My Thoughts on Pyrrha's Death, RWBY, and Rooster Teeth, or I hated Pyrrha's Death and the RWBY Fanbase Nearly Drove Me to Suicide Over it.



This a heavily rewritten repost of my rant I had on tumblr about Pyrrha's Death, RWBY Volume 3 and beyond, and how Rooster Teeth has ignored the various criticisms and backlash regarding Pyrrha’s death and Volume 3 as a whole, as well as the disgusting way that the fanbase of RWBY has used the death of its creator, Monty Oum, as a way to shield the show from the criticism it deserves.



This is now an essay about how Pyrrha's death was a total failure in terms of writing and how RWBY V3's second half was handled very poorly. And no, I did not watch V4, but I do not like what I've heard about it.



My initial rant garnered mixed reactions; some think I’m right and RT needs to listen to those of us voicing our grievances while others think I, and others who are unhappy with Pyrrha's death, are whiny morons who need to grow up.



Well, whatever the case may be I need to make something explicitly clear: I do not blame the animators or the voice actors for the second half of V3′s lack of quality. No, they deserve every bit of praise they get, all of them, it looks wonderful and the acting is wonderful. I place all the blame on Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross for what I feel was bad writing and some of the more toxic fans for using Monty's death to shield the show from criticism.



Now before you complain to me, yes, I know Pyrrha's death was planned from the beginning (or so they say), I know it was originally going to be Jaune killing her by accident (a move so foolish that I honestly wonder if that was a joke), I know that Jen Brown and Monty's widow have confirmed it was planned from V1, but here's the thing: I do not care, it doesn't make the death any less awful, any less insulting, any less contrived, any less needlessly cruel, or any less stupid. I have heard every defense for the death but I have come up with an argument against it, so unless you are Miles Luna, Kerry Shawcross, or Monty Oum returned from the grave (in which case I'd ask why you're talking to me instead of reuniting with your loved ones), there is nothing you can say in its defense.



In my brutally honest opinion, Pyrrha's death fails so spectacularly, that it's as if I am watching someone fall flat on their face upon a bed of spikes, whilst simultaneously getting their crotch smashed with a flaming sledge hammer. It's harsh, I know, but that's how I feel about it. And that's strange, as I am not a person who gets angry at a work of fiction easily and I am actually quite easily pleased in a lot of cases And while there have been series or shows where I gave up and stopped watching/reading, there have been character deaths that I was saddened by, upset by, disappointed with, but never outright angered and offended by. Pyrrha's death was the first death of a character that truly angered me, which is odd as she wasn't even my favorite character in the series, Blake was, and I didn't really come to truly care for Pyrrha until a few episodes prior to the end, so it's an oddity, but it doesn't make her death any less inexcusably bad in terms of writing.



Now if you liked it, fine, okay, I will not insult you for liking, I don't like it and everyone who has tried to convince me it was has failed, I cannot understand why people think it was well done, but that's just me. I will not insult or think any less of anyone if they thought it was execute well. But just because I do not like it does not automatically make me wrong. Having your own opinion is fine until the point where someone basically goes "It's not enough that I like it anyone who doesn't is wrong and must be silenced!" Now that someone, whoever they might be, is just being a jerk. If you thought the death of Pyrrha was well executed, if you thought it was a perfect send off, then okay, good for you, but I cannot bring myself to think that it was well written nor do I understand how someone could, but I will not fault anyone for liking it or defending it. Now I do not believe disliking Pyrrha's death makes me more enlightened or intelligent than anyone else, I'm just here to voice my opinion and why I personally think it didn't work in the slightest.



So, if you need to say that if something is wrong with me, or anyone else who dislikes the death of Pyrrha, then... quite frankly, you're just plain wrong.



If someone were to dislike something I liked I'd be fine with it as long as they weren't being a high and mighty snob who insulted me for liking it. If someone hates something I like, I do not presume myself to be a more intelligent or sophisticated person just on those grounds alone, I would never insult them for their opinions, not unless they were shoving them down my throat and demanding I agree with them. And that is not what I am doing here, I am making an argument against Pyrrha's death and if you disagree with me, okay, just don't attack me for it and insult my intelligence for not liking something you do.



So what if they planned to kill Pyrrha off at the start? Plans for stories or shows change all the time and a lot of stuff planned to happen never makes it into the final product at all.



