RWBY General Discussion

I'd say we put the Too Dumb to Live stuff and replace it with Stupid Evil(Though make a "rare Anti-Villain exanple" note)

To reiterate point's on the Raven debate, she only made the plan to ambush her brother when Cinder and Watts were threatening her and her tribe, and it was explicitly to create a big enough distraction so she could escape in the confusion. And as people have pointed out Qrow was busy making his own plans to attack Raven's tribe and basically kidnap the spring maiden (who at that point Qrow had no reason to assume was anything other than a willing participant in the tribes bandit activities).

She also burned down no villages that we know of, the one village we know she raided survived only for the Grimm to show up whom Raven totally passes the blame over to.

So I am now starting to see what the original tropers meant when they talked about people exaggerating Raven's actions to make her appear more villainous.

Stupid Evil describes villains who act contrary to reason for the sake of evil. There is no reason to think Raven considers herself evil, let alone values committing evil acts more than her own self-interest.

Edited by Tharkun140 on Mar 17th 2019 at 10:00:59 AM

No one Exagerated anything. The thing with her Only following becuase the Tribe was threatened I just don't want to repeat myself

As for Qrow wanting to "Kidnap" the spring maiden, I don't see how any of this makes Raven better unless the intention was Whataboutism. And keep in Mind Qrow wanted to get the spring maiden cause she was needed to help the fight against Salem. Compare this to raven Who MURDERED the spring maiden cause she was Weak.

And she outright says that She does attack Villages, the "Death to the weak" philosophy coming into play when doing so. Does she pass the blame on the Grimm? Maybe. But She also Is the last person who should be trusted when she claims something wasn't her fault.

@Tharkun Aww understood. Then this will be tricky. Any other "Idiot" tropes we could move it to?

Edited by Kylotrope on Mar 17th 2019 at 1:41:31 AM

People keep saying that she and her tribe burn villages to the ground, something which has not happened.

With the Qrow thing it was a point I hadn't thought of previously, that his original plan was to With all he knew at that time involved leading a force of huntsmen to attack her tribe and kidnap one of her followers. Yes he was motivated by a desire to keep the spring maiden away from Salem, yet because of his plan Salem finds out about her location.

Or in short Qrow is pissed at Raven for being part of a force attacking him when the only reason why shes there is because he was planning the exact same thing against her. So not irony but it is a bit amusing.

As for the previous spring maiden we know very little about her directly, the main points we know is that she ran away from the kingdoms because she couldn't handle the pressure of being the spring maiden, she was found by Raven who spent a long enough time trying to train her despite A) thus getting her involved in the Oz/Salem war again and B) conflicting with her "the strong survive and the weak die" mantra. Hence why I'm inclined to believe Raven feeling that she was being merciful by killing the previous maiden (and Yang's counterpoint is how that contradicts her whole survival of the fittest show no mercy worldview).

On the note of that worldview is that it's not "death to the weak", it's "the strong survive, the weak die". Or to put it another way "survival is your own responsibility." Hence her not feeling like the death of the villagers was her fault, since she left them alive and if they weren't strong enough to stop the Grimm that's their own fault. Which yes is a shitty worldview, ignores her part in drawing the Grimm to them and is a worldview that Raven does keep breaking from time to time.

Well it is already listed as Didn't Think This Through on the trope page. We could try to create a What An Idiot page for RWBY again, though I have promised not to touch the trope ever again after the last time.

Edited by Tharkun140 on Mar 17th 2019 at 10:31:19 AM

@Tharkun

The Didn't Think This Through part works.

So yeah, Raven didn't burn down villages...But she still attacked them. And her constant defenses are Proven wrong several times. Again, I think Anti-Villain works best. As a good compromise. Especially sense Illia is listed as an Anti-Villain and dosent do nearly the stuff Raven does.

Edited by Kylotrope on Mar 17th 2019 at 3:57:20 AM

Illia did work for group that turned into a terrorist organization.

Raven is just a bandit that has a code that she doesn't apply regarding Salem.

Illia wasn't the leader though. Her personal crimes were very few. And Raven wasn't "just" a bandit.

That's not exactly an excuse. That would be about as effective as saying "I was just following orders"

Sure Raven is currently leader, but I would imagine she is just following what she was taught by those before her.

Okay, I've sandboxed the Character Pages according to the last position we got to when debating it.

I've put the link in my signature, but here it is:

Web Animation RWBY Characters

This is just to get the ball rolling. So nothing's set in stone.

And on the Raven debate: I do not believe either Raven or Ilia should be listed as Anti-Villain. Their roles in the story have been as antagonists, not villains.

Remember, we're troping their roles in the story, not the personal morality interpretations of individual tropers watching the show (that's what the YMMV troping is for).

Edited by Wyldchyld on Mar 17th 2019 at 1:14:20 PM

I absolutely despise the 'Family' folder, as it consists largely of characters that can be easily sorted into any of the other folders and I strongly dislike the idea of grouping characters based purely on their relation to one of the protagonists'.

Aside from that, it's all pretty cool. I would suggest keeping the 'Other' folder after adding some disclaimer that it's reserved for characters from other media and scrapping the 'Technology' page all together.

