I think the Robocop remake said it best: "What's the one thing people like more than a hero? A DEAD hero." In the end, we are very much animals at our core, the only thing separating us from our beef steak is all in our heads. That's not rhetorical, our developed brains are the only real advantage we hold over every other animal, the capacity to think FAR beyond the concepts of "I am and I need".



The real problem is that in all things, while we have the capacity to process endless complexity, we don't really want to. We want things simple, pre-packaged, spelled-out so we don't have to think too hard about it. And we ALL carry the desire, when we see someone succeed....to see them FALL. And in the subject of literature, writers tend to embrace character deaths for no other reason than to do so because it is EASY, especially when they get the idea from their audience that that is what they WANT to see. They know they don't have to develop characters when the popular trend is to treat their cast as cattle to the slaughter, they KNOW they don't have to try any harder to keep an already hooked audience. And admittedly, part of it is blowback from the idea that no character deaths takes out all dramatic tension, that death has become cheap in certain genres, and that character resurrection is always a bad thing. Thing is, death and revival as literary tools are BOTH "handle with care" concepts, but we've over-corrected to the idea that cast is expendable, doling out death in greater quantities than Glenn Quagmire's DNA.



And those ideas, that people want to see successful people fall on hard times is even prevalent in RWBY, and Pyrrha's isolation is proof of that. And now that I think of it, it's weird that such a concept exists there. Pyrrha's success is in the arena as what we consider gladiatorial combat. Now, WE would see that as simply entertainment, but add in the Grimm, and her celebrity status takes on greater meaning, since she is able to inspire happiness in her audience, banishing away the negative emotions that would otherwise attract the Grimm. You'd think with the whole concept of the Grimm being EVERYONE'S enemy, her peers would see her as something to emulate. But her isolation reveals that they were JEALOUS of her success, NOT proud of it. And now the very thought of her will instead inspire feelings of dread because of her killing of Penny in front of a worldwide audience. You want a great example of what kind of reputation she SHOULD have now, look no further than Princess Euphemia of Code Geass, now known as the Massacre Princess due to her Geass-induced slaughter, something that destroyed her otherwise stellar reputation. What makes that even worse is because of the Grimm, they are likely going to have to SUPPRESS the knowledge of her death. No matter what anyone felt about her, the fact that even she became nothing more than a statistic will only increase the already high negative emotions and in turn attract more Grimm.