For example I have read the series bibles for some shows such as Batman The Animated Series, and upon looking at the proposed episodes section, of which there were 22 in all and only about 6 episodes that were produced as they were planned with another 4 being radically altered: but the most glaring difference is that Mr. Freeze was supposed to be an unsympathetic conman who ran a fake cryogenics operation, an accident occurred, turning him into Mr. Freeze and was nothing but a thief and started up a 'arctic smuggling' operation, but it was wisely replaced with Freeze's now iconic, tragic backstory that serves as one of the show's greatest episodes, redefining that character, saving him from obscurity, and making him one of the most interesting and sympathetic members of Batman's rogues gallery, something that never would have happened had they gone with what was originally planned. Hell, a little while before that episode came out, there was an issue of Animal Man, in which that hero ends up in a limbo for obsolete, lame, old-fashioned characters that no one cares about anymore and he runs into Mr. Freeze who complains that no one remembers him. Oh how that would changes, as now, 25 years later, having Mr. Freeze be 'the lame Batman villain no one remembers or cares about' seems like a strange choice.



Also Harley Quinn, who was originally created for that show and is now an iconic and beloved character, was originally a one-off character for the episode "The Joker's Favor" and was never supposed to come back, but they kept her around and now she's ranked among the great female comic book characters.



Neither of those two characters would be the icons they are now had they stuck with the original plan.



Even the crew of RWBY themselves have done this, since Velvet and Torchwick were both minor one off characters never intended to appear beyond their debuts but fan response kept them around and they both ended up being great supporting characters.



I want everyone, even Rooster Teeth themselves, to know that I have spent months thinking about Pyrrha’s death, I have put my emotions aside, thrown out my preferred ships, looked at it as logically and as calmly as I could. I spent hours in quiet reflection, thinking as hard as I could, I have done my best to see a point for it… and yet I still think it’s a stupid and unnecessary mistake and they should undo it the moment they get the chance.



Quite frankly, it's not a flat out terrible idea, it had potential, but if it were to work, V3 and even V2 needed some major rewriting, as how it was handled and executed in the show... it’s an incredible blunder, one of the worst and most disrespectful, needlessly cruel and sickening character deaths I have ever seen.



I have literally seen villains get more respectful sendoffs when they’re killed off; Shockwave from IDW’s Transformers comics, Savage Opress from Star Wars The Clone Wars, Penguin from Batman Returns, Alexander Pierce from Captain America The Winter Soldier, and Imhotep from The Mummy, all of them got better and more respectful deaths than Pyrrha did.



At least their creator’s didn’t make fun of them and their tragedies afterwards and for those of you wanting proof of this; someone at RT had the gall to put ‘Arkos Sailing… Arkos Sinking’ on the Youtube captions for that version of the episode.



That isn’t funny, it’s tragic and you insult not only the character, but her fans. And to my knowledge the channel has to do the captions on YT or they will only have a passing resemblance to what's happening in the video at best or be random, nonsensical gibberish.



And to make matters worse, I recall Miles Luna mockingly tweeting out on the day the episode dropped and many fans were mourning the character "Happy Valentines Day!" mocking the Arkos shippers and the fans of Pyrrha.



As I said, disrespectful and sickening. It caused me to lose a lot of respect I had for them.



This is something that truly made me angry, as I said above, it's incredibly hard for me to get angry at a work of fiction, as I am a genuinely laid back, easy going person who tries to enjoy everything and see the best in it, and would you want to know how hard it is to annoy me, how willing I am to let the story do whatever it wants I? Jar-Jar Binks never bothered me. Yes, the 'most annoying character in cinema' never bothered me at all (mostly due to the amount of annoying people I have had to put up with in life) and yet, Pyrrha’s death was one of the few things that made me consider suicide by faceplam and say “What is wrong with you? What drugs were you on to make you think that was a good idea?” So if I, the guy so laid back and accepting that he didn’t find Jar-Jar irritating, is going “What the hell were you thinking?”, then maybe you should consider that you may have made a mistake. Oh, and by the way, the RWBY reddit insulted and mocked me because I do not find Jar-Jar annoying, wrap your head around that.



I’m truly sorry to RT, but this… it just felt so… disappointing. I have been a fan since 2010, I love Red vs. Blue, I even stood up for the ending of Season 13 (at first...), I loved the first two volumes of RWBY, I love the Let’s Plays and the RTAA, I even love that F.E.A.R parody you made back in 2005, so this just… felt like a stab in the back. I expected it from other websites, but never from you, and that makes it worse. Pyrrha’s death was meant to invoke sadness, but instead, in me at least, it invoked rage, frustration, disappointment, and a feeling of resentment. I do not feel they owe me anything, but that doesn't make it feel any less like a let down.



