Cure SymphoPug

In canon Watts and Tyrian obviously did shit to stir up the Fall of Atlas, but it wasn't anything too drastic either. In total:

-Kill Ironwood's detractors to make it look like he's assassinating dissent

-Ally with Jacques to get an in to Atlas' security grids

-Frame Penny during the election

-Turn off Mantle's power grids

There was definitely more planned but Ironwood finally opening up about his secrets derailed that. Most of this plays into the pre-existing animosity Mantle and Atlas have between each other. Ironwood plays just as much a role as they did if not more due to his extreme responses to their actions and how he mistreated Mantle for months even before Volume 7

In FRWBY it gets a lot more complicated. For one thing, Mantle doesn't have the gaping hole in its wall that existed in canon, meaning there would be less friction between the two cities from Ironwood's neglect

In total:

-Tyrian still kills Ironwood's detractors

-During a political rally Robyn has Tyrian sparks outrage against Atlas among the crowd, and right as this happens Watts opens some nearby Mantle gates to let grimm swarm in and make it look like Atlas is trying to stomp out dissent

-Watts hacks Schnee Dust bots to make them destroy every Schnee greenhouse, destroying 1/4th of Atlas' food supplies and causing a food shortage

-Due to this shortage, Cinder and Robyn strike a deal where Cinder destroys a Schnee supply ship so that Mantle can pillage it, and in exchange Cinder gains access to an Atlas server room. This pulls triple duty because it gives Watts access to Atlas' security grids, creates more animosity between Ironwood and the rest of Atlas' council, and becomes one of many reasons why Ironwood turns against Ruby due to her letting Robyn go

-It's strongly implied that Watts fed misinformation to Atlas' information network. Due to this, a bunch of Mantle civilians trading stolen Schnee supplies gets flagged as White Fang smuggling weapons. Weiss Blake and Neon get sent there to "deal" with them, making it look like Atlas is stomping down on Mantle civilians with disproportionate force

-Tyrian assassinates Robyn with a sniper rifle as she shows a recording of Ironwood saying he'll become dictator of Atlas, making it look like Atlas is once again crushing any dissent and this ignites a civil war between Mantle and Atlas

-Neo implants a thumb drive with a virus Watts made into Atlas' power grid, completely shutting off both cities aside from the emergency backup generators

While there's still the element of using the existing animosity between Atlas and Mantle, the effects of what Watts does are so much more far reaching the impact gets weakened. In canon the most far reaching thing he did was turn off Mantle's power. In FRWBY he caused a nationwide food shortage and shuts down BOTH cities

And that doesn't even begin to address the finale which causes things to fall apart between RWBY and Ironwood. His and Roman's plans cause Ironwood to turn against RWBY due to it looking like Ruby betrayed him

There's a comment that Watts made to Ironwood at the end of their fight in Fixing RWBY that stuck out to me. According to Watts, he barely had to lift a finger to cause the Fall of Atlas and that Ironwood's own allies did most of the damage. I was 50/50 on if Watts genuinely believed it or if it was just him talking shit to throw Ironwood off his game. According to a comment Celtic makes in the FRWBYV7 comments section, Watts is right

Here it is: "There's a lot of factors building on top of one another to highlight that Atlas and Mantel were already unstable on multiple levels, and Watts was right; he barely had to lift a finger, just put pressure on a few points until the dominoes fell. No one is right, everyone is wrong, everyone is frustrated, and everyone feels betrayed."

In just the past two months, Sony has:

Said the PS6 will be more than $1000 at launch

Announced the end of all physical PS game releases

While simultaneously announcing the end of two of their console game stores — ensuring multiple games will die forever

Declared that they are wholly dedicated to (A) leveraging A.I. when making games and (B) creating live-service games above all other game types

Announced that if you bought any movies through their PlayStation Store, over 550 of them will soon be deleted from all users' libraries — with no restitution offered of any kind

Gamers, it is time — to paraphrase Robert Vann — to turn Sony's picture to the wall. Any one of these insults would be bad, and taken alone? Maybe it could be swallowed. But this is an ongoing campaign of disdain towards customers, with each declaration worse than the last.

