User blog comment:Hidden Scorpius XI/My impressions on "Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back" (V4-E9)/@comment-4010415-20170109021023

I don't see anything wrong with us being right about her being a chameleon Faunus. It was pretty obvious the moment we noticed she was wearing a White Fang mask and her skin was literally black with lighter, scale-like spots. There's nothing wrong with that being obvious. Meanwhile, there is something wrong with Blake being a cat Faunus being obvious. At least Ilia being a chameleon Faunus wasn't some built-up thing that was meant to be secret.

Her being Ilia, though... yeah... There wasn't much Merry could do about that, to be fair. It was either name-drop Ilia and risk us figuring it out or don't name-drop her and risk us complaining "Oh great, some chick Blake knew, completely out of nowhere with no prior mention of her existence!" If there's one thing RWBY actually does, it's make sure they at least mention significant characters ahead of time so they don't come out of the blue the moment they become important.

When they mentioned they didn't have the map, I was like "Well, maybe you shouldn't have thrown it when you got to Oniyuri." Really, they could've had one of them run back and get it before leaving Oniyuri. They didn't know yet that Qrow was poisoned, so there was no reason for them to be all "There's no time!" (Cue Best Friends "There's no time!" "But there's plenty of time!" "No, there's no time!!")

Hey, villages outside of Kingdom walls getting destroyed is a common occurrence. We were told that way back in WoR: Kingdoms (.. That was the one, right?). People probably got lazy over time and were like "Another one fell. Should I get the saw/chainsaw and cut the sign off?" "Ehh, just scratch out the name. People will get it." That, or it's to avoid instances of people walking around with a map and going "Hm, that's strange, the map says Kuroyuri is up ahead, but this sign doesn't point to it. *Goes to Kuroyuri anyway, gets mauled by a Beowolf*" At least leaving the sign there and scratching out the name gives people a clear indication of "This village is no more, don't bother."

Ren and Nora are headed toward Kuchinashi. The kuchinashi flower means "secret love" in Japanese flower language. Shall we get a Renora moment there? Meanwhile, Kuroyuri's meaning in Japanese flower language is "love" or "curse".