RWBY VIII: Well, THAT escalated quickly

[Anyr]

I can accept that, because it's a time honored tradition for crappy disguises to somehow work anyways in all sorts of fiction. I'm not going to harp on RWBY for following that trope.

Except the show isn't supposed to work that way. RWBY is one of those series' that claims to justify its tropes. When a character suffers no damage from being punched through a wall, it's not because 'that's just how things work in this genre': It's because of Aura. Blake's ability to make distracting clones isn't handwaved as 'ninjas can do that in anime'. It's her Semblance. The kind of mentality you're describing is usually reserved for the comedy scenes. When things get serious, the show at least makes an attempt to be consistent.

This is especially vital considering RWBY's reliance on mysteries. We're meant to be asking questions. Cinder is explicitly called out as having strange powers, that the cast doesn't fully understand. If her genuine abilities are freely mixed with tropey handwaves that look like abilities, how are we supposed to tell the difference?

But you might enjoy this short story mocking that scene.

Yes, I read that one a while back. It (and the preceding chapter) did indeed give me a chuckle.

But I will complain that someone breaks into your computer control centre and you apparently don't do anything in response. I mean what did they think she broke in for? Milk and Cookies? It doesn't matter that you don't know if she succeeded in breaking through, you should check at least to see if she uploaded a virus or something. I mean, a properly paranoid group would reboot the whole system to it's last backup, just in case.

100% agreed.

[Jade_Tarem]

Re: Setbacks

Spoiler

Show

I'm not seeing that the bad guys have had no setbacks. Please recall that Cinder is kidding herself with regards to her own grade of villainy. She's certainly evil, but she's in over her head and a control freak on top of that - witness her reaction to Tyrian's breakdown toward the end of the last season and the several times she exposes her plan to greater risk just to avoid having to give up personal oversight of its execution - so her constant assertions that everything is exactly as she foresaw might be boasting, or might just be her reassuring herself that she's as in charge as she thinks she is. Judging by the way everyone else in Salem's inner circle treats her, it's probably the latter.

But even in Seasons 3-5, you see the beginnings of cracks appear in the schemes of Team Bad Guy. Yes, they managed to sow chaos, confusion, terror, and pain when they took down Vale and the CCT system, but there are a few outstanding issues.

- There's still that silver-eyed cape girl running around with the secret sauce for beating Maidens, even in spite of Team Evil going out of their way to neutralize her. And she's now getting personal butt-kicking lessons from an immortal body-surfing warlock who has spent at least one lifetime training monster slayers.
- Lionheart is a mole for them... but after one meeting, Team Good Guy is already suspicious of him and limiting what information he has access to. Plus, the reluctant traitor story arc rarely ends well for either the traitor or the one pulling the strings. Lionheart might decide that one crucial order is one too many and turn at the exact wrong moment.
- Hazel is clearly not happy with Adam's butchering of Sienna Khan, or at least the timing of it. Instead of a militant but predictable leader, now the head of the White Fang is an unstable lunatic (spite personified, according to Blake) who will absolutely pursue a personal vendetta over Salem's orders if he has to choose. Even the Fox Bros seem to have doubts that his latest orders will really have the desired effect on the Faunus population.
- Ozpin is back in action, at least in limited form, and Salem knows nothing about his whereabouts or agenda.
- Tyrian's overly optimistic report of Qrow's demise meant that Team Salem lost their opportunity to go finish him while he was down. Now he's recruiting more huntsmen to mount a stronger defense of Haven than Beacon likely had.
- Ironwood's lockdown is a problem for the good guys, yes, but also Team Evil, since it means Salem can't just dispatch a general to control him the way she did with Lionheart.
- Finally, Salem needs the cooperation of three people, two of which she doesn't know the location of and none of which she currently has control over, to complete her Evil Plan (TM). Why, we don't know yet, but it seems to be a stumbling block.

So yeah, I don't know that I'd say that the bad guys have everything going perfectly for them. It's true that they have a lot of special advantages and momentum is working in their favor but... that's a good thing. If the heroes have the advantage, there's no tension and no drama.

Re: Aura

Spoiler

Show

The lack of explanations never bothered me that much, as I assume they'll get to it eventually. Miles and Kerry aren't going to explain anything until they absolutely have to. This is both something they've implied - having stated outright at one RTX that they don't want to cut off options until they need to - and it's really the only way to tell a story like RWBY. There are thousands of fans for every person on the writing staff, which means that any mistake they make in continuity will get spotted and ultimately bite them. They can reduce or avoid that by being vague until there's no choice.

On Bandit Dude... it's entirely possible that he just doesn't have Aura. It is clear that humans and faunus in Remnant are just tougher than they are in the real world. Jaune still has his aura locked when he gets flung into the Emerald Forest, and both the launcher mechanism and Pyrrha's "save" would have reduced parts of his skeleton to Laffy Taffy in a world that didn't run on anime physics. There's also no news report about the massive loss of life caused by the running freeway battle with Torchwick in Season 2, meaning that if any of those cars that flipped off the elevated highway had a baby on board, that baby tanked the crash like a boss.

As for why anyone, like the Bandit, wouldn't have their aura unlocked, it's likely for the same reason why criminals commit crimes without a concrete alibi, a flawless escape route, full body armor, a black belt in karate, and the biggest weapons they can possibly get. That's all difficult and expensive. Bandit Man from V5 clearly thinks that his plan of "aha, I'll get more people!" is more than sufficiently clever and, to be fair, it probably usually works. He just wasn't ready for the fact that Yang is a magical heavily armed cyborg who is also an MMA champ. Sure, he had a hint when she turned him into a Looney Toons gag in the first episode, but on the other hand, he might very well have a concussion and clearly wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed to begin with.

His weapon was a knife taped to a gun, for pete's sake. More specifically, a revolver that jammed, which is a whole new level of fail in terms of gun maintenance.

[Anyr]

Re: Setbacks

Spoiler

Show

I'm not seeing that the bad guys have had no setbacks. Please recall that Cinder is kidding herself with regards to her own grade of villainy. She's certainly evil, but she's in over her head and a control freak on top of that - witness her reaction to Tyrian's breakdown toward the end of the last season and the several times she exposes her plan to greater risk just to avoid having to give up personal oversight of its execution - so her constant assertions that everything is exactly as she foresaw might be boasting, or might just be her reassuring herself that she's as in charge as she thinks she is. Judging by the way everyone else in Salem's inner circle treats her, it's probably the latter.

But even in Seasons 3-5, you see the beginnings of cracks appear in the schemes of Team Bad Guy. Yes, they managed to sow chaos, confusion, terror, and pain when they took down Vale and the CCT system, but there are a few outstanding issues.

- There's still that silver-eyed cape girl running around with the secret sauce for beating Maidens, even in spite of Team Evil going out of their way to neutralize her. And she's now getting personal butt-kicking lessons from an immortal body-surfing warlock who has spent at least one lifetime training monster slayers.
- Lionheart is a mole for them... but after one meeting, Team Good Guy is already suspicious of him and limiting what information he has access to. Plus, the reluctant traitor story arc rarely ends well for either the traitor or the one pulling the strings. Lionheart might decide that one crucial order is one too many and turn at the exact wrong moment.
- Hazel is clearly not happy with Adam's butchering of Sienna Khan, or at least the timing of it. Instead of a militant but predictable leader, now the head of the White Fang is an unstable lunatic (spite personified, according to Blake) who will absolutely pursue a personal vendetta over Salem's orders if he has to choose. Even the Fox Bros seem to have doubts that his latest orders will really have the desired effect on the Faunus population.
- Ozpin is back in action, at least in limited form, and Salem knows nothing about his whereabouts or agenda.
- Tyrian's overly optimistic report of Qrow's demise meant that Team Salem lost their opportunity to go finish him while he was down. Now he's recruiting more huntsmen to mount a stronger defense of Haven than Beacon likely had.
- Ironwood's lockdown is a problem for the good guys, yes, but also Team Evil, since it means Salem can't just dispatch a general to control him the way she did with Lionheart.
- Finally, Salem needs the cooperation of three people, two of which she doesn't know the location of and none of which she currently has control over, to complete her Evil Plan (TM). Why, we don't know yet, but it seems to be a stumbling block.

So yeah, I don't know that I'd say that the bad guys have everything going perfectly for them. It's true that they have a lot of special advantages and momentum is working in their favor but... that's a good thing. If the heroes have the advantage, there's no tension and no drama.

Spoiler: Setbacks

Show

These are all events that happened after Silverraptor quit the show. We were discussing how the villains seemed back when he first watched it.

[Forum Explorer]

Re: Setbacks

Spoiler

Show

I'm not seeing that the bad guys have had no setbacks. Please recall that Cinder is kidding herself with regards to her own grade of villainy. She's certainly evil, but she's in over her head and a control freak on top of that - witness her reaction to Tyrian's breakdown toward the end of the last season and the several times she exposes her plan to greater risk just to avoid having to give up personal oversight of its execution - so her constant assertions that everything is exactly as she foresaw might be boasting, or might just be her reassuring herself that she's as in charge as she thinks she is. Judging by the way everyone else in Salem's inner circle treats her, it's probably the latter.

But even in Seasons 3-5, you see the beginnings of cracks appear in the schemes of Team Bad Guy. Yes, they managed to sow chaos, confusion, terror, and pain when they took down Vale and the CCT system, but there are a few outstanding issues.

- There's still that silver-eyed cape girl running around with the secret sauce for beating Maidens, even in spite of Team Evil going out of their way to neutralize her. And she's now getting personal butt-kicking lessons from an immortal body-surfing warlock who has spent at least one lifetime training monster slayers.
- Lionheart is a mole for them... but after one meeting, Team Good Guy is already suspicious of him and limiting what information he has access to. Plus, the reluctant traitor story arc rarely ends well for either the traitor or the one pulling the strings. Lionheart might decide that one crucial order is one too many and turn at the exact wrong moment.
- Hazel is clearly not happy with Adam's butchering of Sienna Khan, or at least the timing of it. Instead of a militant but predictable leader, now the head of the White Fang is an unstable lunatic (spite personified, according to Blake) who will absolutely pursue a personal vendetta over Salem's orders if he has to choose. Even the Fox Bros seem to have doubts that his latest orders will really have the desired effect on the Faunus population.
- Ozpin is back in action, at least in limited form, and Salem knows nothing about his whereabouts or agenda.
- Tyrian's overly optimistic report of Qrow's demise meant that Team Salem lost their opportunity to go finish him while he was down. Now he's recruiting more huntsmen to mount a stronger defense of Haven than Beacon likely had.
- Ironwood's lockdown is a problem for the good guys, yes, but also Team Evil, since it means Salem can't just dispatch a general to control him the way she did with Lionheart.
- Finally, Salem needs the cooperation of three people, two of which she doesn't know the location of and none of which she currently has control over, to complete her Evil Plan (TM). Why, we don't know yet, but it seems to be a stumbling block.

