#warning this post contains rwby bashing

[kitkatopinions]

LyricAnon🎶

Look I am forever going to love “Hero” even with its problems. But my newest on (well actually an old on I’m just bringing it up now) is the reference to Ironwood’s semblance.

In the song we get this line “Mettle I'll deploy”

Mettle holds the championship belt for worst semblance ever but it shouldn’t be in this song.

The way it’s stated makes it sound we should know what his semblance is and be excited that he’s going to use like if Yang or Ruby’s semblance is mentioned in song. In this sounds like the actual definition for mettle: a person's ability to cope well with difficulties or to face a demanding situation in a spirited and resilient way. Which, btw CRWBY, doesn’t sound as negative as they want it to sound

They mess up or rather fail to describe Mettle’s presence in correctly (shocker). Ironwood doesn’t have a willing option in regard to his semblance and it’s such a damaging one in its execution. It’s passive and questionably more dangerous than Qrow’s. But we wouldn’t know because it goes 100% unaddressed in universe. One reason...the main reason being are the writers being lazy hacks; and two it would make Ironwood look more sympathetic (to in bias viewers) cause his semblance is basically invisible background brainwashing and would call fault into how he is treated.

Last; and this is more of a...low defense of the Mettle ordeal. Given how semblances occurs I can kinda get that Ironwood got his late in life. Like probably after the Fall of Beacon giving the conversation the inner circle where having during volumes 2 and 3

 Agfdeheafh the semblance that the show writers wrote for James is the worst one in the show to date and that’s not to say that it was a horrible idea, but rather that it was a horrible idea for what they did with it. Which is nothing.

Ironwood’s semblance has some strong elements of horror in it, and could leave James with a sort of imposter syndrome. The semblance could launch very interesting narratives and continue on with the (horribly bungled imo) themes of choice, redemption, autonomy, trust, love, bravery, hope, not letting a part of you control you, the importance of a support system and sharing the load and relying on others... Honestly, the fact that James had this semblance and it wasn’t used to redeem him is so so so weird based on the groundwork they did give James and their own freaking morals we were supposed to get out of the story!

You’re right about how weird that song’s framing is. The wide disconnect and miscommunication between all players is just... At this point, it’s kind of destructive towards them. ‘The songs aren’t canon, we didn’t make Jeff Williams write that’ is what they said when fans thought the BMBLB song was queer baiting. So we know already that the song isn’t canon to James, but that’s an excuse imo. They clearly didn’t properly explain Ironwood’s semblance to Jeff Williams if that’s how he uses it in the song, like something Ironwood can turn on at will and is going to use, when it’s passive. And side note, you’re totally right that the CRWBY writers villainizing traits like ‘the ability to cope’ and ‘being resilient’ is really strange. It reminds me of how they’re villainizing feeling fear and taking precautions and then praising recklessness and being brash.

But, back on track, now we have things like the voice actor for James not knowing about Ironwood’s semblance until a fan told him. Extra communication could go a long way. I mean, that would be like Alan Rickman not knowing that Snape was meant to be a spy until someone told him during the filming of the Half-Blood Prince. This is something so freaking important to the character of Ironwood and they just forgot to mention it to the man supposed to bring life to the role. That is beyond weird.

Honestly, I think there are three reasons why Ironwood’s semblance was invented, but not put into practice in the actual show.

A. The first one you mentioned. I think the writers made ‘Mettle’ as a lazy excuse to rush ahead his ‘fall to villainy’ and using it to insist that they didn’t make an inconsistent character, they didn’t make a non convincing arc, fans just needed to do the extra homework and hear about Ironwood’s semblance that explains the whole thing. Them assassinating Ironwood’s character is easily hand waved now as the affects of his passive semblance at work, that the audience was supposed to view as some sort of easter egg that they can use to justify the story, and fill in the blanks the writers seemingly purposefully just left.

B. The second one you mentioned. They wanted Ironwood to be viewed as evil by the general fandom (and, well, they succeeded,) and knew that putting the semblance in the actual show would make him much much more sympathetic. You know, since he was at least partially seemingly mind controlled into his actions. Honestly, the way they just made Ironwood’s entire personality ‘evil for the sake of evil stupid manipulator who will bomb for no reason’ seems... Vindictive. It feels like they finished volume 7, started hearing fans complain that Ironwood shooting Oscar was out of character, took that as a personal insult, and then decided to get back at their critics by turning their favorite character into a monster. That’s just how it feels, though. There’s always a strong possibility that the writers just liked the idea in the moment, and didn’t care about the previous character, just wanted ‘Ironwood opposes Team RWBY,’ and plowed through it whether or not it made sense. I mean, that’s what they did when they gave lines originally meant for Nora to Yang when she argued with Ren, that’s what they did when they changed the focus of the Nora-Ren conflict from ‘Nora is trying to force a relationship that Ren isn’t currently ready for’ into ‘Nora is getting swallowed by a relationship she isn’t currently ready for,’ and that’s what they did when they had Cinder act like she’d never worked with a team before during the Cindy-Neo-Watts team up, and that’s what they did when they had Winter spout lines that misrepresented her character and stances during V7 and the first half of V8. Ironwood is just this on a larger scale imo. It didn’t matter at all what Ironwood was even up to last season, the writers were writing him in a bubble, based on whatever the hell happened to sound big and sort of cool in the moment. And they wanted us to see him as evil this season, so they couldn’t put his semblance into the narrative.

