Sneaking His Way into the Multiverse (RWBY Jaune, WC-lite mechanics)

[Demiurgos]

...Sorry, but this is where you lost me.
In your take of Ironwood, you presented an overall positive view of him, with his worst parts in the show being the fault of the writers. Here, you immediately jumped to team RWBY being awful in and of themselves, with the writers being incidental to their worst parts rather than a cause of them.
Again, if we are to assign blame for how our favored characters turned out on an external factor, then we should also see if that external factor had a hand in how our disliked characters turned out. In short, in this situation I would say that neither Ironwood nor team RWBY are as bad as some would believe.

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I honestly have no idea, all I know is that Blake is a shitty kitten/waifu, apparently.

 

[Asdercol]

...Sorry, but this is where you lost me.
In your take of Ironwood, you presented an overall positive view of him, with his worst parts in the show being the fault of the writers. Here, you immediately jumped to team RWBY being awful in and of themselves, with the writers being incidental to their worst parts rather than a cause of them.
Again, if we are to assign blame for how our favored characters turned out on an external factor, then we should also see if that external factor had a hand in how our disliked characters turned out. In short, in this situation I would say that neither Ironwood nor team RWBY are as bad as some would believe.

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It's more like they just made RWBY and others excessively stupid and ridiculously hypocritical for no good reason. What was that again about Ozma's secrets being bad? Now let's gaslight and undermine Ironwood while keeping secrets!

Makes no goddamn sense. Team RWBY and the others were done dirty with how they were handled during that season.

 

[Kwame]

In your take of Ironwood, you presented an overall positive view of him, with his worst parts in the show being the fault of the writers

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No it's more iron wood was changed in one episode with no prior buildup or hints. RWBY always had those flaws but were magnified over the course of a couple of seasons but unlike Ironwood this was seen as positive by the narrative.

Here, you immediately jumped to team RWBY being awful in and of themselves, with the writers being incidental to their worst parts rather than a cause of them.

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It's like rorschach he was written as this horrible person and the narrative wants you to believe that but most people I've talked to at least like him due to what he did at the end. This was purely unintentional by then writer. The seeds are there and you can't call it bad writing just because the audience disagree with the intent.

RWBY is like that, they intend for what ever they do to be viewed as good and moral but it doesn't come off that way to the audience. That's unintentional on the writers part bad writing or not.

While Ironwood was made consistent just like RWBY. The writers realized the something was happening in the opposite direction and it didn't suit their message. So the next season they make him wildly out of character. It's not bad writing at that point, that's where it becomes character assassination. It's not the same character at all. If they has written a way for Ironwood to get from A to B it'd be fine. In their case they skipped steps and made a new character. RWBY might be horrible people due to how badly A to B was written but at least they had one even if it's their worse traits amplified.

An example based on your own work woukd be like TT going from smug know it all to murderer in between one chapter to the next just because. Versus smug know it all becoming her only character trait. Both are bad but atleast one of them isn't a completely new character.

 

[Lazurman]

I thank the author for the permission to put my debate hat on, but all the same I'm gonna be putting most of this into spoiler boxes, cuz I'm not the author. Posting entertaining walls of text is supposed to be his job, not mine.

I don't want to upset you, but what can 1 average trained knight (Jaune) and 2 average statistical man (Tattletale) do, even being trained and armed. Will they be able to resist, like the Legions of Chaos (space marines) and the dark Eldar? To be subjected to daily torture in a dream and reality (June's survival in season 9 will seem like a walk through a clean clover field) when you do not understand where the enemy is and where the ally is. What is real and what is not. Jaune may stand for quite a long time, but Tattletale will either turn on the mythical armor (girlspower - failed films and games of 2024 will not let you lie) and at the behest of the author (and the almighty catalog is an excuse for all authors who buy or receive cheats and then no one is afraid of them) or will die much earlier.
But in WH40k, you will have to resist not only the dark side, but also the light side, since they do not believe in the god of the emperor, they do not belong to the cult of the omnissiah (too much flesh, not metal), demons swarm around them in circles, which means who are they? That's right - they are heretics and demon worshippers, and such truly law-abiding children of the EMPEROR have only one conversation - a head off their shoulders or a rain of metal (or a laser). You will not be able to sleep or eat, which means that for survival, you will escape from there as soon as possible.

