RWBY Thread III: Time To Say Goodbye

kokuenDG · May 1, 2022

so gotta few things that need to be said real quick.
We get a lot of reports from this thread. A lot of it is just a series of people yelling at each other over arguments that have been rehashed hundreds of times since the end of the recent Volume. And I get that the last Volume - and RWBY in general, really - has some controversial moments that people will want to discuss, argue about, debate, etc.

That's fine. We're not going to stop people from doing that, because that's literally what the point of the thread is. However, there's just a point where it gets to be a bit too much, and arguments about whether or not Ironwood was morally justified in his actions in the recent Volume, or if RWBY and her team were in the right for withholding information from Ironwood out of distrust, or whatever flavor of argument of the day descend into insulting other posters, expressing a demeaning attitude towards other's opinions, and just being overall unpleasant. That tends to happen a lot in this thread. We want it to stop happening in this thread.

So! As of now the thread is in a higher state of moderation. What that means is that any future infractions will result in a weeklong boot from the thread, and repeated offenders will likely be permanently removed. So please, everyone endeavor to actually respect the other's arguments, and even if you strongly disagree with them please stay civil and mindful when it comes to responding to others.

In addition, users should refrain from talking about off-site users in the thread. Bear in mind that this does not mean that you cannot continue to post tumblr posts, for example, that add onto the discussion in the thread, with the caveat that it's related to RWBY of course. But any objections to offsite users in the thread should be handled via PM, or they'll be treated as thread violations and infracted as such.

TheBleachDoctor · Dec 7, 2015

Cinder is going to hack Penny, isn't she?

I also am not sure whether the latest episode's fight scene was lackluster because of the animation, or RT's shitty web player.

Azecreth · Dec 7, 2015

TheBleachDoctor said:
Cinder is going to hack Penny, isn't she?

I hope not. I want my expectations subverted (Especially with how obvious it is at this point. Maybe Ironwood put two and two together with the break in at the CCT that he almost walked in on, and decided to buff the cyber security, installs the latest version of Norton, that sort of thing. So only some of the robots get hijacked, and not all of them)

Iandude0 · Dec 7, 2015

Azecreth said:
I hope not. I want my expectations subverted (Especially with how obvious it is at this point. Maybe Ironwood put two and two together with the break in at the CCT that he almost walked in on, and decided to buff the cyber security, installs the latest version of Norton, that sort of thing. So only some of the robots get hijacked, and not all of them)

Well, she could try to hack Penny and fail. That'd be one hell of a subversion. Turns out you can't control things with souls, who knew?

FixerUpper · Dec 8, 2015

Rezzing the Cinder Plan thing. What we know about Cinder's plan involves:

Roman stealing all the dust he could.
Having disposable henchpersons on call (White Fang's or Junior's, it apparently doesn't much matter)
Attacking the city with Grimm through an old tunnel system
Cinder getting to dress up as a high school student + Cinder doing mysterious catwoman things
Winning the Vytal Festival Tournament is super important for some reason???

These threads are so far apart in tone, texture and meaningfulness that it's actively unhelpful. It's like Voldemort deciding to personally participate in the Triwizard Tournament and dropping ominous hints that he had a 'master plan'.

(Given its anime inspirations, Orochimaru dropping in on the chuunin exams might be a better comparison, but at that part of the manga, his plans still made sense and were revealed in fairly short order and goddamn he had the atmosphere back then to carry a scene.)

Here, we're all going: ummmm. okay. have fun then you guys??? Like, no one is sure why they're on screen, or why a plan is being mentioned, or what the point is. When narrative space is at a premium, you kind of want to jettison the stuff that doesn't matter (coughcoughJaune'sArc).

(Sorry Arc fans)

Having Cinder make vague allusions to a plan for a few seasons is hugely unnecessary because their intent is for Cinder to come off as criminal mastermind but the end result is she just looks kind of goofy because we have no idea how anything factors anywhere. It's been mentioned before, but it's worth reiterating: we have no point of reference with which to compare. Did the events of the last season matter at all? Yes, no, maybe?

We don't know the stakes, we don't know the goal, and we don't know the plan. At this point Cinder and co's on-screen appearances are some weird sort of anti-exposition and not in a 'the more that's revealed the more questions we have, but rather, 'nothing is revealed, and nothing appreciably appears to change'.'

