One Thing To Note On People Who Say That RWBYs Plan With The Staff Was Better Than Ironwoods. Besides

One thing to note on people who say that RWBY’s plan with the Staff was better than Ironwood’s. Besides the fact that they “cheated” in using it, Oz never told the headmasters the specifics on how the Relics work, considering that Leo never knew Jinn’s name otherwise Salem would have known too. Ironwood thought it was simply something that generates infinite energy and based his plan around that. But if he knew what the group knew? I believe he would have come up with something much better.

That's a really good point, anon, one I don't think I've seen come up very often in conversations about Ironwood's intentions. Granted, a potential pushback is that just because Leo didn't know something doesn't mean Ironwood is in the same boat, but the story certainly implies that he's just as ignorant. Like Qrow, Ironwood didn't know about Salem's immortality and if he knew more about the Relic you'd expect him to test Ruby's lie in the office. Where did the final questions go? What did you ask? How did you know how to accomplish that when that password is a closely guarded secret? If Ironwood understands the Relics as thoroughly as the group did at the start of Volume 7, Ruby showing up with possession of a super secret password, two questions (supposedly) gone, and Ozpin conspicuously absent is damn suspicious. But if Ironwood understands the Relics only as objects with vague powers, he has no reason to question Ruby or Ozpin. Ruby says questions are gone? He has no reason to doubt that because — again, like Qrow — the show has implied that Ironwood may not have even known that questions were a possibility, let alone how many, how often, how many should actually be left, etc. (Remember that Ozpin had already lied once about the number.) If Qrow was shocked to see Jinn come out, wouldn't Ironwood be too? Now, extrapolate that to the Staff. If Ozpin said only that the Staff produces energy, why would Ironwood doubt that? And that does seem to be what Ozpin told him:

We are going to take our plan for Amity Tower and apply it to the city of Atlas. It was Oz's plan in a former life, but he didn't take it far enough. 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.

We've long established that Ozpin gives out information in pieces and keeps as much to himself as he can. So he tells his inner circle that Salem wants these Relics, but not why. Later, he divulges that one Relic allows for questions, but they're gone for the next 100 years. Later still, Qrow is shocked to see a freaking magical woman come out of the Lamp, announcing that two questions still remain, because Ozpin both lies and lets people reach inaccurate conclusions based on what he has told them. So at the end of Volume 7, Ironwood is basically in the position of Qrow prior to the snow scene. He hasn't spoken with Ozpin since the Fall of Beacon and, thus, hasn't gone through the same realization of how many secrets have been kept from him. Or rather, he has, but the responsibility for that has shifted to the group. They said the questions were gone. They said Ozpin was gone. They betrayed him to Robyn. They kept Salem's immortality a secret. Ironwood is fully focused on them in this moment — as one would expect given everything that's gone down between them — and shifting through Ozpin's past claims to test their validity is, you know, not something he really has time for. So Ironwood seems to still be working from what Ozpin told him, accepting it as true:

Ozpin suggested that Ironwood use the Staff to raise Atlas.

The implication is that this is what the Staff is capable of doing and only what it's capable of: producing that kind of energy. This is, as Ironwood says, "the power of the Staff."

Atlas' many years of hovering in the air gave Ironwood the idea to hover Amity and reestablish communication between the Kingdoms.

Neither of these ideas take the power "far enough."

So now that Salem is here, let's rise even higher, hopefully out of her reach.

Unless I'm forgetting a scene that says otherwise (very possible), all of this seems to suggest that Ironwood didn't know the Staff could do others things. Like, say, open a bunch of magical portals for the people of Atlas and Mantle to escape through. Though it admittedly doesn't help that RWBY is so damn vague about who knows what and when and how. The group talks about the Staff like a cure-all solution in the dining room, but when did they learn (or assume) that the Staff could do something like fix all these problems? The God of Light didn't give detailed explanations of the Relics in Jinn's vision. The group (I don't think) discussed this at another point... characters just know things when it's convenient. So yes, we could maybe argue that Ironwood just knew about the Staff like the group just knew about it too, or he should have been smart enough to figure it out like the group apparently figured it out (putting aside that this is more about the authors handing certain characters knowledge rather than which characters are actually thinking through potentialities)... but again, the writing doesn't really imply that. And it's implications like this that paint the group as the more responsible party to me. Unlike Ironwood, they had this information for weeks before Salem's arrival. Unlike Ironwood (presumably, based on the above), they understood how the Staff worked. Or, perhaps more accurately, they didn't fully understand, but they had the means with which to learn. Unlike Ironwood, they knew Ozpin was still around and at any point they could have asked him about the Staff, to try and prepare their resources before the war arrived on their doorstep once more. Unlike Ironwood, they hadn't just been betrayed by their allies. Unlike Ironwood, they weren't suffering from a lost limb. Unlike Ironwood, they had two days — not a couple of minutes — to come up with some kind of plan.

