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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
    • Playing devil's advocate here.

    It took a combination of traumatic moments to cause Ruby's Silver Eyes. Otherwise she'd Silver Eyed when she saw Penny die.

    Likewise, she had to go through some moments before the cap is blown off... But slightly less because she already unlocked it.
     
    You know, I don't really care to keep up with all the minutia of this argument, but maybe I'll throw in a random question adjacent to this subject.

    Do we know how Ruby feels about Cinder? No headcanon, has Ruby ever expressed complicated feelings about the murderer of two of her friends?

    I mean, Jaune got angry, and was straight up ready to murder a motherfucker. His sword just grazed Cinder's bad eye, and we see something like shock or even fear in her other. It's clearly conveyed that if things had gone slightly worse, Jaune would be cleaning Cinder's brains off his sword.

    We know Ruby was sad about Penny and Pyrrha, probably scared it might happen to another of her friends, bit those don't put her in any complicated or ethically challenging place.

    We knew Cinder wanted revenge on Ruby, but it was a pretty one-sided relationship in terms of what we saw. Could Ruby compromise ethically in order to achieve some greater good? Has Ruby ever even examined her own morality or had it seriously challenged?

    It goes back to a matter I had with the Breach in season 2. Ruby knocks a lot of WF off the train in her attempt to stop it. While still basically in the "right" for trying to stop a terrorist attack, her actions still lead to many people (evil people, perhaps, but still people. Not monsters), dying sooner.

    But season 3 wasn't really interested in addressing that. Just like it wasn't interested in exploring Ruby's feelings in this season about good and evil and the realities involved with being in this fight.

    Whether you think the spotlight focused too heavily on Jaune or it was just fine, it seems like a seriously missed opportunity to do something interesting with Ruby regardless.
     
    Mook said:
    -Snip-
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    I don't really give a fuck about what you've been "saying all this time." Part of the reason I choose to engage you was because you decided to justify Ruby's actions by rationalizing that Jaune was in greater danger than Weiss; that rationalization is only relevant if Ruby went through the same thought process, otherwise you're making empty arguments. And reading through this last post of yours, you're still doing it. Everything else you're throwing at me is something I'm only barely concerned with. Either show that Ruby agrees with you or drop it with the pointless comparisons between Jaune and Weiss' situations.

    As a show of good faith, I'll tell you my own rationalization: Ruby wouldn't have prioritized Jaune over Weiss if she had been aware of her surroundings. However, Ruby has been shown to repeatedly shown signs of... I want to say "tunnel vision," but that sounds too extreme, so imagine something lighter. It comes up ever since she first met Weiss in the Emerald Forest and has surfaced again and again on occassions where she decides to go off by herself on whatever self-imposed quest she gets into her head at the moment, often to the detriment of others. This lack of awareness and concern for her team/friends could possibly explain why Ruby was so utterly uncaring of Weiss up until the point where she regains conciousness and is forced to re-check the enviroment. It's not that Ruby makes a judgement based on perceived risks, it's that Ruby got herself a goal and until she gets it the rest of the world doesn't exist. It's a weak argument, it can fall apart quickly, it paints Ruby in a less than positive light and it doesn't solve the problem of Jaune hogging the spotlight to the detriment of others. However, it's one that has a solid if teneous basis on Ruby's observed behavior, so for now I find it satisfactory.

    In addition...
    You know it would have spared us all a lot of time and effort if you had just admitted that up front right? I certainly wouldn't have bothered wasting my time responding to you if I knew that you didn't actually have a reason to think the story should have been changed other than your purely subjective dislike of a character. :eyeroll:
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    Talk about putting words in mouth... I wouldn't say my number five is someone I dislike. As it happens, I'm quite fond of him, but that's no reason to not recognize poor writting when I see it.
     
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    Barnaby said:
    You know, I don't really care to keep up with all the minutia of this argument, but maybe I'll throw in a random question adjacent to this subject.

    Do we know how Ruby feels about Cinder? No headcanon, has Ruby ever expressed complicated feelings about the murderer of two of her friends?

    I mean, Jaune got angry, and was straight up ready to murder a motherfucker. His sword just grazed Cinder's bad eye, and we see something like shock or even fear in her other. It's clearly conveyed that if things had gone slightly worse, Jaune would be cleaning Cinder's brains off his sword.

    We know Ruby was sad about Penny and Pyrrha, probably scared it might happen to another of her friends, bit those don't put her in any complicated or ethically challenging place.

