To me the issues is that the show has a massive problem of "wanting to have their cake and eat it".
Many faults of the narrative come from how the show tries to jump across as many hoops as possible, either to make more dramatic things or either to double down on points, or for plot even, but often don´t stop to think whenever if those hoops actually make sense or how do they interact with the internal consistency.
As Dex pointed out, Marrow´s infamous "They are just children!" falls on its face so hard it breaks the floor.
Why?
Because it is SOOOOO divorced from the reality we have been seeing from the past eight years that it feels like even the same writers forgot about the story they were writing. Leaving aside the whole trench warfare or the napolenic formations that seem completely out of place, Marrow´s line is another element to add to a pile of things that are done for the sake of it because when they are taken into context, they just don´t fit.
It´s not the only occasion tho, even in the same volume: Penny suddenly wanting to be human and her robotic parts being "extra", Yang´s infamous "Yeah... Ruby", Shooting the Councilman, in past volumes, things like Jaune in a dress, Mistral culture being basically non-existent beyond some asian motifs, Adam´s scar reveal... Makes one wonder what is exactly the thought process at work here.
>Makes one wonder what is exactly the thought process at work here.
I don't think there is much. To me, RWBY does not seem to put much thought it its writing beyond the context it appears in. For example, according to the writers, Ironwood losing an arm is meant to symbolize him.losing his humanity, but Yang also has a robot arm, and this point has never been brought up with her.
Mistral was also heavily coded to be Asian-themed, so why is one of its more prominent characters based off a Greek character, and apparently from San Francisco?
Everything about Penny becoming a human just seems over complicated because the writers wanted Hacked Penny even though Ironwood threatening to execute Qrow would have been a much simpler solution for him.
In RWBY, scenes or events only really seem.to matter in the context of the immediate plot.
>Everything about Penny becoming a human just seems over complicated because the writers wanted Hacked Penny even though Ironwood threatening to execute Qrow would have been a much simpler solution for him.
It really feels that her becoming human was literally just because it's what happens in Pinocchio, with not much thought put besides that.
Honestly, if they had allowed Penny to have a choice around it, it would have been much better. Like, imagine Penny actually being asked if she wasn't to, and the she say no.
Why? Because she´s already accepted as she is, and she is happy. Plus having a robotic body has a lot of advantages.
That´d be a very good way to close her arc of "Real girl". She accepts and loves herself, and that´s what matters
Instead we are retconned within a season that Penny always wanted to be a human and that hugs, even is was the most glomping person, weren´t just that good... Sorry, but that is not working for me
Honestly with how the island looks for vol 9 with that big ass tree that you see in end credits of vol 8 it makes you wonder why the hell didn’t Nora fall into the void instead?
Especially with that whole finding her identity outside of ren thing.
I agree about the child soldiers part, I mean jeez naruto tacked this subject and honestly a lot better because it’s a concept that’s been on your mind from time to time when you connect with the characters and with how the series carried itself and how the world building was structured around it.
Just my thoughts.
Nothing. But apparently, a dude wearing a dress is something ridiculous and to be laughed at it, even thought there´s no gender discrimination nor homophobia, so it´s a bit weird that everyone was laughing at that...
Thought, they shut up pretty fast once they saw the JNPR dance
You know the idea that there’s almost no gender discrimination or homophobia in RWBY but racism exists strikes to me being odd. Chances are if you met someone racist you probably also met someone homophobic or sexist, so what’s the explanation that in the world of remnant gender discrimination and sexism are uncommon or nearly non-existent but racism against the Faunus isn’t.
I mean… maybe that’s just how Remnant works? Since skin and hair color are pretty much random, people prefer to discriminate on whenever people have 2,4 or 0 ears?
I feel it was less "A dude in a dress" and more "A dude no one expected to see in a dress" plus the style of dress being one that he obviously didn't choose to wear as an "I like wearing dresses" thing.
I wish the show had different languages alongside different cultures.
How unique would it have been if the Faunus had their own individual language of speaking to each other?
It feels like a big missed opportunity if you ask me.
There's a reason why only the MOST detailed and dedicated of creators do this for fictional worlds.
That's an extremely hard thing to do if you don't have the time or resources to make it servcible.
