Personally, I think that’s really cool.

Another cool (and maybe slightly nerdy) thing - who wants to join Operation Know Weiss Better Than Anyone?  AKA OKWBTA?

I laughed out loud when I found that during proofreading.  It reminds me of that club Hermione formed in Harry Potter.  I can’t remember the name of it for the life of me though...the one to save the house elves?

Back to this story though, Ruby is determined to get to know Weiss better so starts asking random questions.  Now, it’s slightly ironic that I didn’t do amnesia research, but I did stumble upon the favorite flavor of ice cream for Kara - the voice actress for Weiss.  I saw it in an interview or something, and she said blueberry frozen yogurt.

My initial response to reading that answer was the same as Ruby’s - that’s...not technically ice cream...but close enough.

Weiss, meanwhile, answers the questions without hesitation.  She doesn’t even ask why Ruby wants to know - she just answers.  She probably understands Ruby’s motivation, and she’s perfectly fine with it - even though Ruby knew all these answers at one point in the past.

Circling back to my thinking that Ruby remembers in some way - did you notice anything familiar about the first map she created using the neato map builder?  

A mountain filled with caves, in the middle of the forest, with Death Stalkers…

She built a map almost exactly like the hunt where she was injured!  Coincidence?  Or lingering familiarity?  (I’d say a little of both.)

The focus of this chapter is the map builder and the videos Ruby finds stored on it, but that device wasn’t in my original plans.  First, I planned the conversation with Summer and then with Blake, and it was after those conversations that Ruby came to the realization that she wanted to tell Weiss that she loved her.  But I felt like there needed to be something more.  Another nudge to push Ruby in that direction.

What better way to do that than by giving her a glimpse of what they once had?  Let her see the love and partnership between them, so that she has something to want again.  The videos gave her something visible to hang onto - they’re real representations of what they once had.  That’s much easier to grasp onto than a story.  Ruby actually has something that she can point to and say ‘I want that back.’

Poor Ruby...she’s been totally overloaded the past couple of days.  But she always finds someone to talk to (unlike Weiss, who tends to close herself off).  This time, Ruby finds comfort having a short conversation with her mom - something I thought would show sweet and smart Ruby is on her own.

She’s having a one-sided conversation, but look at the types of things she’s concluding without any response coming back to her:

If Ruby had found out about the past on her own, Weiss never would’ve had the chance to prove to herself just how strong she was - which was incredibly strong.

This is one of those moments where Ruby understands the situation at a much deeper level than it appears - but she doesn’t consider herself to be the one with that answer.  She considers that answer to come from her mom.  Her thinking is more mature because she’s trying to think through her mom - I thought that was a really interesting phenomenon to have occur!

But I don’t think Ruby’s alone out there - I do think Summer’s watching over the four of them, hence the situation with the lights in Weiss’ home.  In Ruby’s case, she asks her mom for help figuring out what to do now that she has all these feelings for her partner, and her mom delivers - in the form of Blake coming out to talk.

#BlakeforMVP2018

I really loved this conversation with Blake because we get to see a bit of her insecurity about the past.  She doesn’t know how Summer would feel about her because of her history with the White Fang, but Ruby (again, speaking through the lessons her mother taught her) has a really poignant reply:

“Everyone has something in their past they wish they could change.  You’re a good person now - that’s what matters.”

This is one of the themes of the story, and it can apply to any of them (and any of us, too!).  It goes right along with Ruby’s saying - Your mistakes don’t define you, your reactions to them do.  Blake has mistakes in her past, just like Weiss does, just like Yang does, just like Ruby does - but they’re all good people now, and isn’t that what matters?

I - like Ruby - was self-conscious about this feeling ‘too fast,’ so a lot of Blake’s answers served to lessen my fears as well as explain why it actually isn’t too fast.  Ruby and Weiss are destined to be together, in a way.  Their relationship was never going to be conventional, because it can’t be conventional.  How do you have a normal relationship with the girl you used to be engaged to?  So, even though it might seem fast, Blake advises Ruby to follow her heart (good advice, I think!).

There’s a small callback during this conversation - or, more like confirmation to one of Ruby’s guesses that you might’ve forgotten by now.  When Ruby apologizes for waking Yang and Blake up, Blake says that “Yang sleeps like a rock unless I wake her.”  This ties to Chapter 10, Ruby’s flashback chapter when she wakes up in pain and Yang helps her go back to sleep by telling a story.  

In that chapter, Ruby doesn’t think her whimpers of pain are loud enough to wake Yang up, so she wonders if Blake is the one who wakes Yang up.  Blake confirms that in Chapter 38 by saying that Yang won’t wake up unless someone wakes her.  Therefore, during Ruby’s recovery, it was Blake keeping an ear out for whenever Ruby woke up from pain or nightmares.  And Blake always woke up Yang so they could help Ruby through those challenging moments together.

The end of their conversation was super sweet and classic Ruby - telling Blake that they’re lucky to have her in their lives.  And they really are lucky to have her around (especially in this story)!  Where would they be without Blake to hold them together and give them advice?

(#BlakeforMVP2018)

The chapter ends with a different type of cliffhanger - one I bet you found more tolerable than the others in this story.  We’re setting up for more progress in their relationship, which is what I think everyone wants to see.

Ten chapters left!

Until next time, 

Miko