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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
    • Xalgeon said:
    While you're right about kids looking up to uncles/aunts/whatever more than they do their parents. Ruby has such a lack of commonality with Tai that the writers of the show had to specifically go on record and say "Taiyang Xiao Long is Ruby Rose's biological father."

    I understand that kids don't necessarily have that much in common with their parents, but Ruby and Tai have nothing. Even as just two people living in the same house, they should've found some common ground.
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    Its also worth keeping in mind that it was Yang who noticed Ruby needed to work on CQC and was trying to teach her before going to Beacon as well. As it is her relationship with Tai seems kind of empty.
    Leingod said:
    To be clear, I don't "love" Taiyang, I don't really have especially strong feelings about him, and I don't actually say any of this with the specific goal of "defending" him. Nor did I say anything that's actually exclusive to the idea that Yang felt like she had to step up and take on a role that Ruby needed her to because it seemed that Taiyang wouldn't or couldn't, or, indeed that this was largely true - and in fact the very first sentence of my post included the phrase "Yang had to step up more than she should have needed to."

    But nothing about how they actually talk about or treat Taiyang that doesn't have to do with the period immediately following losing Summer really gives the impression that he spent the next several years like that, or that Yang was more of an actual parent to Ruby than he was the whole time afterward. Even your quote doesn't quite do so, because immediately prior to the quoted bit is Yang saying "Ruby couldn't even talk yet." Meaning that statement inhabits a very specific point in time. In that specific point in time, Yang had to make a sacrifice for Ruby that, as I said, she shouldn't have felt she had to make, and from that point on she continued doing so. She may or may not have actually really needed to past a certain point, but she certainly felt like she did, and in the absence of any further information I won't speak any more about it, as that would indeed just be my personal opinion/headcanon.

    But, that does not mean she was Ruby's only full-time parent or caretaker or moral support forever after and that Taiyang was some virtual absentee who had no greater presence in their lives than the guy paying their mortgage or whatever. Especially since it would make no sense that suddenly once the series begins, his daughters talk about him like he's a loving, affectionate, maybe a bit worry-prone parent who tells Ruby she needs to be more social ("Ugh, you sound just like dad"), or who would disapprove of his daughters having a "big slumber party" that was half-male, or whose letters/packages Yang thinks will cheer up Ruby while she's got some pretty heavy shit on her mind and is proven correct to think so ("Oh, I know what will cheer you up! [...] Dad sent it to us. I thought we could open it together!").

    There's just a lot of things spread throughout five whole Volumes about how they actually talk both to and about Taiyang that don't make as much sense if we go that route. The fact that Yang had to step up and make sacrifices she shouldn't have needed to for Ruby's sake, that she had to take on a role that she shouldn't have needed to fill? None of that actually demands a Taiyang who didn't love and care for his daughters, or who didn't earnestly try to still be a good dad to the best of his abilities for years afterward and at least succeeded well enough to have a largely normal and mostly functional relationship with his daughters. And in fact the contrary seems to fit a lot better with what they're shown to think and feel about him like 90% of the time he comes up.
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    Them being fond of him doesn't really refute the argument about Yang I feel. This is a rather out of date reference but if you ever watched Ostin Powers he has a confrontation with his father where after they'd been joking for a few minutes he remember he's meant to be angry and says "I didn't need a friend, I needed a dad". I'm not saying that was Tai, but the point there is that people can have a good/friendly relationship with a parental figure without said figure necessarily fulfilling the obligation/role of parent. And given Yang was apparently giving Ruby the same parental style advice, and he only sent them Zwei not as a nice token but to dog sit because he was away that cheering Ruby up feels more like a coincidence than anything else.

    Anyway my contention is less "Tai was bad" and more that I feel people tend to minimize Yang to her detriment and his benefit.
     
    I kind of feel like Tai half assed things for awhile to the point where Qrow was being the responsible adult when he was around since he saved the girls during Yang's quest. Really isn't much to support that and assumes a lot but I do like the idea of Qrow finally getting sick of Tais moping and telling him to step up because hes doing more harm than good.
    Plus I headcanon Zwei was an attempt to make up for Tai not being as involved as he should be and making sure the girls wouldn't be wandering off into the woods alone again.
     
