#lucidsnake

OKAY. So first off, yes. This was something I’d picked up on during Maria’s discussion with Ruby, but didn’t bother trying to articulate thoughts on because my recaps are long enough as it is. To summarize that question though: Why is rational, level-headed Maria talking about Light’s power like he’s still an infallible god? Why isn’t she acknowledging how horrible he and his brother were? Why isn’t she acknowledging anything else? 

Imo there’s a “good” answer and a “bad” answer. The “good” one is that Maria just might not care about that history. Ultimately, regardless of what happened in the past, the silver eyes are a tool and in the end it matters how you use tools, not where they came from. She might not want to threaten Ruby’s convictions to use her eyes by emphasizing that they originate from a mercurial, cruel being. They need her eyes--as the encounter with the Apathy demonstrated--and they can’t risk Ruby getting caught up in the morality of ‘Is it ethical to use a power given to me by someone that might be a Bad Guy?’ and start hesitating. There are priorities. 

The “bad” answer is a writing one: RT isn’t having anyone acknowledge anything else about the vision. Period. You’re 100% right that Maria is in an excellent position to, say, emphasize Ozpin’s Good Guy nature by connecting him to that love of humanity, or start a conversation about how freaking gods screwed over a mortal man to hell and back. So if presumably ‘perfect’ beings can fuck up so badly, how can you expect perfection from those around you? Cut everyone some slack. 

But RT isn’t interested in exploring any of these avenues, whether they relate specifically to Ozpin or not. In the same way that they’re not interested in having the gang acknowledge right now that there are other ways of “defeating” Salem besides killing her, or acknowledging that the work they’ve done is far from useless. Despite the massive amount of lore we got and the endless possibilities/questions it generated, RT has decided that everyone is going to have the exact same, simplistic reaction: pessimism and hatred towards Ozpin. The writers are straight up not letting the characters think through ANYTHING else they’ve learned. So yeah, that’s a sad use of Maria’s character and, imo, rather OOC based on what else we’ve seen from her, but this volume is forcing everyone down one very narrow path. 

We saw the same thing happening this episode. For whatever reason they decided that the end scene needed a kids vs. adults mentality attached to it and everything else (logic, characterization, expectations) are chucked out to try and make room for that. It makes perfect sense for the oldest member of the group (besides Ozpin), who is also one of the most level-headed of the gang, who lost her eyes because of her own overconfidence, to be the one to emphasize to Ruby that she needs to work with everyone around her, including the adults. Instead we get a generic cheer about how awesome Ruby is as she rejects everyone who’s not a “kid”--which includes Maria. The writing is so Team RWBY centric that they had an old lady cheering over being denounced when she’s the only reason they made it to Argus. Ruby yells about how they “didn’t need Oz”... but that’s because they had Maria instead. Ruby twists the situation to make it look like the kids did everything on their own when really they just swapped one competent adult for another, and the narrative--partly through Maria--tires to paint that as the truth even though the audience knows that’s BS. It’s like a form of fictional gaslighting (not to use that term lightly, just can’t think of a better one): “You saw events happen this way, but Ruby is now saying it happened this way instead. No one is going to question this and you should believe her because she’s the protagonist.” 

I think that’s bad writing. 

Yes, I believe Maria is largely the voice of reason... up until RT decides that the kids are right and Nothing Will Stand In The Way of That. And they’ve been doing that a lot this season. RT set up a very complex situation (which is great!) but then made it not great by not allowing everyone to respond to it in a complex manner. No one is allowed to have sympathy for Ozpin. No one is allowed to think about the gods’ responsibility in all this. No one gets to theorize about how they can still defeat Salem. No one grapples with everything else they learned. No one is allowed to react to the news in any way beyond abject pessimism and violence. Now, no one is allowed to challenge Ruby on her claim that kids are the most competent people here. 

And it’s not entirely RT’s fault. I’ve said before that RWBY’s format is not good for the kind of story they’re trying to tell. Even with longer episodes now, 12-20mins of content across 12 or so episodes can’t compare to 45mins of content across 20+ episodes. Especially when you’ve developed a cast as big as this one. I can understand why they might go, “We don’t have time to give everyone a unique reaction to this news and have legit conversations about the implications because we literally need this scene over and done with in under 5mins.” If we don’t get more info about Oscar’s excursion, I can understand why they’d straight up ignore him in favor of giving us half an episode on Jaune’s reaction because he’s the character we’ve known longer. But understanding format limitations doesn’t erase the fact that it’s still bad storytelling. And it’s not just Oscar. As the story continues to grow more complex (Ozpin’s morality) and the cast continues to grow (Maria) there’s less and less and less time to devote to each character and each problem. We have eleven main characters this time around, not including all our villains and those on the sidelines who will play an important role later (like Ironwood). If you want to give Jaune a meaningful conversation with Pyrrha’s mom, you don’t get to explore Oscar’s outing too. If you want time to focus on Qrow’s drinking problem then you have to take time away from [insert literally anything we want to see here], which includes Maria’s lack of opinions and her random status as the kids’ champion. You’re right that there’s SO much more to unpack... but with what time? 

Every story has this problem to an extent (that’s what fic is for!), but you reach a point where the amount you have to a) simplify, b) chuck in without buildup/explanation or c) straight up skip begins to have a negative impact on the story as a whole. As fantastic as this volume’s potential is, I think RWBY is starting to reach that point.