#(Someday I'll deliver that monster to the dash)

[livestosave]

Hi sorry to bother you but you seem well versed in rwby. What are you feelings for James? I write side stories and looking for input. I love Qrow....regardless of the drinking but some of the other characters I'm having problems coming up with extra content.

Alrighty Nonnie. I've had some thoughts on how to answer this, quite a few. And really, the challenge for me in it is...I have so many thoughts on James. Mostly, that his arc was a damned shame and a damned waste of a great, amazing character.

Without hesitation, James Ironwood was my favorite character in RWBY from the moment he stepped into frame in V2. This was a man with so much warmth in him, who wasn't afraid to ask for something to believe in from his friend and leader...who retreated in an argument rather than let his size make anyone uncomfortable. A man who disqualified a girl with such sympathy, not telling her that she was lying, or that she was wrong. James never showed anything but a worried protectiveness in the early volumes, and that thread maintained through his spotted appearances in Volumes 4 & 5.

James full on bowed to Weiss when he saw her at the Schnee mansion, James supported her publicly after her outburst at the fundraiser.

And then we get to Volume 7, and despite everything we're primed for, everything we expect, this man laughs off the stealing of an airship, with such warmth. He extends trust to the kids, lets them keep the relic, gives them board and upgrades, is open and honest with them at every step, trusting them - despite the fact he has no real reason to - with secrets that could topple nations, because he has faith in them. He lets them yell at him, snark him, and takes it with a weary sigh and an admittance that they're right.

James is a man who is a natural defender, a knight in shining armor. A paladin. He wants a cause to fight for, and people to defend. He wants to see the best in people. He wants to be proven right, in spite of an obvious streak of paranoia that tells him otherwise. He might fight with his friends, but when push comes to shove, he hugs Qrow because, no matter what they each said in Vale because they were upset, Qrow is his friend.

Jame looks tired, has grown the beard, because he is giving so much of himself to this fight. To trying to hold things together and find a solution when the one man who he thought had a plan died. And then when that man was revealed not to have one? James still tried. Until Salem was at his door, he had confidence they could find a solution, a way forward. And even when she cornered him in his office, battered, weary, broken in his own ways...even then he scorned her. Even then he chose to stand against her. He chose to try and find some plan rather than give in. A way to save some people because he couldn't save them all.

Ultimately, I love James because he is both a perfect Tin Man allusion - a man losing pieces of himself to his need to fulfill his duty - and because he is a fairy tale knight. When so much of RWBY is based on stories and fairytales, James is such an archetype of the genre, and I love that about him. At his heart, he's a good man. And what they did to him will always break my heart for the corruption they perpetrated against his character. He could have fallen so many ways...but not that fast. Not that way. Not to be that.