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RWBY Retrospective Part 2 | Table of Contents | RWBY Final Thoughts: Characters (Part 1)
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The Vision
Once upon a time, back in the day, RWBY was this slapdash animesque show put together on the fly from all of the crazy, inspired things shooting out of Monty Oum’s brain and occasionally tinkered with by his two good pals Miles and Kerry.
I speak of this not to criticize it, but to point out how it’s the sort of tactic and vibe that has all but disappeared from RWBY. I can’t remember off the top of my head any facet of the show that Miles, Kerry, or anyone at their round table has admitted to throwing in on the fly for years, since at least Volume 3. They don’t do that anymore, and we all know why: it would clash with what they have kept doing since Volume 3, which is insist every time a new volume rolls around that what they’re writing dates back to Volume 1, and how this was always the plan from the start.
It’s kind of pathetic, honestly. Even if the actual show content didn’t make it clear what a lie this was, the way they start saying it more and more often as later volumes come (and prove more and more unpopular) makes it abundantly clear this is just their way of trying to retain fans who rely on the narrative that Monty’s vision has been loyally adhered to (it hasn’t). Putting to one side the burgeoning fact that if this was to be believed, it would largely be an indictment of MK’s writing skills, since they would be copping to not having written anything of their own and simply living in the very long shadow of one man who was not exactly known as a writer, this just doesn’t work.
Even if RWBY had all of the other things that were important to its allure—strong aesthetics, badass action scenes, and super cool music—the writing would still be weak, and the fact is, that’s the fault of Miles and Kerry. Eddy Rivas and Kiersi Burkhart were later additions, and I’m still sticking to my theory of Burkhart being browbeat into backing off from Volume 8 onwards. I mean, we all hope that Miles and Kerry, for all that people seem to like them, would be good writers, or at least improve over the course of the show’s duration.
But they haven’t. If you watch RWBY all in one go, one long binge…you’re probably going to be confused. One thing commonly said by critical fans of the show is that the volumes often feel like entirely separate stories that don’t flow together from season to season—and they were saying this before RWBY decided to abandon everything about its current premise and plot and become an Alice in Wonderland ripoff with more suicide.
It doesn’t appear as though the writers actually examine prior volumes at all when writing new ones. Of course, circumstance probably factors in here more than habit—Volume 4 was the first one they had to do without Monty, Volume 6 would not have been what it was without being a massive attempt at damage control, Volume 7 was the first to involve another (actually capable) writer who clearly worked better with the show, and Volume 8 was…well, Volume 8 was a deliberate middle finger. Let’s not even get into Volume 9.
Obviously, this isn’t a symptom of a good skeleton for the story, and probably has a lot to do with why people like to say Volumes 1-3 are better written (they are, but like...marginally.)
The first point that needs to be made is that you should not be writing anything if you don’t know how it ends. Miles and Kerry clearly didn’t know that, and it’s doubtful Monty knew that, either. They may have had some vague idea of how, but actually getting there was not something they had ready. There was no outline to write around. Really, continuing the story past Monty’s death was an unwise idea, when letting it die with its creator was an option. But, you know, money…
So that just leaves us with what Miles and Kerry could cook up.
The World
I think I already brought this up somewhere else, but one point where I diverge from common RWBY-critical audiences (at least the ones who do the most talking…) is the subject of ‘worldbuilding’. It gets brought up constantly, but I really don’t have time for those complaints anymore. If I’m being honest, aura and semblance and dust and these other facets of Remnant’s world work fine, have worked fine since the beginning, and would still work fine if adhering to them wasn’t more effort than MK were willing to expend.
‘Worldbuilding’, much like ‘constructive criticism’ is a term a lot of people just misunderstand ceaselessly. Worldbuilding is not solely about what what makes guns fire or what kind of magic there is. It is simultaneously very important to the overall story but rarely makes any pieces move on its own. Things like aura, semblance, dust, all of these are bare-bones elements of worldbuilding that work fine, whatever r/RWBYCritics might say about them. What does not work well are later elements that Miles and Kerry were responsible for carrying through, that affected several plot lines.
Off the top of my head, the best example is the Schnee Dust Company. As the volumes kept coming, we got more info on them, and you can see things going wrong as early as Volume 4’s “Schnee Dust Company” World of Remnant, wherein we’re assured in disgustingly matter-of-fact tones that the SDC—which has been presented to us thus far as an elite, ritzy, rich-beyond-your-imaginings heirarchy firmly entrenched in the world market—is merely in its second generation of existence. That, on top of the soppily black-and-white praise for Nicholas Schnee and contempt for Jacques Schnee nee Gele, who is very quickly made not just into a bastard, but pretty much the sole driving force of all the ill will associated with the SDC.
