#rwde content

Btw, I’m not saying that James wanting to save Atlas even though he’d be leaving Mantle doesn’t track, I think that was fine and could’ve led to a very interesting character contrast with Ruby. Anti-hero James or kind of gray, ends justify the means, misguided James is consistent and was foreshadowed. James being a cruel, crazy, heartless SOB who tries to murder children and murders civilians despite the fact that he didn’t have to is out of character for someone who has been established as a caring, compassionate person who tries to save everyone he thinks he can.

I’ve been hearing constantly about how James Ironwood turning into the villain he is now has been planned from the start, and if that’s true, it actually makes me more upset. If they’ve been planning James Ironwood turning evil since the start, then they’ve had seven seasons and what, like six, seven years to realize that it might actually be a harmful representation.

James is a military veteran, coded as a war veteran with clear PTSD, he’s an amputee, a disabled man. The character he was given at the start of the show, of being a brave and compassionate man with only the best intentions, but one who clearly struggled to rely on or trust others and was trying to do everything himself is a great characterization for a long time soldier. And a lot of men struggle with things like feeling like they have to be strong and can’t show much emotion, feeling like they’re alone and have to make all the decisions, and feeling like they’re responsible for all the people around them. A storyline about Ironwood making the wrong calls, and having problems like failing to listen to others and prioritizing what he can save over what he feels is a lost cause would be great in my opinion... If CRWBY had had the point of that arc being that James’s new support system worked, they never went behind his back and they helped him, and worried about him, and he realized that he’s not alone and can rely on and trust others.

Instead of doing that or something like it, CRWBY really said “You know what this disabled military veteran with PTSD needs? To be a destructive, dangerous murderer, who can’t be trusted because he’s super violent, and should definitely not be in any position of power or his crazy is gonna turn him into a full blown dictator. Watch how he’s coded as losing his humanity! Watch him do incredibly dumb things in fits of rage! Watch him shoot a child, murder a helpless civilian, and try to take a young girl’s autonomy away from her!”

I feel like it’s kinda obvious why there are people who are frustrated and even hurt by this portrayal. I feel like CRWBY doesn’t handle a lot of things well and doesn’t think a lot of things through, but they had seven seasons to think twice about this. It even hurts their supposed narrative of trust and hope, and is yet another example of how I feel like CRWBY is putting male victims of trauma in a bad light and treating them with much less sympathy than they should.

Alrighty, let’s unpack May Marigold. Like you said, she doesn’t have a lot of screen time or character development, but even if a character isn’t featured much, there are still ways you can like them right away. Funnily enough, some of the reasons I like May are the same reasons I liked Qrow from his first season even though he didn’t get a lot of focus and we knew very little about him.

1. Mannerisms, body language, and attitude

I like expressive characters, I like characters who are dry or feisty or both, I like characters who can be in tense situations and look totally bored, I like joking characters and mock politeness and winks and attitude. May has a dry wit and an air of devil-may-care behavior around her that I find really appealing in a character. But she also has a society upbringing and it leaks into her actions here and there and that adds interest. She feels really distinctive. Also since the mains have started all seeming a bit... interchangeable, May is a nice change of pace in that way. Everyone in the above image is making pretty much the same face, but May, who looks like she couldn't be more bored.

