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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
    • StellarSeeker said:
    Bluntly speaking, all literary analysis is just making up elaborate reinterpretations of the text.

    The reason why you're insisting that this is incorrect because you have already drawn a conclusion regarding the show and don't want to hear different interpretations.
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    I'm asserting that it's incorrect because this is not 'reinterpreting the text', it is straight up ignoring the text.
     
    Leila Hann said:
    "You disagree with me, therefore you are closedminded and irrational."
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    Because attempting to shut down a line of discussion that implies that the show had any level of thought put into it is clearly the sign of rational and deliberate discussion, huh?
    Grimnir said:
    I'm asserting that it's incorrect because this is not 'reinterpreting the text', it is straight up ignoring the text.
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    Look man, you've supported the psychopath Yang interpretation.

    That's actually less valid of a reading than this.
     
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    StellarSeeker said:
    Because attempting to shut down a line of discussion that implies that the show had any level of thought put into it is clearly the sign of rational and deliberate discussion, huh?
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    Listen, I came in to point out a flaw in the analysis. That's not 'shutting down the discussion'; that's participating in the discussion.

    The only one attempting to shut down lines of thought that they don't like here is you.
     
    StellarSeeker said:
    Because attempting to shut down a line of discussion that implies that the show had any level of thought put into it is clearly the sign of rational and deliberate discussion, huh?
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    Expressing disagreement with a given interpretation, and explaining why you disagree with it, isn't exactly what I'd call irrational or unengaging (though the points of contention may or may not be). If you disagree with the substance of our disagreements, and feel like making this known, then you should explain why.

    The only person trying to shut down discussion is you.
     
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    Leila Hann said:
    Expressing disagreement with a given interpretation, and explaining why you disagree with it, isn't exactly what I'd call irrational or unengaging (though the points of contention may or may not be). If you disagree with the substance of our disagreements, and feel like making this known, then you should explain why.
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    Bluntly speaking, I don't think it's going to work. It's why I haven't really been trying to debate.

    The last time we tried doing this, the thread got locked and nobody walked away from it happy.
     
    Leila Hann said:
    "You disagree with me, therefore you are closedminded and irrational."

    Maybe you should try and actually address the substance of the posts you're responding to?
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    Problem is, those posts have no substance, since they pretty much ignore the conversation that had been going on up to that point.

    Here, let me hand it out to you, in case you can't scroll up for whatever reason:
    RWBY Thread III: Time To Say Goodbye

    It's hard to have a conversation when the receiver ignores anything you say.
     
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    Tython82 said:
    That Jaune is a subversion or even better a deconstruction of Anime Shonen protagonists like Naruto and Luffy etc.
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    Hey want to see my film crit hulk impression?

    HEY SO I THINK JAUNE ISN'T QUITE AS REALIZED A CHARACTER AS THE TUMBLR POST SUGGESTS.

    WHILE THERE MAY BE A KIND OF VALUE ON A META LEVEL ON HOW A WHITE CIS MALE REGULARLY DOESN'T FIT ORGANICALLY INTO A NARRATIVE USUALLY CREATED FOR ONE, IN THE SHOW PROPER JAUNE DOESN'T PROVIDE ENOUGH VALUE TO BE WORTH THE EFFORT PUT INTO HIS CHARACTER.

    ADMITTEDLY, THERE IS SOME MEAT TO THE IDEA THAT JAUNE BELIEVES HIMSELF TO BE ENTITLED TO MORE THAN HE'S EARNED BECAUSE OF HIS LEGACY AS AN ARC (SEE: MALE, WHITE), BUT IF IT WERE TRULY INTENDED AS A SUBVERSION OF TROPES, JAUNE WOULD BE PORTRAYED AS LESS OF A NICE GUY AND MORE OF A "NICE GUY", THE KIND WE'RE ALL FAMILIAR WITH -THAT KIND THAT BROWSE R/INCELS.

    ENTITLEMENT HAS CLEARLY BEEN SHOWN TO BE A TOXIC BELIEF BOTH IN OUR CURRENT SOCIETY AND IS EVEN EMBODIED IN JACQUES SCHNEE. HE BELIEVES HE DESERVES HIS WEALTH STOLEN OFF THE BACKS OF A UNDERPRIVILEGED MINORITY AND THE JAUNE IN THIS ANALYSIS BELIEVES HE IS OWED GLORY. BUT WHILE JACQUES IS CLEARLY PORTRAYED AS A VILLAIN, JAUNE ONLY RECIEVED THE GENTLEST OF ADMONISHMENTS FROM PYRRHA AND THE GENERAL INDIFFERENCE OF FATE.