I might be willing to believe that Miles and Kerry were simply ignorant and didn’t realize that real corporations don’t at all work this way, nor do they become as powerful as they are by the time the first guy in charge bites it and hands the reigns to Guy #2, but in the end it doesn’t matter. This scapegoat-ism effect not only lined up neatly with Rooster Teeth’s own worsening image, which they promised to fix by throwing out the Evil Dude (Gray Haddock), it over-simplified the matter Weiss would eventually have to solve. Since only one dude is corrupting the company, all she has to do is defeat Jacques and then the SDC is good again. But if this were at all realistic, Weiss’ quest would take a whole lifetime or more, because corporations like this work with boards. They work with directors. They are are not monarchies. Yes, it’s often true they’re more oligarchical and CEOs like Jacques tend to have way more power than one person should, but at the end of the day, these corporations are bigger than one person. Companies like Amazon and Telsa are entrenched—Jeff Bezos could die today and it would not magically grant all the employees in that company better hours or a living wage. This is an example of bad worldbuilding—the SDC’s negative qualities are all over-simplified into one person.
Another example is the Great War. It’s pretty much the furthest-back event that has any concrete dating and it precedes pretty much all matters of importance—it is, for all intents and purposes, the foundation of the story because the kingdoms as they are currently run, the Academies where the relics are hidden, the current state of faunus rights—discounting a whole extra war that had to be fought over them after the fact—plus the color naming convention, the Vytal Festival and the creation of Amity Colosseum, and even Atlas being in the freakin’ sky, are all determined at the end of the Great War.
The problem is that the Great War only occurred 80 years ago in-story. Miles and Kerry don’t seem to realize how little time that is, or even that it’s well within living memory. The “official story” of Atlas just being in the sky one fucking day because of gravity dust shouldn’t even have had time to settle in yet. There would be people still alive who would have been present to witness Ozpin ending an entire war single-handedly with the help of three all-powerful artifacts and able to contradict the ‘unusually violent storms’ story. Not to mention the fact that the Faunus revolution takes place some unspecified time inbetween the Great War (80 years ago) and the present day—hell, it could’ve happened last week from the first episode. Yet the story still treats faunus rights as if faunus slavery and forced containment was several centuries ago and not alarmingly recent. This issue with not really having a good grip of time is consistent with MK’s bizarre back-and-forth on how old Ruby was when Summer died depending on who they need you to feel sorry for at the moment, Ruby or Yang.
And, of course, we’d be remiss in not mentioning that the maiden powers, the silver eyes, and the relics all were linked to the main plot in haphazard ways. I went over this when they debuted in Volume 3—the maiden powers are more suited to an urban fantasy than an action fantasy. The discrepancies with the powers they granted and how they could be so much more devastating than the insane shit the average huntsman does, never really gets fixed, nor does the discrepancy with how they pass along form person to person independent of Ozpin. ‘Silver-eyed warriors’ as a race of incredibly powerful Grimm-slayers who underwent an apparent genocide at Salem’s hands is completely glossed over and we see no evidence they existed before they were dropped into the story and then quickly explained to account for them. In fact, poor worldbuilding can be called pretty much any time something new, ancient, and inherently powerful is added to the story with nothing having been said of it beforehand. You’ll know the world is being poorly constructed if you have to hear a monologue explaining what something about it is several seasons in, and RWBY is very guilty of this. Just because the Legend of Zelda gets away with it every few years (and we all really wish they’d stop) doesn’t mean it’s just okay to do.
The actual setting often suffered as well, with Vale, Menagerie, and Mistral really just being set dressing, a backdrop for the villains to threaten and the heroes to protect. Ironically, Atlas was the only setting that actually felt properly explored, with the dynamic between Mantle and Atlas above actually being integral to the plot and visible to the viewer at a glance. It was a world that was actually properly built, so to speak, whereas the World of Remnants for Vale, Mistral, and Vacuo could’ve never been released and the differences it made within the story events would’ve been negligible.
When it comes time to actually delve into the world’s backstory beyond the present-day features, of course, it’s so bad that it loops around to hilarious and then keeps looping until it ends up at terrifying and hideous. The two gods who essentially made the story what it was by being unbelievable jackasses because of one upset woman screams ‘rushed’ alongside such unpleasant things as ‘careless’, ‘poorly-thought-out’, ‘ill-considered’, oh and ‘misogyny re-defined’.
