RWBY General Discussion

Like Raven showing up in Yang's dreams.

That wasn't even supposed to be a Plot point. Monty slipped that in without telling Miles or Kerry just cause it looked cool to him.

Is it a dropped point though? Yang was disqualified in a manner that made it clear that was the extent of her punishment, her "victim" turned out to be a terrorist and things escalated quickly enough to overshadow everything else .

I am also having flashbacks to this thread back when volume 3 cane out and people were honestly believing Yang was about to get summarily executed. Wild times.

(2) I really have to watch those DVD extras someday. I always wondered why that scene was there. I thought it was something that just got abandoned between volumes but... that's just such an oversight.

Edited by FOFD on Sep 17th 2020 at 6:06:47 AM

@Rebel: Which makes it a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment more than anything else.

Yeah, I always assumed that what happened with Yang wasn't an abandoned plot point. It was something that was RAPIDLY overshadowed by much bigger things:

• Celebrity student Pyrrha apparently killing an opponent, who was then revealed to be a secret Atlas robot.
• Atlas forces attacking Vale.
• Beacon Academy being destroyed and the loss of the communications tower.

In comparison, Yang breaking some dude's leg in the tournament is barely worth remembering. Not when we later have Pyrrha, a student famous enough to be featured on breakfast cereal boxes, uses her semblance to rip her opponent in half. And not when Cinder makes her big speech about how Ozpin and Ironwood are bad, Penny is a secret killer robot, and the kingdoms might be about to go to war again.

I doubt anyone really remembers or cares about what Yang did, compared to what came later and the aftermath. The main focus fell on Ironwood, Atlas, and the loss of the towers.

Edited by harostar on Sep 17th 2020 at 9:16:20 AM

So, I've been wondering, given the recent events in Atlas, I've been thinking: which character is the Unwitting Instigator of Doom for this scenario?

Edited by gjjones on Sep 17th 2020 at 12:22:31 PM

Raven by far. She's the reason they're even in Atlas to begin with.

By that logic you can then blame Yang for not letting her just take the damn lamp, since Raven only left it behind because Yang guilt tripped her.

I think it comes down to the fact they had to take the Lamp to Atlas, because Raven bailed without closing the Vault? Though I suppose in her mind, leaving the Vault open and the Relic gone means no one will come after her. (As she's likely assuming Salem only wanted the Spring Maiden to get the Relic, and isn't after the power itself.)

She opened the Vault with the intent of taking it and didn't bother to close it. Still her fault.

Edited by Psyga315 on Sep 17th 2020 at 9:51:28 AM

A point isn't an arc.

Anyway, it's been dealt with by other tropers.

It's not an oversight, Monty had a habit of doing things right at the last moment, which meant they'd end up aired before anyone who was supposed to know found out about the additions. Sometimes, it was so last moment, it would even threaten the publication deadlines.

Yes, it was part of a larger whole. Yang got the punishment she was intended to have, Yang's situation was only a talking-point when it seemed like she was a lone incident. Students were quick to figure out that the woman on the microphone was responsible for everything, even if they didn't understand why or how, and the last thing the world ever saw before the CCT went down was Beacon being overrun by Grimm, White Fang and Atlesian soldiers.

It's been said since that people are fearful and confused about what's going on, think Vale has been destroyed (we know that Vale actually survived quite well — it's only Beacon that was lost).

One lone girl having a moment has been rapidly overshadowed by much more important things, especially as people are now aware that someone or something targeted Beacon Academy deliberately. They got Adam's identity quite quickly after the Beacon attack. Thanks to the Haven attack, the got the names and faces of Cinder, Emerald and Mercury, too and were broadcasting them across the kingdom of Mistral.

So, while it hasn't been directly referenced, it's also pretty clear that it's been swallowed up by the larger plot and that the faces of the villains are becoming increasingly and publicly known.

Why does there have to be one at all?

Or think about it this way: Even if the Vault could have been closed, why would they leave it in a school that has no trusted headmaster or available Huntsmen to protect it? Even if the chamber door could be closed, they couldn't have left it there.

Oh, it was just a thought.

Edited by gjjones on Sep 18th 2020 at 11:26:36 AM

Because the key to open the door will have fucked off to Timbuktu (or her nearest rebound) and be as far from the door as possible.

Edited by Psyga315 on Sep 18th 2020 at 9:29:16 AM

The protection of each Relic has never been just a door that's opened by a Maiden. That, by itself, was never deemed good enough protection by Ozma, that's the very reason why elite Huntsman Academies were built on top of the chambers: the single biggest protection each Relic had was the school, not the door and the Maiden. The Academies are part of the protection: an army of Huntsmen (trained and trainee), led by a Huntsman who knows how important it is to protect it, and who can call in extra Huntsmen to the school if needed. Without the school, it's just a door that Salem's free to repeatedly try and circumvent until she succeeds.

