#Its the hypocrisy that gets me not people liking something other than RWBY | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aspoonofsugar · 2 years

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So, I keep seeing some takes on Em and Merc that seem to me as good victim and bad victim and I am scared this is where their story is going!

Hello anon!

I share @hamliet's thoughts on the matter, as for now. However, you give me the chance to explore some ideas that may be interesting thematically and structurally. I'll start from something hamliet said in her post:

If anything, Emercury’s story has the potential–deliberate or unintentional–to deconstruct the concepts of “good vs bad victim.”

The idea of the murder kids deconstructing good victim and bad victim is super interesting to me and - either intentionally or unintentionally - there are some elements that may suggest this is the case.

GOOD VICTIM VS BAD VICTIM

A morality trope about the often arbitrary distinctions writers make between certain sorts of victims. If a character in fiction has a problem or ailment or social situation, and the creators intend him to be sympathetic, the character will have acquired the problem in the most socially acceptable way. If the character isn't sympathetic, then he will have contracted the illness through "your own damn fault".

This definition by TV Tropes explains rather well what this trope is. It is the idea some victims are "better" because they express their victimhood in a more acceptable way compared to others. In some stories this ends up with only the good victim gaining sympathy, while the bad one is punished and condemned.

As per every trope, it can be executed well. Exploring how 2 people process their abuse and pain differently and how one may recover, while the other spirals out can be interesting. The important thing is to do so with empathy and with as little hypocrisy as possible. For example, even if it can be triggering... I like Zuko and Azula's arcs in ATLA. Zuko finds redemption, while Azula is defeated. However, Azula's arc is very interesting psychologically and I at least think it is executed with empathy. The story makes clear Azula is a victim as much as Zuko is. However, she is never able to get help or to truly face her feelings, so she has a bad ending. She is not portrayed as a monster, but as a person with glimpses of good in her that are never capitalized on. This makes her very human.

Now, RWBY plays with this trope, as well. For example, our abused heroes are all more sympathetic/likable than our abused villains. Blake and Weiss escape abuse by choosing to become huntresses, while Emerald, Mercury and Cinder lash out at the world because in pain. Despite this, I am so far rather happy of how RWBY is exploring victimhood.

For example, it is true Weiss and Blake are superficially "good victims", but they still show ugly sides specifically because of their abusers. Weiss is initially cold, entitled and racist. Blake instead is trying to find redemption from a life as a terrorist. These sides of the 2 girls are not explored much because both are already moving in the right direction by the beginning of the story. However, they are still present.

Similarly, RWBY lets its characters process trauma and abuse differently. For example, the Schnees' reactions to their family situation are contrasting. Willow and Winter both close off in opposite ways. Willow does so passively, while Winter actively. Willow stays, but is unable to help her kids, while Winter leaves, but still tries to help Weiss. Both put distance between themselves and their loved ones as a reaction to Jacques's abuse. Weiss and Whitley instead try to be like Jacques wants them to be. Initially, Weiss plays the part of the perfect Heiress, while Whitley presents himself as shallow, two-faced and ruthless. Despite this, all characters are shown empathy even if they make mistakes and have unlikable traits.

In short, so far RWBY has done a decent job when it comes to abuse (and this is true for CEM especially). Still, how do Emerald and Mercury come into this and how do they play into the good victim vs bad victim dychotomy?

BAD KID AND WORSE KID

Emerald and Mercury are both "bad victims" strictly speaking. They have gone through traumatic experiences in their childhood, but they still choose to hurt others out of love (Emerald) and fear (Mercury).

Despite this, there is a tendency in fandom (at least apparently, like... never trust internet and loud voices) to consider Emerald more likable/better/less guilty than Mercury. This tendency seems superficially supported in-universe too.

For example, the protagonists themselves are shown to prefer Emerald over Mercury while interacting at Beacon:

Ruby: That's great. Uh. Why don't we all go and get a victory food together?

Emerald: Oh, gosh, that's so nice of you, but my teammates are all kind of… (looking back at Mercury as he sniffs the inside of a boot, looking perplexed after he does so) …introverted. Really socially awkward.

Yang: Ooh, yeah, I could see that.

Similarly, there are some hints in openings:

In volume 6 the murder kids are shown looking in opposite directions (Em Hazel's, while Merc Tyrian's). What is more, Em is somber, while Merc smiles a little.

In volume 8 too Mercury is shown as a part of Salem's inner circle and he is smiling in a mean way.

However, one needs to simply look at Mercury and Emerald's interactions and actions in-series to realize that these are simply superficial red herrings, as for now.

No matter how much Mercury tells Emerald, the audience and himself he is happy where he is. It is clear as day, he is not. He is deeply scared.

Emerald's progress instead has been possible only because she has received a ton of help and has been much luckier than Mercury.

Let's explore these idea sand let's start with the way Salem has handled the 2 kids after Cinder's disappearence in volume 6.

STEALING ASSETS

It is implied Salem dislikes Cinder's tendency to collect "assets":

Salem: Hm, you certainly do enjoy collecting assets.

She clearly wants Cinder to be isolated, so that she can be under her complete control. What is more, she in general likes to abuse and completely drag into servitude everyone around her. Love, trust, personal wishes. Everything must come after her:

Salem: It's important not to lose sight of what drives us: Love, justice, reverence…But, the moment you put your desires before my own… they will be lost to you.

The same goes for the murder kids and Salem's interactions with them in volume 6 are meant to convey this. The moment Cinder is weakened and away, Salem immediately closes in on Emerald and Mercury and targets their bond with Cinder. She specifically starts with Em because she is the most fervently loyal to the Fall Maiden:

Salem: Emerald… I want you to tell me whose fault this was. Now.

Emerald: Cinder! We failed because of Cinder…

This whole interaction is a way to implement control on her subordinates. Hazel, Emerald and Mercury have failed, but their whole conversation with Salem is really not about their failure. It is a way for her to break them and bring them under her thumb even more. Hazel is not the reason they lost at Haven, but him being ready to take the blame is considered unacceptable. Either Hazel or Mercury could very easily tell Salem Cinder is the one at fault. However, Salem explicitly asks Emerald. She already knows Cinder is the one responsible, but she specifically wants Em to confirm it as a way to make her betray Cinder.

These are all abusive tactics because all of Salem's relationships are abusive. Not just Ozpin or Cinder, but all the other members of her inner circle are her victims. They need to adore her and can easily be punished for the most trivial thing if Salem feels like it.

Volume 6 is where she starts to extend her manipulative claws directly on the kids because there is no Cinder to mediate anymore. The result is that she incites different reactions into them:

Emerald: I just… Cinder was the only family I ever had. She cared about me, taught me things… But without her here, I don't know if what we're doing--

Mercury: You may not like it here without Cinder, but I think I'm right where I'm supposed to be!

Em who can't be abused through fear alone starts to have doubts. Merc instead who has been brought up by an abuser adopts his coping mechanism to become who his abuser wants him to be.

In any case, Salem has a pretty solid grip on both by this point. However, things start to change in the Atlas arc.

TAKEN AWAY

The moment Emerald and Mercury leave Monstra's belly they start different opposite journeys. On the one hand Emerald takes the path of redemption. On the other hand Mercury follows Tyrian in what is probably going to be a a horrible spiral of abuse.

What is interesting, though, is that both kids show very little agency for such pivotal moments in their stories. In a sense, rather than them making a choice, it is more like them being taken away by people on opposite sides of the conflict.

Mercury is literally dragged away by Tyrian and pushed on an airship he is not driving. In stories and dreams not driving a car or some other vehicle is symbolic of not being in control of where you are going. That is clearly the case here. Mercury has clearly zero agency in what is happening. What he does however is to fake control. This is his default coping mechanism. He discovers Salem wants to destroy the world and, before he can process the information, he is taken away and trapped more. So, he deflects the truth and moves forward on the path decided for him.

Emerald is instead encouraged to leave, protected and finally saved by Hazel. She is framed not as a heroine or as a villain making a decisive choice to gain redemption. Rather, she is presented as a child in need of understanding and protection. She is not the one taking the initiative to confront Oscar about the Lamp. She is not the one choosing they should leave. She does not take the most risky part in the operation. Finally, she makes no sacrifice. These are all actions took by Hazel, who is clearly the protagonist of the Witch Episode. Emerald is instead just a tag along.

In short, the kids are presented superficially as taking opposite paths. However, this "choice" is actually pretty much determined by others, at least partially. This is important because the authors could have made their respective decisions more resonant and poignant if they wanted to. They could have framed Mercury as in control (and not as an abused child) the moment he chooses to make a step further in his villanious path. Alternatively, they could have made Emerald more active and more pivotal in Hazel's redemption. For example, Em could have been the one freeing Oscar, they could have been confronted by Hazel and could have convinced him to interrogate the Lamp. This dynamic would have changed basically nothing on Oscar and Hazel's side of the story. Oscar would have still gone through Em and Hazel, while Hazel would have still defected and saved Em in the process. The only difference would have been to make Emerald more of an active part in her own defection.

However, this does not happen and Em and Merc seem much more like 2 abused kids that get better and spiral because of the context around them. Em is helped and saved, while Merc is trapped and isolated. This brings a series of interesting questions. For example, would have Emerald been able to escape if she were the one dragged away and trapped with Tyrian? Would have Hazel saved Merc too if he were the one on Monstra by the time he defects?

CHARACTERS, NOT PACKAGES

Obviously, I don't mean Emerald and Mercury could have been swapped and the story would have been the same. They are shown to specifically have opposite coping mechanisms and opposite reactions to the situation they are in. These behaviours bring different consequences that are independend from the context around them.

Emerald has always shown the most remorse over CEM's actions and she has always been more open about her feelings. This makes it easier for her to think about leaving the moment she realizes Cinder does not care. Mercury has instead always been more guarded and repressed, preferring to ignore his own feelings to avoid hurt. So, it is obvious that partly it is their different behaviours that make so they end on different paths.

What I wanted to highlight, however, is how much of their respective situations is also influenced by others. Emerald is scared of Tyrian and Salem, just like Mercury is. The moment Tyrian appears she cowers away in fear. Similarly, Salem touching her is enough for her losing all willingness to struggle. This is not because she is a coward, but it is the result of abuse. The same goes from Mercury, who lets himself be dragged away by Tyrian with no resistance. At the same time, both kids trust Hazel to an extent because he has been protecting both since Haven.

In short, Salem has been abusing both kids, Tyrian has been terroryzing them and Hazel has been protecting them. However, in volume 8 Emerald is taken away from Salem's clutches, while Mercury slips deeper into them. Similarly, Tyrian isolates Mercury, while Hazel sends Emerald away with her peers. At the same time, this outcome also makes sense with their respective arcs and reactions. Emerald finally sees Cinder for who she is and is rewarded. Mercury instead keeps repressing who he is and is punished.

As for now, there is a good equilibrium between showing Em progressing and Merc stagnating and making clear how she is given a lot for very little and he is given disproportionate retribution. This mix makes it difficult for me to believe they are just going for a good vicitm vs bad victim dynamic, especially when one considers the structure of their individual arcs.

EMERALD - REDEMPTION ARC OR ARC WITH REDEMPTIVE ELEMENTS?

Emerald's arc is just beginning, but some people are already criticizing it because it does not perfectly fit the classic redemption arc structure, which is described in this great post. However, I am gonna argue this is simply because Emerald's arc... is not really a redemption arc, but rather a positive change arc with some redemptive elements.

What does it mean?

Generally speaking, redemption arcs are always positive change arcs aka stories where the character has a positive transformation. However, redemption arcs are also a specific kind of positive change arc defined by well... redemption. By this I mean that a character getting redeemed is usually the very climax of the arc / a huge turning point and it usually happens close to the end of the story/ storyarc/ character story.

For example, Zuko and Catra get redeemed in the very last season of their respective shows. Moreover, for both getting redemption is a huge part of their stories. To Zuko it means overcoming his pride by giving up his royal status and leads to his relationship with Aang to change completely. To Catra it means to finally become selfless in her love for Adora, which in turn leads to the 2 of them ending up together. Notice also that for both Zuko and Catra their bond with respectively Aang and Adora is a major part of their characters. Zuko is Aang's pursuer since ep 1, while Catra is Adora's love interest.

When it comes to Emerald, this is not true. She finds redemption/is accepted into the main group at the beginning/in the first half of her story. Moreover, she has no special connection nor role in RWBYJNR's arcs and is starting just now to develop a bond (hence a narrative role) with Oscar. However, the 2 characters key to her story are not really the heroes, but rather Mercury and Cinder.

This difference has also consequences on a structural level. These are the phases of a "classic redemption arc" applied to Ilia's arc.

Initial crime - Ilia spies on Blake and stabs Sun while running away

Worsening of the crime - Ilia ruins the Belladonna's conference and takes part in a plan to kidnap Blake and kill her parents

Reckoning - Blake goes to meet Ilia and confronts her over her actions. Later on during their fight Blake keeps trying to get through to her.

Refusal of the reckoning - Ilia keeps refusing Blake's words and fights her

Suffering - Throughout the whole volume Ilia is shown doubtful, regretful, confused and in pain. This comes to a climax in her fight with Blake.

Acceptance - When Blake mentions her parents, Ilia starts becoming less assertive. Similarly, after Ghira saves her she is shown to have lost all willingness to fight.

More suffering - After the fight is over, she is desperate and starts crying.

Selfless sacrifice - She stunts the last standing man of the White Feng finishing the fight. This counts as a sacrifice because in this moment she is choosing to give up and to accept her arrest if it means the Belladonnas are safe. Later on, she is also the first one to answer to Blake's call in juxtaposition to her previous disturbance action towards Ghira.

Forgiveness - Ilia is forgiven by Blake, Sun and the Belladonnas.

Ilia's arc follows the basic structure. She has also a final redeeming moment in the Battle of Haven, where she disables the bombs and saves everyone. Let's highlight that the above structure does not go in the way of a classical positive change arc. Ilia starts the story believing a lie (Faunus can fight for equality only through hate and violence), but by the end she has learnt the truth (hate is not an answer and even if difficult one must fight to break the cycle of violence).

Emerald's arc instead does not exactly follow this structure. It seems to initially, but at one point there is a key step missing. To be specific:

Initial crime - Emerald together with Mercury helps Cinder to kill Amber

Worsening of the crime - The Fall of Beacon and all in between

Reckoning - She has 2 linked to 2 different flaws. Firstly, the famous "it is almost sad" comment. Secondly, Mercury telling her at point-blank Cinder does not care

Refusal of the reckoning - She keeps following Cinder no matter what

Suffering - All her scenes in Evernight, her crying at the battle of Haven, her crying while protecting Cinder from Penny

Acceptance - Once again she has 2. Firstly, the one on the Monstra Bridge, where she realizes Cinder treats her like Salem treats Cinder. Secondly, in Atlas underground where she sees people and children in danger because of the war

More suffering - She loses Hazel and is almost tortured by Salem

Selfless sacrifice - SHE LACKS ONE

Forgiveness - She is accepted into the main group after her attempted apology. Yes, obviously there might still be conflict (hopefully), but from what we have seen RWBYJNRO have all been pretty quick to welcome her.

Obviously, the key step which is missing is that of the selfless sacrifice. This moment is super important not just in redemption arcs, but in character arcs in general. That is because it is a climatic moment. Usually, the sacrifice is linked to the character flaw and to the want vs need. For example, Zuko sacrifices his position as Prince and his honor to do the right thing and go help Aang. Catra instead overcomes her selfishness by saving Glimmer. She helps Adora not to have something in exchange, but because she genuinely loves her and wants her to be safe and happy. Let's highlight that both Zuko and Adora are also tested again in the finale. Zuko sacrifices himself for Katara, while Catra sacrifices herself for Adora.

Emerald has so far sacrificed nothing for others. Neither has she been truly tested on her main flaw, which is her dependence on Cinder. She will probably be later on as it is possible her sacrifice will happen in the future. In this case, though, it is possible this climatic moment is not really a part of Emerald's redemption, but rather a resulf of it. Specifically, it arrives after she is forgiven and has reconciled with the main group.

This kind of structure is really nothing new for RWBY. It is actually the series "abusive survivor arc tm".

The survivor is able to escape the abuser, like Weiss and Blake in the White and Black trailers.

They find a healthy environment where they can grow stronger, like team RWBY and Beacon for Weiss and Blake.

They meet the abuser again and temporally regress, like Blake running from Adam and Weiss obediently following Jacques home.

They realize they are now stronger and can face and defeat the abuser. This happens with Blake defeating Adam and Weiss overcoming Jacques.

Emerald is now at the very first step of this journey. She has finally found the strength to leave Cinder and is now in a much healthier environment. She'll grow stronger from now on and will eventually be able to confront Cinder. This is the trajectory her story is taking and it is very similar to that of Blake and Weiss's. The theme here, much more than redemption is the breaking of the cycle of abuse. At the same time, Emerald has not only an antagonist to face (Cinder), but also a person to save (Mercury). Mercury is who Emerald might have been if she ended up stuck in Salem's inner circle instead of being saved. Just like Weiss's goal is to save her family (and not to renegade it) and Blake's to help the Faunus (and not to give up on them), Emerald's final objective should be to help Mercury out of the cycle as well.

MERCURY - AN IGNORED GOAL AND A REPRESSED WANT

Mercury's arc is a little behind Emerald's. However, there are still interesting consideration to make about it.

Firstly, if we consider it as a redemption arc in nuce, then he has gone through:

Initial crime - Same as Emerald

Worsening of the crime - Same as Emerald

Reckoning - Merc too has 2 and. Just like Em's, the first is about his personal journey, while the second is about the general conflict. Firstly, Tyrian spells out to him that he is just a scared kid. Secondly, Tyrian confirms Salem wants indeed to destroy the world. Let's highlight both times the reckoning is started by Emerald confronting Mercury, even if then it is Tyrian that drives it home

Refusal of the Reckoning - He chooses to follow Salem's orders despite Emerald's warnings

Suffering - Like Emerald, he has started this the moment he stepped in Evernight. However, it is clear his fun trip with Tyrian will drive this point home even more

Secondly, if we consider the "abusive survivor arc tm", then Mercury is clearly an inversion of it:

He kills his father, but instead of being freed, he gets trapped psychologically

He finds Emerald and Cinder and instead than a healthy environements ends up in another violent and abusive dynamic

He is now with his main abuser once again. Sure, Marcus is dead, but Tyrian is a clear step in

Basically, while Blake, Weiss and Emerald are given a chance to grow into a different environment, Mercury is negated it and keeps spiraling because of this. This arc too is not unique to him and can be called the "stuck with bad parental substitudes arc tm". It is shared by Cinder, obviously, but also by Winter (Jacques + Ironwood). Interestingly, all these characters seem to have a negative force and a positive force fighting over their souls. To Winter she must choose between Penny or Ironwood's philosophies. Cinder will have to choose between Salem and Ruby's. For Mercury, his 2 key characters are clearly set up to be Tyrian (abusive father step-in) and Emerald (who he might become and only loved one).

That said, when it comes to Mercury's story, the very interesting part comes by considering its set up. To be more specific, is Mercury's arc set up as a change arc or as a steadfast arc? Given the fact Mercury is introduced as a negative character, he can either stay steadfast (so remain negative and even spiral more) or grow and turn into a positive character.

