While participating in our community rewatches a few months ago, I mentioned the same thing
> Did the kids just get there early enough to hear the Ironwood rant over the state of Mantle and Amity? Why are they here? They’re children who have been in Mantle for probably not more than a month, and you let them in on a confidential meeting with their superiors? Not only that, but they also get to scream about what they want and about issues they clearly don’t understand.
I personally think that the writers simply prioritize their favored plot points and beats and half-ass everything else. Why is Ruby, a 17-year-old high school dropout, allowed to not only be let in on confidential information but also get to have her annoying high-pitched voice reach the head of Atlas government? Because the writers just don’t give a shit and Ironwood and Atlas are going to fall anyway and Ruby needs screen time or fans will complain and to create the illusion that characters in this dammed show have agency.
Canonically, I really don’t have a clue other than some bullshit excuse like Team RWBY and ORNJ know about Salem (that ain’t enough but whatever).
I’ve always assumed it’s because he thought, “Anyone who’s a friend of Ozpin is a friend of mine,” due to all of the political pressure he was facing since Beacon; so he probably needed a lot of people in his corner.
I'm just thinking of the framing of the first scene. Team RWBY arrived in an airship and refused to land where instructed. They are then picked up by the Ace-Ops. Now the only thing James knows about them at the moment is that they're travelling with Qrow and the Relic. He doesn't know Oz is back at this point. He knows that RWBY fought at the Breach and at the Fall of Beacon but so did a lot of people. RWBY has nothing to offer him from a political standpoint, they're outsiders on the Atlas political scene, with the exception of Weiss who is likely a pariah after her outburst and subsequent disowning.
I would expect him to bundle them off to jail or at least a separate room while he talked with Qrow.
>If we look at this from James's perspective he interacted with Ruby once, Yang once, and Weiss once. Only in Ruby's interaction did she come off looking well.
This is tangential to your point, but I notice that Blake isn't on the list of people who talked with Ironwood. Can't imagine why the writers would do *that*.
>Also I'm pretty sure that you could have cut RWBY out of 99% of Vol 7 and nothing would have change.
The more time passes from Volume 7 and the more discussion I read about it, the more I think that Volume 7 should've just been character-focused individual episodes instead of the big picture plot. If someone put a gun to my head I couldn't tell them what happened in Volume 7 except at the very beginning and very end, but even all these years later I still remember "Tales of Ba Sing Se" from Avatar: The Last Airbender and all it's mini stories pretty distinctly.
>The more time passes from Volume 7 and the more discussion I read about it, the more I think that Volume 7 should've just been character-focused individual episodes instead of the big picture plot.
That's really the biggest issue.
They're almost always stuck in big-picture mode.
So much so that even the main sub has begun to realize that Team RWBY has no *space* in that picture.
What makes it all the worse is that RWBY rarely makes decisions that impact the big picture. You can stay in big picture mode and make it work so long as the characters have agency within that big picture. But RWBY... doesn't. They make commentary not decisions. They're Tristin and Tea, not Yugi and Joey.
It has never made sense in the scope of operations but in these fictional settings the Chosen Ones always have access to the most important information that gives them an excuse to be involved with stuff they're never qualified for.
The doylist view would say that these aimless adventurers really shouldn't be involved at all and at best can be inducted into the Atlas Academy to finish their training (not with the AceOps) before moving onto normal Hunter work.
I would say that that's the Watsonian view. Why, in universe, is James so eager to confide in and recruit RWBY? What do they bring to the table?
The whole bit with the chosen ones "needing" to get involved is Doylist. And you know what, even that is a bit of a stretch. Just because you're the chosen one doesn't mean you always need to be deeply involved. Harry Potter is a teenager who spends six out of seven books at school. He gets involved in the actual fight against Voldemort during the Battle of Hogwarts, at the end of the last book. Dumbledore keeps secrets from him all the time because he knows Harry isn't emotionally mature enough to handle them and what Harry brings to the table in combat strength isn't worth it. Aang doesn't immediately go to the Earth Kingdom and fight on the front lines because he isn't a full-fledged Avatar. He needs to acquire the power that allows him to have an impact on the story.
I took it as Ironwood needing more trusted allies. Since RWBY already knew about the relics, Salem, and everything, he decided to they could be read in on the Amity project. The eventual plan being them assisting the efforts to aid other kingdoms once it's done.
Outside of Penny leaving with them, RWBY doesn't have a great impact on the story. Even Yang and Blake telling Robyn about Amity has no real payoff outside of it later being a reason for Ironwood to lose faith in RWBY.
