What An Idiot cleanup

• In Volume 5, Yang tracks down her estranged mother, bandit leader Raven Branwen, in order to use her mother's semblance to find Qrow, who's currently watching over Ruby. Raven however doesn't want Yang getting involved in the conflict between Ozpin and Salem, in which Qrow is a key player on Ozpin's side.
  You'd Expect: That Raven would figure out that Yang obviously cares about her little sister, and keep this in mind when trying to persuade her. At the very least, you'd think she wouldn't do the stuff mentioned below if she genuinely wanted to win Yang over.
  Instead: Raven tells Yang that Ruby is "a lost cause" if she's with Qrow, and tries to convince her to abandon Ruby. She does talk about Ozpin's duplicity as well as the Ozpin-Salem confict, but she consistently acts as though finding Ruby and staying out of it are mutually exclusive.
  Result: Raven's attempts at getting through to Yang by warning her about Qrow, Ozpin and Salem all fall on deaf ears, since Yang's sole concern is to find her sister, and she knows and trusts Qrow far more than she does Raven. Raven eventually just gives up and offers to portal Yang to Qrow and Ruby, while making clear that if Yang accepts, the two of them will be at loggerheads the next time they meet. Yang takes the offer, and after getting Qrow and Ozpin to confirm what Raven told her, she decides to stick with them to protect her sister, in exchange for them not keeping any more secrets.

This has been removed and re-added in the past, so it has been brought here in the past, but no resolution was ever reached.

The problem with this example is that it's completely ignoring Raven's characterisation in the show and wants her to be something she's not. She's well aware of the fact that Yang loves her sister Ruby, what she's doing is trying to manipulate Yang for her own reasons. However, she's selfish, a coward, loose with the truth, and is listed as an Idiot Ball example because she gets called out for these traits by a couple of characters, most notably Yang during the Volume 5 climax (Raven flees in tears). So, the entry basically wants Raven to be a completely different character.

It's also complaining about something that Raven's demonstrably correct about: we already know that helping Ruby and staying out of the conflict is mutually exclusive because the conflict is the show's plot driver and Ruby is The Hero who Jumped at the Call to become The Unchosen One. Just one episode prior to this scene, Ruby gives The Chosen One (who is brand new and overwhelmed) a big speech about the importance of fighting Salem, so the audience goes into Raven's scene knowing exactly how Ruby feels about the conflict.

This scene just boils down to Raven being a selfish, manipulative, cowardly woman who is aware of many of the things the audience has learned, while also knowing things the audience has yet to learn. And, when the audience does later learn certain things, the fandom's collective response has been to comment that Raven was right — in a Jerkass Has a Point sort of way.

• Weiss fights Vernal in the climax of Volume 5, and keeps trying to summon her Knight avatar to help her in battle. Vernal, however, sees what she's doing and keeps preventing her from having the time needed to perform the summoning.
  You'd Expect: Weiss to realise that she doesn't have the opportunity to perform the summoning, and that her Aura is suffering enormous strain from the direct hits every time she tries. As one of the most versatile fighters in the show prior to mastering her summoning ability, she has a massive range of Dust-based and Semblance-based attacks and strategies she can instead bring into play.
  Instead: She only uses a very limited range of her abilities, and only to try and give her the time she needs to summon the avatar. Every single time, she sustains direct hits from Vernal, losing ground and advantage to Vernal, who makes it clear she won't let Weiss summon anything.
  Result: After sustaining one too many direct hits, Weiss's Aura inevitably breaks, which prevents her from being able to use her Semblance at all, and leaves her wide open to being injured; Cinder takes advantage of this and fatally wounds her just to spite Jaune, who also saw her Aura break. Weiss's life is only saved by Jaune undergoing a Traumatic Superpower Awakening just in time.