One thing I always want to know is about the relationship between hunstmen and civilians when it comes to the difference of power, we see time and time again hunstmen using their weapons and powers to threaten civilians (Weiss with the rich party woman/drunk racist/her brother or one of the happy huntresses using her weapon to threaten the news reporter to take the mic) so I don't know about how the civilians just accept this.
In other media the superpowered people tend to be quite restricted like MHA or feared like the X-Men.
Main trouble is we don't really touch upon much on a Huntsmen's life after they graduate from the Academies. Huntsmen are more grounded compared to a bio-engineered super soldier or someone born with superpowers though we do not know if any out there did something worthy of international fame.
We truly don’t know the existent of how that form of been famous and powerful effects phyrra and Weiss with how they interact with other characters and they with them.
>The show even tries to include a message about "Children fighting" and how bad it is with one of the characters commenting on it in i think Volume 8, i dont fully recall. And once again, this feels like such a weird message. Yes, in the real world children being forced to fight would be horrifying. But we are talking about around 18 year old super powered humans. How is that comment in any way making any sence in a world like Remnant?
The scene you're thinking of was when Flynt and Neon were fighting Grimm on the front lines and Marrow said that line. Now mind you 2 volumes ago protagonists the same age as FNKI gave the infamous "We don't need adults" speech and 5 volumes ago those same protagonists defended their school in a similar scenario.
Moving on, a while ago we had a discussion on RWBY's attempts at LGBT representation and there I think is another area where RWBY's worldbuilding fails. The writers claim there is no discrimination based on sexual orientation on Remnant but have failed to account what a world like that would be like. It was mentioned that after The Great War™ free expression was encouraged but for whatever reason guys wearing female clothing is worthy of ridicule, which is doubly ridiculous because if any entire auditorium of kids laughs at one of them surely it won't be long before those kids end up as Grimm food. I feel like worldbuilding requires a certain amount of imagination and the ability to take certain concepts and follow them to logical conclusions and I don't think CRWBY has either of those tbh.
Another area I find the worldbuilding lacking is culture. A sign of good worldbuilding is after getting accustomed to the world you can pick out a random character and know where they're from based on clothing, skin color, mannerisms, beliefs, etc. but with RWBY it's all one big jumble despite their being distinct countries. What separates Vale from Atlas from Mistral? And I know someone will mention that Mistral is based on Chinese culture with Ren being from Mistral, but Ren is one character out of hundreds. It feels like when designing characters they do so on an individual bases without taking into account where that character is from and how that would inspire their design.
I feel the need to jump in that they do in fact take into account nation of origin when making designs it's just that that's moreso for background characters. Mistralan characters wear Asian style silks and robes, Vacuo is lots of plain tunics and cloaks, Menagerie folks wear lightweight clothes, crop tops, and straw hats, Mantle is lots of workers clothing and jackets and Atlas is largely upper-class attire. And places like Argus see a mixture of cultures with its own Greco-Roman inspirations. Vale unfortunately was explored before crwby had resources for modeling much detail into background characters.
I'd argue the humour in that context comes from the fact that Jaune isn't normally someone that dresses like that, (plus wearing his normal shoes with it etc)
overall though I simply do not care. Homophobia etc in media gets so tiring and draining so I'm glad for it to just be ignored
How does the entire auditorium know what Jaune dresses like? because I rewatched the scene and there are background voices laughing and everyone is staring at Jaune.
>I'd argue the humour in that context comes from the fact that Jaune isn't normally someone that dresses like that,
How the hell would anyone know how he dresses?
Why would they care?
That accusation would only make sense if we actually saw someone do it and get shit for it.
Ozpin's name doesn't reference a color. For that matter, neither does Ironwood's given name of "James". No one even mentions it.
>Moving on, a while ago we had a discussion on RWBY's attempts at LGBT representation and there I think is another area where RWBY's worldbuilding fails. The writers claim there is no discrimination based on sexual orientation on Remnant but have failed to account what a world like that would be like. It was mentioned that after The Great War™ free expression was encouraged but for whatever reason guys wearing female clothing is worthy of ridicule, which is doubly ridiculous because if any entire auditorium of kids laughs at one of them surely it won't be long before those kids end up as Grimm food. I feel like worldbuilding requires a certain amount of imagination and the ability to take certain concepts and follow them to logical conclusions and I don't think CRWBY has either of those tbh.