Basically, the worldbuilding sucks. On to other matters.
The General Plot
Miles and Kerry are not good writers.
I mean, if we’re arguing that at this point, this far in, you’re not someone I’d convince anyway, so pack it up and go home if so.
Going purely on a plot construction basis, RWBY is very weak. The inciting incidents half the time do not connect to the conflict and climax at all, and when they do, they usually aren’t revealed as the inciting incidents until halfway or later in the volume. Fans that think Volumes 2 and 3 are better written plot-wise do at least have something of a point, as in those examples, the rising action that occurs mid-volume does connect to the eventual climax—Torchwick’s mech barrelling down the street will later link to the invasion arsenal being accumulated at Mountain Glenn, which eventually causes a breach, and the tournament fights in Volume 3 are an actual part of the villains’ plan to unleash chaos on Vale. Volume 6 also tries to involve the silver eyes, at least, before they’re used on a Leviathan at the end. But then you have other examples such as Volume 4, where the rising action is Tyrian vs. Qrow but the climax is RNJR vs. The Nuckelavee. Or Volume 8, where the rising action is about three or four different plots at once. Or Volume 9, where the rising action is an army of Jabberwalkers but the climax is a cat demon ripped from an indie RPGmaker game.
If you try applying that structure to all the volumes as a whole, it all falls apart. The inciting incident doesn’t even happen until Volume 3, and the rising action involves the work of Salem’s various agents to destabilize the world, which goes nowhere in Volumes 4, 5, or 6, ultimately gets somewhere in 7 and 8, and goes back to being nowhere in Volume 9. With all antagonists besides Cinder and Salem themselves (okay, and Mercury and Tyrian too) now dead, the potential for an interesting climax is very low. Or, was, before the show was canned.
Of course, I guess I might’ve written that way too, if I thought I’d have forever to write it. Most shows aren’t prepared for unexpected truncations, of course, but the sheer amount of time wasted when it comes to RWBY’s plot is downright foolish. I’m not talking about the sudden and tragic passing of Monty, either, although filler plots certainly weren’t unheard of in his short-lived tenure as RWBY’s main writer, either. Volume 4 took an astounding amount of time to even bother introducing Ilia or get Qrow and his exposition to the party, Volume 5 was an atrocious filler fest, Volume 6’s climax could’ve been two episodes shorter, Volume 8 had that garbage nonsense with Cinder’s backstory taking up half an episode…
So yeah, pacing is a major complaint as always—when it’s been a complaint in every volume, it has to be—but what else is there to discuss?
Well, let’s look at our counts to determine what the major story issues were. There aren’t many of them—perhaps unsurprisingly for a show hyped for its aesthetic and cool factor above all else, most of my counts were actually related to style—but I did have a few.
- It Was Right There: 64
- Reliable Leaders: 80 + 17
- Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 17
- Threatening Enemies: 59
- Road to Nowhere: 54
- Dragged Kicking and Screaming: 58
- Rooster Tease: 38
- The Lovegood Fallacy: 17
It Was Right There was a count I ended up rarely using, because by the logic under which I made it, I needed to be able to find alternate, better ways of accomplishing the same things that happened in the show with less stupidity. Its usage gradually trailed off, because the things this show was aiming to do kept becoming more and more absurd, and I didn’t want to turn the count into a general “this is stupid” count. Still, it managed to clear the 50 point mark, which isn’t exactly something to take solace in.
Prowling Wolf and Lovegood were, ultimately, proofs of very embarrassing tactics by the writers, tallying characters’ logic and reasoning around certain subjects—negativity and magic, respectively—basically falling apart under any amount of scrutiny. The fact that they were the two lowest counts besides Invisembl should at least be comforting, but their mere existence is a rather large knock against Miles and Kerry, as it was proof that they simply refused to see why a particular element wasn’t working. They mostly got away with it for Prowling Wolf, since it wouldn’t be until Volume 7 until the story acknowledged Ozpin’s constant secrecy was a flat negative, but Lovegood was a much more serious deal. The fandom openly dragged this show every time it insisted on acting like magic was something mysterious and awe-inspiring when the feats several characters can perform casually already put them at a reasonably supernatural tier. It seems the constant mockery eventually caught up with them by the time of Volume 6, because it petered out shortly thereafter.