    Xalgeon said:
    While you're right about kids looking up to uncles/aunts/whatever more than they do their parents. Ruby has such a lack of commonality with Tai that the writers of the show had to specifically go on record and say "Taiyang Xiao Long is Ruby Rose's biological father."

    I understand that kids don't necessarily have that much in common with their parents, but Ruby and Tai have nothing. Even as just two people living in the same house, they should've found some common ground.
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    *shrugs* Eh? Personally, I don't really see it. People often express some level of surprise when my dad introduces me as his son specifically because we don't look much alike, and we have very little at all in common in terms of personality or interests. And yet he is 100% my dad whom I lived with for the entirety of my formative years. So that isn't really a very convincing argument to me.

    And, moreover, we hardly actually get Ruby and Taiyang sharing a scene together anyway. There's what, the one scene at the end of Volume 3, during most of which Taiyang is making sure she's okay after waking up from a coma and explaining to her what happened while she was out, and like 2-3 skits in RWBY Chibi? And Taiyang's got like 3-4 scenes in Volume 4, all colored by what Yang's going through at the time? Doesn't strike me as a strong basis to make claims about how much or little they have in common in terms of personality or interests.
     
    LordDarthYoda said:
    I kind of feel like Tai half assed things for awhile to the point where Qrow was being the responsible adult when he was around since he saved the girls during Yang's quest. Really isn't much to support that and assumes a lot but I do like the idea of Qrow finally getting sick of Tais moping and telling him to step up because hes doing more harm than good.
    Plus I headcanon Zwei was an attempt to make up for Tai not being as involved as he should be and making sure the girls wouldn't be wandering off into the woods alone again.
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    There's some interesting stuff there, though I confess I am not a fan of depression being described as moping be it for Yang or Tai, and given how Ruby & Yang reacted to Qrow passed out drunk on the steps, I feel like he was probably not that much use a lot of the time either.
     
    Zam said:
    There's some interesting stuff there, though I confess I am not a fan of depression being described as moping be it for Yang or Tai, and given how Ruby & Yang reacted to Qrow passed out drunk on the steps, I feel like he was probably not that much use a lot of the time either.
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    Yeah sorry, not the greatest word choice on my part.
    Thinking about it I can see Yang going out to search for Raven as being a big turnaround moment in the XL/R household where everyone (except maybe Ruby) kind of realizes things had to change. It's one of those things I think we might one day get more details on from someone's perspective outside Yang's.
     
    LordDarthYoda said:
    Yeah sorry, not the greatest word choice on my part.
    Thinking about it I can see Yang going out to search for Raven as being a big turnaround moment in the XL/R household where everyone (except maybe Ruby) kind of realizes things had to change. It's one of those things I think we might one day get more details on from someone's perspective outside Yang's.
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    No worries.
    Possibly, though I myself feel its a bit late to rewrite the book on that one if that makes sense.
     
    Yeah I just file it under something else that I want crammed in STRQ backstory. Which I think we'll get at some point but it'll probably be hard to not find it a downer now that I think about it. Kind of like the marauders spinoff I've seen the HP fandom wanting before. Yeah they were all happy then but it doesn't end well.
     
    LordDarthYoda said:
    Yeah I just file it under something else that I want crammed in STRQ backstory. Which I think we'll get at some point but it'll probably be hard to not find it a downer now that I think about it. Kind of like the marauders spinoff I've seen the HP fandom wanting before. Yeah they were all happy then but it doesn't end well.
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    Mhmm, yeah that's fair.

    Honestly, barring a spin off of the RPG, I'd still like a Faunus Rights Revolution movie as while we know it doesn't fix everything forever or what have you, its still a win against injustice if that makes sense.
     
    I might get the RT First membership this time round, but I'll have a look at the release schedule before that.

    I assume it's like all the other video services?
     
    Honestly? I'd love a what-if spin-off showing Ozpin, Lionheart, Ironwood and Theodore as the RWBY
     
    Zam said:
    Honestly, barring a spin off of the RPG, I'd still like a Faunus Rights Revolution movie as while we know it doesn't fix everything forever or what have you, its still a win against injustice if that makes sense.
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    And then the plot twist was that Salem was working on both sides a la Palpatine.
     
    Psyga315 said:
    And then the plot twist was that Salem was working on both sides a la Palpatine.
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    I doubt it.