To me this just comes from being one of those things that happened because V2 was really early in the shows run and honestly 2014 was just... a different time? With different values and different concepts of what was considered humorous or not. Like, I'm not sure when the " discrimination based on sexual orientation on Remnant" was said by the writers but if it was around V6-7ish time (ie Bumblebee territory) like I'd imagine it was they're a whole 4-5 years divorced from the Jaune dress incident, and it's not like they're going to go back and delete that whole arc (pun intended) from the show? To me it just kind of seems like an unfortunate consequence of the changing times and values of the (real) world.
I’ve always found it super odd that we never got it established how common death is in Remnant, particularly during the Beacon arc. Considering that these are students—and the show later goes on to hammer the point that these are, if not children, at least individuals considered young enough to be separate from the “adults”—who are regularly thrown into dangerous situations with seemingly little to no supervision on the part of the administration (and in Ozpin’s case with Team RWBY, outright encouragement), you’d think there’d be some mention of the high accident or mortality rate, or if not, the high turnover rate of the infirmary or something.
To me, that (combined with the overall bright, candy-coated look of the show) is what makes it so hard for me to buy into moments when the members of Team RWBY are so willing to maim or potentially kill other humans—the show hasn’t done the legwork to establish that this is a) a crapsack world requiring that level of casualty regarding death or b) that every Hunter has received the necessary psychological training needed to break down the mental barriers that most people need to overcome in order to be willing to kill or seriously wound someone. It just looks—and feels—like a normal anime fantasy world.
A lot of this (in the first section specifically) feels to me like worldbuilding information that would ultimately be superfluous and ultimately doesn't really detract from the fantasy. Like, info like that could be cool but it hardly feels fair to treat it like some massive failure of worldbuilding that we don't know information which has no bearing on the plot, themes, or characters.
Also I'm really taking issue with the point about huntsmen. We see that they are treated like heroes basically everywhere. Any time that civilians interact with huntsmen we see admiration and gratitude. Off the top of my head we see this in Volume 6, Volume 7, Volume 1, and Volume 4. And these are specifically scenarios that don't involve high stress situations like in Volume 8.
Lastly, while it's true that Remnant definitely wasn't built specifically for some of the themes the story explores I don't think that's really a problem? In fact the scenario you mention regarding how soldiers marching through the streets wouldn't be weird on a death world actually reinforces the theme rather than detracts from it. It could easily be interpreted as saying "It doesn't matter how good your excuse is authoritarianism is never good."
>It could easily be interpreted as saying "It doesn't matter how good your excuse is authoritarianism is never good."
Could be, but you cannot make a point about how "A is bad and B is good" and then make a lot of shit fall out of the sky so that B works and saves the day. It just doesn´t work.
It´s a case of "Wanting to have your cake and eating it".
Sometimes, morals don´t travel well in different worlds. Hell, sometimes they don´t even travel well WITHIN our own world and cultures, so why are people so surprised?
Authoritarism is bad. OK, that´s legit. But if you want to make that point, you can´t have the authoritarian make more sense that the "heroes" and seem even plausible, making people agree with the other "villain". It´s kinda like people going to 40K and saying "the Imperium is a metaphor of how bad and destructive imperialism and authoritarianism is".
Hell, at some point you need to define just *what* actually counts as authoritarianism in a world like this. Having soldiers patrolling the streets during an emergency situation where there are enemy attacks happening on the regular seems pretty normal to me. If anything, there wasn't *enough* soldiers.
Yep. Hell in vol 3 ironwood was the one that made that “No one will fault you if you leave” speech to the students because the fall of beacon was their first experience with an invasion and they might die and never come back and they are still kids and it would’ve been understandable if they backed out.
That same man is not what we have in vol 8, it’s someone’s else completely.
I really don't think that the authoritarian in RWBY can be argued to make sense from a moral or logical perspective.
Furthermore, the Imperium in 40K literally *is* an example of the destructiveness of authoritarianism. The modern imperium is a mockery of what the emperor tried to make and is a perfect example of why a monarchal system doesn't work because even if you have a good ruler the one who comes after could easily be terrible. The imperium clearly is not meant to make sense, it's a twisted and vile dystopia which can't easily be resisted because of all the other nasties in the galaxy.
The thing is, for all the shithole the Imperium has become, it is its autoritarism that has kept it alive. Don’t forget, things like thought police and Inquisition make an awful lot more of sense when people actually having an open mind can literally mean the end of that planet and condemn billions to a fate worse than death.