From the very beginning, Ozma felt the protection needed to be:

Magical Otherworldly Chamber + Locked Door + Specific Maiden + Elite On Site Huntsmen + Trusted Headmaster To Coordinate Resources

Given how much effort he went to in the first place to integrate the academies and the Relic protection, there's no way Ozma would want to leave a Relic behind that was just:

Magical Otherworldly Chamber + Locked Door

He explicitly stated that the reason he's not worried about Beacon's Relic yet is because Beacon isn't in this situation. Beacon has some kind of special protection that Ozpin's clearly relying on right now, which so far seems to be working. While Beacon and Beacon's Maiden is under Salem's control right now, it still has the following resources available:

Magical Otherworldly Chamber + Locked Door + Ultra-Special Mysterious Protection + Elite Huntsmen Invested In Recovering Beacon + Trusted Headmistress To Coordinate Resources

Edited by Wyldchyld on Sep 18th 2020 at 7:59:41 PM

Wait. What.

Edited by FOFD on Sep 18th 2020 at 1:02:17 AM

The problem with that is, as the Fall of Beacon shows, it's quite easy to circumvent the "protected by Huntsmen" part of the lock, especially since the Academies have it as an ulterior purpose rather than an actual purpose.

Yeah, the multiple levels of protection given to each Relic definitely suggests that Ozpin doesn't want to rely upon any single one of them. Haven was basically enough of a lost-cause that even the students have transferred to Shade, so it's more or less abandoned while they attempt to recover from the mass slaughter of their Huntsmen.

I do wonder in terms of the Relics, whether Oz made very specific choices concerning where each one ended up. The Lamp seems to ultimately be the least protected of the 4 Relics, compared to either being personally guarded by him or in a place that isn't easily attacked. The Staff is in a floating city guarded by the world's only standing army and the Sword is in Vacuo, which is inherently a difficult place to reach and attack. Both of those kingdoms have natural defenses in terms of being such inhospitable regions compared to Vale and Mistral.

I guess if we're talking Unwitting Instigator of Doom for the events at Haven, wouldn't that be Qrow? His information is what allowed Salem to find the Spring Maiden, since he told Leo that Raven had taken in the missing Maiden and gave him the information to plan an attack on the Branwen tribe. Without that, they wouldn't have known where to look to find Spring or the tribe.

Edited by harostar on Sep 18th 2020 at 7:56:01 AM

And he also used Ruby as bait tipped off Ruby to let her on a quest to Haven. That's the reason he was at Haven to begin with.

Edited by Psyga315 on Sep 18th 2020 at 5:00:42 AM

I don't think that's really accurate, it's mostly Jaune being angry about what happened to Pyrrha.

Ruby would have probably ended up going to Haven anyway, since that's the only lead she had concerning Cinder. And with her nuking the Wyvern, she'd painted a target on her back so Salem would have sent someone after her eventually. Letting her know where he was headed meant Qrow could watch over her, and be there to protect her when — not "if", when — one of Salem's followers came calling.

I also suspect that's the reason that Tai and Qrow allowed Ruby to start at Beacon earlier. Her Silver eyes meant that avoiding Salem forever was nearly impossible, because Salem's forces hunt the silver-eyed warriors and have for centuries. Eventually, Ruby would have been discovered and she would have been hunted.

Edited by harostar on Sep 18th 2020 at 8:17:30 AM

E. C. Myers stated they didn't have time in the stream to answer it, but he has a personal list of birthdays for Team CFVY with the disclaimer that it isn't 100% canon at the moment.

• Coco - 6/11
• Fox - 11/22
• Velvet - 2/14
• Yatsuhashi - 1/6

Edited by harostar on Sep 18th 2020 at 9:13:19 AM

No, it wasn't.

As the show has stated, the plan to take down Beacon was years in the making and required having a mole on the inside for years to be able to achieve it.

Also, as I pointed out, the Vale Huntsmen haven't gone away; Salem doesn't have things all her own way at Beacon even if the Huntsmen can't take the school back yet. The situation at Beacon is all but a stalemate right now: the Huntsmen want Beacon back and Salem wants both the Relic and the school destroyed forever. Neither is getting what they want right now.

Ozma's defences at Beacon have been good enough for them to still be giving Salem trouble even when she's got Grimm swarming over the place. In fact, part of the reason why Salem has managed to maintain Grimm at Beacon is because of something Ruby did: freezing the Wyvern. The show has told us that the Wyvern is what's complicating the ability of Huntsmen to take back Beacon.

And that isn't an attempt to blame Ruby, it's an observation that — even with years of planning, hordes of Grimm and a mole on the inside — the biggest reason why Salem still has access to Beacon is because of a lucky break. It's that or Qrow's Semblance had left its mark all over Ozpin's office and the vault:

• Office: the office gets destroyed, Pyrrha gets killed, Ruby arrives just moments too late to save Pyrrha, Cinder can't react in time to stop herself being severely injured and the Wyvern gets frozen, passively attracting more and more Grimm to the school.
• Vault: Jaune had one job, Amber dies, Cinder becomes full Maiden, Ozpin dies.
• Tower in general: Cinder's in the right place at the right time, with stupidly good eyesight, to spot Ozpin, Pyrrha and Jaune head inside together.

