#specifically bc i was self-deprecating recently in a way that i was (not deliberately but subconsciously) hoping my interlocutor wld deny

[aeide-thea]

was thinking again abt that post that's like, when yr self-deprecating it forces yr interlocutor 2 either tacitly agree with you or else derail the convo 2 break out into a whole cheerleading routine, and neither role is actually all that great to get voluntold for…!

[sednonamoris]

hey.. i saw that post.. about.. thunderstruck.. and that chapter.. literally left me as a pile of dust on my bed.. do you wanna.. talk about it.. because i will listen..

ohohohhehehee…….. spoilers for ch. 23 of ghost story

starting off strong with the storm/water imagery ⛈️ admittedly ch. 1 starts with a storm bc i had a Vision for a very vibes-based chapter that then ofc spiraled into the ghost story you know and love today. then water and specifically storms became the connecting thread for most of the significant moments in the development of john and ghost’s relationship so OF COURSE i went ham. not only the storm raging when they finally admit their feelings (and fuck lol) but also the town names as they get closer and closer to that resolution. it’s a clean slate, a baptism, a rebirth. a reckoning. something magnetic and powerful and chaotic but also completely natural is exactly what the bond between them is, and the added detail of john being terrified of drowning makes it extra juicy delicious

thennn we have to talk about my close personal friend lottie reed!! 💘 i don’t describe her in too much detail but it was important to me that she shared some physical similarities with john. wiry and slim, dark hair, light eyes. it adds a layer of Insanity to his irrationally jealous response to literally everything she does. i had a blast peppering in vague details about ghost’s past with her, but to lay it all out: they met in tumbleweed when ghost was making their name as the ghost rider of new austin and had a very sweet teenage summer romance. lottie was sheltered by her parents and loved the element of danger ghost brought to her life, and ghost was charmed by how clever and genuine lottie was. when lottie’s parents set up her engagement with melvin reed it was partly bc they’d been working on it for a while and partly bc they wanted to keep her away from ghost. lottie tried to convince ghost to run away with her before the wedding, but her dad got there first and offered a sum of cash that ghost took to cut contact and leave lottie and melvin alone. (when ghost fled new austin with the money, they very quickly found themself in the predicament we see in chapter 1.) what i like about their relationship is that however you read ghost’s gender, there’s an element of forbidden romance there. ghost doesn’t get back in touch with lottie until ch. 23, which gave lottie plenty of time to come to terms with what happened and find joy of her own after melvin’s death. he wasn’t cruel, but they weren’t close. ghost is lucky she’s so kind, though, because they’ve been a pretty shit friend/ex lol

last thing i prommy but the devotion and the deliberate choosing between these two makes me craaaazy 😵‍💫 they love each other!! so much!! aaaaahhhh!! when john asks that rhetorical question - it was always gonna be you and me, wasn’t it? - it comes after being so jealous and then taking that jealousy out in every toxic way he can think of when he and ghost go through those towns and sell the horses but it feels so inevitable bc it is. he isn’t asking ghost he’s being almost self-deprecating, bc everything he’s ever done was always just buying time against feelings held for so long but only fully realized recently. god. anyways,,

THANK YOU SO MUCH for following this story and being so kind and giving me license to ramble abt my fav things there’s like a million more but i promise i’ll shut up now 💞💞💞💞

[itsclydebitches]

so ironwood was confirmed to be dead by Miles in a $42 cameo session, where the person who bought it had asked for "comforting words to soothe our anguished souls" bc she was an ironwood fan and wanted a pick-me-up after that devastating finale. miles' response was to essentially mock his fans (it really sounded like that, especially since he ended with "thank you jimmy, may you rest in pieces, crushed beneath the weight of the kingdom you tried so hard to hold up above your head."

apparently the VA, jason rose, confirmed it in DMs w the same fan who sent in the cameo ask. so like, quite apart from how rude and disrespectful it was of miles to make a mockery of james in a cameo where he'd been specifically asked for comforting words regarding the character, ngl but i think that if you have to confirm a MAJOR CHARACTER is dead outside of canon bc you failed to actually show it on screen.....you've failed as a writer. and also that kind of thing shouldn't be confirmed in an expensive and exclusive interview lmao like how hard would it have been to just talk about good aspects to james' character instead of calling him a dickbag and saying 'don't do a genocide, guys!!'

it reeks of unprofessionalism and also it just makes everything surrounding ironwood's character arc even worse since apparently 'his fate was sealed' from the moment he was introduced to the show.

Me, who received the first Moderna shot yesterday (🎉 🎉 🎉 ): Ugh I feel too crappy to answer asks today

Me, upon hearing this news: You know, I have suddenly found an untapped source of energy

Okay, all joking aside, I watched the vid and it’s definitely a lot. I don’t have any information about the request itself except for what Miles mentions in the recording, so I can’t speak to what the fan may have been looking for outside of that, but some highlights include: 

“This is for the filth in my degenerate discord server” - Yeah, that’s how a lot of us (fans) talk about ourselves. It sounds like someone who really enjoys Ironwood and makes joking, self-deprecating comments about their love of a character. That’s familiar to me and speaks to the expectation that they hoped for something other than what they got. At least, if I’d sent in a request like that I wouldn’t be happy with the vid, but that’s obviously my own perspective and not this fan’s. I’d be very curious to know their own thoughts though... 