Everything this entry says is true. The only reason why I don't list it as a "Keep" is because it might be an objective Idiot Ball example. There is no dialogue in the show that ever shows Weiss (or any other character) talking about how she fought during this fight. However, Volume 7 has, among other things, the heroes all having the opportunity to undertake a lot of training in the background to the main plot, and Weiss does a lot of training with using her Knight avatar in battle, including strategising how best to use it. During the Volume 7 climactic fight, it's revealed that she's figured out a way to create the space she needs to summon the Knight in the middle of a fight by creating a multi-layered attack that disrupts the opponent's balance and senses.

So, while nothing is every verbally stated, her fighting style does undergo an very noticeable change to enable her to summon mid-battle. That makes the "What an Idiot" moment in the Volume 5 seem deliberate. So... what's the best place for this? WAI or Idiot Ball?

• During the Battle of Haven, Adam's bombs are disarmed, his White Fang are surrounded by police, faunus allied with Ghira arrive, Ilia has defected, and he is personally struck down in a single blow by Blake.
  You'd Expect: Blake and her extensive backup to take up Sun's suggestion and quickly pursue and arrest Adam as he attempts to flee alone, defeated, and demoralized, while surrounded by his enemies with little chance of escaping on foot. Therefore removing a dangerous threat from resurfacing in the future.
  Instead: Blake decides to let him go for no reason other than she feels they can't take him on and he should be allowed to escape in humiliation despite Adam being at his lowest point and vulnerable to capture than at any point in the show.
  Result: Adam wreaks havoc another day by stalking Blake throughout volume 6, causing her distress, and murders several innocent guards at the communications tower and almost kills Blake herself if not for Yang's intervention.

This is just complaining. Blake is a Domestic Abuse survivor and Adam is her Psycho Ex-Boyfriend. This Haven fight is the first time she has ever successfully stood up to him. So, saying it's her fault that he spends the next volume stalking her across a continent, murdering people, and trying to kill her just because she didn't stand up to him enough at Haven really stinks of victim-blaming.

However, if anyone does want more detail about the Haven confrontation that the scene is talking about:

Haven is a night-time confrontation (most Faunus have night-vision). Blake's "extensive backup" consists of a small army of Faunus civilian who have only had two weeks of fight training versus a handful of highly-trained White Fang terrorists. Due to kinship, the civilians rely mainly on force of numbers and guilt-tripping. The Mistral Police Force accompanies them in airships (no ground support, and mostly human).

Adam is extremely dangerous, so Blake and Sun (trained fighters) deal with him while the civilians deal with the other White Fang. Adam flees into the mountain forest as soon as the police arrive; with the canopy confounding the police, Sun decides to give chase on foot. Blake stops him because she realises Adam wants them to follow so that he can pick people off one-by-one from cover. She also feels that she and Sun can't beat him in a straight fight, something Adam also mentions when trying to kill her and Yang in Volume 6. The difference that time (as Blake lampshades) is that Adam has put her and Yang in a kill or be killed situation — if they don't win, they'll die.

• In Volume 6, the heroes have retrieved the Relic of Knowledge, and plan to take it to their ally General Ironwood in Atlas. This is trickier than it sounds because the Relic draws Grimm to it, a fact Ozpin knows well.
  You'd Expect: Ozpin would warn the rest of the heroes of this, not just because they might want to modify their travel plans accordingly, but because he'd promised not to hide any more information from them.
  Instead: He says nothing, out of fear that knowledge of this fact would cause increased anxiety within the group, and lead to more risk of Grimm attacks.
  Result: In their ignorance, the heroes take the Relic onboard a packed public train, putting dozens - if not hundreds - of innocent people in danger when a massive horde of Grimm attack it, and meaning that Ozpin has to reveal the secret anyway, at the worst possible time. It also means that, when Ozpin tries to convince Ruby to give him the Relic, it comes after yet another bit of dishonesty from Ozpin, ultimately resulting in Ruby not co-operating and using the Relic to find out everything else Ozpin's hiding from them. The knowledge she and the others obtain, particularly the part about Salem supposedly being unbeatable, shatters the group's faith in Ozpin.