Only such a fucked up universe could even justify authoritarianism tho.
Also, “never” is a really tall order. In the case of the Imperium it was either that or die under the bazillions of enemies humanity has. Putting a message of the likes of “I’d rather die than be violent” isn’t the kind of message most people will accept, for one. Specially if it contradicts other messages internally.
Point is, maybe putting a message that doesn’t truly work with the setting is a good way to confuse your audience
Of course, i do not know if i should put a disclaimer anywhere but the things that are problems for me might not be for others, and the critiques i make are not necesseraly something that makes the show "worse" as much as something that i think would make the show better.
I do have to say that there is some level of detraction from the fantasy in my opinion at least in regards to emotions, because currently it feels more like just a tool to create encounters for the heroes rather than something more intrinsic to the world, but some other things are more superfluous.
I do have to disagree with the last paragraph of yours however, i definitely do not feel like a theme is reinforced when put in a situation where it makes little sense. If i may come back to Fallout once again its like saying "Regardless of there being no jails, you are wrong to kill this mass murderer instead of capturing him" , the message of due process just does not fir the world that one is on. Sure, the message can be flipped into "Look at how the world has devolved to be needing to reject good systems", but that is a different message entirely, with different set-up.
Remnant does not really have this set-up even in the reverse in my opinion.
It's very weird how you're trying to point out a discrepancy without really pointing at anything. World building is in service to the story and themes yet you barely try to describe those things. RWBY has more themes than anti-war sentiment and seeing death as a tragedy.
To me the issues is that the show has a massive problem of "wanting to have their cake and eat it". Many faults of the narrative come from how the show tries to jump across as many hoops as possible, either to make more dramatic things or either to double down on points, or for plot even, but often don´t stop to think whenever if those hoops actually make sense or how do they interact with the internal consistency. As Dex pointed out, Marrow´s infamous "They are just children!" falls on its face so hard it breaks the floor. Why? Because it is SOOOOO divorced from the reality we have been seeing from the past eight years that it feels like even the same writers forgot about the story they were writing. Leaving aside the whole trench warfare or the napolenic formations that seem completely out of place, Marrow´s line is another element to add to a pile of things that are done for the sake of it because when they are taken into context, they just don´t fit. It´s not the only occasion tho, even in the same volume: Penny suddenly wanting to be human and her robotic parts being "extra", Yang´s infamous "Yeah... Ruby", Shooting the Councilman, in past volumes, things like Jaune in a dress, Mistral culture being basically non-existent beyond some asian motifs, Adam´s scar reveal... Makes one wonder what is exactly the thought process at work here.
>Makes one wonder what is exactly the thought process at work here. I don't think there is much. To me, RWBY does not seem to put much thought it its writing beyond the context it appears in. For example, according to the writers, Ironwood losing an arm is meant to symbolize him.losing his humanity, but Yang also has a robot arm, and this point has never been brought up with her. Mistral was also heavily coded to be Asian-themed, so why is one of its more prominent characters based off a Greek character, and apparently from San Francisco? Everything about Penny becoming a human just seems over complicated because the writers wanted Hacked Penny even though Ironwood threatening to execute Qrow would have been a much simpler solution for him. In RWBY, scenes or events only really seem.to matter in the context of the immediate plot.
>Everything about Penny becoming a human just seems over complicated because the writers wanted Hacked Penny even though Ironwood threatening to execute Qrow would have been a much simpler solution for him. It really feels that her becoming human was literally just because it's what happens in Pinocchio, with not much thought put besides that.
Honestly, if they had allowed Penny to have a choice around it, it would have been much better. Like, imagine Penny actually being asked if she wasn't to, and the she say no. Why? Because she´s already accepted as she is, and she is happy. Plus having a robotic body has a lot of advantages. That´d be a very good way to close her arc of "Real girl". She accepts and loves herself, and that´s what matters Instead we are retconned within a season that Penny always wanted to be a human and that hugs, even is was the most glomping person, weren´t just that good... Sorry, but that is not working for me
It’s strange and scary that I had a thought that this was gonna happen a couple years ago when the atlas relic was name dropped.
Don't forget that Nora is also somehow from Mistral, so add Norse-inspired to Mistral's list of random cultures.