More serious is the count that Prowling Wolf was attached to and its sister count: Reliable Leaders and Threatening Enemies. Both of these also cleared the 50 point mark and were used to highlight how Miles and Kerry weren’t able to maintain tension or compel audiences because rational or logical behavior frequently escaped either the heroic faction’s leaders or the villainous elements trying to destroy them. Really, this was a count that could’ve gone up much further than it did, had I bothered to include Ironwood’s apparent madness in Volume 8 in it. The reason I didn’t, of course, is because Miles and Kerry were not actually trying to portray him as a reliable leader. No, it was Jaune, Qrow, and Ozpin who formed the trifecta of ‘leaders consistently portrayed as in the right even though they’re idiots’.
Really, these guys served as very strong symptoms of Miles’ and Kerry’s inability to examine their favorite characters. Jaune had a whole count just for when he behaved like an asshole, got someone hurt, or just generally enraged audiences, and yet no one in the show is ever cast as actually holding it against him. Qrow, of course, was a major hype magnet and the beloved of fans, so he was marginally more successful than Jaune, but it still took until halfway through Volume 6 for any of his many, many flaws to actually be cast in a negative light. It’s a shame we didn’t get there quicker, because just like with Jaune melting down Pyrrha’s gear, Qrow managed to earn some major black marks that stuck with fans before his ultimate character turnaround—those being the physical assault of a man with a freshly shattered arm and punching a kid into a tree. In short, the kind of person who just really shouldn’t be in charge whatsoever.
But it’s Ozpin who got the most Reliable Leader points, and for obvious reasons. After Jaune, he was easily the biggest tooth and the one that took the most resistance being pulled from the hen’s mouth. From Volumes 4 and onward, Ozpin’s steadfastly loyal fanbase steadily turned against him, which was unavoidable when after dying, he came back attached to the body of a little kid—which sounds like something a fucked up fanfiction would cook up. Miles and Kerry were not hearing any of this ‘Ozpin might not be 100%’ nonsense and this negatively impacted Volume 5 in a big way, and Volume 6 in a much worse one. By the time of Volume 6, the backlash against him had become too big to ignore, and there was a single solitary attempt to acknowledge that maybe Ozpin is not, after all, a reliable leader. That single attempt focused only on him not actually knowing how to defeat Salem, and not any of the colossally insane shit it actually revealed about him (like how he tried to take over the world with Salem or raped a man at least four times), so the count kept going up.
Actually, looking back on it, I only gave Ozpin one measly little point for, it must be reiterated, deciding to take over humanity with Salem as a god. I think I was distracted by the rapist revelation, but I really could’ve afforded that a whole ten points if we’re honest.
Then, there was Threatening Enemies. All of the times that enemies could’ve reasonably been defanged with very simple actions or logic, which was naturally something that was going to pop up whenever the heroic factions leaders were being, well, terrible leaders. This one I admit to neglecting (well, forgetting as a whole) more than a little—I frequently gave Your Fight Scene Sucks points, and in a lot of those scenarios, the outcome would’ve easily changed had characters just done the logical thing, and so a lot of those scenes should’ve also had Threatening Enemies points. But either way, it still had enough juice even then to make it to a respectable count.
There was simply no reason that Cinder, Torchwick, Mercury, and Hazel should’ve presented the threat that they did, when the heroes have the means to dispatch them so easily. Emerald, Neo, and Tyrian? Yeah, maybe, with their equally broken powers. But overall, much of the heavy lifting whenever things got hairy was largely just the heroes not taking options available to them. I lost count of how many times Ruby or Weiss could’ve used their semblances to win a fight, or how obvious solutions were available that weren’t taken.
These counts were bad news because they made the story unenjoyable and illogical, made the conflicts difficult to engage with or take seriously, and made it look like the authors were giving approval to people who really shouldn’t be in charge, and making it very clear that sometimes the gap between how smart a character is supposed to be and how smart the author is can be a wide one. But that’s nothing new for Rooster Teeth.
So then, we come to Road to Nowhere, and its more uncommonly seen sister, Rooster Tease. Rooster Tease was an early symptom of Rooster Teeth’s messy construction of RWBY, and tallied the times that the audience was effectively lied to with certain premises and information dropped during hypes and reveals. Frankly, I wish I had replaced it with a general YOU LIED count, but that would’ve merited combing over a lot of the interviews and outside material Rooster Teeth release alongside this show, and I was never going to commit to that. Road to Nowhere, of course, was a tad more serious as a count. Plots seemingly leading places and then just being dropped was a frequent occurrence the further into the show we went. It was a largely sparse count except in RWBY’s worst moments—meaning it showed up most often in Volumes 5 and 8, when matters would be resolved in the laziest, most ill-conceived ways possible or simply not resolved at all. This commonly ended up making the viewer question why certain things were storyboarded or animated to begin with, and furthermore why everyone’s time was wasted.