This is addressed in-universe, but it also expects Ozpin to be a completely different character, and it relies on speculative troping. The "You'd Expect" is completely invalid: he did not promise. Yang told him to, but all he said was "Understood" — most fans immediately spotted his evasion, but the heroes did not. So the expectation in the fandom was that Ozpin would continue to keep secrets until it all blows up. This was where it all blows up, thus revealing an Awful Truth about the Big Bad that Ozpin's been trying to hide. In short, Ozpin being secretive is one of the show's biggest plot-points, and the build-up to a moment where the heroes turn on him for keep secrets is a big plot-point for revealing the truth about the Secret War they're part of.

Without boring people with details, there are different theories in the fandom. The main one is what the Result section is based on, that the heroes are right to assume that the Grimm did attack the train because of the Relic (in other words, Relic attraction is stronger than human emotion). An alternative theory is that the heroes are wrong, and the Grimm attack was coincidence (which is why the train company hired Huntsmen to protect the train and it was built with shields and weapons — attacks are expected); the show consistently depicts Grimm showing no interest in the Relic or people carrying the Relic, even when the Relic-bearer is standing right next to them (in other words, Human emotion is stronger than Relic attraction). In the first theory, people think Ozpin was wrong to take the Relic on the train because it endangered lives; in the second, people think Ozpin knew that a crowd of people is the only way to hide the Relic from the Grimm.

• During Volume 7's penultimate episode, an arrest warrant is placed for RWBY, JNR, Oscar and Qrow. Qrow, having just helped capture Tyrian, is on an airship with Clover and Robyn when the news reaches them. Everyone barring Tyrian then subsequently falls into this:
  • Robyn was assured that she's not being arrested and will be free to go when they land.
    You'd Expect: She'd listen to him, and when they land, to try to see if he's up to something.
    Instead: She chooses to pick a fight with Clover in the enclosed environment of the airship even though her weapon works best at range.
    The Result: One of her bolts then frees Tyrian, allowing him to kill the pilot and crash the ship.
  • The ship crashed and Qrow decided to fight with Tyrian, ignoring Clover.
    You'd Expect: Clover, when he sees Qrow with Tyrian, to help fight with this deranged criminal lunatic, as well as to completely put aside his grudge against Qrow.
    Instead: Even though Qrow has focused his attention on Tyrian, Clover still attacks Qrow, seemingly confident in thinking he can take both Qrow and Tyrian in a free-for-all without even considering a temporary team-up with Qrow to put Tyrian down first.
  • Qrow (alongside forgetting that he can turn into a bird and avoid the airship crash entirely), was highly annoyed at Clover for not cooperating with him to stop Tyrian, as well as to focus on the wrong target.
    You'd Expect: To tell Clover to focus on Tyrian, and, if they really want to argue, to do so later.
    Instead: Qrow decides to team up with Tyrian, the known Serial Killer who nearly killed him in Volume 4, tried to kidnap his niece and personally assassinated many of Qrow's Huntsmen friends in Mistral during Volume 5.
    The Result: Tyrian uses the team up to run Clover through with Qrow's sword after the fight then runs away as Clover dies.
• In Cinder's backstory, it's revealed she had a Wicked Stepmother who forced her to clean a massive hotel by herself without food (forcing the girl to eat scraps to survive) and regularly tortured her with a shock collar. A visiting Huntsman named Rhodes learns of all this and feels guilty for not intervening when he suspected something earlier.
  You'd Expect: Rhodes to reporte Cinder's stepmother to the police. Or simply take Cinder away from there. Or anything but what he does.
  Instead: Rhodes decides to train Cinder to be a Huntsman and insists she endure her torment for several more years
  The Result: Cinder ends up snapping and murdering her stepmother and stepsisters for their abuse then killing Rhodes when he insists she's passed the Moral Event Horizon for her actions.