So yeah, I don't know that I'd say that the bad guys have everything going perfectly for them. It's true that they have a lot of special advantages and momentum is working in their favor but... that's a good thing. If the heroes have the advantage, there's no tension and no drama.

That all happens after season 3. I'm complaining about Cinder's plan in Season 3. None of her wins that season felt earned (not even Emerald's loyalty), and all of her setbacks didn't seem to actually do anything. Her being forced to shut up was the best thing about Season 4.

Anyways, all that stuff you mentioned is why I like Salem.

[Silverraptor]

That all happens after season 3. I'm complaining about Cinder's plan in Season 3. None of her wins that season felt earned (not even Emerald's loyalty), and all of her setbacks didn't seem to actually do anything. Her being forced to shut up was the best thing about Season 4.

Anyways, all that stuff you mentioned is why I like Salem.

Actually, when I noticed that in season 4, I thought something happened to the voice actress that season to cut her out of it. Until she said her one word.

[Callos_DeTerran]

Wasn't Cinder's response basically 'muhahaha, just as planned!"? That was one of my big complaints of S3, in that even the setbacks Cinder suffered didn't seem to actually matter at all.

Nah, her response was 'Whelp, made the best of it, can't do more than that'. And in Volume 3 well..the two real setbacks that Cinder suffers are potentially huge. The most obvious being 'Ruby laser-eyed her eye (and arm?) off' but the other is panning out as we speak. That being Ruby figuring out that Cinder was behind it all and following the trail to Mistral thanks in large part to Mercury being Mercury and Ruby watching Cinder kill Pyrrha. We've yet to see if that's going to be a setback or not, but considering Qrow and RNJR are in Mistral trying to thwart Salem's plan to acquire the Knowledge relic, I'm guessing we can accurately say this is a pretty major setback.

Even in Season 2, Cinder's infiltration of the CCT suffers a setback because they know an infiltrator was there. We don't see them do anything about it (because it'd be boring and our main characters are RWBY, not a team of Atlas programmers trying to ferret out Watts' Black Queen virus) but it probably contributed to Ironwood's military presence in Vale that was...a good and bad thing for WTCH.

Thing is, they had to establish Cinder as more competent than Roman and the easiest way to do that is to not have Cinder fail every thing she tries to do like Roman did until, ironically, his final actions in the series (were he had a surprising amount of accidental success). I found it refreshing that Cinder, Mercury, and Emerald had some bite but I see the complaints that others had about them and get them completely..even if they get blown out of proportion now and then.

To that end, I enjoyed the effort they put in to show the legwork the bad guys were doing but managing to not let on what the end goal is. You see almost every step Cinder takes for the Fall of Beacon aside from how she secured the loyalty of the White Fang and you find that out in flashback once the plan begins in earnest. Except for the Wyvern Grim, but even then we were told that smart, dangerous, and large/powerful Grim were basically just waiting on a sign of weakness to attack humanity so while the Wyvern Grim itself isn't foreshadowed, an attack by some powerful Grim is. And once you see the Fall of Beacon you can look back and see the plan coming together as it happens, including the lucky breaks Cinder gets that make the plan go off as well as it does.

...This doesn't mean that Cinder herself is a particularly compelling character until Volume 4 & 5 (and boy howdy does she become more interesting in those volumes) but it does make her posse's actions more fun to watch since you can tie what their doing directly to what happens in the final six or so chapters of Volume 3.

[Forum Explorer]

Nah, her response was 'Whelp, made the best of it, can't do more than that'. And in Volume 3 well..the two real setbacks that Cinder suffers are potentially huge. The most obvious being 'Ruby laser-eyed her eye (and arm?) off' but the other is panning out as we speak. That being Ruby figuring out that Cinder was behind it all and following the trail to Mistral thanks in large part to Mercury being Mercury and Ruby watching Cinder kill Pyrrha. We've yet to see if that's going to be a setback or not, but considering Qrow and RNJR are in Mistral trying to thwart Salem's plan to acquire the Knowledge relic, I'm guessing we can accurately say this is a pretty major setback.

Even in Season 2, Cinder's infiltration of the CCT suffers a setback because they know an infiltrator was there. We don't see them do anything about it (because it'd be boring and our main characters are RWBY, not a team of Atlas programmers trying to ferret out Watts' Black Queen virus) but it probably contributed to Ironwood's military presence in Vale that was...a good and bad thing for WTCH.

Thing is, they had to establish Cinder as more competent than Roman and the easiest way to do that is to not have Cinder fail every thing she tries to do like Roman did until, ironically, his final actions in the series (were he had a surprising amount of accidental success). I found it refreshing that Cinder, Mercury, and Emerald had some bite but I see the complaints that others had about them and get them completely..even if they get blown out of proportion now and then.

To that end, I enjoyed the effort they put in to show the legwork the bad guys were doing but managing to not let on what the end goal is. You see almost every step Cinder takes for the Fall of Beacon aside from how she secured the loyalty of the White Fang and you find that out in flashback once the plan begins in earnest. Except for the Wyvern Grim, but even then we were told that smart, dangerous, and large/powerful Grim were basically just waiting on a sign of weakness to attack humanity so while the Wyvern Grim itself isn't foreshadowed, an attack by some powerful Grim is. And once you see the Fall of Beacon you can look back and see the plan coming together as it happens, including the lucky breaks Cinder gets that make the plan go off as well as it does.

...This doesn't mean that Cinder herself is a particularly compelling character until Volume 4 & 5 (and boy howdy does she become more interesting in those volumes) but it does make her posse's actions more fun to watch since you can tie what their doing directly to what happens in the final six or so chapters of Volume 3.

...rewatched the scene, it goes from Torchwick dissing Ironwood to Cinder talking to her minions. Literally the first line in the scene:

All in all, I consider today a success.

and it's delivered in the most smug tone possible.

I don't count the eye laser, because it happened after Cinder's plan came to fruition. Ditto with Cinder's identity being discovered. Though the identity thing didn't even matter that much. Qrow would've headed to Mistral regardless in order to deal with the Spring Maiden. And Ozpin would have told them about Cinder then. Also again, that happens after Season 3.

Prove it. There isn't even a toss away line about something like that happening. And since no action is shown or mentioned, then the impression that the show presents is that they literally did nothing after Cinder broke in.


Roman succeeded at stealing pretty much all of the Dust and military equipment. He also typically does pretty well in the fights, til the heroes reinforcements show up. The only exception to that is Blake kicking his butt with her semblance hyped up on Dust. But seriously, his successes mean so much more because he does get thwarted. The heroes clearly anger him, they stop his current actions, and they foil his plot. But most importantly, he does all of that with style.

Season 3 Cinder is pretty much summed up by the above quote. Her plans go wrong, but she smugly (so damn smugly) proclaims success, and is proven right because her overall plan continues on track. And is sometimes completely nonsensical like Penny's death. If they wanted to prove her to be more competent then throw in the extra lines about the virus being impossible to remove. Or have her succeed cleanly. Like again, with Penny's death. Why was Mercury even there? It just made things seem stupid when Ruby didn't rush out of the door behind her to stop the fight.

Regardless, the point is Torchwick got foiled, and he'd get angry. He'd banter, yell, fight, and lose. All with style as he reacted, well like an actual person. Cinder just smugs her way through season 3. Seriously, so much smug. She has no style at all, her victories seem handed to her, and they don't make sense in the first place.

I mean, the White Fang is a perfect example of it. Cinder the human, strongarms a bunch of human hating, fanatical, terrorists into working for her, and it works perfectly. What the ****?! She even gets a bunch of them killed and Adam is just like 'nah, that's cool. I don't care if a human is clearly using me and my pals and treats us like disposable minions. You know, exactly like the people the White Fang was created to stop and I personally despise.'

[Silverraptor]

Nah, her response was 'Whelp, made the best of it, can't do more than that'. And in Volume 3 well..the two real setbacks that Cinder suffers are potentially huge. The most obvious being 'Ruby laser-eyed her eye (and arm?) off' but the other is panning out as we speak. That being Ruby figuring out that Cinder was behind it all and following the trail to Mistral thanks in large part to Mercury being Mercury and Ruby watching Cinder kill Pyrrha. We've yet to see if that's going to be a setback or not, but considering Qrow and RNJR are in Mistral trying to thwart Salem's plan to acquire the Knowledge relic, I'm guessing we can accurately say this is a pretty major setback.

I was wondering about Cinder's left arm. It seems like it did get taken off, but no one mentions it among team bad. But I can't remember during her training if she uses her left arm or not, so I'm not sure. (Also, for a moment when Ruby did her eye thing, I thought it was revealing she was winter or one of the other seasons, with her mom being the previous one. But then they explained silver eye's are a special case, so I accepted it. But hey, it would make sense why she always wanted to be Weiss's friend so much.)

Also, speaking on the knowledge relic, that got me thinking. Since there are 4 seasons but everyone is after Spring, is it possible that Spring is the only one they need? As in they may end up ignoring the other 2 seasons altogether. Because I would think tracking down the other 2 seasons would be easier then prioritizing a girl who has been missing with out a trace for a long time. I also forget (It went by fast in the explaining and I couldn't bother myself currently to go back and watch) which relic is for what season?

Spoiler: Also, thoughts on Spring's Identity

Show

I'm fairly certain Yang's mom's Second-in-Command is Spring. Why else would she appear in the intro glaring down Cinder? Also, her rune on her arm is similar to Cinder's Autumn rune, and it look like she used her power to break up the impending battle slaughter between Yang and Weiss against a camp of Bandits before the negative emotions allowed Grim to show up. Wasn't sure if I needed to spoiler this, but I thought to be safe in case anyone else in the thread hasn't made the same observations.