2. She's someone I want to root for

When Team RWBY wanted to pretend they were in a situation where they could save everyone and everyone could win, May recognized what they were too stubborn and illogical to. May was the voice of experience and reason in that situation that point blank told them ‘there’s no saving everyone, you have to choose.’ And I mean, I was on Ironwood’s side in volume seven before he shot Oscar, but May not only has a point in what she says and in her goals, but has follow through (something Ruby didn’t have.) She wants to launch Amity Tower and so accompanies Team RWBN while feeling assured that Ruby’s friends are making up for her loss in protecting Mantle, she resolves to help Mantle after the Tower is launched with the statement that Atlas has soldiers defending it while Mantle does not and therefore she’s of better use there, and then she does what she says she was going to and goes to protect the people of Mantle even though she did it alone because Team RWB couldn’t choose anything. While Team RWB was hiding out in a mansion drinking tea, May was actually determined to do something. May is a flawed character, she calls Penny ‘robo-girl’ and gets called out for it, she’s aggressive with Marrow, she’s partially responsible for the delay of Amity being launched, and she seems to follow Robyn with too much devotion imo (considering my dislike of Robyn lol, I think this is fair.) But she’s also determined to help those in need and is willing to follow through, and uses actual logic to see the situation for what it is and understands her own limitations. Between annoying protagonists with impossible idealistic standards that act like they never have to change who feel very insincere, former heroes who have gone crazy and who might be actually fighting and trying to do good but are also down to murder anyone and therefore can’t be supported, and villains who are getting ‘redeemed’ in the sloppiest and least convincing ways possible... May stood out as someone who is trying to be both smart and caring, brave and compassionate, but realistic. Ironwood was no longer allowed to be seen in a good light and so was turned into a puppy kicking maniacal ball of crazy willing to torture and bomb just to get his way, and Ruby was not allowed to be seen as wrong or failing and so the whole narrative was about how good and right she was even if she didn’t accomplish her goal or earn a victory because hey, at least she made a rousing speech and yelled at anyone who wanted to do something she deemed not enough. May was allowed to be a moral character who just disagreed with Ruby, she was allowed to make mistakes without it either being treated as monstrous or quickly covered with pretty words about how everyone knows she’s still great. May was allowed to be a character without the authors constantly reminding us of what they want us to think of her. Maybe if she’d been in one of the earlier seasons, she wouldn’t have been as compelling to me (because that wasn’t a rarity lol,) but compare her to Ruby now and she’s amazing. Also she told Ruby she was wrong, and she may have softened it later, but still, it was one of the better parts of the whole volume. Ruby needs more people who are willing to give her hard truths, instead of people who are going to agree with and support her no matter what.

3. Potential

When it comes to characters, the first thing I really look at is if they’d be good in fan fictions, how I’d use them, how I could see them interacting in this or that scenario, and what dynamics I think they’d have. A lot of this has very little to do with actual canon, like wondering how she’d fit into a fake organization full of OCs I’d written into a couple of fan fics or wondering what her dynamic would be with the redeemed Roman Torchwick and Emerald and Mercury that I’ve often centered my stories around. But some of it is stuff like ‘How would May see Winter? What sort of tension might May have with her in Vacuo?’ ‘How would May get along with Sun and Neptune in Vacuo?’ ‘When the others get back from the void, what will May be doing?’ Much like I took to the cocky but clearly more under the surface winking argumentative Qrow in his very first season, I like what little I’ve seen of her and hope I get more of what makes her an appealing character to me later. And much like I got attached to Neo after even her very minor appearances in the first three seasons and started including her as the babied little sister figure of Roman somehow three times more cut throat than him that takes his word as gospel, I like May for what I can see her turning into in my fics even if she’s never given a lot of focus or room to grow or (God forbid) gets her character thrown to the wolves.

Also, as for shipping her with people, I feel like since she hasn’t yet taken a lot of screen time and we are wondering at how she’ll interact with people once things aren’t so tense, it’s easy to imagine her with a lot of people just because I haven’t been put off by any interactions and relationships that were badly handled or that just don’t vibe. I think I’ve listed her in the top three ships with Ilia, Sun, and Blake, and omg I just realized how funny it is that I listed May as a possible romance for all three of them. XD These ships are pretty casual, as I was looking for numbers and I’ve shipped Sun and Blake for so long, it’s hard to picture them with anyone else and there are pretty big road blocks in shipping them with many of the other mains, and I hadn’t really considered many ships for Ilia before writing the post. May just happened to be a ship I saw that I thought ‘that could be pretty cute, actually.’ However, thinking about her and Sun...

