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supersaiyanjedi14 · 1 year

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RWBY COMBAT ANALYSIS: NORA VALKYRIE

“When my mom ran from the Grimm and left me behind, you found me. We became Ren and Nora. But I realized on this mission apart, I don’t know who “Just Nora” is. And if I’m ever going to find out, then I have to do it alone. Because I’ve always loved you, Lie Ren, and that pretty head on your shoulders seems like it’s doing a lot better. But I still got to get mine sorted out before I can be the partner you need. Is that...okay?”

PHYSICAL

At the time of the Atlas exodus two years after the Fall of Beacon, Nora Valkyrie was a 19-year-old human female originally from Mistral. While specific details are sparce, her original hometown was known to have been destroyed by an attack by the Grimm, prompting her mother to abandon her at an early age. Reduced to a homeless orphan, Nora eventually made her way to the village of Kuroyuri, scavenging for some time before it to was overrun, this time spearheaded by a savage veteran Nuckleeve. Fortunately, Nora found companionship in the concurrently orphaned Lie Ren, whose newly uncovered Semblance saved their lives and set a foundation for their nearly inseparable bond down the road. The pair would travel together for several years before enrolling in Beacon Huntsman Academy in Vale, continuing formal Huntsman training alongside Jaune Arc and Pyrrha Nikos. Be it a coping mechanism or sheer optimism, Nora retained a cheerful and friendly, if sometimes eccentric, disposition in her everyday life, though her past trauma and future ordeals would come to severely test her mettle.

Despite obviously suffering from malnutrition during her time as a street urchin and being somewhat gluttonous in the modern day, Nora retained a clean bill of overall health and possessed an exceptional degree of physical fitness. A conventional though nonetheless highly impressive human specimen, Nora sported a stocky athletic physique, standing at 5’1” and distinguished by her auburn hair, green-blue eyes, and fair skin. Nora’s most noteworthy physical characteristic was her exceptional physical strength, leveraged though her direct and heavy-handed approach to combat. By her own estimation, she could bench press five times her own weight, a likely embellished assessment that is nonetheless corroborated by her displays. She has overpowered numerous targets with a single blow, up to and including crushing even high-caliber Grimm, notably executing a Deathstalker, killing a King Taijitu, staggering a Nevermore, and later landing the critical blow on the Nuckleeve. Compared to her contemporaries, Nora has sent multiple trained opponents flying with the force of her hammer swings, and the only beings consistently able to challenge her have been fellow heavy hitters such as Yang Xiao Long, James Ironwood and Hazel Rainart, all of whom she has been able to overpower herself. Although Rainart and Ironwood were only overcome when Nora’s strength was augmented by her charged up Semblance, this is still an impressive feat given the terrifying bulk of both men would have required an exceptional baseline strength level to even attempt these feats. The only times Nora’s might was insufficient was when a Dust-amped Hazel caught her hammer at Haven and when Tyrian Callows braced his tail against her in Oniyuri. Despite this heavy-handed approach, Nora was dynamic and mobile, covering ground with running charges and power leaps. She maneuvered through the Beacon food fight with relative ease, used full-body spins to add power to her strikes, and was proficient in leveraging her weapon’s recoil to propel her across the battlefield. While Nora’s ability to contend with more agile opponents may appear to be middling, given that Tyrian Callows, Neopolitan and even Neon Katt were all able to outflank and trip her up, I won’t deny that it has only been speedsters of this caliber or higher who have ever done so with ease. Though she favored simple movements and strikes with few elaborate movements, Nora still demonstrated strong reflexes and dexterity, responding to gunfire and wielding her hammer skillfully even against Weiss Schnee’s elegant fencing style.

Nora’s extremely high levels of athletic output were reinforced by her exceptional resiliency and stamina, fighting in numerous lengthy battles while maintaining her performance and surviving various major hits. Though not quite a tank along the lines of Ironwood or Hazel, Nora was easily an armored truck in the mold of her contemporaries Yang and Jaune. During the food fight at Beacon, she shrugged off being slammed into a vending machine and was only overcome when Ruby’s Semblance-induced whirlwind slammed her into a wall and battered her with debris. In Kuroyuri and Oniyuri, Nora was battered around by Tyrian and the Nuckleeve, the latter shattering her Aura, and she continued to fight without any noticeable deterioration in her performance. During the protracted battle at Haven, she was knocked around by Hazel Rainart and endured the pain of the brute manhandling and electrocuting her, digging deep and overpowering him (albeit with the aid of her Semblance), and only started to suffer from fatigue in the final stretch. Appropriately for such a tough girl, Nora has only been subdued by overwhelming force or power, folding to punches from an Atlesian Paladin and later Caroline Cordovin’s Colossus mech. While the latter feat was only possible thanks Jaune amplifying her Aura, the simple fact that she was able to walk after such a catastrophic hit is a testament to just how much it takes to put this woman down. However, Nora was not invincible. In easily her most impressive display of fortitude yet also her most risky, Nora endured the agony of absorbing the electric energy of the Atlas command center security door in order to escape, overcoming both her Aura and Semblance, and leaving her with disfiguring Lichtenberg scars across her arms and torso. Though successful in aiding her allies, Nora was knocked unconscious by the ordeal and was left bedridden for anywhere from several hours to a full day. Regardless, just as with Cordo, Nora was able to bounce back very quickly. Despite these severe injuries receiving only limited medical intervention from Klien Sieben and Jaune, Nora made a full recovery and was fit enough to engage Ironwood the following day.

Despite her heavy grounded approach to combat, Nora’s fighting style heavily emphasized full freedom of movement, putting her full weight behind her strikes and swinging as hard as she could. As such, she opted for lightweight Huntress garb rather than adopting armor, fighting unencumbered. When she joined in Atlas operations, she wore a simple black unitard underneath a sleeveless pink overcoat, covering her arms and legs with detached sleeves and leggings. She completed the outfit with fingerless gloves, rugged boots, and metal bands on her upper arms and thighs. Despite offering no protection in the event of an Aura break, it remained practical in the field and continued to reflect the young Huntress’s colorful personality.

RANKING: Tier 2, Peak Human Fitness

Despite lacking any significant anatomical features or enhancements, Nora Valkyrie was irrefutably the most physically powerful member of Team JNPR, and she continues to outperform her peers with her exceptional athletic performance and extremely impressive tolerance for injury. Perfectly representing the physical apex Huntsmen strive for, Nora’s sheer output ensures that she is going to be a major threat to just about any potential adversary, while her ability to roll with the punches means that nothing short of a catastrophic hit will take her out of the fight. Much like Yang and Hazel, Nora is only kept out of Tier 1.5 due to her aforementioned conventional anatomy. Nora isn’t superhuman, she’s just made out of concrete and hits like a wrecking ball. What can be deemed superhuman, however, is her will to fight and persevere. Nora Valkyrie may hurt and cry, but she will not be beaten into submission. It’s a death blow or nothing.

