Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26173711-20200204212304/@comment-25936766-20200205051544

I feel one of the main reasons why people think V7 sucks is due to the way the writers handled its main conflict, between RWBY and Ironwood.

Ironwood's plan isn't perfect and his actions are questionable, but he makes a valid point. Meanwhile the girls are against him because they want to do "the right thing", but they also have no real plan.

It is meant (I hope) to come off as a grey conflict where both sides aren't exactly wrong. But the way the scenes in the last few eps are framed, Ironwood feels like he's being presented as "the bad guy doing bad things so he's wrong" while RWBY are "the good guys who are right because they want to do the right thing". - Now, Protagonist-Centered Morality is nothing new, but it was different before. Ozpin did in a way make them join a war they seemingly can't win, and at Argus they needed to get the Relic to safety.

But here, Ruby repeats the same lies Ozpin got punched in the face for using, and doesn't even gets called out. Ironwood also gave them a place to sleep, Huntsmen Licenses, equipment upgrades and training, all for free, he has supported and trusted them, and yet Bumblebee still goes behind his back and even gave top-secret info to an enemy, and yet they act like they did nothing wrong when confronted about it.

It overall means that a good chunk of the audience felt like they were expected to support a bunch of ungrateful hypocrites, and the grey conflict they expected ended up coming off as black-and-white.

It was so bad that I even saw someone make a rant about how they were quitting the show because this Volume made them outright hate the main girls, when before they were merely annoyed by them.

Then you add more specific stuff that is more minor but it piles on to the things that frusfrate people, like the best Huntsmen in Atlas losing to a bunch of brats with far less training and experience, or people feeling queerbaited when Clover died after so many ambiguously-gayish scenes with Qrow.

I personally liked the Volume, but I do understand if someone felt it was dog shit.