Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-70.164.250.74-20180322215425/@comment-2600:6C44:880:DD2:B1CD:A88E:3C4:CCA2-20180425113243

HeartshiningXX wrote:

You see, the thing about her not being able to deal with death and how to cope would have been tied perfectly together and portrayed just right to the readers had they gave call backs to the most important part of her chracter depth -to the central root of why she is like that - HER MOTHER'S DEATH. It would be a good way to show us that her motto "Keep Moving Forward" and the way she handles it is something that is helping and at the same time hurting her.

You see guys? Properly potrayed INNER TURMOIL and CHARACTER DEPTH. Not necessarialy, though. Mind you, maybe it's just personal opinion... but to me, your examlpe of "properly portrayed inner turmoil and character depth" isn't all-encompassing, because it hinges on one really big thing; the idea that the person in question is actually acknowledging the fact there's turmoil. And as you illustrated in one of your earlier bullet-points, Ruby seems predispositioned to not acknowledge it, because she's fundimentally incapable of properly coping with it.

Basically, the utter lack of any change in Volumes 4 & 5 can be explained as Ruby deliberately not thinking about anything that could call back to those hurts, for the express purpose of making sure others (her team in-universe and possibly the audiance out-of-universe) don't realize her motto is just hiding her hurt. Now whether or not it was well done or was the best that could be done is certianly debatable, but it's not exactly inconsistant with what's known about Ruby's responses even in how you yourself illustrated them.

Simply put; we don't see any of those callbacks because, subconciously or otherwise, Ruby's not allowing them to surface - it seems more to be a case of showing just how deeply Ruby's buried her traumas, as opposed to simply being for the sake of holding back on a reveal about Summer. Of course, I won't assume that doesn't play some role in it, but from a character standpoint it doesn't seem to be the reason for her behavor; her inability to cope with pain once it's actually acknowledged seems to.

(God, I only just realized how much I've typed. I just started scrolling down the line and started replying to any comment that caught my eye XD)