MARTIAL

Nora Valkyrie was armed with Magnhild, a revolver style grenade launcher that converted into an oversized war hammer. Similar in design to the real-life Milkor MGL, the revolving chamber could hold at least six explosive canisters at a time, though the magazine capacity, like most RWBY weapons, it somewhat inconsistent due to Nora never being seen reloading her weapon. The projectiles themselves appeared to be outfitted with proximity detonators, and the individual shots had enough stopping power to stagger a fully-grown Nevermore with a single hit. The firing mechanism could also be altered to launch all the grenades at once in a devastating anti-personnel attack. When converted, the hammer was a comfortable 5.5 feet in length, the 10-inch diameter head appearing to combine elements of a pein and sledge. Built for hard combat, the maul has regularly proven itself strong enough to kill or stagger Grimm in a single blow as well as shatter stone with ease. Furthermore, the firing mechanism could still be triggered in hammer mode, Nora making a habit of using the recoil of the shots to send her flying across the battlefield. During Team RNJR’s journey to Haven, Nora upgraded her weapon with a built-in electric generator, allowing her to better exploit her Semblance in battle, and a more refined propellant system, using continuous exhausts to more efficiently traverse her environment, in addition to…well, turning her weapon into a Scooty Puff Jr. You do you, Nora.

In a private conversation with Headmaster Ozpin, Blake Belladonna stated her stance that individuals who lived outside the boundaries of the Kingdoms needed to learn to fight as a matter of survival, sink or swim. What these people lacked in formal education, they made up for with the trial by fire of real-world dangers, and few combatants in the RWBY setting embodied this mold as strongly as Nora Valkyrie. Given her status as an impoverished street rat and later Kuroyuri survivor, Nora’s formal combat training prior to enrolling in Beacon Academy would have been exceedingly sparce, forcing her to adopt a self-taught freeform approach to combat, building her skill set through grit and practical experience. This pragmatic approach allowed her to stand out as a remarkably talented martial combatant, making up for a lack of refinement and polish though focus and intensity that made her more than equal to her peers. Her training at Beacon and subsequent string of battles in Mistral and Atlas helped to smooth out the edges, her combat experience showing her strengths and weaknesses that she learned to tweak accordingly. Nora’s fighting technique was heavily tied to the nature of her weapon and her baseline physical might, operating as a powerful yet dynamic juggernaut. Her favored melee attacks were devastatingly powerful overhand slams and sweeping backswings, putting her full power into each of her blows to achieve single-stroke takedowns. Despite this brutish method, Nora was no barbarian with a cudgel, executing her hammer blows with precision and control when necessary. Nora was a capable markswoman, though her preference for explosives over standard projectiles further demonstrates her emphasis on power over control. She would often fire off her grenades in a sustained barrage, aiming to either destroy the target outright or soften them up for a critical blow. Ironically for such a heavy-handed offensive stylist, Nora’s defensive component was centered around evasion rather than fortitude, avoiding attacks with solid jumps or quick sidesteps. That being said, Nora’s defense was not perfect, and she regularly found her guard subverted or even overcome with sufficient force. Additionally, there is no evidence of Nora possessing any skill in hand-to-hand combat, relying wholly on her weapon in battle. The only time Nora ever displayed unarmed techniques was when she powered through Hazel Rainart’s grapple and judo-threw him over her shoulder, a clear act of desperation on her part enabled by her Semblance bolstering her strength. Despite her narrow skill set, Nora’s offensive output was devastating, all brought to a point by her committed focus and enthusiastic perseverance.

As a tactician and strategist, Nora Valkyrie was…well…

I hesitate to call her average, as she is quite intelligent and intuitive. Despite appearing to be a bubbly airhead at times, Nora took combat very seriously, recognizing legitimate dangers and responding to them with calm and focus. She had a particular talent for recognizing openings in an opponent’s style and approach before tailoring her own technique to exploit it. However, Nora’s greatest successes in this regard were often when she had time to evaluate or, more commonly, when she had direction from her allies, operating as an essential team player on multiple occasions. In Team JNPR’s battles with the Deathstalker and Team BRNZ, Nora operated completely within Jaune Arc’s strategies, coordinating with Pyrrha Nikos to literally hammer in the Deathstalker’s severed stinger, and taking higher ground to flush out May Zedong from her sniper’s nest. Team RNJR’s confrontations with the Petra Gigas and the Nuckleeve followed a very similar pattern, where Jaune and Ruby funneled Nora’s devastating blows were down the path of least resistance to critically disable their monstrous opponents. This position as her team’s heavyweight carried over to confrontations with intelligent skilled opponents, often engineering scenarios where her full strength could be brought to bear while undermining the enemy’s ability to defend or escape. During a sparring match with Team FNKI, Jaune, Ren and Oscar cut off Neon Katt’s retreat, in the process allowing Nora to fly in and beat her into the ground. Against Tyrian Callows in Oniyuri, Nora capitalized on her Semblance by allowing Ruby to shoot her with an electric Dust round, tricking the Faunus into lowering his guard before she rushed in and blindsided him. A similar tactic proved more successful during the Atlas Academy false flag operation, only this time Nora was charged by Winter Schnee’s Dust-charged Glyph, attacking James Ironwood while he was busy fighting Ren. This isn’t to say that Nora was useless without direction, as her skill and power still gave her the ability to maintain offensive pressure on the enemy as a means of covering for her allies When confronting giant Grimm, Nora typically opened with her grenade launcher, battering the target from a distance to soften them up before moving in the overpower them physically, something the King Taijitu at the Breech learned the hard way. Against skilled opponents, Nora used this same methodology to blunt incoming spearthrusts, her sheer force allowing her to repel Nolan Porfirio and Ivori with casual ease while freeing her teammates up to come up with a new plan of attack.

Despite her prowess as a team player, Nora’s advantages sadly did not carry over to single combat. When operating on her own, Nora’s policy, by her own assessment, was “be strong and hit stuff”. While I must stress that Nora is not unintelligent, her personal approach to combat was still very straightforward, mostly boiling down to a direct attempt to overpower the opponent with heavy offense. To Nora’s credit, her sheer power meant that this method was still very effective, seen when she overpowered both Weiss and Yang in the food fight, disabled Nolan in the Vytal Festival, and crushed numerous Grimm like soda cans over her career. She may have lacked precision and finesse, but her attacks were so powerful they rarely needed to be. Much like Hazel, Nora’s advantage as a martial artist is based around supplanting skill with raw physical performance, getting to the point where strength can override skill. However, this also meant that Nora had nothing to fall back on if brute strength failed her, as she had no means to truly subvert her adversaries nor to prevent the opponent from subverting her in turn. Despite surprising him with her charged attack, Tyrian recovered very quickly by blocking the blow with his tail and kicking the stunned Huntress away. Additionally, Nora’s most significant blunders came from her overextending, whether being baited into pursuing a more evasive adversary or simply over committing to an attack. Neon’s taunting was enough to get under Nora’s skin as she constantly tried to chase after her, the cat Faunus’s defeat owing entirely to the rest of the team cutting off her escape and giving Nora an anvil for her hammer. At Haven, Hazel’s strength simply exceeded hers, allowing him to overpower her, disarm her, and pin her to the ground. The only reason Nora was able to fight back at all was because Hazel, ignorant of her powers, subjected her to electric shocks that powered up her Semblance and gave her the strength to throw him off. Against Neopolitan at the academy, Nora was baited into charging in while the assassin simply tripped her up with a bat from Hush. Nora was at her best against fellow offensive stylists that she could brace up against and overpower, and at her worst when faced with more measured duelists who could cancel out her strength and dissect her.