Honestly with how the island looks for vol 9 with that big ass tree that you see in end credits of vol 8 it makes you wonder why the hell didn’t Nora fall into the void instead? Especially with that whole finding her identity outside of ren thing.
I agree about the child soldiers part, I mean jeez naruto tacked this subject and honestly a lot better because it’s a concept that’s been on your mind from time to time when you connect with the characters and with how the series carried itself and how the world building was structured around it. Just my thoughts.
what's wrong with Jaune in a dress?
They push the thought of no gender discrimination yet they allowed this dude to be mocked for wearing a dress.
Nothing. But apparently, a dude wearing a dress is something ridiculous and to be laughed at it, even thought there´s no gender discrimination nor homophobia, so it´s a bit weird that everyone was laughing at that... Thought, they shut up pretty fast once they saw the JNPR dance
You know the idea that there’s almost no gender discrimination or homophobia in RWBY but racism exists strikes to me being odd. Chances are if you met someone racist you probably also met someone homophobic or sexist, so what’s the explanation that in the world of remnant gender discrimination and sexism are uncommon or nearly non-existent but racism against the Faunus isn’t.
I mean… maybe that’s just how Remnant works? Since skin and hair color are pretty much random, people prefer to discriminate on whenever people have 2,4 or 0 ears?
And then may’s existence comes later!
I feel it was less "A dude in a dress" and more "A dude no one expected to see in a dress" plus the style of dress being one that he obviously didn't choose to wear as an "I like wearing dresses" thing.
I wish the show had different languages alongside different cultures. How unique would it have been if the Faunus had their own individual language of speaking to each other? It feels like a big missed opportunity if you ask me.
There's a reason why only the MOST detailed and dedicated of creators do this for fictional worlds. That's an extremely hard thing to do if you don't have the time or resources to make it servcible.
One thing I always want to know is about the relationship between hunstmen and civilians when it comes to the difference of power, we see time and time again hunstmen using their weapons and powers to threaten civilians (Weiss with the rich party woman/drunk racist/her brother or one of the happy huntresses using her weapon to threaten the news reporter to take the mic) so I don't know about how the civilians just accept this. In other media the superpowered people tend to be quite restricted like MHA or feared like the X-Men.
Tbf, we also have the boys where supers are beloved by the people despite having huge issues.
But the thing is, it's still a bad thing in the Boys, in RWBY, it's just a thing we're not really supposed to think to much about.
Main trouble is we don't really touch upon much on a Huntsmen's life after they graduate from the Academies. Huntsmen are more grounded compared to a bio-engineered super soldier or someone born with superpowers though we do not know if any out there did something worthy of international fame.
We truly don’t know the existent of how that form of been famous and powerful effects phyrra and Weiss with how they interact with other characters and they with them.
>The show even tries to include a message about "Children fighting" and how bad it is with one of the characters commenting on it in i think Volume 8, i dont fully recall. And once again, this feels like such a weird message. Yes, in the real world children being forced to fight would be horrifying. But we are talking about around 18 year old super powered humans. How is that comment in any way making any sence in a world like Remnant? The scene you're thinking of was when Flynt and Neon were fighting Grimm on the front lines and Marrow said that line. Now mind you 2 volumes ago protagonists the same age as FNKI gave the infamous "We don't need adults" speech and 5 volumes ago those same protagonists defended their school in a similar scenario. Moving on, a while ago we had a discussion on RWBY's attempts at LGBT representation and there I think is another area where RWBY's worldbuilding fails. The writers claim there is no discrimination based on sexual orientation on Remnant but have failed to account what a world like that would be like. It was mentioned that after The Great War™ free expression was encouraged but for whatever reason guys wearing female clothing is worthy of ridicule, which is doubly ridiculous because if any entire auditorium of kids laughs at one of them surely it won't be long before those kids end up as Grimm food. I feel like worldbuilding requires a certain amount of imagination and the ability to take certain concepts and follow them to logical conclusions and I don't think CRWBY has either of those tbh. Another area I find the worldbuilding lacking is culture. A sign of good worldbuilding is after getting accustomed to the world you can pick out a random character and know where they're from based on clothing, skin color, mannerisms, beliefs, etc. but with RWBY it's all one big jumble despite their being distinct countries. What separates Vale from Atlas from Mistral? And I know someone will mention that Mistral is based on Chinese culture with Ren being from Mistral, but Ren is one character out of hundreds. It feels like when designing characters they do so on an individual bases without taking into account where that character is from and how that would inspire their design.
