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RWBY Thread III: Time To Say Goodbye

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Stop: So gotta few things that need to be said real quick.
  • Staff Post
    • 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.
     
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  • Staff Post
    • Leingod said:
    So does literally anyone who has to work for a living, including soldiers. You think there would be anywhere near as many people signing up for the military if they offered no pay and no benefits? The only difference is who pays for it.
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    Yeah as I just mentioned with Brunswick. If the place didn't have Huntsmen and it was the job of the military to protect it instead the difference would have been that Bartleby wouldn't have had a choice to keep the place open. He would have been forced to declare bankrupcy because the government wouldn't want to keep essentially subsidizing his little farm by keeping soldiers stationed there to protect it.
     
    "Does Violence for money" is a description that applies equally well to Boxers as it does to Mercenaries, which shows you how useful it is as a description.
     
    ElMariachi said:
    The idea that RT is rabidly anti-militaristic can be retorted with a simple example: Gen:LOCK. In it, Colonel Raquel Marin is depicted as a competent officer who also tries her best to save as many people as possible and keep her humanity in her methods.
    In fact, her actions when the Union launched her surprise attack on NYC in the first episode is everything that Ironwood should had done: she organized her troops to protect the evacuation of as many civilians as possible, ordering the retreat when they evacuated as many people as possible while still saying to her soldiers that they can keep their position longer if they think they can hold it to evacuate more people, all that while the Union's murder nano-bots were literally eating alive entire buildings worth of people and their troops punching through their lines of defense, because as soldiers, that's their duty, they signed for this shit. (the situation would be more muddy if those were conscripts, but nothing in the series indicates that they aren't professional soldiers).
    And even four years later when half the USA were under the Union's control and the Vanguard's line stretched thin, she still sent troops everytime a group of refugees tried to cross the frontline, even if it put those troops at the risk of falling into a trap (which is exactly what happens in the first episode), but once again, that's the military's duty to save and protect the people.

    What Ironwood did would be in the same context to start an evacuation when the murder swarm appeared, and when the actual Union troops landed, to order the stop of the evacuation and a total and immediate retreat of all military forces (except for the people of the elite who own the companies and labs that could help in the R&D for the war effort), leaving the people of NYC to be eaten alive by nanodrones or gunned down by Union troops.
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    Have you seen season two? Because
    In it it's revealed that Marin is guilty of some serious war crimes, and the main team turns against her, with her being one of the primary antagonists of that season. She isn't quite as prone to random acts of pointless cruelty as Ironwood, but's its a very similar plotline with the seemingly trustworthy and moral military authority being revealed to actually be a morally bankrupt antagonist, who must be opposed by the individualistic heroes.
     
    mr_stibbons said:
    Have you seen season two? Because
    In it it's revealed that Marin is guilty of some serious war crimes, and the main team turns against her, with her being one of the primary antagonists of that season. She isn't quite as prone to random acts of pointless cruelty as Ironwood, but's its a very similar plotline with the seemingly trustworthy and moral military authority being revealed to actually be a morally bankrupt antagonist, who must be opposed by the individualistic heroes.
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    *goes look at the Tv Tropes page*
    Welp, that's awkward. :V
     
    mr_stibbons said:
    Have you seen season two? Because
    In it it's revealed that Marin is guilty of some serious war crimes, and the main team turns against her, with her being one of the primary antagonists of that season. She isn't quite as prone to random acts of pointless cruelty as Ironwood, but's its a very similar plotline with the seemingly trustworthy and moral military authority being revealed to actually be a morally bankrupt antagonist, who must be opposed by the individualistic heroes.
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    Season 2 was written by HBO, not RT, and the writing decisions made during it have no bearing on RT's opinions.
     
    mr_stibbons said:
    Have you seen season two? Because
    In it it's revealed that Marin is guilty of some serious war crimes, and the main team turns against her, with her being one of the primary antagonists of that season. She isn't quite as prone to random acts of pointless cruelty as Ironwood, but's its a very similar plotline with the seemingly trustworthy and moral military authority being revealed to actually be a morally bankrupt antagonist, who must be opposed by the individualistic heroes.
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    We don't talk about the HBO controlled season.
     
    ElMariachi said:
    From what I get, this is Games of Thrones all over again?
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    I've made that joke before, yes. Basically, as a result of the costs and damages producing season one cost RT, they sold most of the rights and creative controls to season two. And from comments from inside the company, what suggestions they did make to HBO were roundly ignored.
     
    "RT is anti-military"

    One of their founding members is a ex-serviceman. You can depict people in the military as bad without it being condemnation of all military ever.
     
    Mahrac said:
    To be somewhat fair, everything that happened with Gen:lock is a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that people don't pay attention to, and even then there isn't a lot of information on.
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    True enough, but season 2 is so drastically different from season 1, and RTs content in general, even the more adult oriented stuff, that some alarms should probably ring :p
     
    Matrix Dragon said:
    I've made that joke before, yes. Basically, as a result of the costs and damages producing season one cost RT, they sold most of the rights and creative controls to season two. And from comments from inside the company, what suggestions they did make to HBO were roundly ignored.
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    *makes some more digging*
    Oh my god this is Game of Thrones all over again, from the pointless sex scenes to the characters losing their mind out of nowhere.
     