In just the past two months, Sony has:

Said the PS6 will be more than $1000 at launch

Announced the end of all physical PS game releases

While simultaneously announcing the end of two of their console game stores — ensuring multiple games will die forever

Declared that they are wholly dedicated to (A) leveraging A.I. when making games and (B) creating live-service games above all other game types

Announced that if you bought any movies through their PlayStation Store, over 550 of them will soon be deleted from all users' libraries — with no restitution offered of any kind

Gamers, it is time — to paraphrase Robert Vann — to turn Sony's picture to the wall. Any one of these insults would be bad, and taken alone? Maybe it could be swallowed. But this is an ongoing campaign of disdain towards customers, with each declaration worse than the last.

Who do you think makes professional quality fanart and fanfic? People who've been practicing it for ten, fifteen, twenty years!

Or even people who've been practicing it for thirty, forty or fifty!!!!!

example: Diane Duane. Currently in her seventies. Star Trek fangirl since the original run. Goddess-level Ascended Fan who has created official tie-in works in more forms of media than pretty much anyone else alive, possibly even Rodenberry himself because they didn't have audiobooks or video games when he was with us. Writer of Spock's World, The Wounded Sky, Doctor's Orders in TOS. Co-writer of TNG script Where no one has gone before, and writer of the tie-in novel Dark Mirror among others. Writer of a half-dozen Star Trek Comics. She has adapted her own work for audio, has written for the Star Trek manga series, has written short Trek fiction for anthologies, and plotted and wrote the video game Star Trek: the Kobayashi Alternative.

In other fandoms, she was a personal friend of Terry Pratchett himself. As a scriptwriter, she's also worked in fandoms like Scooby-Doo, Transformers, My Little Pony, Gargoyles, Batman: The Animated Series, Spiderman: Unlimited (and a trilogy of tie-in novels still in print) and Barbie: Fairytopia. ...And that's just cherry-picking her imdb page.

While she can't give out specific details due to Obvious Reasons, she's still active in the Sherlock BBC fandom - and there's a specific subset of her fans who love guessing which of the legendary fanfics might be her work (I am not one of them, BTW, as it is None Of My Business. I'm old-school that way).

Fandom is not for teenagers. Fandom is for everyone of good heart and enthusiasm for a good (or even bad! No judgement!) story.

In canon the core conflict between the main cast and Atlas is a fundamentally different view of heroism, as well as Ironwood's own personal flaws taking full control over him. Ironwood and by extension the Atlas military has an ends justify the means mindset. Anything is justified if the end result is saving the world from Salem. After all, Ironwood does say that he'll sacrifice "whatever it takes" to beat her

Ironwood has been neglecting Mantle for months so he could illegally repurpose their supplies for Amity, there's a literal hole in its wall that lets in Grimm by the day. People call it stupid and a plot hole that Ironwood left Mantle undefended, but that's the POINT! Ironwood doesn't give a single iota of a fuck about Mantle, so of COURSE he'd leave a massive hole in its defenses if it meant making Amity as fast as possible. The scene where Nora confronts him on upping Atlas' military presence in Mantle best exemplifies this sentiment: "What's more important? Establishing communication, unite the world? Or appeasing a few city blocks."

