Board Thread:Episode Discussion/@comment-5430952-20200104163125/@comment-4010415-20200105052006

Solaris XD wrote: I liked this episode a lot but a few things irk me.

1) Neo's big fuck off green eyes were a dead giveaway. I wish they were a bit more subtle so the twist would be more shocking but whatever, it was still pretty good.

2) I still have no idea why Ruby hid Jinn's infodump from Ironwood for so long. There was literally no sign beforehand not to trust him and nothing that happened this episode seemed like a big enough turning point for her to suddenly be like "yeah okay, I'll tell him now."

3) Ironwood's reaction seems a bit underwhelming. I won't be too annoyed by this for now, because maybe he's Internalising it for now since Mantle is the priority for the moment, but still.

Otherwise, great episode and I'm keen to see where the climax goes. 1. The subtle moment was when we saw Neo last episode. That scene you're talking about was actually the hinting reveal of "Remember that server you saw last episode when Winter stormed out of the room? Yeah, that's not actually one of Jacques' servers."

They put her almost in the center of the screen and called attention to her by having her just happen to be walking in with more drinks at the right moment for Winter to nearly bump into her on the way out of the room. That was Neo's subtle presence scene. The scene of her looking at the camera and smirking in this episode was part of the reveal.

2. Like Blake told Yang, Ironwood has a tendency to overreact, so they weren't sure if Ironwood would once again overreact or not. There's also the fact that RWBY, Qrow, and JNR all had to deal with their emotions when they found out, and most of them nearly gave up on everything. Ironwood had just told them all about the hard work he had put into a plan to stop Salem, and Ruby wasn't sure yet if she should hit him with the reveal that he can't stop Salem with brute force.

3. It's easier to pull yourself out of despair from being hit with bad news when there's a dire situation that you absolutely have to deal with right now. For now, he needs to put aside whatever he feels about Salem being immortal and just focus on saving Mantle and taking back control of Atlas. Everything else can come later. Just like Ironwood himself said.

Honestly, in any tough, discouraging situation, it really is best to just focus on what's right in front of you for the moment and take things one step forward at a time.