Seriously. The tower had Qrow cooties all over it. That's the real reason Beacon fell.

I absolutely do. The most recent post I made on my theory is here (January), although this post only focussed on Atlas and Vacuo at the time, so I'll add the rest in here. In short:

• Solitas has few natural resources and is an extremely harsh environment. Innovation and creativity are survival necessities. The Relic of Creation is symbolically appropriate for the kingdom that represents the importance of creativity and innovation to the human race.
• Vacuo is a landscape destroyed by the actions of humanity. It is thematically appropriate for the Relic of Destruction to be in the landscape that acts as a warning to humanity about the dangers of misusing destructive powers.
• Mistral is a place that requires knowledge to survive, its built on knowledge: artistic, tradesman, criminal enterprise. You have to know your audience, your setting, what you're getting into, how to interact with people from different parts of society, where to go to find the information you need, and so on. It's thematically appropriate for the Relic of Knowledge to be here... the kingdom where knowledge is most abused contains the Relic represents the collection and dissemination of knowledge.
• Vale: The kingdom that seems to be the most free in allowing people to be whatever they choose to be. It's been my suspicion for years that the Relic of Choice is the most dangerous Relic, and that Oz deliberately makes sure he's the one sitting on it because of that reason, and he definitely seems to have a preference for Vale (at least in recent incarnations). The Indecisive King certainly reinforces the idea.

On the subject of the Indecisive King, how's this for a thought?

The question he couldn't find a favourable outcome for. The king didn't indicate the choice was to be made in his current lifetime. If he was Ozma (and I feel fairly confident in say that it was), then it could have been a future lifetime. So, here's two options I've been toying with:

• The ending of the Great War, where it's indicated the King of Vale was wearing the Relic of Choice: if Ozma was faced with a situation where the violence of a single day was the least worst option, that might explain why he took it.
• The passivity of the first three volumes that ends with Beacon's fall. What if Ozpin knew, thanks to the Crown, that this situation would happen and it would unfold in different ways according to the decision he made.... only to discover that the least worst outcome could only happen if he sat back and let Beacon fall.... which he did, for as long as he could, until it became clear he couldn't just sit and watch any longer (although whatever he was about to do was then interrupted by the Wyvern).

Both of those scenarios would fit the idea of a choice with no favourable outcomes. It would also be a slightly more interesting use of You Can't Thwart Stage One: where the reason the trope is in play is because of future-knowledge. This idea crops up a lot in stories, especially ones that have some form of time-travel or magical awareness development: a character who normally would never stand by and watch the awful unfold learns that things will be even worse if they stop the terrible event.

One of the classic examples would be Star Trek: The Original Series where their journey into Earth's past accidentally changes the future to something terrible. They discover it's because McCoy saved the life of a kind and generous woman who was destined to die. Because she didn't die, her peaceful ideals revolutionised the world and allowed Hitler to win. So, Kirk was forced to passively stand by and let her be killed just to save the future.

The lamp is also housed in the kingdom that, even at its best, is hardest to protect and defend because of its territory.

Qrow had Ozpin's cane and Ozpin pushed Oscar into going to Mistral. They clearly had some kind of pre-arranged signal to meet up in Mistral after a reincarnation event. Qrow basically manipulated Ruby into going to Haven — not that she needed much of a nudge, but it did ensure that she departed in a way that would allow him to take the cane to Mistral and keep an eye on her at the same time.

When Kerry said they were mentioning the rest of Team RWBY's birthdays, it's because they found so old notes with the dates on and fans ask so much about it, they decided to stick with the old dates and announce it. He said it was unlikely they'd do it for any other characters. Myers' may be putting the cat among the pigeons here... although I suspect that Kerry wouldn't really get his wish after announcing the other birthdays because that's just fuel for the fire.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Sep 18th 2020 at 2:45:16 PM

For most pages on films and TV shows (such as The Rise of Skywalker, Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Season 7), etc.), there's a section where the video clips for previews (i.e. trailers, TV sports, etc.) are listed just before the examples. Inspired by some of them, I'm thinking about adding the RWBY volume trailers to the main page. Thoughts or objections?

Edited by gjjones on Sep 18th 2020 at 11:36:26 AM

So... question. Is it okay to add Writers Can Not Do Math to the RWBY: After the Fall and RWBY: Before the Dawn pages? Cause both books try to claim the Fall of Beacon happened over a year before the events of the books, except the shows own timeline doesn't suggest that, even if you still use the "6-8 months" frame that has since been discarded, and at times outright contradicts it.

...no? I'm broadly on the pro-troping side, but unless you have pretty substantial evidence...