At this point we're basically just there to watch bad people goof off.

Admittedly, sub-par exposition and foreshadowing are issues that RWBY has suffered from from the get-go. The trailers tried to show us a variety of settings, and in the end we still had no idea what the heck to expect.

So, yeah, if you think it's bad writing, I can definitely say you're not alone.

Zam · Dec 8, 2015

FixerUpper said:
Roman stealing all the dust he could.

From what I recall Roman and the WF used a lot of that for the bombs.

FixerUpper said:
Having disposable henchpersons on call (White Fang's or Junior's, it apparently doesn't much matter)

This seems pretty standard for villains, Cinder just seems to be manipulating would be allies into being her disposable mooks so they can enact her plans over she having to do it.

FixerUpper said:
Attacking the city with Grimm through an old tunnel system

This seemed specifically built around either getting Ironwood put in charge or getting Ozpin to lose favour with the council.

I can't say much about the infiltration side of things beyond Cinder seemingly wanting info on young in training Hunters and potentially wanting to use her place at Beacon for deniability as well as proximity to stuff like the festival, the tower, Ozpin, ETC.

FixerUpper said:
(coughcoughJaune'sArc).

I would be totally OK with this though

FixerUpper said:
Having Cinder make vague allusions to a plan for a few seasons

If I recall she really only did that in Season 2, we didn't see much of her in Season 1 and in Season 3 in most instances where she's appeared she's revealing some aspect of her influence, reach, knowledge and power.

Azecreth · Dec 8, 2015

Zam said:
From what I recall Roman and the WF used a lot of that for the bombs.

The warehouse full of Dust we see in Episode 1 of Season 2 disagrees a bit.

Zam · Dec 8, 2015

Azecreth said:
The warehouse full of Dust we see in Episode 1 of Season 2 disagrees a bit.

That is a lot of Dust, though given Cinder's plan also involves getting the entire city into a state by virtue of a crime wave and a Grim attack leading to Ironwood being laced in charge I still feel it works.

I seriously love that pic though.

Iandude0 · Dec 8, 2015

FixerUpper said:
When narrative space is at a premium, you kind of want to jettison the stuff that doesn't matter (coughcoughJaune'sArc).

Zam said:
I would be totally OK with this though

I honestly don't get why people think that anything about Jaune's arc didn't matter. It gave a lot of worldbuilding and gave insight into a character that will likely play a major part in the series (dev commentary for volume one said that they were originally meant to be B-team, but in the end developed into a second A-team alongside RWBY), no matter how much some people would rather he not.

The execution wasn't great (that's a lot of season one to begin with, though), but once again that was because of the massive restraints they have about time and the necessity of showing other characters. If anything, I don't think any arc really could have been dropped because most if not all of them give important development to characters.

I think these posts over on SB I think give a pretty rational look at why people don't like him, even though his character and his arcs weren't the waste of space and time some think he is.

And honestly? I think any arc that would focus completely on a villain's plans would make we want to stop watching the series, because it would just get so godawfully predictable, and then viewers would stat complaining about the characters being able to get around the problems. I think it would be worse than any shitty arc they could have put into the show because it ruins most of the tension due to the fact that it really only leaves two options in the story: either the plan goes off successfully, or it doesn't. And so long as we know that, we aren't really going to be as highly invested in the whole story as we could be because we know what the final objective is. If we don't know, there's that little voice in the back of your head saying that even if the heroes manage to derail what the villains are doing, it may not affect everything but most of your mind is hoping it does. Sort of like when it's revealed Cinder now knows about Penny, and there's the people going, "she's going to hack her!" and other going "that would be cliche!", but we don't actually know if that will happen or if something like that could even work. That we ask questions helps everything be a bit more entertaining for us all (at least in my opinion).

FixerUpper · Dec 8, 2015

Iandude0 said:
snip

I didn't bother to read the SB stuff, sorry! I'm running on time limits left and right. If you don't think they're worth quoting, I'm not going to bother reading them and instead address the points you made.

It's not that it didn't matter, he's become Sasuke in terms of narrative import. He has literally had more character arcs devoted to his growth than the nominal main characters (has Yang had a single character arc devoted to her yet? Nope! All we get are hints that she's looking for her mom, whereas this guy has had, what, three? Four? I've lost track but I dislike them all).

