Is Volume 8 really a Broken Base?
I always thought Ironwood's portrayal and opposition with Team RWBY were divisive, but it was otherwise well-regarded.
I mean as well regarded as anything RWBY can be anyway.
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Aside of the Ironwood issue, most regard volume 7 and 8 as the best of the show, mostly follow by Volume 3. Probably because it really try to up the stake and make big and epic and some chararter REALLY got good moments like Qrow, Jaune and Oscar(the mother fucker carry the whole thing by himself and the more I think off, the more Rebel is right they really feel more like protagonist).
Most low point is james being a lame villian(that it, regardless on they handle his fall) the end which for many was kinda sorta contribed, people already done with Cinder and of course Penny fall just after becoming human.
Anything other than that?...neat.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
Eh, I've found Volume 8 garnered more of a mixed reaction than anything. Volume 7 is considered good, but Volume 8 is very much YMMV.
Volume 8 is kind of like 7 in reverse
7 was a bit rough til the last few episodes which became downright great, which of course made the build up more tolerable once you knew where it was headed, Volume 8 was phenomenal but the last one or 2 episodes were just a little....Eh...
Penny's arc in particular was just a lot of...God
Bow to the PrototypeI don't question brining her back but rather why make it some big reveal.
Penny was a robot they can be rebuilt.
The Pietro's aura is permanently lost comes off as a last minute explanation as to why Penny's memories aren't immediately dumped into a new body Ultron style via cloud storage.
Her being made human like her inspiration Pinochio (Disney version cuz the old fairy tail was a ripe prick) just gave a signal she was gonna die once Cindy got near hear.
As Cindy was beating her badly when she had the metal robot parts to walk off most fatal injuries.
Bringing back penny was already controversial in part she come back fine, her idea of wanting to be in Vale suddenly come to nothing and the idea Atlas sneak a robot girl is kinda brush aside as she become mantle supe...I mean protector and them they hate her and them she become human....
for all the talk about Penny personhood she is like james very pasive actor, she good a emotional scene but very little in her own choices, she is a macguffin girl.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"I always thought Ironwood's portrayal and opposition with Team RWBY were divisive, but it was otherwise well-regarded.
No, it's not. It's driven by a combination of the hatedom (which never gets troped because it's flamebait) and intense dislike of how certain characters (mainly Ironwood and Penny) were handled — which is Base-Breaking Character instead.
There is a Broken Base entry regarding whether to take the heroes' side or Ironwood's side, which could be rewritten to cover Volume 8 as well as Volume 7 (it mostly focusses on V7 right now), but that's an element of the whole, not the whole itself.
Aside from specific triggering elements (specifically Ironwood and Penny), Volumes 3, 7 and 8 are considered the best volumes of the entire show.
How do we know her memories didn't involve a data dump? Taking chunks of Aura from Pietro isn't an explanation for how Penny's memories survive — memories of things Pietro wasn't even present for. A data dump was almost certainly involved. They even link her memories to data dumps in Volume 7 (when she's framed, they download her memories to assess what actually happened). When Ozma's reincarnation is described, the survival of his memories are not automatically linked to the reincarnation of his soul and Aura. In fact, they're singled out to make it clear that his memories reincarnate as well. So linking Aura and memories isn't an automatic thing we should be doing.
We've been speculating since Volume 2 about where Penny's Aura comes from. The big fandom theory was that her Aura was taken from the creator's dead daughter to make the robot a recreation of a deceased person. So, the fandom's primary theory was always that her Aura was transferred from somewhere, especially when we learn about the Aura transfer technology in Volume 3. Everyone pretty much spotted that had to be linked to Penny's creation in some manner.
So, the idea that it comes from Pietro doesn't feel last minute. It's very much part and parcel of information we were given that made us speculate in Volumes 2-3. Just because we didn't think "what if it came from someone who is still alive?" doesn't mean it was last minute on the part of the creators. The pieces were all there in earlier volumes, we just didn't have the linking information (because we hadn't been introduced to Pietro).