RANKING: Tier 4, Advanced Application

Nora Valkyrie is a devastating offensive heavyweight, with a performance level more than advanced enough to threaten the greats of her era and a weapon that allows that power to be leveraged both at range and in close quarters. At the same time, Nora’s most compelling feats have been the direct result of working in concert with her allies, filling in the gaps of her narrow skill set with more consistent and adaptable tactics. Nora is a product of her era, her fighting style designed for general combat rather than single combat, leaving her at a disadvantage against more skilled and tactically nuanced opponents who can nullify her simple hammer strikes. Still, simplicity has a strength of its own, for while Nora is not a true master martial artist, she is certainly a master of her weapon, and her ability to capitalize on her advantages means she can maintain a consistent game plan with consistent power. Be strong, hit stuff. Lather, rinse, repeat.

SPECIAL

Nora Valkyrie’s Semblance was a particularly shocking power known as High Voltage (pun completely intended, come at me bro!). As described by both Bartholomew Oobleck and Nora herself, the ability allowed Nora to absorb electricity into her muscles, bolstering her already considerable physical strength to superhuman levels. Nora’s powers first manifested on what she dubbed a “crazy Thursday”, a freak accident resulting in her getting struck by lightning, not only enduring the bolt but emerging stronger as a result. Beyond the obvious application, this power’s nature fed into a secondary ability to negate the effects of electric shocks and injuries, something that Nora has demonstrated on numerous occasions. While Nora was not immune to the pain and still had to endure it, the lasting effects of the shocks on her Aura and body ranged from minimal to nonexistent, and the magnitude of these shocks is truly immaculate at times. When hit with a sustained application of electricity from Nolan Porfirio’s cattle prod, Nora showed mild discomfort at best, while a direct hit from an electric Dust bullet from Ruby merely knocked her off her feet for a bit, moving to attack Tyrian Callows almost immediately afterwards. While the exact measurements have never been established, there is a degree of correlation between the intensity of Nora’s absorbed electricity and the effects it has on her physical strength. Nolan’s prod merely empowered Nora to the point of blowing him backwards, but after absorbing a lightning bolt from Amity Colosseum’s mountain biome, Nora was strong enough to make a crater in the arena center. Nora also seemed able to control the amount of energy she expends for a given attack, having enough juice leftover to send all of Team BRNZ airborne hard enough to eliminate them. When Hazel Rainart subjected Nora to a sustained electrocution at Haven, Nora, despite clearly being in great pain, gained the strength to throw Hazel over her shoulder and later slam him through the walls of the Haven entrance hall, which is frankly incredible given that Hazel had spent the better part of the battle overpowering everyone he came across, including Nora herself.

Unfortunately, as impressive as Nora’s displays with her Semblance were, they were also fraught with numerous logistical drawbacks. Due to Nora needing electricity to absorb in the first place, her power’s effectiveness was severely diminished if there was insufficient electricity for her to draw on. While Oobleck’s commentary in Volume 3 says that Nora could generate electricity herself, this detail can comfortably be attributed to Early Installment Weirdness or a simple typo in the script, as Nora has never demonstrated this ability by herself. Instead, all of Nora’s uses of her Semblance have boiled down to circumstantial factors or the benefits of equipment. At the Vytal Festival and Haven, she turned her opponents’ attacks back on them by taking in the electricity of their weapons, bracing up against them and hitting them where it hurt. While these showings were impressive, they required Nora to exploit what the opponent had in that specific moment rather than something she actively took advantage of. This reliance on others carried over to her allies providing her with the electricity she needed. Against Tyrian in Oniyuri, Nora took the boost from Ruby’s Dust round to blindside the Faunus, and Winter Schnee infused her Glyph with electric Dust to provide a similar effect against Ironwood at Atlas Academy. While this reflects well on Nora’s ability to coordinate with her allies, this is, again, something she would not be able to accomplish when operating on her own, which limits her overall combative viability. To get around this, Nora upgraded the head of Magnhild with an electric generator during her travels in Mistral. Through this means, Nora was able to empower herself in the moment to perform some of her most impressive feats, most notably the destruction of the Petra Gigas. While Nora has rarely used this feature in live combat, my Watsonian belief is that the generator requires time to build up the necessary power, time Nora has rarely had against skilled opponents.

A far more serious shortcoming was the fact that Nora’s Semblance did not cancel out pain entirely. While her resistance to electrocution is truly immaculate, her most impressive feats have taken hefty tolls on her. Nora’s overpowering of Hazel was preceded by her screaming in agony as she was electrocuted, and her minimal participation afterwards indicated the beginnings of fatigue setting in. Even the comparatively limited power of Ruby’s Dust round was enough to stagger her, her survival owing entirely to Tyrian’s gloating. Fortunately, Nora was able to partially compensate for this by avoiding direct contact with the currents. Like many of her peers, she has frequently utilized her weapon as a medium to safely channel the power, allowing the weapon to take the damage rather than enduring it herself. It was likely this feature that influenced the incorporation of her hammer’s electric generator, providing her with a means to safely bolster her strength. However, the generator clearly had a limit to how much energy it could expel, as Nora’s greatest displays have still required outside influence, thereby continuing to expose her to risk. Cycling back to Nora’s ability to manage her output, this demonstrates that her Semblance is based around a serious calculated risk, forced to choose between power or control. Furthermore, even this tactic had limits, put on full display in easily Nora’s greatest showing of power. When her party was trapped in the Atlas command center’s computer terminal, Nora, through the hammer, absorbed the energy of an electrified security door, giving her the power to smash through the barrier. While this titanic display demolished the door, Nora’s Aura was overwhelmed, knocking her unconscious and leaving her grievously injured. Nora’s feats make it clear that pushing her to her limit is no easy feat, but even the strongest conduit in the world will eventually burn out.

RANKING: Tier 4, Reinforce Combat

Nora Valkyrie’s Semblance is a uniquely powerful ability, enabling her to perform some of the most incredible physical feats in the series while also providing an ability to turn her opponent’s energies against them. At the same time, the practicality of Nora’s powers in live combat is extremely circumstantial, as she requires outside sources of energy to use them to their fullest, while her showings against Hazel and the door prove that she does have limits to what she can do. Nora’s attempts to compensate are only partially successful, as the generator in her weapon has its mechanical limits and she has constantly relied on the Dust of her allies rather than carrying her own. Nora’s Semblance strongly reinforces her fighting method and plays into her ability to work together with her teams, but its logistical limitations hinder its effectiveness as a strategic tool, seen in her overwhelming preference for physical combat.

