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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
    • Pugman said:
    random thought
    but I think I have another point against the Black Sun ship
    That being, the fact that Sun and Neptune were forgotten during the Paladin Fight in V2.
    If Blake was meant to end up with Sun or they were actually building that pair for future romance than I doubt they would of forgotten the existence of one half of the ship
    In fact that also discredits the Iceberg ship (Weiss x Neptune) in a way.

    eh, either way this is just me rambling my random thoughts.
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    Sun and Neptune were meant to be part of the Paladin fight, but Monty was having too much trouble getting Sun's weapons to work properly so he eventually went "Fuck it" and scrapped them being there. The manga retelling from a few years ago included them in the fight.

    It's not entirely fair to say the show forgot them when they were meant to be there.
     
    Crack idea: during the E-Vacuo-Ation, some Faunus take them into shelter. The air then becomes awkward when they talk about an absent member of their family: Tukson.
     
    Epsilon Rose said:
    I doubt anyone there would even recognize the name and he left White Fang before the start of Volume 1.
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    I don't think he'd actually properly left the White Fang yet when he died; he knows who Emerald and Mercury are, for one, and the way Emerald phrases it makes it sound like he's still considered a member, at least, and that he's planning to just quietly GTFO and head to Vacuo rather than try to, like, formally quit or anything. Presumably he has some idea on how kindly Adam would take to his trying to cut ties openly, and/or that he already knows too much.

    Emerald said:
    You shouldn't make a promise you can't keep, Tukson. (Mercury activates a switch near the entrance causing a front window to darken.) I hear that you're planning on leaving. Moving all the way to Vacuo. (Mercury activates another switch and the window in the front door darkens.) Your brothers in the White Fang won't be happy to hear that. (Mercury activates the third and final switch, darkening the last window as he smiles creepily at Tukson.) And neither are we... You know who we are, don't you?
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    Psyga315 said:
    Did we though? That was more "everyone is pissed at you and the only reason we're not beating you to dust is because of pressing matters and because of this dude's power to read the script from flower petals".
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    Even still there is no reason to beat Emerald with more and more fall out for her actions.
    We already got Emerald being faced with the ramifications without even a word spoken about it when she and the whale group walked by that group of survivors taking shelter in the subway.
    Ya know, "Show, Don't Tell", one of the many things certain critics claim RWBY doesn't know how to do.
     
     
    Matrix Dragon said:
    I'm pretty sure it's driven Eddie and Co to drink after volume seven and all the 'IRONWOOD IS EVIL OUT OF NOWHERE!' idiots
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    I mean even if Ironwood's fall was set up, it doesn't erase that his Volume 8 writing is just fucking abysmal and borderline out of character for him to the point where they were self conscious enough to throw his glorified mental disorder Semblance out during a panel so superfans could run defense for them (a semblance, it's worth noting, was such a blatant narrative band-aid to cover for them that not even Ironwood's voice actor knew about until after Volume 8 had finished recording because a fan had to tell him what it was).

    Adding in that him and Salem are both hyped up as villains just to be pushed aside so Cinder can be the baddy for the final episodes means that him being evil adds nothing of merit to the story and it fails to execute on the two interesting plot threads of Ironwood's fall in having Qrow and Ironwood fight, which had been actually set up since Volume 3, and having him talk with Ozcar. Instead he just kills Jacques and has a bad boss fight with Winter which is solely there to keep Winter out of the Cinder fight long enough to force the "Jaune shoves Penny in a fridge" scene. Everything that makes Ironwood an interesting character is tossed out so he can be a generic roadblock until the story gets bored with him and shuffles him offstage so they can play with their Cinder action figure again.

    Being blunt: He's badly written in Volume 8 regardless of what setup may or may not exist in prior seasons and being frank, the story shouldn't have made Ironwood a full villain since it means he has to compete with Salem and Cinder for the screentime, leaving all three of them feeling unsatisfactory character wise.

    Not to mention the whole "Loss of arm equals loss of humanity" bullshit that taints everything and anything they ever say about Ironwood from a meta POV meaning his arc ends with a shitty ableist message that's only compounded with Penny's arc ending in the same episode with a glorification of suicide.
     
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    ArtFartCop said:
    I mean even if Ironwood's fall was set up, it doesn't erase that his Volume 8 writing is just fucking abysmal and borderline out of character for him to the point where they were self conscious enough to throw his glorified mental disorder Semblance out during a panel so superfans could run defense for them
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    The worst part is that there are people who legit think Ironwood is always as ax crazy as he was in Volume 8. If that were true, pretty sure Oz would entered Oscar back in Volume 2 and we'd see if Glynda really was the Relic of Choice or just a human.

    My theory for why this happened is because they realized midway that, aside from the Hound (who was only there because of Oscar) Salem exclusively attacked Atlas and inadvertently proved Ironwood correct. So, to try and counter this, they put his jump to "he can't be reasoned with so he must die" on fast forward.

    Unfortunately, he had to contend with the dozen of other subplots, thus making his defeat extremely prolonged of "I am now the villai- Nope, I'm beaten. Wait! Now I can have a part of the final battle but only with one person and she just up and leaves me to die off screen."

    Like, you can tell they needed to chop up loose ends when the most we got out of Qrow's hate boner with Ironwood was Robyn victim blaming the very guy he's trying to avenge.
     