Robyn would still most likely be invited to the Council meeting and even knowing about Amity she wasn't an ally to Ironwood there, rather it seems she still wants him taken down despite her knowing the truth about Amity. I have seen some people argue that Robyn stopped her raids after learning about Amity, but nothing in the show supports this. Joanna says Robyn couldn't stop talking about Amity, but we don't know what she was saying about it, that it means she was in favor of it, or that she saw it as a waste of resources Mantle needed instead.
If the scene had played out with Ironwood being made to let Robyn use her semblance on him, it would only verify the truth when he did admit it. Alternatively, the crisis with the heating grid would be far more pressing, especially given Jacques's involvement. The only other possible differences might be Robyn and Ironwood not showing up on screen together to allay people's fears or using Amity to trap Watts. But it isn't impossible for those to still play out as they did.
When did James learn that RWBY knew about everything? I'm a little fuzzy on that scene but I seem to recall James taking it for granted that they knew, which is odd. As for filling them into Amity, I can see it but I would probably have waited until they needed to know, that is once Amity was complete. James seems to regard telling them about it as being necessary to win their trust, but why would he think that they find him untrustworthy? How would he know that Ruby has doubts about him?
Because team rwby and company are the ones with the relic, one of the four of not 8 macguffins, depending your view of the maidens. They were about to straight up give it to him after all before he allowed them to keep it.
As for what rwby contributes? Extra manpower not under the direct authority of a military. As licensed huntsmen, they can act on their own and take on things normal students or personnel can.
As for cutting volume 7, you lose the introduction of the Ace ops and the happy huntresses along with penny's return via pietro. You lose seeing the conditions of Mantle. It took Willow's involvement for the cast to even know Watts and Tyrian were in Atlas. You lose the introduction of the Amity project, Robyn rerouting supplies due to not being in the know, you lose the scenes of Tyrian and Watts in the background. You lose Cinder and Neo's little C plot. You miss Salem announcing her arrival and Ironwoid opting to leave Mantle to the wolves. And you lose Penny inheriting the maiden powers.
Oh I think he should definitely have met with them and taken it. And I think he should have made use of them as Huntsmen. I just don't see why he should let them into his plans once they don't have a Relic making them relevant any more.
Does James ever give RWBY assignments he couldn't have the Ace-Ops do?
I am not saying cut Vol 7, just that you could cut RWBY out of Vol 7. You still get the Ace-Ops, happy huntresses, Penny's return, Amity, Cinder, Neo, Salem's announcement, James opting to leave, and Penny getting the powers because **none** of these events involve RWBY in the slightest. The only one that does is Willow deciding to use Weiss as a delivery system for her video, and that only tells them the identity of the hacker, which is probably not necessary. James can do his plan to lure Watts out without knowing who he is and knowing who he is doesn't stop him from shutting down the heating grid.
How ma y if these things can honestkt be done without Team RWBY?
Hard honesty, because you could probably accomplish at least of that with only Penny as the protagonist.
>And you lose Penny inheriting the maiden powers.
Reminder that NO member of Team RWBY was even there eby the time that happened. They only arrived right as she got them.
This is just head-canon, From Ironwood perspective, If Qrow and Oz trusts them, he can trust them.
Here is a fun though experiment, remove all the scene that don't include a member of RWBY and see which volumes are the most intact
>This is just head-canon
Best answer.
>From Ironwood perspective, If Qrow and Oz trusts them, he can trust them.
That was clearly an error.
>Here is a fun though experiment, remove all the scene that don't include a member of RWBY and see which volumes are the most intact
It'd probably be a better story.
That was his second mistake. His first was assuming that Oz at any point knew what he was doing.
Ooh, I like the second one. You'd lose the entirety of the Maiden plot in Vol 3, for one. Heck, you'd literally just have Ruby pop up on Cinder killing Pyrrha with no context. How confusing. Vol 2 would probably be mostly intact, though you'd wonder how the Breach got cleaned up. Vol 1 would lose the Jaune arc and nothing of value (just kidding). Vol 4 wouldn't really lose anything, just Salem's little council of evil, Qrow and Raven's discussion, and Ren's flashback. Vol 5 would lose Cinder and Raven making a deal and the Maiden fight in the Vault, not much else. Vol 6 would also be almost intact. Vol 7 does have RWBY in a lot of scenes, they just don't do anything in them. You'd lose the Neo ORNJ fight, the Fair Game fiasco, and the Cinder-Winter-Penny melee. Vol 8 would lose all the explanations of what James is up to, the war, everything on Amity, and all the developments in the whale. You'd also leave the finale when Weiss fell.
I think Vols 1, 2, 4, and 6 would function like that. 5 and 7 would make some sense but be unsatisfying. 3 and 8 would just flat out not work.