Road to Nowhere is the more serious count because, as we all know, the story thrives on its conflicts, and this was a tally for how conflict just...died. Dropped, abandoned, swept under the rug, you name it, it happened, because conflict is work. Conflict is time, conflict is money. Of course, work is the biggest of these, because regardless of how much a budget may have constrained the show, a lot of these simply were not down to what could or couldn’t feasibly be done—Miles and Kerry simply were not putting forth the effort. Much of Volume 8 comes to mind, with how many plots just went belly-up because they didn’t feel like following through on them.
But worse than all of those counts is the one I’ve saved for last. The above counts just really make it clear that Miles and Kerry aren’t very good writers and very, very badly needed an editor that never appeared. The last count we’re going to discuss for story is the one that very loudly says they should’ve been fired.
Dragged Kicking and Screaming: 58
I don’t need to reiterate it. If you’ve gotten this far, you know exactly why this count exhausted and frankly sickened me. But I couldn’t let it slide. It was a count that was desperately needed, as evidenced by the fact that it accrued more points in one volume than some counts did in eight.
I don’t like to say that people just shouldn’t write. Fact of the matter is, criticism should always come from a place of love and try to encourage people to be better writers. But this count and how high it went over the course of Volume 8 alone, nevermind the whole show, was simply a piece of evidence that maybe Miles and Kerry are lost causes. They didn’t write a good story. They didn’t want to write a good story. They wanted to write their story, consequences be damned.
The worst part about it is that it fits. Nothing we’ve seen in Volume 8 and beyond is really outside the range of what Miles and Kerry typically produce—they’ve veered wildly off the rails before. Adam Taurus was a major example. But this was just...so utterly gross, so very clearly agitated and deliberate and petty.
It should not have been allowed to reach that point. Evidences abound that Miles and Kerry simply were not healthy for this show, and keeping them on past Volume 5 was a major mistake.
Themes
Maybe it was poorly written, but was RWBY at least coherent? Did it gets its general messages across? What was RWBY really about? If we start on that, maybe we can start to see whether or not it succeeded in at least some respects?
Before we start, let’s address some of the things people think are the themes of RWBY, and most definitely aren’t.
Women
Women and womanhood play absolutely no driving part in the plot of RWBY nor star as its themes in any way. The plots that make up RWBY are not about being a woman. RWBY, contrary to how popular insistence goes, does not make any real remarks for or against sexism or misogyny. It’s simply a show led by four women, or at least sometimes it is when some dudes named Jaune, Ozpin, and Qrow aren’t hogging up all the freakin’ screentime. Exclusively feminine themes are not at all explored in this show. The simple fact that there’s powers only women can wield doesn’t really change that.
Colors
Colors are absolutely not a major theme of RWBY. It has a vibrant art style (sometimes) and the characters in it are named after colors (sometimes). Art and expression, perhaps, can be said to play some role in the backstory, but don’t connect to any plots and don’t actually feature as a long-running theme around which any of them center.
Fairy Tales
Miles’ and Kerry’s major mistake when it came to Volume 9—RWBY is not about fairy tales any more than it’s about colors or women. Like the colors, fairy tales were simply an aesthetic choice meant to provide some glitter and a creative twist to some of the characters early on. Making them major plot points was a mistake, but even then, fairy tales don’t actually get a lot of attention unless to basically say “yeah this particular one is true”.
Now, what exactly are the themes of RWBY? Well, after combing through the show, I think we can settle on a few major ones, each of which connects to at least one major character.
Unity, Strength of Heart, and Choice.
Unity
Unity is by far the most common and recurring theme of RWBY. It’s what every volume tries to link back to, it’s the central core message: divided we fall, united we shine bright. Salem is, multiple times, explicitly stated to use divisive tactics to try and get her enemies to fall apart and destroy each other, and that the only defense against this is remaining steadfast and working together.