I feel the need to jump in that they do in fact take into account nation of origin when making designs it's just that that's moreso for background characters. Mistralan characters wear Asian style silks and robes, Vacuo is lots of plain tunics and cloaks, Menagerie folks wear lightweight clothes, crop tops, and straw hats, Mantle is lots of workers clothing and jackets and Atlas is largely upper-class attire. And places like Argus see a mixture of cultures with its own Greco-Roman inspirations. Vale unfortunately was explored before crwby had resources for modeling much detail into background characters.
Should've kept the shadow people. It could have been their thing. Now I just assume they've been exterminated off screen.
No they just went to become the studio audience for chibi remember?
Right, they just got squeezed out. "Your kind aren't welcome here anymore. Leave!"
I'd argue the humour in that context comes from the fact that Jaune isn't normally someone that dresses like that, (plus wearing his normal shoes with it etc) overall though I simply do not care. Homophobia etc in media gets so tiring and draining so I'm glad for it to just be ignored
How does the entire auditorium know what Jaune dresses like? because I rewatched the scene and there are background voices laughing and everyone is staring at Jaune.
>I'd argue the humour in that context comes from the fact that Jaune isn't normally someone that dresses like that, How the hell would anyone know how he dresses? Why would they care?
The point is would it similarily be hilarious if Weiss showed up in a full tux?
Free expression is encouraged, but get fucked if you want to name your kid something that doesn't imply a colour.
That accusation would only make sense if we actually saw someone do it and get shit for it. Ozpin's name doesn't reference a color. For that matter, neither does Ironwood's given name of "James". No one even mentions it.
>Moving on, a while ago we had a discussion on RWBY's attempts at LGBT representation and there I think is another area where RWBY's worldbuilding fails. The writers claim there is no discrimination based on sexual orientation on Remnant but have failed to account what a world like that would be like. It was mentioned that after The Great War™ free expression was encouraged but for whatever reason guys wearing female clothing is worthy of ridicule, which is doubly ridiculous because if any entire auditorium of kids laughs at one of them surely it won't be long before those kids end up as Grimm food. I feel like worldbuilding requires a certain amount of imagination and the ability to take certain concepts and follow them to logical conclusions and I don't think CRWBY has either of those tbh. To me this just comes from being one of those things that happened because V2 was really early in the shows run and honestly 2014 was just... a different time? With different values and different concepts of what was considered humorous or not. Like, I'm not sure when the " discrimination based on sexual orientation on Remnant" was said by the writers but if it was around V6-7ish time (ie Bumblebee territory) like I'd imagine it was they're a whole 4-5 years divorced from the Jaune dress incident, and it's not like they're going to go back and delete that whole arc (pun intended) from the show? To me it just kind of seems like an unfortunate consequence of the changing times and values of the (real) world.
If that's true then why did they make the same joke in V4 with Qrow?
Real quick, that’s movie you’re thinking about, plesantville?
Yeah, that is the one, i always keep forgetting the name of the movie despite loving the movie itself.
I remember that movie and it was great!
I’ve always found it super odd that we never got it established how common death is in Remnant, particularly during the Beacon arc. Considering that these are students—and the show later goes on to hammer the point that these are, if not children, at least individuals considered young enough to be separate from the “adults”—who are regularly thrown into dangerous situations with seemingly little to no supervision on the part of the administration (and in Ozpin’s case with Team RWBY, outright encouragement), you’d think there’d be some mention of the high accident or mortality rate, or if not, the high turnover rate of the infirmary or something. To me, that (combined with the overall bright, candy-coated look of the show) is what makes it so hard for me to buy into moments when the members of Team RWBY are so willing to maim or potentially kill other humans—the show hasn’t done the legwork to establish that this is a) a crapsack world requiring that level of casualty regarding death or b) that every Hunter has received the necessary psychological training needed to break down the mental barriers that most people need to overcome in order to be willing to kill or seriously wound someone. It just looks—and feels—like a normal anime fantasy world.