Think about it: even the concept of taking parts of Auras was introduced in Volume 3 with the Maidens information. We were outright told that the Maiden magic was bound to Aura, which is why they were going to give Amber's Aura to Pyrrha. However, we also knew that Cinder already had part of the Maiden magic. They didn't outright use the words, but it obviously meant that Cinder had taken part of Amber's Aura — part of her soul. That's why Amber was unconscious. It's not simply that the magic was split, it's that the Aura was split.
All the Maiden information we were given in Volume 3 was set up for both the Ozpin/Oscar reveal, and the Pietro/Penny reveal.
But, as I keep saying, the Atlas Arc was a parallel arc for both Penny and Oscar (and, more secretively, Ozpin).
Edited by Wyldchyld on Apr 17th 2022 at 6:23:07 AM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.I was solely referring to the difference in how robots are brought back normally in fiction vs in RWBY on a functional basis.
I.E just have a back up of their memories on hand and get ready to make them a new body if you don't have the spare one made.
vs RWBY's version
Penny needs both her memories and then the Aura from her dad to be brought back "good as new".
I say good as new as the writers said they dropped the idea of Penny losing some memories and/or agnsting over being a clone in the Vol 7 commentary due to time constraints with all the other plot points v7 juggled
Because again for robots in fiction you really need to hammer home why they can't just be rebuilt like any computer irl you have the entire hardrive backed up for (cloud/physical)
Look at Bender from Futurama when his back up body was brought up Amy rightfully asked why he panicked during all their other near death experiences.
Bender's retort? He's a drama queen
When Bender finds out he has a factory error that prevents him from being backed up then he panicks for real.
I don't go into fandoms theories because they have been proven wrong numerous times that even the commentary team took time out to mention the wrong ones in v7.
We are ultimately talking about very two different things here.
I'm talking about how Pietro's sudden "my aura depletes with every rebuild" is a way to build drama/tension for when Penny gets infected with the virus.
Cause the logical explanation for a regular robot in fiction in that situation would just be self-destruct and be rebuilt using a physical copy of their memory unit before they got hacked.
vs what RWBY did
Use the second creation relic to make Penny a human body through loophole abuse leaving the virus infected robot body....to self-destruct.
The regular robot virus route with extra steps cause RWBY was really on the "Aura is the soul" route for Penny throughout the two volumes. As to why she was a "real girl" underneath all those metal parts as Yang summed up to 'Daddy Merlin"
A cute payoff that led to a shaggy dog story as Penny is later mercy killed by Jaune. After the girl saw team RWBY fall to their "deaths" courtesy of Cinder.
Which is when you question why even bring Penny back if you were just gonna kill her off again?
As by the second time Penny died I didn't care and was calling it the second Penny was looking back worried for her mechanical wire swords. Signaling she's fighting in a new body she isn't used to vs a woman that was beating her in her durable robotic body.
Edited by FKJ10 on Apr 17th 2022 at 7:54:33 AM
No, we're talking about the same thing. I'm just observing that, even with the Aura clause, they clearly used normal robot rebuild tropes as well. The Aura clause is what makes Penny a person, but she still had a robot rebuild in addition to that unique aspect.
Cause the logical explanation for a regular robot in fiction in that situation would just be self-destruct and be rebuilt using a physical copy of their memory unit before they got hacked.
That's not generally the case in sci-fi. In most stories that involved robotic sapience of some fashion, there will never be a case of "oh, he's just a robot, destroy him and rebuild, problem solved" unless it's to get the ball rolling on the question of robotic sapience. There is always a hook that creates a question — and usually full-blown angst — about whether the person that the robot is can survive the loss/destruction/self-destruct/etc. of the robot body or any kind of reboot of the robot's software.
The dichotomy (and similarities) of the man and the machine is the very essence of sci-fi. It's very rare for heroes in such works to take such a blasé approach to rebuilding a robot precisely because of the personhood question. In RWBY, the hook is the Aura clause. In other works, it'll be something else. But it will almost always be there in some form.
On the subject of avoiding the angst with Penny by going down the route of having lost memories, or some kind of "loss" of the person that used to exist, I was actually quite relieved when I heard the writers decided not to go there. It was nice to have a break from that. The focus ended up being on the soul instead — which is what the show's plot is all about.