I am gonna argue Mercury's arc is set up as a positive change arc because of this:

Mercury: And when I unlocked my Semblance, he stole it with his! "This is a crutch!" "This makes you weak!" He told me I could have it back when I was strong. So I got strong, but I never got it back!

Mercury's missing semblance is a perfect character goal. A character goal is something needed in an arc. A character has a want that is represented by a physical goal. In order to reach the goal and fulfill the want, the character struggles with a flaw. Sometimes this basic structure gets complicated by the need vs want conflict. The character's want is not really what the character needs, so in the end they give up the want in order to get the need and reach true happiness.

For example, Emerald and Cinder's arcs are variations of the want vs need structure. Emerald wants to have a true family, which gets concretized in 2 conflicting goals. On the one hand what Emerald pursues is a relationship with Cinder. On the other hand what Emerald should pursue is a relationship with RWBYJNRO and Mercury. Cinder is the family she wants, but the others and Mercury especially are the family she needs. Similarly, Cinder wants to be powerful (want), but what she needs is to accept herself for who she is, so that her personhood and humanity are affirmed and recognized (need). This is all obviously linked to a want she is repressing that is her desire to be free. She tries to reach it through power, but she can only get it through choice.

When it comes to Mercury, his set up goal is to try and get his semblance back, which is clearly linked to the want to be himself instead than his father. However, what's interesting is that so far Mercury has done nothing to pursue this wish. He is not serving Salem because she has promised him he can get his semblance back, for example. Similarly, this detail of his background gets revealed only in volume 6. Think of how Emerald's desire to be loved by Cinder and Cinder's thirst for power are instead presented immediately in Beginning of the End, which is CEM's pivotal episode. This does not happen to Mercury, who tells the audience about his missing semblance only when prompted and provoked by Emerald. This is because Mercury has clearly given up on his want in favor of his need. Basically, his arc can be read as an inversion of the classical needs vs wants arc. He does what he needs to survive (he obeys Salem/Cinder/Marcus/Tyrian, kills and hurts others), but by doing so he has completely repressed what he wants. This explains why he is the most passive of CEM. Obviously he is passive, he is telling himself there is nothing he really wants! Except clearly there is or he would not have brought his semblance up with Emerald. Similarly, he would not care about Emerald so deeply if she had not come to be a part of who he is and what he wants.

It is obvious that Mercury will be at one point asked to choose between surviving (basic need) or truly being himself (his repressed want). This choice will probably be framed with him having to choose between his (fake) safety and Emerald. By choosing her, he will actually be choosing himself and living.

TWO SIDES OF A BAD VICTIM

Emerald and Mercury's arc being an exploration of good victim and bad victim played straight would be detrimental for both their stories.

Emerald's positive arc would be shallow because of how luck and help she received in juxtaposition to Mercury. They are presented as a set, are guilty of the exact same crimes and are similarly abused and victimized. It would actually also be potentially distasteful if the one saved is the girl with a powerful semblance (so abled), while the boy whose semblance is stolen (so disabled) gets left behind. Like, it is not even a secret Emerald's powerful semblance is actually one of the reasons why she is accepted so quickly into the group. Oscar comments on how useful her power is and Weiss uses it to trick Ironwood.

Mercury's negative arc would simply be a waste of set up in 90% of the cases. Why setting up an objective Mercury is not even pursuing? It would be different if by pursuing it he were to spiral, but so far Mercury has been incredibly passive in his "villanious path" (differently from Cinder, for example). Sure, things may change in future volumes, but for now he is clearly framed as a lost child rather than a cruel villain.

Finally, having 1 kid getting redemption and the other 1 spiralling and dying would not work for the greater narrative and for what Emerald and Mercury represent in it. They are clealry meant to be 2 sides of the series most relevant bad victim:

Emerald and Mercury's arcs are meant to comment Cinder's and to show what she needs to eventually do to free herself from the cycle. Her whole arc is probably gonna be a combination of Emerald and Mercury's. Because of this, both kids need to find redemption for Cinder to have hers. Sorry, but there are really not exceptions here. Cinder is the 2 kids' authority figure, who fails and abuses them. For her to get redemption, while one of her kids does not would be like Jacques getting redeemed while Whitley or Winter do not. It is not impossible to pull off (like everything in writing), but RWBY is rather direct when it comes to foiling, character hierarchies and framing. Emerald and Mercury are framed as kids more directly than Cinder is, they have killed no major character, they are not abusing people below them. Hence they are getting redeemed before Cinder herself.

#rwby #rwby murder kids #emerald sustrai #mercury black #asksfullofsugar #anonymous #just some blubbering on structures #which obviously is not perfect #but it let me touch and think about interesting structures #rwby meta

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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I am under the firm belief that once Ruby made her “we never needed adults” speech they started writing a completely different show. I’ve said this before, I don’t like mentor archetypes, so I’m all up for a show saying they suck and they haven’t done the kids any good, but I’m also not one to just gloss over the fact the show written before that point has! I honestly can’t wait for Tai to come back just for the show go shit on him too. Make the cycle of ungratefulness complete!

Nooo don't do Tai dirty too! 😭

Yeah, looking back it does feel like there was a pretty intense switch flipped, huh? Personally, I'd put that change at Ruby using the Lamp, it just didn't become obvious until much later that her taking that/the reaction towards Ozpin/the awful treatment of Oscar/etc. wasn't something the characters were going to hold one another accountable for down the line. There was a very long stretch through Volume 6 (and 7, and parts of 8 lol) where I kept thinking, more and more desperately, that this was all a long-term setup for that Revelation™. But really, by the time Oscar was baking them casseroles and pledging his loyalty instead of calling them out on their behavior, I'd largely lost hope. When we get to Ruby reframing not just their current behavior, but the entire series' behavior as both justified and entirely self-sufficient, that change was well set in stone. Everything from there there out, from Cordovin randomly letting them pass with a smile, to Yang telling off Ren for criticizing their choices, just continually re-establishes the new mindset. Hell, I actually think this started in Volume 5 with Yang baselessly accusing Ozpin of things and the writing never holding her accountable for that... but yeah, the certainty of this new perspective was solidified through Ruby's speech. Listening to the triumphant music, watching the group stand behind her, including Maria who is, you know, an adult, I realized that the show really was digging its heels in and had no intention of deviating from this course. And, sure enough, it hasn't.

An anti-mentor show isn't really my cup of tea, but it obviously would be for you, anon! The problem isn't that preference but that, as you say, this change occurred over four Volumes into the series, contradicting what came before it. If you're going to write the next generation as better than the mentors and justifiably dismissive of their actions... then I want to see circumstances in which they are, in fact, better than the mentors and have justifiable reasons for the extent of their behavior towards them. That's the crucial difference for me. Yeah, Team RWBY absolutely has a right to be pissed at Ozpin for his secret, but that crime really doesn't fit the punishment that was dished out. Yeah, Team RWBY absolutely has a right to cut Ironwood loose when he starts murdering people, the problem is they betrayed him long before that point and, arguably, have no idea that events like shooting Oscar and the Councilman occurred. To say nothing of the continued hypocrisy as they repeat Ozpin's (supposed) mistakes. Their utter failure thus far to do better in regards to this war. The acceptance of actual villains like Emerald and Hazel. The continued, iffy treatment of the adults around them even while the group simultaneously presents themselves as adults and professionals. (I mean, by RWBY's logic we should now be looking to some other first year students to save the day...) It's just a thematic mess on the whole, made worse the more the show tries to tackle morally gray subject matter. We've got multiple, nuanced situations stuffed into a black and white box, all of it wrapped in a contradictory continuity. If the show wants to push these messages, by all means go for it, but the story needs to be able to back those claims up for the messages to resonate.

#rwby #rwde #mymetas

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oddlyhale · 3 years

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As much as I begin to see the horrors of RWBY fndm and how crazed BB fans can be, there'll probably be no comparison to the psychotics I had to deal with in the HH fndm.

While I can totally find myself being tolerant with all RWBY ships, there's something territorial when it comes to HH ships. It's a different beast on its own, especially with the popular artists that can and will control their fanbase.

Boy do I have a tale of 2020 that had me deal with the mental gymnastics these wild shippers put me through. The sheer hypocrisy, the fear fans had of standing up to them, the collective harassment.

In a synopsis, before we start:

Hi, my name is Hale.

Alfa and Alex are probably the most psychotic people I’ve ever met when it comes to my online daily life. I used to think my ex-friends were the bane of my existence, but Alfa and Alex started making me think just how angelic my exes were in comparison.

So let’s begin.

When I first met the Double AAs, it was Alex first (awhile back in late-June 2020 during Vaggie Week) but it was indirect. I was on my Instagram when I was tagged by a random user in something Alex had drawn. This was when I first saw the kill art of Vaggie. I was so upset that I had yelled at this random user for tagging me, as well as showing it via screencap on my twitter, as a warning to never do this to me to my followers. Keep in mind, I had censored Alex’s name from the screencap, not the random user.

However, Alex saw this somehow and became hysterical, thinking I was targeting him for what he drew. This caused an uproar of his fans to come attack me, and it did cause me to become scared and get away from my account. Alfa decided to insert herself into the mix, but I didn’t care enough for her to say anything. It was mostly Alex and how much he was “scared” and cried about the “fandom being so hateful and scary.” He went private for a while I believe, but Alfa was still going hard at me and sending more of her fans to come harass me.

If Alex ever says he is a strong and brave man, don’t believe him. He fears the HH fandom.

Anyhow, after Alfa’s fans had done their best to gaslight me, I didn’t give in. In fact, I made amends with the random user that tagged me. Somehow they assumed I would like the art of Vaggie being killed, which was childish to even believe in. Nonetheless, I forgave them, and we moved on from there.

But even when we both resolved this together, Alfa and Alex decided that it would be fun to make this “kill Vaggie art” a meme, or trend. With their huge followings combined, they were able to get their artist fans to join in and start creating so much hate art of Vaggie. Many of them drew her head being cut off, mutilated, raped and cheated on.

Alfa and Alex adore gaslighting the hell out of people. While they draw such hideous things, they will go ahead and say, “but it’s just fiction, it’s not real,” and call you psychotic for even caring so much about their bad behaviour. I can only imagine what Alfa’s husband goes through everyday since Alfa loves to make people second-guess themselves often.

Keep in mind, Alfa and Alex are the same people who will cry and shake when their fictional ship is invalidated and written out. They often wish nothing good for Viv and her team that are providing these ungrateful children with the show and content they so badly want. It shows you just how privileged they had grown up as children, doesn’t it?

This wasn’t fun, it was horrible. I didn’t realize just how many toxic people existed in the HH fandom until this “trend” began to spread.

But the funny thing that I'll never forget is how apeshit Alfa went when I had the audacity to draw Alastor plus sized. She accused me of being a pedophile, supporting MAPs. Even though she leans towards being pro-ship (likes incest, OK with lolicon, will condone drawing necophilia.) But me? Having the sheer audacity of drawing Alastor fat? It burned her so bad.

As well, this was being pushed on the VAs during a small livestream. The chat wouldn’t stop asking, “what do you think of the Vaggie kill art going around?” Of course the VAs ignored these questions, but it was really rude to even ask these things. Especially when Vaggie’s VA was in the same livestream.

But then this trend was proven to be a lie, by Alex’s own words. He dropped the ball in a one-off conversation with an anti that “he only created this to get back at the Chaggie shippers.” So retroactively, this trend was worthless.

What also began to start becoming obvious was that Alfa was too afraid to do anything on her own, and thus, she will recruit some darlings to defend her. Alfa seems to have more defenders than she has any confidence to defend herself, and when she has no choice but to stand up for herself, she will buckle and hide. She is weak, is what I had learnt.

I decided to just ignore Alex and Alfa as much as I could. With a friend though, I was given updates of what was happening on the Double AAs’ side in the meantime, and it’s amazing to see just how vile they can be with their own fans and haters. Especially with their new puppy named Salty. (I think that’s their name, another weak ass bitch.)

As months went by, the major event that stirred from the AA camp was when they were harassing Pastel Sky. This would be where the big reveal of just how horrible the AAs and their friends truly are, when they have nobody to harass except for kids. HH has a wide audience of children involved in this fandom, hence why many other artists keep saying we should try to be good examples for them, and keep them safe. But not for the AAs.

Pastel was ruthlessly attacked by them and it was all unwarranted. What they were angry about was that Pastel had the nerve to have negative opinions when it came to AAs, and they broke their own rule of “don’t like then block.” Even Galactic Potatoes (Spuds) would go out of their way, again, to gaslight Pastel into believing that what attacks she received on Twitter was allowed, because Pastel was asking for it. Spuds is well-known to gaslight, a thing they had learnt from the AAs quite often.

Pastel was a minor at the time, and it really doesn’t matter if Pastel was just 17. I don’t care if Pastel was only 17 and that “well she’s almost 18,” because regardless of age, harassment is not the answer. Follow by that, fighting with minors is actually fucking stupid and braindead. Spuds tried very hard to justify why attacks were OK, and that Pastel “should learn” how to grow up. I then learnt that Spuds went into hiding afterwards.

That was until the Double AAs’ discord chats were exposed, showing that they were practically mouth-watering at Pastel’s pain, romanticizing her apparent abuse and trying to convince each other how her punishment on Twitter was correct. Even one (I believe was Jay because he loves me and wants me back) wished that I would die. This would be the third time he asked me to die indirectly, which justifies my points on how toxic and abusive they are.

This entire event seemed to have unraveled a new wave of truths, and it’s sad to know it had to take a literal minor to have their masks fall off.

In 2021, Alex was exposed to be a thief. Stealing commission money for “stress pills.” If Alex is on a path of drug addiction, I hope it’s not the case. That’s a terrible place to be, and hopefully he’ll be clean and grow up for once. I still don’t care enough about Alfa, after now knowing all she is, is just a dramatic housewife with nothing better to do in her life. Perhaps if they just got jobs instead of stealing money from fans, they’d be leading well-productive lives.

From what I understand, many of the toxic fans of the Double AAs have either dropped HH fandom, or have deleted their accounts. Good, I hope they stay gone. The fandom deserves better, not trash.

Needless to say, the best advice I can give to those in the HH fandom that come facing the Double AAs is to not be afraid of them.

Over time, once you get used to their behaviour, you come to realize that this is their default. They’re not likable, they’re not nice, and they aren’t appreciative of one singular thing you do for them (hence Alex stealing from his own fans.)

It’s their M.O., they are just that cruel. So don’t fear them, but challenge their behaviour. Don’t stoop to their level of wanting to draw hateful art, though, that will fuel them. Talking down to them like their idiots always works like a charm.

Anyways, thanks for reading.

If anybody from the Double AAs’ camp ever finds this and reads it, I just wanna say that you are doing a great job, sweety. Thanks for proving me right by the new year. I appreciate the honesty for once. It only took you a year, just think of what other things you’ll do in the next year.

#hazbin hotel #fndm critical #personal story #mature topics ahead #tw

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kob131 · 4 years

Note

Looks like Hbomberguy's hours long crap is up(publicly).

“Made a legendary animator, his most trusted colleage (shows Shane) and two-”

People he outright went to and he acknowledged were better writers, thanks for admitting that HBomberguy and not be an insulting jackass right?

“RWBY’s failures matter because it could have been something-”

So could Twilight- That means nothing at this point other than ‘I made a bunch of headcanons and the show dared to not follow them.’

‘It’s easy to see why this show has such a devote fanbase because it frequently threatens to become good-”

So did Fairy tail (except for real) and that died out. Also you are really chipping away at my goodwill

‘People say what it promised!”

You mean this?

‘Weaken REAL criticism by being given too much attention-”

Hypocritical much douchebag?

“*insert a bunch of sarcastic bullshit mocking critics of RWBY*”

*rolls eyes* You say as you mimick them down to using the DEAD.

‘It’s separated into two eras with issues that don’t necessarily overlap-”

Bull. Fucking. Shit. Most of RWBY’s problems now ORIGINATED in the early Volumes.

“If you’re a fan of the show you’re probably gonna dread what I’m about to say and if you’re a fan of the second half then you’ll probably agree with what I’m about to say-”

Considering you’re stupid sarcasm is just a less smug version of what I do, pretty clear ‘agreement’ and ‘actual good point’ are very different here.

“If you love RWBY and are still gonna watch, thank you and I love you for joining me on this journey.”

Less a journey and more a Seven Page Muda but sure.

“My goal isn’t to make people think less of the show-”

Which is why you openly insult it in the beginning.

“-but to think more about it.”

So far you’ve shown about as much understanding of the show as FloofArtist, complete with hypocrisy. And considering what I’ve heard about your video, you’re not getting better.

“I hope to give credit where credit is due-/It’s said failure is the best teacher-”

Which is why you openly insult people.

“’Rooster Teeth is starting game development!’ *insert insulting Steam Statistics*’

Fucking wonderful. Like you haven’t already tested my patience.

“*gushes about the Red Trailer after about eight minutes of recaping*”

Cool, eight minutes wasted on knowledge that EVERY RWBY fan knows. Literally every RWBY fan knows the origins of RT and Monty and the bitch basic knowledge of how they came together. You seem to have targeted this to RWBY fans and yet to blab about shit that you get after looking at the fandom for 2 seconds.

To say nothing of how you prove something was wrong with the Red Trailer. Namely, you never mention a plot, a personal conflict, a display of character or anything other than ‘cool music!’ and ‘animation!’ despite the show being pretty plot dependent.

*Gushes about the White Trailer*

Yet another bitch basic gushing with nothing of substance to it. For a guy who says he wants people to think critically about RWBY, you sure don’t do that for what is considered the basis of the show. It’s just talking about shit you like instead of anything worthwhile.

*Yet more gushing with the Black Trailer.*

... You know, I watch these kinds of videos searching for some kind of intellectual stimulation. Something to make me think and engage with. Right now, I get more stimulation and engagement from RWBY itself than a supposedly critical video that doesn’t even have to bother with anything original.

“The show already has generic monsters who just want to destroy humanity and yet you have written your characters to act exactly the same-”

And within your own bitching, you discovered the counter. The Grimm have nothing really to explore about them outside giving them variations and powers whereas the human characters can have these things called ‘motives’ and ‘reasons’. Not to mention even you would say people act like that in real life *cough* anyone NOT of your political alignment *cough*.

“And the audience is left with one lingering though...he can make that jump.”

youtube

How does it feel that Family Guy did a better version of your joke?

“She’s written like two adult men who have never written anything professional before except Red Vs. Blue wrote a Teenage girl-”

.... Monty wrote her based off her voice actress. You’ve also made me regret ever using this same insult against Miles and Kerry so congrats on that.

*Even more gushing...*

You know, I am legitimately considering rewatching the Persona episode of Game Theory because at least MatPat’s faffing about is short and he has more content in his first eighteen minutes than this.

“More people have gone back to watch the trailers than watch actual episodes of the show!”

The trailers are the first thing people would watch to know about the series- no shit they’d be higher in view count.

“It’s so hard to not be onboard with the trailers!”

It’s actually very easy, especially in their release.

Why? Simple, a lot of the depth in the trailers only exists with context from the show itself. The White Trailer is cool and all but it’s symbolism and deeper meaning comes from Weiss’ backstory and the truth depth of Blake leaving Adam and what it causes is found in the show, the two best trailers while Red is just mindless fun that you can get better from other places and Yellow is just kind of neat.

