Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-27404492-20170511131216/@comment-25936766-20170604175604

Nikoli the rebel wrote:

1. sure.

2. Sir Thomas Moore first used the word utopia in his 1516 book which described temperary forced labor, slavery, forced employment, social heirarchy, and a cashless, propertiless society.

3. Individuality vs anonymity/conformity.....

4. Teamwork vs whatever the good guys were doing for three volumes 1) It was indeed Realism. I acknowledged that just because Vacuo did not have as many "social problems" as the other Kingdoms, it doesn't mean that there wouldn't be sufficient drama if the story went there. Thinking there wouldn't be any is just pessimism. In fact, since there's still the part of the Relics and Salem, the

At the same time, I acknowledged when I said "HOPEFULLY" at the end, that it could end up not being the case (IOW, that there really wouldn't be much, if any, drama), thus not being Idealism nor Optimism.

2-Interesting (and outdated). What would he call a Dystopia then?

3-Alright on the Individuality (and Self-Expression) part, for all the reasons you mentioned......but where's the part of "VS conformity/anonymity"?

Even CRDL follows Individuality, especially Cardin.

-Walking around wearing armor, when even Jaune the Everyman used a pair of jeans and a hood. The only real exception was Russel.

-Cardin has a mace that can cause explosions with the Dust at the top, while Dove has a gunsword and Sky has a Gun-Axe, which all still follow the idea of "Outstanding if not Unique" that weapons in RWBY follow. Hell, they follow that idea more than some weapons used by people with less bland designs in the Tournament. (The only exception is Russel, who only has....a pair of daggers).

-Even Cardin's racism follows Individuality. An aspect of Individuality is Self-Expression and Freedom of Speech. Instead of just agreeing with the masses for the sake of acceptance, it's more Individualistic to have your own opinion based on your own ideals, even if it's an "unpopular" opinion like "Faunus are animals". (Not saying it deserves respect or anything automatically, just saying that it's an aspect of Individuality).

-And if you want to take it humorously literally, there's how in their fight with Pyrrha CRDL was basically acting like "every man for himself" more than an actual team.

And Conformity is simply following, and acting based on, the standards, values and rules of society. Which in itself does not go against Individualism necesarily. After all, Individualism does not need to involve Anarchy, or being a Social Rebel.

4-.....The Paladin fight. Which was literally nothing BUT teamwork between RWBY. That they did not do "perfectly", can be justified by the fact that they were in their 1st years at the time, they are rookies by Hunter standards.

Then there's Weiss sharing Dust with Blake, and the different moments they helped each other in their fight against ABRN, though these are not as outstanding or remarkable as the previous one. Though there's the moment they killed the Nevermore in V1, which required teamwork.

They did kind of drop the ball against Flynt and Neon, but the ones fighting were Yang and Weiss. Yang is simply "Hulk Smash" until she wins, Weiss thinks she's awesome without Dust when she isn't, both are the least skilled on their team, and both were stupid enough to not switch oponents at some point.

Now, as for JNPR....well, Pyrrha was their crutch so she did the most, though they had their moments, like when fighting the Deathstalker. Excluding Jaune simply giving orders at times.

And as for the other Good guys, the Ozluminati.....well, there it's different. It's not that they lacked Teamwork. It's just that Ozpin had a fetish with Inaction, while Ironwood had a fetish with proving his Dick is superior, so one side did nothing and made things worse while the other did too much and made things worse.

....So, overall, there was indeed teamwork. To deny it would be delusional. That it wasn't perfect for RWBY is expecting too much from rookies who had barely known each other for some months (sans Yang and Ruby).

Greystark wrote: (And that definition sounds a lot like communism)

Considering Nikoli included "social hierarchy", I really don't think it's Communism.

...In fact, the whole comparison with Communism that you're making, does not make me think of actual Communism, but the Hollywood Communism that the US's propaganda teaches. Propaganda coming from Russia's biggest competitor.

Communism is not necesarily that. In fact, the Ideology alone, along with Socialism to whom it is related, has nothing to do with slavery, forced labor, forced employment, or a "cashless, propertyless society" (the last of which sounds more in line with Anarchism).

However, these 2 Ideologies are pretty focused on the economics, and can vary wildly in terms of civil rights and social freedom. Some Socialist/Communist entities follow the ideas of being socially liberal and anti-authoritarian, but others (like Stalinist Russia) are instead very conservative and authoritarian.

.....To sum things up more smoothly, Socialism and it's "brothers" have been and still are divided in many ways, like "Democratic vs Nondemocratic", "degree of state control over planning", etc. The ideals remain the same, but the means differ heavily, and in some cases corruption means those ideals aren't always followed to the letter. It also leads to much Socialism vs Socialism.