I don't hate him, but I know a creator's pet when I see one and the story suffers for his presence.

For example, Weiss was forced to confront her inadequacies vis-a-vis her heritage, her sense of entitlement, and so on. Jaune Arc never has to justify his presence even though he cheated his way into school. Boo-hoo, cry me a river, why bring him up at all if you are going to deny us the most salient point of his character arc? There are less grating ways to deliver exposition especially since he's become a narrative parasite whose arc never. goddamn. ends.

As for the 'villain-centric arc' that's not what we're arguing. Or at least not what I'm arguing. Either take it out or make their goals comprehensible because this waffling between the two is dumb. We can infer more about their goals from the meeting between Qrow-Ozpin-Glynda-Winter-Ironwood than anything she had said up until that point and it's at that point where you have to wonder why they're on screen at all because they don't seem to serve an actual purpose.

Zam · Dec 8, 2015

Iandude0 said:
I honestly don't get why people think that anything about Jaune's arc didn't matter. It gave a lot of worldbuilding and gave insight into a character that will likely play a major part in the series (dev commentary for volume one said that they were originally meant to be B-team, but in the end developed into a second A-team alongside RWBY), no matter how much some people would rather he not.

The execution wasn't great (that's a lot of season one to begin with, though), but once again that was because of the massive restraints they have about time and the necessity of showing other characters. If anything, I don't think any arc really could have been dropped because most if not all of them give important development to characters.

I think these posts over on SB I think give a pretty rational look at why people don't like him, even though his character and his arcs weren't the waste of space and time some think he is.

Sorry hit the wrong key before I'd finished writing. Anyway for me, part of it is the "would rather he not" that is to say I don't agree with his development or particularly care for his role in canon as its been during seasons 1 and 2 for various reasons. As for providing world building, that's good, but the WoR do that rather effectively and I feel there were other ways to do it than using Jaune.

I recall looking at Bots arguments over on SB and may have participated in them, chances are what my responses where than are still more or less true now, though I can understand where they are coming from.

Iandude0 said:
And honestly? I think any arc that would focus completely on a villain's plans would make we want to stop watching the series, because it would just get so godawfully predictable, and then viewers would stat complaining about the characters being able to get around the problems. I think it would be worse than any shitty arc they could have put into the show because it ruins most of the tension due to the fact that it really only leaves two options in the story: either the plan goes off successfully, or it doesn't. And so long as we know that, we aren't really going to be as highly invested in the whole story as we could be because we know what the final objective is. If we don't know, there's that little voice in the back of your head saying that even if the heroes manage to derail what the villains are doing, it may not affect everything but most of your mind is hoping it does. Sort of like when it's revealed Cinder now knows about Penny, and there's the people going, "she's going to hack her!" and other going "that would be cliche!", but we don't actually know if that will happen or if something like that could even work. That we ask questions helps everything be a bit more entertaining for us all (at least in my opinion).

The bit of text I underlined, that I agree with 110% and its why I said earlier I believe keeping Cinder's plan vague works so well and makes sense from a narrative perspective and in regards to dealing with fans.

Iandude0 · Dec 8, 2015

FixerUpper said:
All we get are hints that she's looking for her mom

Well then, how would you make that into an entire character arc without having her discover her mother? I mean, you can't really resolve something that character has been working at for most of her life within two seasons? That's just ridiculous. Her characterization has been mainly that she has been acting as the team's mother, and is doing so because Ruby lost hers while a major motivation has been to find her mother. They can't focus on that too soon because if they move that entire plot through within two volumes, then it really doesn't have much else to go. And you can't really make an arc to herself because her personality is so dependent upon others.

FixerUpper said:
what, three? Four?

One, he has had one solely focused on his character. As one of the points I sourced said:

I mean, I can see the argument in volume 1, when Jaune was the focus of 2 of the 10 chapters (made worse by each being a two-parter, so it was actually spread over a whole month), but even that wasn't entirely a plot black hole: we saw that fights were measured by tracking Aura levels, we got a reasonable introduction to Semblances, we got some continued character development for Ruby (showing her internalizing her lesson from Ozpin and passing it on to others), and, of course, the faked-transcripts bomb getting dropped - I might not like the implications of that particular bit of info in regards to the plot, but it's hard to say that it's not significant information. It was something the audience needed to know sooner rather than later.