How the fuck am I the more critical of the two of us so far?

“Then the show actually came out and it was terrible-”

Piece of advice, don’t follow this up with a super janky, uncanny valley 3D animation that makes Volume 1 look appealing.

“RWBY isn’t just a bad show, it’s a bad show that could have been something-”

*cracks neck*

The idea that RWBY or any show ‘had potential’ is most often used when a person once had a fondness for the property in question but has long since lost the goodwill to see it in a positive light, trying to make up for the cognitive dissonance of the conflict between liking what it once was and disliking what it is now. The issue here is that these so called ‘issues’ are born of the original creator who either founded the show or helped found it which means that it was pretty much DESTINED to be this way as the creator’s specific interpretation of their own work is what resonated with you in the first place and was likely built up to in the subtle inner workings of the show, thus making the big changes you want so badly would cause a ripple effect that would have affected your past impression of the show because everything in a show is connected. And in all likelyhood, your impression would have soured no matter what.

Tl;Dr- ‘It had potential!’ is self defeating and stupid.

‘The creators are receptive to criticism!...well, they try to be.-”

Oh boy I can’t wait for Mr. ‘kill half of all babies’ to try and speak about THIS topic.

“You don’t engage with any of the good faith criticism and just reward shitty people with attention. And I hope to show them that as a lifelong fan of RT and Monty Oum, that I’m saying this thinking RWBY could have been good...and still could be.”

Says the man who when referencing Miles for the first time, actively SEPERATED him from being a ‘treasured college’ of his friend and insulted him with Yang even though the fault lied with MONTY.

All while referencing a tweet where he chews someone out for saying EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE SAYING ( ‘God this is why i hate this fandom. You miss the point. If I critise the show I'm a hater because you worship it. I'M OFFERING CRITISM U IDIOT SO THE SHOW SEES ITS FAULTS AND FIXES THEM. HOW THE FUCK CAN U KEEP MOVING FORWARD IF YOU DON'T IDENTIFY YOUR OWN FAULTS AND LEARN’). Yeah great job there jackass- How exactly are you any different from this fucker?

So that’s my thoughts on the first twenty or so minutes. Can already tell it’s gonna be shit.

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warsmith-38 · 3 years

Text

How I would do RWBY pt. 2

Season Two

Emerald and Mercury go to book store.

Try intimidating ex-White Fang owner.

He’s tense, but not impressed.

Adam walks in.

He shits himself.

Tries fighting.

Dies. Painfully might I add.

Emerald and Mercury banter. Adam just seems bored.

Cinder (teenaged, not adult) scolds them for 86ing the guy in such a public and possibly trackable way.

Adam assures them that they weren’t seen. He has practice in that sort of thing.

Torchwick is annoyed at working with these people but at least he’s getting paid a mint.

Cinder says that, with all of the stolen dust, phase two of plan can to be started soon.

Neo give her a look of ‘get over yourself, you chuunibyou.’

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.

More guests arrive.

Ironwood talks with Ozpin about world affairs.

Grimm populations and attacks are getting worse, but are still manageable.

Says that he has brought plenty of extra security in the form of Penny and a big amount of security robots and mechs.

More bonding scenes because reasons.

RWBY + JNPR have food fight because funny.

Velvet and Blake are closer than earlier and give little ‘anti-racism’ classes for Weiss.

Blake is friendlier with everyone now that she knows they wouldn’t kill her since she’s a faunus.

Ruby has taken on the role of mechanic for everyone’s weapons.

Jaune dominates wargaming night.

Ren and Fox try to help Ruby with her hand-to-hand skills (Yang is not a great teacher of such things)

Scene of properly meeting team SSSN.

Nice guys, but a little too uncoordinated in style.

Ruby ends up having a frustrated breakdown.

Gives WBY speech of how they have to get involved and screw the people telling them to sit down and let them handle the problem instead.

Blake is the first to go along with what she’s saying.

Yang and Weiss argue that this is not a good idea, saying that this sounds like Ruby just wants to go play vigilante again.

Blake says that Ruby has a point, nothing will get accomplished if they sit around doing nothing.

Weiss is the one that cracks next. Agrees that the authorities aren’t exactly inspiring confidence since the run in with Torchwick.

Yang finally gives in, if only to make sure Ruby doesn’t get herself murdered.

Ruby, in her excitement to actually be doing something, rushes out the door to get snacks and runs into someone.

That someone is Cinder.

Cinder, Emerald, Mercury, and disguised Neo (Team CEMN (Cinnamon (work with me here))) keep up the façade of Haven guests from canon.

Ruby almost immediately starts gushing over their cool weapons before being reined in by WBY.

Emerald pickpocket’s Weiss’ wallet and snags rich girl’s cash before putting it back.

Mercury and Yang have a very clear stare-down of ‘punching vs kicking, who will win?’

Neo and Blake…stare at each other (Adam is Blake’s Rival/Foil. Blake v. Neo is just pair the spares).

RWBY has made new friends. (The poor dears)

RWBY start their investigation.

Team SSSN turns up to help at the last minute.

Okay, sure, free help.

Blake and Sun try to find local White Fang schmucks.

Scarlet and Sage go off to do random shit.

Yang drags Neptune to Junior’s club to check the pulse of the criminal element of the city.

Ruby and Weiss dig up information at library place-thing.

They encounter Penny on the way.

Penny acts weird(er) and tries to bolt off.

Weiss agrees that Penny is suspicious as hell and, with all the happenings, that means that she could be a potential lead.

She lets Ruby go after her while she about her investigating alone.

Penny reveals to Ruby that she’s a mechanical maiden (Persona 3 is best Persona).

Ruby is VERY interested now.

Ruby already liked her as a person and now she knows that Penny is a person who is also a weapon.

Zero downsides.

Penny, happy to be accepted, let’s slip that she knows some crazy stuff is happening in the world.

Says that that’s why she was allowed to come to the tournament, as extra back up just in case.

Says that the communications tower is the most obvious target but might not be the actual target.

Can’t elaborate further because of Ciel and her bodyguards showing up.

Ciel gives Ruby the third degree on encouraging Penny’s truant behavior.

Ruby gives her the finger.

Ciel takes Penny away and Ruby gets back to work.

Weiss gets whatever information about the White Fang and Torchwick that isn’t classified, and a little that is, transferred to her.

Her older sister is a high ranker in the military and her father bankrolled a good chunk of said military.

Ain’t nepotism a bitch?

Yang and Neptune come up empty handed, but Yang got to pick another fight at the club before the cops showed up so she’s all good.

Neptune thinks that that’s all Yang went there to do in the first place.

Scarlet and Sage get captured by the White Fang. (They said they had fresh cookies, what were S + S going to do, say no?)

Blake leads Sun along a trail of breadcrumbs to a White Fang hideout.

Sees a recruitment rally going on.

Blake has a heart attack seeing who’s giving a speech.

It’s Adam.

Speech is an emotional call to arms against the cruelty of humanity.

Crowd is skeptical but still listening.

Reveals his brand.

Crowd is now enthusiastic to sign up for the White Fang.

Adam reveals newly stolen war-mech.

Says that they’ll test its power by executing Scarlet and Sage.

Blake spoils his moment by covertly revealing that Roman is the pilot of said mech (Neo is co-pilot).

Crowd turns against Adam for his hypocrisy.

Adam cheeses it.

Roman takes it on himself to attack Blake and Sun.

Scarlet and Sage are freed and take on the rowdy crowd.

While running, Blake and Sun encounter RWY and Neptune.

Sun and Neptune get good hits in but are btfo’d.

Scarlet and Sage find them and all is good for team SSSN.

RWBY has quasi-rematch against Roman + Neo.

Fight goes well.

Team CFVY shows up and stomps the mech.

Looks like Team Rocket’s blasting off again!

RWBY celebrates a fight well won.

CFVY are pissed that RWBY would do something so dangerous and make them promise not to do things like this again.

RWBY lies through their collective teeth about not doing it again.

Get put on probation anyway.

Pyrrha and Jaune are having a moment together before Jaune ruins it.

Jaune admits that he lied and cheated his way into school due to impatience and lack of immediate combat skills.

He confesses all of this out of guilt and plans to turn himself in.

Pyrrha is actually rather angry at him.

1. for cheating to get what everyone else fought tooth and nail to earn the right to and 2. Putting the rest of his team at risk due to his inability to keep up with them in a fight and for associating them with a cheater/liar.

Not to mention lying to her face.

Says good riddance.

Cardin overhears and blackmails him into doing what he says or else he’ll narc on him and say that NPR knew and thus were complicit in the crime.

Jaune goes along with it while creating plan to oust Cardin and get him kicked from school.

Has conversation with Ren and Nora, both of whom are pissed at him.

Of course Pyrrha told them.

Jaune tells them that he knows he’s a piece of shit but also has Cardin to deal with.

Ren and Nora begrudgingly agree to help him get rid of Cardin.

Tells them his plan.

Plan proceeds to fail and Jaune ends up fighting all of CRDL alone.

Loses.

Grimm outside of their power-level shows up.

Jaune’s quick thinking and tactics get it killed.

Cardin is grateful and promises to keep quiet about blackmail. Even means it too.

CRDL is never a real issue again due to them actually realizing that it’s a very cuntish thing to bully the guy and/or the friends of the guy who actively saved their lives.

Jaune plans to give one last apology to his team before he turns himself in.

NPR say that they deliberated amongst themselves.

They have decided that Jaune doesn’t get to take the easy way out.

His penance is to train his ass off, night and day, to catch up to them on the physical level.

Jaune’s role is to be the strategist and that it’s his job to make plans that keep them all alive.

If he fucks up, they work his ass harder until he doesn’t fuck up.

They haven’t fully forgiven him, but they’re giving him a chance because they genuinely like him.

Jaune is touched by their compassion and promises make up for his mistakes.

Sparring day in class.

Jaune has match against disguised Neo.

Neo wins but Jaune starts to have suspicions.

Pyrrha and Mercury spar.

Pyrrha wins but Mercury now has valuable data on her overall fighting style and semblance usage.

Cinder and Ruby are last match of the class.

Cinder has fire powers as a semblance.

Has second semblance giving her bullet time.

Bullet time doesn’t work all that well against Ruby because of her super-speed.

Ruby gets some pretty good hits in. Kinda kicking Cinder’s ass.

Cinder then decides she’s done playing nice and goes on full offensive. Even starts to scare the crowd.

Times up!

Due to technicality, Ruby won the fight.

Aura cohesion (health bars) Cinder:48% Ruby:51%

Emerald and Mercury are blue in the face with fear of what Cinder might do, having officially lost a fight.

Cinder helps Ruby up, apologizes for going overboard, and offers to buy Ruby lunch the next day.

Ruby happily agrees to hang out with her newest friend.

Cinder later explodes at her hideout and incinerates a White Fang member that got a little too close.

Adam pretends to care. Doesn’t actually.

Ruby and Cinder become shockingly good friends (as far as Ruby is concerned).

Cinder explains the concept of a second semblance, confirming to Ruby that she’s a ten-percenter.

It’s somewhat rare, but it’s common enough that people know how it works and why it unlocks.

Great emotional duress.

She was raised in an orphanage that REALLY sucked.

She awakened both semblances pretty quickly and was snatched up by the authorities as soon as possible to be a huntress.

She’s mostly lying about the details but there is still the base truth.

Ruby tells her that she lost one of her parents too.

Summer just didn’t come home one day, being told she was killed in the line of duty by a lucky grimm.

She’s always thought that there’s more to this story, but doesn’t have the means to follow up just yet.

It’s part of why Ruby wants to be a huntress, to do her best to make sure that some other kid never experiences that kind of loss because of the grimm.

Cinder tells her that that’s not the worst motivation. (she means it more than she thinks)

Since Blake saw Adam at the rally she has become obsessed with analyzing all the data gotten during investigation.

RWY is worried.

Yang talks to her about it, giving the speech about her mother and the problems with obsession.

Blake talks about how dangerous she knows Adam to be. Is vastly terrified of him.

Yang reassures her that the team can handle that punkass.

4 on 1, let him try it. They’ll put the boots to him. Medium style.

Blake reluctantly snaps out of her funk.

Dance comes.

Everyone’s having a good time.

Pyrrha decides to properly forgive Jaune.

They kiss and, after a wacky JNPR argument because funny, so do Ren and Nora.

Insert the cool JNPR dance scene here.

Ruby is happy for her friends but notices some bullshit going on near the comm. tower.

Cinder is infiltrating it wearing something that actually makes it difficult to tell who it is.

Makes a big show of knocking the guards unconscious.

Places real obvious hacking device onto console.

Ruby comes in and shoots at her.

Cinder pops smoke and disappears.

Authorities arrive and (as far as they can tell) disable the hacking device.

Ruby is given a commendation for her actions and her team is taken off probation from earlier.

Upper echelon is pleased that enemy plot was foiled.

Exactly as the bad guys wanted.

Ozpin presses the doubt button.

Teams gets chaperone assignments.

JNPR requested a special Grimm bounty mission.

RWBY gets put on simple observation mission.

JNPR spends time tracking and eventually fighting nuckelavee grimm with Prof. Port.

Ren comes to terms with fighting the grimm that killed his parents.

Y’know, sub-plot stuff to relieve some main plot tension.

RWBY is sent with Dr. Oobleck into ruins to observe and document the growth rate of the non-hostile presence of the local *loud snoring*.

Actually sent near suspected White Fang supply depot with hope that they uncover it and fix problems.

Find it fairly easily after a little bonding moment or two with everyone.

Torchwick and Adam are in charge of train depot. (Torchwick gets the train, Adam gets the depot)

Ruby goes in on her own because she was told not to do things like that.

Ruby gets double-teamed by Roman and Adam. Neo watches like a little shithead.

Ruby fights like a demon but still gets bested.

Adam says that he is now bored and leaves Roman to finish up.

Oobleck and WBY show up.

Roman starts the train, tries to cheese it.

RWBY + Oobleck board the train.

Yang fights Neo.

Weiss fights masked White Fang member (later revealed to be Ilia).

Ruby and Blake fight Torchwick.

Oobleck fights the stormtroopers.

Neo, the crafty, dodgy, dexterity style, sly-bitch, kicks Yang, the brutish and blunt boxer, in the ass.

Raven pops up through a portal.

Neo am-scrays after almost getting her shit pushed in.

Raven says a scant few things to Yang and leaves her a trinket and a map, telling her to follow it when she can before leaving.

Weiss wins her fight.

Blake and Ruby kick Roman’s ass.

Discover train is full of dust explosives to blow up a chunk of Vale and let the grimm through in droves.

Was originally intended to be deployed before explosion but Roman decides ‘fuck it’ and tries to turn it into a kamikaze run at the last minute out of spite.

Oobleck disconnects the explosive cars.

Train still rams hole into central Vale.

Grimm incursion.

RWBY fights as best they can.

Almost get overrun when Teams CFVY, SSSN, and CEMN show up to help.

CEMN only involved because evil plan failed and they want to try and clean up any possible evidence.

Neo (in disguise) tries not to be obvious that she’s still tired from earlier.

Horde battle with large hydra (or something) grimm being final boss of season.

They kill it, of course.

After the battle RWBY thinks that the problem is more or less solved.

Adam is still loose but his plan is foiled and his co-conspirator, Roman, is in prison.

All they have to do is hunt him down.

If he’s going to try something, it’ll be at the tournament. RWBY will have an extra eye open during.

JNPR returns triumphant from their mission and wonders what the hell happened while they were gone.

Cinder is livid that plan-A failed and they lost their best chance to kill Ozpin.

Yeah, their plan is to fuck up Vale and get and chance to kill Ozpin.

Is reassured by the mysterious figure she’s talking to (Salem) that plans can change and still succeed.

Adam is looking through security footage taken from depot.

Sees Blake.

He smiles.

Season two done.

#RWBY #Ruby Rose #Weiss Schnee #Blake Belladonna #Yang Xiao Long #Cinder Fall #Emerald Sustrai #Mercury Black #Adam Taurus #Neopolitan #RWDE I guess #I regret nothing #How I would do...#Team CFVY

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littlemisssquiggles · 4 years

Note

Some people are saying that Rosegarden feels forced, especially after the most recent interaction the two had. That RG had absolutely no build up in terms of shipping. What is your response to this?

Hello Draw. You see, one of the many perks of being both a Rosegardener and Rosegardening Pinehead is that my adoration for the budding bond between our pair of smaller, more honest souls has caused me to become more observant of their moments together; particularly over the course of the most recent three seasons. And it is because I pay so much attention to following these two and their interactions per episode that I can easily contest with full confidence that people’s point of the ship being “forced with no build up” is drivel because it’s not true.

Again, take this from someone who has been following the development of this bond since V5. While it’s not as in your face as the portrayal of certain other ships within the FNDM, I can’t deny the fact that he show has been slowly building up these two’s relationship from the moment they met.

Throughout the seasons, the PLOT continues to highlight Ruby and Oscar’s growing friendship in the form of their continued support of one another. In V5, we began off with Ruby being the sole member of RNJR to actively look out for Oscar during his stay with the group back in Mistral and this habit of our littlered rose being protective of our freckled farm boy turned little barn prince has remained consistent even till this season.

And what’s interesting to note is that this protective and supportive nature wasn’t only established with Ruby. Oscar mirrors this behaviour as well with his own support of Ruby particularly in V6.

But don’t just take my word for it, here’s the photo proof because a picture says a thousand words:

So no I don’t believe the relationship between the Rosebuds is forced at all. If anything, I think the CRWBY have done pretty decently on showcasing the development between these two kids. It’s slow but it’s definitely there and it’s certainly ain’t forced. ‘Forced’ would’ve been if we spent several seasons with the show never really acknowledging these two’s relationship at all, providing zero groundwork for the potential of a romance to spark between them only to suddenly slam them together for this season.

This has not been the case with them fortunately. The Rosegarden bond has been building up nicely with the show occasionally tossing in moments between V5-V7 that highlight just how much one values the other’s influence on them on the team.

My one gripe is that I wished the show had done just a bit more to push for their friendship for this season. What’s weird was that it honestly seemed like that was the direction they were going for at first looking back on CH2 and CH3 of this season.

But no, what that essentially boiled down to was more light exchange of comments between the two until the recent ninth episode. It’s not how I would’ve handled if I were a CRWBY writer but hey, it’s the PLOT and I’m not here to argue the PLOT of RWBY and how the show writes its characters.

Needless to say, the portrayal of Rosegarden and their budding bond has been handled well enough so far (certainly better than certain other ships).

The only thing I believe might be ‘forced’ here is the reaction or rather overreaction of certain members of the FNDM in regards to the recent development of Rosegarden. It honestly upsets me to no end the level of toxicity people can stoop to within this FNDM and just how far they will go to rain on another person’s parade when they weren’t even doing anything to bother them in the first place.

Do you have any idea how annoyed I was over the weekend hearing stories of people complaining about the Rosegarden moment in V7CH9? How angered I became when I saw retweets from fellow Rosegardeners with some of the comments people were making in regards to not just Rosegarden but also Oscar because of this episode. Heck I’m upset now that I can’t even answer this question since I am just so fed up with this part of FNDM and their nonsense.

