Agreed, they had loads of focus and they did have a storyline — it was just an Heroic BSoD based storyline.
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.
How exactly shall we rewrite the entry of Protagonist-Centered Morality so that it's removed of YMMV language?
Some detractors to the show have noticed that the narrative tends to gloss over some of the actions of the main characters, like when they stole an airship to get to Atlas, or when they kept secrets from Ironwood when they were the same secrets they criticized Ozpin for keeping from them. Generally, whenever someone disagrees with Ruby, they are immediately portrayed as a villain, specifically General Ironwood. While the morality of Ironwood's plan has been debated among the FNDM, when Ruby criticized his plan and actively fought to make sure he couldn't go through with it, even though she had no alternative, she was portrayed as being in the right.
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This is an in-universe trope, so the story has to present the bad things being done by protagonists as ignorable and/or ignoring the good things done by antagonists.
It doesn't matter if some of the audience feels that way. That's YMMV. This is an objective trope and therefore has to be written objectively about how the story is presenting the protagonists as people who can get away with doing bad things without being called on it.
Edited by Wyldchyld 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.
Rather notably, the story does call Ruby's actions as not necessarily being the best. Ren has a rant about how nothing they've done has helped anyone, and he basically voiced the most common complaints within the fandom regarding Ruby's lack of alternatives to Ironwood's plan.
Reality Ensues had a lot of trope misuse and shoehorning going on. It also had an issue with separate entries discussing the same situation in different ways, effectively being repetition.
I've combined the repetition entries, so they have a single example and I've listed the entries I've removed below, along with reasons for the removal.
- Reality Ensues:
- Pyrrha, being too shy to confess her feelings, simply cultivates a friendship with the object of her affections, hoping he'll someday ask her out. He does not, and her feelings remain unrequited until she actually mans up (in a manner of speaking) and tells him about them.
- Jaune forges academic transcripts and cheats his way into an elite military school, in a shonen-worthy attempt to become a hero. And were it not for Pyrrha's intervention, he would have died on the first day of basic training, since the first test involves being launched into the sky without parachutes, and he didn't have a landing strategy. Though he does improve greatly in terms of combat skill over time, and shows good leadership, he has yet to reach the level of several of his peers, who trained for far longer than he has. Nora teasingly implies that he's the weak link of the team in the third volume.
- Ruby's impulsive, scatterbrained approach to battle nearly gets her hit by one of Weiss's attacks, and nearly again later on by a Deathstalker. While she is incredibly talented with her Crescent Rose scythe, she is fairly ineffective where she's unarmed. She makes some progress in that regard by the end of Volume 5, but barely enough to make a difference.
- Blake's Heroic B.S.O.D.s (guilt) over her traumatic past as a White Fang terrorist once got so bad that her teammates have to remind her to eat and sleep.
- Ironwood supports the idea of recruiting Huntsmen to the military, contradicting their inteded autonomy. Aside from these specialists, the Atlesian military relies heavily on machines, such as flying airships and the Ridiculously Human Robot Penny, whose true nature is only known to a select few. When Penny is ultimately killed in her tournament battle with Pyrrha and her nature is revealed to the world, Cinder asks the horrified crowd why Ironwood would ever need a killing machine disguised as an innocent teenage girl, which further discredits him, furthering her objective of inciting a panic. And then things get worse for the guy when the (remotely accessible) mechanized units capable of (autonomously?) perating in combat without human involvement get hacked by a malware program Neo planted by Roman via a compromised phone and put under its control (or reprogrammed their targeting/IFF parameters), leaving most of Vale at the villains' mercy.
- Neo, Torchwick's Perky Female Minion, typically fights with Parasol of Pain Parasol of Pain, which also has a Sword Cane. During Volume 3 Chapter 11, Ruby is able to defeat her by opening it up to catch the wind, carrying her off of the ship.
- After beating up Ruby, Torchwick pauses to give a huge monologue about how Ruby is a fool because in the real world, heroes don't exist. All this does is leave him open to being eaten by a Griffon, which (as a Grimm) is drawn to negative emotions.
- Sun ends up finally blowing up at Blake in Volume 4 because of her It's Not You, It's My Enemies ideals, stating that their foes can hurt them badly, but it's her constant running away that hurts her friends the worst because she's making the decision to run away and stay away from them without seeing how it will hurt them.
- Raven's plans throughout Season 5 eventually put the Relic of Knowledge within her grasp. However, the reason she wants the relic is supposedly so that she has the power to keep Salem away. As Yang points out, revealing herself as the Spring Maiden has painted a giant target on her back, and taking the relic will only make that target even bigger. After realizing this Raven decides to just leave the relic and run like the illogical chicken she is.
- A conflict involving Qrow and Tyrian has multiple aversions of Talking Is a Free Action. When Qrow confronts Tyrian, he begins talking in flowery speeches, the two begin bantering. Midway through one of Qrow's taunts, Tyrian attacks him. Later on, after Qrow saves Ruby from a falling wooden beam, and the two share a momentary look of mutual relief... and then Tyrian stabs Qrow with his stinger tail. And then, while Tyrian is laughing, Ruby cuts off his extended tail.
Reasons:
- Person in love says nothing to their love interest and suffers in silence. Standard romance plot. Not this trope.
- There's no indication that Jaune would have died on his first day. For all we know being forced to land might have activated his Aura and Semblance. We can't trope the road not taken, we can only WMG.