    JAUNE SIMPLY DOESN'T FIT IN WELL WITH THE LARGER NARRATIVE AND LACKS THE CHARM OR CUTENESS THAT OTHER CHARACTERS LIKE SUN, TORCHWICK, OR PENNY HAVE TO MAKE IT MORE FORGIVABLE TO MUCH OF THE AUDIENCE.

    (I couldn't help myself)
     
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    LancerisDead said:
    Problem is, those posts have no substance, since they pretty much ignore the conversation that had been going on up to that point.

    Here, let me hand it out to you, in case you can't scroll up for whatever reason:
    RWBY Thread III: Time To Say Goodbye

    It's hard to have a conversation when the receiver ignores anything you say.
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    I didn't ignore that. I disregarded it, as it's full of actual absurdism.

    Consider the following:
    The reason why people still voice this criticism is not because the RWBY writers screwed up, but because countless other writers did. It's not like Jaune actually stole screentime from our female main characters, but we expect him to do exactly that. It's not that Pyrrha actually got fridged only to further his development, but we expect exactly that to happen.
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    In this segment, the author suggests that Jaune didn't actually steal screen time from team RWBY, we just 'expected' him to do so, and that Pyrrha didn't die for the sake of Jaune's narrative arc, we just expected her to do so.

    Except.... Jaune did take up valuable screen time in season 1 that could have been used for developing Team RWBY's personalities. Pyrrha did get killed, and this was used as part of Jaune's character development.

    But the argument asserts that these aren't bad writing, because... they give no reason. At best, the 'proof' that it's not bad writing is that it's not bad writing, pure circular logic. It's an assertion, and nothing more.

    The post, and it's supporters later on, go on to argue that Jaune is a clever subversion on the shonen hero. There are two major points that came up in support of this argument:
    1. They argue that he subverts the lack of training and dedication of the shonen hero, while ignoring the fact that we see him ignoring opportunities to train and get stronger, and the fact that shonen heroes are frequently depicted as highly dedicated training all the damned time.
    2. They argue that he subverts the idea of getting a teacher through pure willpower and grit by not getting any teachers and having to learn for himself, while ignoring the fact that we see him have a teacher (Pyrrha) literally throw herself at him for basically no reason.
    If you're not concerned with the actual events of RWBY, that's fine; heck, if you were to argue that Jaune was a subversion of a shonen hero because he shows an unusual lack of dedication and interest in training, and because he blew off offers to get help to grow stronger, there would be textual support for that as well.

    But when you argue that we should ignore the actual events which were shown to have occurred because they don't match up with your fanon, like the linked post does (And, yes, the post is clearly asserting that frequently criticized aspects of the show that disagree with their take on it should be ignored- see the quoted portion above) you don't get to play the victim when people point out that that is stupid.
     
    Well, going slightly sideways of this point, it would be an interesting direction to take Jaune's character if they ran with that idea to it's logical extreme and gave him a heel turn.

    UbeOne said:
    Doing so much all-caps tends to be... poor form.
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    I hoped by using the text equivalent of shouting would add a degree of absurdity to what might be accidentally read as an attack on people who like Jaune when that wasn't what I was about to write at all. And also it was fun. I couldn't resist.
     
    Grimnir said:
    But the argument asserts that these aren't bad writing, because... they give no reason. At best, the 'proof' that it's not bad writing is that it's not bad writing, pure circular logic. It's an assertion, and nothing more.
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    You also aren't giving any reasons as to why you think so.

    Jaune took screentime away from team RWBY, true, however that in itself doesn't constitute bad writing. You can argue that the execution wasn't as polished as it could've been, but by the end of the arc Jaune's character did develop (which is what we're arguing), and that is the entire purpose of having a character arc in the first place.

    It would be considered "bad writing" or at least a failure if Jaune was the exact same person at the end of his Dumb Bullying Arc than he was at the beginning, or if the jumps the story took to get there outright contradicted the arc's theme.

    And saying Pyrrah's death being both being bad writing and "just" to motivate Jaune requires one to pretty much ignore everything that's happening in that scene and the one following into it.
     
    LancerisDead said:
    It would be considered "bad writing"
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    That arc is bad writing, just not for those reasons. It's bad for reasons like the plot itself being very cliche with the tired school bully crap with Cardin being such a 2D cutout he's practically transparent, and for the fact that it's a terrible idea to make this essentially a four-parter on a weekly schedule, and the way the characters all seem to just forget that this isn't some normal high school on Earth and that they're all superhumans learning to punt soulless murderbeasts into the dirt for a living and thus at least half of the characters sitting at that table while Cardin was physically assaulting Velvet should and would have done something about it from beating him into paste to just staring him down and telling him to cut it the hell out, but the demands of the plot dictated their characters rather than the other way around.
     