And what’s silly to me the most about all of this is that these types of fans are losing their butts over a moment that confirmed nothing.

So Ruby and Oscar acted all awkward and adorable while talking to each other in a scene that focused on their interaction?

So?

It’s no different than all the other times the show has had them act this way in a scene. And that’s just it! All they did was share another nice moment together that could easily be argued as not being all that romantically charged.

I’m a Rosegarden shipper and while I will say that that moment did toss a coin in the possibility of a future Rosegarden romance should the series really take them in that direction, it didn’t confirm this possibility for me either. It was just another cute moment between the two characters and the fact that folks are losing their knickers over something as minor as that is utterly ridiculous.

I even had a Whiterose shipper leave me comments on Twitter implying that their ship was now sunk thanks to that moment and they even congratulated me as a Rosegardener in this kind of way as if we were in some kind of beef regarding our ships. My reaction to that was “…Dude what?”

The last time I checked, I’m not fighting anyone on their ships. I am here because I love Rosegarden. They are my main RWBY OTP at the moment and like any fan, I’m more than delighted to see wherever the showrunners decide to take their bond—be it platonically or romantically. That being said, just because I ship RG, doesn’t mean I have any kind of beef or wish to be in any type of ridiculous shipping war with non-Rosegardeners.

To put it humbly, it doesn’t really matter to me what your shipping preferences are. Ship whoever you like so long as you remain respectable to other shippers. To put it bluntly, I don’t give a rat’s ass who or what you ship. Just don’t be a dickwad to anyone else regarding their own shipping choices. To each their own, in my books but respect is mandatory.

To the last episode in question, I’m going to be frank here. If Whiterose or Lancaster or any other non-RG ship had received any kind of moment in V7CH9 or in any episode before that, as a Rosegardener, I would be upset that my pairing didn’t get to have a moment too but I wouldn’t go out of my way to complain about the other ships or worse attack the shippers of said ship. That type of nonsense is unwarranted.

This is why this whole recent discourse surrounding a ship that I love has left me bothered. The things I have heard people say regarding the Rosegarden pair and even our shipping community is just deplorable.

I mean…it’s not entirely new what these people are saying.

It’s the same ole rubbish that’s been said to complain about the “problems” with RG for a while—the 2 year age gap. The Ozpin Dilemma. Yada-yada! Stuff that has already been debunked by the Rosegarden community, the CRWBY and the show itself. Yet…here we go again. The same recycled arguments going around and around, like a Beyblade.

I’ve even heard through the grapevine that certain-certain folks have reached as far as to refer to us Rosegardeners by a very ‘problematic’ term (i.e. paedophiles) just for liking Rosegarden. Like…wow! All of that just because RWBY gave our ship a little moment in the recent episode. Terrific.

But who is more problematic, though? The community of shippers who see this pairing of the two youngest huntsmen in our gaggle of heroes (who are not too far apart in age) as nothing more than an innocent bond that has the strong potential to blossom into an equally charming romance built on their mutual support of one another and their shared core values, as established within the canon.

Or…the group of people who are spreading hurtful backlash regarding said ship and its shippers that are not only NOT true but are just downright vulgar.

If I were to be completely honest with you, fam, my heart really isn’t in answering this question this time because there isn’t anything here I can really say to argue in favour of Rosegarden that either I or my fellow gardeners have not said multiple times before.

Seriously? How many times do we have to argue the hypocrisy of the nonsensical 2-year age gap “issue” that people still bring up to throw shade at Rosegarden while leaving ships like Whiterose, Lancaster and Nuts and Dolts who share the same age gap completely unscathed?

How many times do we have to repeat the same information provided by the show in which “The Lost Fable” episode (V6CH3) clearly said that Ozpin does not affect the Rosegarden relationship since in the past, Ozma had learnt to live in harmony with the men he was paired off with leading to one of them even getting married and having a family with Ozma being present but never interfering with Henkle’s (Dadpin) family affairs?

Seriously, how many times are people going to dig up both of these two poor, poor dead horses and continue to beat the ever living daylights out of em, huh?

It’s bad enough to ignore the rationales of the people who actually better understand the bond between the characters within the pairing since we pay closer attention to said relationship; however to ignore evidence provided by the series too as well as the word of the showrunners— that is a level of ignorance that has surpassed my patience to deal with this crap anymore.

Honestly, this squiggle meister has reached a point where I am fed up with the toxicity of some of the folks within this FNDM. The type of people, who to me, sound like nothing more than spoiled brats throwing hissy fits and tantrums just because the ‘CRWBY didn’t give them what they wanted in regards to their favourite SHIP so they have to ruin the experience for others who are just trying to have as much fun with it as they were’.

As if the CRWBY owe them anything. At the end of the day, the people running RWBY have all the say in the world. So if they decide they wish to give certain character relationships a bigger push than others then it’s their call.

And even if something becomes canon, that don’t necessarily mean it’s the end of a ship. Look how many other fandoms there are that dissolved into ridiculous shipping wars over whose ship was going to be canon and what happened? It didn’t matter in the end. Canon or not, people still continued to love and support the ship they liked even long after the series was over. Just look at Zutara from Avatar: The Last Airbender.

You think the Zutara-shippers gave two Flying Lemur shits about Kataang being endgame? No! Both ships still thrive pretty strongly even after all of these years as well as any other beloved ship from that show. So certain folks in the RWBY FNDM need to chill it with this kind of crap. It’s foolish!

And quite frankly, I have no more f***s left to give at this point to deal with it. Once upon a time, another fellow gardener approached me with this same kind of question and I’m going to repeat the same thing I told them in the end. There is a saying in my country that my mom used to say whenever conflict arose and people would just run their mouths for no reason. “Let the jackass bray!”

If folks within the FNDM wish to continue to run their mouths, making the same ole set of noise time and time again over small ting then it makes no sense trying to debate these kinds of people. This is why I feel more annoyed that I’m hearing about my fellow Rosegardeners still answering these people. STOP! Please STOP!

I myself have been caught up in it a little bit. Whether Rosegarden becomes canon or not, these types of people are always going to complain about it. We will never win with these people and y’know what? Whatever, because in all honesty, there is no fight or “shipping war” in the first place.

I refuse to argue with anyone over my preferred ship. Whether Rosegarden becomes canon or not, what matters to me is that I just want to kick back and enjoy the progression of our rosebuds who I adore so much. Ruby and Oscar are both my all-time favourite RWBY characters. Their individual stories mean a lot to me and their shared story together means a lot to me too. I want to be able to express my admiration for the growing bond between these two buds and create content around them in peace; away from any kind of animosity.

Instead of wasting my time and energy on responding to the half-baked comments of people who clearly only care about my ship whenever they wish to stir up trouble, I will instead channel it into giving more support for the ship I adore. And I pray my fellow gardeners do the same.

I, for one, have been more inspired than I’ve ever been to create more RG content because if I have sit in my proverbial bubble and listen to constant chatter from folks like that then the least I can do is fill my bubble with the things I like. And I adore Rosegarden very much. I also adore our community. We’re a small bunch but we’re mostly all pretty cool, very nice, very talented and mostly courteous people. If certain-certain folks are saying things, let them run their mouths. Leave them alone with their noise.

DON’T ANSWER THE TOXICITY! IGNORE IT! AND SHOULD IT DARE ATTACK YOU FOR NO REASON, DELETE AND BLOCK ARE YOUR WEAPONS. DON’T LET THE HATE RUIN YOUR FUN!

I understand how annoying it is to hear people talk smack about something you like while also being tempted to contest everything they say. But as I’ve mentioned before, I and many others have already debated these same old arguments before. They are not even worthy of being mentioned anymore since the CANON OF RWBY has deemed them invalid already.

While I appreciate you coming to me for my views, fam, truth is that I’ve already said my piece many, many, times before and I will always say the exact same thing:

I have been a Rosegardener (and by extension Rosegardening Pinehead) since RWBY V5 (2017). I have adored the pairing of Ruby and Oscar together since the series did a great job of hooking me in with how adorable these two’s first interactions were. Watching the way Ruby giggled and smiled at Oscar and seeing his ‘mini-stroke smile’ response to that was quite cute and such an expected reaction befitting of two adolescent kids meeting each other for the first time.

I have always viewed Rosegarden as the romantic pairing between Ruby Rose and Oscar Pine. I have NEVER once confused Rosegarden with Clockrose—the presumed RWBY pairing of Ruby Rose and Professor Ozpin. I wasn’t even aware of the existence of such a ship until V5.

But regardless, when I say I ship Ruby with Oscar, I mean exactly that, I ship Ruby with Oscar. To me, Oscar is NOT Ozpin. Nor will he ever be Ozpin or even another version of Ozpin.

Do you wanna know why? Because by my understanding of the character of Oscar Pine, he is his own person separate from the character of Professor Ozpin.

As a matter of fact, when Ozpin previously had his old body, people saw him as himself. And when Oscar first appeared on the scene, the show introduced him to the audience as his own character. Even after Oz’s soul appeared, the show immediately highlighted that the two souls are different from the other in spite of sharing Oscar’s body.

It is for this reason why I don’t understand how people can keep insisting that Oscar and Oz are the same person.Especially when the show has gone out of its way to establish time and time again that these two souls, while like-minded, are NOT the same.

So when certain-certain folks attempt to imply that Rosegarden = Ruby and Ozpin because Oscar is Ozpin, not only do I find this remark to be gibberish but it’s also a complete misunderstanding of both the characters of Ozpin and Oscar.

Rosegarden does not involve Ozpin at all since it is a pairing between Ruby and Oscar and as I shall repeat with conviction, Oscar and Oz are not the same person. Two souls, people.

I also have no problem with shipping the Rosebuds despite their ginormous, galaxy-sized age difference of 2 years.

As confirmed by Miles Luna, the age gap between Ruby and Oscar is indeed 2 years. So even if Ruby is 17 years old as of present in the series, there is the likelihood that Oscar will be turning 15 soon. Possibly in V8.

As a matter of fact, 2 years is a common age gap used in RWBY. So common in fact that it’s the exact same age gap as non-RG ships like Whiterose, Lancaster, Nuts and Dolts and for all the ‘special folks’ in the FNDM who ship Enabler—the pairing of Ruby with her sister Yang.

Not trying to throw shade at Enabler, I just find it hilarious how incest is wincest within the FNDM yet my ship is the one getting heat all because they shared a cute moment where they finished each other’s sandwiches.

No declaration of love. No confirmation of a crush. No kiss. Not even a flushed cheek. Just two KIDS being absolute dorks with one another got certain-certain people all rattled up. Wow.

Man I can’t wait to see how those same folks will react if Ruby and Oscar were to ever…dare I say it, hold hands and gaze into each other’s eyes.

RoosterTeeth may need to censor that kind of stuff because it’ll be too inappropriate for this type of uppity audience. The same audience who wouldn’t mind this type of thing or more if it were in favour of their favourite non-RG ship of the same age difference. Nope. Just the Garden is the problem. Sure….

Anyhow, while I understand that certain people may dislike Rosegarden for whatever reasons they got, what this squiggle meister firmly disapproves of is the outright disrespect of their fellow fans. I don’t understand the need for people to stir up trouble just because things within the show didn’t play out exactly how you wanted it. It’s just ridiculous and as I said, I’m done with it.

Just because certain-certain folks are talking, don’t mean I have to listen. Certainly not anymore now.

Anyways, that’s all I have to say on this topic. Not sure if I actually answered your question fam but that’s the best I got.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2020)

#drawsforfun2000 #squiggles answers: rwby #oscar pine #ruby rose #oscar and ruby #rwby rosegarden #rwby volume 7 spoilers

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whitleyschn33 · 5 years

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Ozpin and Ruby: Hypocrisy (Probably a Rant)

Yeah, you probably knew this was coming - as a fan of Ozpin that was very much not happy with how he was treated during the later half of V6, you can probably guess that I had a very bitter taste in my mouth when only 2 episodes in, Ruby told the exact same lies for the exact same reasons as Oz and the FNDM started trying to find every possible way that that wasn’t true, that obviously “Ruby is far more justified and has far better reasons to do so” than Ozpin did, and therefore not being hypocritical.

Yeah, that’s a crock of BS, and I will go on to explain why in a bit, but first, got to make something clear.

As of right now, this isn’t necessarily an example of hypocrisy yet (stressing that yet there). As of now, there hasn’t been any episodes out to follow up on the thought process of Ruby in this and no chance for her to explain why she did it, so there is a chance that she will connect her reasons for doing this to Oz’s reasons to what he did, and realize that Ozpin was right (or at least justified) in not letting them in on every detail, which would mark this a sign of growth in Ruby’s worldview and a step towards reconciliation with Ozpin, rather than hypocrisy at its finest.

However - the way that the stolen ship was handled (which I’m also itching to rant about) and the fact that there was no set-up to Ruby learning that Ozpin had reasons to do what he did (no talking with him, no example of trust backfiring in her face, nothing that would indicate her perspective of “we deserve to know everything involved” has flipped to “sometimes it’s necessary to be cautious with information”) makes me pessimistic on how this is going to be handled. The track record of the show so far makes me feel like this going to be played as an “It’s okay when we do it, and it’s totally justified cause we’re the protagonists” moment rather than a “Okay, we now see why it would feel necessary to lie or hold back information” moment of growth, and that makes my blood boil. I could be wrong, I hope I’m wrong, but as of writing this, I don’t have a lot of faith.

That being said, let’s get into the arguments (and if I miss one or you have another one, lay it on me).

The main one I’ve seen is that “The gang can’t trust Ironwood, so that makes them lying to him justified, but Oz should trust RWBY, so him lying is wrong and inexcusable.” That’s bull, though - Ozpin has no reason to trust RWBY whatsoever. We know that they’re (theoretically) trustworthy since they’re the protagonists, but from Oz’s point of view, these are just a bunch of random teenagers that Qrow dragged to his safe house and expected him to explain everything to, despite Ozpin not bringing any of them into the loop himself. With Team RNJR, he’s only familiar with Ruby’s background, and only met her at the beginning of the school year - JNR are all complete strangers he’s had no chance to vet. Weiss, Yang, and Blake literally just show up and attach themselves to the party - they all volunteer or invite themselves into the inner circle, and then expect Ozpin to trust them completely when he has no reason to. That’s what I think a lot of people forget - they volunteered for this. Ozpin didn’t seek them out; they showed up with Qrow and volunteered to help - volunteering before they could possibly know everything there is to know. Ozpin doesn’t trust them, and he has every right not to. We’ve seen firsthand that Oz is constantly betrayed, even by people he does come to trust and bring in. Lionheart is someone that Oz has known for decades, but still betrayed him the moment Salem came for him - while coming off the sting of that, why would he do something so foolish as to put his faith in these random teenagers? JNR and Blake in particular are people that he knows next to nothing about, and all have gaps in their pasts or faked records - any one of them could been an agent of Salem. RWBY and Co may not be able to trust Ironwood for good reasons, but Oz has equally good reasons for not trusting them.

Another one I’ve seen is that “Team RWBY is risking their lives doing this - they deserve to know everything”. To which my response would be, well, that’s not entirely true. Ozpin has never actually lead them into a conflict zone. Haven was meant to be a safe place to recover and begin rebuilding defenses, I’ve already explained why the Grimm attack isn’t Ozpin’s fault, and everything that goes down in Argus is on tRWBY. The only thing Ozpin haves them do is continue training and hang around while they make sure the lantern is secure - Lionheart was supposed to be an ally, Haven was meant to be a haven. Ozpin has never asked them to head into the line of fire - all he’s asked is they learn and play defense while at Haven.

But alright, though, I’ll play that game. Assuming that them risking their lives is true, then doesn’t Ironwood deserve to know everything? He’s not only risked his own life all this time, but as the head of the Atlesian military and currently concocting a plan that will draw the lives of all of Remnant into this conflict, shouldn’t he be told everything they know that could possibly be pertinent? Before Ruby lies to him, Ironwood has just laid out a plan that will throw Remnant into chaos and panic and result in many deaths, all for the end goal of finally mustering enough strength to destroy Salem - phrased another way, his entire plan hinges on the idea that whatever consequences that happen will be worth it when they destroy Salem. Ruby then proceeds to lie and not tell him about the part where them learning that, for all intents and purposes at this moment, Salem can not be destroyed is what drove Ozpin away. That is extremely important information that Ironwood, if for no other reason, needs to know since it’s the motivation behind everything he’s doing. At this moment, Ironwood has far more need to know this information than tRWBY ever has since he’s actually about to put himself, his military, and all the people of Remnant in the line of fire and the chaos of panic, but Ruby doesn’t tell him because.... why? She doesn’t trust him because of what’s happening in Mantle, which is being fueled by Ironwood’s current plan which she has the information to dissuade him from? Then telling him would be the right choice, and it wouldn’t come of as massively hypocritical. Gah, this entire situation is dumb.

Then there’s the fact that the first thing she lies about isn’t about the Relic, isn’t about what they’ve learned - it’s about why Oz isn’t there. Ironwood wants to speak with Oz, and Ruby lies about why that isn’t possible. You can make the argument that she’s lying to protect the last Relic question, or protect the information that Salem isn’t able to be destroyed, but that’s not what she’s directly lying about, those are a few steps down the line. What she initially lies about is why Ozpin isn’t present, and she practically cuts Oscar off to do so - and that comes off so much like her trying to hide what they did to Ozpin, and honestly? That’s what really makes me mad, because they have no right to hide that. If they’re so certain that what they did was right and justified, why hide it? Why cover it up? Is it possible you realize using the Relic against his will to dig into his past and trauma and then, when he was on the ground and crying after you forced him to relieve his own deaths and the death of his children, attacking him about it was a shitty thing to do? It feels so much like trying to hide what they did so they won’t face the consequences, and after all they did to Opzin for not telling them all of his mistakes and trauma? It’s so insanely hypocritical that I want to scream.

Speaking of the Relic - lying about the Relic now, are you, Ruby? But I thought that was a no-no - after all, you all freaked out when you realized that Ozpin lied about the number of questions left and that was the driving motive for you to use the Relic on him. Why is it okay for you to do that when it wasn’t okay for Oz? “Well, we can’t trust Ironwood to not waste it/use it poorly -” Great! You just realized why Ozpin didn’t tell you! He couldn’t trust you all either, especially when the first thing y’all did after learning what it was was start trying to come up with questions to ask. So, same reason!

As I’m sure you can tell, the more I talk about this, the more ticked I get. All the justifications Ruby could have for lying to Ironwood are the same reasons Ozpin would have, but honestly worse, since it comes off as them not giving Ironwood the information he would need to stop his disastrous plan and hiding their own sins. It all seems so incredibly hypocritical, and if we don’t some kind of follow-up discussion of all of this, it will be. I want to think that CRWBY will find a way to make this a moment of growth and understanding, but they failed to properly set that up when Ruby switches from “we deserve to know everything” to “it’s okay to lie to people you don’t trust” without any reason that she may have come to change her mind on this between those two actions, and so far, the show hasn’t been batting a hundred with showing any consequences for the team doing something stupid. I want to be hopeful, but for now, it’s just left me feeling incredibly bitter.

Probably a poor way to end this, but I’m technically in class, and I feel like if I rant any longer, it will devolve into incoherent rambling, so - let’s just end it here.

