>>105168728I've been thinking about this in relation to Weiss and Yang, who aren't 'partners' yet have a close friendship, and to Ruby's close relationship with Jaune, which is arguably her closest within her peer group with Weiss as the only real competition. I think it's down to how they've written Ruby.
Ruby doesn't have a very personal style. One of the things I see people praise about Lancaster is the natural way they communicate about things that are core to their characters, which is a rarity for her. Even Weiss doesn't often get that, if she gets it at all. Their earlier interactions are defined by Weiss' refusal to accept Ruby as a partner, leader or equal, and Ruby trying to adjust to Weiss' expectations until they kind of meet in the middle, and they've stayed there, more or less.
And that's what often happens with Ruby. She's been primed as a character with a greater mission, and it often precludes the more personal style that Blake and Weiss, for example, easily adopt. She's been personal in some capacity to Qrow, Yang and Jaune, but as the show's drawn on and especially the past three volumes, she's become more distant.
Blake and Ruby early on seem like two characters who might've had a friendship had the characters gone in different directions; but at this point they've entrenched Ruby as this heroic and sometimes quite distant figure. Her first real conversation with Blake, appropriately, is the one where she tells her she likes books about heroes and Blake makes a cynical comment that it doesn't work like that in the real world. That's microcosmic of the characters as they've moved forward: Ruby growing into this strong-willed idealist and Blake paying for her all-too-human mistakes. Having them connect is possible, but it requires creating a role for Ruby that she rarely plays. A corollary of all this is that Weiss often seems closer to Yang than to Ruby, especially in V5 with stuff like the hug and the little exchange of looks at dinner.