- Ruby doesn't have team-work skills to start with and is the Leeroy Jenkins trope, not this one. Lacking unarmed combat isn't this trope, it's a deliberate decision to give the character strengths and weaknesses in combat. Like Yang struggling with kickboxers because she's fist-heavy.
- Blake wasn't in an Heroic BSoD. She was obsessing, and her portrayal was standard obsession.
- Removed Ironwood's military reference. The entry doesn't seem to know what it wants to be and isn't presenting an example of the trope in use.
- Neo floating away in the wind like Mary Poppins is definitely not an example of Reality Ensues.
- Torchwick's fate is definitely not a case of reality ensuing, but it is an example of internal consistency of the setting, which isn't this trope.
- Sun lecturing Blake about how hurt friends feel when a friend runs away isn't Reality Ensues. It's The Power of Friendship as a Discussed Trope.
- Raven's not a case of Reality Ensues, it's just consistent storytelling of her character type.
- The actions of Qrow, Tyrian and Ruby during the fight are not Reality Ensues, they are various other combat tropes or subversions of tropes. For example, after Tyrian spends his fight against the kids engaging in Talking Is a Free Action, when Qrow turns up and starts playing along only for Tyrian to attack mid-sentence; that's subverting that trope, not Reality Ensues. Also, Tyrian and Ruby taking advantage of their enemies being distracted is just tactics. If every fight that uses tactics was troped as Reality Ensues, the page would break every time a fighting tale is troped.
I feel I should explain myself. I was bored yesterday and was checking random tropes when I found the Reality Ensues Trope page. I found the RWBY section, and as someone who frequents The Other Wiki, I took the entries there to see if anyone there had any opinions on them. When someone responded and it was mostly spell corrections and ellaborations on the entries, I went and edited it. I then check the main Trope Page for RWBY and found that the section for Reality Ensues was nearly entirely different from how the main trope page originally looked, so I changed it to match.
The Wiki I go to has plenty of people with opinions, just some don't bother editing things themselves. I only did this to get their take on the tropes and out of boredom.
Edited by RebelFalcon Vegeta: I'm back bitches!
My edit isn't a reflection on you so please don't take it as that. It's just whether or not they're relevant to the trope description that's the issue.
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.
Entry brought here for discussion:
- Recruit Teenagers with Attitude: Volumes 1-3 deconstruct the hell out of this trope via Ozpin's actions. While Beacon's students come in at 17 and are considered the best of the best, he allows the younger Ruby and the obviously untalented Jaune in because reasons. This leads to problems with their own teams as Weiss tended to butt heads with Ruby and Jaune is mocked by his teammates. In Volume 2, he allows Team RWBY, a team of first year students, to go investigate a potential villain hideout, which ends up leading to Vale being invaded by Grimm and Ozpin disgraced by his actions. In Volume 3, he puts Pyrrha in a bind as he wants her to take over the powers of the Fall Maiden before Cinder can take the rest of them, which scares the shit out of her and when she does decided to do so, it's too late as Cinder ends up taking the power for herself, leading to Beacon's destruction, Vale's ravaging, Pyrrha and Ozpin's current form dying, and the remaining members of RWBY and JNPR being left to find Cinder to take revenge.
The Trope is not in effect for V1-3:
- Jaune actively sought out the Academy to fake his way in, so not this trope. Ruby was recruited into the academy, but for an unknown reason that can't yet be troped.
- Jaune is bullied by The Bully, not mocked by his team-mates. Not relevant.
- Weiss's issue was that she, and only she, should be team leader. Not relevant.
- V2 made it clear that Team RWBY planned on getting to the hideout no matter what the teachers assigned them to. Ozpin's intervention gave them fully-trained combat back-up they otherwise wouldn't have had. Not this trope.
- The kids did not cause the invasion: they're merely the reason why it happened at that specific time. So, that's a misleading addition. Also note: even the experienced adults weren't expecting an underground attack (they were focussed on sky and ground threats) and the underground threat was only discovered by accident (a sinkhole dropped the heroine right into the villain's lap).
- Pyrrha was a decision made based on a set of magical rules everyone had to obey and her being the only suitable candidate to solve a crisis of the villains' making. That isn't this trope.
Now, Recruit Teenagers with Attitude might come into play in this work. In Volume 5. That is the point where Ozpin actively recruits a bunch of kids (Team RNJR, Weiss, Yang and Oscar) to fight his Secret War. It's clear that they've got barely any knowledge or understanding of the situation so Ozpin is forced to acknowledge that, at this point, they simply don't have what it takes to defeat the Big Bad. It's also strongly implied that, at this point, Ozpin really has no-one else he can rely on.
I'm therefore suggesting this trope be rewritten to deal to cover the Volume 5 events, and it's currently a straight use of the trope, not a deconstruction. The sticking point to whether or not this trope applies even for Volume 5 is that Team RNJR effectively recruited themselves because they want answers to what happened and went hunting for them alone, while Weiss has reunited with them by accident and Yang is determined to help her sister no matter what. Ruby is also a target of the Big Bad because she has an inherited power that is the Achilles' Heel of The Heavy and which is some kind of mysterious fly in the Big Bad's soup. In other words, Ruby's involved no matter what Ozpin does.
Edited by Wyldchyld 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.
Most of the Out of Focus entries are exactly the same as the version on the main trope page. The only exception is the last bullet point for it on the page. I don't really know if that should really be there since the main characters didn't feel out of focus during Volume 8, they were just recuperating.
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