[Jade_Tarem]

Season 3 Cinder is pretty much summed up by the above quote. Her plans go wrong, but she smugly (so damn smugly) proclaims success, and is proven right because her overall plan continues on track. And is sometimes completely nonsensical like Penny's death. If they wanted to prove her to be more competent then throw in the extra lines about the virus being impossible to remove. Or have her succeed cleanly. Like again, with Penny's death. Why was Mercury even there? It just made things seem stupid when Ruby didn't rush out of the door behind her to stop the fight.

Regardless, the point is Torchwick got foiled, and he'd get angry. He'd banter, yell, fight, and lose. All with style as he reacted, well like an actual person. Cinder just smugs her way through season 3. Seriously, so much smug. She has no style at all, her victories seem handed to her, and they don't make sense in the first place.

I mean, the White Fang is a perfect example of it. Cinder the human, strongarms a bunch of human hating, fanatical, terrorists into working for her, and it works perfectly. What the ****?! She even gets a bunch of them killed and Adam is just like 'nah, that's cool. I don't care if a human is clearly using me and my pals and treats us like disposable minions. You know, exactly like the people the White Fang was created to stop and I personally despise.'

All of this is kind of what makes Cinder a proper, hateworthy villain. Because you're right! Her power is all borrowed or stolen. Her victories rely heavily on underhanded cheating, even after you take into account that she's a vicious and wicked individual. She seems untouchable compared to Roman because she isn't giving Torchwick nearly as much backup as Salem is giving her, which means that she's operating on a whole other level in terms of raw power, but how clever she is in using it is a big question mark. Tyrian even outright states that Cinder's opinion of herself is heavily inflated when Ruby (incorrectly) guesses that she's his boss. And yes, that happened 'after season 3' but ragging on the shortcuts she took in that season because the consequences weren't immediate is a bit unfair.

As for the White Fang, it's working perfectly... so far. I don't think Adam was cool with it so much as he realized that fighting Cinder to the death on the spot wasn't a high percentage move at the time. Even in Volume 3, it's clear that he's a remarkably petty individual who never thinks anything is his fault, but he's not really shown to be a complete idiot. I got the impression that he was cooperating with Cinder because being temporarily used (in a way that appealed to him anyway, since it let him kill humans and hurt Blake) was better than butting heads with whatever let Cinder barbecue half his camp.

It's easy to get on RWBY's case about the CCT raid and the virus, too, but ultimately what it comes down to is whether or not you think it was possible for Cinder to subvert the automated defenses and get access to the network. If so, then everything after that is just haggling over the price. A detailed description of why the cracker program worked would have bogged down the pacing and a throw away line would have just had people complaining about magical hacking. Damned if you do explain it, damned if you don't. Also, the scene immediately after Cinder goes back to the ball shows Atlas guards looking at the computers. It's true that giant neon letters saying "these guys will be investigating what happened" don't flash on the screen, but it seems like a safe assumption to guess that someone was working on that but ran out of time. I mean, they don't explicitly state that Ozpin brushes his teeth or bathes regularly (not even a throwaway line!) but it makes sense.

Bear in mind that RWBY's computers are not quite like our computers. The CCT is a crucial part of the world's information network, which is far more centralized and vulnerable than it is in our world. They can't turn off the internet while they look for whatever the crazy masked woman in the catsuit did to the computers without causing more problems than they'd solve... in theory. Their decision to keep it low key makes sense if you remember that they aren't expecting the best computer virus ever plus a massive Grimm attack plus the White Fang to all blow up at the same time.

[Forum Explorer]

All of this is kind of what makes Cinder a proper, hateworthy villain. Because you're right! Her power is all borrowed or stolen. Her victories rely heavily on underhanded cheating, even after you take into account that she's a vicious and wicked individual. She seems untouchable compared to Roman because she isn't giving Torchwick nearly as much backup as Salem is giving her, which means that she's operating on a whole other level in terms of raw power, but how clever she is in using it is a big question mark. Tyrian even outright states that Cinder's opinion of herself is heavily inflated when Ruby (incorrectly) guesses that she's his boss. And yes, that happened 'after season 3' but ragging on the shortcuts she took in that season because the consequences weren't immediate is a bit unfair.

As for the White Fang, it's working perfectly... so far. I don't think Adam was cool with it so much as he realized that fighting Cinder to the death on the spot wasn't a high percentage move at the time. Even in Volume 3, it's clear that he's a remarkably petty individual who never thinks anything is his fault, but he's not really shown to be a complete idiot. I got the impression that he was cooperating with Cinder because being temporarily used (in a way that appealed to him anyway, since it let him kill humans and hurt Blake) was better than butting heads with whatever let Cinder barbecue half his camp.

It's easy to get on RWBY's case about the CCT raid and the virus, too, but ultimately what it comes down to is whether or not you think it was possible for Cinder to subvert the automated defenses and get access to the network. If so, then everything after that is just haggling over the price. A detailed description of why the cracker program worked would have bogged down the pacing and a throw away line would have just had people complaining about magical hacking. Damned if you do explain it, damned if you don't. Also, the scene immediately after Cinder goes back to the ball shows Atlas guards looking at the computers. It's true that giant neon letters saying "these guys will be investigating what happened" don't flash on the screen, but it seems like a safe assumption to guess that someone was working on that but ran out of time. I mean, they don't explicitly state that Ozpin brushes his teeth or bathes regularly (not even a throwaway line!) but it makes sense.

Bear in mind that RWBY's computers are not quite like our computers. The CCT is a crucial part of the world's information network, which is far more centralized and vulnerable than it is in our world. They can't turn off the internet while they look for whatever the crazy masked woman in the catsuit did to the computers without causing more problems than they'd solve... in theory. Their decision to keep it low key makes sense if you remember that they aren't expecting the best computer virus ever plus a massive Grimm attack plus the White Fang to all blow up at the same time.

All of that would be fine, and there is certainly an art to villains you love to hate, except for one big problem. And that's Cinder having the personality of a particularly smug sponge.

Season 4 was amazing for changing and developing her. She's gained so much in terms of personality and interactions with other characters. I still hate her, but it's a proper hate where I want to see her lose and be foiled. Not the sort of hate that makes me want to stab pencils in my ears every time she opens her mouth.

[Callos_DeTerran]

Spoiler: Cinder

Show

...rewatched the scene, it goes from Torchwick dissing Ironwood to Cinder talking to her minions. Literally the first line in the scene:

and it's delivered in the most smug tone possible.

I don't count the eye laser, because it happened after Cinder's plan came to fruition. Ditto with Cinder's identity being discovered. Though the identity thing didn't even matter that much. Qrow would've headed to Mistral regardless in order to deal with the Spring Maiden. And Ozpin would have told them about Cinder then. Also again, that happens after Season 3.

Prove it. There isn't even a toss away line about something like that happening. And since no action is shown or mentioned, then the impression that the show presents is that they literally did nothing after Cinder broke in.


Roman succeeded at stealing pretty much all of the Dust and military equipment. He also typically does pretty well in the fights, til the heroes reinforcements show up. The only exception to that is Blake kicking his butt with her semblance hyped up on Dust. But seriously, his successes mean so much more because he does get thwarted. The heroes clearly anger him, they stop his current actions, and they foil his plot. But most importantly, he does all of that with style.

Season 3 Cinder is pretty much summed up by the above quote. Her plans go wrong, but she smugly (so damn smugly) proclaims success, and is proven right because her overall plan continues on track. And is sometimes completely nonsensical like Penny's death. If they wanted to prove her to be more competent then throw in the extra lines about the virus being impossible to remove. Or have her succeed cleanly. Like again, with Penny's death. Why was Mercury even there? It just made things seem stupid when Ruby didn't rush out of the door behind her to stop the fight.

Regardless, the point is Torchwick got foiled, and he'd get angry. He'd banter, yell, fight, and lose. All with style as he reacted, well like an actual person. Cinder just smugs her way through season 3. Seriously, so much smug. She has no style at all, her victories seem handed to her, and they don't make sense in the first place.

I mean, the White Fang is a perfect example of it. Cinder the human, strongarms a bunch of human hating, fanatical, terrorists into working for her, and it works perfectly. What the ****?! She even gets a bunch of them killed and Adam is just like 'nah, that's cool. I don't care if a human is clearly using me and my pals and treats us like disposable minions. You know, exactly like the people the White Fang was created to stop and I personally despise.'

Yeah, she's smug about it but 'All in all' is not generally a positive statement. Its a 'all things considered' meaning good and bad things have happened it just can be considered a positive outcome.

And Cinder's identity matters quite a bit because we don't know if Qrow would have gone to Mistral on his own and it puts a face to Salem's minions that they didn't know before. Qrow is 0/2 with identifying Salem's inner circle and without going to Mistral we have no way of knowing how long it would have taken him to meet up with Ozpin. That..is pretty important they can not only identify who orchestrated the Fall of Beacon but also is the current Fall Maiden, before that all Qrow and anyone else knew was 'they came from Minstral' which...could be the country or the city.

As has been pointed out, there is no line but a brief scene of people working at the computers after Cinder's infiltration.

Alright, you are right, Roman does succeed in stealing all of that Dust and military equipment but here's the thing and here's what I meant...every single time we see Roman try anything, he fails once the heroes get involved (which is almost every time). Ruby stops his Dust robbery at the beginning of the show, Penny stops the Dust heist at the end of the Volume, Team RWBY stop the White Fang rally, destroy a prototype Paladin and almost capture him at the beginning of Volume 2, and at the end of Volume 2 he launches the big attack he's been put in charge of early because RWBY finds his hide out essentially by accident. And then that attack fails as well.

Every time we see Roman trying to do anything, he fails and all of his successes? They're all off screen and informed which becomes more heinous because we see that huntsmen-in-training are able to regularly thwart him, so he must be running into absolutely no resistance for his other robberies to be going off without a hitch. His big success in Volume 3 is taking control of the airship and taking control of the Atlas tech but Neo has already done the heavy lifting on that front and his death leads to all the Atlas tech shutting down (which is good and bad..probably more good then bad, so this is still a plus in Roman's win column). Roman's successes are the definition of being handed to him, but he is stylish/likeable so it gets a pass even if he comes off as a bit cartoonish to me (still enjoyable though). He's ineffective, but stylish and fun to watch so its okay...and it honestly is, especially once you find out there is a more competent and sinister force backing him.