    Grimnir said:
    We.... Are still talking about the guy who is shown sleeping in class and reading comic books when he should be studying, right?

    "He wants to work hard and do it on his own" sort of falls flat when the show has opportunities to show him working hard, and instead uses those opportunities to show him slacking off.
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    I think it's more "he came in expecting to naturally fall into a hero to an extent, and he learned how to work hard, listen to others, etc.".

    Jaune does put himself into being a planner for the team (if not always good at communicating it with the others at first), and changes his approach. Now could this arc been done better...? Definitely, but I see what they were going for.
     
    LancerisDead said:
    Jaune took screentime away from team RWBY, true, however that in itself doesn't constitute bad writing.
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    It is bad writing when the name of the show isn't Jaune Arc: Hunstman or even JNPR, it's RWBY. Jaune got four episodes entirely dedicated to him, a full quarter of the first season and far more screentime than was devoted to any of the actual leads. That's not a good use of available resources.

    Now, where I agree with the Tumblr post is with the idea that in-universe Jaune thinks that he's a shounen action hero and is hilariously wrong, because that was pretty much what I was thinking when he tried to Leeroy Jenkins Cinder at the end of Volume 5. (And I absolutely love that Cinder's response to his big dramatic speech was, "Who are you again?")

    One of the shounen tropes that I'm absolutely sick of is the untrained protagonist dude who triumphs because they naturally have a lot of raw power or a special ability. Especially because this often correlates with the even more obnoxious Faux Action Girl trope where you have a female character with actual training that should be way better at this than the protagonist, but always winds up losing and needing the protagonist to save her.

    I'll also agree that giving him a support/healing power, something that's usually given to female characters, also works against his shounen expectations to a degree.

    And while the only thing that Pyrrha's death is doing for the story right now is motivating Jaune and giving him a gear upgrade (going back to the earlier discussion about how there isn't even a token mention of informing her family), I will agree that when it happened it wasn't really about him the way that Stuffed in the Fridge deaths usually are. She wasn't in that fight because of him, he didn't witness it, Cinder didn't do it to make him suffer (because she neither knows nor cares who he is), her last thoughts weren't of him, etc. But except for Volume 3 when she had the Maiden stuff going on, Pyrrha never really did anything that wasn't about Jaune in some way, either encouraging him to improve himself or pining for him.

    As a subversion of the shounen hero tropes, however, it's a bit wishy-washy. As noted by others, Jaune never really faces any consequences for his misguided attempts to be shounen hero guy. He doesn't get into trouble for faking his way into Beacon or ignoring his schoolwork, doesn't fail at a crucial moment because of his lack of competence, doesn't risk losing friends because of his pig-headed unwillingness to accept help. He still got to have a beautiful and vastly more competent woman fall head over heels in love with him for no apparent reason and devote all her efforts to helping him improve himself. He still gets to go along on the big adventure to save the world, and even gets to keep acting like he's the leader. He still got more screen time than any other character in Volume 1, which is something that you would expect from the protagonist, not the comic relief.

    Later on his screen time hogging would diminish somewhat, but the climax of Volume 5 wound up being about Jaune more than it was about any other character except maybe Yang. Yeah, his attempts to be the hero and 1v1 Cinder end in pathetic failure, but a lot of what happens still revolves around him. Jaune being in danger is what causes Ruby to try to go Silver Eyes Super Seiyan (only to immediately get knocked out, taking our ostensible protagonist out of the fight for much of the climax because otherwise she'd end things too soon with her deus ex machina powers). Cinder spends most of her time fighting Jaune and not Ruby, the person she specifically came there to kill; she might like toying with her prey, but it is still a bit much. She spears Weiss to hurt Jaune, prompting Jaune to spontaneously manifest a new power to save her.

    Jaune might be subverting the shounen protagonist by never becoming competent, but it undermines the subversion when the narrative still treats him like the protagonist at times.
     
    The Narrator said:
    It is bad writing when the name of the show isn't Jaune Arc: Hunstman or even JNPR, it's RWBY. Jaune got four episodes entirely dedicated to him, a full quarter of the first season and far more screentime than was devoted to any of the actual leads. That's not a good use of available resources.

    Now, where I agree with the Tumblr post is with the idea that in-universe Jaune thinks that he's a shounen action hero and is hilariously wrong, because that was pretty much what I was thinking when he tried to Leeroy Jenkins Cinder at the end of Volume 5. (And I absolutely love that Cinder's response to his big dramatic speech was, "Who are you again?")