OVERALL RANKING: TIER 4, EXPERT HUNTRESS

Determined by her martial and special abilities, Nora Valkyrie’s placement in the Tier System highlights her status as a remarkably powerful warrior despite her repertoire of limitations. Like most Huntsmen of the day, Nora’s skill set and attributes are optimized for general combat with the creatures of Grimm rather than single combat with skilled adversaries, and as such Nora is a combatant built for the battlefield rather than the dueling arena. Her powers and abilities are well-honed, powerful, and feed into each other very effectively, but they are also rather straightforward and singular. What you see is what you get. Although the two have had little interaction in canon, Nora is surprisingly similar to Sun Wukong in how her attributes stack up. Nora’s physical hardiness provides a physical edge on par with Sun’s tail, their fighting styles emphasize power and force yet can be applied with subtly when necessary, and their Semblances provide strong battlefield advantages despite their logistical shortcomings. They are expert-level fighters respected for their prowess, but they lack the refinement and skill of the true masters. While Nora is not unintelligent, her displays of cunning and ingenuity are the exception rather than the rule, and she tends to rely too heavily on brute strength against well-trained opponents. She is an extremely credible threat to the higher ups, but her underdeveloped skill means she remains manageable.

In Volume 8, Nora pointed out her insecurities in formulating her own identity beyond Ren’s other half and the “be strong and hit stuff” girl. Aside from underscoring Nora’s own brand of psychological stress during the Atlas crisis, I find this idea (as is often the case with RWBY characters) intriguingly reflected in her development as a warrior. Just as she drew so much strength from her bond with Ren yet struggled to determine who she was on her own, Nora is someone who learned from her victories but not her defeats, doubling down on her offensive method rather than fleshing herself out with more tactically viable options and tools. Luckily for her, Nora has become aware of this, and has committed herself to achieving the healthy self-actualization she needs to grow. While not one of the great masters of her day, Nora is well on her way to truly coming into her own as both a Huntress and a woman just as Ren himself did. Whether this will carry over to Nora’s fighting abilities has yet to be seen, but given all she has demonstrated, I feel confident that the Valkyrie with come to fly on her own. One Boop at a time.

Special credit to KamenRiderAvenger (@kravenger2022) for the edit of Nora’s Atlas Arc render with her scars (slightly edited further by me to be closer to what’s on-screen)

*originally posted on RoosterTeeth Community page on 03-24-22*

* images taken from RWBY Wiki and @sapphire--art *

RWBY Combat Analysis

#rwby #rwby combat analysis #nora valkyrie #rwby nora #team jnpr #beacon academy #peak human fitness #advanced application #reinforce combat

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historyhermann · 1 year

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RWBY Volume 9 Spoiler-Filled Review [part 1]

RWBY is an anime-inspired science fantasy action-adventure series, using computer animation, which has run for eight seasons, known as "volumes". Originally created by animator and writer Monty Oum, in 2013, and continued after his death in 2015, RWBY is the flagship series of Rooster Teeth, a digital media company and subdivision of Warner Bros. Discovery. As a warning, this review will discuss death, suicide, blood, torture, animal death, physical (and emotional) abuse, and other related themes.

Reprinted from Pop Culture Maniacs and Wayback Machine. This was the thirty-first article I wrote for Pop Culture Maniacs. This post was originally published on April 26, 2023.

This young adult animated series primarily centers on the four primary protagonists: Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long, with the series name deriving from their forenames. Set in a fictional world named Remnant, these characters, and others, train to become warriors (huntresses or huntsmen), so they can save the world from monsters known as Grimm, which are driven by fear and dedicated to destroying humanity.

Apart from the aforementioned protagonists, others, such as Ozma/Ozpin/Oscar Pine, Lie Ren, Nora Valkyrie, Qrow Branwen, Robyn Hill, and Jaune Arc, help them fight against evil forces. Uniquely, the series has theme songs, primarily by Casey Lee Williams, at the beginning of each volume, which foreshadows what will happen, making the show unique in its own way.

The show's ninth volume is unlike the previous volumes, which had a classic conflict between good vs. evil, intricate story telling, horror elements, and character development. That is because the protagonists are stranded in a magical land known as the Ever After. Even so, they retain a semblance which allows them to have superpowers-of-sorts, so they can either manipulate objects, disorient people, use super strength, or have other abilities.

Morally grey characters are inherent to RWBY, including the Ace Ops or General James Ironwood. In contrast, Cinder Fall breaks from the strict dictates of her leader, Salem. The latter, and her enforcers, are determined to do anything to achieve their goals, even engaging in human experimentation. This interlinks with the blood, gore, and death of some characters.

The series' large focus on sci-fi and magic elements goes beyond characters like Penny Polendina (voiced by Taylor "Pelto" McNee), a cyborg girl, and scrolls which record and receive messages. Arguably, in this volume, the series has received a "directional reset" and ended on a strong note, even setting up a possible volume 10.

One of the most controversial parts of RWBY, up to the current volume, has been its LGBTQ representation. There have been lesbian couples, like Saphron and Terra-Arc, and lesbian characters who have crushes on the protagonists, as is the case for Ilia Amitola (voiced by Cherami Leigh). This was strengthened by the role of May Marigold, the first trans character in the series, in Volume 8. She was voiced by trans female voice actress, Kdin Jenzen. She did not appear in Volume 9 and Jenzen has been critical of the company's practices. This volume is the last one that Jenzen will be working on, as she was reportedly laid off from the company.

Some fans have held out hope that the Bumbleby ship (Blake and Yang) would become canon, especially after Arryn Zech, Blake's voice actress, confirmed her character as bisexual in May 2020. This came to pass in this volume and there have been hints of other possible romantic ships, which I'll discuss later in this review.

One of the strengths of this series is its visuals, which have improved dramatically from the first volume, and its voice actors. Furthermore, although the fandom of this series can be toxic, the show's fans have come up with colorful ship names. This includes femslash ones, such as Baked Alaska (Yang and Neopolitan), Blood Mint (Ruby and Emerald Sustrai), Freezerburn (Yang and Weiss), Ladybug (Ruby and Blake), and White Rose (Ruby and Weiss), even though some of these are problematic.

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The surreal nature of RWBY's ninth volume makes it fundamentally different from the canon-adjacent anime series, RWBY: Ice Queendom. The latter focused on Weiss Schnee, especially on how she needs to "unlearn her white supremacist thinking" and become a better person. There was a non-binary character named Shion Zaiden (voiced by Hiroki Nanami, and Jenzen in English). It was confirmed in an interview with the show's staff and producers. Unfortunately, similar characters have yet to appear in RWBY, even though both series share fight scenes, strong visuals, and soundtrack.

