[RWBY] RWBY Shorts

[Sir Borks-a-Lot]

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He'd go with Jaune but he got hit by a truck and will probably be gone for a month again.

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"Dang it! Whys it always a truck? Just once I'd like these Isekai to not be painful. Where even am I?"

"Welcome brother. The emperor protects."

"Fuck."

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Guess he's eating alone. Maybe afterwards he can find a movie or something. Anything to kill his boredom.

There ain't shit going on at Beacon.

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I need more of this. Especially 40k isekai'd Jaune.

 

[ExFelineServer3]

That was some random alternate chaos, kind of with Jaune and how he's feeling.

 

[AndrewJTalon]

Ugh... The Reddit Mods would not let me post this. Probably because they have enough shipping arguments. But bare with me here.



Imagine if Blake was a male character... And that was the only change. Male!Blake does all the same things, runs off on Yang after Adam (male or female, whatever) beats him up and cuts off Yang's arm. He abandons RWBY/JNPR and only comes back to their aid at Haven by complete coincidence, and never, ever apologizes to Yang onscreen for running out on her and their friends.



Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the same Bumblebee fans who so viciously defend the terrible execution of this ship would be as thrilled. Because now instead of it having the modern protection of "If you criticize it, you hate gays!" it is now a man abandoning the woman he ostensibly is madly in love with and never apologizing for it or leaving his friends to potentially die.



And if you make Yang a man, he just has to take his alleged destined love abandoning him and his family and friends and never apologizing for it.



Now naturally, people would still defend this ship if it was like this. There are crazy people who still think Reylo in the Star Wars Sequel trilogy or Azula/Anyone from Avatar: The Last Airbender are good ships. But without that protection of "If you criticize this, you are a bigot", suddenly, the dysfunctional and potentially abusive nature of the relationship is revealed.



Funny how that works, huh?

 

[zMADLAXz]

You know I just realised something sad.

Infidelity is probably a rampant problem in Remnant. While most of our focus is on Jaune who is Shonen levels of dedicated and would never cheat, if we take a step back and look at the whole demographic, the working conditions of huntsman really make them prone to cheating.

Now I will preface this by saying that cheating is ultimately a personal decision and you cannot blame things as "nature" or "timing" for that.

But you have Men and Women, going on extended missions, under high stress combat conditions, often staying away for lengths of time and only people near them to keep them company or to understand their turmoil?

Plus every huntsman has a super charged biology, libido isn't the issue here?

It's basically the same issue that army faces but multiplied by an even larger danger factor and higher libido. And a very, very lax attitude and flexible rules.

Plus think of the Huntsman and Civilian pairings?

Plus with how open in terms of gender and sexuality Remnant is, unlike the traditional case where you might know about the cheating via untimely pregnancy, here you don't know if your significant other cheated or not if they start playing for the other team.

 

[zMADLAXz]

But without that protection of "If you criticize this, you are a bigot", suddenly, the dysfunctional and potentially abusive nature of the relationship is revealed.



Funny how that works, huh?

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That reminds of the statistic that Lesbian Women have one of the highest rate of Divorce and cheating that is reported.

Now, some people on reddit have said that it is wrong or misinterpreted but none have put forward their own "correct" stats as counter argument.

In fact, recently on YT shorts I was seeing this stand up comedian lady Taylor Tomilson, who I think came out as bisexual, and she said something like "The most difficult art about dating women is respecting their choice, with a man I can think "He doesn't know what is missing out on" if we break up , but for a woman I have to say to myself, "Good for you, you are strong for recognising your choice" ", and all that jazz.

I am not commenting on her dating life because I have been following her for some time now and I know she ahs gone through shit in her dating life and mental health but it really puts into perspective how internalised sexism is even in people of the LGBTQ+ community.


In fact, recently on Reddit I saw discussion between two people where one put forward that they were harassed by people on tumblr for disagreeing with someone that Jaune is an egg when the other person said that "look at his Bunny onesie and how he dresses up for Pyrrha" and said that these kind of things could be counted as Positive masculinity.

The other as you would expect the literal stereotypical caricature of tumblr user and was continuously putting forward allegations.

It's so sad for me that people like these can't even see past their own hypocrisy.

 

[Bommel]

Ugh... The Reddit Mods would not let me post this. Probably because they have enough shipping arguments. But bare with me here.



Imagine if Blake was a male character... And that was the only change. Male!Blake does all the same things, runs off on Yang after Adam (male or female, whatever) beats him up and cuts off Yang's arm. He abandons RWBY/JNPR and only comes back to their aid at Haven by complete coincidence, and never, ever apologizes to Yang onscreen for running out on her and their friends.



Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the same Bumblebee fans who so viciously defend the terrible execution of this ship would be as thrilled. Because now instead of it having the modern protection of "If you criticize it, you hate gays!" it is now a man abandoning the woman he ostensibly is madly in love with and never apologizing for it or leaving his friends to potentially die.

Click to shrink...

"Does it survive a genderswap" is almost always a decent way to test if behavoir is actually acceptable, if it's horrible or completely toxic with a double standerd lens.

 

[CountvonBarnOwl]

Ugh... The Reddit Mods would not let me post this. Probably because they have enough shipping arguments. But bare with me here.



Imagine if Blake was a male character... And that was the only change. Male!Blake does all the same things, runs off on Yang after Adam (male or female, whatever) beats him up and cuts off Yang's arm. He abandons RWBY/JNPR and only comes back to their aid at Haven by complete coincidence, and never, ever apologizes to Yang onscreen for running out on her and their friends.



Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the same Bumblebee fans who so viciously defend the terrible execution of this ship would be as thrilled. Because now instead of it having the modern protection of "If you criticize it, you hate gays!" it is now a man abandoning the woman he ostensibly is madly in love with and never apologizing for it or leaving his friends to potentially die.



And if you make Yang a man, he just has to take his alleged destined love abandoning him and his family and friends and never apologizing for it.



Now naturally, people would still defend this ship if it was like this. There are crazy people who still think Reylo in the Star Wars Sequel trilogy or Azula/Anyone from Avatar: The Last Airbender are good ships. But without that protection of "If you criticize this, you are a bigot", suddenly, the dysfunctional and potentially abusive nature of the relationship is revealed.



Funny how that works, huh?

Click to shrink...

Would anyone mind if County got a few swings in while we're still kind of within the postal code of Dubious Writing Decisions by CRWBY and weird unsettling thoughts? No? Okay.

Editor von BarnOwl here. It ended up being more than a few.

James Ironwood has to be one of the most useless generals in all of fiction.

Now I know what you all are thinking. 'He'd have been fine had CRWBY not desperately been trying to overcorrect after they accidentally wrote him to be a sympathetic, complex, and interesting antagonist.' Yes. And while I do think that most of CRWBY's most profound and meaningful writing happens entirely by accident and without (or perhaps even against) their wishes. Make no mistake, I thought he was great for his part in Volume 7 (or as great as he could be), but on reflection, while I do think he's a sympathetic antagonist with very valid concerns (even if he comes across as such entirely by accident).

Spoiler: This one scene right fucking here

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/rwby/images/8/80/V8_07_00009.png/revision/latest?cb=20201226164641

Okay the link is giving me trouble but you are all astute enough to know exactly which scene I'm talking about from the spoiler title alone?

First off, it seems like the basic deployable unit that Atlas structures all of its doctrines around is... let's call it what it is; A fucking 1600s era Tercio. By that I mean the 12x12 man block of infantry with (if you squint) 2 officers positioned at the back (where they can contribute the least) and two Paladins on its right flank (your left if you're facing them). I did not count some other guy wanting to calculate Atlas' military strength for his own AU on a different website did. We have, of course the gamut of cinema combat sins (people in front of walls & fortifications rather than on/in/behind them). In America, for comparison the basic deployable unit is what is known as the Brigade Combat Team, and it is exactly that a 1 brigade (4,000-5,000 men) self-sufficient formation.

I believe, by contrast, the whole Atlas doctrine revolves around stacking these blocks and building them up before marching them straight at the Grimm. Now I could discuss the out-of-universe reasons for why this is (squares are simple and cheap to animate & [Redacted by order of Count's Sobriety - for this post]). But as I said here or in another thread I like to come up with in-universe explanations for the absurdities. Here's why it stuck with me in RWBY. I once read an old piece of FF.net - a crossover - in which an Alpha Legion Techmarine finds himself stranded on Remnant. After he learns about Remnant's socio-political situation, he comes to the conclusion, somebody (or a group of somebodies) have created this status quo from the shadows and worked very hard to keep it this way, and for a very long time (he has no idea about Ozpin and Salem but he bases the judgment off of his experience with death worlds, the ones fortunate enough to achieve any degree of political development usually become ultra-militarized or warlike and society clenches like a fist). I cannot even say how long ago I read it or if it is still up. But that line sticks with me, that and the one where he also (humorously) tries to give Yang advice after watching a spar between her and Pyrrha ("get new weapons, between her sword, spear, gun, and shield she has a good reply for every combat situation, you on the other hand have to charge a braced spear and shield with your fists").