    We knew Cinder wanted revenge on Ruby, but it was a pretty one-sided relationship in terms of what we saw. Could Ruby compromise ethically in order to achieve some greater good? Has Ruby ever even examined her own morality or had it seriously challenged?

    It goes back to a matter I had with the Breach in season 2. Ruby knocks a lot of WF off the train in her attempt to stop it. While still basically in the "right" for trying to stop a terrorist attack, her actions still lead to many people (evil people, perhaps, but still people. Not monsters), dying sooner.

    But season 3 wasn't really interested in addressing that. Just like it wasn't interested in exploring Ruby's feelings in this season about good and evil and the realities involved with being in this fight.

    Whether you think the spotlight focused too heavily on Jaune or it was just fine, it seems like a seriously missed opportunity to do something interesting with Ruby regardless.
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    Well, she chopped off Tyrian's tail...

    I kinda want to see her have a Gon style morality.
     
    Barnaby said:
    Has Ruby ever even examined her own morality or had it seriously challenged?
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    Torchwick did so in V3, but its "seriousness" was probably hurt by the fact that he got eaten for his troubles. Ruby might actually have learnt the opposite of what Roman was saying, since it seems the enviroment just saved her life :p
     
    Kintty said:
    I don't really give a fuck about what you've been "saying all this time."
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    Well then I don't give a flying fuck about whatever the hell your opinion is. Done. Argument finished.


    Barnaby said:
    Do we know how Ruby feels about Cinder? No headcanon, has Ruby ever expressed complicated feelings about the murderer of two of her friends?
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    Well I remember in Volume 3 she sounded pretty hateful when saying Cinder's name although it was sort of covered up by how much she was tearing up at the time. When mistakenly thinking that Tyrian served Cinder in Volume 4 she certainly sounded like she had a grudge. And when talking to Emerald in this volume she can't comprehend why anyone would work for her. All in all Ruby does not have a positive impression of Cinder, at all. Which you know, makes sense considering that Cinder not only murdered Pyrrha and Ozpin (and the former Fall Maiden) but also arranged for the murder of Penny and the Level 9 Grimm attack on Vale + robot hack that probably killed thousands of people at minimum and utterly wrecked Beacon and the internet.

    Barnaby said:
    We knew Cinder wanted revenge on Ruby, but it was a pretty one-sided relationship in terms of what we saw. Could Ruby compromise ethically in order to achieve some greater good? Has Ruby ever even examined her own morality or had it seriously challenged?

    It goes back to a matter I had with the Breach in season 2. Ruby knocks a lot of WF off the train in her attempt to stop it. While still basically in the "right" for trying to stop a terrorist attack, her actions still lead to many people (evil people, perhaps, but still people. Not monsters), dying sooner.
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    Honestly Ruby's willingness to be ruthless when necessary is one of the things I like the most about her. I'm sick and tired of the bullshit "no killing" rule that comic books seems to have ingrained into the public consciousness. Ruby wants to make the world a better place and the world would objectively be a better place without Cinder "burn down the world to take more power" Fall in it. For lesser evils like Emerald she's willing to attempt to negotiate first and if she's in a position to do so she will offer the opportunity to surrender but for her Good does not equal Dumb and her morals are not so inflexible that she will stand by and let greater evils happen just so that she can keep her hands clean.
     
    Hmm, so it seems I've been cut out of the debate, frustrating but oh well. Regardless, nothing has really changed my opinion on the matter; however I'd like to address a different, FNDM related thing to do with one, Blake Belladonna if the previous debate is 'over'.

    Namely, the idea I have seen propped up, for varying reasons, that Blake did not enjoy her teams company, does not take to people easily, did not smile much around them and or did not smile until much later & or only did due to outside influences, had trouble getting along with them for awhile, or generally suffered their presence before warming up to them, I offer my counter thusly:

    Day 1, after finding out Yang read Ruby stories and Ruby wants to make the world a better place:


    Day 2, her following and choosing Yang as her partner:



    Day 2 with Yang after specifically choosing Yang to be her partner:

    They also have a moment:


    Day 3, with RWBY, half of whom she did not choose to team up with:
     
    Going to break my self imposed exile to poke my head in and say I see @Mook 's point of view - the entire scene is basically saying that Jaune running in like your Doran's Ring Lux Support in YoloQ only gets people hurt, and arguing that it somehow empowers Jaune or makes him central misses the point - but I also see the point of others who are saying that the serious injury of someone who Ruby's described as her 'besty' should probably have more emotional impact than the potential injury of a close-ish friend.

