#nevermind the ableism that they threw at ironwood like these writers don't care about marginalised people

[dragynkeep]

Ironwood: *Provides Yang with a prosthetic arm, Immediately releases the heroes from the arrest, lays all his cards on the table at once, trust them to keep a world-changing tool in their posession, upgrades the their weapons and gear, promotes them all to professional huntsmen*

QRWBY & JNOR: Imma pretend I didn't see that, I don't like this dude's vibes, he shady

Emerald: *Manipulates the heroes by putting up a friendly front, kills Penny, traumatizing Ruby and Pyrrha, helps orchestrate the fall of Beacon that entailed hundreds of casualties, takes part in the fall of Haven, assists Cinder in trying to kill Penny (again) and stop her from launching Amity like a day before she joins the team at the eleventh hour, doing little to nothing to regain their trust*

RWBY & JNOR a few hours later: awww she mad haha welcome to the team Em

The fact that ~Emerald, who cause the deaths of countless innocents, Penny, Pyrrha, indirectly led to Yang losing her arm, Weiss nearly dying, attacked Penny AGAIN, and was with Salem for over half of the invasion of Atlas that killed more countless people-

was welcomed far quicker than the man who literally helped RWBY every step of the way, put his upmost trust in them by giving them their licenses, new weapons, housed them, trusted them completely with the plan with no secrets, and even listened to them up until they literally went behind his back and their lying was exposed, is my villain origin story.

The fact that the heroes were shown as justified in their reactions to Ozpin, who didn't even do half the shit they did, while painting Ironwood as irrational and should be lied to when he'd done nothing to justify that beyond the American white writers getting scared that a shut down country reeling from a terrorist attack would enforce a curfew, is aggravating.

And it shows because so many people before V8 were actually on Ironwood's side, or at least pointed out that RWBY were being hypocrites and not being held accountable by the narrative! So the writers went "We'll just make him stupid evil and a genocidal general so everyone who sided with him in the previous volume was wrong to do so".

Like, can we all agree they just fucked up writing actual nuance and grey morality already? It's far easier than trying to justify their dogshit writing.