And that got me thinking, you see. So I ask myself, how much of the societal incongruity that comes from a bunch of writers who live in a city that does not need to be walled off, whose political opinions can be surmised as "late 2010s Twitter," who can be badgered by Tumblr into writing the latter's favorite mess into canon (nonsensical though it is for the story), and whose competence can be best described as "a punchline," trying to write a characters in a setting of continuous, pervasive, and substantial mortal peril, and where the reaper's hand probably feels a hell of a lot heavier on the common man's shoulder can be put to a very powerful, very old (and therefore very opinionated and set in his ways) wizard fucking around behind the curtain.

I do think that CRWBY wanted to make Ozpin "morally grey," and just didn't follow through, but that would have been a good way to go about it. A man who, ultimately has done more good than harm (especially given humanity is still around) but he has... tendencies.

I can see why he let Mantle's successor state keep their military - I think it was disputed (on SB maybe?) the long held notion that only Atlas has an army. So I went back and looked at the script for the WoR episode. Atlas is the only kingdom with a STANDING army. Everyone else does have armies and does not solely rely on Huntsmen, but it sound like they have them in the form of calling up urban peasant levies (which will probably lead to greater hilarity) as the need arises. Maybe, and here's an unsettling thought, Ozpin has an opinion on organized standing armed forces not too far out of step with his IRL creators? What if he orchestrated events so as to let the Atlesians see the futility of their ways, and the objective superiority of his way, by making sure (however he could make sure) that the Atlesian Army was as ineffective as possible.

148 men (inclunding two in paladins positioned to get in each other's way and two commanders positioned as far from where they can read and control the battle as possible) arranged in a fucking square. I shouldn't need to paint a picture of what happens if a large distinctly non-humanoid monster gets in their midst. Though based on that you can argue the formation's greatest (only) strength. Assuming that melee with the Grimm is unavoidable, structure infantry deployments such that when the Grimm does start rending the morons in droves, it will face massed fire from every direction. Of course the logical follow-up is what happens if the bullets miss or overpenetrate? The answer is that it becomes even more obvious how terrible this strategy is for fighting Grimm. In fact the only two I can think of that are worse are either 1) sending Auraless soldiers out by their lonesome, and 2) assuming the line infantry formation designed specifically to defeat the tercio (which while maximizing fire and ground held against other lines and formations, is even less responsive to a monster in among them, and they cannot bring as many guns to bear against it.

Boy small, brightly colored Teams of Aura wielders sound appealing now don't they

But what does this have to do with Ironwood's stupidity? I'm getting there. And that was without getting to the reason that I think Beacon era Ruby would probably hate Atlesian people. I will save that one for later, or for another post

It has to do with Ironwood's stupidity because I think Ozpin was behind Ironwood's rise to power as both head of Atlas Academy and head of the Atlesian Army. But why in the case of the latter? Wouldn't Ozpin want a competent ally leading the Army?

Of course, I've thrown out insults, but no explanations, so here is the explanation. Ironwood's Semblance, which let us not forget is a post-hoc bullshit excuse conjured up by CRWBY to explain away the emotional weight of the scene where he finally gives up hope on Ozcar. It was touching, the way the light left his eyes for the second-to-last time. The minute he realized that he had nobody except maybe Winter. That everything and everyone that he had given his all for up to that point had betrayed him, and had been betraying him.

Mettle is, at its base, the ability to not have the two traits a general needs to succeed. It makes him hyperfocus on one thing when a general's mind must focus on all things. "What happens over here matters over there" - General Shepherd, six days before killing Ghost. A general officer must account for tens if not hundreds of thousands of his own men. Of where they will be, of when they will be there, of how they will get there, of how much they will eat between now and then, etc. And that's just for his own side, he must too account for all of his enemy's men, and for the enemy running the same calculations in his head, trying to position those tens or hundreds of thousands of men to kill him and his. This we call strategy, and Ironwood's power is one half 'the ability to not do that.'

The other half of Ironwood's power is that it 'gives him the resolve to carry through with tough choices and suppress his doubts.' And that might be good in theory. Doubt means hesitance, and hesitance is death on the battlefield. But that is only true of doubt in medium to large doses. Doubt in small doses signals us to perhaps reconsider our actions, that our gut and our reptile brain have gotten together and held forth that the conscious mind is about to make a critical blunder. In leading large numbers of men into battle you can see how the ability to say 'wait, maybe this is a bad idea,' even if subconsciously, is something a commander who wants to live and win would value. This we call instinct, and Ironwood's Semblance robs him of that too. It is the same skill that lets a commander read the tide of battle when a decision is needed at less than a moment's notice. Instinct is what takes the inputs "I am up against X, in terrain Y, and the left flank has been concerningly quiet. I better defer or scrap action Z and switch to my Plan B. Strategy, to the converse is, "If I come up against X in terrain Y, I will do Z unless, say, variable A or something like it takes place on the left flank, then I should go to Plan B."