In volume 2, though? Discounting ensemble pieces (the food fight in episode 1 and the big fight in the finale), he got very brief scenes in episodes 2 and 3 (the former establishing that team JNPR had been told that Blake was a Faunus, which, again, important information) and then was the main "viewpoint" character in a dance arc which mostly served to develop people around him (Pyrrha, Weiss, and Neptune) rather than himself. Volume 2 suffered from a lack of Ruby focus during the character development scenes (her primary role in the dance arc was drifting outside and then going to fight Cinder, and she missed out on campfire sadness time in Mountain Glenn), which made it seem like the side characters got too much focus, particularly in lieu of the arc in the previous volume (which, again, suffered itself for each episode being split into two parts and therefore taking an extra two weeks of airtime), but it was actually spread around pretty well. Looking back, my (admittedly biased) eyes would actually put Jaune around 6th in character focus in volume 2 (after Blake, Yang, Weiss, Ruby, and Pyrrha, in roughly that order), which is right about where the leader of the show's B-team ought to be.

FixerUpper said:
I don't hate him, but I know a creator's pet when I see one and the story suffers for his presence.

And I don't think he's that at all. He is realistically flawed, and has been given development to face them (even if it wasn't the greatest). He may not be the most loved among the fandom, but I do not think the creators magically value him more than the others.

FixerUpper said:
For example, Weiss was forced to confront her inadequacies vis-a-vis her heritage, her sense of entitlement, and so on.

Okay, you're using the fact that a character has had to face their flaws. Guess what? In his arc, Jaune had to face the fact that he was cripplingly inadequate compared to basically everyone else in the school, that he cannot do things by himself and has to learn to actually stand up and ask for help when he has a problem instead of just toughing it out and thinking "things will get better". That is character building, though it may not have been as well done as some would have liked.

FixerUpper said:
Jaune Arc never has to justify his presence even though he cheated his way into school.

He has had to justify his presence to everyone who he knows has the knowledge of them, and that is all that should matter for that part of the story. If he starts trying to justify his presence in the school to people who have no idea, that would be fucking stupid. And the point that those transcripts were fake still stands in importance, because they could have that brought up by Ozpin or the staff at literally any time if one or more of them know. Not to mention his family, which may be seeing this on live TV.

Salty · Dec 8, 2015

Iandude0 said:
Well then, how would you make that into an entire character arc without having her discover her mother?

This is the problem. We were given fuck-all about Yang that wasn't already shown in her trailer (or exposited in the most heavily-handed possible way in the middle of a big fight) until the mom bomb got dropped.

As such, looking for her mom has become her entire character arc in everybody's eyes because that's the only possible point of conflict or development that we have.

IOW, Yang has been criminally underused and desperately needs not only more non-fight screentime, but more plot hooks as well.

Iandude0 · Dec 8, 2015

Salty said:
IOW, Yang has been criminally underused and desperately needs not only more non-fight screentime, but more plot hooks as well.

I can agree with this, but I think one of the main problems with he character is the fact that so much of her development was forced to happen before she got to Beacon (Summer dying, looking for her mother, caring for Ruby, possible father shutdown) and thus can only be shown in flashbacks or alluded to.

The whole mother thing is really one of the only loose ends she's got left, really. That and maybe confronting about why she really wants to be a hunter.

I do think that later in the series she's going to have to deal with Ruby growing up and Yang feeling like her sister doesn't need her as much anymore, but that is likely a long way off.

Zam · Dec 8, 2015

Iandude0 said:
One, he has had one solely focused on his character. As one of the points I sourced said:

Yeah... I'll be honest I still disagree that the dance didn't have an over abundance of Jaune regardless of the other persons argument. I only ever backed off on that point due to how aggressively they argued.

Iandude0 said:
He has had to justify his presence to everyone who he knows has the knowledge of them, and that is all that should matter for that part of the story. If he starts trying to justify his presence in the school to people who have no idea, that would be fucking stupid. And the point that those transcripts were fake still stands in importance, because they could have that brought up by Ozpin or the staff at literally any time if one or more of them know. Not to mention his family, which may be seeing this on live TV.