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Spoiler: You stop that.

Oh look, a whataboutism, haven't had to put up with that brand of nonsense in a bit.

Did the words 'Jaune and Lisa can trivially handle everything 40k has to offer' ever pass my lips? Did I ever say they'd be just fine if the most evil motherfuckers in the galaxy got their hands on them? No. That's asinine. Shame on you. Whataboutisms are poor debate behavior.

My argument was that while yes, Jaune likely would draw abnormal amounts of daemonic attention by dint of being who and what he is, he'll have the chops to take care of himself, both in terms of narrative weight, and in skill and experience and power and Catalog-granted boons. I also don't think he's going to be causing daemonic incursions just by existing. His soul is a shield, not some loose and uncontrolled thing dangling appetizingly out in the Warp.

(Side note: if you take their mid-to-high end feats into account, top level Huntsmen, absent any Catalog specific boons, could defeat any soldier in the Imperium short of a Custodian, certain members of the Assassinorum, or high level psykers. 'Ooh, Mr. Astartes, you're so skilled, you can deflect bullets with your sword--congratulations, you now count as a particularly durable and disciplined mook by RWBY standards.' Jaune is far off from being a veteran Huntsman, but he will be, one day.)

Oh, and attributing any of Lisa's chances of survival in 40k to Girlpower TM--classy. Real classy and mature. Shame on you, twice over. Lisa has some flaws that need fixing, yeah, but hopefully by the time they're feeling alright with tackling a DR 10 setting, she'll have tempered them with experience.

Also also! Unironically calling the Imperium the light side? 'The cruelest and bloodiest regime imaginable' that kills more of its own citizens than any xeno ever has over the last ten thousand years? You have not been paying attention, dude. Don't kid yourself. In 40k, your options are all varying flavors of shit.

More to the point, there are an endless number of ways for a pair of people to go unnoticed and survive on most Imperial worlds, if not exactly thrive. Unless they immediately and explosively grab high level attention, it could be years before they're found out and sufficiently powerful forces are mobilized to deal with them. Quick and efficient, Imperial bureaucracy is not. Evidence supporting this being every two-bit cult and gang that crawls out when you so much as turn over a rock on any given world.

They're protagonists; they're bound to get wrapped up in an adventure, but it'd be a really miserable story if it concluded with 'and then Jaune and Lisa were tortured to death, Imperium über alles, the end, lololol'.

As for Ironwood and exposing him as a villain, he had a plan to gather as many people as possible (who can be saved, but a small part of the people will have to be sacrificed - unfortunately, all cannot be saved - this is the law of the trolleybus) and evacuate. But problem-solving specialists (the RWBY team) came, and now, instead of a large number of people whom Ironwood wanted to evacuate, we get a very small proportion of the total number of survivors. After all, it can't be that the actual ruler of the country (Ironwood, who led the country for a very long time) was a fool and couldn't do anything, and the only ones who could save everyone were 4 girls who didn't even live in this country? Weiss lived for 16-18 years - Weiss or 40-50+ years of Ironwood, which of them knows their country and its possibilities more? Regarding Ironwood's madness, the authors deliberately made the general crazy. No one has a good rescue plan except the RWBY team, but we know how their plan ended - almost the entire population left for the afterlife, with Jaune and Neopolitan, where RWBY will later come and break everything that Jaune has been protecting for several centuries.

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Spoiler: AGAIN with the glazing of the deluded authoritarian.

Every step of the way, James Ironwood played into the villains' hands and gave them everything they wanted.

Directly from V6 and V7:

Tyrian: There's been a change in plans. Her Grace must act swiftly if we are to prevail. If General Ironwood comes to his senses and calls upon aid from Vacuo, all may be lost for us! And so the good doctor and I are being sent to Atlas... to prepare.
...
Ironwood: (over communicator) Schnee.
Winter: Yes, sir?
Ironwood: (over communicator) Was anyone caught trying to enter the school grounds while I was away?
Winter's eyes widen, and she turns to look at the school.
Winter: (uncertain) N-no.
Ironwood: (over communicator, speaking slowly) Are. You. Sure?
Winter's eyes widen more, and she sprints toward the school.
Cinder: Still afraid, I see.
Cinder is standing in a hallway inside the academy, watching Winter through a window. The lights in the hall are red.
Cinder: Now show me where you've been hiding her.
...
Ironwood: If we harness the power of the Staff, and raise ourselves high into the atmosphere, the city's artificial climate will keep citizens and food supplies unharmed. Always out of reach of whatever Salem may try to send our way.
Blake: But we're nowhere near finished evacuating everyone! You'd be leaving Mantle to die.
Ironwood: Yes… I would.

