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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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    strange_person said:
    One of the world's leading military strategists
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    Personally ironwood seems to have his position through a lack of competition rather than his own virtues.
    Even within the atlas military his own subordinates lack any of their own initiative and are extremely deferential including in private that speaks to me not of a well developed military with a robust hierarchy but of a cult of personality clothed in the trappings of a military.
     
    strange_person said:
    I did say "leading," rather than "best." Wednesday 18 March 2020
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    Hey, don't insult Tagon by comparison! :p The man has shown that while he had many flaws, he also took the job seriously, learned from his mistakes, and was willing to accept the consequences of his actions. Up to and including giving his life for the mission rather than his men. Several times. Even if he was left helpless and alone in a dying city with Salem, he'd still try and shoot her, or more likely Cinder.
     
    The comparison's not meant to be insulting (ETA: to Tagon, anyway), just an illustration of the opposite end of a sliding scale between "flaws willingly acknowledged" and "flaws retained or made worse."
     
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    Keep in mind that a whole planet of semi-immortal people failing to get along, and then feral goo-monsters wandering the ruins, is literally schlock's backwater home town. What has Salem got that the Bradicor didn't?
     
    Carrnage said:
    Personally ironwood seems to have his position through a lack of competition rather than his own virtues.
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    Personally I think you are right, and his luck and Mantle Medical know how has always let his sacrifice plays work out for him well enough that he can still tell himself it was the right call when it manifestly wasn't preventing him from growing out of his self defeating mindset
     
    Carrnage said:
    Personally ironwood seems to have his position through a lack of competition rather than his own virtues.
    Even within the atlas military his own subordinates lack any of their own initiative and are extremely deferential including in private that speaks to me not of a well developed military with a robust hierarchy but of a cult of personality clothed in the trappings of a military.
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    I think ultimately this is a big part of why things went downhill so quickly. Without Oz and Glynda to be respectable peers he was left with Atlesian politicians, and a bunch of enthusiastic yes men/women instead of a real support network.
     
    Ironwood's fundamental problem is that he mistakes the tactical for the strategic and the strategic for political.
    This is a common problem for most military officers and one of the reasons civilian oversight is so essential.

    An army is going to do it's best to be very good at the fighting, it'll spend untold amounts of treasure on the fighting if you let it. An army with a well developed general staff will also become fairly good at deciding when and where to fight.

    But traditionally armies are absolute idiots about the *why* to fight. Not because no one involved is smart, but because they come up through a system where the question isn't 'do we do a violence or not?' but 'How do we do a violence?'
    Their incentives are to fight whenever possible to justify all that they're doing.

    Ironwood falls into this trap because he's allowed the tactical consideration of 'how to best defend Atlas' to override his strategic and political concerns. All of his decisions ultimately rest on his focus on how to *immediately* protect Atlas and only then think about other actions.

    Strategically he needs to bring the fight to Salem. Letting the enemy have tempo is bad operationally. As long as he lets her set the pace, eventually she wins. However, he is not prepared to take a tactical risk for that. So he comes up with the Amity plan, and it's not actually a good plan. It relies entirely on the other kingdoms both believing in him, and not rolling over, and them rallying to Atlas for no reason beyond 'I said so'. If he had sent out his forces to help the other kingdoms to reinforce Mistral and Vacuo to help Vale rebuild, then he'd have no need to risk it all on the Amity gamble.
    However, he can't give up the need to protect Atlas. So the troops stay. Even though it ultimately means he's been defeated both politically and strategically from the beginning.

    Politically, he needs to unite the world, that is the win condition that he's been told. That when the Kingdoms are united and working together they can force Salem back. One person can't keep her down for long, but you five thousand people shooting her in the head for days on end? Yeah that'll probably ruin her week. However gaining that unity requires both trust, and actual negotiation which James just isn't that good at.

    So he doubles down on what he knows the immediate consideration of 'how to defend Atlas' rather than working to accomplish any of the strategic or political goals he should be having.
     
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