I want to believe RT wants to make a good show, but given how poorly done the second half of V3 was story wise and how they have ignored the backlash over Pyrrha’s death, and how Miles sadistically mocked the death of a character he was supposed to care about I think MST3K’s saying “They Just Didn’t Care” applies here. It felt like they made this season darker to pander to the crowd that felt RWBY needed to be darker, and they went to far. I was perfectly fine with the series going darker in tone, but V3 was far too much and way too fast. They claim Game of Thrones influence and I can say very confidently that not that many people looked at this show and went “… needs to be more like Game of Thrones.” In fact, I have never watched GoT but even I know it's been mocked for its constant deaths. Others have pointed out the anime Gurren Lagann was a huge inspiration to Monty, and he wanted to do something similar to what that show did with a character, but just because something works in one story does not mean its going to work in another series, and besides that it makes it sound like Monty was ripping off that anime. Take all of that and combine it with Luna's sadistically cruel tweet and it makes me wonder if they truly cared about their characters and their fans.



In fact if I were to be incredibly blunt and brutally honest I think that Monty spitballed the idea of Pyrrha's death one day and no one had the guts to challenge him on it. To quote a friend of mine about this whole mess: "...it was my hope that they would develop her as a character through trials she would face through the series. But they went down the easy route; killed her off for a nice dose of drama, easy character development for Jaune and the plus of having to write and develop one less character - much easier than creating actual pathos for a character. Hell, she didn't even achieve anything with her death, and she wasn't going to in that situation; anyone would have been able to gather that the CCT was lost at that point and it would best to regroup. It's just... not all that impressive in my opinion."



And to be totally fair, while Pyrrha's death had merit in concept I still think the execution failed horrifically and came off as an incredible blunder, as I feel it was done too soon and should have been saved for Volume 5 at the soonest.



Some had been guessing that Pyrrha would die, but I said no because I believed you weren’t stupid enough to kill her off. Why did you have to prove me wrong?



I’m sorry but… I wanted to watch the next volume but Pyrrha’s death was so insulting and disappointing I just can’t bring myself to watch it because as Captain America said “When I see a situation pointed south I can’t ignore it.”



Another big problem is Monty's death. His death was a tragedy, make no mistake. We all mourn and miss him, we were all surprised and devastated by the news, no one will argue that. But his death affected the show in a negative way; anyone who critiques on the show's writing and animation quality has been attacked by the show's rabid fanbase as 'attacking Monty's legacy'. I should know, as it happened to me. RT themselves are guilty of doing it, as Pyrrha's death was intentionally not well received at all, but then came the news that Monty intended for Pyrrha to die and then the fans basically attacked, insulted, and shunned anyone who felt it was still a bad idea, and some even conformed. I did not conform, I stuck by my opinion, and I suffered for it.



Now' let's go over some of the problems with Volume 3, beginning with how badly this season wastes its characters; aside from Qrow none of the new characters do anything; Teams SSSN and CFVY barely do anything (Okay, I’ll cut them some slack with Sun and Velvet) Most of the new characters get one episode and that’s it. Hell Teams NDGO and BRNZ don’t even show up in the big battle, nor is the unseen half of FNKI. Ceil Soleil literally just shows up for one scene and then vanishes, we don’t see her weapon or even see her reaction to Penny’s death, she's just gone. So was she a ghost? Is that why she just disappeared? Or was it bad writing? Probably the latter.



I mean I don't want them to be promoted to new main characters or something like that but if you have all of those character then do something with them.



Winter shows up, fights Qrow, trains Weiss for one scene leaves, and is never even mentioned again in the season.



Then there’s Amber, voiced by Laura Bailey. Why did they get her to voice that character? She had like one line and a bunch of grunts, you could have pulled a random woman off the street and you would have gotten the exact same performance out of her. Such a waste of Bailey’s talent.



Then there’s the Four Maiden’s stuff, which was recently confirmed that it WAS made up after V2 had rapped, which I had guessed for myself, and it shows, they come out of nowhere and seemingly exist for no other reason than to give Cinder more power. They are seriously inconsistent because when Amber fights Cinder she doesn’t put up that much of a fight, even if she is out numbered she should have taken them out if these powers were as strong as they claim them to be, it seems that the plot of RWBY has bended itself to Cinder so she can become the most ridiculously overpowered Mary Sue of a villain I have ever seen. And now with V4 out they show that Ruby scarred Cinder during the V3 finale but we never saw it... how convenient. I know they said they always planned for Cinder to be scarred but as it was presented it feels really tacked on in an effort to save face, I mean it's almost as if RT realized what a Mary Sue she became and tried to correct that mistake.