They played him like a damn fiddle and preyed on his insecurities to guarantee their victory. Cutting off the evacuation was in response to the assumption of there being more infiltrators among the populace of Mantle. Because there might be infiltrators, that's apparently enough reason enough to condemn half of your kingdom to die and to not even bother trying to save them. Not that he was incapable, especially given that the military held out for basically a full day after the hardlight shields fell and left them scrambling in a much less advantageous position, but that he didn't even want to try. I know that you can't always save everyone, but by God first you have to try. The first and last duty of a soldier is to fight and die in the defense of your country, and he failed that test of character.

Throughout the entire volume, Ironwood has routinely dismissed Mantle as unimportant, an obstacle to go around or threaten to get what he wants. The moment he quit being a paranoiac and took a leap of faith to work with Robyn, Mantle and Atlas were finally working together and they were on course to win.

This man was introduced as an day-drinking alcoholic who practically immediately began undermining his allies upon being told that he couldn't do things the way he wanted. And later, in V4:

Jacques: You've never trusted anyone but yourself!
Ironwood: And for good reason!

He doesn't even deny he's got issues! His arc, for the entire length of the show, has been that of an isolated man caught in a downward spiral, interspersed with little hope spots here and there to remind us that this man had the potential to be one of Remnant's greatest heroes and staunchest defenders. But his obsession with control and distrust for anything he does not control turned his allies against him and left him to die alone and unmourned.

He also didn't rule Atlas, at least not until he murdered the peer that dared call him scared and conducted the world's shortest-lived coup. Close thing, though, given that he occupied two out of the five council seats governing the kingdom in an unprecedented grab for power. But that's just pedantry, really. Your argument is that because he's older, he knows better by default? Hah! That'd be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. News flash: being an old fucker doesn't make you wise; it just means you've had longer to make mistakes, and in James' case, to keep making the same damn mistakes without learning from them.

Also, you're flat out wrong about the majority of the kingdom dying. Cinder blasted a handful of people off the edge before fighting Team RWBY, and there were no more people trickling into the portal network when Cinder finally deleted it. They saved everyone they could, from both kingdoms, instead of settling for half. If James hadn't lost his mind, he and the heroes could have worked together and properly pooled their resources to get an easy victory.

If you still think, after all of that, all of that character development over the course of V2-V8--that it came out of nowhere, and that James was a rational actor in his right mind making the smart choices? And not a deeply flawed man who let his stubbornness and paranoia undo him? Then I have no more words for you.

And as for the Paper Pleasers' situation, please. Heroes should not be held responsible for villains deciding to be murderously evil shitheads. Full stop. Jaune lashed out and blamed Ruby because his insane coping mechanism was just washed away. Then practically immediately realized he fucked up and apologized.

It's more like they just made RWBY and others excessively stupid and ridiculously hypocritical for no good reason. What was that again about Ozma's secrets being bad? Now let's gaslight and undermine Ironwood while keeping secrets!

Makes no goddamn sense. Team RWBY and the others were done dirty with how they were handled during that season.

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You may recall that, after learning the sheer magnitude and hopelessness of their situation, Team RWBY very nearly gave up. Part of that was due to overnight Apathy exposure, sure, but looking at the whole sordid tale, it's not hard to see why their resolve to continue was shaken. If it weren't for Ruby's nigh ceaseless optimism to push them onwards, they'd have chucked the Lamp down a well and gone home. So yes. They felt betrayed by Ozpin for keeping secrets, and then went on to do the same because they came to understand why, especially with how sus Ironwood was acting. But unlike Oz, who had to have his secrets pulled from him by Oscar and Jinn, Ruby and Oscar felt that Ironwood had sufficiently proven his character after reconciling with Robyn that it would be okay to be honest with him. Only for him to use it as ammunition for why RWBY weren't trustworthy. He and Ozpin really did swap roles between V2 and V7, as others have pointed out.

Oh joy, it's almost 3am. Good night, sirrahs.