Cinder's schemes run into problems regularly but either succeeds cleanly which include framing Yang, orchestrating Penny's murder, acquiring the rest of Amber's power, and destroying Beacon Academy. Or they run into problems but she manages to make the situation turn out positively anyway such as the first time she tries to get Amber's power before a Qrow-ex-Machina shows up, Mercury's presence during Penny vs. Pyrrha, the infiltration of the CCT, and recruiting the White Fang. Not only do we see her doing these things we either see her flat out succeed or manage to pull a victory out despite the heroes intervening. That's not easy victories or having them handed to her, that's being a competent villain with a solid plan...But she's smug as hell which is inherently unlikable and she stays smug despite her setbacks because she knows her plan is still on track, even if we the audience don't know it at the time which just makes it worse. And after we see the plan, its still unlikable because of the results of the plan. So you hate her but, and I agree here, she's not particularly entertaining in Volume 3 so it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Cinder's most entertaining moment in Volume 3 is in the very last chapter when she shows emotions besides smug, like her cold anger at Ozpin, her curious response to being asked about destiny by Pyrrha, and the 'this IS BULLLSSSH***TTT' reaction to Ruby's Silver Eyes. She's still unlikable (which is good) and a bit boring but she is a rather competent villain with some bite to her which is more important than style to me. Even if the preference is obviously competent AND stylish, they aren't exclusive after all.

The White Fang says more about Adam than it serves as a negative about Cinder. Aside from 'try to make friends with a hostile group and then threatening them into compliance when that fails' being a tried and true trope in media (and lets be honest, that is what this was). Adam does refuse the offer at first and Cinder backs off and moves onto the next big point in her plan which is acquiring Fall's powers which..she half succeeds at. Then she goes back and makes it simple for him 'an offer you can't refuse and survive' while demonstrating she's got some mysterious power so maybe there's something to this partnership. And instead of standing by his principles, Adam caves cause he wants the power that Cinder has and will use towards their mutual goals. We've just seen that the White Fang leadership was not happy with Adam's decision and never was but Adam achieved the terrible things he wanted to do which only won him more popularity. Hell, after Roman launches the attack and all those Faunus die, they're even talking about how they don't expect the White Fang will follow them anymore and Adam's all 'they won't but they'll follow me and I'm following you' cause..Adam is all about Adam once that veneer of doing what's right for the Faunus is scraped off and freely kills or sacrifices his own kind if it serves his needs. That's why Cinder/Salem considered him valuable and not some other White Fang commander.

Spoiler: Silverraptor's Post

Show

I was wondering about Cinder's left arm. It seems like it did get taken off, but no one mentions it among team bad. But I can't remember during her training if she uses her left arm or not, so I'm not sure. (Also, for a moment when Ruby did her eye thing, I thought it was revealing she was winter or one of the other seasons, with her mom being the previous one. But then they explained silver eye's are a special case, so I accepted it. But hey, it would make sense why she always wanted to be Weiss's friend so much.)

Also, speaking on the knowledge relic, that got me thinking. Since there are 4 seasons but everyone is after Spring, is it possible that Spring is the only one they need? As in they may end up ignoring the other 2 seasons altogether. Because I would think tracking down the other 2 seasons would be easier then prioritizing a girl who has been missing with out a trace for a long time. I also forget (It went by fast in the explaining and I couldn't bother myself currently to go back and watch) which relic is for what season?

Spoiler: Also, thoughts on Spring's Identity

Show

I'm fairly certain Yang's mom's Second-in-Command is Spring. Why else would she appear in the intro glaring down Cinder? Also, her rune on her arm is similar to Cinder's Autumn rune, and it look like she used her power to break up the impending battle slaughter between Yang and Weiss against a camp of Bandits before the negative emotions allowed Grim to show up. Wasn't sure if I needed to spoiler this, but I thought to be safe in case anyone else in the thread hasn't made the same observations.

We don't really know what's happened to Cinder's arm because we've never seen it but we have seen her using it when killing GRimm under Salem's supervision but Zodiac brought up a while back the possibility that Cinder might have lost her arm. And looking back at her scenes since V4 started...its possible. Cinder's clearly trying to hide any visible signs of her injuries as much as possible and her entire left arm is covered. And its mostly an object of interest since we know losing a limb isn't the greatest problem in Remnant. We recently became aware of the fact that Watts can either fabricate new limbs or knows the people to have them made or Cinder could have acquired some funky Grimm replacement arm. Keep in mind that theory solely comes from the scene where Salem is telling Cinder, during her 'treatment' mind, that she needs to make 'it fear her' to control...and this could refer to the Grimm parasite that allowed her to steal Fall's power but Cinder's left side is slumped as if in pain and the implication could be made that she needs to be making something else fear her instead.

On the Maidens, its entirely possible that WTCH already know where the other two Maidens are and simply can't get to them at this point in time. They could have the other two relics and I suspect they have at least one of them, but Mistral is the most vulnerable country now that Beacon has fallen so it made sense to go there next. Plus the fact Spring was missing comes with the benefit that no one knows where she is. If Salem and company can get their hands on her before anyone else, then no one would get the chance to find out that the Spring Maiden (or her powers) would have fallen into anyone else's hands before it was too late. As for which season to which relic..

Fall / Choice (Beacon/Vale)
Spring / Knowledge (Haven / Mistral)
Winter / Creation (Unknown)
Summer / Destruction

Spoiler: Spring's Identity

Show

Yeah, everyone suspects that Vernal (Raven's second in command) is the Spring Maiden right now but it is just a suspicion at the moment, nothing confirmed. Though I can't imagine it not being Vernal since, like you said, it shows Cinder and Vernal staring each other down in the intro. And having Cinder fight Vernal if negotiations break down is the perfect chance to both show how Cinder has developed as a villain and with her powers as well as show what a supposedly battle-hardened and experienced Maiden is capable of.

All of that would be fine, and there is certainly an art to villains you love to hate, except for one big problem. And that's Cinder having the personality of a particularly smug sponge.

Season 4 was amazing for changing and developing her. She's gained so much in terms of personality and interactions with other characters. I still hate her, but it's a proper hate where I want to see her lose and be foiled. Not the sort of hate that makes me want to stab pencils in my ears every time she opens her mouth.

This I do agree with. Vol. 2-3 Cinder has flashes of interesting characteristics here and there but otherwise can largely be summarized as just being smug most of the time. Vol 4-5 did wonders for making her interesting and even explaining why she is the way she is to a degree, assuming the fan theories are correct (that she was trying to emulate the calm control and confidence Salem has and is a control freak because she's the runt of WTCH and hates it) which it feels like they are.

In Vol. 2-3 I enjoyed Cinder's scenes because I found out more about what the heck was going on and I enjoyed Mercury and Emerald. Vol 4-5 I just genuinely enjoy Cinder's scenes for Cinder herself and it certainly helps she's playing off the other villains and, most importantly, Salem. Heck, I even get some retroactive enjoyment from Cinder's scenes in 2-3 because now you get this distinct sensation she's a kid trying to play grown-up by emulating her 'parent' as best she can and not succeeding as well as she'd like to be.

[Lethologica]

Spoiler: Spring's Identity

Show

Yeah, everyone suspects that Vernal (Raven's second in command) is the Spring Maiden right now but it is just a suspicion at the moment, nothing confirmed. Though I can't imagine it not being Vernal since, like you said, it shows Cinder and Vernal staring each other down in the intro. And having Cinder fight Vernal if negotiations break down is the perfect chance to both show how Cinder has developed as a villain and with her powers as well as show what a supposedly battle-hardened and experienced Maiden is capable of.

Spoiler: v5c3

Show

Not to mention, her name is Vernal. Pretty on-the-nose as meaningful names go.

[Lord Raziere]

Because I'm bored:

Spoiler: Raziere's RWBY Binge Watch: (Vol 4, Ep6 Onwards)

Show

I forgot what episode I EXACTLY saw last, but I'm pretty sure it was around Episode 6 of Vol 4 that I stopped, so I'm going to start there to catch up:

V4E6:
Yeah, I remember this, Oniyuri, Weiss at a party, jerk trying to hit on her, another jerk being called out yup this is getting worse.....oh and Tyrian attacking

V4E7:
Poor Oscar, past lives are sure a problem aren't they?

"I don't give a damn about you, or what you want" yup, Weiss's father is grade A prick. to his youngest daughter. not even sugarcoating it with some false "I know whats good for you better than you do" schtick or emotionally manipulating her or anything, just "screw you, I'm your father, obey me." Its not even a quality jerk father who pushes your buttons, he is just plain incompetent.

"don't worry Weiss, the Schnee family name is in good hands."- Whitley. Its as if Weiss has my family problems, but the positions of brother and father are reversed: the father is a unsubtle sledgehammer of jerkishness while the brother is the jerk hiding behind smiles and lies. quite the switch.

Yeeaaaaaah Weiss, go break out!!!!!

good fight between Qrow and Tyrian. cool. cool.

V4E8:
So, two god, light and dark, the darkg uy created the Grim to destroy everything..then they created humanity to be free and blah blah blah....yeah......thats....really cliche......sigh....

huh, Blake's social problems about not being talkative reminds me of myself as well.....yeah, poor blake....

FRELLING SUN. SCREW YOU! IF THERE IS ANYTHING ZODI IS RIGHT ABOUT, ITS YOU.

so yeah, four artifacts that control important things about the world, four Maidens, ok cool.

ok Qrow's semblance brings misfortune to everyone regardless of side and its always on. that explains a lot.

Sun? screw you.

V4E9:
Finally! YANG! and she learns to be smart. cool

as for Weiss, well.....I don't think she'll be trapped in her room for long.

ninja faunus is a chameleon. kay. and up, shes seen your face. nowhere to run now.

oh don't mourn for Sun, Blake. he will live despite our wishes for him not to.

and Team RNJR splits up. great.

V4E10:
Oscar sets out!