You know what, speaking of plot holes I think it’s time we look at Ozpin. Let’s face it, a lot of V3′s plot problems can be pointed to Ozpin, I think he’s either a traitor or an incompetent idiot who needs to be thrown in prison for said incompetence the moment they get him back. He failed so spectacularly, made so many idiotic mistakes that I wouldn’t trust him to feed my cats, let alone be someone with as much power as he is.



Here are some the mistakes he made off of the top of my head:



1, placing Amber inside of a school, of all places, with no one guarding her when her safety and the protection of the Maiden's powers should be paramount. Why not place her in some heavily guarded citadel with a baker's dozen worth of professional Hunters armed to the teeth instead of in a vault at the bottom of a school with little to no security?



2, choosing to give these top secret powers to Pyrrha, the one student who is a celebrity.



3, He took Pyrrha to give her Amber's powers at the worst possible time, right as the Grimm begin to invade instead of letting a powerhouse like her help out in the battle. The real kicker of it is that I like to think that Cinder didn't even know where the Vault was, she just followed him there so if he had just let Pyrrha and Jaune stay nothing would have happened.



4, the only ones he took to the vault were himself, Jaune, and Pyrrha, instead of some actual highly trained guards or any other teachers. I know that Glynda, Port, and Oobleck were all off fighting but we know there has to be other teachers we haven't seen yet (Peach being the one that was name-dropped) so why not bring SOME form of back up? Heck even some guards would have been nice. (Hint, hint Oz). The biggest thing, I must repeat this, is that there was literally no one guarding someone who is this powerful. Were they on the honor system or something?



What's even more egregious is that this had to have been like a couple of weeks after Cinder broke into the CCT tower back in V2's Dance, Dance Infiltration so he should have suspected something was up and posted more guards around the place.



5, I have no idea if he truly knew if Penny was a robot or not but if so he let her go into battle against someone with a magnetic Semblance. If he didn't then he gets a pass but Ironwood probably should have known, so Ironwood's the idiot in this situation because it's probably not a good idea to let your highly experimental robotic warrior to go up against someone and not know for sure if they can permanently damage said robot.



6, Speaking of Ironwood with that many ships there there had to have been large crews and a rather large number of troops with them, troops that do squat to stop the Grimm or guard the CCT tower. I honestly can't remember it that well and I don't want to go back and try to check on it but I do kinda remember something about Ozpin refusing to give Ironwood control of security measures to ease the civilian's tension or to make it look like nothing bad was about to happen. So yeah, all those casualties and Grimm that got in? Ozpin's fault. Again, correct me if I'm wrong as I might be misremembering it.



7, He basically filled Pyrrha's head with the destiny nonsense that deluded her into thinking her destiny was to throw away her life and her future to fight Cinder for some incredibly forced, asinine reason. And what's worse her sacrifice is incredibly hollow for reasons I'll get into soon.



and 8, Cinder's plan relies on Ozpin's stupidity. Okay, so Mercury is injured by Yang and is taken in an ambulance to the hospital, which obviously never showed up. Didn't anyone find that weird? Didn't anyone notice that? If not then these are some pretty poor authority figures. Second of all Mercury just waltzes around before Penny and Pyrrha's fight begins and no one notices until Ruby sees him, meaning no one on the security cameras gave a damn. Third, after Yang breaks Mercury's leg they mention Coco's encounter with Emerald, seeing Yatsuhashi when he wasn't there and Yang attacked Mercury when she had been tricked into thinking he attacked first. Coco apparently talked about this as they mention it without her present, so no one put two and two together? No one noticed that weird stuff happened when CMEN was involved in a fight? No one in the crowd noticed Coco was talking to someone who wasn't there? This had to have been an attempt at a Batman Gambit, where you rely on your enemies to do odd, stupid, and specific things to succeed with your plan but with Batman it makes sense since he can manipulate his enemies mentally because he can psychologically analyze them and manipulate the villains since he knows how to push their buttons. Here Cinder literally just relied on no one being smart enough to see through this obvious plot.I mean this isn't like the Star Wars prequels where Palpatine was using the Force to cloud the minds of the Jedi so they couldn't tell he was a Sith lord, because the Jedi were still suspicious of him and knew they couldn't trust him, and knew there was something up, here Cinder's plan works, simply because of Ozpin's incompetence.