C. I honestly think it’s a partially a commitment issue. Currently, I can’t get this out of my head.

This is Ironwood’s VA, teasing a possible V9 return for Ironwood. They left his death open ended and ambiguous and they’ve done ‘oh they’re definitely dead’ things at the end of a season only to reveal in the next season that the villain we all thought had died was actually still alive and kicking before.

There’s every possibility that Ironwood will return, and I think it’s possible that they specifically left his semblance out of V8 not only because they wanted Ironwood to be evil this season and wanted Ruby to be an indisputable hero (failed but I think that was their intention) but also because they wanted to one hundred percent convince their audience that he is fully evil... Even if they don’t want him to be. If they want to, they can use his semblance to ‘redeem’ him and subvert expectations in V9. Or they might want to keep him a villain. So they couldn’t bring up his semblance in V8 at all if they didn’t know where they were going with this character. Is he dead? Will they redeem him? Will they keep him a villain? All of those three are options and it’s very possible that they specifically kept any mention of his semblance from the season so they could have the possibility of doing any of the above options if they wanted to. This is obviously really frustrating to me and I already am itching to get to V9 because I just have to see if they bring James back and if they actually do go into his semblance and try to redeem him and if that could maybe lead to Ironqrow moments. But yeah, this wound up being yet another long reply because I am so long winded, but I just wanted to hit on your last note there...

It is possible that Ironwood’s semblance was one he got in V3. That’s interesting and I never heard that theory before. It makes sense, but it does just make me want to groan, just because if Ironwood had gotten a semblance during that time of trauma, why didn’t so many other characters? My dislike for soft magic systems, my dislike for ill defined magic systems, and my dislike for sporadically used magic systems all come together to make RWBY my ultimate foil. XD

[kitkatopinions]

The scene with Penny and Winter talking before the transfer and Winter's still in her Volume 7 design makes me think they planned out that scene before anything else.

If so... Yikes. XD Every time I hear a ‘this was planned from the beginning’ or ‘this has been planned for awhile,’ it actually makes me feel like the writers are doing a worse job than if I thought it was a spur of the moment mistake, or a hurried choice. On one hand, I struggle to believe it any time someone tells me that, because I don’t trust CRWBY as far as I could throw them (I am very weak, so that would be like an inch,) so even if they confirmed that, I still would be going “but was it really?” But also because if they did have this stuff planned out for a long time, they really had a lot of time to either A. think twice and adjust their plans, or B. give this stuff the groundwork and development it needs.

In the case of Penny and Winter, there was buildup to be fair, don’t get me wrong. I think it’s plausible that they intended Penny to temp get the powers and then give them to Winter as she dies from as early as... Whenever they decided to bring Penny back. Certainly them having planned it as early as the concepting for V7 is believable, what with Penny and Winter interacting and seeming to have a connection in that season. Honestly, there are some weird ways this was executed (like having Winter willingly stand by everything Ironwood did until the bomb and then only get the powers once she acts like she’d never been the one suggesting martial law before Salem even announced she was crashing the party,) but really, the problem is that the concept was bad. Not ‘the concept of Winter getting the Maiden powers’ was bad, but ‘the concept of Winter being slotted to get the powers, Penny getting the powers, and then Penny dying and giving them to Winter’ was bad.

I feel like I don’t say that very often. Most of the time, when I criticize RWBY, I tend to see it as ‘even if I personally dislike this concept, it could’ve been done well,’ like with Ironwood. I really don’t like it, but if it had been done well, I feel like I could at least get behind it and enjoy part of it. But as for Penny’s death? I think that was just a very bad call, a bad concept. And Penny giving the Maiden powers to Winter is obviously tied up in the fact that she dies. I don’t just dislike it, it feels literally sloppy to kill off a character, bring her back after three other seasons where she’s only hinted at in one moment if I recall correctly (Ruby’s ‘combat ready’ moment in V5,) make her return lack emotional depth, and then just kill her off again.

There are some fans who have been saying “everyone calm down, Penny isn’t actually dead. The writers wouldn’t bring her back just to kill her permanently!” And like, I think they’re over-estimating CRWBY, but also... if the writers brought back Penny again, that would make her just like Loki from the MCU. Spoilers for that, btw.

But yeah, the boy died twice and then the MCU really thought anyone was worried he’d die for real again. They had successfully removed any tension surrounding Loki being in danger, because everyone knew he was such a fan favorite that it wasn’t a matter of ‘will the MCU kill him’ it was a matter of ‘if the MCU kills him again, how long do you think they’ll keep fans waiting before they drop him back in again?’ Loki dying became a giant meme and there was very little actual emotional risk for the audience anymore. Even the most hardcore Loki stans (which I’ll admit, I was,) heard he died in Avengers Infinity War, and were like “Oh, will we get some cool gifs? Will his hair look good?” If Penny really is dead for real this time, that was a dumb move in my opinion for obvious reasons. If they brought Penny back again, no one will ever take stakes seriously in RWBY anymore.

Winter getting the Maiden powers from Penny would require her to die, which was a very sloppy move to me. If it was planned early (which might not be the case) that’d just make me feel worse about it. XD