This is a big, big issue — one the fandom generally agrees is a case of the characters behaving like idiots (there are debates as to who to blame the most, but everyone agrees it's an issue). However, this is an in-universe thing. It's also based on character behaviour that's well-established, before the fight happens. So, a lot of this is expecting characters to not behave like themselves during a scene where people are feeling betrayed, being baited by the villain, and have been thrown a very nasty curveball after pulling an all-nighter (so, they're also exhausted and not thinking straight).

So, Qrow has been reeling for over a volume by the person he had Undying Loyalty to becoming a Broken Pedestal (Ozpin). He also has issues with being The Jinx because he has Power Incontinence issues with his bad-luck Semblance. Clover's been a bit of a rebound relationship because he has a good-luck Semblance that meams Qrow feels safe around him (he feels he won't hurt Clover by accident).

Clover is Qrow's complete mirror: he has Undying Loyalty to a man that is turning into a Broken Pedestal, and never questions Ironwood's orders as a result. His trust is blind, just like Qrow's was in Ozpin, and has been displayed since the very first episode of the volume, where they get the heroes arrested because they blindly follow orders without thinking for themselves and checking the situation — it's lampshaded as such in the second episode. And this theme of unquestioningly following Ironwood's orders without thinking or acting independently, crops up multiple times.

A couple of volumes ago, Qrow was fighting his sister over Ozpin, where she was railing against him because she can't understand why he's so blind to Ozpin's flaws. They ended up fighting when she is temporarily forced to team-up with Salem's subordinates because she has no choice. In this fight, Clover is basically playing Qrow's role as the man who won't question his loyalty to Ironwood or the things Ironwood tells him to do, while Qrow is playing Raven's role, of being unable to see why Clover is so unquestioningly loyal... resulting in him teaming up temporarily with Salem's subordinate (Tyrian) because he has no choice.

Robyn is an impulsive, confrontational activist who has been fighting for her people's rights against Ironwood, and a system that is consistently aligned against them. It took outsiders coming into the situation to get her and Ironwood talking and trusting each other, and the very people who got her to do that are now telling her that Ironwood has betrayed them and is now leaving her people to die. Worse, he's sent her instructions to arrest the very people who have just warned her. So, she's

So, Tyrian baits Robyn's impulsiveness and confrontational personality (which doesn't need much baiting). Clover won't stop trying to arrest Qrow — even while Tyrian's attacking him — and Tyrian baits Qrow into siding with him temporarily just to disarm Clover so that he can deal with Tyrian properly. Qrow also has a habit of dismissing his sword when he's disarmed and putting his opponent down with his fists before retrieving his weapon — Tyrian takes advantage of this to kill Clover with Qrow's weapon (Qrow thought Tyrian had been successfully bound by this point).

Tyrian is the only one in completely control of his feelings. Everyone else falls apart. Qrow spends several episodes the next volume in an Heroic BSoD over the mistakes he and Clover made in this fight.

This feels more like an Idiot Ball situation to me. The characters are set up throughout the volume to end up in a situation where the worst sides of their natures come out, clash in an awful way, leading to terrible consequences.

• In Cinder's backstory, it's revealed she had a Wicked Stepmother who forced her to clean a massive hotel by herself without food (forcing the girl to eat scraps to survive) and regularly tortured her with a shock collar. A visiting Huntsman named Rhodes learns of all this and feels guilty for not intervening when he suspected something earlier.
  You'd Expect: Rhodes to reporte Cinder's stepmother to the police. Or simply take Cinder away from there. Or anything but what he does.
  Instead: Rhodes decides to train Cinder to be a Huntsman and insists she endure her torment for several more years
  The Result: Cinder ends up snapping and murdering her stepmother and stepsisters for their abuse then killing Rhodes when he insists she's passed the Moral Event Horizon for her actions.

The entire setting of the Kingdom of Atlas is a highly structured society, built on inequality and worker abuse. There's an implication that the wealthy elites get around the illegality of slavery by adopting orphans into their family, effectively hiding their slaves as legal members of the family.