RWBY is somewhat complicated by issues that Rooster Teeth has dealt with over the years. For one, actor Vic Mignogna, who voiced Qrow Branwen until Volume 6, was removed after accusations of sexual harassment. Ryan Haywood and Adam Kovic were either involved in scandals which related to their leaked nude photographs or grooming underage fans, in the case of Haywood. Furthermore, anonymous reviews focused on a negative crunch culture at Rooster Teeth, especially at their animation division, leading to the resignation of Gray Haddock (creator of gen:LOCK), head of this division, as a result.

Former hosts of Rooster Teeth programs stated that they received racist and sexist abuse from the audience. Jenzen argued that an upper manager engaged in transphobic and homophobic abuse. This was followed by other employees posting similar stories. In response, the company released statements arguing they were taking steps to improve the work culture, review pay parity, and even replace the entire Human Resources department, while reducing the number of shows being produced. These issues were compounded by the arrest of then-vice president of Rooster Teeth, Michael Quinn, for assaulting his wife, in November 2019.

In terms of RWBY itself, fans previously claimed that the show queerbaited after the death of a character in the show's seventh season, believing that Qrow Brawnen and Clover Ebi were canon. In reality, the series never directly showed them together. The argument that Clover's death is queerbaiting, is like saying Wednesday did the same by not making the friendship between Wednesday Addams and Enid Sinclair a romantic one, despite the false insistence of fans that it was canon. As such, it is no surprise that some see RWBY as a lost cause and not worth supporting.

From my perspective, I think that regardless of these issues, and the fact that Rooster Teeth seems to be a toxic work environment, RWBY still has value. This is because of the hard work of the animators and writers, known as CRWBY. In fact, I would argue that the latest volume is the strongest in the series up to this point and it has some of the best animation. Although some may balk at the show's style, or even claim that the protagonist's clothing constitutes fan service for the audience, the reality is that the show's style makes it stand out, apart from any other action-adventure science fantasy.

Unlike previous volumes, the ninth volume premiered on Crunchyroll on February 18, as part of "a one-year exclusive release with Crunchyroll", and it will then release on the Rooster Teeth website in 2024. This is a big deal because the series is primary show for Rooster Teeth and its streaming platform of the same name. So, it may portend the end or reduction of the platform.

Whether the worst for Rooster Teeth comes to a head, I'm not sure. It seems very likely that the show will receive a tenth volume, which may be the final season. I would be very surprised if RWBY is not renewed, as it has generated a lot of buzz, has generally strong ratings on Crunchyroll, and, undoubtedly, has thousands of people watching each episode.

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The ninth volume of RWBY is captivating. Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang try and find themselves, and anything they have lost. There are new characters like a talking mouse named Little (voiced by Luci Christian), the Curious Cat (voiced by Robbie Daymond), which fulfills a specific role in a land which has many characteristics of Alice in Wonderland, and enemies such as the jabberwalkers (voiced by Richard Norman). Little later becomes Ruby's emotional support animal of sorts.

I was further drawn into this volume by the story of Alyx, her brother Lewis, the Rusted Knight, and the Curious Cat. This was weaved together artfully, with the audience knowing as much as the characters about the real story as the series went forward. This included the revelation that Juane became the Rusted Knight and was reportedly betrayed by Alyx (voiced by Shara Kirby). He became trapped in the Ever After for over 40 years, causing him to become a "mature" older man, who has a steed named Juniper.

The volume interrogates Juane's hero complex. It breaks down when the town of the Paper Pleasers is flooded (possibly mirroring what happened to Mantle in Volume 8) and he can save none of them. He admits as much in the seventh episode, saying he "not ok" or "right". In some ways I see a parallel between Juane (voiced by Miles Luna) and General Ironwood (voiced by Jason Rose). Juane seems to be just as tired and angry at people, thinking he is "saving" people by making "hard choices". Ironwood is different as be became an unhinged military dictator who turned against the protagonists.

Even more than any previous volume, this 10-episode volume of RWBY has a specific focus on Ruby. She begins a downward spiral, although her sister, Yang, repeatedly tries to ask her what is wrong, often to no avail. Understandably, she is further shaken when her friends are shrunk to miniature size. She begins to have so much self-doubt that she isn't sure is a huntress/hero anymore.

This volume shows the extreme pressure Ruby is under as team leader, as she puts the needs of others ahead of her own. This is shown directly when she can't even use her weapon, Crescent Rose, in the show's seventh episode, after having flashbacks to traumatic events from the previous volumes. This is almost akin to the Steven Universe Future episode where Steven Universe tells his friend's mother about all the childhood trauma he has experienced over his life time.

Getting back to RWBY, at the end of episode seven, Ruby has a breakdown, asking why she has to be the leader. She criticizes everyone else for not devoting time to solve her problems, for helping Juane's "make-believe" friends, and seeming to disregard what she is going through. I thought it was interesting that none her teammates push her over the edge, but Juane, who has experienced as much trauma as her, ends up blaming her for everything that went wrong.

Although Juane has a valid point, it is wrong of him to put the blame on her entirely. In addition, Ruby's plan in Volume 8, to use the staff of creation to create paths to evacuate citizens from Mantle to Vacuo, clearly opened them up to a lot of danger. But, its failure wasn't entirely her fault. If Cinder hadn't asked about Ruby's plan, thanks to magic lamp, it might have been successful. Even so, they seemed to ignore the advice from the genie, in the staff of creation, who told them to "not fall".

This reality mattered little to Ruby, who felt overwhelmed by everything, and fled, shocking the rest of her team. Having Ruby snap at her team in the ways she did was inevitable based on what has happened through the previous seasons. In fact, she was already under a lot of stress by the end of Volume 8 and almost lost her life multiple times over.

In watching this volume, I am reminded of the mental health struggles of Steven in Steven Universe Future and Steven Universe, and Julian Chase in the ever-problematic gen:LOCK. However, it is different for Ruby. In the eighth episode, she pushes away Little and faces Neopolitan, a mute villain-of-sorts in a mansion, with Neo bringing back ghosts of Ruby's past to torture her. Through Roman Torchwick, Neo "says" that she will enjoy seeing Ruby break down.

At the end of the same episode, drinks a cup of tea, poured by Neo, with a leaf from the ever-powerful tree. She appears to end her own life, staring into the eyes of her sister, Yang, and feels that the world would be better without her. As this happens, her teammates remain in shock over what she did.

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This serious tone of RWBY is only part of the show's mature, and distressing themes. It is coupled with death, loss, destruction, and horrific creatures such as the Grimm, which are attracted to those who are afraid or scared. Although such beings don't appear in this volume, the above scene is followed by the Curious Cat possessing Neo for his own ends. The devious cat sees Neo as an "empty host", and the cat-as-Neo is a being which Weiss, Blake, Yang, and Jaune fight in the last two episodes of this volume.

