Remove ads

RWBY Thread III: Time To Say Goodbye

Reader mode
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.
     
    Last edited:
  • Staff Post
    • Hey just so ya'll know: I am a certified dumbass. I don't know history. I don't know politics. I'm also bad at math.

    That's why my posts about how cool it would be to see Blake just shoot a stupid racist in their stupid face rather than waffle about with all this "nonviolence" have absolutely nothing to do with anything in the real world. I'm strictly talking about media. And in media, I'm 100% done with letting the powerful and corrupt off the hook by like, singing a song about free love or something. And by "letting them off the hook" I mean not shooting stupid slaveowners in their stupid, slaveowning faces.

    Does it have real-life applicability? I don't know and I definitely don't care. Learning things is for chumps. I'd rather spend my time watching cute girls use magic to fight evil. And by "evil" I mean white people corrupt individuals with the power to oppress the masses.
     
    Last edited:
    thesevenwielder said:
    Really?
    *googles star spangled banner*
    Huh. Learn something new every day. Wonder why that song is the national anthem then. Odd.

    Still, point is the idea of a nonviolent revolution is a new one, and they frequently almost never work. Sure violent revolutions often end up with someone just as bad in charge, but nonviolent ones are even less successful.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    You keep saying that but can you actually back that up? There have been hundreds of revolutions and revolts in the modern era but the vast majority have been failures, for example even in the USA only the revolutionary war was successful where Shay's rebellion, the Whisky Rebellion, Fries's Rebellion, the various Slave Rebellions, the Mormon Rebellion, John Brown's Raid, and of course The Civil War all managed to fail.

    There have been less than a hundred nonviolent revolutions on the other hand, and personally I can only think of one that isn't on going that didn't ultimately meet their goal, and that is the movement of the Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic.
     
    thesevenwielder said:
    Actually it's the complete opposite. Peaceful revolutions are very rare and almost never work. People like Ghandi and MLK jr. are exceptions. Throughout history, nearly every revolution ever was violent. For better or worse, violence is what works.

    My own country owes its very existence to violent revolution, the national anthem literally has a line that says "the [light from] bombs bursting in air proved through the night that the flag was still there."

    The reason unions even came to exist in the first place was because overworked and underpaid workers had a tendency to lynch the factory owners if they mistreated their workers too much, and unions were a nonviolent way to resolve disputes.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    I think you missed my broader point, which admittedly is because the wording in my post wasn't clear. Even if you want to argue that violent protests are more effective (debatable, but not really my point) they are shit at actually creating a better society afterwards. Violent revolutions tend to create situations worse than the ones they were revolting against. On top of that most people in the society aren't violent revolutionaries or the oppressors. They're innocent people just trying to get by, and they're the people that tend to die in the largest number. That's why I referenced the Real IRA. Most of the people who died in the Troubles were not either IRA members or Unionist members. They were just random people who got caught in the bombings.
     
    As far as I know the only violent revolution to be successful was the American one the others just degenerate into chaos or brutal dictatorships until there is another peaceful revolution that allows for a transfer of power or the cicle repeats itself.
     
    thesevenwielder said:
    Actually it's the complete opposite. Peaceful revolutions are very rare and almost never work. People like Ghandi and MLK jr. are exceptions.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    It's worth noting that there are good arguments to be made that MLK Jr. largely had his success, or at least partially, due to the pressure created by the more radical (and occasionally violent) Black Panther movement. Though whether that makes his movement "Violent" is admittedly contestable.
     
    So just a quick list of a small number of successul violent and or aggressive revolutions just from BC:

    c. 2730 BC: The Set rebellion during the reign of the pharaoh Seth-Peribsen of the Second Dynasty of Egypt.[1]
    2380 BC (short chronology): A popular revolt in the Sumerian city of Lagash deposes King Lugalanda and puts the reformer Urukagina on the throne.

    167–160 BC: The Jewish revolt, in the Hasmonean Revolt, against the Seleucid Empire because of the Hellenization of Judea and the high taxes; Leader of the rebellion is Judah the Maccabi, achieving independence as the Hasmonean Kingdom of Judah.

    206 BC: Ziying, last ruler of the Qin dynasty of China surrenders himself to Liu Bang, leader of a popular revolt and founder of the Han dynasty.

    (Removed one as I misunderstood it)

    509 BC: A political revolution in ancient Rome, following the rape and subsequent suicide of the noblewoman Lucretia, resulted in the Overthrow of the Roman monarchy and the establishment of the Roman Republic.