Because she raises some serious questions about Ozma and Oscar's situation, the role of the soul in life and death, and why victory lies with the "simple soul" instead of "strength". Penny and Oscar had parallel arcs in Atlas, which culminates in Penny having the same choice to make as Ozpin in Volume 3. Penny's death is a mirror for Ozpin's: Penny couldn't save the Relic but could save the Maiden power; Ozpin couldn't save the Maiden power, but he could save the Relic. Both Oscar (his nuking of the whale) and Penny's choice are connected to what Ozpin did at the end of Volume 3 — which is still a mystery for now because it's connected to what he did to the Relic of Choice that has made it so hard for Salem to find it.
Based on the theory that Salem needs to be saved rather than destroyed (and the key is the value of life and death), then you actually need a death that makes people want to just give up because... what's the point?
If the story is ultimately about saving Salem instead of destroying her, then the question of why people would struggle so hard to save a soul only to end up losing them anyway has to there somewhere — because Salem's entire life has been about this, her entire curse is: what is the point of struggling so hard to save Penny, to go to that extreme to do it, only for her to die anyway? That is what someone like Salem will see: the failure, the wasted effort, the loss of so much potential (which is always the added tragedy of losing people young — which she did with both Ozma originally and her four daughters later on). After all, that's exactly what a lot of fans see. And it's valid — especially if that's going to be the point.
And it really can be the point:
If you knew in advance that all your effort would be for nothing, that Penny would be saved from the virus only to die soon after in a different way, would you bother trying to save her at all? Would you just give up and let the virus do its thing? Or would you try anyway? Why would you? Is it because life's worth trying for? Or is it something else? What makes you keep going?
After all, it's life. If you don't think life is worth struggling for, there is no point. There is no hope. And that's Salem's problem. See, her speech in V3 made it clear what her path to victory requires: it requires the destruction of hope. It requires the Despair Event Horizon. Saving Salem will require the opposite: the restoration of hope. But that can't happen without the question of why bother continuing if someone's potential has been snuffed out, if so much effort has been put in to saving someone, only to fail.
Until you actually grapple with that question "keep moving forward" is just a bunch of empty words. In some ways, using that phrase on the back of someone like Pyrrha's sacrifice is pointless: because she inspires the people around her. Penny's the death that makes people ask "Why did I bother? Why did I struggle? Why go to so much effort only to fail? If you can't save them, why even try?"
If the heroes don't have that experience, they're not even going to dent Salem's sucking black void of hopelessness.
And some of us were calling Penny's death far earlier than that. Some fans were calling it when she became a Maiden at the end of V7. And I've seen a few fans who called it right at the start of V7 — who believed that the only reason for bringing back Penny would be to tie up the "rebuild the robot" plot thread and kill her off for good (especially once she cheerfully said "It'll be just like Beacon again!").
At what point a fan realises where a storyline is heading usually isn't that important beyond the personal and what someone individually hopes to get out of a story. Some fans do hate figuring anything out in advance of being told and lose interest if they do, but other fans like having I Knew It! moments. Ultimately, no matter how hard creators try, they're not going to stop everyone in the world who consumes their work from figuring things out in advance, and quite a few people saw Penny's second death coming from early on.
On a personal note, I think it does a fandom some good to be confronted with the realisation that the return of a much-loved character isn't going to protect them from being killed off. When Penny came back at the beginning of V7, I saw the death flags there and then. However, I dismissed them (unlike some fans, who were convinced that CRWBY had brought her back to kill her off) solely because I didn't think CRWBY had the guts to do it. They proved me wrong, and I'm not unhappy about that.
Edited by Wyldchyld on Apr 17th 2022 at 10:51:38 AM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.![]()
I'm just pissed they killed Penny again period. Seriously, the commentary made it sound like they were going out of their way to put her through a Trauma Conga Line and make her suffer, with killing her just being the icing on top when it was so unnecessary and cruel. What happened with Penny seriously ruined that Volume for me, and at this point the only hope I have remaining is what Ambrosius said about not knowing what Penny is now, and the mechanics of how the Maiden powers work compared to Ozma's powers, meaning Penny can still be alive as sapient aura and part of Winter.
