RWBY General Discussion

Hoping to miraculously achieve something better is not a good thing. It's recklessly irresponsible. Again, you should judge plans based upon their WORST possible result. Expecting everything to be sunshine and rainbows and roses is ridiculous.

EDIT: Yes, Ironwood's plan would ensure most of mankind's destruction. But it would also (in his mind) ensure the survival of SOME. RWBY's plan did not ensure the survival of ANYONE, so, comparing worse outcomes, Ironwood saves one city and RWBY saves no one. I believe saving one city is better than saving no one.

Edited by Sereg on Aug 2nd 2021 at 4:22:43 PM

They don't though, the only reason it's even hard to do is because of James turning on them thus not having the recources James did.

Judging based on the worst outcome is insanity, it's maximum defeatism. Ensuring horrible things happen because of a possibility worse things could happen is just crazy.

When the fight is over most of mankind, at the very least You should try the option that dosent involve 'Let everyone else die' first.

Snoke, stop arguing with them. They're clearly a troll, you can't reason with someone like that.

I suggest everyone step away, and hope lack of food makes them go away.

If even Haro is throwing their hands up and leaving this argument, I should know better than to pick this fight.

Anyway, @Sereg none of what you said makes sense. There's not even an explicit guarantee that lifting Atlas that high up is possible, especially once the city's shields are down. And, like... Ironwood wanted to blow Mantle up after Salem's army has been dealt with. The worst was behind him, and yet he chose to dig himself even deeper, because he wanted to be in the right instead. Because Ironwood's heroic delusions would, at best, kill the entire world but Atlas; at worst they'd doom the world beyond repair.

So in that vein both he and RWBY are equally responsible for genocide. Or something.

Now I'm out.

Edited by FergardStratoavis on Aug 3rd 2021 at 9:14:58 PM

I dont want to get super deep here since I havent read everything in detail but your are wrong: Salem army haven being deal with, ther eis still grimm as james himself noticed, Salem will turn back at any moment, all this is just a momentary setback borught by a unsuspected element(ozpin deciding to light-salem to hell).

Well I guess to change the subject, but still involving James..

https://tempoaryblogformightyjensblog.tumblr.com/post/657983275925684224/the-tragedy-of-james-is-that-he-could-have-foiled

Little Tumblr analysis

Again, they had no plan until after they cut ties with Ironwood.

Maximum defeatism is an intrinsic part of my philosophy, yes. If you want to consider that insanity fine, but insanity and evil are not the same thing.

And I consider it responsible risk management and believe not doing so is reckless irresponsibility.

And I believe you should go with the option that guarantees at least SOME survive.

I am not a troll. I actually hate trolls. I just have unusual viewpoints. Which can be seen if you check my history.

This is not related to the current discussion, which I'm staying out of.

It looks like someone changed Ironwood's entry (Characters.RWBY James Ironwood) in the past from Well-Intentioned Extremist to Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist, and added him to the NSWIE page as well (without removing his entry from the WIE page). Meanwhile a different troper had written one of the longest natterific justifying edits I've seen for a while on the WellIntentionedExtremist.Web Animation page claiming Ironwood is a deconstruction of the original entry.

I've cleaned up all three pages and listed Ironwood as a Well-Intentioned Extremist on the grounds that he's Type 1 of the WIE trope (a character with a hero's motive but a villainous method of carrying it out). It gave me the chance to shave down the Word Cruft while I was at it. The entry now reads as follows:

• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Like the heroes, Ironwood desperately wants to stop the Big Bad, save lives, and keep both the Relics and Winter Maiden out of her hands. While his plan to do so is initially supported by the heroes, the villains' successful exploitation of his character flaws means he cracks under the pressure of fighting Salem, tries to abandon Mantle in favour of saving Atlas, and descends into authoritarianism; he turns on anyone who disagrees with his methods, such as shooting people for disagreeing with him and threatening to bomb Mantle to force the Winter Maiden to the Vault. Eventually, even the most loyal Ace-Ops turn on him, with the one person he never thought would betray him — Winter — declaring him an enemy of Atlas.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Aug 3rd 2021 at 12:16:59 PM

As an authoritarian left, what's wrong with that?

Political perspectives on authoritarianism are neither here nor there. Specifically with regards to James' actions, he murdered anyone in a position of power with any chance of overruling him.

In his mind, he certainly had a good reason but his method for achieving his goals are beyond the pale.

Edited by Eagal on Aug 3rd 2021 at 6:29:39 AM

Guys, please take haro's advice. Even if they're not a troll, we've been going in circles about this for two and a half pages now - it's clear that Sereg is not going to stop leather-pantsing Ironwood anytime soon.

