Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-28486044-20160727075112/@comment-26463535-20160727211247

If you looked, you would find that most fairy tales have always had happy endings or at worst bittersweet endings. The majority of the Hans Christian Anderson tales, Red Riding Hood, and Goldilocks are exceptions to the rule and the last two were cautionary tales. Snow White always lived and married the prince, the kidification just toned down the witch's death. Sleeping Beauty was wakened up by the prince, they just usually leave out the second part, about the prince's orgess mother and how she tried to eat Sleeping Beauty and her two kids except that two servants refused to follow orders then the prince came back in time. Hansel and Gretel always made it back home in the end. The girl finally confessed her sin before she was burned in flames and her children were restored to her. Sinbad lived through his voyages. The step-mother who killed and cooked her step-son at least recieved her just reward from her now transformed step-son's wing.

TL:DR Only cautionary tales and a lot of Hans Christian Andersens works have the complete downer endings. The rest, while more violent then commonly thought of, always had good triumphing over evil in the end (OK, that's questionable for Aladin, but you get the picture). RWBY can end bittersweetly then, but evil must not have the final triumph. The route they have gone doesn't present any cautionary lessons that would be emphasized by a major apocolypse ending.