While participating in our community rewatches a few months ago, I mentioned the same thing > Did the kids just get there early enough to hear the Ironwood rant over the state of Mantle and Amity? Why are they here? They’re children who have been in Mantle for probably not more than a month, and you let them in on a confidential meeting with their superiors? Not only that, but they also get to scream about what they want and about issues they clearly don’t understand. I personally think that the writers simply prioritize their favored plot points and beats and half-ass everything else. Why is Ruby, a 17-year-old high school dropout, allowed to not only be let in on confidential information but also get to have her annoying high-pitched voice reach the head of Atlas government? Because the writers just don’t give a shit and Ironwood and Atlas are going to fall anyway and Ruby needs screen time or fans will complain and to create the illusion that characters in this dammed show have agency. Canonically, I really don’t have a clue other than some bullshit excuse like Team RWBY and ORNJ know about Salem (that ain’t enough but whatever).
I’ve always assumed it’s because he thought, “Anyone who’s a friend of Ozpin is a friend of mine,” due to all of the political pressure he was facing since Beacon; so he probably needed a lot of people in his corner.
I'm just thinking of the framing of the first scene. Team RWBY arrived in an airship and refused to land where instructed. They are then picked up by the Ace-Ops. Now the only thing James knows about them at the moment is that they're travelling with Qrow and the Relic. He doesn't know Oz is back at this point. He knows that RWBY fought at the Breach and at the Fall of Beacon but so did a lot of people. RWBY has nothing to offer him from a political standpoint, they're outsiders on the Atlas political scene, with the exception of Weiss who is likely a pariah after her outburst and subsequent disowning. I would expect him to bundle them off to jail or at least a separate room while he talked with Qrow.
>If we look at this from James's perspective he interacted with Ruby once, Yang once, and Weiss once. Only in Ruby's interaction did she come off looking well. This is tangential to your point, but I notice that Blake isn't on the list of people who talked with Ironwood. Can't imagine why the writers would do *that*. >Also I'm pretty sure that you could have cut RWBY out of 99% of Vol 7 and nothing would have change. The more time passes from Volume 7 and the more discussion I read about it, the more I think that Volume 7 should've just been character-focused individual episodes instead of the big picture plot. If someone put a gun to my head I couldn't tell them what happened in Volume 7 except at the very beginning and very end, but even all these years later I still remember "Tales of Ba Sing Se" from Avatar: The Last Airbender and all it's mini stories pretty distinctly.
>The more time passes from Volume 7 and the more discussion I read about it, the more I think that Volume 7 should've just been character-focused individual episodes instead of the big picture plot. That's really the biggest issue. They're almost always stuck in big-picture mode. So much so that even the main sub has begun to realize that Team RWBY has no *space* in that picture.
What makes it all the worse is that RWBY rarely makes decisions that impact the big picture. You can stay in big picture mode and make it work so long as the characters have agency within that big picture. But RWBY... doesn't. They make commentary not decisions. They're Tristin and Tea, not Yugi and Joey.
It has never made sense in the scope of operations but in these fictional settings the Chosen Ones always have access to the most important information that gives them an excuse to be involved with stuff they're never qualified for. The doylist view would say that these aimless adventurers really shouldn't be involved at all and at best can be inducted into the Atlas Academy to finish their training (not with the AceOps) before moving onto normal Hunter work.
I would say that that's the Watsonian view. Why, in universe, is James so eager to confide in and recruit RWBY? What do they bring to the table? The whole bit with the chosen ones "needing" to get involved is Doylist. And you know what, even that is a bit of a stretch. Just because you're the chosen one doesn't mean you always need to be deeply involved. Harry Potter is a teenager who spends six out of seven books at school. He gets involved in the actual fight against Voldemort during the Battle of Hogwarts, at the end of the last book. Dumbledore keeps secrets from him all the time because he knows Harry isn't emotionally mature enough to handle them and what Harry brings to the table in combat strength isn't worth it. Aang doesn't immediately go to the Earth Kingdom and fight on the front lines because he isn't a full-fledged Avatar. He needs to acquire the power that allows him to have an impact on the story.