The whole Haven fight was terrible (and imo started the decline of the show) but this line was incredibly forced, made no sense, and was very ill placed.

RWBY is terrible with the Faunus racism they chose to make part of their story. They made the White Fang an evil terrorist group, they made Blake lecture fellow Faunus about how they're the ones actually hurting themselves by using violence against each other, they framed comfortable and peaceful protest as the only good way despite establishing that peaceful protest didn't work, and they made their child slave coded character who literally got branded turn into nothing more than an abusive stalker and then had him killed without ever addressing the aforementioned child slavery. Also, the only Faunus among our main cast now that Sun is gone is one of the most privileged of the Faunus. Blake can pass as a human if she wants to, she grew up fairly rich, she has two loving parents, and she comes from an inherently powerful position as the daughter of the Chief. Having Blake be privileged would be absolutely fine, if she acknowledged her privilege, wasn’t the mouthpiece on Faunus rights, if she wasn’t the only Faunus in our main cast, and if she didn’t repeatedly lecture other Faunus.

On top of that, two of our main cast have been racist (within the narrative of the show) towards our main Faunus character, one of them learns from it (even though that as well was badly handled) and became the only member of Team RWBY to ever call out human's being racist after season three. Oh wait, except the other member of our main cast that was racist that never had it addressed because it was treated like a joke now has yelled at a racist once, in an incredibly tense situation, so I guess her racism is gone. It’s good that it’s gone, since CRWBY is pushing her and Blake as a couple, but it’s frustrating that her racism never even got a ‘that wasn’t funny’ and we never see Yang learn any better, because it feels like CRWBY brushed it off and acted like it was fun and quirky instead of treating it like the casual racism it was. They do a similar thing with Robyn in season seven which came out in 2019, when she calls Marrow ‘Wags.’ Also none of our main cast are ever seen protesting for Faunus rights (sans a two second flashback of child Blake at a rally and a non canon RWBY chibi cartoon.) I don't think Ruby - our main protagonist - has ever even mentioned Faunus rights. In a world where Adam was branded with the SDC logo under fifteen years ago at the most, racism and fighting racism should be a big part of the story, and instead, it's brushed to the side and used for the occasional 'we don't like racism btw' moment now that Blake got rid of a Faunus run terrorist group. To me, this implies that the number one threat to the Faunus… Was the Faunus, and although some humans are still anti-Faunus, no one has to devote their time or energy into fighting for equality. In season 7, Blake doesn’t even attend the rally of the political figure running against Jacques Schnee - who as far as I’m aware, is the only business owner or person in power who has ever displayed anti-Faunus racism in the show. By the way, please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. It’s been a hot minute since I watched through the show.

Instead of attending a rally that seems very important for the Faunus, Blake goes dancing with her crush. It’s like she stopped caring about politics and rights after the White Fang got removed. That feels so bad. Also, I'll note that most of the actual POC Faunus that can't pass as white in this show are on the bad side (Sienna, Fennec, Corsac, Lionheart, Ilia, Marrow.) And either they die, or they must learn to give up their destructive ways and become better people. I’m not saying this was intentional, I’m saying it’s a pattern, it’s alarming, and the writers should’ve known better.

I believe Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross have admitted that they mishandled Faunus racism, but first off, it still doesn’t excuse them because they were grown people putting out a product that premiered in 2013 and they should’ve known to do research and do better. But second off, I still feel like they haven't done the research they need to and continue to mishandle the racism by ignoring it when they want to and bringing it up only to let us as an audience know Weiss and Yang aren't racist anymore. They can’t just cut the Faunus from their storyline now, but they can’t just ignore it, and need to actually make it a better allegory. Honestly though, one of the big reasons I'm convinced that they still haven't done any real research on how to properly portray POC or racism is because of how terribly they're handling the Ace Ops.