    Even ignoring that this was started exclusively because of human aggression so there's no "both sides" aspect, Salem infiltrating and puppeting governmental figures is clearly a somewhat unfamiliar thing to Ozpin and co given how utterly bamboozled they were in the early volumes. I can buy Salem starting the Great War via sabotage, but actually orchestrating a war from behind the scenes, especially one like this? That's a bit too hard to swallow.
     
    Zam said:
    I doubt it.

    Even ignoring that this was started exclusively because of human aggression so there's no "both sides" aspect, Salem infiltrating and puppeting governmental figures is clearly a somewhat unfamiliar thing to Ozpin and co given how utterly bamboozled they were in the early volumes. I can buy Salem starting the Great War via sabotage, but actually orchestrating a war from behind the scenes, especially one like this? That's a bit too hard to swallow.
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    I agree that she wouldn't be the instigator, I do feel if she did any participating in things it was probably finding ways to just poke and prod both sides.
    If nothing else she at least grabbed some popcorn and sat on her throne while she watched it all unfold via STV (Seer TV).
     
    Marco said:
    I might get the RT First membership this time round, but I'll have a look at the release schedule before that.

    I assume it's like all the other video services?
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    If you do you should check out gen:Lock if you haven't already. As well as RWBY: The Grimm Campaign.



    daedalus725 said:
    She isn't a bastion of unbiased Experiences, she may have thought she was the one who Kept it all together alone but we don't got nothing but her word.
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    Let's not go too far in the other direction. There is no reason it think that Yang's situation wasn't like that. For a time. Leingod has been making the point that clearly Taiyang pulled himself together eventually but even if it only lasted a relatively short time an experience like that in her formative years is going to leave a mark. Especially if she's subconsciously worried that there will be a repeat and so feels like she can't stop trying to hold everything together even when Taiyang went back to being a dad.
     
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    Mook said:
    If you do you should check out gen:Lock if you haven't already. As well as RWBY: The Grimm Campaign.




    Let's not go too far in the other direction. There is no reason it think that Yang's situation wasn't like that. For a time. Leingod has been making the point that clearly Taiyang pulled himself together eventually but even if it only lasted a relatively short time an experience like that in her formative years is going to leave a mark. Especially if she's subconsciously worried that there will be a repeat and so feels like she can't stop trying to hold everything together even when Taiyang went back to being a dad.
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    This is what I think happened. We see from V3-4 that Tai's clearly pulled himself together now, but I think the girls remember when that wasn't the case and don't quite trust him as a dad.
     
    Xalgeon said:
    This is what I think happened. We see from V3-4 that Tai's clearly pulled himself together now, but I think the girls remember when that wasn't the case and don't quite trust him as a dad.
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    Possible, but even if so, I'd think that would be more true for Yang than Ruby, as Ruby should barely remember the period where Taiyang was at his lowest point, and certainly won't remember very well what he was like before her mother disappeared.


    Matrix Dragon said:
    I think the problem, or at least a major part of it, can be traced back to the way RWBY is one of the first shows that really got the YouTube critic theme going. And the YouTube critics for RWBY are... Unprofessional, shall we say. Bad faith arguments, lies, hate campaigns against the dead creators brother, they've done it all. They got a lot of views. Which means that the Bad Critics are the loudest part of the fandom. And people spend a lot of time arguing with the idiots instead of just using the damn block button.
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    There's also the problems with "Internet 2.0", social media in general (including Youtube), and Tumblr specifically.

    Warning: Long posts, but FASCINATING reads.



     
    Matrix Dragon said:
    Never forget, Clovers first appearance has him arresting RWBY for fighting the Grimm. The airship theft was just a justification. They actually had no proof that the heroes stole it. If they had, Maria would have been arrested as well. So, they attacked and arrested people who had literally been talking to an authority figure in Mantle two seconds before, instead of dealing with Grimm threatening civilian lives.
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    I wonder how much compare/contrast potential there is between the Ace Ops' first encounter with the main characters in V7E1 (and subsequent encounter with Ironwood), and Glynda and Oz's first encounter with Ruby in V1E1:

    - Young, capable-but-not-licensed hero(es) encounter criminals/Grimm on the streets of a major city
    - Said hero(es) engage the threat and proceed to defeat it (or, in one case, prompt him to flee)
    - Licensed Hunter(s) show up on the scene
    - Said Hunter(s) reprimand/punish the hero(es) for their actions
    - The hero(es) are introduced/brought to the Hunter(s)' boss
    - Said boss offers to, in effect, induct the hero(es) into his service

    A lot of, at the very least, similar story beats - enough to raise the possibility that these similarities were intentional. I haven't gone back to rewatch either sequence since the parallel occurred to me (in particular, it's been quite a while since I've watched V1E1), but I feel like there's something to be gleaned from that comparison.
     