    Humble H Dweller said:
    "DnD adventurers" are just Mercenaries with fantasy spray-paint, dude.

    And Hunters are for-hire Violence-doers that institutionally follow the money over any ideal or cause; certainly over hunting the monsters that threaten all sentient life on their world.

    They're mercenaries.
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    Some Hunters become Mercenaries. Not all do.

    Some might even do the jobs to make ends meet so they can do the real work.

    I don't think it's fair to call Hunters and Mercenaries the same, even if I suspect most Mercs were trained first as hunters.
     
    Putting aside Gen:Lock, I don't think it's a really meaningful statement to say that RT as a company holds any particular views based on what RWBY's (checks) 4-ish living writers have to say. Now, do RWBY's writers hold anti-militaristic views? It definitely feels like they think militaries are part of the method via which authorities aim to maintain a monopoly of violence on the state (only sort of true - that's more of a role police tend to take) and how they are given excessive priority in terms of resources which could really easily be given to people in greater need.

    That last point is very relevant - just last year, in the middle of airing volume 8, there was the Texas power crisis due to winter storms - the state had in 2002 isolated its power grid to reduce power costs and deregulate its energy sector. Partly as a result of this, and partly because of how there wasn't any preparation despite being warned about it, millions of homes and businesses were left without power for several days. It's estimated that several hundreds of people died directly or indirectly as a result of this. Some energy firms made billions of dollars in profits.

    RT obviously did not know this was going to happen, but I have to imagine the coincidences with Mantle being essentially left to freeze to death came from a lifetime of living in a state that by many accounts puts people in a cynical state of mind about its governors. The general anti-authoritarianism feels far more relevant than anti-militarism.

    Edit: I'm now sort of wondering to myself just how separate the authority of a given country and its military are, but that's a whole other can of worms entirely. It's not a stretch to suggest if you distrust your country to do properly fix the infrastructure, you also wouldn't trust them to run a military, but... well, this seems like reading too much into things that can't be verified.
     
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    Parabola said:
    RT obviously did not know this was going to happen, but I have to imagine the coincidences with Mantle being essentially left to freeze to death came from a lifetime of living in a state that by many accounts puts people in a cynical state of mind about its governors. The general anti-authoritarianism feels far more relevant than anti-militarism.
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    Theres also the elephant in the room. Ironwood is the bad guy. Everyone following his orders is either scared out of their minds of him (the rank and file), convincing themselves there's more to the plan or that Ironwood is just bluffing (Clover and Vine), look like they just want to curl up in a ball and are clearly dying inside with each new order(Marrow and Winter), or are blinded by anger and realize how much they fucked up when they calmed down (Elm and Harriet). Not a single person is depicted as just evil.

    The entire focus on the Atlas end of things was the stress and fallout of the wheel being taken by someone who's steering right into an iceberg. I struggle to see how you got "military bad" out of that. Unless the definition of "military bad" is "military didn't swoop in and flawlessly save the day."
     
    erttheking said:
    Everyone following his orders is either scared out of their minds of him (the rank and file)
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    To expand on this: the rank and file who are scared to death are the ones close enough to Ironwood to experience his rage. The majority of the soldiers are the like that guy and gal in the elevator. Confused and scared about what the hell is going on with all the shit that's been going on lately because they're completely out of the loop and have pretty much zero idea what's going on so they default to following orders because that's what they've been conditioned to do and they don't have any better ideas.
     
    erttheking said:
    Unless the definition of "military bad" is "military didn't swoop in and flawlessly save the day."
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    I mean, if it is, then that's going to be the inevitable critque because RWBY has spelled out, in ten story tall flaming letters from the very beginning, that raw force is not going to win the day. And that's . . . kind of what Militaries are meant for.
     
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    I think the main issue with the Atlesian military is that it lacks focus and screentime, aside from the Ace Ops. Which is fine, RWBY isn't a military show after all and it makes perfect sense that RT would rather focus on Hunters and Huntresses, but ever since V2 most of the soldiers' dedicated screentime has featured them either as obstacles to the heroes or easy kills for the villains. V8 had glimpses of them being useful again, but even then their last act was to blow up the SDC freighters. Not exactly a shining record, and it doesn't really pay off the hype that was built up around them IMO.

    Of course, one could argue that portraying the military as useless and villainous as a whole is valid, and I can respect that. Personally I'm always up for soldiers in futuristic gear blowing up scary monsters with guns and missiles, and helping the heroes achieve their objectives. I guess that's the consequence of having played too much Halo.
     
    ZQFMGB said:
    Of course, one could argue that portraying the military as useless and villainous as a whole is valid, and I can respect that. Personally I'm always up for soldiers in futuristic gear blowing up scary monsters with guns and missiles, and helping the heroes achieve their objectives. I guess that's the consequence of having played too much Halo.
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    There's a difference between sympathy for the soldiers and sympathy for the institution. The soldiers are people, fellow citizens, once and future civilians. The institution is a thing which should be serving first the society that created it and then the soldiers comprising it, it should never be above criticism or even ridicule.
     
    Like I can respect politicians as people. But I can also say a lot of politicians are shady
     
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