RWBYJNR by comparison, want to save everybody possible. Hell Volume 8's opening is called For Every Life, obviously in reference to them saving everybody they can. You could call it naive, but it plays into the series' fairy tail motifs to give its main characters a more idealistic approach to heroism

This creates a natural clash between them that comes to a head once Ironwood hears that Salem is at Atlas' front door. His first instinct, the first thing he comes up with, is to completely abandon Mantle to die to save Atlas even though he has the means and resources to save everybody. And of course, our main cast are entirely against this, leading to RWBY fighting the Ace-Ops. This core conflict is Heroic Optimism vs Ruthless Pragmatism

Fixing RWBY though, didn't take this approach. At all. The main cast have misgivings of his treatment of Mantle but it's nowhere near as bad as canon, hell Mantle doesn't even have the hole in its wall. Hell he doesn't even plan to abandon Mantle here, at least not yet. Maybe he will in FRWBYV8

Instead RWBYJNR's concerns are more about Ironwood becoming more of a dictator, and they wonder if they're doing enough for the world or just being Ironwood's mindless drones. But this doesn't play into the finale. At all

What's the reason for RWBY and Ironwood fighting? Ironwood gets misinformed. Neo disguises herself as Ruby and uses her keycard to access Atlas' vault. Ironwood puts an arrest warrant on team RWBY in response

To be a little fair, there is some stuff beforehand that wore away at his faith in Ruby, but it just isn't super compelling. Ruby let Robyn escape with stolen Schnee supplies when she abuses her authority as a member of Atlas' council. Neo sent Yang a text asking if she trusted her to which Yang responded yes, and Ironwood had Pietro spy on this. Watts and Salem tell him that Rubya and Oz have been lying to him. "Ruby" entering Atlas' vault was the final straw for him

There is no core conflict in the main cast vs Ironwood in FRWBY. No clash of ideals or anything like that. It's just Ironwood making a rash call due to not having all the information that we the audience do. Oh sure, when FRWBY Ironwood does this shit Celtic's fans cheer him on and lap it up but when Robyn in canon acts on the same restrictions they call her a terrorist I see how it is

I normally wouldn't include the comments of anyone other than Celtic's since they're not relevant for this discussion. This one though, is near the top of the FRWBYV7 comment section and plays into my own worries about Ironwood in FRWBYV8. Here it is: "My hope for Volume 8 is that despite Ironwood having more than enough reason for his current actions, that he can be persuaded to help the team and if needed, go out like a true hero as opposed to on his stomach like a beached carp"

I fear this is the direction Celtic's going with Ironwood. He died "like a beached carp" in canon because he lost everything. No army, no allies, no nation, nothing. Cinder saying "And that's checkmate" is brilliant because it made Itonwood reflect on how he's been in "check" ever since she put the black queen chess piece in his office and he's been making terrible decisions ever since. Once you're in checkmate, there's no more moves to make because you've lost

“They’re not smarter or faster they’re buying up others’ lifetimes to do their chores”

I see this reaction a lot, and I gotta say, it always makes me a little sad. Whenever the conversation of exploitation of labor comes up, inevitably someone finds themselves struggling with the guilt of “It is so important to me not to contribute to exploitation but I cannot do this thing myself and need someone else to do it for me, so how do I even approach that?”

Exploitation isn’t in the hiring of a service worker. Exploitation is in the respect you show them for their ability to perform the service you need from them.

I have been on a cleaning service staff before, and also been someone who hired a cleaning service, and I can tell you for sure that a lot of cleaning crews (especially worker owned ones) absolutely LOVE their clients and are genuinely happy to be able to make their lives better. The clients they don’t like? Those are the ones who disrespect the workers.

When I was involved with a cleaning service, we had everything from little old ladies living alone to McMasions with five cars as clients, and I can assure you that whenever there was someone who clearly hired us because they were overwhelmed or unable to keep their space clean, those were the households where you put a little more elbow grease in and did a deep clean even when it wasn’t paid for, because you could see how much these people were trying and struggling, and they were always so kind and generous and often embarrassed when talking to you about the job.

I only hired a service a couple if times in my life, but whenever I did, I worked with the same people as often as I could, tipped as well as I could afford, and tried to be the kind of client I would want to have, and that’s how I often ended up with my baseboards cleaned too, or my fridge scrubbed and organized or a restorative clean done in a high use room even when that wasn’t what I had scheduled or paid for.

I’ve heard the same thing from all manner of service workers over the years. Many of us like our jobs! We enjoy the work. It’s the customers that can do a number on you.