User blog:ArrwCtchr/Character Development.

Character growth is a fundamental part of a narrative.
It's arguably the single most important aspect of a character during their journey through a story. And ultimately, it's RWBY's failing.

The fundamental misunderstanding of this narrative element is the separation of of the plot, from the growth and development of the characters. Now, it's entirely possible that Miles, Kerry, and Monty actually just wanted to tell a bully story, but it's more likely they they wanted to advance Jaune from the awkward, unskilled fighter, and move him towards his role of "hero".

But this is where the show gets the process wrong. It focuses solely on the "development" of the character without actually moving the plot forward. Concluding with Jaune's fight against the bear in episode 14, we've vanquished the bully that was introduced as a bully in episode 11, and the only thing that's changed is the character of Jaune.

Obviously the big bombshell of the 20 minute Jaune story was that he faked his way into Beacon. I'm sure that will come back in some way in the future, though, my suspicion is that it will be brushed aside by Ozpin's all-knowingness.

RWBY's ultimate problem is it does nothing to earn its character's development, it just decides that it's time to develop them. The first scene after the prologue was Roman Torchwick robbing a Dust store being patronized by Ruby. It's pretty clear that he's our antagonist… or supposed to be. We later see him planning something nefarious. Yet, he is neither responsible for the Grimm in the woods nor the antagonization of Jaune.

In fact, they only story element he's directly contributed to so far is an extreme positive for our supposed protagonist, Ruby. Had he not robbed the Dust shop with Ruby inside, she may never have ended up getting into Beacon 2 years early.

Nothing connects. They get launched into the forest because they need to form teams. But the forest is a self contained story loop that's contextually unimportant. They go into the woods, because presumably that's what always happens. They fight monsters in the woods because there are presumably always monsters in the woods. They find chess pieces that connect the pairs into teams. The physical objects are unimportant… they are even canonically unimportant. And at the end of the day, a few monsters no one care about are dead and teams have been formed.

Glenda, episode 8:

"Speaking of which… what did you use as relics this year?"



Carden is introduced as a bully solely so that Jaune can grow a bit as a character. Ruby and Weiss can argue, make up, argue again, get scolded by professors and make up… and all of that happens independently of any actual plot progression. These moments aren't even connected to each other, Ruby and Weiss story could happen with our without Jaune's story and vice versa. The teams formed during the 4 episodes in the forest could have been drawn out of a hat and it wouldn't change whether or not Carden would bully Jaune.

Well, it's late, I'm tired, and I ran out of words. I'll might have more to say on this subjec depending on how aggravated I get reading comments on reddit and the RT site... or how this post is recieved.

-ArrwCtchr