They're writing a fantasy show, they aren't tied to real world portrayals of law enforcement, but they went the route of commentating on real world police, corrupt police, and use of excessive force. That's fine. But things are already pretty dicey just starting off because of how they've mishandled and continue to mishandle Faunus racism. Outside of Jacques Schnee and his company and business partners, I don't remember seeing Faunus racism in Atlas (not Mantle, Atlas.) If I'm wrong about that, again, please correct me, I may have missed it. But without seeing actual discrimination against Faunus within the police force, right off the bat, that's a mishandling of commentating on police brutality. But also, other than Clover who is now dead, the Ace Ops are all people of color. CRWBY made their bad cops all not white. Even Ironwood - who is white passing - is voiced by a person of color who has said he believes that James is Chinese American. I'll point out that being a Hunter is pretty much just being a cop with more freedom and seemingly less rules. Qrow (a Beacon Huntsman) goes around destroying public property and comments on how some hunters work outside of the law, and yet it's only the Ace Ops who are held to real world ACAB rules and everyone else gets to be a good cop/law enforcement officer. Ruby gets to proudly proclaim herself a Huntress, Weiss gets to arrest people, Jaune gets told that he deserves his Huntsman license, we've been getting told for seven seasons that Hunters help people and do what's right, and we're given long time Hunters and mentor figures like Oobleck, Glynda, Qrow, and now Robyn is being framed that way, and they back that up. Even training Atlas soldiers like Neon and Flynt are fine and fun. But only the Ace Ops are bad, corrupt law enforcement officers. So that way, we can have the entirely white passing Team RWBY beat up the entirely POC, not white passing Ace Ops. Even though Team RWBY is a byproduct of the same kind of program and even though we’ve seen the police discriminate against Faunus in Vale. If CRWBY wants their allegories to be taken seriously, they need to recognize that RWBY and co are also certified police. Also, it’s really not funny to see people use ACAB as a reason why the Ace Ops are of course bad, but then turn around and simp for Winter, and be like ‘We want Winter to be redeemed, but Harriet? What a bitch!’ Like… I’m side-eyeing that pretty hard.

Speaking of Winter, now she’s in charge of the Ace Ops. But unlike Marrow, Winter doesn’t just look sad sometimes and blindly only follow direct orders without protest. She’s actually feeling all kinds of things, and she’s actually being framed as strong, intelligent, and reasonable. I’m sure no one forgot this, but I’ll note it anyway; Winter is white. Having Winter be the only Ace Op to actually listen to JRY and do things without James explicitly telling her to (although I don’t consider what she did a betrayal or going behind his back) is dicey. They could’ve given this moment to Harriet and nothing would change. ‘This lady typically follows orders, is short tempered, and pushes down her emotions, but she can still recognize a fairly good idea when she sees one and can actually think for herself, so although this isn’t a betrayal, she compromises and lets Team JRY go after their friend.’ Yeah, idk guys, I feel like there was literally no reason to slot Winter in with the Ace Ops to be the lone voice of reason when Harriet could’ve become the new leader and played the exact same role. Instead, Winter gets to have a power move where she puts Harriet in her place. Winter is given actual depth and gets to put down the black woman who the writers have made display nothing but anger for the whole season. The fans rally behind Winter because she was given depth and hate Harriet because she has none, but that’s the fault of the writers. Btw, ‘this black woman won’t show any emotion besides anger’ is a racist stereotype. It would probably have taken like five minutes on google for Luna and Shawcross to have realized that it was a bad idea to write a black woman in any sort of position of power to be constantly angry + hiding her emotions. Elm is in the same boat as Harriet, and I was going to say it’s less severe, but then I remembered that she literally attacked Ren for talking about their emotions.