How does a man like that get promoted beyond company level? There a superior officer can give him a single task and set him to it before putting his own mind to more sensitive matters, sure in the knowledge that that objective is in the hands of a man who will not stop or flinch before he and everyone under him is dead. Of course, those of you that remember my own ranking system mentioned earlier in this thread was that I gave Atlesian Specialists the standard rank of Major (O-4 in the NATO system), which is typically the XO or sometimes even CO of a battalion ~1,000 men but structures in which a battalion is 800, 500, or 350 men do or did exist. My own thought is three 148 man companies makes up a battalion in the Atlesian system but that, like all matters of Count's AU production is subject to change if I come up with something better/more sensible or hear a better argument. I ripped that from FMA where the State Alchemists in Amestris (because Amestris is a stratocratic parliamentary republic) are all technically and legally majors in the Amestrian army unless they make a genuine career of being a soldier and start climbing ranks.

Ironwood could succeed there too. He'd have to start dividing his focus among at least three, but perhaps six or seven different matters concurrently, and to change his mind as his situation changes around him. But as long as he has someone giving him an OVERALL objective a 'accomplish this goal within these parameters if reasonably practicable' order from somebody higher up he could conceivably succeed. I say conceivably because this is when it becomes a capital letters IMPARATIVE to possess a great deal of initiative & intuitive understanding. Of course, new officers need that, and NCOs need that quite a lot so they can keep their boss going in the right direction, but this is where discretion, experience, and the ability to make snap judgments based off of the tides of battle become more than ordinarily imperative. And I chose my prior words with care, you see. We, well my fellow Americans, have all heard the story of the Battle of Gettysburg. Driven by desperation, Confederate General Robert E. Lee was pulled into a battle with Union General George Meade. Meade was driven out of the town proper but still held the heights to the south. He was all that stood between Lee and D.C.. One of Lee's top corps commanders, Lieutenant General Longstreet advised Lee either withdraw and make a dash for the Union capital, if it so pleased him, or better yet, withdraw and redeploy on more advantageous ground. But Lee was at that point desperate for not just a win, but a decisive win against the Union. The Union had most of the country's populace and industrial base, so they could reinforce and resupply ad nauseum. The Confederacy could not. And that was before the Union blockaded them. And it was already 1863. So Lee, decided to stake it all on a single throw of the dice, to completely and utterly demoralize the Union army by kicking the snot out of them and then threatening the capital.

Now that you know why the battle happened, those with passing knowledge of the US Civil War will say, "Wait. I thought Stonewall Jackson was Lee's top corps commander." He was the other one. But he had recently been shot by his own men when riding back to his camp on a foggy night when they thought him a Union scout. His replacement, Richard Ewell, was not nearly as good at his job. Lee told Ewell to take Cemetery Hill "if practicable." Ewell did not think it was and failed to contest the Union position. Jackson would not have made that mistake. This comes from the fact that Jackson had a knack for digesting ambiguously worded orders and taking liberties in their interpretation based on battlefield inputs (I've been over this) and turning them into detailed little assignments for his division commanders and lower officers to carry out. Ewell, one of said division commanders, depended on detailed orders based on conditions planned by higher ups. And the whole Confederacy paid for it, decisively.

The night is winding on, and I still don't think I am quite to where the place that I want to be because I just took a detour through Fullmetal Alchemist and the American Civil War, but am I saying that Ozpin deliberately put Ironwood in charge to kneecap or sabotage the Atlesian army? I would not put it past the man. Whether this is something to ignore as CRWBY's usual bungling or a tool in the toolkit of anybody who wants to write Ozpin with more of a devious edge. Oh, and the fanfic potential for ulterior motives for Ozpin building the inner circle he did how, where, and with whom he did it.

County, you're rambling again and closing on 2.6K words on a fucking dissertation. Don't turn this into the The Atlas Arc was bad, and not just bad, but they're damming the river Styx and forcing everybody in the Fifth Circle to watch it on loop for the rest of eternity instead bad.

 

[zMADLAXz]

-SNIP-

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Hmmm.

While I am not well versed in the millitary formations as Count so passionately described and subsequently disassembled, I do realise that it's a fair point to make that Ozpin is trying to actively keep the power to himself by setting up examples that show his way is the correct way.

In fact in the eyes of an immortal wizard who has been there since this creation of Humanity, what is the worth of hundreds or thousands if Humans when the outcome is that the world is "united" against a common enemy following his own plans and schemes?