I'm, honestly confused by what you're tyring to say here.

Anyway a friend of mine did a big post we worked on together over on an SB thread that covers my views of Jaune fairly well, spoiling for size.

Chandagnac said:
I don't like Jaune Arc from RWBY. Probably gonna get flamed for this because he's such an incredibly popular character and has hundreds/thousands/hundreds of thousands of fans ready to rush to his defence, but...

It took me a while to realise why I don't like him and have little sympathy for him. This came out of some discussions I had with some of my friends:

Jaune is the character that members of the audience are supposed to identify with. (And judging by the amount of fanfics that turn him into the ultimate badass, super-powerful demigod, master of his own harem, and so on, the creators of RWBY got that part right.)

In all kinds of fiction, the "audience surrogate character" is usually a socially awkward loser (which almost always annoys me because it seems like the creators of [INSERT NAME OF TV SERIES/ANIME/FILM/ETC HERE] are saying to the audience, "This guy is exactly like you: you stupid, clueless nerds!")

Leaving that aside for the moment, I think the role of "audience surrogate character" doesn't mesh very well with the backstory they've given Jaune. They want him to be a lovable slacker who reads comic books and dozes off in lessons and hopelessly flirts with a girl who has no interest in him while ignoring the beautiful, talented girl who is one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet and has inexplicably fallen in love with him. However, combined with his backstory (committed fraud to get into Beacon because he wants to be a hunter), it makes him seem lazy, selfish, unmotivated and ungrateful, someone who wants to be admired and celebrated as a hero but can't be bothered to work hard enough to actually become a hero. I don't think that was what the creators intended: I think they gave him a bunch of character traits that were supposed to make him seem sympathetic, but didn't much consider how these character traits would interact and the implications thereof.

There are a lot of things about Jaune's character and backstory that just bug me. If the Arcs are a famous family that have produced many renowned hunters, why didn't they make sure Jaune got the basic training he'd need to become a hunter, if that's what he wanted to be when he grew up? Did he just decide to become a hunter and bluff his way into Beacon on the spur of the moment? Where are Jaune's parents and seven sisters now? Aren't they worried about where he vanished to? If they know he's gone to Beacon, aren't they concerned about his safety? (Also, this is another thing that makes Jaune seem like a selfish dick, at least in my eyes. I mean, how would his family feel if he'd died in one of the many situations where he could easily have died fighting the nightmarish creatures that, at least at first, he didn't have the skills to fight?)
- Yes, there are probably reasons for all of these things. Yes, you could probably tell me that I'm wrong, that Jaune has this really sympathetic backstory where his parents never loved him enough and never gave him the opportunities to become a hunter like he really wanted. Maybe that's true. I don't know, it just bothers me that we (the audience watching RWBY) never get to see any of that stuff on screen. Maybe Season 3 will do a really good job of filling in Jaune's backstory and completely redeem his character in my eyes, but that just leads on to another thing I dislike about him:

He gets too much screentime. In the first season, he gets almost as much screentime as Ruby, the main character (in fact, she takes a backseat for most of the second half of the first season so the episodes can focus on Jaune a bit more). He gets more screentime than Yang, ostensibly one of the four main characters. I'm not sure if he gets more screentime than Weiss or Blake, but maybe. Maybe I just imagine he got a lot more screentime than he actually did because I thought his episodes were boring and dragged on too long. The problem is that the genre of RWBY seems to change when the episodes focus on Jaune, and not for the better.

RWBY is the story of four badass ladies fighting nightmarish creatures and investigating a sinister organisation seeking to bring down the fabric of their society, with humour and impossibly cool fight scenes. Except when the episodes focus on Jaune. Then it becomes a high school drama. And not even a very good high school drama. The kind I've seen dozens of times before: 'Jaune is being bullied, the bully gets blackmail material and makes Jaune work for him. Then Jaune stands up for himself and the bully lets him go, yadda yadda yadda.'
Ehh... I don't really care about that stuff. I'd rather have seen more Yang. Or Ren and Nora. Or more of Pyrrha. I'm a Pyrrha fan (she's my favourite character in RWBY) and it annoys me that most of her screentime revolves around Jaune, and most of the fanfics focusing on her also focus on Jaune and shipping them together.