Okay sir.....who the heck are you and how did you know to do that? and are you helping Oscar or not? oh. Ozpin knows him how...............reassuring???

so kuroyuri.....black lily, and the last one, was oniyuri, broiled lily. weird.

now kuroyuri looks actually ruined, compared to oniyuri just look half-built.

"I think I have a pretty good idea."- Jaune. I like this. the protagonists can draw their own conclusions without needing to ask about backstory and be accurate.

so Ren was the guy living well while Nora was poor and living on the street. hm.

"sometimes the worst action to take....is no action at all."- I like Ren's father.

I like this, they promised to keep each other safe when the Grim attacked since they were young.

V4E11:
ookaaaaaaaaaay.....Tyrian is going full demented.....

okay, golden arm, I like it, it matches....ah so where IS Yang going?

Weiss, you broke the windows, you can just jump out, your a Huntress, it won't hurt you.

Weiss, why did you do that, locking the door is stupid what are you hoping to accomplish-

.......guys don't. just don't.

The frell is that Grimm.

V4E12:
good fight, nice teamwork at the end.

oh hey cool, Mistral Ex Machina

and long letter whatever.

but uh twist! Lionheart is evil? but Qrow and Ozpincar gets his cane back.

V5E1:
Ok, I like the art, but it is a little jarring.....

ok, Lionheart is weird......and uh hm, Blake and Illia have a little chat.....hm...

ok so only the Maidens can get the relics

"everything I can to help" meaning not very much, Lionheart, eh Mr. Salem traitor?

Yang yang yang.....can't seem to shake these stupid fights eh? at least you only punched him once.

yeah, thats real awkward for Ozpincar

V5E2:
Weiss gets to be awesome and take a bunch of Grimm all by herself. cool. get Weiss's level, Ruby.

Sienna is so right now, everyone else is looking left handed. seriously, why aren't people negotiating wit HER?

uh, dude, I disagree, Taurus totally needs to die. like. right now.

uuuuuuuum.......yeah, I was totally correct, Taurus DOES need to die. wow. thanks for proving me right, cause now he is starting a coup against the reasonable leader, an oddly spontaneous one. SPONTANEOUS COUPS EVERYONE! just so stupid....

yeah, Taurus is an idiot. and man, Sienna sounds so cool, I wish she was a character that y'know......had more screen time because she actually sounds interesting. Taurus is so boring and without personality. I totally see why people criticize this show for killing off the most interesting characters in it. Sienna was just so interesting from her design to her criticism, just......ugh

OH FRACK, RAVEN HAS FOUND WEISS.

V5E3:
good speech. oh wait hm. guess people aren't excited for taking action.

freaking Illia.......

hey Opzin, so your cursed to forever reincarnate like a maiden until you defeat Salem. thats rough buddy.

so Weiss will get ransomed back to her father. great. Yang get here soon and rescue her! PLEASE!

and yeah, Ruby really needs to work on her hand to hand.


V5E4:
and Yang is coming to the rescue, kicking ass without losing her cool. awesome.

yes, yes, Aura lesson whatever.

ok, Yang meets Raven!

AND YANG AND WEISS ARE FIGHTING TOGETHER!!! YEEEAAAAAAAAHH!!!

ok they don't fight, but its still heartwarming that they're together and that they hug. Yang best sister. and I don't just meant to Ruby.

so yeah, all caught up. my thoughts? yaaaaay people are finally nearing getting together. thats pretty much it.

[Reddish Mage]

I don't see why there is even a hint of doubt as to who the spring maiden is at this point or even as of last episode.

Whether you were looking in her last known location, or perhaps need someone with a name that practically means "spring," we got a perfect match. If you were asking for a dramatic sign a lightning bolt out of the sky does it.

Because I'm bored:

[SPOILER=Raziere's RWBY Binge Watch: (Vol 4, Ep6 Onwards)]
V4E7:
Poor Oscar, past lives are sure a problem aren't they?

V4E8:
So, two god, light and dark, the darkg uy created the Grim to destroy everything..then they created humanity to be free and blah blah blah....yeah......thats....really cliche......sigh....

Grrr...Oscar doesn't have past lives! Ozpin and Oscar were both alive a year ago and neither knew they were going to be sharing a body. Sorry...*ahem* get a bit excited, someone was claims Oscar was basically the "Avatar" and I had a full treatment dissecting that a few pages ago.

On the topic of the two gods. Isn't the whole notion that the dark god created the grimm to destroy everything the light god make and then worked with the god of light to create humans contradict the behavior of the grimm themselves as well as other established canon?

According to the origin story, grimm were created by the dark god to destroy all the creations of the light god (the visual images are of flowers, trees and so on), but that in the end the dark god and light god reconciled and created man as half and half.

However, WOR tells us that the grimm supposedly only attack "man and his works" (man meaning humans and faunuses), and ignore anything from nature (supposedly only attacking animals rarely and apparently in "territorial" disputes).

Also, when grimm were introduced by Pyrrha, Pyrrha said aura was possessed by every living thing except grimm as the grimm have no souls. "They are the darkness and we are the light."

Turns out man is half light/half dark and grimm are only interested in him.

I can see the dual light and darkness nature of man explained, with interesting implications. Souls and aura are from the light half. However, if man draws consciousness and power from the light half, this suggests there must be equally potent dark powers that man can possess. Of course, I think we have seen plenty of evidence of this.

The fact that the grimm are only interested in humans and faunuses though...that is pretty hard to reconcile with the grimm, gods, and man origin story. Indeed, the fact that grimm don't attack nature is also problematic.

[Lethologica]

V4E10:
Oscar sets out!

Okay sir.....who the heck are you and how did you know to do that? and are you helping Oscar or not? oh. Ozpin knows him how...............reassuring???

That was Hazel. He was at the meeting of villains in v4c1. He shows up again at the meeting of Adam and Sienna in v5c2. He's fought silver-eyed warriors before. Thaaaaaat's pretty much all we know about him.

[Forum Explorer]

On the topic of the two gods. Isn't the whole notion that the dark god created the grimm to destroy everything the light god make and then worked with the god of light to create humans contradict the behavior of the grimm themselves as well as other established canon?

According to the origin story, grimm were created by the dark god to destroy all the creations of the light god (the visual images are of flowers, trees and so on), but that in the end the dark god and light god reconciled and created man as half and half.

However, WOR tells us that the grimm supposedly only attack "man and his works" (man meaning humans and faunuses), and ignore anything from nature (supposedly only attacking animals rarely and apparently in "territorial" disputes).

Also, when grimm were introduced by Pyrrha, Pyrrha said aura was possessed by every living thing except grimm as the grimm have no souls. "They are the darkness and we are the light."

Turns out man is half light/half dark and grimm are only interested in him.

I can see the dual light and darkness nature of man explained, with interesting implications. Souls and aura are from the light half. However, if man draws consciousness and power from the light half, this suggests there must be equally potent dark powers that man can possess. Of course, I think we have seen plenty of evidence of this.

The fact that the grimm are only interested in humans and faunuses though...that is pretty hard to reconcile with the grimm, gods, and man origin story. Indeed, the fact that grimm don't attack nature is also problematic.

Not really. I mean mythology contradicts itself all the time, and humanity has always had a self-centered point of view. Well, I mean it does contradict itself, but I don't see a problem with that.

The most obvious answer I'd have here is that nature wasn't created by the 'light' god. It just was.

[Lethologica]

Spoiler: v5c5 reaction

Show

too
much
talking
no
stop
talking
YOU ALREADY EXPLAINED THIS
YOU ALREADY SHOWED THAT
YOU ALREADY IMPLIED THAT OTHER THING
YOU JUST WAFFLED AWAY ANY POINT YOU WERE GOING TO MAKE
IS THAT THE CHARACTER SHEET ARE YOU JUST READING THE CHARACTER SHEET NOW
WHY IS MOBILIZING FOR THIS RESCUE MISSION TREATED WITH LESS URGENCY THAN FUNDRAISING FOR THE AVERAGE NONPROFIT
AAARGH

Okay, so Ilia gets to play Judas. And that's...just about it for interesting things in this episode. *sigh* This is the first time I've used the skip-ahead function to get through RWBY faster.

[Reddish Mage]

That all happens after season 3. I'm complaining about Cinder's plan in Season 3. None of her wins that season felt earned (not even Emerald's loyalty), and all of her setbacks didn't seem to actually do anything. Her being forced to shut up was the best thing about Season 4.

Anyways, all that stuff you mentioned is why I like Salem.

At this point, I'm just getting tired of the "all as planned" claim that hasn't been relevant since season 3.

I never thought it the critique was sensible at any point. Cinder had a super-virus and a mask that would have fooled very few fans of the show (although I the idea Ruby automatically should recognize her when she bumped once in the hallway is a bit of a reach). She is very smug about how her plan is going to win. She gathers a bunch of minions pretty easily and her plan executes more or less the way she intends without any extraordinary efforts on her part. The most she can be accused of is being too typical as a scene-chewing action villain.

Seriously, its probably easier to point out action-villains that violate the sort of "got incredible toys and the heroes are completely oblivious and unaware of the secret plan until it executes" rather than listing the villains that fits this mold.

Cinder actually does more work than the typical villain does to make the plan work. She does a lot of the legwork herself. Most villains just get everything handed to them by the plot.

Typical: the woman has to work twice as much and then her success is considered undeserved and even unbelievable.

Re: Setbacks
Re: Aura

Spoiler

Show

The lack of explanations never bothered me that much, as I assume they'll get to it eventually. Miles and Kerry aren't going to explain anything until they absolutely have to. This is both something they've implied - having stated outright at one RTX that they don't want to cut off options until they need to - and it's really the only way to tell a story like RWBY. There are thousands of fans for every person on the writing staff, which means that any mistake they make in continuity will get spotted and ultimately bite them. They can reduce or avoid that by being vague until there's no choice.

They have explicitly said that they don't want to get to specific with what is and is not possible. They also introduced the honeycomb in season 3 to show aura depletion but said they weren't going to use the honeycomb with EVERY aura depletion.

That said, nothing in the past couple of episodes have actually really added anything to what was not already said about aura.

