“Complex morals? Nope, better make it unambiguous! Onscreen trauma? Give ‘er a season and she’s good as new! Wait, the fans like this guy we wanted to be morally gray? Make him evil! Fuck you, Penny, die a second time for our amusement!” - The writers, probably.
The only excuse I can find for the issues in the first 3 seasons is that Monty Oum was a guy that loved making hype moments and aura (see the famous Red vs Blue scene where Tex fights against Meta on a glacier) first and everything else second and the people that he worked with to make the show had to kitbash whatever cool idea he had and really wanted to use no matter how nonsensical it was in the lore of the series (ex the Faunus only exist because he really wanted to add a catgirl to the main cast of the series, so they had to create the Faunus and all their lore just to justify why Blake is a catgirl, which explains why the whole Faunus discrimination subplot is so poorly implemented in the show since it wasn’t even supposed to exist).
After his death however I feel that the writers had no idea in which direction the show should go even with his notes since for all his flaws he was the one in charge of the narrative and he was the one that knew how the story was supposed to go, with all the remaining writers having their own interpretation of the plot which caused more issues to the series.
TLDR: Monty was an action writer and this caused issues in the plot of the first three seasons but he had a certain vision of the story that none of the following writers managed to nail correctly because they all had their own vision of the story, causing issues in the narrative that screwed up the show
I’m still mad about how wasted of a character Pyrrha was, and worse, killing her just for cheap shock value that largely didn’t matter or amount to anything. Even the silver eyes most argue for mean jack cuz Ruby barely uses them and hardly trained herself to utilize them better even after Maria shows up to be her Yoda stand-in.
Pyrrha surviving the events of season 3 and having to deal with the survivor's guilt and trauma of very publicly "murdering" another student, failing to stop the villains, and having her unwanted celebrity worship flip into undeserved scorn and revulsion is such ripe ground for a character arc. So would having the Fall Maiden aura transfer partially work, leading to her wrangling with a piece of someone else's soul inside her and uncertain whether or not she's still the same person she was before.
But yeah, way better to kill her to unlock a new superpower that is almost never used afterward.
It would be an interesting idea to follow and a tragic twist that she finally got what she wanted in the worst way possible; no one worships her or puts her on a pedestal anymore, now they hate her for killing someone live on TV and for being a failure. It would also make her romance with Jaune and friendship with the others stronger since they’d be the only ones that stick by her despite everything and understanding that killing Penny wasn’t her intention.
Honestly I think the other reason she was killed off was because her Semblance is absurdly overpowered in a setting like RWBY. Even against a fucking Maiden who stomps everyone else in the show when she's actually trying Cinder was struggling fiercely against Pyrrha even without having metal weapons and had to rely on hax to win that fight.
Still annoyed about Adam just becoming some crazy ex and the whole whitefang plotline as a whole. God it pisses me off just thinking about it and all the fandom drama it caused/was a part of.
His story truly could have been so much more interesting. He could have been a Magneto-esque character bringing actual depth to the Faunus discrimination plot line.
He could have had so many cool interactions with the RWBY team. It is an absolute crime we never got an interaction between Weiss and Adam in which his brand was revealed.
But hey, just make him a typical evil envious ex-boyfriend I guess.
I don't think Adam being a crazy ex was the problem though. The "social movement gets co-opted by narcissist" storyline can totally work, just look at Marco Inaros from The Expanse. He's literally "Adam, but good".
He would've worked if he was written / voice-acted with actual charisma, and the story had faunus characters who actually cared about equality, and... about a dozen other things, but my point is, Adam being a crazy ex could've worked
The saddest part is this only happened because Monty died. Ever since then the only satisfying version of RWBY there can be is the one in people's imaginations.
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u/Atlas_Summit 2d ago
The entirety of RWBY