One thing I dislike about Mary Sue/Marty Stu characters is the way the story bends itself over and twists itself in knots trying to accommodate them. I'm not saying that Jaune is a Marty Stu, but he's somewhere on that sliding scale. The story of RWBY seems to bend over backwards trying to accommodate him: 'He knew nothing about being a hunter and had none of the training, but that's okay because he has tons of potential and we're going to cram years of training into a few months just to show how special he is! After all, Hard Work Hardly Works, amirite? So it doesn't matter if we ignore characters who've worked hard and trained to be hunters for years - because instead, we're going to show you more of how great Jaune is!'

Also... I get that Jaune's hopeless flirting with Weiss is supposed to be cute, sweet or endearing, and I know a lot of fans think she should give him a chance, but... seriously? It's probably supposed to be funny when it's mentioned that he keeps asking her out. Stalking Is Love and all that, but... wait, no! No! No! Creepy, stalkerish behaviour is not okay!
That's basically my problem with it. I hope I don't need to give you people the whole "no means no, and if a lady says she's not interested then that's up to her and you should leave her alone" speech?
Yes, Jaune isn't just interested in Weiss for her beauty and wealth, he actually likes her as a person... but so what? Weiss tells him she's not interested, signifies her lack of interest many times, but he keeps bothering her, invading her personal space and ignoring her feelings, and he only gives up when he realises she's interested in someone else. Yeah... What a creep.

Anyway, that's why I don't like Jaune. I look forward to being told that I'm wrong.

EDIT: I don't hate Jaune. While writing this post, my dislike of him may have spilled over into actual hatred, but I don't really hate him. Done differently, he could have been an interesting character, but... he's one of the few things I dislike about RWBY. Even so, if it weren't for some of his fans turning him in Super-Jaune the awesome demigod with dozens of devoted girlfriends, I could happily ignore him.

EDIT: I will note I've been enjoying Jaune more this season for what its worth.

Salty · Dec 8, 2015

Iandude0 said:
I can agree with this, but I think one of the main problems with he character is the fact that so much of her development was forced to happen before she got to Beacon (Summer dying, looking for her mother, caring for Ruby, possible father shutdown) and thus can only be shown in flashbacks or alluded to.

The whole mother thing is really one of the only loose ends she's got left, really. That and maybe confronting about why she really wants to be a hunter.

I do think that later in the series she's going to have to deal with Ruby growing up and Yang feeling like her sister doesn't need her as much anymore, but that is likely a long way off.

See, you're confusing character development and plot hooks. These are decidedly not the same thing.

As a simple example, Ruby growing into her role and responsibilities as a leader for her team is character development and may even be a subplot for many arcs. A plot hook is "Ruby meets a Robot Girl who saves her ass in a fight. Later on she finds out about Robot Girl's being a robot and made by the military, who may or may not have her best interests at heart."

Capisce?

Iandude0 · Dec 8, 2015

Zam said:
I will note I've been enjoying Jaune more this season for what its worth.

I think that is because they're moving him past the audience surrogate character now that people are actually getting more acclimated to the world and don't need someone to act as a crutch of the familiar. I believe that if he gets any major development this season (which I'm honestly hoping against in favor of Nora and Ren) I'd think it would be about him dealing with the inevitable problems around Cinder "dealing with" Pyrrha and his transcripts getting revealed to everyone by either Beacon's staff or his parents coming in and wondering why here's at Beacon in the first place.

Salty said:
Capisce?

Makes sense.

Triggerhappy · Dec 8, 2015

FixerUpper said:
Rezzing the Cinder Plan thing. What we know about Cinder's plan involves:

Roman stealing all the dust he could.

Having disposable henchpersons on call (White Fang's or Junior's, it apparently doesn't much matter)

Attacking the city with Grimm through an old tunnel system

Cinder getting to dress up as a high school student + Cinder doing mysterious catwoman things

Winning the Vytal Festival Tournament is super important for some reason???

I've been trying to think of a way to answer this concisely for a while now, so here goes.

While I'm not going to commit to a blind unwavering defense of the writing, especially when Cinder's whole plan could very easily fall flatter than week old Pepsi . . . Not all of the above things have to mesh together into some sort Rube Goldberg-esque 'plan'.