Volume 7 was leagues and leagues ahead of the other volumes when it came to reflecting this theme, with the best of intentions ultimately not helping much when trust in others became an issue that could change the fate of a whole nation. Ironwood and Robyn uniting to save the people was a glowing testimony to the fact that the theme of unity not only could be competently executed, but could be significantly compelling. It even stood the test when everything started to fall apart (i.e., when Volume 7 became pre-Volume 8), with JNPR failing against Neo 1v1, but successfully repelling her when together—only to be separated and lose the crucial item she came for to her trickery.
Of course, there are many more examples where this theme falls apart. Salem’s rebellion against the gods in the great big backstory dump of Volume 6 completely failed and ended not only with humanity completely eradicated in the span of moments, but with the narrative openly blaming Salem for it. Even Ozpin, for all that unity is supposed to be his go-to strategy, fails at this. He was the King of Vale who ended the war and brought peace to the four kingdoms—pretty much single-handedly, by abusing the combined powers of three reality-bending artifacts all at once. And then of course there’s his parasitic fusion with other souls, with Miles and Kerry trying so, so hard to avoid saying outright that the host’s consciousness will cease to exist—preferring a more neutral-sounding “fuse with Ozpin” dynamic, but in the process pretty much making it clear that there’s no real difference because Ozpin will always be the one who gets control in the end and has the important mission to complete.
Volume 8 strikes again with the Penny and Cinder plots. For all that unity is the theme of the volume as spelled out over and over again, most of the victories are won single-handedly or have very poor attempts at lip service to say otherwise. Penny successfully handles the Ace-Ops alone to such an extent that RWB joining in just seems like overkill, and she even single-handedly K-O’s Cinder and Neo—while Emerald is trying to manipulate her. Worse still, sparing Emerald (because the horny lizard in Miles Luna’s brain demanded it) directly leads to Penny’s death later. She even single-handedly saves the Amity Colosseum and its message from destruction while whooping Cinder, and only fails due to outside intervention. Conversely, Cinder at the end gets exactly what she wants with only a token attempt at trying to claim that Cinder and Neo won through their own version of unity—from that point onward, it’s a very clear railroading and all the teamwork from RWBY’s faction in the world fails to save them from the authorial hand of Miles Luna.
Volume 6 attempts something along these lines—Adam only falls once Yang joins the fight with Blake, and the Leviathan Grimm at the end requires the combined efforts of Ruby and Cordovin to put down for good—but it fumbles both. The finishing blow on Adam comes from a charged-up Yang after Blake has been removed from the fight, and Ruby ultimately has to abuse a magical artifact to succeed in even paralyzing the Leviathan—which was something only she could do anyway, as a mystical warrior of an ancient and powerful bloodline.
Keep going back further and you’ll keep finding more examples. Tyrian in Volume 4 is a flagrant one, since RNJR get their asses whooped even four-on-one despite being a functioning and united team, leaving only Qrow able to take him head-on, and Ruby’s attempt to try and help just gets her uncle injured.
And let’s not even get started on Volume 9, with a conflict ultimately solved in a manner that makes it clear that the titular team are not a united front, that Ruby can’t rely on her friends, and that responsibility for atrocities is a one-man shouldering.
Perhaps had Miles and Kerry (and Rooster Teeth at large) remembered the theme of unity more often, and perhaps applied it to themselves, RWBY wouldn’t be a poorly-written show, and Rooster Teeth wouldn’t be looking at possible dissolution.
Strength of Heart
Strength of heart is, in a word, principles. Throughout RWBY, there is a very firm stance that one’s principles should not be sacrificed for anything, and that pursuing destructive choices that hurt others is usually the wrong decision. Adam Taurus, Raven Branwen, and James Ironwood were all characters castigated by the narrative for failing to uphold any standard of principles. Adam was framed as a fallen rebel because he allowed anger to control him and lashed out, Raven was scored for being a coward who only cared about her own skin, and Ironwood was made out to be a mistrustful, backstabbing bastard who was controlled by fear.
You’ll note two of these examples to be the biggest forms of derailment in the show’s history. But we can get to them later, so let’s start with Raven.
As a plot device, Raven is meant more to serve the unity angle, but the fact remains that for all her treachery and lack of any moral character, she acquits herself rather well. Her cunning and battle skill managed to hand Cinder her first major one-on-one loss in combat, something that occurred due to Raven being the spring maiden—something achieved with a ruthless act of murder. Had the rules of aura not been clearly swept aside to make way for Vernal’s exit, she would’ve gotten away with it cleanly, too, as Cinder would’ve been totally floored and the relic would’ve been secured well before Yang could’ve gotten down there.