How RWBY depicts suicide is fundamentally different from how it is depicted in the continually controversial gen:LOCK. The latter featured all of the characters killing themselves, then each becoming the equivalent of a swarm of locusts to defeat the enemy. In the case of Ruby, there are questions as to whether she ended her own life, or she only engaged a suicide attempt.

The final nail of Ruby's descent into a dark place, Neo, is more than a villain. She is not completely heartless, even though she terrorized Ruby into the drinking the tea and killed Little with a twist of her heeled shoe. By the end of the volume, it is clear that she may have some form of redemption or will become an ally-of-sorts to the show's heroes. Ruby even says that Neo will find herself, one way or another, as she falls back into the Ever After.

In terms of the tonal shifts in this volume of RWBY, they were not as well-executed as they could have been. At the same time, it should be remembered that a lot has happened in a short period of time, leaving Weiss, Blake, and Yang, especially after Ruby "ascends", without much time to process to process everything. Furthermore, it would be inaccurate to say that Ruby's teammates don't care about her, as they clearly do, in more ways than one.

The volume was effective in connecting the previous volumes to this one, with an emphasis on the themes of self-acceptance and self-love. Ruby exemplifies this directly. She isn't sure what choice she wants to make, even as those outside the tree, like Yang, Weiss, and Blake, accept whatever path Ruby wants to go down. At one point, Ruby thinks she might be doing more harm than good, looks at all of the possibilities in front of her, and grabs her mom's weapon. In the end, she embraces herself. This isn't as much change as some had been expecting, but it is a powerful message that you are enough, without a need to remake yourself.

The ever-present tree in this volume is shown to be a place of rebirth and rejuvenation, which does not simply resurrect and kill someone. Instead, ascension isn't death, but it is change, and that is the role of the tree. This is connected with the theme of this volume that you should not condemn yourself for mistakes you make, but accept them and learn from them. In fact, when the Curious Cat, which is vulnerable after the tree's leaves released him from Neo's body, argues that humans are weak, confused, incomplete, and break everything they touch, Weiss, Yang, and Blake disagree, saying Ruby is none of those things.

The volume nine finale of RWBY was one of the best episodes, giving background, but tying up loose ends, even talking about how the Ever After was created. It brought together the aforementioned themes and it ends with the characters walking through the portal to a place they are needed most: Vacuo. It was a fitting end to the series, if this is the last episode ever produced.

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There is more about of RWBY's ninth volume, especially when it comes to LGBTQ representation, which put it on the map when it comes to all the representation in series this year. Episode 6, entitled "Confessions Within Cumulonimbus Clouds", was written by Eddy Rivas, and directed by Kerry Shawcross and Yssa Badiola. The latter was known for her short-lived series, Recorded by Arizal.

This episode built upon previous interactions between Yang and Blake, with flirting or blushing at one another in this volume, and in previous volumes. Everyone is trapped in a Punderstorm, a literal and metaphorical crossroads, with individuals only able to get out if they either solve the problems or wait until the storm passes.

In one of the best-constructed and well-done queer romantic scenes I've seen in an animated series, Blake and Yang admit their feelings for each other, as the music swells, then kiss. Significantly, the characters almost express the feelings of the fandom, with Weiss and Ruby surprised to see them linking lips, while Juane says that it "feels like I've been waiting forever for that". It is something which many fans of the Bumbleby ship had been waiting for.

While the scene was hinted in the volume 9 poster, it was no substitute for the scene, which excited fans over the canonization of Bumbleby, including on the show's subreddit. Even the Bumbleby's subreddit was exploding with new content. It could be said that the episode set a high standard for women-love-women romance.

It is only rivaled by the developing yuri story within the recently ended yuri isekai The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady, or the queer romance encapsulated within She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Dead End: Paranormal Park, Arcane, Star Trek: Lower Decks, Helluva Boss, Craig of the Creek, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, and Steven Universe to name a few recent series with prominent representation.

The episode itself generated discussion from the show's roundtable and even on All Good and No Worries, a Rooster Teeth show hosted by Barbara Dunkleman (voice of Yang), in an episode in which she talked with Arryn Zech (voice of Blake). In previous years, Zech and Dunkleman often hinted at this ship, stating their support for the ship, as did actor Kara Eberle (who voices Weiss).

The life of Zech somewhat mirrored her character, as she accused her ex-boyfriend, prominent actor Bob Morley, of verbal and emotional abuse, and said that Morley was furious when he learned that she was bisexual. Blake had been with an abusive ex-boyfriend of her own named Adam Taurus, who wields a chokutō and a gun, and attempts to take over the White Fang, peaceful organization originally aimed at improving conditions for the animalistic Faunus, a group of cat-like people.

In the penultimate season six episode, "Seeing Red", Blake and Yang kill Adam together, and touch their foreheads, which some see as a sign of romantic affection. Blake is also a bisexual character, like Zech is real life. In addition, during the discussion with Zech, Dunkleman admitted she is "not fully straight", but is "for the most part...fairly straight", while Zech talked about the struggles of dating as a bisexual woman.

It is clear that the romantic relationship between Blake and Yang was always planned, despite brutal shipping wars claiming otherwise. The canon nature of Bumbleby flies against those claiming the show's crew was queerbaiting. In fact, some made similar claims about the slow build-up of the romance between Marceline the Vampire Queen and Princess Bubblegum in Adventure Time, whose relationship, known as Bubbline by fans, was canonized in the series finale "Come Along with Me". It is not known if the CRWBY would ever an hour-long episode about Bumbleby, akin to the Adventure Time: Distant Lands episode "Obsidian", which almost exclusively focused on Bubbline, but would be great if that occurred.

The episode six scene was reinforced in other episodes: Blake and Yang fight together in tag team style, Yang protects Blake at one point, or Ruby sarcastically says she is "happy" for Blake and Yang getting their "feelings sorted out" when she has her breakdown at the end of episode seven. More powerfully, in the final episode, Blake and Yang walk through the portal door back to Vacuo holding hands just like Korra and Asami Sato in the Legend of Korra series finale.

Continued in part 2

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darkenlyte · 11 months

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Visions of RWBY

So I've recently been playing Genshin Impact again, and as a long time RWBY enjoyer, I got to thinking 'What visions would the main cast of RWBY have, hence, without further adoo.

Team RWBY:

Ruby Rose: Pyro

Pyro vision holders are almost always energetic and passionate individuals who love their jobs, this fits Ruby to a tee. The one exception being Diluc, and even then, volume 9 Ruby followed much the same path as he did.

Ruby's introduction to the pyro family would be like adding oil to an already blazing fire, bringing yet more life to the excitable home.

There is beauty in fire, but in order to burn something must be sacrificed.

Weiss Schnee: Cryo

Cryo weilders seem to recieve their visions when are at a cross roads in their lives, i.e. leaving the comfortable life she knew and choosing to fight a seemingly unbeatable foe.