In fact, points 1 and 2 really aren't what I'd particularly call part of Cinders 'plan'. Cinder needs resources and went about using Roman and disposable henchmen to acquire them. That isn't some menacing plan, it's logistics, which incidentally gave Ruby and friends a nice starter villain to fight.

Point three, Cinder is ratcheting up tensions. She clearly wanted Atlas to get involved so she gave them a pretense they could never refuse. So now there's a massive amount of firepower sitting over Vale flying the flag of a foreign Kingdom and conveniently linked into the local communications network. A piece of Atleasian technology which Cinder has Hijacked.

Point four, I never really got the impression that Cinder has a huge organization at her beck and call. Instead she operates mostly through proxies like Roman. It also means she has to handle linchpin details in person to be sure they're done to her specifications. And we already know what the Catwoman thing accomplished, to an extent, it's hardly been a secret.

Point five, who say's she's planning to win the Vital Vestival? She's they're to wreck it. And also, it would seem, to put down Ozpin's 'Guardian' whatever significance she might have.

Zam · Dec 8, 2015

Iandude0 said:
I think that is because they're moving him past the audience surrogate character now that people are actually getting more acclimated to the world and don't need someone to act as a crutch of the familiar. I believe that if he gets any major development this season (which I'm honestly hoping against in favor of Nora and Ren) I'd think it would be about him dealing with the inevitable problems around Cinder "dealing with" Pyrrha and his transcripts getting revealed to everyone by either Beacon's staff or his parents coming in and wondering why here's at Beacon in the first place.

I think that definitely helps and some of the humour and self awareness also, I feel, helps contrast against his initial focus and disposition. I can't really comment on any potential arc he might have beyond hoping any time that would normally be dedicated to it would be focussed on Pyrrha, Nora and Ren instead, or just the main plot.

FixerUpper · Dec 8, 2015

Iandude0 said:
Well then, how would you make that into an entire character arc without having her discover her mother? I mean, you can't really resolve something that character has been working at for most of her life within two seasons? That's just ridiculous. Her characterization has been mainly that she has been acting as the team's mother, and is doing so because Ruby lost hers while a major motivation has been to find her mother. They can't focus on that too soon because if they move that entire plot through within two volumes, then it really doesn't have much else to go. And you can't really make an arc to herself because her personality is so dependent upon others.

What.

Did you seriously just pull a 'Yang cannot hold her own story arc' argument on me. While discussing Jaune of the 'I Need More Confidence' Arc. Did you just - Good god, she's the older sibling. An older sister! Proud of her younger sibling! It's my frigging favorite archetype and you - you -

I'm not talking to you.

Triggerhappy said:
I've been trying to think of a way to answer this concisely for a while now, so here goes.

While I'm not going to commit to a blind unwavering defense of the writing, especially when Cinder's whole plan could very easily fall flatter than week old Pepsi . . . Not all of the above things have to mesh together into some sort Rube Goldberg-esque 'plan'.

In fact, points 1 and 2 really aren't what I'd particularly call part of Cinders 'plan'. Cinder needs resources and went about using Roman and disposable henchmen to acquire them. That isn't some menacing plan, it's logistics, which incidentally gave Ruby and friends a nice starter villain to fight.

Point three, Cinder is ratcheting up tensions. She clearly wanted Atlas to get involved so she gave them a pretense they could never refuse. So now there's a massive amount of firepower sitting over Vale flying the flag of a foreign Kingdom and conveniently linked into the local communications network. A piece of Atleasian technology which Cinder has Hijacked.

Point four, I never really got the impression that Cinder has a huge organization at her beck and call. Instead she operates mostly through proxies like Roman. It also means she has to handle linchpin details in person to be sure they're done to her specifications. And we already know what the Catwoman thing accomplished, to an extent, it's hardly been a secret.

Point five, who say's she's planning to win the Vital Vestival? She's they're to wreck it. And also, it would seem, to put down Ozpin's 'Guardian' whatever significance she might have.

My description of her 'plan' is not an attempt to go 'oh, look this is so dumb,' it's a castigation of the writing where 1 through 5 are given the same narrative weight (and that weight is if nothing else, at least consistent: Torchwick does ask her to know the 'rest' of her plan when he's complaining about all the shit he's stolen to which she replies with a sultry 'Oh Roman, you'll know what you need when you need to know' which is kind of been her entire shtick so far when it has come to exposition). We the audience do not actually know which part of her operations are actually important. We lack perspective.