Not really. I mean mythology contradicts itself all the time, and humanity has always had a self-centered point of view. Well, I mean it does contradict itself, but I don't see a problem with that.

The most obvious answer I'd have here is that nature wasn't created by the 'light' god. It just was.

Light god clearly was supposed to have created things other than mankind. That those things was the nature of the world is supported by the imagery. Whatever the light god created, the grimm are supposed to go after those things. However, we know of nothing other than humans that the grimm are interested in.

Its not especially clear what purpose the grimm are meant to serve after the creation of man, they are apparently just remnants of the dark god's once desired goals, already abandoned.

Mythology contradicting is not itself problematic, but the context of the contradiction matters. Qrow tells us that "some myths are true" and this is the "true story." What it contradicts, however, is a WOR, which is Salem-as-narrative telling us objective fact about the world as well as the behavior of grimm we observe.

So to put it simply, we get another explanation that raises as many questions as they answer.

[Lord Raziere]

Spoiler: V5E5

Show

they're trying to recruit them and.......its not working. Of course, all the fanatics are already in the White Fang.

ugh, no. Sun, stop existing.

Ruby, we ALL wish we spent more time with those characters. y'know. so that we could actually have them around be important to more than just some sacrifice stuff.

Ruby's voice though.....sounds out of place for the somber speeches she's making.

so yeah, doubts all around:
-Illia looks like she has some doubts about attacking and killing the Belladonnas
-the two religious guys seem to have at least a couple doubts about Adam being high leader

[Callos_DeTerran]

New RWBY Day and...I'll be honest, I don't really feel like doing this right now, but I feel the need to get out of my own head and distract myself, so here I am.

Y'know how by chapter 6 of most past volumes we've usually either had something big happen or some kind of revelation? Well...I'll leave it up to the people here about if that tradition has been maintained or not. And this time we don't have a Blake episode or a Yang & Weiss episode or anything like that...this is basically a Qrow & Raven episode.

Spoiler: RWBY V5 C6

Show

Speaking of the Branwen twins, we actually open with Qrow on his search for huntsmen to help assault Raven's camp. He goes to a bar and starts to ask about a huntsmen like you normally see in movies and TV shows to find out that, yep, the guy owes the bartender money so Qrow back pedals out about as fast as he can and crosses a name off his list of Mistral contacts.

We a montage of Qrow going to various people to ask about other huntsmen and huntresses but he doesn't seem to be having luck and the tone and colors all portray a rather somber mood rather well. Which is really the only reason I have a problem with them trying to have Qrow do a pretty silly visual gag while this is going on. Especially when we see the reason that the reason Qrow isn't finding anyone is because all the people he's looking for are out on missions and when he checks the status of the missions finds out they're either dead or missing. Again, tastefully done somber moment with some pointed imagery of Qrow sitting in front of a wall of listing the names of the dead or missing huntsmen with Qrow wondering how it could be that all of the missions ending like that. Probably leading to more suspicions about Leo but its a good moment and Qrow goes back to the par he first tried to pay off the dead huntsman's tab as a sign of respect/mourning.

A somber scene with disturbing implications. Have things in Mistral gotten so bad that huntsmen are dying left and right because they are stretched so thin? Or has Leo been deliberately sending his huntsmen on suicide missions to get them out of the way? Interesting questions and it means Qrow hasn't found anyone to help with the assault on the bandit camp.

=================

Back with Raven, Weiss, and Yang things are still very uncomfortable in Raven's tent and the attempts at small talk fail. Miserably.

So what's the terrible truth about Ozpin that Raven knows? Well...first we get a little bit of background on the Branwens and..well...why they went to a huntsmen academy in the first place and it turns out the reason was to learn how to kills huntsmen. Makes sense, if huntsmen and errant grim are your biggest threat as a bandit tribe, you want people who can act as counters to them...even if that is an immensely messed up reason to go to school, because you are essentially there to learn how to kill your teammates and class mates.

How's this tie to Ozpin? Well it seems that Team STRQ caught Ozpin's eye with how well they were doing and, as Raven puts it, began to groom them for something more which made Raven suspicious. When asked how Raven knew they were being groomed for something, Raven talks about being given extra missions, given leeway when causing trouble, and basically the entire way that Ozpin treated RWBY back in the first two volumes.

So Raven looked into him and found out he was the youngest headmaster to have ever reached the position and basically discovered the entire 'help Ozpin's reincarnation get back into a position where he can do his Salem thwarting' system with people that are only loyal to Oz in position to grease the wheels. And then they (Team STRQ) found out about the secret Ozpin's been hiding that could cause panic across the world. Weiss demands to know what can be so terrible a secret and Raven drops the Salem bomb. Not so much by name, but by revealing that the Grim are being controlled by a single entity that has it out for humanity. And yeah, I can see how that would be a terrifying thing for people to find out but Weiss and Yang are rightfully dubious because...well..they have no reason to believe any of it.

Raven says she has a way to prove her talk about Salem, magic, and a reincarnting man and goes to step outside while talking about why she abandoned Ozpin after what he did to Qrow and Raven. Okay, now the scene gets more interesting because what ever Ozpin did is her proof that this is all real. Raven says that they know how her semblance works but Taiyang probably never explained what that was and heads outside the tent.

Weiss and Yang follow and the proof Raven has isn't the Spring Maiden but a raven. A raven that turns into..well..Raven. So that isn't part of her (and presumably Qrow's) semblance! That seems to be the product of magic or something else and..its pretty good proof honestly! People have been wondering how a shape-changing semblance could work and the answer is 'a shape-changing semblance doesn't exist' as far as we know. Raven opens the portal to Qrow and Yang is understandably confused that Raven is willing to help her reach Ruby and that's when Raven lays it out.

Yang (...and Weiss..?) can either stay with Raven, 'where she belongs', or she can blindly follow after Qrow and get tangled up in Ozpin's machinations. Yang doesn't even seem to consider it for too long before deciding to go through the portal and Raven tells her that she won't be so hospitable next time. Yang replies she wasn't this time but the offer of portal seems honest.

Now..I like and dislike the scene. I like the scene because of the performances in it and I skipped the bit where Raven badmouthing Qrow and then Taiyang sets Yang off exposing just how trying it is for her to be right in front of her mother and have to walk away from her and the answers Yang has been looking for. That all that frustration is bubbling just beneath the surface but she's putting what she wants aside because Yang wants to take care of Ruby. Its a good character beat and everything feels on point.

What I dislike is Raven's reveal. With the build up to finding out the dark truth about Ozpin having been building for so long, the actual reveal is a bit lackluster. The content of the revelation is fine but the thing is the show hasn't been present Ozpin as some benevolent, on the up and up type the entire time. They've always painted him as a bit shady and untrustworthy to the audience. With a reveal like this, you want to be able to look back at all of Oz's previous scenes and have them changed in ton because of new information. To look at them a different way and this revelation doesn't manage to accomplish that for me. Again, confirmation that Ozpin is not the pure white force that he wants to be and he's done some shady things to stop Salem, but this are things we the audience have known or suspected for a long time. The big new information is that Ozpin, somehow, made Qrow and Raven into shape-shifters and the process might have been the last straw that sent Raven back home. There is also now the implication that Ozpin might be indirectly responsible for the death of Summer Rose which, I'll be honest, that would have been a much better reveal to drive home the point that Ozpin has been, and has to, use other people as tools in order to stand against Salem.

-----------------

The closing scene is something more light-hearted but just as emotional. We get RNGR cooking in the kitchen to provide a dinner for Qrow's hunstmen friends in order to try and persuade them to help. Qrow comes in as Ruby burns food (despite Ren's advice) and...yeah...Yang and Weiss are with him. Ruby starts crying and apologizes to Yang for running away and for not helping Yang more, Yang hugs Ruby and tells her its all fine, Weiss stands lonely but happy until she notices that Yang and Ruby are waiting for her to bring it in as well, and RWY share a big hug while everyone watches on and its a sweet feel good moment. Most of the team has gotten back together, they're just waiting on Blake at this point and it happened before the end of the volume too! Weiss continues to cement herself as my favorite member of Team RWBY (and probably the show honestly), we've got build-up for when RWYNJR attacks the bandit camp, and a reminder of how dire the situation is in Mistral where as in Vale the situation seemed fine but was really quite dire.

A nice solid episode that I will guarantee I did not do justice in this write-up because RL reasons. So be gentle in bringing up moments I missed or character beats I glossed over, I'm well aware that I've probably glossed over them.

[Ramza00]

New RWBY Day and...I'll be honest, I don't really feel like doing this right now, but I feel the need to get out of my own head and distract myself, so here I am.

Yorokobe Shounen. Rejoice and be glad Callos De Terran for today is Incredibles 2 today. Today in the City of Disney a Hero movie has been born to you. And it will have the voice of Cliff Claven for it is foretold!

----

Back to RWBY

As Callos DeTerran already mentioned today is RWBY day so Vol 5 Chapter 6 is out on rooster teeth's website and Vol 5 Chapter 5 is out on youtube


Vol 5 Chapter 6: Known by it's Song
http://roosterteeth.com/episode/rwby...6ulihl23hns988

And for the people who are a week behind

Youtube: Vol 5 Chapter 5: Necessary Sacrifice



Back to the fairytale / Back to the show!

[Silverraptor]

I want to watch episode 6. But I don't want to pay to see it.

[Callos_DeTerran]

Yorokobe Shounen. Rejoice and be glad Callos De Terran for today is Incredibles 2 today. Today in the City of Disney a Hero movie has been born to you. And it will have the voice of Cliff Claven for it is foretold!

Sadly that does not cause rejoicing, though happy for those that look forward to Incredibles 2.

[Rawhide]

Spoiler

Show

{snip}

In this thread, you must ALWAYS include a title for a spoiler box. If the spoiler box contains spoilers, you must include the volume and chapter number. If it doesn't (e.g. it's to fold away a large image), you should list the reason instead (and make it clear that it is not a spoiler).

Re: Setbacks

Spoiler

Show

{snip}

Re: Aura

Spoiler

Show

{snip}

As above, in this thread you must always include a title for a spoiler box in the spoiler box code itself. If you don't know how to do that, the code is below:

[SPOILER=Sample Title]Sample text.[/SPOILER]

[Rawhide]

Wasn't Cinder's response basically 'muhahaha, just as planned!"? That was one of my big complaints of S3, in that even the setbacks Cinder suffered didn't seem to actually matter at all.

