Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-27404492-20170511131216/@comment-14909251-20170516055031

73.Anon.52 wrote: well.... there are other traits that aren't too popular IRL right now that she represents... "white" privilege, so there may be some level of hostility from that too. While the possibility of privilege in the sense of her wealth is something else I considered as being part of the resentment (the idea that she is a spoiled little rich girl who gets everything she wants even though she never got the most important thing she wanted), I really do think this is just lingering emotions from how she was introduced. A big part of why people feel this way is because our glimpse into Weiss before the series was so jarring next to her introduction. Every other member of RWBY was introduced in a way that was essentially consistent with how they were shown in the trailers.

They also introduced them in ways that immediately made them sympathetic to the audience. Ruby is the quirky hero who feels she is in over her head. Yang is the doting and overprotective sister. Blake is the snarky dissident who fights the power. Weiss is the girl who yells at our hero over an innocent mistake when she was already upset. As much as they may have felt it necessary to advance the story at the beginning, it has obviously kept some people from seeing her side of things to the point that they make up excuses for an abusive parent.

However, if you go back and think about it in the context of where we started, Ruby's reasons for being upset and disliking Weiss are utterly frivolous compared to the reasons Weiss has for being upset and disliking Ruby. So Ruby was upset that her sister ditched her to be with her friends and then someone yelled at her because she knocked over the girl's stuff that could potentially explode. Oh well. Meanwhile, Weiss is finally free of a toxic and abusive home environment and determined to use her newfound freedom to prove her worth so that she can reclaim her family legacy and undo the damage caused to it by her abusive usurping father, only for some bungling oaf to start ruining it all.

None of us know that at the time, but when you think about it that way then it honestly makes sense why Weiss would have a problem with Ruby. Having a buffon two years her junior be in charge undermines her not just in a personal sense, but in the broader sense of how it would be perceived back home. Despite having invited her father's wrath for trying to pursue her own path, she is still not good enough to even be considered worthy of leading the team. Really, it has nothing to do with her abilities or intelligence at all, however that is still the perception and in her world, especially with Jaqcues, perception is everything. So, she is really upset at Ruby for putting her in that situation and is upset that Ruby doesn't put on a more respectable air about it.

Compared to every other character who basically just has an issue with the fact that Weiss is maybe a bit too harsh when they do and say stuff that is stupid or inappropriate, it kind of makes her look better. Weiss has been dealing with more intense issues than any other member of RWBY, but it took them until Volume 4 to make that abundantly clear. People still haven't caught up with that and are stuck thinking about the way Weiss was before without all the added context.