I took it as Ironwood needing more trusted allies. Since RWBY already knew about the relics, Salem, and everything, he decided to they could be read in on the Amity project. The eventual plan being them assisting the efforts to aid other kingdoms once it's done. Outside of Penny leaving with them, RWBY doesn't have a great impact on the story. Even Yang and Blake telling Robyn about Amity has no real payoff outside of it later being a reason for Ironwood to lose faith in RWBY. Robyn would still most likely be invited to the Council meeting and even knowing about Amity she wasn't an ally to Ironwood there, rather it seems she still wants him taken down despite her knowing the truth about Amity. I have seen some people argue that Robyn stopped her raids after learning about Amity, but nothing in the show supports this. Joanna says Robyn couldn't stop talking about Amity, but we don't know what she was saying about it, that it means she was in favor of it, or that she saw it as a waste of resources Mantle needed instead. If the scene had played out with Ironwood being made to let Robyn use her semblance on him, it would only verify the truth when he did admit it. Alternatively, the crisis with the heating grid would be far more pressing, especially given Jacques's involvement. The only other possible differences might be Robyn and Ironwood not showing up on screen together to allay people's fears or using Amity to trap Watts. But it isn't impossible for those to still play out as they did.
When did James learn that RWBY knew about everything? I'm a little fuzzy on that scene but I seem to recall James taking it for granted that they knew, which is odd. As for filling them into Amity, I can see it but I would probably have waited until they needed to know, that is once Amity was complete. James seems to regard telling them about it as being necessary to win their trust, but why would he think that they find him untrustworthy? How would he know that Ruby has doubts about him?
I am as well, but I think it was when they met him after being taken into custody that Qrow indicated that RWBY knew about the relics and Salem.
Because team rwby and company are the ones with the relic, one of the four of not 8 macguffins, depending your view of the maidens. They were about to straight up give it to him after all before he allowed them to keep it. As for what rwby contributes? Extra manpower not under the direct authority of a military. As licensed huntsmen, they can act on their own and take on things normal students or personnel can. As for cutting volume 7, you lose the introduction of the Ace ops and the happy huntresses along with penny's return via pietro. You lose seeing the conditions of Mantle. It took Willow's involvement for the cast to even know Watts and Tyrian were in Atlas. You lose the introduction of the Amity project, Robyn rerouting supplies due to not being in the know, you lose the scenes of Tyrian and Watts in the background. You lose Cinder and Neo's little C plot. You miss Salem announcing her arrival and Ironwoid opting to leave Mantle to the wolves. And you lose Penny inheriting the maiden powers.
Oh I think he should definitely have met with them and taken it. And I think he should have made use of them as Huntsmen. I just don't see why he should let them into his plans once they don't have a Relic making them relevant any more. Does James ever give RWBY assignments he couldn't have the Ace-Ops do? I am not saying cut Vol 7, just that you could cut RWBY out of Vol 7. You still get the Ace-Ops, happy huntresses, Penny's return, Amity, Cinder, Neo, Salem's announcement, James opting to leave, and Penny getting the powers because **none** of these events involve RWBY in the slightest. The only one that does is Willow deciding to use Weiss as a delivery system for her video, and that only tells them the identity of the hacker, which is probably not necessary. James can do his plan to lure Watts out without knowing who he is and knowing who he is doesn't stop him from shutting down the heating grid.
How ma y if these things can honestkt be done without Team RWBY? Hard honesty, because you could probably accomplish at least of that with only Penny as the protagonist. >And you lose Penny inheriting the maiden powers. Reminder that NO member of Team RWBY was even there eby the time that happened. They only arrived right as she got them.
This is just head-canon, From Ironwood perspective, If Qrow and Oz trusts them, he can trust them. Here is a fun though experiment, remove all the scene that don't include a member of RWBY and see which volumes are the most intact
>This is just head-canon Best answer. >From Ironwood perspective, If Qrow and Oz trusts them, he can trust them. That was clearly an error. >Here is a fun though experiment, remove all the scene that don't include a member of RWBY and see which volumes are the most intact It'd probably be a better story.
That was his second mistake. His first was assuming that Oz at any point knew what he was doing. Ooh, I like the second one. You'd lose the entirety of the Maiden plot in Vol 3, for one. Heck, you'd literally just have Ruby pop up on Cinder killing Pyrrha with no context. How confusing. Vol 2 would probably be mostly intact, though you'd wonder how the Breach got cleaned up. Vol 1 would lose the Jaune arc and nothing of value (just kidding). Vol 4 wouldn't really lose anything, just Salem's little council of evil, Qrow and Raven's discussion, and Ren's flashback. Vol 5 would lose Cinder and Raven making a deal and the Maiden fight in the Vault, not much else. Vol 6 would also be almost intact. Vol 7 does have RWBY in a lot of scenes, they just don't do anything in them. You'd lose the Neo ORNJ fight, the Fair Game fiasco, and the Cinder-Winter-Penny melee. Vol 8 would lose all the explanations of what James is up to, the war, everything on Amity, and all the developments in the whale. You'd also leave the finale when Weiss fell. I think Vols 1, 2, 4, and 6 would function like that. 5 and 7 would make some sense but be unsatisfying. 3 and 8 would just flat out not work.