#rwby7 #rwby7 spoilers #ozpin #ruby rose #james ironwood #hypocrisy

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jace-the-writer-guy · 5 years

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I just realized some hypocrisy in the RWBY FNDM

In the wake of this "Cleo" situation, even with it being fake, it helped me realize the hypocrisy and the double standards regarding older characters x younger characters.

Some people: "This ship is pedophilic!" "Older men shouldn't be with younger girls!" "It's gross!"

First off, Blake isn't a younger girl, and neither is any other girl in the show barring Ruby at the moment. They're young women, they're consenting adults, and this is fiction.

Second, there's the hypocrisy and double standards heavy in those statements too.

Kali x younger guys: "Oh my god so hot! Such a milf!"

Qrow x younger women: "Disgusting! He's too old to be with her! This is problematic! There are so many issues with this!"

Like what the fuck? It's not only hypocritical, it honestly sounds really sexist. Older women like Kali or Raven are allowed to have sex with Sun or Ren or Jaune no problem. But as soon as it's Qrow with Blake or Weiss or whoever is a young woman, it's suddenly a problem? Fuck that, seriously.

I get that people might not like shipping Qrow with younger women. I understand it, but to say it has issues where Kali/Summer/Willow/Raven being shipped with younger men is perfectly fine? Yeah, I don't understand that shit at all.

And another fucking thing that infuriates me is the hypocrisy and double standards when it comes to a character's sexuality. Just tell me something isn't wrong with this:

Writing straight characters as bi/gay/lesbian: Perfectly okay! Nothing wrong here!

Writing Ilia/Coco/Gay or Lesbian characters as bi/straight: "OMG, why are you so homophobic!? Stop erasing their identities!"

Is it because of equality? Is that why it's bad? Answer this: Is it really equality when you erase a straight character's identity or sexuality just to pair them with a gay or lesbian character? No, it's not, so it shouldn't be problematic for a person to make a gay or lesbian character straight or at least bi for things they write, especially considering, y'know:

It's fan fiction, not canon

I was called homophobic before when I tried to defend a friend of mine on his decision to keep writing Coco as straight or bi, despite what's in the book (and I've yet to see any clear evidence from the book that says Coco is lesbian. Bi at most with the only thing I've seen people refer to). They started spouting shit about Coco being the first canon lesbian and being more important than Saphron, Terra, and Ilia just because she was the main character in a spinoff book. They said Coco was the first canon "lesbian", while Ilia, Saphron, and Terra were revealed as lesbian first and they called me homophobic for correcting them.

They called me homophobic, yet my favorite ships are Ladybug and Freezerburn, and a lot of my OC ships are lesbian ships. Idiotic. If you want respect, you god damned earn it, and that person didn't deserve any respect, and I dropped it after they stupidly called me homophobic

The FNDM is full of hypocrisy and double standards. Hell, any fandom is, no matter what the show is. Now I'm gonna request something that I doubt anyone will listen to, but I'm gonna politely request it anyway.

1. Please don't say Qrow x Blake/Weiss/Winter or any younger woman has issues and is problematic because of age if you ship Kali/Willow/Raven/Glynda/any older woman x Jaune, Ren, Oscar, or any younger men/women

2. Please don't say its problematic or erasing someone's identity or sexuality if a fanfiction writer/artist makes a gay/lesbian character straight to be with a straight character and writes/draws it if you make a straight character bi/gay/lesbian to ship them with a gay/lesbian character.

Just simple requests but I'm tired of seeing these double standards and the hypocrisy regarding these subjects. Call me homophobic all you want regarding the second thing, but just know that you'll make yourself look stupid while doing it. I can imagine that this is probably gonna get me a lot of hate, but oh well. It would be nice if people would be civil if they don't agree with me here.

Have a nice day.

#rwby ships #rwby #rwby fndm #fndm #rant #double standards #hypocrisy

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yurireview · 5 years

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The Hypocrisy of the argument "this ship is forced"

Lately I have realized that a part of the fandom is very hypocritical when they say "this ship is forced" because they only apply it when the couple is (lesbian)

Now that the BB is almost canon, they are very scared and they are throwing shit to Whiterose (when they did not do it before) because they are realizing that this volume they have had a lot of focus ... but let's analyze which are the ship forced and that the fandom would not say anything if it becomes "canon".

I remember that the video that made me think that most of Straight ship with Weiss were forced was this:

do not get me wrong (I know that Calix is super positive, multishipper and one of the best youtuber of RWBY) ... but in that video as his teammate Hunter pointed out, she had to create a fanfic so that the dynamics of Weiss and Neptune worked, even ignoring many things established in the canon.

Now let's look at the date (2017) even with the latest volumes and with all the character development of Weiss ... there are people who want Weiss to be with Neptune (not because they like the couple) but because they want the Whiterose not to be a canon couple,,,but there are others who would not call that "forced"

let's look at a more updated case of one of my favorite youtuber (not that he is talking badly about Whiterose ... but sometimes even the "experts" get more stupid arguments for "normal" ship)

When I read this, I said to myself, Really? Weiss and Jaune in 6 volumes have only had 9 minutes on screen (most were in the first 2 volumes) where she rejected him in a very cruel way ... then when she at least became his friend (almost did not talk whit him)

in fact the moments that could at least give them "development" made Weiss focused on Ruby.

The end of Vol 5 is a clear example where Weiss did not dedicate 1 minute of his time to Jaune (or even to thank him)

Not to mention the Vol 6 ... I mean literally this was Weiss in that Vol (no development or even talk with Jaune)

It's sad that even Blake was more affective with Jaune than Weiss ... but still there are people who say "Weiss and Jaune are going to end up together". Where do they get that from? In what universe would that ship not be forced?

I mean even the argument of the "big family" is ridiculous (taken from a fanfic) ... first that works best with Ruby and Weiss for 2 simple reasons:

Ruby is the person who brings more happiness to Weiss (that's undeniable) ... so Weiss does not need Jaune because the show itself establishes it that way.

In family dynamics ... Tai is the opposite of Jacques and really the "loving family" does not work ... because like Jaune sister (Ruby and Weiss would have to move since you can not live with their parents forever)

I've even seen people who ship Weiss and Sun on Reddit (even on Tumblr and some are Bumbleby fans who for some reason promote this so the fandom will forget the Blakesun)

They prefer that Weiss be with Sun (they say that the Ship has "Potential) I mean WTF ... they prefer that to Weiss not being straight

literally they only have 2 minutes to talk, zero development, zero interest ... it's literally the same example as with Neptune but worse (you'd have to create a fanfic and clearly make Weiss act out of character because as we can see his link is with Ruby and this volume made it clearer) ... if that is not "forced" then I do not know what it is.

I'll clarify something before they misunderstand me ... we all have the freedom to match couples what we want, it's the beauty of the shipping...but if you come with those ship that are bad (objectively speaking) you have no right to say that another ship with development, time on screen and that the narrative gives meaning is "forced"

Literally the only straight ship that at least would not be "forced" if they give more development would be the Lancaster ... in fact the Lancaster is similar to the Whiterose with the difference that it has less screen time, less important moments.

But it's still a thousand times better than the other Weiss straight pairings

The fandom and the Whiterose

Even though the Whiterose is one of the most popular ship of RWBY and with better development still there are people who say "forced" if the ship becomes canon

Literally the Whiterose is the ship with more time on screen

the new official RWBY manga that is telling the same story of the show (but more developed) is giving the Whiterose a very special and clear focus giving very obvious moments in this dynamic

Not only this ship has more time on screen than all the others ... but it is evident how the Weiss character has become so close to Ruby (as it never was with another character)

Many of the moments between Weiss and Ruby had happened between Weiss and a guy many of the fandom would say "are canon" or they would say "Weiss is starting to feel something for that guy" without hesitation

In addition to each volume its dynamic is changing ... but still there are people who say "this is forced" "are putting agenda" or "The Bumbleby is already canon... why they want to transform a straight character into homosexual?"

Weiss is as "straight" as Blake or Yang

Monty video on this subject is quite clear ... it does not matter if the couple is “straight or homosexual" if they have development in the narrative then it's fine (part of being young is "self-discovery")

For something the BB is almost canon, because events led them to develop feelings (it's simple) to classify them as "straight" is silly and Monty himself clarifies it there

So stop saying nonsense like

"The Whiterose can not happen because ...she straight" "The Whiterose is forced not like the straight ship of the show" "They can not develop anything because if not everyone in the RWBY team would be lesbians and that would be supporting political agenda"

I hope you liked this review ... saying this I say goodbye and I wish you good day

#rwby #white rose #whiterose #weiss schnee #ruby rose #rwby fandom #rwby ships

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silverwolf866 · 4 years

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Seriously not impressed with the second to last episode. Sure the fights got better but the writing took a nosedive again. The lead up to the qrow/clover/tyrian fight makes zero sense. The rwby vs ace ops even less so. Reminds me of the second half of volume 6. Good start, awful finish.

Honestly, for me, the whole of Volume 7 has been one giant disappointment. The only fights I liked were the ones from the second to last episode.

From the beginning, this Volume has been really boring. There were many times where I would find myself looking at the time stamp and/or found myself getting physically tired. It was so draining. Really, the only times I seemed to enjoy myself were scenes involving Tyrian and Ironwood (and even some of the scenes with Jacques and Watts).

The plot point involving team RWBY lying and going behind Ironwood’s back was stupid beyond reason. There could’ve been a reason why team RWBY would be mistrusting of Ironwood, but they never showed that. Instead, it comes across as them lying to him for no reason despite his complete trust in them. And their hypocrisy/double standards concerning lying and hiding the truth was obnoxious and really unlikable.

A large majority of fans were gushing over Nora’s “sass” at Ironwood about hiding the truth, when she and everyone else were doing the exact same thing and hiding crucial things from him.

And don’t even get me started on Miles and Kerry’s pathetic attempt at “political commentary” with the election of Dona- I mean Jaques Schnee and Robyn “Hill.” And how Jaques cheated via “hacking” by some third party. Also while we’re on that, Robyn was one the most boring addition to the cast. Her voice did not at all suit her character and her actions were so over the top and unreasonable. She doesn’t even come across as someone who’s a leader that’s worried about the “corruption” that plagued the city and chose her allies wisely, or something to that extent, rather, she just comes across like a total bitch. And when it came down to it, I was actually rooting for Jaques than her, because she was simply that unlikable.

And some of you might say, “How can you can say that? Jaques is an abusive, corrupt, asshole!” But, that’s the point, as a villain/antagonist, I actually thought he was intimidating and fulfilled his role well (up until Weiss arrested him). My favorite scene with him was the part involving him, Ironwood, and Weiss. Where he went from angry and hostile to quietly calming himself down, adjusting his suit, before emotionally manipulating Weiss by simply saying, “You know… your mother was devastated when you left. You know how she gets… when she’s upset.” Before smugly smirking and turning away from her. That was such a chilling and good scene. He was entertaining as a villain.

But Robyn… she’s supposed to be a person of the people but when is she ever being apart of the people outside of that one political speech during election day? We never see that. If anything, we always see her being hostile/antagonistic towards others. She’s supposed to also be based on Robin Hood, a vigilante hero. For example, just look at Disney’s Robin Hood, they did a much better job at that representation. You always see him helping the people one on one, actually showing him having relationships and having friendships with the characters. As well as the impact he has on the residents of Nottingham.

Now granted, RWBY takes liberties with the fairytale characters they base their characters on. However, they tried to make Robyn a, more or less, one to one ratio with the symbolism/idea of Robin Hood. They basically tried to make her mirror the concept of Robin Hood as someone whose a hero for the people, but does it through unlawful and underhanded means. They say, but they never show, which is one of RWBY’s biggest problems. If all I see is Robyn picking fights with the main characters, even when they’re telling the truth and she knows that, on top of the fact that she’s being rude and name calling basically a kid to her (who wasn’t even rude to start with), what impression am I supposed to get from that? She’s just being unlikable at that point to me. And not even in a purposeful villainous/antagonist sort of way like Jaques.

Not to mention, that the whole Penny revival and Weiss’s character arc with her father has been really underwhelming. I didn’t care for it. It’s just… damn this Volume was a mess. Including the second to last chapter, as much as I loved the fight choreography the plot which lead up to and came out of it was really contrived and bullshit. For a lot of the reasons people have already stated (except for the queer bait stuff, come at me all you want, but I disagree with this), so I won’t get too much into that, especially since we still need to see the next episode and wait for the rest of its follow up, development and conclusion.

But yeah, this damn Volume has basically just been boring setups with disappointing payoffs. Not even Volume 5, for as terrible as that Volume was, was I met with such disappointment and in an unentertaining way. Even then, I never felt so physically and emotionally drained from watching Vol 5 as I did with this Volume. And it really sucks because for the longest time, since it was first introduced, out of all the places/arcs I was looking forward to was Atlas. And now that’s just been completely ruined.

Like you said, Vol 6, while it had a bad second half, the first half was actually really good. And I was impressed overall that they were at least able to pull off a lot of good episodes in that Volume. So I was also really looking forward to this Volume because I was hoping to see if they finally caught back to form or start going back into the direction that was more familiar to the RWBY I fell in love with.

I don’t know man, I really hope the finale will be good. Cause if it turns out to be another shit show like this previous chapter I don’t know what I’m gonna do.

#rwde #asks

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Creation”

Happy Saturday, everyone! Oh man, oh man, oh man. I think I'll need to steer clear of the general RWBY tags this week, simply because I know the sort of responses I'll see to this episode. From smug celebration at Ironwood's downfall, to bad takes about what makes us human, this episode is a petri dish of sensitive material handled insensitively.

Let’s unpack it, shall we?

We open on an action that feels like a summery of the last three volumes: a grimm attacks an airship from the front, no doubt killing its pilot, while the other grimm conveniently ignore our heroes, no masking in sight. The group looks a little sad at the destruction around them, but ultimately ignore it because they have bigger, heroic things to do. I could write a whole, additional essay on how the huntsmen code — to protect the people — has been warped and abandoned by our protagonists in their effort to do what they think is right. It's a tale that might have been compelling if only RT knew they were writing it.

We get a shot of Atlas drones unloading the bomb before one is taken out, presumably by Qrow and Robyn. Segueing to Ironwood and the Ace Ops, they're waiting for Penny to arrive, the former carrying a massive gun presumably capable of capturing her. Despite the horror we saw on their faces last episode at the realization that Ironwood would kill Marrow for speaking up, it seems that now the Ace Ops are entirely in agreement with these measures. A week ago the implication was that they fell back in line out of fear, but now Harriet talks passionately about "putting down" the group if they were stupid enough to accompany Penny. "The General gave his terms." Vine sighs at this, but doesn't actively disagree. He's just "retracing the steps that led us here."

So, congratulations on introducing four new characters, not bothering to develop any of them, killing one off while ignoring Qrow's hand in that, and having the other three become all, "Yeah! Mass murder is a perfect solution!" off screen. Marrow is the only one with something resembling development and, as covered in these recaps, that's been pretty badly executed too.

Ironwood sends them to deal with Robyn and Qrow after Winter reappears to "assist" him. That gets quotation marks because most viewers at this point have realized that she's who our two birbs spotted in the elevator. Winter isn't on Ironwood's side anymore, she's just skillfully clearing the field for the final attack. Indeed, we get a moment where she hesitantly brings up the bomb and Ironwood responds that he hopes she's not going to try and talk him out of it. No. Winter doesn't think that's possible. This was her final attempt at peace.

One of the reasons why I think I'll stick to my own blog for a while is because the fandom has a tendency to paint broad personality traits as evil when applied to some characters, yet simultaneously heroic when applied to others, when really it's about how that those traits are used. What I mean is, I've seen a lot of Ironwood critical posts that emphasize how stubborn he is. He thinks he's right and he won't back down. He wont listen to others. He's going through with this plan and if anyone tries to stop him? That's their mistake. Totally evil, right? Except, this is the exact same behavior Ruby displays, particularly in Volumes 6 and 7. She was stubborn about stealing from Argus and continuing the fight to the point where it endangered her and her teammates, to say nothing of the rest of the city. She refused to listen to Qrow, or Ironwood, or the Ace Ops, loudly announcing that she was right about, well, everything. If they didn't agree with her, the options were to leave the group entirely, or fight her. The actual difference here is that the writers have taken Ironwood to an extreme, one that's incredibly easy to understand as bad because it is bad: bombing Mantle has no defense. Ruby pulls the exact same nonsense, it's just not to that same extreme and her actions are followed by scenes that are meant to make us forgive her: a sad look because she didn't mean to get a city attacked by a leviathan grimm, a cry on the staircase because she didn't mean to risk the lives of an entire kingdom... even though she did. Ironwood is the bad guy because he's been written to take specific, OOC actions like shooting unarmed kids. He's not the bad guy because when other characters go, "Don't do this" his response is, "I have to." Because that's been Ruby's motto ever since she "had" to use the Lamp to rip Ozpin’s life story away. RWBY introduced those extreme actions of shooting the youngest in the group (for no reason) and threatening to bomb a city (for no reason) or shooting a councilman (for no reason) because when you remove those you've got a man who looks exactly like our hero. Ironwood's arc has been peppered with these confusing, unpersuasive actions because if you just keep the story as him stubbornly keeping to a plan he thinks will save the world, you're left with the reminder that all Ruby has done lately is stubbornly keep to plans she thinks will save the world. This moment with Winter just highlights how ill thought out Ironwood's descent has been because he does everything Ruby does... with a few, tacked on, “and randomly shoots people!” moments to ensure we understand that he’s definitely evil. No comparison to our heroes here, folks!

Ironwood is a bad guy now. That’s certain, but he was made that way so the story never had to grapple with the question of what that means for Ruby if we really start condemning things like lying, secrets, stubbornness, or endangering others for the greater good. Well then damn, if we strip away the hypocrisy then she might not be a good person after all. Or the people she’s simplistically labeled as bad might not be the devils Ruby claims they are.

But that’s a level of nuance RWBY would rather pretend doesn’t exist.

All of which is highlighted by Ironwood’s reaction to "Penny." He sighs and sags over the gun, immediately putting it aside. With his hand on her shoulder, Ironwood tells her she's "done the right thing." Precisely the same way Ruby would lower Crescent Rose and give someone a smile when they decided to fall in line with her.

Which, of course, is the moment when Emerald reveals herself, dispelling the Penny illusion and revealing Team JNPR The Second behind her. She gives a quip about it feeling "weird" to do the right thing before disappearing.

From there the action picks up fast. I really enjoyed this battle simply from a choreography and energy standpoint. It gets the blood pumping, Ironwood's hand-to-hand is spectacular — especially that moment against Ren — and the group actually displays teamwork for the first time in what feels like forever, all of them needed to land a hit on Ironwood. As always, out of the context of the rest of the show it feels and looks great. My primary issue is that we get this fantastic fight against Ironwood. Not Salem, not Cinder, not Watts (like last volume when Ironwood was still a hero), not even Emerald as a means of transitioning from murderous villain to the group's best bud. No, what's arguably the best action sequence in the volume thus far goes to beating up the guy they betrayed from the start. There's no catharsis for me here, only frustration as we watch Ironwood stand in shock as Winter powers up Nora — who's fine now, I guess — and she slams her hammer into his face.

