#and then the flipside. the warren haters. you make a post about him and. my god the biphobia in that fandom.

[senseiwu]

From what I can tell the reason why so many people in the fandom latched onto Ronin is bc he easily would have fit into the wildly popular trope of 'gruff morally grey selfish world wise loner who only wants money has the walls around his heart worn down by getting roped into the shenanigans of a magical child with parent issues and realizes too late that he now cares about said children more than he has about anything since his tragic backstory happened', but the writers for whatever reason didn't commit to that trope fully, leaving Ronin in a weird limbo between 'enemy turned trusted ally and pseudo-parental figure with some morally dubious habits played for laughs' (helping the Ninja to his own detriment even after his betrayal in S5, teaming up with Jay and the others to fight Nadakhan in the final fight of S6(if you count S6 at all which I personally don't since it was all erased), being trusted enough to help the team move into their new base and dragging Nya out of a fight she couldn't win instead of leaving her to save himself in S7, all of his involvement in the Wu's Teas shorts which are totally cannon and Tommy can fight me over that) and 'mid-level scumbag the main characters deal with when the world isn't about to end' (literally hunting the ninja and hacking Zane in a horror movie worth scene in S6 (again, if you count S6 as relevant to anything after it), his whole thing in S14 and the out of nowhere animosity Lloyd and the rest of the team had for him despite his last appearance being him getting injured to help them fight the Vermilion (not saying he didn't do anything to earn that animosity in between appearances, but to my knowledge his only other appearance was getting caught by the SoG in S9. I haven't seen all of S12 or S13 tho, so I could have easily missed something).

Another huge contributing factor in much of his fandom love was that the 'magical child with parent issues' he seemed to be connecting with was Nya right when it was revealed that she had powers all along and was basically neglected by all the adults in her life who knew and could have told her, which felt like even more of a kick in the teeth since the entire reason she became Samurai X was bc she felt left behind by the guys and useless stuck on the Bounty not being a real member of the team. Combine that with Wu's kind of cryptic and indirect way of teaching her with the bucket thing not being a very good way of teaching the typically straightforward Nya, and Ronin coming in and being able to help her progress with her powers more quickly really seemed to lean into Ronin fitting into the 'unintentional and massively under-qualified but mostly well meaning father figure/crime uncle' trope (just want to make it clear that I'm not trying to say Ronin is a better teacher than Wu in any way, just that Nya seemed to figure things out better with being directly told to look at things a different way than with the bucket thing which I don't think will ever not bug me)

And, in a way, Ronin in S14 was both in character and out of character, since him being an ally or the villain of the day seems to be decided by a coin flip. It's like Schrodinger's characterization.

But yeah, tl;dr all of the appeal of Ronin as a character is that he had the potential to fit into a popular trope, the fandom took that and ran with it, and then for whatever reason the writers didn't commit to that trope but by that point he had been firmly cemented in the minds of many fans as 'crime uncle'. But that's just what I think happened

That makes sense, I s'pose. I'm not gonna be mad at people for liking him, he's just a fictional character, but I just.... can't bring myself to. I do appreciate that he has helped out, of course. That was very good of him (and yes, I do count Skybound as relevant. Even if the events got erased, they still acted how they would have, if that makes sense?). But I'm not usually a fan of morally grey characters, with a few exceptions (Morro and the main Sky Pirates other than Nadakhan, I don't know if Glutinous counts) I generally love the good guys. And I just... I can't get past the thing with how he was gonna take the sword, and ESPECIALLY not that freaking scene with Zane. That was horrifying to watch, and had it happened anywhere other than Skybound, I wouldn't blame Zane if he never trusted Ronin again. And then there's the part where he may have brought Zane and Pixal to Chen.... (I know that's not canon, it's from Shadow of Ronin, but...... Zane... my boy...)

It's interesting to see how he might play into a story, but that's about it for me, personally.