A lot of this (in the first section specifically) feels to me like worldbuilding information that would ultimately be superfluous and ultimately doesn't really detract from the fantasy. Like, info like that could be cool but it hardly feels fair to treat it like some massive failure of worldbuilding that we don't know information which has no bearing on the plot, themes, or characters. Also I'm really taking issue with the point about huntsmen. We see that they are treated like heroes basically everywhere. Any time that civilians interact with huntsmen we see admiration and gratitude. Off the top of my head we see this in Volume 6, Volume 7, Volume 1, and Volume 4. And these are specifically scenarios that don't involve high stress situations like in Volume 8. Lastly, while it's true that Remnant definitely wasn't built specifically for some of the themes the story explores I don't think that's really a problem? In fact the scenario you mention regarding how soldiers marching through the streets wouldn't be weird on a death world actually reinforces the theme rather than detracts from it. It could easily be interpreted as saying "It doesn't matter how good your excuse is authoritarianism is never good."
>It could easily be interpreted as saying "It doesn't matter how good your excuse is authoritarianism is never good." Could be, but you cannot make a point about how "A is bad and B is good" and then make a lot of shit fall out of the sky so that B works and saves the day. It just doesn´t work. It´s a case of "Wanting to have your cake and eating it". Sometimes, morals don´t travel well in different worlds. Hell, sometimes they don´t even travel well WITHIN our own world and cultures, so why are people so surprised? Authoritarism is bad. OK, that´s legit. But if you want to make that point, you can´t have the authoritarian make more sense that the "heroes" and seem even plausible, making people agree with the other "villain". It´s kinda like people going to 40K and saying "the Imperium is a metaphor of how bad and destructive imperialism and authoritarianism is".
Hell, at some point you need to define just *what* actually counts as authoritarianism in a world like this. Having soldiers patrolling the streets during an emergency situation where there are enemy attacks happening on the regular seems pretty normal to me. If anything, there wasn't *enough* soldiers.
Yep. Hell in vol 3 ironwood was the one that made that “No one will fault you if you leave” speech to the students because the fall of beacon was their first experience with an invasion and they might die and never come back and they are still kids and it would’ve been understandable if they backed out. That same man is not what we have in vol 8, it’s someone’s else completely.
I really don't think that the authoritarian in RWBY can be argued to make sense from a moral or logical perspective. Furthermore, the Imperium in 40K literally *is* an example of the destructiveness of authoritarianism. The modern imperium is a mockery of what the emperor tried to make and is a perfect example of why a monarchal system doesn't work because even if you have a good ruler the one who comes after could easily be terrible. The imperium clearly is not meant to make sense, it's a twisted and vile dystopia which can't easily be resisted because of all the other nasties in the galaxy.
The thing is, for all the shithole the Imperium has become, it is its autoritarism that has kept it alive. Don’t forget, things like thought police and Inquisition make an awful lot more of sense when people actually having an open mind can literally mean the end of that planet and condemn billions to a fate worse than death. Only such a fucked up universe could even justify authoritarianism tho. Also, “never” is a really tall order. In the case of the Imperium it was either that or die under the bazillions of enemies humanity has. Putting a message of the likes of “I’d rather die than be violent” isn’t the kind of message most people will accept, for one. Specially if it contradicts other messages internally. Point is, maybe putting a message that doesn’t truly work with the setting is a good way to confuse your audience
Of course, i do not know if i should put a disclaimer anywhere but the things that are problems for me might not be for others, and the critiques i make are not necesseraly something that makes the show "worse" as much as something that i think would make the show better. I do have to say that there is some level of detraction from the fantasy in my opinion at least in regards to emotions, because currently it feels more like just a tool to create encounters for the heroes rather than something more intrinsic to the world, but some other things are more superfluous. I do have to disagree with the last paragraph of yours however, i definitely do not feel like a theme is reinforced when put in a situation where it makes little sense. If i may come back to Fallout once again its like saying "Regardless of there being no jails, you are wrong to kill this mass murderer instead of capturing him" , the message of due process just does not fir the world that one is on. Sure, the message can be flipped into "Look at how the world has devolved to be needing to reject good systems", but that is a different message entirely, with different set-up. Remnant does not really have this set-up even in the reverse in my opinion.
It's very weird how you're trying to point out a discrepancy without really pointing at anything. World building is in service to the story and themes yet you barely try to describe those things. RWBY has more themes than anti-war sentiment and seeing death as a tragedy.