Ironwood's plan would have ensured the survival of no one. Because there was never any guarantee that he would have been able to raise Atlas before Salem could wreck the place or that his shields cut hold out indefinitely in the mean time.

And even if he did succeed in raising Atlas he would have had his people stuck in an unsustainable situation, were they would have eventually have to either come back down (were Salem would get them) or die a long painful death in the sky. And even that's under the assumption that the enemy in that can fly somehow can't reach them in the sky.

The worst case scenario of Ironwood's plan is everyone in Atlas dies and the rest of the world has no idea Salem's coming to wreck their shit. So it dosn't exactly looking like the better option when you judge by that metric.

You don't say judge a plan based on it's worst possible outcome and then have your argument for Ironwood's plan operate under the assumption that nothing could go wrong with it.

Edited by Gaogaigar54 on Aug 3rd 2021 at 8:52:50 AM

Aight for the sake of my own mental health I’m not going to engage in this conversation anymore after this post; however, I’m gonna have to step in here and vouch for Sereg not being a troll.

Cause I’ve seen this same cycle of conversation with Sereg and pattern of how it goes a few years back in the Fate and Madoka threads^* I want to say Sereg may have been active in this thread too in the volume 3-4 days, but that might be me confusing people, and based on personal history that was shared at the time I am inclined to believe that they are sincere in their stated beliefs and arguments. I won’t share Sereg’s background here because that’s not my story to tell, but I believe them.

…

Now you might note that Serious Mode pothole I put at the top of this post. It’s there for a reason. While I generally, if not universally, disagree to some level or another with Sereg when conclusions and extremes are reached, or with real life politics outlook ^* I.e. Sereg’s above stated position of authoritarian left vs mine of anarchist in an ideal world but social democrat (in US terms) in the real world, I more often than not at least understand to some extent where they’re coming from and find myself agreeing with them when things are kept in the abstract (I.e. the talk about selfishness yesterday).

But when I’ve tried putting myself in the mindset to follow Sereg’s perspective to their endpoint for the sake of trying to have a constructive conversation, what tends to happen for me (i.e. with the whole “characters are essentially corpses” thing) is related and even more extreme thoughts resurface from a time in my life when I was a danger to myself, and I both need and want that to not happen. But that’s a me issue, not a Sereg issue.

So yeah, Sereg I do not believe to be a troll, and Imma bounce. Got too much Chibi shorts to hunt down, Neo TWEWY to play, and Brando Sando to read. Hopefully will only be a few hundred pages here that I miss before I’m back.

Edited by TheAirman on Aug 3rd 2021 at 11:00:32 AM

This has nothing to do with the main topics going on here (which is probably a good thing seeing how insane it's getting), but it does pertain to Atlas.

Did Pietro play any major role in the development of the Aura transfer technology Atlas supplied to Beacon to transfer Amber's half of the Fall Maiden powers and tried to use for the Winter Maiden transfer in V7?

I'm asking because I'm writing a fic, BlazBlue Alterative: Remnant, and in it, Pietro wasn't part of Atlas and is on the run in Vale with Penny, who's a Murakumo unit here. So since he wasn't part of Atlas, I have to wonder if the kingdom would still have the Aura transfer technology.

If this isn't the right thread for the topic, please let me know.

Thank you for vouching for me, The Airman. Yes, I used to be a lot more active here, but time constraints and being tired of lots of negativity towards the show here kept me from commenting as much recently.

I also give you permission to mention any parts of my background you deem relevant. i will say that I am much better off nowadays (I am married, for a start)

As far as politics are concerned I actually do consider myself somewhere between social democrat and democratic socialist. While I agree with authoritarianism, I am much further left than authoritarian.

Now, as I said, I know Ironwood's plan was a terrible one that would have never worked. But that's irrelevant as he was deluded into believing it was guaranteed to work. I have to use his knowledge to judge his actions, not my own. Because stupidity and evil are different things.

Now, it would have been great if RWBY's objection was "Your plan will fail to save anyone. Let's try something else." But that was NOT their objection.Their objection was "Saving just Atlas is not good enough for us. We have to save mantle as well, or nothing at all." Which is an absolutely terrible objection and Ironwood is absolutely right to treat that objection as making them an enemy.

And it gets even more ironic when both teams just left Mantle to fend for itself for a few episodes before Ozpin came and told them "so, you know that the Staff of Creation can create, right?"

The real problem is tat what Ironwood's doing isn't an informed decision based on the knowledge available to him so much as it is him simply shrinking his definition of "us".