    One of the shounen tropes that I'm absolutely sick of is the untrained protagonist dude who triumphs because they naturally have a lot of raw power or a special ability. Especially because this often correlates with the even more obnoxious Faux Action Girl trope where you have a female character with actual training that should be way better at this than the protagonist, but always winds up losing and needing the protagonist to save her.

    I'll also agree that giving him a support/healing power, something that's usually given to female characters, also works against his shounen expectations to a degree.

    And while the only thing that Pyrrha's death is doing for the story right now is motivating Jaune and giving him a gear upgrade (going back to the earlier discussion about how there isn't even a token mention of informing her family), I will agree that when it happened it wasn't really about him the way that Stuffed in the Fridge deaths usually are. She wasn't in that fight because of him, he didn't witness it, Cinder didn't do it to make him suffer (because she neither knows nor cares who he is), her last thoughts weren't of him, etc. But except for Volume 3 when she had the Maiden stuff going on, Pyrrha never really did anything that wasn't about Jaune in some way, either encouraging him to improve himself or pining for him.

    As a subversion of the shounen hero tropes, however, it's a bit wishy-washy. As noted by others, Jaune never really faces any consequences for his misguided attempts to be shounen hero guy. He doesn't get into trouble for faking his way into Beacon or ignoring his schoolwork, doesn't fail at a crucial moment because of his lack of competence, doesn't risk losing friends because of his pig-headed unwillingness to accept help. He still got to have a beautiful and vastly more competent woman fall head over heels in love with him for no apparent reason and devote all her efforts to helping him improve himself. He still gets to go along on the big adventure to save the world, and even gets to keep acting like he's the leader. He still got more screen time than any other character in Volume 1, which is something that you would expect from the protagonist, not the comic relief.

    Later on his screen time hogging would diminish somewhat, but the climax of Volume 5 wound up being about Jaune more than it was about any other character except maybe Yang. Yeah, his attempts to be the hero and 1v1 Cinder end in pathetic failure, but a lot of what happens still revolves around him. Jaune being in danger is what causes Ruby to try to go Silver Eyes Super Seiyan (only to immediately get knocked out, taking our ostensible protagonist out of the fight for much of the climax because otherwise she'd end things too soon with her deus ex machina powers). Cinder spends most of her time fighting Jaune and not Ruby, the person she specifically came there to kill; she might like toying with her prey, but it is still a bit much. She spears Weiss to hurt Jaune, prompting Jaune to spontaneously manifest a new power to save her.

    Jaune might be subverting the shounen protagonist by never becoming competent, but it undermines the subversion when the narrative still treats him like the protagonist at times.
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    Going further off of this:

    I think that in season 5, Jaune actually DID become a much better character, and largely for the reasons that the article talks about. But that doesn't really do much to redeem his handling in the previous seasons, and I don't think that that earlier handling was a buildup to this later subversion; it only works as that if you carefully ignore most of the details, and I'd be very surprised if Jaune's season 5 arc was planned any earlier than season 3 at best.

    If the framing of the article had been "this is why Jaune doesn't suck anymore," I'd probably have agreed from the start.
     
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    Violation of Rule 4/5
  • Staff Post
    • violation of rules 4/5 @hellgodsrus if you have a complain about a Mod's ruling, you must head to the 'Ask a Private Question Subforum' to ask clarifications about it, or query an Advocate to write an appeal, if you do not wish to write one yourself.

    You do not pointlessly snipe in-thread about the Mod's action. That is a violation of Rule 5, and together with this post: RWBY Thread III: Time To Say Goodbye - Anime | Page 421, which is in violation of Rule 4, for Spaghetti Posting, you've been infracted for 25 Points.


    This is also a general call-out to the posters In-Thread. If you feel the discussion is pointless, then why are you discussing it to begin with?

    And if you feel it isn't, then put effort into it. And if you put effort into it, and are ignored, then either persist on your ideas properly, or let it go and move on. Whether or not RWBY is written poorly, do you really want to foul the next five minutes of your life because someone else on the internet has a different opinion from yours on why the Author's Curtains are Blue in the text or has decided to conveniently ignore your well-constructed criticisms? Shrug it off as agreeing to disagree, and move along.

    Have a nice day.
     
  • Staff Post
    • Leila Hann said:
    I think that in season 5, Jaune actually DID become a much better character,
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    Jaune is much more tolerable when he's being treated like the supporting character that he's supposed to be instead of like the main character.

    By comparison, Ren and Nora played fairly minor roles all through the first three seasons and never usurped control of the narrative, so the one time that they actually do take center stage in late season 4 to tell their backstories, it doesn't have the same "not this shit again" feeling as when Jaune does it.
     
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