    508/7 BC: The Athenian Revolution establishing democracy in Athens.[3]

    The idea violent revolutions never/almost never work and or always lead to things being worse feels like a fallacy propped up and lionized by the powerful who would be the one's to be deposed in such a revolution.

    Also here's a post on more recent such events that much like others, get swept under the rug of history and kept out of most schools lest it affect the narrative.

     
    Last edited:
    Zam said:
    The idea violent revolutions never/almost never work and or always lead to things being worse feels like a fallacy propped up and lionized by the powerful who would be the one's to be deposed in such a revolution.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    On the other hand this argument that civil protests are meek and ineffectual ways of bringing about change seems like a fallacy pushed by hardcore radicals who are trying to look for an excuse to take out their frustrations on people they don't agree with. People seem to have a false perception of what civil protest actually is and what violent protests are actually like. Like a real non-violent campaign isn't about sitting around singing protests songs and meekly asking those in power to consider changing things. It's about putting yourself in the line of fire in order to provoke the oppressors to attack. The goal is to shock the society out of their compliance with authority by forcing them to confront the lengths authority will go to in order to keep power. You want to be attacked, you want them to hurt you because in doing so they lose the moral high ground, and you win the hearts and minds of the general public.
     
    VolantRedX said:
    On the other hand this argument that civil protests are meek and ineffectual ways of bringing about change seems like a fallacy pushed by hardcore radicals who are trying to look for an excuse to take out their frustrations on people they don't agree with. People seem to have a false perception of what civil protest actually is and what violent protests are actually like. Like a real non-violent campaign isn't about sitting around singing protests songs and meekly asking those in power to consider changing things. It's about putting yourself in the line of fire in order to provoke the oppressors to attack. The goal is to shock the society out of their compliance with authority by forcing them to confront the lengths authority will go to in order to keep power. You want to be attacked, you want them to hurt you because in doing so they lose the moral high ground, and you win the hearts and minds of the general public.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    I literally never said anything like what you seem to be responding to and I notice you failed to address or acknowledge the numerous examples of successful rebellions I provided which disproved the running theme of "They are always bad/fail."
     
    Generally speaking, it's complicated and the success or failure of any revolution, peaceful or violent, largely depends on a variety of complex and interrelated factors that can't be summed up in a short post on a thread about a 3D action anime.

    To speak purely of the American Revolution, though, a big factor in its relative lack of early instability (and I do mean relative, as there are a lot of early issues with the birth of our nation that we tend to gloss over or neglect) and successful creation of what we might call a "proper" government is that said government was more or less already in place; the English had let the Americans mostly run themselves for a long time, so most of the early business was about the role of the federal government and sectarian disputes like slavery, while state and local governments didn't really need much except for some standardization and formalization of preexisting institutions. And perhaps even more importantly, there was already a large (for the standards of the time) literate, and educated middle class with the means and support to make up the backbone of a proper government and bureaucracy who were not massively despised or resented by the masses.

    And if you want to don your "Great Man History" hat, you might also argue that one reason the U.S. didn't devolve into a new monarchy or a military dictatorship might be that George Washington very self-consciously emulated Cincinnatus in his refusal to use his massive popularity and support to make himself a king (which many in Europe thought he'd do, and many Americans probably would have been either supportive of), to exercise very much federal power during his time in office, and his refusal to serve for more than two terms (thus setting an informal limit to presidential terms that wouldn't need to be formalized until FDR nearly 200 years later) all helped to legitimize the idea in peoples' minds about what the president's limits were and what role he served in the government.

    Of course as time went on most of that fell by the wayside, but that's beside the point.

    VolantRedX said:
    On the other hand this argument that civil protests are meek and ineffectual ways of bringing about change seems like a fallacy pushed by hardcore radicals who are trying to look for an excuse to take out their frustrations on people they don't agree with. People seem to have a false perception of what civil protest actually is and what violent protests are actually like. Like a real non-violent campaign isn't about sitting around singing protests songs and meekly asking those in power to consider changing things. It's about putting yourself in the line of fire in order to provoke the oppressors to attack. The goal is to shock the society out of their compliance with authority by forcing them to confront the lengths authority will go to in order to keep power. You want to be attacked, you want them to hurt you because in doing so they lose the moral high ground, and you win the hearts and minds of the general public.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Correct. There is a clear difference between pacifism and passivity that people like MLK and Gandhi were keenly aware of and often spoke about at length. Both of them have been systematically misrepresented and cherry-picked after their deaths to make them and their messages more acceptable to those in power so that they can admire these men without confronting any hard questions about themselves.

    In fact, Dr. King once said that perhaps the greatest obstruction to Civil Rights wasn't the violent racists, but white moderates who continually claimed to want to support the movement but urged King to be less confrontational in rubbing their white privilege in their faces and to wait for "the right time" to push more strongly for change.