Weiss' introduction would be a more quiet affair, however, I believe that her presence would help bring a touch of warmth to the home of ice.

Like delicate shard of ice refracting light into all colours for those around to see.

Blake Belladona: Anemo

Almost all users of anemo desire to be free in some capacity or another. Blake fought for the White Fang in order to free her people from persecution, when she realised the error of her ways, she looked for a different way to achieve freedom, even if it meant hiding who she was.

The anemo family is widely known to have some the most free individuals in Teyvat, despite their hard pasts. Blake along with Jean, would often act as the voices of reason, acting like a refreshing breeze on a warm summer day.

None can survive without the air to fill their lungs, even the bound desire to fly.

Yang Xiao Long: pyro

Same as her younger sister, Yang is a firey, and confident individual who is always willing to put provide a supporting shoulder to those who need it, and is emotionally healthy enough to take support when its offered.

Yang's introduction would be like a grand golden flame joining the bonfire, outstanding and beautiful, yet easily integrating into larger whole.

Fire is deadly but it also harbours life.

Team JNR:

Jaune Arc: Geo

The weilders of Geo visions share an unwavering determination and are all widely accepted as skilled leaders. Though Jaune didn't start out with the willpower or skills of his peers, through constant effort and pain, he is now considered both a skilled leader and combatant.

The geo family is prided on their mutual support and demeanour. Like Itto, I expect Jaune to bring a sense of levity and fun, though his experiences would lend themselves to acting as a surprisingly understanding listener.

Like a piece of uncut and unpolished gem, his value would only be known to those with the keenest of eyes.

Nora Valkyrie: Electro (surprise?)

Electro visions are received by those think or are fundamentally different from other. This is not a negative trait, rather because of this plans and avenues that otherwise would not be expored are opened to the team.

As a young woman, Nora would fit right into the electro family, bring a positive charge to any conversation she is a part of.

When lightning strikes it lasts for but a moment, but even those who cannot see will know it has come because of the roar of the thunder.

Lie Ren: Dendro

Seekers of knowledge and wisdom. Ren is a well educated individual with a good head on his shoulders (most of the time). He is the brain to Nora's brawn, the two of them operating similar to another electro, dendro duo we know of.

From dust we came, and to dust we shall return, thus shall we forever be a part of the world.

Sorry for the long essay everyone, if you have any suggestions, criticisms or questions on how they would interact with other vision weilders let me know.

#rwby #genshin impact #visions #genshin impact au #overthinking

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the-path-to-redemption · 11 months

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Valkos Nora x Pyrrha

ask meme

DON'T SHIP IT

Why don’t you ship it? - This is gonna sound repetitive, but holy shit I cannot stand Nora anymore. She went from being a good friend to Pyrrha despite the minimal interaction between them to an absolute asshole to Ren that I refuse to ship her with anyone for their own well-being. May Pyrrha rest in peace away from these bitches.

What would have made you like it? - The same thing with any Nora ship tbh, to have her have her own agency away from Ren, and my god, have her talk to other people. Stop letting her be out here abusing and gaslighting him. Free them from 'writer's misogyny" pleaseeeeeee

Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it? - I do think their interactions in the Beacon era are cute. Pyrrha's calm and Nora is hyperactive, Pyrrha hides her emotions but Nora understands them. But sadly, that's about it.

#answered #anonymous #ship meme answered #ask meme answered #nora valkyrie #pyrrha nikos #nora valkyrie critical #rwby electromagnetism #rwby #rwde

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rentogen123 · 1 year

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Hey how are you ?

A few weeks ago i posted an au of rwby called dawnseeker

abd re-reading the post i made for the story i realize it sucks so i want to take another shot and see if i can explain it better but make sure i dont just write a wall of text i will just write the most important points

Fall of beacon arc

-jaune manages to grab pyrrha so both end in the rocket locker so pyrrha does not die

-since jaune does not call ruby she tries to find yang and she finds her just before adam uses his semblance and calls to yang causing her to turn her head and adam to change his attatck to land on her eyes leaving her blind from one eye and the other on critical condition abd causing yang to lose consiousness

-ruby thinking her sister just died causes her eyes to awaken in a much more powerfull way than in cannon so much that her eyes kill every grim in beacon and vale including the dragon

-this makes adam retreat and blake to run away thinking that yand died because of her and she hurt ruby

ozpin manages to survive since the silver damaged cinder

Scatered and alone arc

-after yang wakes up and realizes she is blind from one eye and her parter ran away causes yang to enter in a deep deprecion

-Weiss is forced to go to atlas like in cannon

-after a year and a half weiss schnee takes over the SDC in a rather brutal fashion

-Blake starts a new group called blue edge woth objective of destroying the white fang

-this causes her to earn the nickname the wandering shadow

-ruby is hailed as a hero and becomes a simbol of hope for the people

-and she becomes a unwiling political puppet

-in a mission on atlas she meets penny again

-penny becomes one of the few people ruby can count

-jaune saving pyrrha causes friction on jaune and pyrrha relationship

-this friction last for 3 months and after that they become a couple

-They break up after 6 months due to an incident on the raid of mount glen

-this incident ears pyrrha the nickname of the godness of betrayal

-this is also the incident that breaks team jnpr for real

After ren lie abandons jaune in mount glenn taking nora valkyrie with him

Falling dusk arc

-after the incident of mount glen jaune arc never uses a sword again

-half a year passes and after an encounter with jaune and a recorded scroll call yang finds her will once again

-yand and jaune start learnig from taiyang xiao long

-jaune becomes a hand to hand fighter

-ruby makes a specialized weapon for jaune with penny's help called " "AGS" (aura gear sistem)

-yang recives a robotic eye from penny

-ruby begin to fall from grace as a simbol and becomes more and more deatached to her feelings her only safe heaven are jaune yang and penny

-jaune and ruby start dating

-after 2 years of dating yang joins the relatiinshio

After 5 years after the fall of beacon ruby rose is selected to a suicide mission "either kill salem or become a martyr

This makes the begening of the dawnseeker event

#why i do this to myself #Dont know what im doing #please help #brain goes brr #Jaune is based naoto kurogane #Yang is basicaly juri han without the crazy

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howlingday · 2 years

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Nora: See! I told you we could trust him!

Jaune: Nora, is that your hand he's eating?

Nora: (Looks down amputated arm, Scoffs) Tyrian~!

Tyrian: (Nibbling on severed hand) What can I say? I'm a sucker for lady fingers!

