Thread:BlizzardDragon/@comment-25936766-20190210225610

Doing it here because while I was writing my response I realized it was going to be huge so better to do it out of the comment section. If you want to move this to a forum thread feel free to do it.

Before anything, let me remind you that I didn't say that she was a Mary Sue, just that she had quite a number of Mary Sue traits.

There's a problem with your arguments: You focus too much on the letter of "what is a Mary Sue" that you miss the spirit behind those letters. Assuming you're talking in response to the TvTropes explanation.

I do admit I did not have enough coffee yesterday to bother explaining what I meant in detail to you, and the link I gave is more focused on OCs than canon characters. So I'll do that now. The points that have a (T) are those where the traits are among the ones in that TvTropes page so even following the letter Ruby has them.

1) Ruby, from day 1, was a prodigy. Maybe not as much as Pyrrha, but still notable, with Ozpin himself outright comparing her skill with "one of the most dangerous weapons ever designed" with Qrow's, which is no small compliment.

She lacks experience, but only if you look at it in a general sense. Within Team RWBY the only one with more experience was Yang. Blake didn't spend years learning how to fight Grimm, and Weiss was so lacking in real experience she messed up her own combat stance in her first fight against real Grimm.

At the same time, her lack of experience (overall, not Silver Eyes) has only been an issue once in the entire show, and only at the Initiation. Both before and after that it's never actually been an issue that has affected anything.

2) You point out that she's "useless" without her weapon. But that point is weak for two reasons. First, she's very skilled with said weapon, which isn't your plain sword or gun either, and that's without taking into account Ozpin outright calling it "one of the most dangerous weapons ever designed".

If anything, being so skilled with such a weapon means a lot more than being "useless" without it. She trained and learned how to fight based around her Sniper Scythe, and that's a kind of weapon that would require dedication to use well. Complaining about Ruby's lack of CQC is like complaining about an archer's lack of swordsmanship skills.

Second....she's not useless without it. The very first thing she did in her first non-trailer fight was kick a man through a window, and that's despite not having much room inside the store. And if that wasn't enough we have the Food Fight as more proof of how "useless" she is without her weapon.

She doesn't compare to Yang or Merc obviously, but she's not useless at all unless the plot demands it. And so far that's only been in Vol.5, which is a mess in quite too many ways. Yes, Merc kicked her once in Vol.3, but that's because she dashed straight at him - she wasn't "bad at CQC" there, she wasn't even trying to use it, and if she had dashed to the side instead of seemingly trying to tackle Merc she wouldn't need it at all.

3) (T) Continuing with the flaws: When she first appeared she was supposed to be understandably-inmature, gun-loving, and socially awkward. But her gun-loving and social awkwardness both basically vanish before Vol.1 is over, and of these two the former only pops up rarely for one-note minor jokes.

As for her inmaturity, it's only made a difference in Vol. 1. And even then, despite acting like a total clown in Port's class, we get Ozpin telling her that he didn't make a mistake when he made her leader while Weiss is painted as a selfish brat and the one in the wrong despite her justified complains.

Overall these flaws lie quite in the background, at best, and in any case none of them ever make her look bad or cause any real problems or anything, at least in the eyes of the plot.

4) She is quite the special snowflake, in case you forgot. At the start of the show, we knew she was prodigious among the first years, and wielding "one of the most dangerous weapons ever designed" with skill that we later found out was outright compared to Ozpin's right hand man. That in itself is rather outstanding, even if Pyrrha still overshadows her.

Then we found out that she's part of a very rare race of Silver Eyed Warriors who just happen to have the power to poof Grimm out of existence or otherwise petrify them on the spot, even the old and mighty ones.

For comparison, out of the entire cast, the only ones more special and unique than Ruby at this point are Ozma, Salem and Penny, and Cinder if you look at her as not "a Maiden" but instead as "a Grimm Maiden".

5) (T) to quote TvTropes, two things:

A) "No matter how shy or socially awkward Mary Sue is supposed to be, other characters will be inexplicably drawn to her...Anyone who doesn't react to her this way is usually portrayed as evil and/or stupid."

B) "everyone finds her opinions to be better than their own, regardless of the actual content of her supposedly awesome arguments".

Both have been the case, to different extents. For the former, everyone loves her For a socially awkward girl who didn't even have any interest in socializing when she arrived at Beacon, she sure attracts quite the number of friends. Even Ozpin described her quite positively in Vol.5, and he didn't spend that much time together with her.

If someone doesn't like her, then they are either the ones in the wrong (Weiss), stupid (Cordovin), the freaking villains, or just plain someone who never spoke to her.

And among these examples, remember: Weiss's opinion of Ruby did a 180 in the span of a single day of classes and a single conversation with her teacher, one where she was treated like a selfish brat who always got what she wanted.

For the latter, well, it mixes with the other point. Her opinions tend to be taken as objectively right, at least in regard to important things like what to do with the Relic, and if anyone disagrees they are either in the wrong, stupid, evil, or they have an international roasting license. Though this is mainly a Vol.6 problem.

>At the farm: She insists on taking the Relic to Atlas, the rest whine about "what's the point", and in the end they only did that because of depressive not-zombies hidden underground. The moment they're gone their attitude towards "the mission" does a 180 so it lines up with Ruby.

>At Saphron's house: Qrow: "If you guys steal an Atlas airship you'll be marked as terrorists and shot down in less than 10 minutes! Just drop it, this isn't something you can fight your way out!"

Ruby: "Qrow, shut up, nothing has ever stopped us, we never needed an adult's help and this won't be any different so stop being a whiny little puss. We'll do it our way like always, so zip it"

Qrow: "You have destroyed me. My argument stands in ruins now"

Or to put it in another way, Qrow points out actual, big consequences for the insane plan they have: It's the Atlesian Military, it's not something they can just muscle through without problem. But Ruby just gives an optimistic speech that completely ignores everything Qrow said and because she's Ruby she's right and Qrow is wrong and stupid.

And in the end she does turn out to be right that they could just fight through whatever obstacle showed up, but only because Cordovin was an idiot, not because anything Qrow said was wrong.

6) (T) Her never-ending cheerfulness and optimism in spite of all the shit that happens in her face or around her. Her mother dying while on a mission, Vale overrun by Grimm, friends dying in front of her, the CCT going down, Mistral having a shortage of Huntsmen thanks to a traitorous old man, Salem being literally unkillable even after drowning in a pool of destruction incarnate......

She's been through a lot, seen a lot, and yet her attitude never changes, she remains the ever-optimistic ball of fluff that she was in Vol.1, to the point Oscar outright confronts her about it. And there she basically states that she didn't know Penny and Pyrrha very long to justify her apparent lack of fucks given after Vol.3.

The only times she doesn't act like that are extremely momentaneous, and last from just a few seconds to barely a minute. The moment the scene ends she's back to normal. And there's no explanation for this beyond "that's just how she is".

Now, personally, she is kind of a Sue but not firmly a Mary Sue just yet. She's too much in the background and she's only started to regain her protagonist position. If she had screentime comparable to Jaune's though, her status would be undeniable. 