    How I would've done it is had a moment with Ruby looking around in panic - focusing in on Weiss on her knees, Yang and Merc looking even but Mercury is smirking, Oscar looking tiny next to Leo - then she sees Jaune and Cinder charging each other. So it's clear that Jaune/Cinder is the straw that breaks the camel's back, not the whole trigger by itself, which I think is what they were going for.
     
    One neat thing I think could be done if Cinder is dead and Emerald groomed to take her place is that V6 would focus mostly on the heroes dealing with Ironwood's new... 'intense' management style, and figures like Jac trying to exploit or subvert it but not always for good reasons,.

    Salem could send like, Watts and Tyrien with orders of 'make all things pear shaped' but nothing more, IE, spread chaos and make things worse and be ready to get out of dodge fast.

    Watts is suspicious and concerned but he only puts it together like, two thirds of the way through the volume hat he and Tyrien are just distractions, and as he's expressing shock and disbelief that Salem would trust some 'street urchin' the scene cuts to Emerald getting out of an airship, either in a new badass outfit, or in a disguise looking calm, in control, maybe even a little disconnected like she doesn't care about anything anymore but somehow still holds an intense focus.

    Then, while the rest of the cast is dealing with the business, the story sporadically flashes back to Emerald doing spy and thief things via disguises, skill and her Semblance and culminates in her impersonating Ironwood to the local Maiden to trick them into opening the Vault (Or be vulnerable to a Grimm bug strike) and then just walking out with the Relic before anyone's the wiser (She could maybe pull something similar with Haven's relic)

    Then she just calls up Watts, informs him its time to leave, he rankles but she just bluntly tells him he's leaving now or not at all and hangs up and they escape,possibly with an entirely ignorant pilot who doesn't realize who or what they are carrying, or how they are bypassing Grimm ETC.

    The narrative theme of it could be that, well, the people shouldn't be fighting each other cos that gives Salem the in she needs to take what she wants IE, everyone was so wrapped up dealing with Ironwood, who was so wrapped up in just "looking after" Atlas, that they totally missed Emerald's machinations, or if anyone noticed, it was someone like a member of RWBY but they couldn't marshal their forces and catch her in time.

    It gives the villains a worrying win, establishes Emerald's new role and intelligence, without things suddenly taking a huge jump in terms of power scaling that a Maiden Cinder creates, and the heroes can still have their own win, because a threat created by and or inadvertently unleashed by Ironwood, or Jac's actions (Like say the SDC's Grimm experiments) could have necessitated a big epic throw down, thus they saved Atlas/Mantle, but lost a Relic.
     
    hellgodsrus said:
    Going to break my self imposed exile to poke my head in and say I see @Mook 's point of view - the entire scene is basically saying that Jaune running in like your Doran's Ring Lux Support in YoloQ only gets people hurt, and arguing that it somehow empowers Jaune or makes him central misses the point - but I also see the point of others who are saying that the serious injury of someone who Ruby's described as her 'besty' should probably have more emotional impact than the potential injury of a close-ish friend.

    How I would've done it is had a moment with Ruby looking around in panic - focusing in on Weiss on her knees, Yang and Merc looking even but Mercury is smirking, Oscar looking tiny next to Leo - then she sees Jaune and Cinder charging each other. So it's clear that Jaune/Cinder is the straw that breaks the camel's back, not the whole trigger by itself, which I think is what they were going for.
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    Personally, I think it'd have been better to trigger Jaune by injuring Ren or Nora, or possibly Ruby. There's far more of a connection between those four than there ever was between Jaune and Weiss. Triggering Ruby's silver eyes was completely unnecessary; it didn't achieve anything that couldn't have been done by more mundane means.
     
    They just wanted to subvert her silver eyes being a deus ex machina.

    My response is that their presentation of events needs to get better before they should really try to subvert anything. Basic plots work if you do it well.
     
    I always felt that the silver eyes thing was a bad idea, personally. Ruby was a protagonist who was capable because of her training and skill and unorthodox tactics. She didn't need a deus ex machina superpower. And now the writers have to come up with reasons why she can't use it, or fight scenes would be over immediately, so we get goofy stuff like Ruby getting clocked over the head at the start of the fight.
     
    The Narrator said:
    I always felt that the silver eyes thing was a bad idea, personally. Ruby was a protagonist who was capable because of her training and skill and unorthodox tactics. She didn't need a deus ex machina superpower. And now the writers have to come up with reasons why she can't use it, or fight scenes would be over immediately, so we get goofy stuff like Ruby getting clocked over the head at the start of the fight.
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    To be fair we have no idea what Silver Eye powers do to regular humans since it seems to be a power meant to defeat super natural threats like the Maidens(Or Wizards considering the source of those powers) and Grimm.
     