Nope. Not at all. Not in the slightest.

Cinder has never even come close to "just as planned".

Setbacks happen. That's why in a war you have contingency after contingency after contingency. In this specific case, The plan went to all hell and back and they scrambled to make something good of it.

Cinder's words were: "All in all, I consider today a success."

Meaning: "After all things are considered, we have made today work for us."

Meaning: "Despite the catastrophic failure and considerable setback, we have managed to clean up the mess."

Meaning: "We've suffered a considerable setback, but our actions today have put a bandaid on the situation which will let us still proceed to the next step, albeit not quite in the position we wanted to be."

I want to watch episode 6. But I don't want to pay to see it.

You can either sign up for a trial membership, or wait until Monday to watch it for free on their site.

Also, Holy 57 pages! I guess some mod is not enforcing the 50 rule.

Yeah yeah, I'll get right on that...

[LaZodiac]

I must...fulfill...blood oath. Sorry for late responses, I've just been trying to refocus myself in this week off from doing things that aren't real life job.

Spoiler: V5C5

Show

Unrelated and just something I wanted to say. I saw a preview for Lazer Team 2. Jesus christ those effects are the actual worst I've ever seen hoo boy. RT please learn to...anything.

We open on zoo. Hooray it's a Blake episode.

Blake and Wukong are...going to go get signatures. Like with everything in Zoo, they don't actually set up what happens they just kinda enter the middle of it and expect you to catch up. The mouth flap animations look really weird here again.

Oh, they're...looking for volunteer warriors. They sent the shirking violet Blake and the literal ass hole Wukong to try and convince people to go to war. This can only be good. Because this series has some...weird quasi attempt at being Japanese sometimes, the signup sheet goes Last Name, First Name the the Signature. This is really silly. Blake tries to earnestly get help, while Wukong...basically just Wukongs it up and is unsurprisingly unsuccessful.

...there are people just swimming around and they're fish faunus I guess. I...nevermind. Moving on.

The two quit for some drinks because it is, understandably, tiring work failing to convince people to die for your cause. Blake understands as to why; the people here came here because they're tired of fighting. This makes sense and is good. I do think it's outlandish they didn't get even ONE signature, but I can accept this. I'll also point out the idea that...army recruiters coming to your house to be like "please volunteer" is a little weird, but not outside the realm of possibility in my opinion. At any rate, Blake brings up the point that fight or not, what happens at Haven affects them all, which is also true. It's something a lot of people need to learn, I think.

Wukong asks for some clarification on Adam and it's immediately clear he's awkward about thinking of Blake dating other people and that's super disgusting.

...Blake then...gives us a very smultzy speech about how she tends to see people initially in black and white. She first got to know Ruby and was like "you're the embodiment of purity" and saw that Weiss was "defiance" and Yang was "strength" and Zodi is incredibly not super into this idea that Blake is literally describing the character's base character traits as a thing she observed in universe. This is...it's to me as clumsy as their being an in universe reason everyone is named in a way to evoke colours on purpose. I really don't like this, and I think it cheapens things a bit. Wukong asks what he is, and Blake says she's not sure, but she thinks "earnest" which...I mean I suppose that's a good word for someone who's unashamedly a moron and *******.

Blake goes on to elaborate that she thought Adam was "justice" and then "passion" and finally she realized he's "spite" and...look. If you want to have a character talk about this stuff, you can do it. But the way it's phrased makes it bluntly clear that Blake's just reading off of some wikipedia page about how the character was made to embody such and such terms. This is less "I thought Adam was the path to justice, but beneath that passion was just spite" and more "if you made an image macro of the character it would have Spite written on it". It just comes off as weird, makes Blake look kinda dumb, and overall is just...incredibly clumsy.

That said, Spite does work really well as a word that personifies Adam. He's nothing if not a spiteful mother****er. Anyway, Blake is concerned for the chameleon girl, afraid she'll go down the same path. Blake says that she always admired how her chameleon friend never tried passing for human...ignoring the fact that we know she did, and she stopped only because her parents died and some humans laughed about it. Uh...Blake, you remember that story right? She even goes on to SAY that, so...presumably she means that's how the chameleon girl acted AFTER her parents death. Anyway, this is all in all a good speech aside from the beforementioned direct actual character traits thing. The idea that Blake didn't leave the Fang with her parents because she had her friends is cool, and makes sense for an edgy teenager.

Blake decides she'll try to help her chameleon friend the way Wukong helped her. Reminder that what happened is that he let her hang out in his hotel room for a couple of nights without saying anything to her. That's...definitely gonna help out, yeah. Definitely.

Oh okay. She's not talking about the past she's talking about recently, on the boat. About how Wukong showed being a pushy ******* is good actually. Look, depression is a difficult topic and sometimes you've gotta be there for a person even if they don't want it, and sometimes you've gotta know to keep your distance for the best of things. But don't go patting Wukong on the back for this.

Meanwhile back at the plot that matters, Oscar continues to training. Oscar and Ruby bond awkwardly over their mutual disinterest/interest in violence and projecting it onto other people. There's this moment where Ruby says he'll be combat ready in no time, and I think this might be the first time RWBY's ever actually been subtle, because Ruby realizes what she said and gets sad about her dead robot girlfriend. Oscar doesn't notice because he would have no ability to, and asks how she's able to be so happy go lucky about the whole violencing thing. Ruby tries to explain how they didn't want any of this, but they did sign up for the fighting, and Oscar cuts her off. He's SUPER doesn't understand how they're able to handle this.

So. Oscar's the best character now for bringing this up. Or at least a good character. They are taking this surprisingly well all things considered, and it is a little weird, especially for an outsider like Oscar who's at most killed like maybe a rat.

I really do like the emotional moment with Ruby talking about her dead friends, it just amuses me to think that the first friend she mentions, accident or not, is the one who killed the other. Womp womp. All in all, I do actually like this scene. Insert expected comment about how I wish the earlier season earned this moment. Did Ruby ever actually interact with Pyrrha? Like that all?

Oscar and Ozpin have a chat about how special Ruby is due to her ability to inspire others, which we've never seen up to this point, and not her special magical eyeball wings.

Then, sadly, we cut to the amazing idiot losers of the White Fang who are praying at the shrouded animal picture from the opening, having received a message from Adam. He has orders for them. The chameleon arrives, and after some wishywashy "oh yes our evil plot is going swimmingly" dialogue that I don't super like, they tell her that it's time for operation kill all of Blake's family. Blake'll be taken alive because Adam is a creepy ****er. The two then bring up the genuine point that BlakeDad would be a martyr, but...eh. More murder will solve that.

Then they watch Adam's message again so the audience can see that...he did in fact order the Belladonna family to be killed and Blake to be captured. Was this ever in any doubt? He said he'd kill her family.

Oh no. The fox minions make a sort of implication that they're going to do a traitor on Adam. I swear if Adam gets a redemption arc I'm actually just ****ing done. I do like that they notice, quite easily, that Adam is VERY deranged and a ****ty terrible leader. I appreciate that much.

And then some dragon guy shows up called Yuma and he killed the message BlakeDad sent out...I forget what the message was. Ah well. Episode over.

My thoughts on the episode:

Spoiler: V5C5

Show

All in all...okay? I mean nothing overtly bad happened except for Blake showing that the writers trip over themselves trying to turn their symbolism into literal text in universe, which is basically just a complete and total mistake.

I liked Ruby's little speech, but I feel like the show hasn't earned this. Like I said, we've...seen one or two real interactions with Penny, and NO REAL INTERACTIONS AT ALL with Pyrrha. We can infer they were probably friends based on the closeness of other members, but "Pyrrha was my good friend" is a toothless statement when we've never seen it. It only really works since we, the audience, have seen Pyrrha die. It's not Sasakibe dying and all of Soul Society crying over this man who appeared on screen for two panels in the entire series, but it's close. I also don't like the implication that the foxboys intend to do a traitor on Adam because it could open an avenue for a redemption arc.

All in all, RWBY has hit just about the point Fairy Tail used to be at constantly. It's an episode that's decent enough, and deserves a better series.

[Callos_DeTerran]

I must...fulfill...blood oath. Sorry for late responses, I've just been trying to refocus myself in this week off from doing things that aren't real life job.

Spoiler: V5C5

Show

Unrelated and just something I wanted to say. I saw a preview for Lazer Team 2. Jesus christ those effects are the actual worst I've ever seen hoo boy. RT please learn to...anything.

We open on zoo. Hooray it's a Blake episode.

Blake and Wukong are...going to go get signatures. Like with everything in Zoo, they don't actually set up what happens they just kinda enter the middle of it and expect you to catch up. The mouth flap animations look really weird here again.

Oh, they're...looking for volunteer warriors. They sent the shirking violet Blake and the literal ass hole Wukong to try and convince people to go to war. This can only be good. Because this series has some...weird quasi attempt at being Japanese sometimes, the signup sheet goes Last Name, First Name the the Signature. This is really silly. Blake tries to earnestly get help, while Wukong...basically just Wukongs it up and is unsurprisingly unsuccessful.

...there are people just swimming around and they're fish faunus I guess. I...nevermind. Moving on.

The two quit for some drinks because it is, understandably, tiring work failing to convince people to die for your cause. Blake understands as to why; the people here came here because they're tired of fighting. This makes sense and is good. I do think it's outlandish they didn't get even ONE signature, but I can accept this. I'll also point out the idea that...army recruiters coming to your house to be like "please volunteer" is a little weird, but not outside the realm of possibility in my opinion. At any rate, Blake brings up the point that fight or not, what happens at Haven affects them all, which is also true. It's something a lot of people need to learn, I think.

Wukong asks for some clarification on Adam and it's immediately clear he's awkward about thinking of Blake dating other people and that's super disgusting.

...Blake then...gives us a very smultzy speech about how she tends to see people initially in black and white. She first got to know Ruby and was like "you're the embodiment of purity" and saw that Weiss was "defiance" and Yang was "strength" and Zodi is incredibly not super into this idea that Blake is literally describing the character's base character traits as a thing she observed in universe. This is...it's to me as clumsy as their being an in universe reason everyone is named in a way to evoke colours on purpose. I really don't like this, and I think it cheapens things a bit. Wukong asks what he is, and Blake says she's not sure, but she thinks "earnest" which...I mean I suppose that's a good word for someone who's unashamedly a moron and *******.