It never should have come to this and when a good character is done so dirty, their downfall doesn't evoke the emotions the writers are looking for. Watching Ironwood fall doesn't generate feelings of victory, or even tragedy at a course of events others were powerless to stop. It's just frustration at watching years worth of bad writing, sprinkled with fantastic ideas that never go anywhere.

Oscar gets a few hits in, Ironwood snatches his cane, and just as he's about to throw a punch, Winter arrives with the most dramatic sword slash I've ever seen.

Ironwood's aura breaks and he falls, unconscious. We cut to an image of a droid's head separated from its body, one of Robyn's arrows through its skull. That doesn't have meaning or anything.

I suppose I should be grateful they didn't rip Ironwood's arm away during the fight, or outright kill him, though I'm still expecting him to die before the end of the volume.

Hmm. Wouldn't that be something? If after Salem's arrival, freezing cold, a Hound attack, grimm soup, a giant whale, a massive army, and a hack ending in self-destruction, the one character who actually dies is Ironwood.

It's looking more and more likely.

Honestly, beyond all the obvious, what's so frustrating about this fight is that characters are only now using their impressive abilities to their fullest. Emerald creates an entire fantasy of what's happening and then straight up disappears, but she only does a half-assed version of that when fighting against Penny. (And really, she put more effort into helping the heroes she just joined over Cinder, the woman she's been obsessed with since the start?) Marrow refuses to use "Stay" against a group they wanted to peacefully arrest because that's just too horrible an act, I guess, but he'll do it on his own teammates the second Qrow and Robyn don’t want to fight.

This is what I mean when I say the rules of the world bend to assist the protagonists in absurd ways. It's not nearly as egregious as Amity suddenly being up and running, but the fact that characters become substantially more powerful while fighting for the protagonists than they do against them is still a significant problem.

So Ironwood is down and out. As much as I hated watching that and didn't necessarily want more, am I the only one who felt like it was... a bit lackluster? I mean, the action was great, yes, but relatively short. There was no dialogue, such as another delve into the moral questions that led to this fight in the first place. There certainly wasn’t any hesitance against fighting a former ally. (Again, we’re meant to believe that the Ace Ops won because they just couldn’t bear to fight the group seriously, but every former ally here is capable of wailing on Ironwood without a single pause or pained look?) Ironwood just skillfully blocks for a while, is blindsided by Winter's betrayal, and then falls unconscious. Given that we learn he and Jacques will be evacuated after the rest of the kingdom, it's possible he'll escape somehow and we'll get a fight 2.0, but if not that feels like a rather tame end to the guy forced into the antagonist seat. Plus, what was the point of having Qrow frothing at the mouth to kill him this whole volume? I never wanted that to happen, I'm glad it hasn't, but I'm nevertheless left to ask why we bothered with that eleven episode side plot if we were going to erase it with one sentence from Robyn about Qrow being better than this. If that's all it took, let them work through Qrow's irrational anger while sitting around in a cell.

Winter tells the group to move onto "phase two" which is when we're treated to a flashback. We return to the ending of the last episode, with Ruby realizing that opening the vault is an option. Jaune, all smiles, goes, "We never considered using what's inside!"

This is what I mean about no consequences! This is what I mean about it all being a meaningless circle that ends with undeserved praise for the group! We started this horror show with Ironwood going, "We don't have a plan to protect the people, so I'm going to take what people we do have to safety" and the group going, "We don't have a plan either, but we're going to stop you implementing your plan because it's not perfect, risking a kingdom's worth of lives in the process." Now, the group has used two plans, one of which two characters knew about at the start and another they could have devised with the information they had. Oscar and Ozpin's, "We have an all powerful magical blast in our cane" and the group's "What if we used the Staff for something other than raising Atlas?" are both things that could have come up in the office debate. These were both always on the table! Instead, Ruby grew furious over the mere thought of cutting their losses, betrayed Ironwood again, attacked his people, denounced him to the world, and then two days later goes, "Oh wait! We could do something now that we could have easily done before if we hadn't made a needless enemy!"

Everyone realizes how much worse they made things, right? Turning against Ironwood, bringing everyone left in Mantle directly under Atlas, sitting around while an army was devoured, drawing it out until Penny was hacked... all of it would have been avoided if the group had thought and discussed things for a few minutes, not jumping straight to violently resisting what Ironwood came up with first. "We never considered..." Ruby says. Yeah, you didn't, except that's not something to smile about. The group made the situation a thousand times worse with their reaction when they could have just magically evacuated the kingdom from the start. “Maybe we could use it to save Penny and get everyone in Atlas and Mantle back to safety." Nothing has changed! They had this ability the whole time! Nothing about the last twelve episodes led them here, they just randomly thought of it after RT had padded the volume with needless drama. Considering that they're heading to Vacuo now, we could have just made this the finale of Volume 7 instead: big fight with Ironwood, revelation, get everyone evacuated while Salem attacks, leave her behind, then Volume 8 begins in Vacuo with the group knowing Salem is out there looking for them. This entire volume has been pointless. What did they accomplish?

Oscar got kidnapped and beat up, Nora was scarred, Ruby and Yang realized horrible things about Summer, and the whole world is panicking about a witch. Good things are... Ren and Ruby unlocked some semblance stuff? Weiss loves her brother again after he proved himself useful to her? Great work, team.

So this one moment makes everything they've done up to this point useless and, of course, once thought up the plan goes off without a hitch. Note that the summary of this episode says, "It's risky, dangerous, and nearly impossible — but it's the only plan they've got." Nearly impossible? That's a whole lot of talk for a plan that was implemented perfectly.

There is, admittedly, one snag, but one that is likewise made meaningless just seconds later. We'll get to that.

We see Winter call Weiss who also smiles at hearing from her sister. Obviously interactions like the group's with Emerald are the bigger concern, but it's still an issue that no one reacts as they should to people reappearing in their lives. Rather, RWBY continually confuses audience knowledge with character knowledge. We know Winter is on their side now, but Weiss hasn't a clue. Last she saw, she and Winter were agreeing to head down different paths. She has no reason to think her sister isn't loyal to Ironwood, so why isn't the group treating this call with suspicion? What if it's Ironwood trying to mess with them through a presumably safe party? I swear to god, with any consistency in the story this group would be dead ten times over because their decisions are so stupid. Oscar decides to believe in the guy currently beating him to a pulp, the group decides to trust a villain over a flawed ally, and now they see Ironwood’s second calling and are like, “Great, big sister Winter is checking in!” There’s a difference between a hopeful story filled with second chances and characters whose reliance on the narrative bending to assist them makes them come across as insanely naive.

None of which even touches on characters forgetting that other characters are presumably dead. Ironwood shot Oscar off the edge of Atlas, but doesn't react to learning he was kidnapped, or when he shows up to the fight. Thanks to Marrow's comment, Winter thinks YJOR have perished in the whale, but also has no reaction to them appearing to help with this plan. Absolutely nothing is followed up on.

We then get a flashback within the flashback (fun) of Winter — shock — not arresting Marrow. It's precisely as I assumed, with Marrow angrily asking why she hit him and Winter responding with, “Because you were about to get killed if I didn’t do something!” As I said last recap, I feel like I should let the marginalized groups lead this discussion, but I do want to add that no matter how well intentioned — or strategic, as I mentioned last time — the imagery itself is still harmful. No matter the context, we were still left with white woman Winter putting her knee on black man Marrow's back to arrest him, and it’s an image that everyone in the U.S. should be familiar with the horror of. Far more of a problem than the (presumed) ignorance of this scene is, I think, the choice to make Winter entirely unrepentant. I think some of this discomfort could have been alleviated if RT had written Winter as apologetic, contrite that it came to that and asking Marrow to understand that she only did it as a means of assisting him. Asking his forgiveness. Instead, we get this

So what, the only emotion we have room for is gratitude that Winter beat him up? Yikes.

As a lighter side note, I find the animation here unintentionally hilarious. Winter's assistive device makes her shoulders look too high, making this gesture more, "Woman exaggeratedly pouts about not getting ice cream for dinner" and less, "Woman sternly closes off during a disagreement about saving lives and betraying their general." Gotta find our humor where we can, right?

What's intentional, but far less funny, is the needless animation to show us that, yes, Marrow is peering at Winter calling Weiss. Oh, the shenanigans.

The elevator opens where Qrow and Robyn spot them. "Speaking of help," Winter says, as if she has any reason to believe Qrow didn't kill Clover. He and Robyn lower their weapons a bit, as if they have any reason to believe Winter and Marrow aren't still loyal to Ironwood. Would it really be so hard to have Winter immediately throw up her hands in the face of their almost-attack, blurting that she's not their enemy and needs their help, please listen? Again, RWBY can't remember which characters know what, let alone what their motivations and reactions should be.

We then enter the third part of the flashback where everyone piles into the Schnee dining room and discusses doing the things they could have done from the start. I'm metaphorically banging my head against that table. In RWBY's favor though, we also get a long shot of Jaune continuing to boost Penny’s aura.

Though it's only one of many issues, just the other day I asked, "Hey, why has Jaune always needed to hold onto the person he's assisting, but now suddenly he can touch Penny once and the boost remains?" It still doesn't explain why he was letting go before/why him needing to boost her continuously didn't put a hard time limit on their plan — not that Mantle's hour limit meant a thing — but at least they're showing more of that here.

Oscar notes that Atlas has enough gravity dust that it won't fall immediately when they use the Relic, but they will have to move fast to ensure no one is underneath. Yeah, like all the civilians you put there. He also cautions that the Staff isn't a "magic wand" that they can just wave to make all their problems go away... even though that's precisely what they're going to do. Ozpin gets some lines that aren't apologies or followed by attacks — hallelujah! — about how the Staff's spirit is a "character" and requires that you be able to precisely explain anything you want him to make. Blueprints, examples, a firm knowledge of how this will be accomplished — all of it is required to actually get what you're after. That's a cool limitation. It's just too bad we didn't know about it episodes ago, forcing our heroes to find ways to meet those requirements. Instead, they already have everything ready to go the moment they learn about it: Penny has her own schematics and Whitley apparently has knowledge of the entire kingdom after sending some ships out. Normally I'd go, "Really?" but I'm still just struck by how much good he's done compared to everyone else in this room. Your show is seriously broken when the side character the writers didn't even want the audience to like until a few episodes ago is more active, mature, and sensible than the heroes.

From there we see the group implementing the plan. They fly up through the hole Oscar left, straight to the vault. Penny opens it without any trouble and Ruby uses her speed to grab the Relic and stop time, halting her self-termination. I do like that combination of skill and their knowledge of how this magic works. That felt like a smart move. What's interesting though is that the Relic appears to stop time in the entire kingdom. We see people in Mantle and Atlas slowing to a halt too. I assume no one remembers that happening after time restarts, otherwise people would be freaked out by suddenly being frozen in place.

Wouldn't that have been cool though? The group often takes a while to use the Relics, either deciding what they need, or watching Jinn's information, so what if you had a population that blinks and suddenly, from their perspective, half an hour has passed? How long might Ozpin have sat on his knees after Jinn told him he wasn't able to defeat Salem? How long was that space frozen? We could have had a world built around rumors and fairy tales. Not the random stories Ozpin brings up to make a point and that we never hear about again, but tiny details that foreshadow these revelations. A Beacon where the kids tell each other spooky stories of people suddenly losing time, once a whole day. The wives, sisters, daughters, and nieces who disappear, or wake up one day with horrifying, unnatural powers. We see magic influence the world around it, but we've seen very little of the world reacting to that influence. The one time I can think of is Blake reading a book about "a man with two souls," the fiction clearly inspired by knowledge of Ozpin. And indeed, it felt great to recognize that as a significant detail and then be proven right years later as the lore was revealed. We could have gotten so much more of that if RWBY was better planned out.

I'm getting off track though. As time stops we see a series of images: Ironwood being led to a cell with Jacques, Penny succumbing to her hack, Team JNPR The Second preparing to contact the kingdom about what's going on. Then everyone is distracted by the giant, blue, buff Ambrosius who comes out of the Staff.

...there's a lot of innuendo in that last statement lol. At least RWBY is committed to the crazy design they chose? I was never particularly comfortable with the image of characters gaping up at a giant, naked woman in chains, so it's nice to balance that a bit with an equally giant, naked dude in chains.

From here things get confusing. In all honesty, I'm not sure if this is another moment where RWBY is trying to pass off a retcon as the group being brilliant, or if I, as an individual, simply didn't follow the logic. I won't bother to rehash the slow, meandering way that Ruby reveals their plan — that certainly didn't help with the clarity. Not in an episode where we didn’t even know these rules ahead of time — but it boils down to this:

The moment they have Ambrosius create something new Atlas will start to fall. Two of his creations can't exist at the same time.

He needs clear instructions about what he's making in order to create it.

The group has brought him Penny's schematics so that he understands how she's built.

They want, specifically, "a new version of her... using her exact robot parts."

They can't just create an exact duplicate of Penny because that would carry the virus with it.

They can't create an exact duplicate without the virus because that Penny would cease to exist as soon as they used Ambrosius to make an evacuation plan instead.

So they essentially want Ambrosius to create a new Penny by removing all the robot parts from the Penny that currently exists, carrying the virus with them, and leaving only the human parts of Penny behind: her aura/soul. Then, the purely robot version is destroyed when Ambrosius creates something new.

Except... this new Penny, this human Penny, still needed a human body. That's what Ambrosius created and that's the snag I don't understand. They want a version of Penny that's just her aura, just her soul, but that soul still needs something to be housed in. Ambrosius himself notes that. At first I thought the group would just have some wisp-like version of Penny they'd have to find a new body for — perhaps leading to a new one for Ozpin too — but she's just... given a human body when he takes the technology away, something she absolutely didn't have before. That is Ambrosius' creation. That is what should have disappeared along with the removed parts of Penny, leaving only her soul — what Ambrosius didn't touch — behind. Instead, the plot oh so conveniently has Penny get a new body for free and it's untouched as they move onto the next task.

Ruby drops a casual line about Ambrosius not being able to kill, or destroy, or something, which I think is meant to be the justification here. The rule (which, again, we JUST learned) about not killing anyone supersedes the rule of two creations not allowed to exist, allowing Penny to stick around. But even if that’s true, it’s a load of bull. What, does the magic think no one in an entire city might die if the floating mechanism is removed and it plummets to the ground? Ambrosius didn’t say, “Sorry, can’t stop floating Atlas because thousands of people are still here and they’ll die if I create something new,” but we’re supposed to believe the group skated by on, “Sorry, can’t destroy the last creation like everything else because there’s a single person still using that body and she’ll die if I create something new”?

Seriously, did I miss something? Or is this another, "Amity is ready because the group needs it" situation? The rule of creations ceasing to exist is bent because the group needs to have their friend around. Ambrosius is certainly enthusiastically complimentary, saying how "smart" the group is and that they've "done their homework," but I'm not so sure. It feels like a moment where the show is (once again) insistent that the group is far more talented and brilliant than their actions actually imply. It's only the rules of the world twisting and turning that allows for their success. To say nothing of how the episode dropped all these rules on the viewer in a ten minute info dump, ensuring we didn’t have any time to think about them before the deed was done.

It doesn't add up for me and honestly, even putting that aside? I hate this. I absolutely despise it. Look, if it turns out this really does make sense then props to the group for coming up with that plan. Our snag aside, the rest is a legitimately well thought out wish. I don't have a problem with the execution so much as the message. I've been saying since Volume 7 that RWBY has done Penny a disservice in terms of her "real girl" narrative. Whereas before we had a firm message that you don't need "squishy guts" to be human, to be real, Volume 8 continued to carry us further and further into the idea that it is necessary. That Penny's body is entirely inhuman, something to hate, but at least her soul is human and good. That's what the virus arc taught us: your terrible, technological body might be betraying you, but hold onto the parts of you that are really human. I hated that too, but I never thought RWBY would go this far. They made Penny fully human and went, “THIS is the version that always should have existed.”

And this isn't just me reading into the implications. It's right there in the text. Blake says that they're looking for “Penny, the girl who’s always been there underneath." Meaning, underneath the metal. The girl exists trapped in the robot body. Yang holds up her arm and says that the metal is only "extra," it's not really who you are.

That gets into two perspectives on disability that RWBY just doesn't have the nuance for: what's an integral and celebratory part of one person's existence can be seen as something separate and discomforting to another. Though there are many people with disabilities who would happily cure themselves with a magic Staff if given the chance, there are just as many who say no, this is a part of my identity. I don't want to change, I just want the world to accommodate my existence. However, RWBY takes a hard stance here, saying that any metal in your body is intrinsically bad. We didn’t use to have this take, but now the show has embraced it. Blake says the real Penny is trapped in there. Yang's words implies that she'd get rid of this "extra" bit of her if possible. Mercury with his metal legs is the enemy. Ironwood with half his metal body is the enemy. Whereas once difference was truly accepted, now it's shunned and fixed whenever possible. Those who can't be fixed, like Yang, must simply deal with the lot they've been dealt, reassuring themselves that the metal isn't really them. But Penny? Penny they can fix.

So they do and the very first thing Penny does is hug Ruby, exclaiming, “Do hugs always make you feel this warm inside? Wow. More!” and proceeds to hug all the others.

What's the underlying message there? Penny didn't understand hugs before this moment. She never experienced the "warmth" of them while an android, despite the fact that here warmth is entirely metaphorical and has nothing to do with a literally cold body. RWBY really went and said that the "real girl” android was never actually real at all — not as real as she could be — because it's only when she's given "squishy guts" that she understands the true happiness of a hug.

Wow.

I mean seriously, wow.

Never-mind that, you know, we've seen that happiness and warmth since she was first introduced.

RWBY is really rewriting all the core themes introduced in Volumes 1-3 and it sucks. The show is absolutely the worse for it.

To say nothing of all the other disservices to Penny's character here. There's all this buildup about whether she'll still be the same Penny once the wish is complete, but of course she is. We wouldn't want to have Penny struggle when she becomes something other than what she's always been, would we? After all, it took Yang an entire volume to work through the shock of a metal arm, but taking away a metal body for a human one is in no way traumatic. Having a normal, human body is intrinsically a good thing! Of course Penny accepts it with nothing but smiles. Becoming human is celebratory, but becoming more machine is a horror.

She gets to watch her body self-destruct, glitching out and collapsing in front of her. But again, nothing to unpack there that can't be covered with a hand over her mouth.

There's no discussion of whether Penny still has the Maiden powers, or whether a wish like that would mess with the transfer in any way. How did the group know this action wouldn't register as a clear-cut death, forcing the power out of her and into someone new? Obviously they couldn’t know, but no one even thought to bring it up?

And the entire time they're formulating their evacuation plan, there's no talk of whether these portals will appear before everyone currently alive in the kingdom. I mean, if they do then Ironwood and Jacques can just waltz through and escape into Vacuo. If they don’t, then Maria and Pietro don't necessarily have a way out. We still don't know if they're stuck floating in Amity, or if Amity crashed, or if they made their way back to Mantle or Atlas. More importantly, the characters don't know. I have no problem with RWBY keeping that a surprise until the finale, but I absolutely take issue with Pietro's daughter walking through a portal, seemingly not to care whether her father is going to make it out too.

