Talk:Grimm/@comment-58.7.173.251-20140515124200/@comment-4010415-20140517174607

I've seen someone suggest that the grimm might just be misunderstood by the characters in the show. If that's the case, then the writers may be saving that fact for later for some reveal or something. For now, we're stuck with students being taught and told by adults that the grimm are bad, dangerous beings that, as a collective, all want to kill humans for no good reason. And they just take in that info without questioning it, especially since there was some war (against grimm?) that their great great grandparents took part in (Jaune's great great grandfather).

So far, the fights we've seen against grimm have the reasons as follows:

Well, in the beginning of the initiation, Ozpin did tell them "Do not hesitate to destroy everything in your path, or you will die." Truth, indoctrination, or misunderstanding of grimm? We don't know. The students were just doing as he said for fear of being killed by these big bad monsters.

Weiss ended up surrounded by beowolves. When they first started lurking around her, she was obviously fearful, especially when she cried out for Ruby upon actually seeing one of them. Though, oddly enough, now that I think about it, they didn't actually make a move until Ruby slashed at one of them. Once the fire that Weiss accidentally set started spreading, the beowolves fled.

Fear leads to aggression, not just in animals, but in humans. People in the world of RWBY are raised being taught that the grimm are creatures to be feared.

When Yang encountered the ursas, they attacked her on sight. She didn't take it seriously until one of them cut off a strand of her hair, at which point she got pissed enough to utterly curbstomp one of them. (Seriously, when we finally get some development on Yang, I wanna know what the hell that's about. They can't just have her hair be a berserk button for no reason, so there's likely some story behind that.)

Jaune disturbed the Death Stalker in its nest, and after it flung him away, Pyrrha fled. Since it just kept chasing Pyrrha and acting aggressively, Ruby tried to attack it. Because of that, it turned its aggression to Ruby, so that was provocation. However, it still went after them even after they left it behind after Weiss had temporarily subdued it. That's one pissy grimm that knows how to hold a grudge.

The Nevermore may have targeted them for a number of reasons. Ruby slammed into a bird on her way into the forest, which, upon closer inspection, had the same model as a Nevermore, just smaller. Was it a Nevermore? Maybe. It could've been that giant Nevermore's baby. When Ruby cut down a tree, a giant feather floated down from it. Was its nest there? Monty decided it'd be funnier to leave it open to speculation as to how Ruby and Weiss got on the Nevermore, so I guess we'll never know how they did that.

Whatever the reason, it was apparently pretty pissed and wasn't about to just let them leave, just like the Death Stalker. In that situation, the students decided it was best to kill them, so they could safely get away and head back to Beacon. That, and, again, Ozpin said "Do not hesitate to destroy everything in your path, or you will die."

Later on, Jaune had to fight a giant Ursa. Why? Well, it came out of nowhere and started attacking. But the person it attacked was Cardin, who was covered in... sap. Was it the sap that attracted the Ursa? We don't know. Either way, it continued to act in a way that made the students fearful and perceive it as aggressive. It seemed like, as far as Jaune was concerned, it was kill it or someone was going to die.

The reason I typed all this up is because 58.7 anon does kind of make sense, now that I think about it. We really don't know if the grimm really are some genocidal species or if the characters just think they are and were raised to believe they are.

Since volume 1 was all about introduction, they didn't bother to go too far into explaining anything because there was too much to introduce. Not grimm, dust, aura, semblance, anything. Everything they did in volume 1 was all about preparing for volume 2, not really for explaining anything or getting into the story or characters' backstories just yet. Supposedly, volume 2 is when that stuff is supposed to happen.