#canoncrit emerald sustrai

[kitkatopinions]

So let me get this straight: Hazel after killing all the huntsmen in Mistral and brutalising Oscar for most of v8 (and people dont come with "Ozpin took most of it" its still Oscars body???? Hello????) gets an redemption via death but Ironwood who we know since v2 and was always an ally and a really cool character till v8 dies as a iredemable villain???? How? Why? Its just so dumb... love you blog btw

You know, this reminds me of seeing posts that were like ‘RWDE posters are mad about Ironwood not getting redeemed and yet they don’t like Hazel or Emerald being redeemed???’ And just... Yes, Kathy, the two are incredibly different.

Ironwood has been a hero for seasons who has displayed flaws and made mistakes but was not ever treated as a possible future villain by the narrative, and he was treated as pure evil before he tried to do anything more evil than ‘saving the people he can since he can’t save everyone,’ but then started getting pushed into the maniacal heartless abuser villain role at lightspeed within one season + one episode of the show and (I cannot stress this enough) two or three days of in show time. Our main characters treated him like a monster without knowing about the more villainous actions for the better part of the season, without any of them wondering if there was some mistake, no sympathy given to the fact that Ironwood had his back against the wall or was suffering from mental strain or a horrible injury, no recognition of anything that the mains did badly that maybe contributed to the situation they were in. His ‘fall to villainy’ was outlandish, over the top, out of character, and lacking in any real emotional depth, they blamed him for all of Mantle’s problems despite him having done his very best to ‘go for both’ and Jacques Schnee and Watts being the actual ones responsible for the state of Mantle - as well as huge systemic issues that Jacques was purposefully trying to preserve. He then was (most likely) killed off by the writers who then laugh at how it was ‘always planned’ while no single person in the group of protagonists gives a care.

And on the flipside, you have Emerald and Hazel! Both of them spent seasons being three times worse than James at his worst (seriously, he at least had good intentions.) Emerald and Ironwood’s direct kill count is the same (one,) and Emerald contributed to the deaths of hundreds more at the Fall of Beacon, knowing what it would lead to, and only gives small, rare indications that she feels remorse for it (it’s almost sad.) And Hazel is hinted at being responsible for many of the deaths in Haven and spent his time blaming Ozpin for the fact he was actively trying to murder children. Both of them continued their villainy right up until the very season they got redeemed as they both continued working with Salem to bring down yet another kingdom and while Hazel was beating a fifteen year old, Emerald was eagerly volunteering to help Cinder try and murder Penny yet again. And then when it was revealed that Salem wanted to destroy everything including them, they turned out of self preservation without apologizing for their terrible, harmful, murderous actions. And then the narrative acts like Hazel was some martyr who taught Oscar a valuable lesson about not letting anyone else die and isn’t it sad he died before he could do the bare minimum to earn any sort of redemption. And Emerald winds up having friendly laughs and getting endearingly teased by the people she’s arguably hurt the most, with the girl she’d murdered right there laughing with them. And now she can get away with now being part of the group without any indication she’s changed, no apology, anyone that protests her involvement being scolded for their lack of trust...

One of these things is an incredibly badly handled hero-to-villain story, where they failed to get the beats of emotional depth for a fallen hero arc and rushed it instead without care, leaving it feeling out of character and out of the blue despite the small bit of groundwork that they had in place for the narrative.

The other two are incredibly badly handled villain-to-hero stories, where they failed to get the beats of emotional depth for good redemption arcs and rushed them instead without care, leaving them feeling very insincere and out of the blue despite the small bit of groundwork that they had in place for the narratives (mostly on Emerald’s side, Hazel gave less indication.) 

Also we weren’t playing Yankee Swap, we didn’t trade in James as a hero for Emerald or Hazel, we just had three characters who were all handled badly.

But yeah, it’s really weird that the same volume where the writers were trying to force us to sympathize with Hazel was also trying to force Ironwood into an irredeemable category. The thing is, if I didn’t know about James’ never-mentioned-in-show semblance, I’d not be down for a post volume 8 redemption because I think trying to kill children and actively wanting to torture people as a full grown adult is kind of hard to get redeemed from. But Hazel did that, Hazel is just as if not MUCH MORE evil than Ironwood, so why on earth did the series treat Hazel as redeemable and kind of right and just needing a hand of mercy extended to him? Why was James ‘keep soldiers off the battlefield, turn my gun around because I don’t want to hurt Qrow even though I think he’s trying to murder me, look away from the Grimm while I shoot it’ Ironwood treated as the 100% deserving of pain and death and treated as totally irredeemable villain no one could sympathize with?