It's been the same with Qrow and his nieces' relationships. The show is good at insisting that these families love each other because they hug and smile while on screen together, but when shit is actually going down, none of them care about pesky things like disappearances, arrests, or “The last time I saw you, you were with an old woman on a damaged station after a villain attack, potentially stranded in deadly cold if life support failed.”

So yeah, this entire arc with Penny has been a disaster. From throwing away her framing subplot, to giving her a virus that did absolutely nothing, to giving her the Maiden powers which she's also done nothing with, to erasing her android status for a “She's really human now” message, Penny has been done dirty by the show these last two volumes. Not nearly to the extent Ironwood has, but still. At this point I wish they'd just kept her dead dead. Why do I want her back when that resurrection produces no reaction, her conflicts lead nowhere, and one of the core things that made Penny Penny has now been magically erased?

I've been saying for weeks that killing Penny off and keeping Penny around each had serious downsides attached, yet I never expected RWBY to do BOTH.

Also, I'm warding off any, "But Pinocchio was made into a real boy too" defenses. RWBY is not Pinocchio. Penny is not Pinocchio. I thought the allusion was going to be the Pinocchio inspired girl heading into the whale, not the show forcing the exact plotline — down to a blue, magical creature — onto a character whose entire journey has been about accepting herself as an android. Congratulations, RT. You just obliterated years of work.

Again, if you'd like an example of how to do this far better:

As Penny's character falls apart, Atlas shakes, alerting Jaune and the other that a new wish has been granted. Jaune pecks at the screen and realizes "That did, uh, something…?” but doesn’t realize that there's a giant, red "LIVE" up in the corner.

Jaune tries to warn the entire kingdom about their plan, but what he actually says is

“Atlas is falling, but — !”

And then the communications cut out.

Watts, perhaps?

Our heroes are really good at saying things that make large populaces panic, huh? This is the one (1) snag in their "impossible" plan, but as said above, it doesn't amount to anything. We get a shot of Nora, horrified at the thought of kingdom-wide communications being down, but literally seconds later Team RWBY has made portals appear that everyone can walk through. So... why do we care about communications? More importantly, why does the show try to make us care? So much time is spent getting the viewer invested in problems that never come to mean anything.

Including the problem of Salem herself.

Because the group successfully creates that evacuation plan. This is it. Everyone is leaving while Salem still reforms.

Yang asks if they can use the vaults themselves as a single point for everyone to go to and Ambrosius agrees. So everyone is going to pile into the Vacuo vault that can only be opened by an unknown Maiden? They're going to put an entire kingdom's worth of people, including their enemies, into the vault where the Relic of Destruction is? Yeah, that's great. Prior to this — like if this had been the plan at the end of Volume 7 — I would have 100% agreed that these risks are better than death by Salem/grimm/cold. Now though, Oscar as axed Salem for an unknown length of time, the cold is having no impact on the civilians outside, and the grimm only attack background military personnel that supposedly no one cares about. They couldn't have spent another few minutes (especially with time stopped!) to figure out a means of getting to Vacuo that doesn't involve revealing and providing access to the location of a super secret vault? To say nothing of what they're going to do if Salem wakes up and snags one of those portals for herself. Two kingdoms for the price of one!

But that's what they're going with. Weiss gives Ambrosius a schematic of the kingdom, I guess, and he makes branching pathways appear with numerous portals for everyone to step through. They'll enter through one and, when they exit another, will be in Vacuo. Easy peasy, right? Especially since Ambrosius doesn't seem to have any limitations about how often his power is used. Is it three creations every 100 years like Jinn? We're not told, at least not to my recollection. However, I was expecting there to be a waiting period, that they'd fix Penny, go to evacuate the kingdom, and learn that sorry, I can't make another creation just yet. It feels like the sort of shit move these beings would pull — "Don't cry to me when it's not what you wanted" — it would have been another commentary on the group's insistence on putting friends over the people's safety (like demanding the Ace Ops not bomb the whale because of Oscar), and crucially, would have kept the action in Atlas. Isn't that what this volume is? The battle for and potential destruction of the Kingdom of Atlas? We have two episodes left and, unless something unexpected happens, we're moving that action to Vacuo. Why?

Meanwhile, Penny's corpse is just chilling in the background 😬

While all this is going on, Winter reassures Jacques that he and Ironwood will be evacuated too, though she makes it clear saving him was Weiss' idea. It checks out, considering Weiss is the one who turned her father's arrest into a joke last volume. Winter still takes his abuse seriously.

The group prepares to leave with a celebratory, "We did it!" from Weiss. I'm still banging my head against that dining room table. Before they can pass through the portal though, Ambrosius leaves them with one, dire warning: "Do not fall."

In any other story a line like that is a neon sign announcing to the audience that someone will absolutely fall, and maybe they will, but RWBY has dodged consequences so often I wouldn't be surprised if this was merely another way to string us along. Remember all the hype surrounding Salem? The cold combined with her army and magic? How she was going to decimate Atlas and leave our group broken in a Fall 2.0?

I mean, we still have two episodes left. Forty minutes of content. Salem might still decimate them, especially since something has to happen in the finale. But god, it's a problem that we've come this far without a payoff. Salem randomly decided not to attack anyone, was stopped by a weapon added in solely for this purpose, and now the whole kingdom is being evacuated with a plan the group could have used at the start. This volume really is meaningless.

“We go to vacuo and hope we’ve thought of everything” they say as the camera zooms in on Cinder's smiling face. For the second week in a row.

Bingo time!

Winter betrayed Ironwood, the group used the Staff of Creation, and I'm axing Maria on behalf of Pietro. You can't have the guy's daughter become human — after he was killing himself to give her his aura?? — and magically walk to Vacuo, not knowing if he's even survived since she last saw him, and expect me to think he hasn't been forgotten. Same with Maria. Has the group mentioned her since Amity cut out, notably for reasons they couldn’t explain? Of course not. Did they care to find out what happened? Of course not. I have no doubt they'll both re-appear in the next two episodes, Pietro crying over how perfect his girl is now and Maria congratulating the group on their actions, but we're still marking it.

This is the ugliest thing I’ve ever created, I hope you all are enjoying it :D

Another week, another couple feet added to the hole we’re digging. I know I keep saying I have no idea what's going to happen next... but I have no idea what's going to happen next. A Vacuo ending was not in the cards, not outside of them miraculously showing up in ships. Maybe they have been on their way to Atlas (somehow...) and will arrive precisely when everyone has left! Anything is possible at this point.

See you next Saturday, everyone. Hold on until then lol. 💜

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #mymetas #rwby recaps #rwby creation

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kob131 · 3 years

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https://itsclydebitches.tumblr.com/post/635993185636827136

The first slide that ISN’T a summary and we have serious issues.

The two examples given do NOT reflect on Ironwood’s viewpoint or actions. They’re one off mentions by OTHER characters. IRONWOOD is not reaching out to people here, Ruby and Ozpin effectively are. And Ruby and Ozpin are big on the whole ‘team up!’ thing (to the point Ruby tried to talk RAVEN into joining them.)

So? This is Volume 2, long before Ironwood faces the negative events than change him as a person. Acting like he’s the exact same person then and now is disingenious is a VERY extreme degree.

Glynda: Trouble sleeping?

Ironwood: (Looking back, gripping his shoulder with the other hand.) Arm was acting up.

Glynda: Of course, so logically, you got out of bed, dressed yourself completely and decided to gaze menacingly out into the distance. (Approaches all the way to his side, then looks at him concerned.) What's wrong?

Ironwood: I've trusted him for years. We both have. I just... I can't help but feel like he's keeping us in the dark.

Glynda: Don't be ridiculous! You know very well that we are not the ones in the dark.

Ironwood: (Laughs humorously.) That makes it worse! I refuse to believe that a man that I've trusted for so long would act so... passively.

Glynda: (Puts a reassuring hand on her friend's shoulder.) You're a good person, James. You've always done what you think is best for the people, even against strong protest. It's admirable. But it's high time you stopped talking about trust and started showing it. (Drops her hand as they stare into the distance together.) Ozpin has experience that the rest of us lack. And I think that's something worth remembering.

This is the full conversation. Which is rather important given how much it emphasizes that Ironwood looks up to and respects Ozpin...who we all know is about to get cut off from his allies.

Skipping through a LOT here as it’s just a bunch of ‘Hey look! Ironwood’s being nice!’ along with tangents. I’d love to address them all to prevent any accusations of manipulation but I’m not repeating myself: Ironwood being nice is not a contradiction of what he will do (in fact, one can very well see that his empathy is a FACTOR in his decision).

‘Being cautious’. That is an important statement here. Because ‘being cautious’ would also include going for the decision that’s guruanteed to save a few people rather than the decision that MIGHT save a lot of people (a ‘safe bet vs. gamble’ if you will).

Ironically here, OP just displayed how Ironwood’s actions are consistent with his previous ones.

The man whose allies weren’t hacked?

Also note how this DOESN’T have anything to do with the actual argument at hand. It’s not about showing an inconsistency with Ironwood: it’s about making the character look good. It’s a tell from the OP that what they SAY they’re arguing for doesn’t match the actual ACTIONS. OP is not upset that Ironwood is inconsistent- She’s upset that Ironwood is being portrayed NEGATIVELY.

So you’re saying we should throw away all our tech based on the work by Nazi scientists because we disagree with how it was originally used? You try to call hypocrisy here and yet fail to address the distinct difference between the intention/moral implications behind tech and how it’s actually used.

Not to mention how a lot of this is fucking bullshit. Like the army point was about how bringing his army to Vale was a bad idea due to putting people on edge...and then the Grimm attacked, which pretty much made that a non-issue. Or how about the objection of the Aura experimenting wasn’t actually condemning Ironwood? Or how they sympathize with Ironwood and still CONDEMN his actions? Or how the Penny thing flat out wasn’t said?

My pattern senses are also tingling. Specifically the ‘manipulation’ part.

Now it’s all about arguing how Ironwood is actually totally and factually right, as if this isn’t a story.

Issue?

‘In This Story’. AKA The OP has already argued from a meta standpoint but is now trying to argue as if the story is real.

There’s also the complete disregard for the CONSEQUENCES of Ironwood’s actions.

Ironwood brings an army? Gets hacked, turns on the citizens, wrecks Vale and Atlas’ reputation is shot.

Ironwood doesn’t tell the truth about Penny? She gets used as a lynchpin in Cinder’s plan.

Ironwood closes off the border? Atlas’ reputation is further shot and it gives reason to Team RWBY to question him.

Ironwood doesn’t include the council? Their trust in him is dead and they get in his way.

Ironwood doesn’t help Mantle despite their fear, distrust and dislike of Atlas and the very real threat of Grimm? Helps Robyn rise to power who in turn openly distrusts him and conflicts with him, making things harder and causing a rift with his allies.

Fucking hell, a lot of Ironwood’s mistakes are REPEATS of his past mistakes, like his unilateral action in a team effort or him excluding people. Not to mention his preaching of Ozpin’s morals then proceeding to trample all over them and expect everyone to follow him. Stuff that OZPIN got punished for in the previous Volume and Ruby and co. got punished for in the SAME Volume as Ironwood.

He was never portrayed as power hungry. He’s STILL not portrayed as power hungry.

I’ll go ahead and destroy this entire slide show with one quote from one episode, a quote you seem terrified of given how you completely gloss over it despite addressing literally EVERYTHING ELSE with Ironwood.

Volume 4 Episode 11 ‘Taking Control’

Ironwood: (sighing heavily) Winter is one of my best. If she's telling me there's a threat in Mistral then I am not going to take that news lightly. She's been there for weeks, people are mobilizing, sudden spikes in weapons and Dust trades. Someone is about to make a play and I do not trust Leo to stop them.

Weiss is listening outside.

Jacques: You've never trusted anyone other than yourself!

Ironwood: (shouting) And for good reason!

Weiss covers her mouth with her hand as she gasps at the sound of Ironwood slamming his fist onto the desk.

Ironwood: If Oz had just listened to me from the start...

Jacques: You need to get a grip.

Ironwood: That's exactly what I'm doing. Our people need protection. By this time next week, the Kingdom of Atlas will be officially closing its borders. No one in; no one out. Without the council's permission.

Jacques: You mean, without your permission?

Ironwood: And if that becomes the case, I would think you'd want to be on my good side.

Suddenly your whole narrative fails apart. because here we see the core of how Ironwood became who he was-

The sorrow at his failure at Beacon.

His paranoia confirmed.

His belief that his way is the best.

All things he displayed before then- Now worsen by perceived failure. All thrown out into the open for the audience to see. All things he repeated in Volume 7, worsened AGAIN by betrayal and Salem’s arrival.

You can call out all you want about the good things Ironwood has done and how he’s ‘right’- it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t disprove what he showcased here. His empathy in fact would MAKE IT WORSE because he feels responsible for people’s lives so he can’t hesitate to save them. Like say, hesitate to listen to a person whose lied to him or a perceived obstacle *cough* Oscar and Slate *cough*.

He’s not a deconstruction of a cold hearted dictator or a sudden evil villain.

He’s a deconstruction of the Well Intention Extremist trope, showcasing that his intent matters not in the face of his actions and the flaws he fails to overcome. He’s a depressingly real person (I’ve certainly felt like him before) but that doesn’t justify his actions or make him right,

And no woobie pandering will change that.

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itsclydebitches · 4 years

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RWBY Recaps: “Spark”

What’s the current mood? I would sell all future RWBY seasons for one episode of The Mandalorian.

Okay, I exaggerate. Overall this episode had some really great moments, just (per usual) tied up in a lot of awful implications. Which frankly is a step up from last week’s more overt nonsense, so I’ll take it. I’ve just got Space Dad Fever like the rest of the internet so whenever RWBY does something stupid my brain goes, “Why can’t you be more like Baby Yoda? With non-forced cuteness and consistent writing?”

Okay, okay I’m focused on the correct fandom. I swear.

This episode opens with Penny waking the group up extra early. Yang wants to know what time it is. “Time to be huntresses, of course!” Really, the contrast between, ‘I love my job’ and ‘But my job makes me get up at an ungodly hour’ is easily the most relatable thing RWBY has done this season. I was also just greatly amused by the animation choices with in-world implications. Like that Weiss sleeps with her giant braid in. Or that the group owns nothing except for the new clothes on their backs. I wondered after the Volume Six’s train scene if most of their luggage had been up front with JNR, or if they’d lost it all during the crash itself. We only see three bags as they make their way to the farm.

Did Oscar re-pack everything before they had to hightail it out of that burning, grimm-infested place? I don’t remember and I’m way too lazy to go check. Yang then loses her motorcycle. Who knows, if they did have stuff, whether it got onto the stolen airship. Doubtful. I mean, Weiss showed up with a massive amount of luggage, but that’s for hiding grandmas. Basically, what I’m saying is that I think the group showed up in Atlas, exhausted, and had to tell Penny they don’t have PJs anymore. Cue standard issue t-shirts and strange thermal-ish pants.

We then begin a montage of their different work. It starts out not with the missions they signed up for last episode but anything and everything connected to Amity Arena. Keep clearing out the mines. Protect resource transports. Fill in for the missing soldiers in Mantle, etc. On the whole I legitimately loved these moments showing the various relationships and life as a huntress in Atlas, with the exception of two scenes. The first is during the section where we see Blake and Yang working with Marrow, who makes the mistake of saying a) that they should consider partnering with other people sometime and b) pointing out that he’s not sure their styles are complimentary.

Look, I get it. A few hours after the episode dropped and tumblr is already exploding with GIF-sets of this scene, celebrating how Blake and Yang are so in love they can’t even stand Marrow suggesting that they might spend some time apart. From a shipping perspective it looks like gold and as someone who also ships them I’d normally be inclined to celebrate too. Except that this is a really unhealthy pattern of behavior. Marrow is right. The group should practice partnering with other people for the simple reason that this is a job and they may not always get to decide who they’re going to work with. It’s a job with endless risks and they may not always be able to control who they end up fighting beside, because when was the last time a plan actually worked right? The advice of ‘Hey. Don’t stagnant by only fighting with the same person 24/7’ is sound, especially in an episode already focused on training and progress. As is the innocent observation that their styles don’t seem to compliment each other. Marrow isn’t being cruel here. He’s not trying to insist he knows better and separate them based on that. He’s just making casual conversation---and gets this in response.

This scene would read completely differently if Blake and Yang were playfully smug after that attack combo. Then it becomes a moment of bonding where they’re correcting Marrow through a bit of teasing. Instead they’re legitimately mad. Mad enough that Yang’s semblance briefly activates. I’ve mentioned before that Yang has a tendency to think the worst of people and act violently towards them on instinct (Ozpin, bot in the street) and that Blake has a tendency to go wherever she leads, even when that makes no sense for her own characterization (siding with Yang’s anger over her own experiences as an abuse survivor). This is another example of that. Marrow gives them good advice and makes a casual comment? Immediate fury from Yang. Yang’s pissed off? Well I’m gonna be pissed off too. I try not to bring shipping too much into these recaps, but I do think it’s worth mentioning here. Big Blake/Yang fans have a tendency to paint everything they do as the most Romantic Thing Ever ™; anti-Blake/Yang fans have a tendency to make blanket statements about how their relationship is inherently unhealthy. But as usual the truth lies somewhere in between. They’re fantastic together, I think Rooster Teeth is setting up a relationship, and there are also aspects that are unhealthy. Not because it’s queer (which is the basis for most antis’ anger), but because the writing has them enabling their flaws in the name of “support.” Sorry, but if you can’t deal with someone making a comment as innocent as Marrow’s without beating up a grimm in fury about it... then you either need to work out that relationship insecurity or work on general anger management. Because Marrow didn’t deserve those cold looks and these two weren’t justified in receiving his panicked backpedaling. It’s one of those little things that presumably means nothing on its own, but combined with Blake and Yang’s entire development speaks volumes. Let them talk through Adam. Let someone call Yang out on her judgments. It’s ‘fine’ in situations like this; not fine in situations like Volumes 5-6.

The other part of the montage that didn’t sit well was another ‘joke.’ Just like I’m not inclined to view Yang and Blake’s anger as cutesy romance stuff here, I’m not comfortable brushing off Jaune’s interaction with the kids’ moms as a bit of humor. Yeah, maybe I’m “sensitive,” but was no one else creeped out by that? Jaune might technically be an adult, but he’s, what? Nineteen? So a junior in college. Maybe a sophomore. A young adult is what I’m saying. Is it possible all these women are also eighteen to early twenties (it’s so hard to tell ages with RWBY) and they just had their kids early? Sure. It is possible that these women all decided to become single moms, or divorced their partners, or are open to polyamory? Also sure. But let’s be real here, that’s not the joke. The joke is that a group of older, presumably married women are thirsting over the young, hot huntsmen. People would be more willing to admit that it’s not a great humor choice if RWBY had done that to one of the girls, but when a guy is the target it’s seen as a funny victory. Look at Jaune getting all that older, adulterous attention! As Nora herself says, “It’s totally the haircut.” (Even though that haircut remains atrocious, sorry.) The message is basically that if a guy is hot enough it doesn’t matter that he’s just trying to do his job, that he’s probably far younger than you, that you’re probably married... go gawk at him and give him gifts that clearly make him uncomfortable.

Again, I realize I’m being “sensitive.” It’s just a web series, just a stupid scene meant to generate a laugh, etc. But I’ve reached a point in my life where I simply don’t find that sort of stuff humorous. As a woman who has had much older men hit on me while I’m trying to do my job, I look at the same thing happening to Jaune and ask, “Why was this supposed to be funny again?”