In other words, Raven’s complete lack of principles actually ends up benefiting the heroes and serving them a win on a silver platter—she’s smart enough to trick Cinder and strong enough to kill her, but too scared to take the trophy, so Yang gets to have it. All of the work the heroes were supposed to accomplish with their unity and strength of heart was meaningless because Raven got it done better and then handed them the rewards.
So let’s take a look at Adam now. Adam, ostensibly, is castigated by the narrative for letting spite control him to the point he takes innocent lives and lashes out at people who don’t deserve it. Obviously there’s a massive glowing red gash on that narrative’s hamstring, given the abusive ex angle that was oh-so-smoothly and seamlessly slotted in come Volume 3, because Adam lashing out at a racist world was a plot that too many people identified with and didn’t make Adam villainous enough for Miles’ and Kerry’s tastes, and they didn’t want to risk anyone sympathizing with him. That narrative dies completely once Adam the Reverse Racist Fascist comes along, openly advocating for faunus supremacy over humankind.
At that point, it’s not about strength of heart. There’s never any question in either of the two Adams that we’re presented after Volume 3—the murderous incel or the faunus supremacist—of whether they have the strength to do the right thing or could be swayed into villainy by their circumstances. They’re just morally bankrupt bastards. Nothing consistent, nothing interesting, nothing worth a second glance.
Which just leaves Ironwood. I think we all know that the theme here didn’t just totally go up in flames, but was doused in lighter fluid and detonated with dynamite.
Ironwood, in the right hands, was a shining example of strength of heart, ultimately choosing right even when treachery and ill circumstances put his morals to the test and fear began to poison him. But Miles and Kerry didn’t want him to be that. They told us that the way they wrote it was Ironwood falling from grace, his heroism torn down by the lengths he’d go to in pursuit of defeating Salem, his good intentions crumbling due to how many principles he sacrificed to uphold them.
Miles and Kerry are liars. That is not what they wrote. That is not even what they wanted to write. That’s what they told us they wrote to try and make themselves look better as authors.
Ironwood’s failure of principles was not successfully reflected, and was never going to be, when the choice to portray that seemingly extended only to making him act as evil as possible even against common sense. Shooting Oscar, murdering the councilman, trying to kill Marrow, murdering Jacques, sabotaging the Mantle rescue mission and then trying to blow the city off the map—do I even need to finish the sentence? Strength of heart or lack thereof is not why Ironwood lost or why Salem won. It was petty authorial spite, plain and simple.
Choice
A smaller but still recurring theme was allegedly choice. From Pyrrha to Penny all the way to Raven and Qrow, choice was made out to be this big thing. Who you were was not defined by race or blood or family name, but by the choices you made, and the ability to determine your own fate was held up as monumentally important. This, more than anything, was the one that Miles and Kerry screwed hardest.
Obviously the first big choice of the show was Pyrrha’s, which was no choice at all. She had a monumentally huge burden thrust on her and was told her decision would be respected, all with the knowledge looming over her that there was that an active threat she might could help prevent that was rapidly approaching. Nonetheless, the writers try to spin her final fight with Cinder as some sort of grand choice too, as if to make up for it, but to this day, I still have no idea who Pyrrha is supposed to have saved with her sacrifice, despite the text and its repeated insistence that she died to save people. Despite her glamorized legacy in-show, even that choice in itself was one she was pressed into, in that she literally states that there’s no time.
Choice next comes up in Volume 4, with Qrow Branwen and, more by inference than anything, his sister Raven. Much is made of Qrow’s agonies that he has a curse that causes misfortune and can’t be near the ones he loves, while Raven has the power to see her loved ones any time she likes and chooses not to.
Obviously, Qrow’s choices (or lack thereof) come off as melodramatic, with his semblance—which is supposed to be a personal power and a tangible manifestation of his soul—being twisted into a curse with ill-defined effects that simply amounts to manpain. Raven’s ethos took a little longer to crumble, mostly because her fear of Salem takes until Volume 8 to look rather laughable, but her antagonism with Ozpin ends up completely justified much faster, when it turns out not only is all his control over the big conspiracy actively aiding Salem’s cause, but he has no real plan to defeat her and in fact was once at her side aiding her causes directly. Raven’s choices retroactively become more understandable, though not all of them—she’s still a grade-A bitch for walking out on her husband and daughter.