    Tython82 said:
    To be fair we have no idea what Silver Eye powers do to regular humans since it seems to be a power meant to defeat super natural threats like the Maidens(Or Wizards considering the source of those powers) and Grimm.
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    Given Raven wasn't effected by her silver eyes I think it just affects Grimm.

    Ooh another good reason to have Emerald as a foe, provided she doesn't get a Grimm power up, no real threat from silver eyes for her as a villain!

    Vindictus said:
    They could have also done this by like... Actually having her train and try to figure out how to use her silver eye laser bullshit. And using it in situations OTHER than the climactic final battle of the season.
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    Honestly I was fine with the idea of subverting it, but yeah the fact she hasn't asked about it at all, nor has Ozpin or Qrow brought it up, and the general handling of the scene, its pretty frustrating.
     
    Zam said:
    Honestly I was fine with the idea of subverting it, but yeah the fact she hasn't asked about it at all, nor has Ozpin or Qrow brought it up, and the general handling of the scene, its pretty frustrating.
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    It pretty much hasn't been discussed at all since the end of Volume 3, and all we got there were some super vague comments from Qrow, which makes me suspect that the writers haven't actually decided where they come from or how they work yet.
     
    The Narrator said:
    It pretty much hasn't been discussed at all since the end of Volume 3, and all we got there were some super vague comments from Qrow, which makes me suspect that the writers haven't actually decided where they come from or how they work yet.
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    Possible, but given Ozpin emphasizing it when they met I find that unlikely, I can see it as being something they are unsure how to go forward with though.
     
    Zam said:
    Possible, but given Ozpin emphasizing it when they met I find that unlikely, I can see it as being something they are unsure how to go forward with though.
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    It's also possible that there was an intention from the beginning to have silver eyes be a thing, but no details on exactly how it would work. Or possibly those details were only in Monty's head and are now lost.
     
    The Narrator said:
    It's also possible that there was an intention from the beginning to have silver eyes be a thing, but no details on exactly how it would work. Or possibly those details were only in Monty's head and are now lost.
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    Possible, but I'd rather not jump to conclusions on that front, plus if I recall the Fall of Beacon was, to one degree or another, conceived of early (Pyrrha's death certainly was) so presumably how/something to stop it would also have been in the books.
     
    Zam said:
    Given Raven wasn't effected by her silver eyes I think it just affects Grimm.
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    Are you sure?

    IIRC Qrow and Raven fought their own battle somewhere else while this was going on, so Raven wasn't anywhere near Cinder and Ruby.

    Qrow only came back to save Oscar from Hazel, and pretty much the moment Raven returned they went to the vault. So I don't think that we can say for sure if the silver eye things affect her or not (we can say for sure that it doesn't impact Vernal :V)
     
    The Narrator said:
    It pretty much hasn't been discussed at all since the end of Volume 3, and all we got there were some super vague comments from Qrow, which makes me suspect that the writers haven't actually decided where they come from or how they work yet.
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    Silver eyes come from the moon, duh.

    SPOOKY MOD EDIT: I'm serious about this and will be bookmarking this post to say I told you so sometime. Also, when Adam reveals his silver eyes I demand a tribute of his weight in likes :V
     
    Itaywex said:
    Are you sure?

    IIRC Qrow and Raven fought their own battle somewhere else while this was going on, so Raven wasn't anywhere near Cinder and Ruby.

    Qrow only came back to save Oscar from Hazel, and pretty much the moment Raven returned they went to the vault. So I don't think that we can say for sure if the silver eye things affect her or not (we can say for sure that it doesn't impact Vernal :V)
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    Not 100% But no one has specified them as being an anti magic weapon, merely anti Grimm, and and given Raven screaming and falling to her knees would probably have been noticed by someone, I feel fairly confident in saying its the Grimm parts that make Cinder vulnerable, but that's just me.
     
    I think Silver Eyes are only effective on Grimm, not on Maidens.

    Cinder has that Grimm arm, and before that, used a Grimm to take Amber's power.
     
    ColdGoldLazarus said:
    She didn't have the Grimm arm in Volume 3, though.
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    UbeOne said:
    and before that, used a Grimm to take Amber's power.
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    During that time when she stole half of Amber's power, she used a Grimm parasite-like thing that was in a glove. After it was used, it was, if I remember right, absorbed, and then that black tattoo formed on her back. I think of that Grimm as an implant, designed to hold a Maiden's powers.
     
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