Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-43891221-20190921134652/@comment-43757330-20190924074521

The Purpur Man wrote: Am I the only one that thinks Ruby does indeed have character development?

V1-3 Ruby was a happy go lucky, naive young girl with a simple aspiration to save people. She had a romanticized view of the world and being a Huntress, and thought that the world was at peace.

Post time-skip, we can see that Ruby is less happy. The Fall of Beacon and the death of her friends shook her and woke her up, realizing the grim (pun half intended) situation the world is. In other words, Ruby grew up and learned that not everything is sunshine and rainbows. Sadly, that's not really quality character development.

Character development is achieved through dozens of different pathways, and the best character development utilizes most, if not all of them. Things like establishing a background, giving a character identifiable habits, creating motive, and making sure the character has flaws and imperfections.

The problem with Ruby is that her development only utilizes one of those pathways, and that's traumatic development. She has no background, no visual ticks, no motive for wanting to be a huntress, and to top it all off: she has no real flaws; which makes her unrealistic.

In fact, this very same problem applies to most of the characters in RWBY. The writers are great at creating tragedies and having characters respond in kind to them. It's their go-to method of developing their cast. Here's some examples:

-Ruby: dead mom, dead friend -Yang: physical deformity -Blake: domestic abuse -Weiss: overbearing father -Jaune: dead friend -Nora: orphan -Ren: dead parents -Salem: dead lover -Ozpin: children murdered by ex-lover -Mercury: abusive father -Hazel: dead sister -Watts: public disgrace -Adam: enslavement -Taiyang: dead wife

And that's not including the characters who likely have tragic backstories that have yet to be divulged. E.g. Cinder, Qrow, Emerald, etc.

My point is, the writers of RWBY lean far too much on the trauma/grief angle when they're developing characters. They need to branch out and find more varied ways to influence their character's various arcs. Because what they're doing right now is noticably repetitive, and they're better writers than that.