User blog:HazelQuill7445/About Roman and Ruby. Canonically.

These two characters...

I love the way they play off of each other. They are clearly meant as the foil of each other, and I mean that as a literary noun, not a verb. (Though the verb works too. We'll get there.)

Roman and Ruby are the opposites of each other in ideology and approach toward life.

Roman:


 * Has given up on the world


 * Looks out for himself first

Ruby:


 * Always has hope


 * Cares about others first

In "Ruby Rose" their introduction is designed to display them on opposite sides of the same struggle. Roman appears on Salem's word "darkness" while Ruby appears on Ozpin's words "honest soul."

That said, they also have a few similar qualities. They both have fun when they find themselves forced fight. They both like to sass. It's not much, but it's there. However, fighting also a demonstration of their opposing natures as Roman will cut and run while Ruby will keep going until there's an end. "Persistent" is the exact word used, I believe.

The "Ruby Rose" episode also shows that Roman is the catalyst for Ruby's character arc. They are in the same store at the same time, and it is just coincidence, but if it hadn't happened, Ruby wouldn't be where she is.

Which is why every time they confront each other it's always interesting. When face-to-face it's never just a simple fight. Roman is always trying to teach her, even when he wants her dead, even while he's still acknowledging her abilities.


 * He lets her go. He was so ready to just leave her behind. When she chooses to keep pursuing him, that's when he first starts to get ticked off at her. Little thing's not playing by the cut-and-run rules. He tells her it's time to stop—"End of the line, Red!"—and blasts her with a red dust crystal, laughing at, one could say, having showed her.


 * In "Black and White" he taunts her for being too young to be involved and immediately takes advantage of her distraction to attack.


 * Roman is certainly not happy to see her when she shows up at the underground hideout, but in "No Brakes" he laughs about how incapable she is at hand-to-hand while delivering a subtle compliment about her skill with Crescent Rose. He later acknowledges that she has "some tricks up (her) sleeve" but they are not enough to get her out of the situation.


 * I think we can also safely say that "Heroes and Monsters" speaks for itself. The confrontation and dialogue between Ruby, Rowan, and Neo make up for one of the best scenes in all of RWBY. He sets out to crush her innocence and (again acknowledged) spirit by spouting his view of both the current conflict and the world in general. Ruby, for her part, tries to understand why anyone would try to prevent stopping Grimm from hurting people. To Ruby, up to that point, Torchwick is still a fellow person and despite everything else the world is still clearly split between those with souls and the monsters. Roman demonstrates differently, and that's when he descends from opponent to someone she actively dislikes and is angry with.

Then of course, while spouting his negative view of the world and how it will help him survive, Roman gets eaten by a creature drawn to negativity. His last lesson to Ruby blows up in his face, and yet... some of it took a very small hold. Her pain is mostly evident after Pyrrha's death, and yes she still spiritedly got her butt off that airship, convened with friends, and set out to save Pyrrha... but it would be foolish to claim that witnessing Torchwick getting swallowed whole didn't contribute to the horror of her evening. I would even go so far as to say it was a seed, along with Penny's destruction, Blake's wound, and Yang's dismemberment, that helped catalyst the Silver Eyes out of her when Pyrrha died.

=
Now, stepping out of the narrative flow, I'd also like to point out that Ruby is never able to defeat Roman on her own. Not-a-once. And I rather like that. It might be as simple as Crescent Rose would destroy Melodic Cudgel with one swipe of the sharp end, which is why those two weapons never clashed. But I like to think that Roman's roles as her foil and one who pushes her further storywise prevents her from being the cause of his destruction. And vice versa.