#interesting how they’re children for condemning salem but ‘college students’ for defending ozpin. isn’t it

[bestworstcase]

most baffling response to the child soldiers post is definitely “they’re not really child soldiers, though, and it’s like how for physically demanding pastimes like ballet you need to start training young so thirteen is actually pretty old, and the students aren’t actually meant to be fighting in real combat anyway”

the huntsmen academies admit seventeen-year-olds—or younger teens with their guardian’s permission. all of the adults, including ozpin, refer to huntsmen students as “children.” (curiously, salem is the only character who ever gets flak in the fandom for calling the nineteen-year-olds children. i wonder why that is 🤔)

from the mouths of the children themselves:

WEISS: Well, Ruby’s still just a kid. BLAKE: She’s only two years younger. We’re all kids. YANG: Well. Not anymore. I mean, look where we are—in the middle of a war zone and armed to the teeth!

the narrative makes it very emphatically clear that these “warriors” are children. they are consistently referred to as children, and the only one who ever objects to being called a child is yang, on the grounds that children don’t fight in wars.

secondly: “when ozpin's predecessor founded the schools, he built them around the relics to act as a fortress. not only would they be easier to defend, but they would constantly be surrounded by trained warriors.” not only are the huntsmen students expected to face real combat (mountain glenn is explicitly considered a war zone), they are the first line of defense for the relics inside the schools. the point of putting the relics in the academies is so that the students will defend them should salem attack. which is exactly what happens at beacon, because the system works as designed.

thirdly: children die at these schools. gretchen rainart died on a training mission. younger students—the ones attending combat schools, which begin at thirteen if not younger—also sometimes die on training missions involving real grimm:

She had some idea why. The research she had done on her teacher had turned up a story Aurelia would probably much rather forget. A student of hers had died on a training mission at Patch Combat School, lost in a scuffle with Ursa Grimm. The school didn’t hold her responsible—she had managed to protect her fifteen other students, and it was all part of the risk. But there was plenty of blame to go around. The child’s parents vowed to have her pay for the death of the girl, and Aurelia’s official statement was, “I blame myself. She should still be with us. She was always so capable, perhaps I put too much faith in her to take care of herself while I got the others to safety.” The girl had been the same age as Trivia, only fifteen.

the huntsmen academies are more intensive, but new students are expected to show up already capable of mowing through hordes of grimm on day one, because the combat schools also send students into the field with minimal supervision (one teacher, sixteen students 14-15 years old, involved in a “scuffle” with grimm). and that teacher leaving one student behind to cover the retreat of the other fifteen and herself isn’t considered to be negligence—she isn’t held to be at fault for this student’s death—because being killed by grimm is “all part of the risk” of attending a combat school.

which again, enroll students 13-16 years old, if not younger.

so yeah, they’re child soldiers. in the real world we define child soldiers as anyone under the age of eighteen recruited for participation in military activities; in rwby it was a deliberate narrative choice for the huntsmen academies to begin at seventeen, for the characters to consistently refer to the students as “children,” and for one of the major villain’s motivations be that his seventeen-year-old sister enrolled at beacon academy and died on a training mission. the text is very clear about the situation.