     
    Zam said:
    I literally never said anything like what you seem to be responding to and I notice you failed to address or acknowledge the numerous examples of successful rebellions I provided which disproved the running theme of "They are always bad/fail."
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    I was responding to the Tumblr post. Also you are right, violent revolutions are not doomed to total failure all the time, but I will point two things out. First the point I've been trying to make is that such revolutions tend to get a shit ton of people killed. Like that's the stated goal and often require killing a ton of innocent people in the process. That has not been disputed. Secondly for every successful revolution there are dozens of failed revolutions. Just look at France. They had basically three major revolutions. In between were dozens of failed revolutions where a ton of people died and nothing got solved. And that's just the modern history of France. Look at Rome, yes it became a Republic after a revolt by the people, and then most of it's history was putting down revolts from the people they conquered and enslaved.
     
    Zam said:
    So just a quick list of a small number of successul violent and or aggressive revolutions just from BC:


    The idea violent revolutions never/almost never work and or always lead to things being worse feels like a fallacy propped up and lionized by the powerful who would be the one's to be deposed in such a revolution.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    You do realize that the section of the list you are looking off of has more unsuccessful revolutions/rebellions than it does successful ones, thirteen unsuccessful to eight successful.
    Also the Ionian Revolt was actually a failure the Persians managed to reestablish control over the rebelling cities.
    And another thing the Set rebellions may have never actually happened that part of Egyptian history is still under contention.
     
    Last edited:
    VolantRedX said:
    I was responding to the Tumblr post. Also you are right, violent revolutions are not doomed to total failure all the time, but I will point two things out. First the point I've been trying to make is that such revolutions tend to get a shit ton of people killed. Like that's the stated goal and often require killing a ton of innocent people in the process. That has not been disputed. Secondly for every successful revolution there are dozens of failed revolutions. Just look at France. They had basically three major revolutions. In between were dozens of failed revolutions where a ton of people died and nothing got solved. And that's just the modern history of France. Look at Rome, yes it became a Republic after a revolt by the people, and then most of it's history was putting down revolts from the people they conquered and enslaved.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Very true. The Haitian Revolution is probably the most successful slave revolt of all time, period (not just in the sense that it was, you know, a successful slave revolt that led to the creation of a legitimate nation-state, but also in the sense that it was the primary factor in Napoleon Bonaparte giving up on his dream of recreating France's overseas French empire that they believed he intended to fund through the reintroduction of slavery), and yet it still claimed the lives of an estimated 350,000 people, most of them black Haitians and its economic future was basically shot to death in the cradle when the French made a massive sum of 150,000,000 francs in reparations (most of which went to the Frenchmen who had been the absentee landlords for the massive sugar plantations) a condition for France to recognize Haiti as an independent state and stop trying to reclaim it (and more importantly, to end Haiti's diplomatic and economic isolation, as France remained its primary market): Haiti wasn't able to pay that off until after World War II and was forever impoverished by those ruinous conditions which is a large factor for the country's current state along with strong racial and class tensions due to the system built during French rule.

    And as you've also pointed out, for every Haiti I could easily find you a Spartacus, and more than half the rebellions/revolutions (in some cases I'd argue one or the other term, BTW) were unsuccessful.

    Then again, peaceful revolution is largely a product of the modern age (Gandhi himself actually enumerated a lot of changes in modern society that made his movement possible), so the destruction of the CCT system and thus the loss of easy dissemination of information on an international level could well serve the purpose of making a peaceful solution to these issues in Remnant harder to solve, though I doubt the show will go that route (though it'd be pretty brilliantly insidious of Salem to pull off).
     
    tygerbright said:
    You do realize that the section of the list you are looking off of has more unsuccessful revolutions/rebellions than it does successful ones, thirteen unsuccessful to eight successful.
    Also the Ionian Revolt was actually a failure the Persians managed to reestablish control over the rebelling cities.
    And another thing the Set rebellions may have never actually happened that part of Egyptian history is still under contention.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    When did I say they were always more successful? My point was that there are plenty of examples of successful revolutions and none peaceful movements.
    My apologies for the mistake, I'll remove it.
    (Shrugs) so its fifty fifty?