#rwby #nora valkyrie #jaune arc #tyrian callows #nostalgia critic #the nostalgia critic

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princeoftheroses · 3 years

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something funny abt rwby is the most interesting characters in the show are NOT in team rwby and they are treated the absolute worst by the writers imo

not to say team rwby is treated well by the writers either (i don't think the writers know a good characterization if it hit them in the face) but like the most interesting parts of rwby are not rwby at all

oscar having to deal with his turmoil being thrust into the world suddenly? he got therapy offscreen & a wardrobe change in vol 6 and in vol 8 he just uses ozpin's magic it's never brought up how he feels about it

penny realizing she's a real girl even if she's a robot as well? no she gets a virus and treated like a machine & then has to become a human to be a real girl & is killed off badly anyway

ren's tragic backstory and tendency to guard his emotions because it's all he knows how to do to protect himself, only to lead to him blowing up and yelling at jaune and yang? he gets over it and gets a dumb power up

ironwood's trauma & past existence giving him tunnel vision and leasing to him doing the wrong thing for a good goal? nope now he's just trying to murder children & is an asshole

nora realizing that she doesn't know how to be a person without ren by her and valuing only what she can do (be strong & hit stuff) as opposed to who she is leading to her getting seriously injured? well she tells ren she needs time to find herself so instead of her falling with team rwby & jaune so she'd be separate from ren to find herself & be near that tree that has to do with norse mythology (relevant for somebody named nora valkyrie) , she's with ren again.

don't even get me started on ozma/ozpin, team strq, ilia, and mercury

#rwby #rwde #rwby critical #long post #this show just has too many characters #anti rwby #oscar pine #ozpin #ozma #penny polendina #li ren #james ironwood #nora valkyrie

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fadedneonzzz · 3 years

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There is A LOT of discourse this hiatus due to the “protagonist centered morality”, however the funny thing is I have seen people asking for something like V7 and V8 where it’s not a standard morally right or morally wrong side for a long time. It’s made me realize that the FNDM doesn’t actually know what they want until they actually get it.

In V7 we’re introduced to this moral dilemma as early as the second episode, the Ruby and the gang are conflicted because they want to trust Ironwood, but they also saw the state that Mantle was in, they wanted to get a grasp of the situation before they told anything to him because they didn’t know how he’d react to the news about Salem. To make things both better and worse at the same time, Ironwood introduces Amity Tower to reestablish communications across the world which would help immensely in the battle against Salem, but again it only makes it harder for them to tell him the truth about Salem.

Before their mission in the mines, they even briefly talk about their decision to not tell Ironwood about what’s really going on, and Ruby says they will sooner or later, but later on in the volume they ask if they should’ve told him earlier before Ironwood himself put so much on the line. So they’re partially at fault here, waiting for the right time to tell him, but when is the right time? And what will happen when they do tell him?

Also Ironwood is far from flawless, he saw Mantle as a burden more than people of the Kingdom of Atlas, he prioritized a secret project over fixing Mantle’s wall which lead to frequent Grimm attacks. Yes he gave them Penny, but I don’t think I need to explain why she wasn’t enough. Most of Atlas’s troops weren’t down there, it was mainly drones and android soldiers. It was so under-protected that Watts and Tyrian were able to sneak in undetected and remained so until episode 5.

We see in episode 6 just how little he values Mantle, yet he demands their cooperation anyway as if they’re supposed to not value their own home because they don’t live in Atlas. Nora even calls him out on this lack of empathy for people he knows are struggling day in and day out.

It’s one of the best scenes because he could care less about Mantle, yet he knows he needs their help to complete Amity. It also shows a side of Nora that we haven’t seen very often, which I loved, but she was right to call out Ironwood for being so heartless towards people he’s supposed to protect. He shouldn’t see them as “a few city blocks”.

However in the same episode, Blake and Yang decide to tell Robyn what’s really been going on. They do it because they trust that Robyn would side with Ironwood if she knew the truth, and they were partially correct. However this is seen as a controversial scene to many viewers and some demonize this action for reasons I’ll get into later. What I will say for now is that it’s not portrayed as the morally right thing to do, Blake and Yang decided to do this on their own unprompted, they knew the risk they were taking when they did that.

2 episodes later when it’s revealed Jacques was helped by Watts to win the election, which also lead to the deaths of several Mantle citizens, and now the heat was shut off in Mantle in addition there is an ongoing Grimm invasion. At this point Oscar pleads with Ironwood to tell the truth to the Kingdom, which he does. Ironwood is even praised for not sitting on his ass waiting for Ozpin to tell him what to do, but he couldn’t keep holding on to so many secrets otherwise it’ll only make things worse.

Remember when I said this lead to some controversy? Well RWBY and co. are seen as hypocrites because they didn’t immediately tell Ironwood the truth at the beginning of the volume, yet they kept telling Ironwood to do the same. However there is one important thing to remember: the show doesn’t portray them as 100% in the right. They aren’t treated as if they did nothing wrong, but can they be blamed for not completely trusting Ironwood? Honestly? No. And in the episode Gravity, their fears were realized.

Ironwood was fully prepared to leave hundreds of thousands to fend for themselves, it makes sense from a pragmatic and strategic standpoint, but it also goes against everything RWBY was taught to do as huntresses. Were they wrong to withhold the truth from Ironwood? In a way, yes and no. Were they wrong to go behind his back and tell Robyn what was really happening? Yes and No. Neither side is completely wrong or right, yet people complain that RWBY is portrayed as the good side.

The reality is that both sides want the same thing, but they go about it differently. Ironwood has a plan, but the answer isn’t to run away. RWBY has no plan, but they know they can’t afford to do nothing.

This is set up pretty well in V8, they stopped Ironwood from getting the staff, but Salem is there, Ironwood has labeled them fugitives, and they’re running out of time. They have to do something no matter what it is. Ironwood sees no other option than to escape. His problem is that, as he said in V7, he was done trying to get people to understand the “bigger picture”. All that means is that it’s his way or the highway, and if you protest you need to get out of the way (which basically means you’re dead to him).

There are many scenes throughout V8 where they are unsure of themselves, because they are only trying to do what they think is best. They don’t want people to die, they know they have to unite humanity, and at every turn it only looks more and more impossible. However the difference between RWBY and Ironwood is that one side has given up while the other is looking for solutions. In fact, Ruby even tried working with Ironwood, but he chose not to work with them, he decided they were the enemy.

So after all this, I hope I debunked this idea that the morality of the show is centered around the protagonists. In V7 and V8, neither side is seen as inherently wrong or right. The only time Ironwood is seen as in the wrong is when he threatens to nuke Mantle. In the end, it was his own stubbornness, fear, and paranoia that lead to his downfall. He pushed away everyone that could’ve helped him, he’s left alone to go down with the kingdom he thought he was protecting.

And it’s not like this was a win for RWBY either, they were defeated by Cinder, lost both relics, now they’re lost in another world.

The only person who won in the end was Salem

And Cinder to some degree

Salem wins when people are divided, Ironwood played right into her hands. RWBY knew this, but he didn’t it’s as simple as that.

Like I said I hopefully cleared up this “they already decided RWBY was right before anything happened” myth. The fact that we can discuss it shows how good the writing is.

#rwby #long post #james ironwood #ruby rose #yang xiao long #blake belladonna #salem #cinder fall #nora valkyrie #rwby criticism #i hope im not rambling on too much

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