Choice, of course, is also another one of those themes that looks good in Volume 7 and is then ground up in a blender come Volume 8. Ironwood’s choices are deliberately antagonistic and unsympathetic, blatantly unhinged to try and make him seem deserving of death, even as we’re told by Miles and Kerry that they’re supposed to be the choices made by a traumatized veteran who is acting on fear and desperation to save people. The hastily invented semblance “Mettle” only made things worse, in that it actively paints Ironwood’s actions as guided by a tunnel vision he can’t even control.
Of course, the real offender here is Volume 9. Choice ends up being the defining theme of the latter half of the volume, which takes the story from an over-wrought effort to try and make the crashing of Atlas look like it’s all Ruby’s fault and not something Miles wrote out of spite, and into the territory of some bizarre narrative of ‘you are enough’ that seems to wear themes of self-love and autonomy like a particularly cheap set of earrings. Choice as a theme, in Volume 9, is one more lie Miles has decided to tell us to make his shitty story look better than it is.
Roundup
The full takeaway here is that Miles and Kerry, in many ways, never understood RWBY or its appeal and tried all sorts of ways to make the show about what they liked, which unfortunately was really not in line with what the fandom liked about it. They are, in many ways, very basic as writers, with a lot of their pitfalls being alarmingly amateurish for people who have been in the business this long. Emerald and her titty redemption come to mind, of course, but so does their severe authorial tracts against any character they seem not to like, and their vicious derailment whenever anything good actually happened that they perceived to be slights against their story.
As I said above, people often misconstrue what constructive criticism is. People take “constructive” to mean that it doesn’t hurt feelings or encourages the writer to keep writing as they have been. “Constructive” is not a synonym for “polite”, guys. Constructive criticism, if we’re being honest here, quite often looks less like “here’s how this element could be better” and more like “this particular thing you wrote is shit and doesn’t work, here’s why, get rid of it”. Constructive criticism should address your writing flaws and force you to grow out of them, not spare your feelings.
Of course, there are problems on both sides of the aisle. Miles was never ready to be an author by the time he got control of RWBY, and the spiteful ways he snipped Sun from the narrative and twisted Adam into an ‘abusive ex’ plotline proved that. Even with all the criticism coming his and Kerry’s ways over their various fuckups, they never improved, with their attempts at doing so being moreso attempts to placate their audiences with winks and nudges and what has come to be known as “Summer-baiting”, because that’s allegedly a character the actual plot was attached to once upon a time. Beyond their various talks about not having the characters spend a volume sitting around a table drinking tea (which is really very low on the ladder of takeaways they should’ve left Volume 5’s aftermath with), I struggle to think of any time Miles or Kerry actually managed to fix anything they screwed up—much of their frequent errors form larger patterns.
Of course, I have to be truthful here and mention that any criticism they’ve probably gotten in the last couple years has probably been, ahem, rock fucking stupid. I’ve made the point many a time that as the patience among the RWBY fandom wore out and more and more of them started leaving, only the most devoted—and therefore brainrotted—stuck by Miles and Kerry. The same goes for the critical side of the fandom: all the sane ones left for greener pastures year after year. It’s quite an unfortunate thing to see so many people convinced they know a single thing about writing and willing to pipe up about it and being so...very dense about it. I’m going to attribute this mostly to people that were exposed to RWBY by the various YouTube essays that started popping up on how shitty the show was, creating a sort of “Link is Dead in Majora’s Mask” Matpat effect of people who know absolutely nothing about a subject willing and able to spend 2,000 words a pop telling you about it. It’s pretty clear by this point that even if by some miracle Miles Luna were willing to rewrite the whole damn show in accordance with “constructive” criticism, what he’d end up with wouldn’t be much better.
So that’s about where we’re leaving off now, not much left I can say about the story besides this:
It fucking sucks.
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RWBY Retrospective Part 2 | Table of Contents | RWBY Final Thoughts: Characters (Part 1)
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Date: 2024-01-17 02:51 am (UTC)From:Another thing lost in the chunking of SSSN, who had some of the better male character design given the exotic music video they were created to emulate. If you've seen the Fantastic Baby music video or the shit T.O.P. used to wear, you'd think right away it's no wonder RWBY looked so vibrant early on.
You're quite right, and I believe I've seen other people point it out, too. Ironwood was terrible for putting his military in places other than his own country, even if for security reasons and with the blessings of their governments (V1-3) but then was also evil for keeping his military close to home and locking things down (V4-8); he can't win and gets savaged either way.
With the emphasis on it being her choice, of course, conveniently sparing anyone else for having to take the blame for their parts in it.