But anyway, enough about all that. Other moments in the montage include Ruby and Yang fighting grimm together (presumably in their downtime. Nerds), Winter pretending to be unimpressed with Weiss’ summoning, and Ironwood telling Oscar that maybe they can “jog [Ozpin] loose” with a bit of training.

Yeah, remember how excited we all were that, based on the Volume’s opening, we would at least see Oscar training with Ironwood? Remember how we all thought that this would provide him with some much needed character development? That maybe this would be the moment when he struggled with and potentially decided to come clean about their lies? Or he tries to talk to Ozpin while sparing with an incredibly difficult opponent? You know, since Ironwood himself brought up jogging Ozpin loose, we might actually get some interaction with Ozpin?

Boy were we optimistic! What we actually get is them charging each other for one hit before we cut back to others training. Namely Jaune. And this right here is the problem with this entire episode: for however cute and wonderful these moments might seem, they’re all flat out ignoring the primary conflicts of the show. The ones the writing keeps refusing to grapple with. Who knows how much time this montage is supposed to cover, but it’s substantial. We get multiple flashes of different days, see the group working on different missions, a couple different moments taking place in the early morning, so I’d wager at least another week has passed. Combine that with however long it took Pietro to make their weapons and you’ve got the group fully entrenched in their lies. No one is questioning Ruby. Ruby isn’t making headway towards trusting Ironwood. Everyone is just kicking their heels, happy with the status quo until something forces them to finally make a decision. They now, officially, have no right to judge Ozpin for the time he took to trust people. We see them doing the exact same thing here and they’re all happy about it. With the exception of those two quick flashbacks in “Ace Operatives,” we’ve seen no evidence that the rest of the group is struggling with their own hypocrisy. I---like many---had hoped that Oscar’s training session would finally acknowledge and expand on the rest of the team’s initial hesitation. But no.

(In which Jaune’s expression is me.)

Jumping ahead just a bit, we see this same issue when Ruby, Penny, Qrow, and Ironwood are out driving the supplies. Ruby and Penny finally have some time to themselves! Will they discuss her murder and resurrection? Nope. Ruby vaguely references it with, “You know...” but there’s no actual depth to their conversation (and if you can’t even say ‘When you died’ that implies that maybe there are some lingering feelings about all this). Instead Ruby is interested in whether Penny has made new friends and she says that Ironwood claims she has no time for friends. Slot that in next to the Ace Ops’ ridiculous, “We’re not friends.”

Second, we have this moment between Qrow and Clover where they reiterate the huge gap between age and experience here. Clover is hoping that “another generation” will do right by Remnant after we’re gone. Namely Ruby and the others. Continuing with that age theme, he reassures Qrow that “those kids wouldn’t be where they are without you” which is all well and good, but is anyone going to tell THEM that? The adults don’t need to know that they’re doing good work---even if it is nice for Qrow to get some validation for once---rather, the whole “we don’t need adults” fiasco came about because the teens refused to acknowledge that work. We don’t need someone telling Qrow that he’s helped keep them safe. Overlooking some insecurities (which RWBY isn’t tackling anyway), he knows that. We as the audience don’t need to hear it because we saw it all happen on screen. Rather, Clover should be put into a position where he reminds Ruby of all that her uncle has done for her. Just like Qrow talking to Ruby about her motivations for moving forward against Salem doesn’t accomplish anything, Clover telling Qrow, as one adult to another, that they’re worth something doesn’t accomplish anything either. These parties know all this already.

As a side note, this is why you should mix things up. Not just so that Blake and Yang can practice fighting beside other people, but so that people who don’t already agree can be challenged for once. Put Yang with Qrow and have him comment on her anger, continuing Tai’s work. Put Ruby with Clover and let him talk to her about what adults have done to get her here. All these moments of potential development are lost by maintaining the expectation that the original partners have to be the priority. Rooster Teeth had an easy way of throwing new people together by assigning them various missions and they didn’t take it. Yang is still with Blake. Ren is still with Nora. Of course Qrow is with the one other guy his age who we have to pair him with. Reinforcing these relationships is great, but so is pausing them too.

And then there’s the drinking.

Hold up one second. I need to grab a bit of writing from my Volume 6 finale recap. Think back to Qrow and Ruby’s interaction in the airship:

And then Qrow lowers his bottle which… what? Alcoholism doesn’t work like that. Much more importantly, no one has tackled his drinking this season. Or the reasons he was drinking in the first place. Literally, Qrow’s semblance, his place in the war, Ozpin’s secret, none of it has been addressed. He has no reason to suddenly put aside his flask like he’s actually learned something. Does RT think we’re going to just imagine scenes that never actually happened?

After I posted this a couple of people pointed out that it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. We’ve seen other times where Qrow goes to take a drink and then thinks better of it, so it’s a reach to assume he’s magically given up drinking now. Which, fair. Now though it looks like that’s precisely what we got. Sometime between being found passed out on the front steps of the Argus house and reaching Atlas, Qrow just decided he was done with drinking and thus far we’ve seen no evidence that he’s struggling with that. Meaning, it’s not a conflict he’s working through. That doesn’t seem to be his arc this volume.

Yet he’s an alcoholic. Qrow’s drinking may have functioned as a joke for most of Volumes 1-3, but Volume 6 made it abundantly clear that this problem is incapacitating for him, especially after learning about Ozpin and Salem. So what happened? What changed? Even if I choose to overlook Qrow just deciding not to engage with his addiction anymore without help or backslides that we know of (doesn’t work like that...), I can’t ignore the fact that there was no catalyst for this. If the show wanted us to work under the assumption that Qrow stopped drinking because it endangered his family then they should have had him stop after the farm. You know, when he was almost killed by Apathy and had to be dragged out by his nieces. As it is, his drinking continues on throughout their whole time at Argus. He’s not picking up his scroll. He’s passed out on the steps. He’s brushing past Ruby to go get a drink instead of helping them figure out a way past Cordovin. Then a day later they make it to Atlas. So what precisely in that 24 hour period happened to change one of Qrow’s defining characteristics? Or, if this is supposed to be an arc wherein Qrow attempts to get sober and struggles with it, why haven’t we seen that? Again, they’ve been in Atlas for weeks now. This isn’t a one day sober Qrow with a naively optimistic outlook. He’s apparently been managing this for a while now with no downsides, no difficulties, no regrets.

Blake and Yang getting mad at Marrow instead of acknowledging their trauma. Oscar taking one hit at Ironwood instead of grappling with their secrets. Ruby talking about new friends instead of the relationship she already has with Penny. Clover telling Qrow adults are important instead of anyone telling the teens that. Qrow revealing that he’s just not drinking anymore. For reasons. It’s amazing just how much space this episode provides for the characters to start working through their conflicts and we bypass every opportunity. This is RWBY’s primary problem. Beyond the pro-protagonist perspective is the issue that, especially since Volume 5, the show has made a habit of introducing intriguing problems and then either twisting them so they have simplistic ‘solutions’ (we don’t need to tackle Ruby’s hypocrisy. She’s just “different” from Ozpin) or ignores them completely. We don’t need a new friendship vs. professional relationship conflict. We don’t need a new luck vs. bad luck semblance conflict. Not yet anyway. Not until we work through the conflicts that have already been introduced. Let Ruby talk to Penny about their own relationship. Let Clover help Qrow get sober. RWBY is like me when I’m writing fic. Why would I finish the thing I started when there’s this shiny new idea over here? Except I’m engaging in a low-key hobby whereas they’re writing for their livelihood. For the love of everything, please solve the problems we already have before chucking in new ones. You can give us all the same moments and relationships, just tailor them so they acknowledge the things the viewers have been waiting for you to tackle. I don’t need to know why Ruby and her team are Super Special because they’re BFFs when everyone else in Atlas apparently rejects friendship like the plague. I do need to know why a guy who was introduced downing a glass of whiskey apparently got over his alcoholism off screen.

Ugh. You know what we need? Penguins. Everyone look at the penguins for at least five seconds and allow them to cleanse your soul.

Heading backwards, before the transport scene we get a training fight between JNR + Oscar and Neon’s group. I honestly wonder how a team like theirs feels about them getting their licenses. After all, they fought at the Battle of Beacon too. The only reason why RWBYJNR got into extra, life-threatening situations is because they stupidly went off on their own. I realize that duh, as a story we can’t just have our protagonists twiddling their thumbs, but from an in-world perspective Ruby snuck out of the house to hunt down a woman who would absolutely have killed her and 100% would have been kidnapped if Qrow hadn’t followed to keep her safe. Everything else stems out of that. So not exactly a classically heroic basis for special treatment. All of which Neon and Flynt presumably don’t even know about because it touches on all those secrets. I suppose they just heard something along the lines of, “I, Ironwood, am giving two Beacon teams early licenses because they survived a horrendous battle. You, my actual students, don’t get them even though you did the same work.” It could have been really interesting to have some tension over this and for the group to see another complication of their secret keeping. Here they have to keep Cinder, the Maidens, the Relic, etc. quiet... but because of that it leads to some pretty awful miscommunication between friends. There are repercussions to your secrets and not all of them are things you can plan for or fix.

We don’t have anything like that though. Obviously. Instead we just get a generic fight with a side of weird Nora/Ren stuff. Meaning, Neon calls him Nora’s boyfriend and asks, “Where’s that energy when he’s around you?” Later Nora asks if they’ll still get sandwiches before work and Ren heaves out an annoyed sigh.

That moment struck me simply because it doesn’t come across like one of his normal, happily indulgent sighs. Ren seemed legitimately annoyed. Which is even stranger when we consider that Nora isn’t being over the top here. Sure, she pops up behind him in a sort of silly manner, but really all she’s doing is expressing that she’s hungry after an intense battle. Can we please make sure we grab something before heading off to work? That’s a more than reasonable request.

Ren shutting her down over his hair. Seeming to ignore her when she fiddles with it while on patrol. Neon’s comment about his lack of energy around her. Nora getting mad enough about it to give her a black eye (RWBY so rarely shows injuries). Ren seemingly put out by her theatrics. They’re all little things that only seem to paint a picture when put together, but of what exactly? It’s like I said last time, if the show wants to introduce some sort of arc for Nora and Ren this volume it had better do it soon. Really soon. Details that may or may not be setup can only take you so far.

During this battle Ironwood smiles down at all their progress, which could be endearing or creepy, depending on whether you think he’s hiding something (more on that in a bit). Neon actually acknowledges Oscar’s existence and draws a blush out of him, so thank you for that, Neon.

I thought for just a moment that Jaune might compliment Oscar too, but he just compliments the other team instead. At least they’re letting him train with him. After last week’s episode I’ll take this small step forward.

Back past the talk between Qrow and Clover, we finally get to meet the infamous Robyn Hill. She blocks the road to Amity Arena with one of her Happy Huntresses, the same faunus who was spying on the project last episode. And who I forgot to mention in my recap. Whoops. I love Hill already though precisely because she’s able to do what our protagonists couldn’t last Volume: stand down when a plan fails.

Hill takes her shot by putting up the roadblock and asking Clover to be straight with her, but when that doesn’t work and it looks like they’re about to come to blows, she admits defeat and lets them through. That’s how you handle a tenuous ally. Keep the peace and regroup with a different idea. Show them basic respect so that they might help you in the future. Clover’s “good luck” regarding the election speaks volumes about how everyone does want to help each other, they just need to figure out a way to do it. Hill could have attacked the group and stood her ground purely because she believes she’s right---just as Ruby did with Cordovin---but she demonstrates her maturity instead. She didn’t risk lives for the sake of getting what she wanted right here, right now. Despite the fact that what she wants likewise involves the safety of the people. Take note, Ruby.

Speaking of, everyone catch that guilty look when Ruby learns that Ironwood’s project is taking resources directly from the city that most needs it? Yeah, what did you think was going to happen? At the very least the group saw that they were taking manpower away. Ironwood needs them to help protect Mantle because most of his men are off in the middle of nowhere, so the group is well aware that their actions are causing a negative impact. I highly doubt that the eight of them (including Qrow) can make up for however many people Ironwood is pulling out, to say nothing of the fact that many of them (like Ruby here) are also on Amity duty. They’re allowing Ironwood to put people, money, supplies, and time towards an endeavor that they know is bound to fail. Sure, it would be nice to have communication across Remnant without fear of losing that to the grimm again, but we all know Ironwood is primarily doing this because of the Salem situation. If he knew about her immortality he’d probably go, “Hmm. Well, the first part of the idea is still nice, but I probably shouldn’t pour this much into just a regular communications tower. Defeating Salem potentially justifies me hurting the people to get this done. But not anything else.” I’ll say it again: Ozpin’s secrets didn’t endanger anyone. Everyone from Pyrrha to Yang agreed to put their lives on the line for reasons entirely separate from Salem. Their lives were in danger from the start and, given their choices, always would be in danger. Ruby is the one whose secret is not just threatening all of Remnant in the future, but actively hurting people now too. She has the ability to stop this and she chooses not to.

Or rather, she chooses to keep putting off the decision. We’ll tell Ironwood when we’re ready. Yeah right. I still want someone to challenge Ruby on what this magical ‘He’s trustworthy!’ moment looks like. They’ve spent weeks with this man, fighting for him, training with him, accepting gifts in the form of weaponry, armor, facilities... so what exactly is it going to take, Ruby? I’m not saying Ironwood is trustworthy, I’m saying you can never know until the day they betray you. If that day comes. So when is Ruby going to acknowledge that? That she will never get that magical moment and that she’s just like Ozpin, putting off telling someone because the information weighs so heavily and there’s just too much to risk?

Hill thematically acknowledges the last two Volumes with, “It doesn’t have to be difficult. Just tell me,” while we all know it’s not that simple. Even if people would like it to be. Clover refuses, Penny spots two invisible huntresses closing in (nice), and as said, Robyn backs down.

We then end this episode with a long bonding session between Winter and Weiss. We see them fighting with their summonings and Winter comments about how, “You’ve grown up a bit, haven’t you?” We get it. You’re not subtle. Weiss has grown up. “Make no mistake. School is over.” They’re adults now! If only we saw that more than we heard it. Weiss at least is a character who has had legitimate, excellent development over the last couple of volumes. I’m admittedly a bit confused though regarding how that development aligns with the old Weiss. Meaning, we learned early on that she wanted to become a huntress to redeem the Schnee name. Now Winter is talking about how separating herself from the Schnees was the best thing to happen to her and Weiss seems to agree. So is that it now? Is Weiss just concerned with being her own person, or is she still invested in being a Schnee? Just a Schnee who embodies what her family used to stand for? It’s unclear based on the conversation.

Then. Ugh. They discuss Ironwood’s choices and Weiss snidely comments that, “Everyone thinks what they’re doing is right, but really they’re just looking out for themselves... and their secrets.” Yeah, Weiss. INCLUDING YOU. Are they really so dense that they don’t see how lying about how Ozpin disappeared was looking out for themselves, namely by making sure that Ironwood continued to embrace them with open arms instead of getting pissed? After all, it’s less likely that the group would have gotten a nice place to live, awesome weaponry, high-tech places to train, and early licenses if they’d admitted to their sins last volume. They’re also protecting their own secrets by spending these weeks nice and quiet, just ignoring the Ironwood problem completely. Weiss is protecting their secrets right now by encouraging Winter to question Ironwood’s intentions---subtly casting him and Ozpin in a bad light---while she herself is keeping secrets from Winter. I mentioned before that Ironwood’s smile could potentially be a bad omen if we follow the writing rule of, “If a character insists someone isn’t keeping anything from them... they’re definitely keeping something from them.” Winter’s belief that Ironwood doesn’t keep secrets from her sets up the expectation for the audience that he probably is. But we don’t actually know that yet. Weiss thinks Ironwood might be keeping secrets. Weiss knows for sure she and the rest of her friends are keeping secrets. Only one party is definitively guilty here, so I’m not sure why she feels entitled to act like she still has the high ground.

With Ironwood’s honor in question, Winter takes Weiss to see the Winter Maiden. We really don’t get to learn much about her except that she still looks young-ish (again: RWBY ages are hard) and seems to like to paint.

No one else can visit her---and thus we don’t hear the conversation---because Ironwood wants Winter to inherit the power. Okay. So that leaves us with a couple options now:

Older woman can inherit and Ozpin made a very iffy call in trying to foster that responsibility off on a First Year. Which is probably down to more writing concerns than Ozpin’s characterization. Meaning, you want to keep the conflict among the main cast, not bring in a random new character to do the volume’s Important Thing. So you set up Pyrrha as the Fall Maiden, even though in-world that looks like a sketchy decision. To say nothing of the fact that Rooster Teeth isn’t very good at setting down hard rules. What functioned as a limitation during Volume 3 can easily be wiped away in Volume 7. In the same way that we went from Qrow’s semblance being totally passive and range-based to “sometimes I can’t control it.”

Ironwood and Winter are assuming that Winter can inherit, but she’s actually too old now. They’ll be blindsided by this when the power unexpectedly goes to someone else.

Ironwood has convinced Winter that she can inherit but actually has some sort of other plan up his sleeve.

Really, my biggest takeaway is Winter’s speech about how she is choosing this. Regardless of whether fate forced her into a situation with only bad options. Regardless of whether others also want her to make this decision. It’s still her choice. 95% of the fandom needs to listen to that speech and then chuck Pyrrha into Winter’s place. Having only tough choices isn’t the same thing as having no choice. The fact that your choice coincides with what others want doesn’t lessen it. They both chose to take on this power and it’s wrong for others to trivialize that by claiming that the men in their life---Ozpin and Ironwood---manipulated them. It’s implying that they can’t make their own decisions. That making this terribly difficult choice doesn’t come down to their own strength. They know it’s dangerous, regardless of whether they understand every detail of that danger, and actively choose to take on that responsibility anyway. Because they want to do some good in the world. The fandom has worked its butt off to take that away from Pyrrha and I really hope they don’t do the same to Winter.

Although... the death flags. Yeesh but Winter looks like a particularly enticing target for the end of this Volume. What with talk of destiny and all... I really hope the series doesn’t go the route of giving every Team RWBY member one of the Maiden powers, what with Winter in a position to think about Weiss if she dies with the power, Raven in a position to think about Yang, and Cinder obsessed with Ruby literally all the time... yeah. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m personally more invested in ‘normal’ people managing the impossible through hard work, belief in themselves and each other, all that jazz. Not already overpowered people (at least in Ruby’s case) getting literal magic to solve their problems with. There’s so much more you can do with that.

Finally, Jacques comes online to spew a bunch of BS about how everything ever is Ironwood’s fault and he’s totally suffering just like everyone in Mantle.

Right.

As Winter says though, the lies are just enough of a “spark” to ignite an already pissed off populace. We close on an angry mob beginning to tear the streets apart. Guess we’ll find out next week how the group tackles that nasty problem.

Until then! 💜

Minor Things of Note

What was that sandwich gag? RWBY is really pushing the humor in iffy directions this volume.

I enjoyed Qrow and Clover playing cards though. What a mess with their semblances.

Also, I made us a poster:

#rwby #rwby volume 7 #rwby volume 7 spoilers #mymetas #rwby recaps

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