And we never get that perspective. Do I know what the hell she's up to? No. Do I care? Noooot really. Literally nothing she has managed to do so far seems to have had any lasting consequence in either direction (okay, besides the virus, which was used to commit acts of true villainy: alter tournament matchups!!!) which means that the tension you are talking about is less on the scale of 'oh no, there's an impending disaster of a villainous nature' but rather 'oh no, maybe they'll defeat Pyrrha or RWBY or something' because that seems to be a scale just as important to them as Grimm rampaging around the city.

(The thing with Penny is admittedly more interesting. But it wasn't even part of the original plan so my original point stands)

I mean, it should be writing 101 that your criminal mastermind has a plan that's at least coherent enough that people can speculate on what that plan is.

Right now I could literally run the gamut of possibilities and never narrow it down.

She's there to:

Kill the prospective hunters and huntresses. The consequences of this act are twofold: she deprives humanity of their next generation of protectors, and increases the feelings of fear/rage/hate/paranoia thus making it easier for a Grimm invasion.
She's actually there because she wants to protect humanity, but disagrees with both Ozpin and Ironwood on how best to do it. Ozpin believes the MIB approach is best; Ironwood believes military force is the answer; and she believes that citizens are the key. People must learn to rely on themselves, not 'heroes.' If she has to teach them through a trial by fire and burn down half the world to do it so fucking be it.
She is working to end the world. This involves more than simple death, she has to deprive the world of all that is good. In order to do this, she is planning a large-scale human war, and playing Ironwood off Ozpin to do it. The infiltration into the Vytal Festival is both a sabotage operation and a recruitment drive. She is going to first take away their toys, then their heroes, and then their lives.
She's there to prove herself. There's a big boys table and she wasn't invited. She's there to show everyone that she can work at as high a level as any of the Greats, modifying her plan on the fly so that she is working better and more diligently than anyone else.
She's suffering eighth grader syndrome and being uncommonly successful at turning her dreams into reality.

Etc. etc. etc.

I could have come up with these with literally just the material of the Season 2 episode 1. Nothing past that would help me refine it in any way whatsoever.

I exaggerate, but not by that much, really.

robopanda · Dec 8, 2015

So, Penny's body type in the schematics is listed as M.3.7.4, which is leet for META. So, is Penny a missing part of Alpha?

JarringToaster · Dec 8, 2015

r0b0panda said:
So, Penny's body type in the schematics is listed as M.3.7.4, which is leet for META. So, is Penny a missing part of Alpha?

Obviously she's a Murakumo unit made up of many other Murakumo units, with Alpha being the exception.

Apologies if you don't get the reference, I just had an urge to make it.

Salty · Dec 8, 2015

JarringToaster said:
Obviously she's a Murakumo unit made up of many other Murakumo units, with Alpha being the exception.

Apologies if you don't get the reference, I just had an urge to make it.

Already made if for you bro.

Leingod · Dec 8, 2015

r0b0panda said:
So, Penny's body type in the schematics is listed as M.3.7.4, which is leet for META. So, is Penny a missing part of Alpha?

Meta is not a Greek letter, which is where the name of Alpha and his shards comes from. It is a Greek preposition and prefix which means "after, beyond." And it's what this guy calls himself:

Which has no ominous implications at all, obviously.

EDIT: The view of her head without her skin looks kind of like that floating eye Epsilon was in for a while, though.

Private Lee O'Malley · Dec 8, 2015

Clearly she's a prototype body for an experiment that would transfer all human souls to robot bodies. Which is why her soul is actually her dead sister's/uncle's/mom's/whatever.

/s (this better not be true)

mistakenot · Dec 8, 2015

FixerUpper said:
I don't hate him, but I know a creator's pet when I see one and the story suffers for his presence.

Jaune is a character: created by a one of the show's story writers, voiced by Miles as well, and more prominent than the original protagonists for much of the show. Whether or not he's a good character, it's hard to deny what he is.

Compare with Ren, who was created and voiced by Monty, but handled with much more restraint.

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