Look, my point is that RWBY as a show has never handled allegories like racism and corrupt police well, and either they should stop trying and stick to ‘make believe land is just different than the real world’ or start putting in the work and fix this. By the way, I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad for watching or even enjoying RWBY, but I hope people can watch it while recognizing that some of the things CRWBY has chosen to put into their show are destructive and that the creators need to be called out. I’ll continue to hope that most RWBY fans do recognize that RWBY is deeply flawed, but I’ve just been stewing recently about someone who told me that I shouldn’t have expected the show to address Faunus racism in the Atlas arcs because that ended when Adam died.

Cordovan works for the Atlas military. Once Weiss is in range of Atlas, she can just call Winter on her scroll (global communications are down, but not communications completely.) Cordovan would have to listen to her superior officer and take Weiss straight to Winter, who could tell Ironwood about them being stuck at the border and he could’ve let them through. So it’s not facing her father that makes Weiss pause, it’s just going back to Atlas alone despite the fact that weeks or maybe a month or two ago, Weiss was fine going places on her own to find her sister. On top of that, the easy solution would be for Qrow to transform and travel along with her out of sight. Even if you come up with some reason for why Qrow couldn’t go (like, perhaps he didn’t want to leave Oscar, who is Oz’s host, or Ruby, who he knows is being hunted by Tyrian,) it makes Weiss seem childish and selfish for choosing to steal a plane because she didn’t want to go to Atlas alone. And it makes the rest of the team seem really hard to trust, actually, since they prove that they’ll prioritize one person’s comfort over their mission and then break the law to avoid that person’s discomfort. They’re all actual teenagers, so maybe it’s unfair of me to expect them to not make selfish choices or prioritize their friend group, but these are the protagonists that the show is constantly asking us to believe are adult enough to be in charge, make their own choices, and take control of situations.

Even more annoying than that, when the team comes up with the (totally unnecessary) plot to steal a ship to get over the border, and Qrow protests, he is essentially told to fall in line or leave, because the team is going to do what they like no matter what he or anyone else says. It’s kinda weird how the show established Qrow as a longtime huntsman with experience both in the war against Salem and the world at large, made him a hub of knowledge and a mentor, had him shepherd the kids around, be the one doing the work in Haven, and then... expected us to just accept that Ruby is the leader and Qrow shouldn’t have a say in what the group does or doesn’t do. Like, I know they established his alcoholism as a big problem that made him unreliable, and I was angry at him about how he treated Ozpin (but the show didn’t treat Oz with any sympathy, leading me to think they expected us to view that as a good thing?) But regardless of his alcoholism, he’s the one with experience, he’s the one who knew Ironwood, he’s the adult. And having just established that the children were being irrational, selfish, and letting their emotions control them, I’m still more inclined to trust the man who got drunk under the affects of Apathy, and then got drunk knowing that he couldn’t do anything for the night (both bad instances that don’t mean he’s useless and his opinion shouldn’t matter,) then the children who can’t be apart for a day or two. Ruby demanding that he do whatever they want or leave is soooo weird.

While we see soldiers shaking as they face hordes of monsters, I want to see our main hero doing more than drinking tea and wondering if they should be doing something. While Ironwood is trying to take critical, life saving action against an immortal enemy, Ruby is doing nothing. While Jaune makes an ally out of Winter and realizes he doesn’t have much time to save a friend, Ruby is doing nothing. Oscar got tortured and now is going to try and make an effort to get help from one of Salem’s people, and Ruby is doing nothing.

Above the fact that she could be doing something and is choosing inaction to stay with her friend, the main problem with this in my opinion is that when you compare Ruby to Jaune, Yang, Oscar, Ozpin, May Marigold who is only supposed to be a side character, and even Whitley Schnee, she is currently less heroic. She seems more boring, she seems much less active, she seems less important, she seems less caring. The person that the show just went out of the way to make a villainous murderer (Ironwood) is doing more to stop Salem than our main protagonist. Ozpin, who the show has tried to push into a gray ‘suspicious’ category is doing more to stop Salem than our main protagonist. Whitley isn’t doing anything to stop Salem, but he was the only person in that mansion who did anything to help Nora and is doing more than our main protagonist.