While Ozma is constantly patient and supportive, how much of that is his genuine self and how much of that is his learned instinct.

He sacrificed the stored magic for Oscar but for an immortal, what is the worth of time if he knew that magic is going to inevitably recharge.

Even his words to Oscar saying that he was doing good enough without him seem disingenuous considering that tge reason he got into this mess was him being his vessel.

In fact I am still not over the fact that Ozma probably knew about Jaune and the Rusted Knight because if you look back to it, it makes no fucking sense to admit him to the institute unless you knew he was integral to your plans.

RK became the equivalent of Statue of Chivalry for Huntsman and based on him Ozma was able to let people become government employed Mercenaries.

 

[cavalal386]

reading the last two post just gave me an idea, what if Ozma's the villain and Salem's the hero?
history is written by the victors after all. whose to say that Ozma, whose been around for so long, didn't change the story to fit him and his goals, while painting Salem as the villain, kind of like Kingpin and Spider-Man.

might be a good idea for a story.

also my headcanon for why Ozpin doesn't want a standing army is that "History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes". Ozpin been around for a long time, maybe he did tried having an army and saw that it didn't work, so he's trying something new this time and hoping it has more success.
but that's just me.

 

[Gur40]

SNIP

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Never attribute to malice that can be explained by incompedence
Oz SUCKS as a manipulative mastermind BECAUSE he is Empathetic
While Salem is GREAT at manipulating and twisting people as shown in her flashback and in the show
Salem is Great as a shadow Villain with the deck so stacked we have to make up excuses on why she HASN'T won yet
Oz is just... eh, he is no Lelouch/Shikamaru/L/Light

 

[cavalal386]

Never attribute to malice that can be explained by incompedence
Oz SUCKS as a manipulative mastermind BECAUSE he is Empathetic
While Salem is GREAT at manipulating and twisting people as shown in her flashback and in the show
Salem is Great as a shadow Villain with the deck so stacked we have to make up excuses on why she HASN'T won yet
Oz is just... eh, he is no Lelouch/Shikamaru/L/Light

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is this about my headcanon or my idea?

if it's about the headcanon, i never said it was a good headcanon, just what i think an immortal whose fighting a shadow war would try. other than that fair enough.

if it's about the idea, than how would you go on about it? not trying to an asshole, i'm honestly just curious.

 

[Gur40]

SNIP

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Sorry if i came off as rude, about the good evil swap

as for the "History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes" i kinda want to hear more about it?
How did it go? was it 1 ancient Grimm being taken out by 1 strong fighter or just waves vs waves?

How did Remnant Fail at armies were the mess that was the 'Army scene' was considered better then just bombing from the air?

 

[cavalal386]

Sorry if i came off as rude, about the good evil swap

as for the "History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes" i kinda want to hear more about it?
How did it go? was it 1 ancient Grimm being taken out by 1 strong fighter or just waves vs waves?

How did Remnant Fail at armies were the mess that was the 'Army scene' was considered better then just bombing from the air?

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don't worry about it. you didn't come off as rude, i was just confuse about which part of my post you were replying to.

as for armies thing, i was thinking a mix of both. a few strong fighters sprinkled in, that's where Oz gets the idea of quality over quantity aka hunters, and waves after waves to take down Grimms, but that leads to many dead and those can't be recuperated easily, so he tried something different. although the main issues i was thinking about wasn't Grimms or Salem, but human error. like human greed sets in, they start to fighting each other instead of the grimms and them being to difficult to control, stuff like that is what cause Oz to drop the army idea. there is also the fact that Oz is both old, meaning it's difficult to change his mind as he's probably set in his ways, and a former Champion, meaning someone who has solo large groups of fighter himself, so it wouldn't be difficult for him to convince himself to return to the time of Champions, aka of small but elite group of warriors.

as for the 'Army scene', i want to begin by saying i dropped RWBY long before reaching that point, so i can only speculate. having said i will just point out that, from what i remember from history class, Napoleonic Tactics were used in WW1, so it wouldn't be far fetched to believed that Atlas, being the only one left with a standing army after the great war, never saw a need to upgrade their doctrine since then. as to why they didn't just bomb them from the air? allow me to addon to this:

Never attribute to malice that can be explained by incompedence

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and never attribute to incompetence that can be explained by arrogance.
remember Atlas was the only one with a standing army and were technologically advanced, they believe themselves to be invincible, they probably thought their army was enough to take on the grimms.

 

[AndrewJTalon]

It never made any sense to me for Atlas to have the only military so I usually just correct that and their organizational and doctrinal shortcomings. I don't like to write characters as idiots if they're intended to be.