Edited by Tharkun140 on Mar 17th 2019 at 2:19:35 PM

I suggest before that the other page should be rename to RWBY media.

I'm not clear on the difference you're making here. Illia, at least, is presented in a very sympathetic light (whether you think it's warranted is YMMV), and Raven is not. They both oppose the protagonists but one is due to essentially a misunderstanding and another remains on her own side until the end.

I think I'll(for now) move on from the Raven debate. Though I agree with Ninety.

If you guys were writing the show how would the villains Backstories/Personalites change?

Edited by Kylotrope on Mar 17th 2019 at 7:12:46 AM

At this point I would give Cinder some hints of a backstory at least and maybe move up where Emerald explains why she's so loyal to Cinder to an earlier volume. Beyond that not a whole lot I would change, more just give villains screentime to show off their personalities and backstories.

Speaking about Cinder I found this take on her character that i found interesting [1]

I would change Adam defeat at the end of V5 to a real fight to keep his threat change his dialogue to sound less like i could change it to the Squeaky-Voiced Teen from The Simpsons and it would feel the same more screentime for all villains.

Honestly at this point I’m half expecting Cinder’s backstory to be just as unsympathetic as every other case where people thought the show was setting up for her to be humanized. Depending on whether Salem’s followers know what the relics actually do, I could totally see Cinder inadvertently getting the Gods involved in this mess by trying to pull a fast one as use the relics herself. That’s doubly true if Salem actually doesn’t have a plan beyond “stop Ozpin from fulfilling the Gods’ mission”, leading to a similar Broken Pedestal moment as happened with Ozpin to our heroes.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Mar 18th 2019 at 12:07:26 PM

Correct me, if I'm wrong, didn't you also predict that Adam's backstory will turn out to be that human's never did anything to him? I vaguely remember that this was discussed in the days before and after the Adam trailer came out.

Since even Adam, who in the writer's eye is a horrible human being, got a sympathetic, if underdeveloped backstory that really justifies his hatred, I'm positive that Cinder will get a sympathetic backstory.

Adam not being a victim of any kind would have been a cool twist and a subversion of "cycle of abuse" narrative, but it was a fat chance. The scars were probably meant to be there since the very early development and they were references to him having been hurt in some horrible way.

Cinder, on the other hand, gave us absolutely no reason to think that her motives were even noble or that she is out for vengeance. I doubt she will ever get a fully fleshed-out backstory, but if she does, I hope it will be something along the lines of "Cinder woke up someday and decided she that she wants to gain ultimate power and commit mass murder along the way. And so she did." It would be perfectly in character and could make for some interesting Good Cannot Comprehend Evil moments.

Edited by Tharkun140 on Mar 18th 2019 at 10:51:41 AM

I'd hoped for a mix of both things, as in, Adam was never hurt by humans; his scars were self-inflicted, as a way of making himself a martyr in the minds of his fellow Faunus and attracting attention in a sick, psychotic way. It would greatly inform us about his character and not be out of place as a last revelation before he was killed.

But alas. He had an SDC brand. I can only hope this will come back at some point.

If your talking about me it was just a theory I got from One Piece taking the character Hody Jones backstory that an anti-human extremist had nothing happen to make them an extremist just hearing how much the suck changing them.

Which I do think would work better for a character that is supposedly base on spite do to the fact i think they didn't to much the his scars his was just obsessed with Blake.

Given the Cinderella theme and her hatred for Ruby I hope they go with her having a similar origin to the fairy tale to serve as a bit of a mirror to Ruby's backstory. So both having lost their mother's at a young age, but Ruby still had a happy childhood with her father whilst Cinder gets an abusive stepmother. Ruby has a great relationship with her half-sister and Cinder has a terrible relationship with her step-sisters.

Really the one thing I want to know more than anything else at the moment is how Salem and Cinder met initially, seeing as Salem would fit as the fairy godmother figure in the analogy.

I had a feeling that it was a reference to One Piece, which also shows my biggest problem with the manga. The villains and the conflict of the show can often (there are exceptions of course) be really simple and shallow.

Though I wonder, how would that be a cool twist with Adam? It means that his character would remain shallow and any semblance of greyness completely gone. Speaking of semblance, Adam's semblance plus how Blake talked about him, were a big clue that he got hurt a lot in the past and is now out to unleash all the damage he had sustained. His scar showed that Adam was not born a beast, but that he was an innocent boy transformed into a beast. It also made the overall mission of RWBY/Ozpin more difficult, to achieve unity. There are people who have been genuinely hurt and they cannot just forgive or forget. While Adam's action were not justifiable, his hatred was. That makes him and the whole conflict much more nuanced and complex. Especially, since Team RWBY failed to make Adam see the errors of his ways. If they can't deal with one edgeboy, how will they ever make making unite or make Salem see the errors of her ways, which may be the only way to stop her.

Same with Cinder. Her having no semblance of greyness would or sympathetic motivation, would mean that one of the main antagonists is shallow. Why would anyone want that?

Edited by bandersnitch on Mar 18th 2019 at 4:21:56 AM