    VolantRedX said:
    I was responding to the Tumblr post. Also you are right, violent revolutions are not doomed to total failure all the time, but I will point two things out. First the point I've been trying to make is that such revolutions tend to get a shit ton of people killed. Like that's the stated goal and often require killing a ton of innocent people in the process. That has not been disputed. Secondly for every successful revolution there are dozens of failed revolutions. Just look at France. They had basically three major revolutions. In between were dozens of failed revolutions where a ton of people died and nothing got solved. And that's just the modern history of France. Look at Rome, yes it became a Republic after a revolt by the people, and then most of it's history was putting down revolts from the people they conquered and enslaved.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Given what they said about MLK, I think you misunderstood their post or took it out of context.

    I doubt any revolution could start with the stated goal of 'kill tons of innocent people'.

    I never said all revolutions were successful, see the above.

    Not really the point, as what a nation turns into X generations down the track is not what the revolt necessarily started out as or initially installed.

    My point was that violent revolution or protests don't inherently fail or make things worse, and in fact can and have made things better in different instances, see Stonewall for a modern example and thus the idea that having RWBY take down violent bigots or corporations/governments built on exploitation is bad seems flawed and unreasonable to me.
     
    Leingod said:
    And if you want to don your "Great Man History" hat, you might also argue that one reason the U.S. didn't devolve into a new monarchy or a military dictatorship might be that George Washington very self-consciously emulated Cincinnatus in his refusal to use his massive popularity and support to make himself a king (which many in Europe thought he'd do, and many Americans probably would have been either supportive of), to exercise very much federal power during his time in office, and his refusal to serve for more than two terms (thus setting an informal limit to presidential terms that wouldn't need to be formalized until FDR nearly 200 years later) all helped to legitimize the idea in peoples' minds about what the president's limits were and what role he served in the government.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    One can argue that this is Washington's true historical achievement: choosing principle over power. As a general his track record, by all accounts, rather unimpressive. Military victory in the American Revolution was actually won by the French, who were convinced by Ben Franklin (in between him boning half the population of Paris) to back the colonists as a way to undermine their British rivals.



    Leingod said:
    Then again, peaceful revolution is largely a product of the modern age (Gandhi himself actually enumerated a lot of changes in modern society that made his movement possible), so the destruction of the CCT system and thus the loss of easy dissemination of information on an international level could well serve the purpose of making a peaceful solution to these issues in Remnant harder to solve, though I doubt the show will go that route (though it'd be pretty brilliantly insidious of Salem to pull off).
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    They still have local TV news, so it's still possible for shocking images of their own society's wrongdoing to be broadcast into people's homes. International condemnation just won't be a factor.
     
    Zam said:
    When did I say they were always more successful? My point was that there are plenty of examples of successful revolutions and none peaceful movements.
    My apologies for the mistake, I'll remove it.
    (Shrugs) so its fifty fifty?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    More like I was pointing out that it seemed like you were making a disingenuous argument in regards to the source you were using.
     
    The Narrator said:
    One can argue that this is Washington's true historical achievement: choosing principle over power.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Frankly, it's far more impressive than any amount of actual military brilliance on his part would have been. IMO, great generals are kind of dime-a-dozen in comparison to people who can both seize incredible power and then willingly give it up for the greater good of the people and the state. Not that there aren't others (after all, Washington was very consciously trying to emulate Cincinnatus).
     
    Broken Base said:
    I think this is an interesting discussion, but would be even more interesting (and topical) if we linked it to RWBY? ^_^;
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    I did try to with the last bit of my second last post, XD Its kind of tricky as it was started, i think, based on a discussion of what some want from RWBY and reasons outside of RWBY not to do that and then it just went from there.

    Still, I do agree we should probably tie it all back to RWBY, hehe.
     
    Well for one, I like RT and don't think they're bad writers, but still don't really believe they could tackle a subject as thorny as violent revolution along racial and class-based lines as a major, A-plot foundation of their story and frankly with the world-building that's already presented this already isn't a story that can really do that and still satisfy all the other plot points and important elements of the world that it's introduced.

    Would make for a very interesting AU, though, presuming of course it was handled competently (a massive presumption, I know).
     
    Whole lot of Gandhi being mentioned in relation to successful revolts. Probably wouldn't be kosher to start being all Captain Bringdown and say that Gandhi probably had a negligible impact on Indian independence from the Empire.
     
    Delphisage said:
    Whole lot of Gandhi being mentioned in relation to successful revolts. Probably wouldn't be kosher to start being all Captain Bringdown and say that Gandhi probably had a negligible impact on Indian independence from the Empire.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    That is arguable but certainly not entirely incorrect, but more importantly we've already decided this was getting off-topic and needed to either relate it to the show again or drop it.
     
    Alrighty then.

    In other news, it took me until just last week to find out that the strings on Penny's knives in Season 1 existed in-universe and weren't just poorly hidden rigs like all the other animation errors in the show.
     
    Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top