“Sometimes a character we like doesn’t make it, does something we don’t agree with... or both!” - That is indeed how characters work! The real question is whether their death/actions make sense within the story, which is not addressed here. Many fans who enjoyed Ironwood don’t have a problem with him dying or turning into a villain  — I’ve been honest about my acceptance of either/both, regardless of personal preference, provided it was written well  — and that was always the issue. Not what happened to Ironwood, but how it happened. 

“James Ironwood’s fate was sealed the moment his character was conceived many years ago.” - Personally, I don’t believe this. RT makes a lot of grand, sweeping statements about what’s been planned “for years” or “since the beginning” and too often we’re faced with writing that directly contradicts that. Though it’s unlikely we’ll ever know the truth, neither option paints the writing team in a good light. Either they’re straight up lying about what’s been planned (or twisting tossed out possibilities into assurances after the fact. For example, someone once suggested Ironwood might become a villain somehow at some point and now that’s presented as, ‘We’ve deliberately been working towards this specific ending for years’), or they’re being truthful and just... can’t write what they want to write. It doesn’t sound good when a writer says, ‘I’ve planned this the whole time’ and a good chunk of the fandom responds, ‘Then why couldn’t we see that planning this whole time?’ 

“When James was introduced we intentionally made him look like kind of a big dickbag, but then we realized that dickbag had a heart and was also half metal, and that was pretty cool!” - I don’t even know what to make of this. I’ve deconstructed his introduction before, but to summarize here, he’s presented as no more of a “dickbag” than Ozpin who may not be doing enough to protect the people, Winter who allowed herself to get taunted into a fight on campus, or Qrow who deliberately started that fight while drunk. Glynda is the only one who is arguably innocent here. The implication seems to be that obviously Ironwood became a villain because “we intentionally made him look like kind of a big dickbag” but then... does that mean Qrow will become a villain too someday?? 

The comments about them realizing he had a heart and was half metal just speak to that lack of planning. No, you obviously didn’t plan this downfall from the start if you “realized” something as basic as him caring for others partway through writing him and then allowed that care to drive his character for so long that the decent into villainy read as OOC, rather than inevitable. You obviously weren’t writing him with a backstory that influenced his character  — of which his semblance is a major part  — if you “realized” he was half-metal... whenever that happened. The fact that we never saw that backstory, or the semblance on screen, or returned to his half-metal nature outside of a ‘That’s coding for evilness’ theme again speaks to the fact that either a) none of this was actually planned or b) the execution is seriously lacking here. 

“Let us all take a moment to thank General James Ironwood for his service to the Kingdom of Atlas, but... at the end of the day, don’t do a genocide [laughs]” - I’m having trouble articulating why I dislike this. I’m really too tired to be unpacking this right now (lol), but it has something to do with  — as you say, anon  — that mocking tone. Something else to do with the surge of purity culture in recent years. The tone feels like it’s tied up in an unsaid, ‘You like the character who tried to commit genocide?’ accusation when, you know, he’s a fictional character. People can like characters who do bad things. More significantly, he’s a fictional character Miles wrote. There’s something particularly distasteful about writers who feel like they’re laughing at fans for liking something when they created the thing with the intent that we would like it. And many did. So they gave attention, time, money, passion, etc. to the work and then when that part of the work finished, the creator appears to make light of that investment? Idk, I’m speaking about more than just this one line  — the tone of the vid as a whole, really — but it feels much less like “You enjoy Ironwood! 😄” and more “You enjoy Ironwood...  😬” Like yeah, fans enjoyed the character that you wanted them to enjoy who you wrote to have a heart and then suddenly commit genocide instead. There’s definitely nothing complicated in all that. 

“Thank you, Jimmy. May you rest in pieces crushed beneath the weight of the kingdom you tried so hard to hold above your head. Amen.” - All of the above x2 with the added issue that this was never shown on screen. Miles presents Ironwood’s arc like this seven year long plan when in fact they couldn’t even manage the basic move of telling the audience what happened to the character in his final hour. The fact that a fan had to pay to find out whether Ironwood is dead is not a gold star for the writing. 

Every time the RWBY crew speaks about the story in supplementary material the canon itself gets worse. Hyping Clover/Qrow on social media pushes the canon closer to queerbaiting. We’re way closer to that with them hyping Blake/Yang. Long ago comments about Ozpin’s cane suddenly make Volume 8 a retcon. A Q&A about Ironwood’s semblance makes his arc a thousand times more confusing about how we’re supposed to read his character  — to name just a few. Now this. When a friend first told me this info had dropped I thought, “Thank god. He’s not coming back then. I don’t want them writing Ironwood’s character anymore,” but really... can we believe anything the crew says? “Crushed beneath the weight of his kingdom” doesn’t mean Ironwood won’t show up in Volume 9 if it’s a spirit world type adventure. It doesn’t mean he won’t show up three years from now with even more metal in his body and a, “We said he was crushed, not that he was dead ;)” explanation. Hell, it doesn’t even mean he won’t show up with no explanation at all because, as established, what’s said in supplementary works and what happens on screen are two entirely separate things. Iffy as the vid may come across to those who did like Ironwood, I was initially happy that it at least gave us some closure... but now I’m not even sure about that.