    Anyone who thought Ironwood was a good or rational guy when he introduced himself in V2 as:

    Stupid enough to bring a large chunk of his army to a festival commemorating peace (As well as blinded by ego enough to think Salem gave a shit). Followed it up by being an ally of the SDC. Then an idiot with so little strategic acumen he thought charging through Grimm infested wilderness and blatantly alerting his enemies was a good idea. Who back stabbed Ozpin to try and take control of the festival and then proceeded to fail miserably at his own assigned task to the point where he needed Ozpin to tell him to actually use the army he brought to Vale because he was too busy trying to make excuses about hiding the dead robot girl. Was a good guy?

    Wasn't paying attention.

    Especially when he followed that up with betraying Mistral, threatening a critic he'd once deemed a friend, announcing to the man's face his intent to become a dictator as a veiled threat for the man to keep himself in line and who turned Mantle into a police state that had the main cast going "Hey maybe seeking out Ironwood is a bad idea" from the moment the saw it.

    He was never that smart, that heroic or that competent.

    Did he have good moments? Sure. So too did lots of tyrants, despots and leaders of ultimately failed states. Doesn't change their end point, or the shitty mentalities that brought them to said point.
     
    Zam said:
    He was never that smart, that heroic or that competent.
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    Let's just say that I disagree strongly. What Ironwood became was tragic, but before his fall I believe that he genuinely did want to do the right thing.

    But in the end, fear, and his response to that fear, was his undoing.
     
    Lazurman said:
    Let's just say that I disagree strongly. What Ironwood became was tragic, but before his fall I believe that he genuinely did want to do the right thing.

    But in the end, fear, and his response to that fear, was his undoing.
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    As I said, Ironwood 'had' some good qualities but he was literally introduced as a guy who gleefully aligned himself with the SDC, he can't have been 'that' good*. Then he just got worse over time.
    *Or that smart for the aforementioned reasons of bad strategy.
     
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    Zam said:
    As I said, Ironwood 'had' some good qualities but he was literally introduced as a guy who gleefully aligned himself with the SDC, he can't have been 'that' good*. Then he just got worse over time.
    *Or that smart for the aforementioned reasons of bad strategy.
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    I mean the SDC holds a monopoly of a resource that is vital for a society to exist in the first place. The closest we have to that is oil and even that is not a good comparison since Dust is even more valuable do to how diverse it's uses are.

    In irl we have countries bending over backwards to accommodate and maintain good relationship with despots due to them being a major oil producer. So if one nations somehow holds a monopoly of oil I don't know how far the world would accommodate them.
     
    Zam said:
    Followed it up by being an ally of the SDC.
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    While there's a lot of incredibly slanted takes in that rant, this stands out. Ironwood and Jaques are at each others throats in every scene they share together. The SDC has a de-facto monopoly on a critical resource and a ton of political clout, Ironwood's inability to find other suppliers or reform them doesn't make him their ally.
     
    MonochromeXClown said:
    I mean the SDC holds a monopoly of a resource that is vital for a society to exist in the first place. The closest we have to that is oil and even that is not a good comparison since Dust is even more valuable do to how diverse it's uses are.

    In irl we have countries bending over backwards to accommodate and maintain good relationship with despots due to them being a major oil producer. So if one nations somehow holds a monopoly of oil I don't know how far the world would accommodate them.
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    I doesn't hold a monopoly, otherwise every other nation would completely collapse the moment Atlas back stabbed everyone and closed its borders to look out for only a third of its kingdom. What's more, given we know the SDC is abusive, shady and gets its workers killed, the fact Ironwood makes no effort to legislate about that and actively partners with them rather than just "Having" to buy from them is rather indicative of his moral failings I feel.
    mr_stibbons said:
    While there's a lot of incredibly slanted takes in that rant, this stands out. Ironwood and Jaques are at each others throats in every scene they share together. The SDC has a de-facto monopoly on a critical resource and a ton of political clout, Ironwood's inability to find other suppliers or reform them doesn't make him their ally.
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    Jac literally describes Ironwood as a friend, Ironwood is preening about his Alliance with the SDC in V2. They only turn on one another when Jac notes Ironwood is damaging his business and becoming a dictator, which was a conversation also involving Ironwood damaging Jac's desk to intimidate him and then threatening Jac with his impending dictatorship to stay in line.
     
    Zam said:
    Jac literally describes Ironwood as a friend, Ironwood is preening about his Alliance with the SDC in V2. They only turn on one another when Jac notes Ironwood is damaging his business and becoming a dictator, which was a conversation also involving Ironwood damaging Jac's desk to intimidate him and then threatening Jac with his impending dictatorship to stay in line
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    Because nobody ever has falsely claimed to be someone's friend for political reasons. If they're such great allies before S4, why was Winter disinherited for joining the military? If Ironwood and Jaques were so buddy buddy, then surely either Ironwood would reject her application or Jaques would not see it as a threat.

    As for why Ironwood didn't forcibly reform the SDC, it's quite simple-Ironwood does not actually have the dictatorial power his haters claim he has before V8. Prior to that he does follow Atlas law and is constrained by Atlas politics. You can see this in how he doesn't interfere with the V7 elections when both candidates are openly hostile towards him.
     
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