It's so easy to be disgusted by Ironwood because yes, the idea of leaving anyone behind is horrific. But take a couple seconds to consider how and why Ironwood made that decision and it's easy to see that it stems from ignorance and prioritizing the many over the few, not a generic, villainous desire to abandon poor people. The group are the ones who had this information the whole time, had the means (thanks to that knowledge) of bettering their circumstances, hadn't just suffered betrayal and gruesome injury, and were later afforded time to literally sit around contemplate their problem for as long as they pleased. The situations are radically different and, thus, so is the blame. It's like watching a relay race where one party has a broken leg, wasn't told where the finish line was, has reason to think his teammates are going to undermine him, and was given about thirty seconds to complete the challenge. "Why couldn't you have just finished the race? Why can't you be more like them" the spectators ask, gesturing to the healthy group who fully trust one another and possess insider knowledge of the race's rules while also having a two day time limit to leisurely jog it. Idk. Why were they successful? Kinda feels like they had some significant advantages that the other party lacked... If we set aside everything else Ironwood was grappling with — betrayal, the shock of Salem's immortality (which the group spent days coming to terms with), losing an arm (what Yang spent months coming to terms with), the threat of immediate destruction, the responsibility of the entire world, and a canonically ambiguous semblance — then yeah, he might have come up with something other than "abandon Mantle" if he had a better idea of how to use the Staff.

Ruby's responsibility as a hero was not to save Mantle after things had reached their absolute breaking point, doing so by dissolving friendships and panicking the entire world. Ruby's responsibility as a hero was to save Mantle by doing long term work before this all went down, like reconciling with Ozpin, practicing her silver eyes, and extending Ironwood the trust she demands from others, so that when Ironwood has a crazy idea like, "Let's just run and leave half the Kingdom behind" she can go, "No, Ozpin has taught me that we can use the Staff in other ways. My abilities mean we can hold off Salem's grimm long enough to finish evacuations and I've extended enough trust to you that you'll trust me now and help me take this risk. I've prepared for this. I've earned it."

If then Ironwood had rejected a perfectly good plan and the offer to work together to instead run and needlessly leave people behind to die... yeah, then he'd be a cowardly antagonist who needs to be stopped. As it's written, he's just an understandably panicked man doing his best against a buttload of opposition from the people meant to be helping him.

RWBY Fan: "Sorry you hate RWBY because it doesn't match your headcanon."

Also RWBY Fan: (proceeds to make up headcanons about how the entire show worked)

The cope is unreal.

how in the world do people come to the conclusion that Adam is a pedo? Genuinely asking because I saw your pinned post

anon before you read any further ask yourself: do you really want to know?

As far as I understand it, the logic, working backwards, is as follows: Adam is ~4+ years older than Blake. Adam and Blake have been in a romantic relationship for many years. Blake first met Adam when she was very young. Therefore, Adam groomed Blake to be in a relationship with him when she was a child.

You can 100% be angry at Ruby lying to Ironwood. Here's the thing.

People want to instantly jump down Ironwood's throat for ignoring Mantle, but Team RWBY have been doing nothing but wasting time and BRINGING the danger onto Atlas and Mantle as they carry the Lamp around with them. As much as they spout about Mantle, they really didn't do anything for them either.

As I had said before in a previous post, Volume 7 is a terribly slow one, as if the writers truly had nowhere to go with the season unless they slowed down a ton of subplots to extend the watch time. Literally nothing happened in Volume 7 until we reached the tail-end of it. Ironwood fighting Watts, Penny and Nora fighting some main antagonists, and Team RWBY still being shafted to the side, and Penny becoming the maiden.

Even Weiss' side mission of investigating her dad was pointless. Yes, I am deadass serious. I've been rewatching Volume 7 just for Ironwood and legitimately, nothing important happens until the near-end. Team Kids weren't remarkable at all and weren't doing anything. Even Robyn went absolutely nowhere and became useless in Volume 8. Sure, it sounds like they were "trying" to set her up for something unique, but all we got was some stupid politics arc and then her team stealing from the military, and yes even the theft was pointless because we never heard about it ever again. And why would we? Team RWBY destroyed Atlas and Mantle.

Actually, both sides didn't do anything special for Mantle. All they could do was just bellyache about it and then get angry with Ironwood whenever he took a breath of air, and Ironwood was focused on Atlas. However, that didn't always mean he didn't care for Mantle. Meanwhile I seriously have no idea what Team Kids wanted for Mantle. Hell, they even became divided into either saving Mantle or saving "everyone" in Volume 8. Seriously?

So, they were running around in circles, chasing their own tails. Hence why the writers must have thought, "oops, we should really wave that magic Staff to wrap all this up, we fucked it up. And kill Ironwood because maybe this will never let us touch the Atlas arc ever again."

Say or think what you will about Volume 7, but to me, Volume 8 really showed its ass.

Just because the kids first started their journey into Atlas by taking a stroll through Mantle, doesn't mean they suddenly care with all their heart. I didn't see anything for them to care about.

“ugh why do you try to make everything about God” I don’t, everything already is about God. hope this helps

Most people who eat shark fin soup are Asians or specifically Chinese.

China had a practice where they drowned infant girls.

China also has one of the highest abortion rates in Asia.

So the 'shark-fin' argument does not apply to pro lifers that much, ironically enough.

if we are going to outlaw abortion because the fetus is a living being then we should also take steps towards legislation to outlaw shark finning.

shark finning is the practice of catching, and then cutting off the fin of a shark before throwing it back into the water to drown to death.

many of these sharks are surely pregnant considering the the fact that the gestation period of a shark can be up to two years it is reasonable to hypothesis that a great number of these sharks that are being killed are pregnant.

to add to my point, many species of sharks give live birth. meaning they give birth just as humans do. they carry pregnancies just as humans do.

so anytime a shark has its fin brutally cut away and is carelessly thrown back into the water to die, there is a chance they are not only killing the mother but her pups as well.

so in conclusion if you are truly pro-life, if you are truly fighting for all living creatures right to life, you would be fighting just as hard for these sharks and other live birth giving animals as you do the human fetuses you are trying to so desperately to “save”.