#opheliaramirez

My answer to this is yes and no. Yes, the female characters had vast amounts of wasted potential but so did the male characters.  I feel the same sense of frustration over the fates of many of the cast. I can’t talk about how dirty he did OG Ymir without remember how Bertholt was similarly dismissed. When I rant about Historia I reminds me how Reiner was also turned into a joke at the end.  

It’s the feeling of incompletion that’s the problem here. I don’t mind Reiner sniffing a letter, but give me something more substantial to hold onto. I don’t mind Historia doing whatever she did, but at least tell me why she did it. 

It really is a case of the horse drawing meme.

The fact that so many of the characters were slopped together at the end doesn’t change the wonderful details we got initially. It just sucks that we’re left to wonder what the complete picture would’ve looked like.  

Hello! Sorry for the long wait!

I have watched it and I will gladly share my thoughts!

However, I would like to make clear that I am more a casual viewer than a hardcore fan, so I have surely missed many details.

Personally, I have really enjoyed volume 7 and it is one of my favourite volumes so far. I have especially liked it because of two characters I ended up loving for completely opposite reasons. These characters are Ironwood and Penny.

I love Ironwood because he is a character who passes the majority of the season walking in perfect equilibrium between being a possible ally and a possible antagonist. At one point he seems to grow in the right direction, but immediately later he regresses and ends the season as a full fledged villain.

All in all, Ironwood keeps exhibiting a contradictive behaviour throughout all the volume. He wants to tell the world the truth and has informed a small group of people he claims to trust. This seems to be almost in opposition with Ozpin who has kept even his most trusted comrades in the shadows about important truths. However, Ironwood’s ambition to tell the world is in conflict with him being too scared to share the information with people he has to work together with. This is a contradiction with which Ironwood will fight for the whole season and against which he will eventually lose.

Ironwood, just like Lionheart before him, loses to fear. However, he does so in a completely different way than the late headmaster. Lionheart was so scared to die that he betrayed Ozpin and allied himself with Salem. Ironwood does not want to switch sides and he wants to stop Salem like everyone else. However, his wish to do so makes him obsessive and paranoic. In short, Lionheart did not fight his fear, while Ironwood fights it too much and would want for it to disappear. The point, however, is that fear will never completely disappear and human beings must learn to live with it. This is why symbolically Salem can’t be killed. It is because fear can’t be conquered with simple might and prowess. However, this is what Ironwood is trying to do. He refuses to admit that he is scared and keeps trying to suppress his fear and to make it vanish by gaining more and more control and this of course backfires spectacularly until in the end Ironwood completely loses control.

He loses the leader of the Ace Op who died because of a fight which was avoidable. He loses the support of people like RWBY, JNR and Oscar who were genuinelly trying to help him. He loses the alliance with Robin and the rest of Atlas and finally he loses both Penny and the Winter Maiden. At the end of the volume Atlas is divided with two groups fighting each other while they should overcome their respective differences and work together. Ironwood’s paranoia, inability to face fear and to trust others are the reasons of this. It is probable that he will become more and more isolated and will be left behind by more of his own comrades in the next volume.

All in all, he is a very tragic character and it is very sad to see him spiral out of control especially after he has shown the potential for growth when he accepted to tell Robin and Atlas. That moment led to several conflicts being solved and made so that two of Salem’s most trusted agents could be neutralized. The moment Ironwood really starts facing his insecurities and fear and opens up to others he is rewarded, but his fear blinds him and does not let him realize the positivity of the results obtained. A leader should be able to make of the people around him a strength, but Ironwood does the opposite and ends up seeing others as his weakness.

I feel you! I never really thought a talk was needed, per se, but it would've made sense (and would've been really nice) for Levi to talk about it to Mikasa once he found out about his origins. 

But now I feel it is imperative that they have a talk. Somehow I can't believe Levi never explicitly told Mikasa about them being related by blood, especially when both of them have lost their original family (and the second one as well - Isabel and Farlan, and the Jaegers). 

Levi had also learned to be more open with his squad members, and Mikasa had learned to value Levi's opinion. 

If they never had a conversation about their shared blood, then I feel it is in order for the future, though as I said elsewhere I'm struggling to see a comeback to the main story in useful time on Levi's part. I'm sure Isayama will pull it off, somehow, if he wishes so.

The only hope I have about such a thing happening is this panel right here, from chapter 107. It's true that Levi seems on guard/taken aback at the sudden appearance of Mikasa's other side of the family, but I would've loved to see him feeling a bit worried, maybe talking to her about it.

Then there is Eren and his words about the Ackerman bloodline, which caused Mikasa to second-guess her own will. So it seems to imply the only two Ackermans left should have a confrontation about it, but it's not like Levi knows anything about it, so I don't know. Besides, Mikasa could realize she cares about Eren as Mikasa, and not as an Ackerman, on her own.

I considered doing a Blake post last hiatus along the longs of my ones on why Jaune, Ruby and Cinder were unpopular but I felt that Blake discourse was akin to beating a beat horse’s descendants. Might do one on her if V7 and the presumed return of Faunus racism means her arc gets dragged back into that particular circle of hell.

I cropped this image to show the top responses. I’ve already talked about why I am certain Erwin would not support the rumbling. I don’t have strong enough feelings about Kruger or Zackly to offer an opinion, but I’d love to chime in on Ymir and Kenny about why I think they’d be against the rumbling. 

Freckled Ymir: No

Ymir tried her hardest during her second chance at life to be selfish and self-serving and she failed miserably at it. She could not help but be the same goddess unwilling to let other suffer when she could offer help. 

When it came to the rumbling, present day Ymir would be all talk. She’d say “Hell yes lets rumble them all!!” in conversation until that moment actually came. Ymir is a lot like Jean in that she’d want to be the type a person who could accept the easy life while others suffered but in the end she’d be unable to go through with it. 

Kenny Ackerman: No

If Kenny were around, he might play both sides of the argument for the sheer entertainment value. He’d take up whichever ideology would provoke the best reaction at the moment. But in truth he’d be against genocide because of Uri. 

Kenny was drawn to Uri because of Uri’s love and compassion. He sought Uri’s power because he wanted to feel those thing. Reflecting on Uri just before his death, Kenny asked,  “Can a piece of trash like me ever see the same kind of things you see.”

 My friend Neetaku said it very well in a discord chat, “I think Kenny would probably consider it a downright insult to Uri’s memory for Eren to use the Founding Titan’s power in a way that is so antithetical to what Uri stood for”