Otherwise, if they were just gonna kill her again after bringing her back and spending time developing her as a character, only to then kill her just to further Oscar and Ozpin's narrative themes, then it was a waste of her character in general.
Edited by RebelFalcon on Apr 17th 2022 at 1:30:33 PM
Rodimus: Self-sacrifice, Magnus— It's cheap. It's a cheap way out. I need to live so I can make amends.
I added it into my previous post because I forgot, but people have posted since, so I'll add it here as a separate post because I realised I'd just be copying it, and you wouldn't have seen it when you wrote your post.
It's not simply about furthering Ozpin and Oscar's themes. It's about Salem. It's about her curse. It's about the gods' original demand of her.
Based on the theory that Salem needs to be saved rather than destroyed (and the key is the value of life and death), then you actually need a death that makes people want to just give up because... what's the point?
If the story is ultimately about saving Salem instead of destroying her, then the question of why people would struggle so hard to save a soul only to end up losing them anyway has to there somewhere — because Salem's entire life has been about this, her entire curse is: what is the point of struggling so hard to save Penny, to go to that extreme to do it, only for her to die anyway? That is what someone like Salem will see: the failure, the wasted effort, the loss of so much potential (which is always the added tragedy of losing people young — which she did with both Ozma originally and her four daughters later on). After all, that's exactly what a lot of fans see. And it's valid — especially if that's going to be the point.
And it really can be the point:
If you knew in advance that all your effort would be for nothing, that Penny would be saved from the virus only to die soon after in a different way, would you bother trying to save her at all? Would you just give up and let the virus do its thing? Or would you try anyway? Why would you? Is it because life's worth trying for? Or is it something else? What makes you keep going?
After all, it's life. If you don't think life is worth struggling for, there is no point. There is no hope. And that's Salem's problem. See, her speech in V3 made it clear what her path to victory requires: it requires the destruction of hope. It requires the Despair Event Horizon. Saving Salem will require the opposite: the restoration of hope. But that can't happen without the question of why bother continuing if someone's potential has been snuffed out, if so much effort has been put in to saving someone, only to fail.
Until you actually grapple with that question "keep moving forward" is just a bunch of empty words. In some ways, using that phrase on the back of someone like Pyrrha's sacrifice is pointless: because she inspires the people around her. Penny's the death that makes people ask "Why did I bother? Why did I struggle? Why go to so much effort only to fail? If you can't save them, why even try?"
If the heroes don't have that experience, they're not even going to dent Salem's sucking black void of hopelessness.
Edited by Wyldchyld on Apr 17th 2022 at 10:51:50 AM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.Yeah and that aura clause is what's ultimately used to make sure they don't have spare Penny's ready to pop out of a containment case the second a Penny dies.
That's what I'm focusing on the fact the aura is used to build drama as Pietro can only do it a finite amount of times or he dies.
Except when you even have popular movies such as Big Hero 6 where Baymax literally gives Hiro a USB drive with his memories to rebuild him after his heroic sacrifice. The robot had enough sentience for self preservation
I'm not even gonna bring up Ultron again where his constant body hoping and hive mind reach absurdity in the comics even with the usual man and machine sci-fi philosophy between him and Hank Pym
Hell even in RVB Lopez is constantly snarking that he's got a back up body ready whenever the Blood Gultch crew are in danger. With even the Red's treating rebuilding him with all the seriousness of fixing a car.
So even RT are aware of how little drama there is for robot deaths cause rebuilding is a thing.
So they have to add the aura clause as a way to keep the tension when they put Penny throughout her trauma conga line
Especially when the robot is a ridiculously human robot like with Bender or Lopez.
Heck both of those characters are actually more human than Penny despite lacking a "soul" that makes Penny unique.
This would be interesting if Oscar and Ozpin actually interacted and talked with Penny throughout either volumes. Jaune had more interactions with Penny which amounted to temporally dealing with her virus cause aura amp then the mercy kill.