When you factor in his semblance it really just makes even less sense. I literally cannot comprehend why the RWBY writers do what they do. Also, thank you so much for the compliment on my bog! Sorry to kind of rant there haha. XD 

[kitkatopinions]

Emerald is one of my favourite characters in the series and I wanted her to get away from Cinder, but her joining the heroes and becoming another generic Ruby stan is some thing I HATE. Let her, Mercury and Neo fuck off to Mistral and live their best lives ( with Adam turning out to have survived so Team MEAN can become a reality).

Can we add survived!Roman to that group and make their name MEANR?

Tbh I don’t write Adam very much in my fanfictions and don’t like him much, so I personally prefer just Roman, Neo, Emerald, and Mercury, but that’s besides the point because guys... There are so many better ways to write a redemption arc for Emerald than what we were given.

I know that holding all redemption arcs up to Zuko is a very high bar to set, but Emerald’s arc didn’t have to be on par with Zuko to still be good. Let me go through a quick barebones explanation of what I needed from an Emerald redemption.

1. Recognizing her own mistreatment and Mercury’s mistreatment at the hands of Cinder and Salem 2. Recognizing and acknowledging that Salem and Cinder’s plans were not okay and hurt innocent people who didn’t deserve it. 3. Recognizing and growing to clearly regret her own role in those plans and enacting that hurt. With her change in morals made explicit. 4. Resolving to do what she can to make up for it and apologizing to the people she’s wronged the most. 5. The narrative validates the hesitance and hurt feelings of those she’s affected, while she earns her place eventually and proves herself and her good intentions over a period of time even if they’ve been working with her out of necessity before that.

You might have noticed, but... RWBY doesn’t manage any of these things. They get really close with the first one to be fair, but Emerald recognizing that Salem is trying to kill everyone including her is not fully recognizing that she’s been treated very badly, and - this is important - despite Emerald’s seasons long commitment to and belief in Cinder, we don’t see Emerald acknowledge Cinder’s mistreatment of herself, let alone recognizing Cinder’s mistreatment of others.

Her own role in harming others was brushed over (”Sure you’ve also been getting your asses kicked, some of that... By me,”) and never apologized for. Despite the fact that I had thought that Mercury should’ve been the one defecting and leaving with Oscar while Emerald stayed back to talk to Cinder, but clearly agreed with Mercury and wanted to leave herself (setting her up for defecting in Vacuo,) I actually don’t have a real problem with Emerald defecting this season after learning what she learned about Salem and joining the people fighting her. But this by all rights should be the start of her redemption arc, rather than the entirety of it, which is what I think the CRWBY writers are missing. Zuko didn’t rescue Aang as the Blue Spirit in volume one of Avatar and then join their group and immediately get the ‘everyone is joking and teasing him and happy to have him’ treatment right away. Even after going through several of the above steps of redemption (plus more such as ‘relapse’ that I think are great, but not required for a proper redemption,) Zuko still had to apologize, prove himself, and be forgiven organically and through his organic relationship growth with the gaang. Emerald leaving the whale and joining the group wasn’t the problem, that could’ve easily been part of the start of her arc in the same way that Zuko being made a fugitive and having to hide his identity was arguably the start of his arc.

But the way the narrative started insisting that she’s done the work already and ought to be accepted into the group is annoying because she hasn’t been redeemed! She’s barely even started.

I love a good villain/antagonist turned good, and I loved Emerald and wanted her to get redeemed. But the way that RWBY did it really just makes me wonder at their writing choices. We don’t need one more person who will sometimes be sassy, but follows along behind Ruby, that everyone is just going to pretend they have an established close relationship with. If RWBY was written better, I’d be wholly on board with Emerald’s redemption. But, with what it is, I do really wish she and Mercury and Neo would just ditch to Mistral, just like I really hope that we don’t see a lot of Sun and Neptune in Vacuo. I still love these characters and I don’t want them ruined or (in the case of Neo and Emerald) even more ruined than they already are.