Blake goes on to elaborate that she thought Adam was "justice" and then "passion" and finally she realized he's "spite" and...look. If you want to have a character talk about this stuff, you can do it. But the way it's phrased makes it bluntly clear that Blake's just reading off of some wikipedia page about how the character was made to embody such and such terms. This is less "I thought Adam was the path to justice, but beneath that passion was just spite" and more "if you made an image macro of the character it would have Spite written on it". It just comes off as weird, makes Blake look kinda dumb, and overall is just...incredibly clumsy.

That said, Spite does work really well as a word that personifies Adam. He's nothing if not a spiteful mother****er. Anyway, Blake is concerned for the chameleon girl, afraid she'll go down the same path. Blake says that she always admired how her chameleon friend never tried passing for human...ignoring the fact that we know she did, and she stopped only because her parents died and some humans laughed about it. Uh...Blake, you remember that story right? She even goes on to SAY that, so...presumably she means that's how the chameleon girl acted AFTER her parents death. Anyway, this is all in all a good speech aside from the beforementioned direct actual character traits thing. The idea that Blake didn't leave the Fang with her parents because she had her friends is cool, and makes sense for an edgy teenager.

Blake decides she'll try to help her chameleon friend the way Wukong helped her. Reminder that what happened is that he let her hang out in his hotel room for a couple of nights without saying anything to her. That's...definitely gonna help out, yeah. Definitely.

Oh okay. She's not talking about the past she's talking about recently, on the boat. About how Wukong showed being a pushy ******* is good actually. Look, depression is a difficult topic and sometimes you've gotta be there for a person even if they don't want it, and sometimes you've gotta know to keep your distance for the best of things. But don't go patting Wukong on the back for this.

Meanwhile back at the plot that matters, Oscar continues to training. Oscar and Ruby bond awkwardly over their mutual disinterest/interest in violence and projecting it onto other people. There's this moment where Ruby says he'll be combat ready in no time, and I think this might be the first time RWBY's ever actually been subtle, because Ruby realizes what she said and gets sad about her dead robot girlfriend. Oscar doesn't notice because he would have no ability to, and asks how she's able to be so happy go lucky about the whole violencing thing. Ruby tries to explain how they didn't want any of this, but they did sign up for the fighting, and Oscar cuts her off. He's SUPER doesn't understand how they're able to handle this.

So. Oscar's the best character now for bringing this up. Or at least a good character. They are taking this surprisingly well all things considered, and it is a little weird, especially for an outsider like Oscar who's at most killed like maybe a rat.

I really do like the emotional moment with Ruby talking about her dead friends, it just amuses me to think that the first friend she mentions, accident or not, is the one who killed the other. Womp womp. All in all, I do actually like this scene. Insert expected comment about how I wish the earlier season earned this moment. Did Ruby ever actually interact with Pyrrha? Like that all?

Oscar and Ozpin have a chat about how special Ruby is due to her ability to inspire others, which we've never seen up to this point, and not her special magical eyeball wings.

Then, sadly, we cut to the amazing idiot losers of the White Fang who are praying at the shrouded animal picture from the opening, having received a message from Adam. He has orders for them. The chameleon arrives, and after some wishywashy "oh yes our evil plot is going swimmingly" dialogue that I don't super like, they tell her that it's time for operation kill all of Blake's family. Blake'll be taken alive because Adam is a creepy ****er. The two then bring up the genuine point that BlakeDad would be a martyr, but...eh. More murder will solve that.

Then they watch Adam's message again so the audience can see that...he did in fact order the Belladonna family to be killed and Blake to be captured. Was this ever in any doubt? He said he'd kill her family.

Oh no. The fox minions make a sort of implication that they're going to do a traitor on Adam. I swear if Adam gets a redemption arc I'm actually just ****ing done. I do like that they notice, quite easily, that Adam is VERY deranged and a ****ty terrible leader. I appreciate that much.

And then some dragon guy shows up called Yuma and he killed the message BlakeDad sent out...I forget what the message was. Ah well. Episode over.

My thoughts on the episode:

Spoiler: V5C5

Show

All in all...okay? I mean nothing overtly bad happened except for Blake showing that the writers trip over themselves trying to turn their symbolism into literal text in universe, which is basically just a complete and total mistake.

I liked Ruby's little speech, but I feel like the show hasn't earned this. Like I said, we've...seen one or two real interactions with Penny, and NO REAL INTERACTIONS AT ALL with Pyrrha. We can infer they were probably friends based on the closeness of other members, but "Pyrrha was my good friend" is a toothless statement when we've never seen it. It only really works since we, the audience, have seen Pyrrha die. It's not Sasakibe dying and all of Soul Society crying over this man who appeared on screen for two panels in the entire series, but it's close. I also don't like the implication that the foxboys intend to do a traitor on Adam because it could open an avenue for a redemption arc.

All in all, RWBY has hit just about the point Fairy Tail used to be at constantly. It's an episode that's decent enough, and deserves a better series.

Spoiler: V5C5

Show

Just minor things.

1. The point of showing Adam's message at the end after the Fox brothers told Illya about it is to show that Adam is ordering the Belladonna's death to spit in Blake's face. Not for the more practical reason the Fox brothers give Illya about destablizing Zoo so they can't try to help Haven. That was also what the messenger Ghira sent was, to warn Haven about the impending attack. So as of right now, Haven is defenseless for non-Lionheart reasons.

2. We've seen Ruby inspire before. Most recently with getting Jaune, Ren, and Nora to follow her to Mistral rather than letting other people handle it. Previously it was in getting everyone to work together in Players & Pieces to grab the 'relics' and escape the Deathstalker/Nevermore fight. There was getting Weiss to not be...well...old!Weiss by showing she was willing to be a competent team leader. Inspiring Jaune to stand up to Cardin for the sake of his team and to just be better in general for them. Getting Penny to realize she wanted to be more then a combat-bot but that is equal parts friendship and inspiration. Usually riling up her team to do...a bunch of different things. Ruby inspires plenty of people close to her, its just understated most of the time.

3. I would agree on Pyrrha except..we see JNPR and RWBY hanging out a lot. Not specifically Pyrrha and Ruby, but those two groups were obviously friends and spent a lot of time together. Its not hard to buy that Ruby is torn up about that especially since she saw Pyrrha get killed rather than knowing it was a horrible (constructed) accident like with Penny. Still, you are right, would have been nice to have more scenes of Ruby and Pyrrha hanging out to give the scene more weight.

4. I wish they had worded Blake's speech better. It feels a bit clunky how she did it but the general point is solid. Even just so much of 'who do you think of when you hear a word? When I think purity, I think Ruby. Defiance? Weiss. Strength? Yang. I used to think of Adam when I thought of justice, but now all I can associate him with is spite' or something along those lines. It was a good point..just clumsy

[LaZodiac]

Spoiler: V5C5

Show

Just minor things.

1. The point of showing Adam's message at the end after the Fox brothers told Illya about it is to show that Adam is ordering the Belladonna's death to spit in Blake's face. Not for the more practical reason the Fox brothers give Illya about destablizing Zoo so they can't try to help Haven. That was also what the messenger Ghira sent was, to warn Haven about the impending attack. So as of right now, Haven is defenseless for non-Lionheart reasons.

2. We've seen Ruby inspire before. Most recently with getting Jaune, Ren, and Nora to follow her to Mistral rather than letting other people handle it. Previously it was in getting everyone to work together in Players & Pieces to grab the 'relics' and escape the Deathstalker/Nevermore fight. There was getting Weiss to not be...well...old!Weiss by showing she was willing to be a competent team leader. Inspiring Jaune to stand up to Cardin for the sake of his team and to just be better in general for them. Getting Penny to realize she wanted to be more then a combat-bot but that is equal parts friendship and inspiration. Usually riling up her team to do...a bunch of different things. Ruby inspires plenty of people close to her, its just understated most of the time.

3. I would agree on Pyrrha except..we see JNPR and RWBY hanging out a lot. Not specifically Pyrrha and Ruby, but those two groups were obviously friends and spent a lot of time together. Its not hard to buy that Ruby is torn up about that especially since she saw Pyrrha get killed rather than knowing it was a horrible (constructed) accident like with Penny. Still, you are right, would have been nice to have more scenes of Ruby and Pyrrha hanging out to give the scene more weight.

4. I wish they had worded Blake's speech better. It feels a bit clunky how she did it but the general point is solid. Even just so much of 'who do you think of when you hear a word? When I think purity, I think Ruby. Defiance? Weiss. Strength? Yang. I used to think of Adam when I thought of justice, but now all I can associate him with is spite' or something along those lines. It was a good point..just clumsy

Spoiler: V5C5

Show

I'll admit it's late and I flaked out and didn't really notice a difference between the thing Adam ordered and how they chose to deliver it. I still very much don't want to see an Adam redemption arc. I hope he just dies in the Haven attack.

I completely forgot about that stuff.

Blake's scene is the writer pushing his notes in the face going "get it, get it? I'm doing a writing".

Incidently for Nanowrimo I kinda want to put the first chapter of my book up somewhere but I'm not sure where is a good idea for that.

[Silverraptor]

Yeah yeah, I'll get right on that...

[Lethologica]

Spoiler: V5C5

Show

4. I wish they had worded Blake's speech better. It feels a bit clunky how she did it but the general point is solid. Even just so much of 'who do you think of when you hear a word? When I think purity, I think Ruby. Defiance? Weiss. Strength? Yang. I used to think of Adam when I thought of justice, but now all I can associate him with is spite' or something along those lines. It was a good point..just clumsy

Spoiler: v5c5

Show

Blake doesn't have a good reason to think of Weiss as defiance--I would go so far as to say that defiance is not Weiss in general, but specifically Weiss with her family. That one in particular exposes the 'reading off a character sheet' element of the speech, but really the whole thing has that problem. Something concrete and experiential about Blake's time with Adam, something to buttress her abstraction of his nature, would have hit harder than this glib tangent.