I know I'm just parroting whoever originally said this again, but it bares repeating. Ironwood is all about the idea protecting "us" from "them", but you only really count as "us when it's convenient for him. And as such he responds to adversity by shrinking his definition of "us".

The decision to abandon Mantle was really down to the fact that in his eyes it wasn't his duty to protect them, because it was not convenient for him to view them that way anymore. That drove his decision making much more than weather he believed it was possible.

Team RWBY's position was less a naive belief that they could save everyone and more a belief that they should at least try to save everyone that that could.

Evidence?

Except that they make it clear that RWBY had no idea how to try save everyone at that time and was willing to sacrifice everyone on a gamble that some miracle would present itself to achieve what they wanted.

how we got here

I can respect other opinions but I think

This was a fair summation of Ironwood's character without painting him as anime Mussolini or Team RWBY as a bunch of meddling kids.

Edited by FOFD on Aug 3rd 2021 at 3:59:34 PM

I think the worst part of this is that we're not supposed to cast one person as good or evil (at least until Ultimatum). Before any solutions had been found, Team RWBY were beating themselves up over whether or not they were in the right and barely blamed Ironwood for the circumstances they were in (in fact, Qrow's the one doing that and he was called out by Robyn for having the one-track mind of killing him). The writing makes it clear that this isn't a clear cut situation of good or evil until Ironwood decides to use the bomb on Mantle.

After that, the fandom broke out into a flame war over Ironwood's methods. One side insists that every action he's ever done is a chaotic evil action while the other sees him as trying to save Remnant.

This statement is probably the best statement because it understands the nuance RWBY tried to achieve with the Solitas conflict.

Edited by Psyga315 on Aug 3rd 2021 at 12:48:48 PM

The writers said that Volume 7 was designed to be Ironwoods descent into Villainy.

It's a pretty consistent pattern of behaviour throughout the show even long prior to him sliding into outright villainy, he does progressively shrink his definition of who he's protecting as the situation progressively gets tougher.

It's why he ultimately ends up willing to kill everyone in Mantle to get his way. Because by that point he dosn't see them as the people he's meant to be protecting. Of course he has a cocktail of other flaws that combined with the stress of the situation pushed him over the line.

Team RWBY didn't have a plan, but they were trying to figure out one in the mean time and were pretty content to let Ironwood get on with his. They eventually do figure one out but Ironwood intentionally screws that one over and then they figure out another one that by all logic should work. But it ends up arbitrarily failing because the plot said so.

I've made nos secret that I really dislike the V8 and I don't know if the show can recover from it. But the handling of Ironwood and moral stuff between him and Team RWBY wasn't one of them.

While the situation isn't exactly a clear cut case of good vs evil so to speak, I think it's pretty clear that Ironwood is the bad guy, given how by that point his response to people disagreeing with him was to shoot them in the face.

Then again that might explain why Team RWBY aren't all that hostile towards Ironwood until Ultimatum, cause they arguably weren't privy to his worst act, prior to then.

Not to say the situation is ad black and white as Ironwood bad. But he'd certainly crossed the line into villainy by that point.

James plan is terrible not by the plan itself but because it violate the spirit of what they are fighting, is just james change the paramter of "fighting for humanity" to just "fight to win" probably without realising, so they are not fighting really the same war.

Now that is plan being terrible dosent change is analysis of the situation is correct: Salem is the doorstep with a huge whale grim with dragon flipper for wings while altas army and fleet are spend of what happen and Salem can more or less freely target one over another, all while salem is esencialy untouchable.

In short, they are fuck, they are reaaaaaally fuck.

the issue is that while the original assement of james is correct, his solution is pretty much a capitulation of fighting bsaed on the idea of denying salem what she wants, after all people matter very little to her but the relics does, ergo mantle can be sacrifice because mantle dosent really matter(and truth enugh, salem didnt atack mantle after that).

the other issue is that RWBY have mostly the correct notion of saving maximun of people, they seen to strugle with the idea that...well..sometimes, YOU CANT save everyone and you have to make hard choices, ruby in particular was distress for this, specially since they didnt have much of a plan except using ironwood original plan which in short efect means nothing, they got better only because Ozpin use his secret technique he told nobody about and them he share stuff nobody knew about the staff, that is after being lose in oscar brain matter for nearly two volumes.

So, that ironwood went evil? yep, that james have flaws like is stuborness, heroic complex? yes, that he did a lot of mistakes? yes, that he was enterely wrong? hell no, but is hard to separate that he was right about the situation even if idea is stupid and probably why so many people feel odd about the chararter.

They should still try, if there's a chance to save as many as you can you should still try it.

Sometimes you can't save everyone yeah, but here there was a chance they could.