We have no idea what options actually exist for getting kids out of that situation. All we know is that Rhodes seemed to feel like Cinder's only options were to either destroy her future by killing her family or endure it for seven years while training in secret for the Huntsman Entrance Exam, which would take place when she was seventeen because seventeen is the age where she can legally walk out on her family and they won't be able to do anything about it.

The idea of expecting a ten-year-old child to endure seven years of abuse was very much a collective WTF in the fandom, but the creators are on record as wanting it to be a screwed up situation because it is a screwed up society. The fact that Atlas is screwed-up is mentioned a number of times, and is a plot point in places. But we're never really given any insight into what options beyond "spend your life on the run for murder" and "endure for seven years to legally escape" really existed.

So, the entry is mostly based on speculation. It assumes that the police would do something if they were told about that, but the greatest and most noble heroes in the world are Huntsmen, and this hotel caters to Huntsmen like Rhodes. In all those years of being openly abused, not one Huntsmen guest ever intervenes in Cinder's case, except for Rhodes (who intervenes secretly). So, if the world's most noble warriors are turning a blind eye to Cinder's abuse, why assume the police would be any different?

I'm not sure what trope or audience reaction this would come under, and there's definitely something worth recording because the "WTF" audience reaction was so widespread, but I think WAI is the wrong place for it.

• Idiot Ball:
  • When Weiss fights Vernal at Haven, she sacrifices her highly flexible combat style and abilities in favour of repeatedly trying to summon her newly mastered Knight avatar. Each time, she leaves herself wide-open to direct strikes from Vernal, who makes it clear she won't let Weiss take the "easy way out". As a result, she quickly loses the fight and her Aura, allowing Cinder to inflict a fatal blow. Jaune's Semblance awakens in response, saving her life. When Team RWBY later fights the Ace-Ops, Weiss shows she's learned from the Vernal fight by using complex strategy to keep her opponent off-balance and blinded just long enough to allow her to safely summon the Knight.
  • Raven plans to use the Relic of Knowledge to keep Salem away from her tribe. During the Volume 5 climax, Yang points out just how poorly thought out her plan is: if Salem is willing to pursue her for daring to harbour the Spring Maiden, she'll become even more determined to hunt Raven down to obtain a Relic. Yang concludes that Raven's cowardice means that she should leave the Relic with her more courageous daughter, something Raven tearfully agrees to before fleeing in shame.
  • Cinder is successful in carrying out Salem's plan for Beacon, adapting on the fly to unexpected events. However, she's obsessed with stealing power and killing Ruby, so ignores Watts' warning and sabotages Salem's stealthy plan for Haven in favour of a noisy confrontation with the heroes just to target Ruby and the Spring Maiden. As Watts predicts, the consequences are a "bloody mess"; the villains are defeated, the heroes gain the Relic, and Cinder is left for dead. Ostracised from Salem until she redeems herself, she keeps unsuccessfully sabotaging Salem's plans for personal gain until Watts furiously dissects her failings in Volume 8. This time, she listens and returns to her Beacon form.
  • In Volume 7, Robyn protects Mantle aggressively and recklessly, while Clover's blind obedience to Ironwood reflects Qrow's Undying Loyalty to Ozpin prior to its breakdown. An all-nighter sees them transporting Tyrian when they learn Ironwood's betrayed Mantle and arrest warrants for the heroes have been issued. The fight that unfolds is a cascade of poor decisions caused by exhaustion, stress, established character flaws and Tyrian baiting Robyn and Qrow. A betrayed Robyn recklessly attacks Clover, who is trying to arrest Qrow, allowing Tyrian to crash the airship. With Robyn comatose, a three-way battle ensues where Qrow prioritises Tyrian, Clover prioritises Qrow, and Tyrian baits Qrow into a truce against Clover. It ends with Tyrian down, Qrow disarmed and Clover without Aura. As Qrow and Clover argue about Undying Loyalty, Tyrian escapes by impaling Clover with Qrow's weapon. In Volume 8, Qrow moodily dwells on the poor decisions that were made.