    AliasBot said:
    I wonder how much compare/contrast potential there is between the Ace Ops' first encounter with the main characters in V7E1 (and subsequent encounter with Ironwood), and Glynda and Oz's first encounter with Ruby in V1E1:

    - Young, capable-but-not-licensed hero(es) encounter criminals/Grimm on the streets of a major city
    - Said hero(es) engage the threat and proceed to defeat it (or, in one case, prompt him to flee)
    - Licensed Hunter(s) show up on the scene
    - Said Hunter(s) reprimand/punish the hero(es) for their actions
    - The hero(es) are introduced/brought to the Hunter(s)' boss
    - Said boss offers to, in effect, induct the hero(es) into his service

    A lot of, at the very least, similar story beats - enough to raise the possibility that these similarities were intentional. I haven't gone back to rewatch either sequence since the parallel occurred to me (in particular, it's been quite a while since I've watched V1E1), but I feel like there's something to be gleaned from that comparison.
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    Huh, very good insights there, though it also makes the contrasts stand out all the more.

    Ruby was taken for a lecture due to endangering others & herself cos she's so young & Glynda was on the scene to help. Meanwhile in Atlas its just the law you're not allowed to defend yourself & the Ace-Ops sat around waiting in ambush.
     
    AliasBot said:
    I wonder how much compare/contrast potential there is between the Ace Ops' first encounter with the main characters in V7E1 (and subsequent encounter with Ironwood), and Glynda and Oz's first encounter with Ruby in V1E1:

    - Young, capable-but-not-licensed hero(es) encounter criminals/Grimm on the streets of a major city
    - Said hero(es) engage the threat and proceed to defeat it (or, in one case, prompt him to flee)
    - Licensed Hunter(s) show up on the scene
    - Said Hunter(s) reprimand/punish the hero(es) for their actions
    - The hero(es) are introduced/brought to the Hunter(s)' boss
    - Said boss offers to, in effect, induct the hero(es) into his service

    A lot of, at the very least, similar story beats - enough to raise the possibility that these similarities were intentional. I haven't gone back to rewatch either sequence since the parallel occurred to me (in particular, it's been quite a while since I've watched V1E1), but I feel like there's something to be gleaned from that comparison.
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    One big difference is that Glynda showed up and actually helped, while the AceOps let Ruby&Co. + Penny deal with the Grimm and swooped in after Penny left. That would be the first indicator of differences between the scenarios.
     
    Which sets up the big thing for the AceOps. They're not there to defend the people, not really. But then the next ep has them acting all nice, and you can't help but think 'oh, it was all a misunderstanding', and they go a few eps seeming all right, and then the shadiness comes back when Robyn calls Clover out on the shipments. But... they're so NICE...
     
    Matrix Dragon said:
    Which sets up the big thing for the AceOps. They're not there to defend the people, not really. But then the next ep has them acting all nice, and you can't help but think 'oh, it was all a misunderstanding', and they go a few eps seeming all right, and then the shadiness comes back when Robyn calls Clover out on the shipments. But... they're so NICE...
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    Only as nice as they have to be.
    Harriet herself said it. She trust the others to watch her back, but they aren't friends.
    Meanwhile the only ones we see go out of their way to try and interact with them are Clover and Marrow.
    Clover, because while he is eventually shown to be loyal to a fault, is a fairly decent guy to those on his side.
    Marrow, on the other hand, is just a kind goober. He is their Jaune in a way. The newest to things and trying to put on a facade he feels matches is position. Heck, he tried to match Clover's stride out of the mine. XD
    Sadly we didn't get anything really for the others, and I think moments with Elm are the only ones confirmed to of been cut if anything.
     
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