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The same applies to my thoughts on Pyrrha's death. So she inspired others? So what? She's still dead, her death having accomplished nothing than inspiring others to try so her death wasn't in vain. But it doesn't change the fact that it was still in vain. It's the problem I had with the statue at Argus: they were trying to turn Pyrrha's death into something noble, dress it up as something to inspire them to keep fighting, rather than acknowledge what it actually was: a young girl whose life was stolen from her after a Senseless Sacrifice, a friend who was killed by a heartless monster, someone whose efforts meant nothing.
Then again, I'm biased because I don't believe in hope. "Hope" I find just sets you up for a bigger fall into despair. It's why I don't believe in hoping something will happen, you make it happen. As much as an asshole as he was, I tend to agree with Felix on the notion of "hope".
If you want something to happen, you don't waste time hoping. You do everything you can to make it happen. You don't dress up the loss of life as something to inspire a reason to keep going, you acknowledge it as a cautionary tale and a reason to make sure others don't meet the same fate.
And again, it still reduces Penny's role to being a plot device in someone else's arc, despite her having her own character and arc too. It's the same problem I had with the argument that Hazel had to die to further Emerald's arc, since Hazel had his own character and still had room to be used as a character, but is instead reduced to just being motivation for Emerald's character arc.
Edited by RebelFalcon on Apr 17th 2022 at 2:13:59 PM
Rodimus: Self-sacrifice, Magnus— It's cheap. It's a cheap way out. I need to live so I can make amends.So let thousands of people die?
They have the winter Maiden now, once they take care of the Grimm they will make there way to the city
Okay this is something I have noticed...People claim that the team expects to find some perfect solution that fixes everything...But like, I think its the Fans who expect them to do that not anyone at the team who says that? They go for the best solution available and people tend to give them shit for...Well, not magically making all issues go away
I think its easy to preach about Hopepunk with that, the point is how things are bleak and such, just remain hopeful in spite of it.
Bow to the PrototypeSee now that's another thing "saving the villain"
That has always been a point of contention in other forum discussions such as Naruto and MHA.
Does Salem deserve any form of saving/redemption? No.
She's actively snuffed out an untold number of lives just to spite her ex.
Or with the silver eyes turned them into Grimm abominations.
Even before the Grimm bath she didn't care she sent, what she thought was just, an entire army to their deaths. Then promised to do it again.
And her endgoal is Taking You with Me just to spite the Gods as a final middle finger to their lesson.
There's a reason Salem took a liking to Adam. She's the bull faunus' spite jumped up to 11.
In any other series the heroes would just resolve to seal Salem away in another dimension or erase her from existence a la Zamasu because she's that much of a monster.
Edited by FKJ10 on Apr 17th 2022 at 11:30:56 AM
Do deserts have anything to do with it? If Salem can't be beaten until she's "learned," then she's got to be redeemed, whether she deserves it or not.
Doylistically, too, she's set up to be redeemed. Let's say she could be killed, but V6C3 were, mutatis mutandis, still in place. The heroes overwhelm her, break her Aura, and skewer her like Adam. Would that feel like a fitting end to her story? I expect exactly that will happen to Cinder in a few volumes (probably Crocea Mors, for reasons I've outlined ad nauseum), and even after her backstory, it'll feel right. But when we've seen as we have Salem reach the highest highs and the lowest lows, act as victim and villain both of Hesiodic proportions, we need something more, even if it'll end up letting her off far too easily from a Watsonian perspective.
My posts make considerably more sense read in the voice of John Ratzenberger.My main theory if she is not redeemed is that she will just be stopped, that they will thwart her plan and she will be forced to retreat and come up with a new plan for the next time, they just accept that even though she cannot be killed, her winning is not inevitable, and they can just work to ensure she never wins
Bow to the PrototypeAnd possibly make a system that doesn't feel like a zero-sum game with one party withholding the vital need-to-know info to make people think their sacrifices aren't senseless...
For about a few years until RT needs more money and they invoke Happy Ending Override.

Remember the expectations being more along of Pyrrha haunting her, and jokes with her Cinder’s equivalent of Ghost Nappa.