Okay, now let's move on to the fact that they tried to make Ironwood look like an asshole but after V3 Ironwood looks like the sensible one trying to keep people safe while Ozpin kept getting in his way, getting god knows how many people killed! Say what you will about Ironwood but at least he did, or tried to do, something to keep people safe, Ozpin just did nothing and hoped for the best. Ironwood, however, isn’t free from it either because as previously mentioned he allowed Penny to fight someone with magnetic powers! And he left his flagship so undermanned that someone as small as Neo could wipe it out. Someone tried to say that the Atlas soldiers are about as powerful as the White Fang troops but that is just as stupid, since Atlas soldiers should probably be highly trained while the White Fang are a sloppily trained Guerrilla terrorist force, there's no excusing it.



And then there’s that stupid CCT thing… Why would that be the only one? Why are there no backups? Why is it at the school? Why would the fall of one shut all of the others down? Ozpin didn't scan it for any viruses or uploads after Cinder broke into the tower?! GAH! To quote Batman Forever: “It Just Raises Too Many Questions.”



This season made Ozpin look like the biggest idiot one could imagine. Literally nothing about Cinder’s plot would have worked if Ozpin wasn’t an idiot. Why let him live and kill Pyrrha?



In fact that’s what should have happened. It would have been much, much better to kill the wise old mentor figure off, someone who all the kids liked and looked up to as a mentor, Ozpin would die to redeem himself for his mistakes and failures, he dies a heroic sacrifice so Ruby, Pyrrha, and Jaune could escape from Cinder and as I said, to redeem himself while unlocking Ruby’s eye power at the same time as she was attached to him but no, let’s have a beloved character die for no reason other than angst!



Now let's get on to some of the bigger problems with Pyrrha's death:



Her name means Pyrrhic victory, but they didn’t win anything, nothing at all. To paraphrase Army of Darkness once more like I did in the last rant, Her sacrifice won two things: Jack and Shit, and Jack left town. Why did she even go to fight Cinder? To save a building that was already lost?

Although it's recently been suggested to me that it could apply for Cinder's Pyrrhic victory and if so that's an odd way to do it since if your name means Pyrrhic victory it might as well be for YOUR Pyrrhic victory.



Seriously the only real solid excuse for Pyrrha’s death is Ruby’s eyes and Jaune’s Development (I do not hate Jaune no matter how much some people say I do) and that doesn’t make it better, but worse, because in an insanely liberal age like today you’d think a bad case of ‘Stuffed in the Fridge’ (a term used when a female character is killed off for no reason other than for a male character's angst and development) would be avoided like the plague but no, let’s kill of a beloved female character for a very divisive male character’s development. Ugh, did they not see how badly that would work out? Better question is did they even care?



Okay, first of all Ruby and Pyrrha barely interacted over the course of 30 plus episodes. Second, while I'm not watching V4 I've been told that one of the new villains mentions they've dealt with silver-eyed warriors before, meaning that Cinder was probably the only one unaware of them for some reason given her surprise and that it's not that big of a deal for the rest of them. Three, it gives off this really weird message since Pyrrha worked hard all of her life to get where she was and dies to activate Ruby's special powers which she gets because a casual friend died.



And as for Ruby’s eyes (which I don't think were as out of nowhere as others have complained as there was some foreshadowing in the first episode), that could have easily been done with Penny’s death or seeing Yang’s arm cut off because in the final show itself it's odd that Ruby's eyes don't shine when she sees what has happened to her sister or to a friend she has a developed relationship with but with a character she has barely interacted with over the course of 30 plus episodes, hell I can barely recall a scene where Ruby and Pyrrha interacted so the idea that they were close comes out of nowhere. I know there was a lot of passage of time offscreen but still they could have shown they were friends over the course of 3 volumes, so they're basically forcing us to accept that they were close friends, we just never saw any signs of it. So yeah, I think it would have worked better with the death of Ozpin or Jaune.



Now, to quote a colleague of mine, AraelIsrafel, who has made other complaints on his own journal has said this about the issue and had given me permission to feature it here: "Even worse, Ruby's Silver Eyes... completely invalidated every concept Pyrrha shaped her whole life on.



So, based on her views on "destiny", it's clear that while Pyrrha had people pushing her to succeed, SHE got herself to where she was. Her success and fame prior to coming to Beacon? All her own hard work, drive and effort, to the point where these things are what prompt Ozpin to make her the offer of Amber's powers in the first place. Even how she uses her Semblance is indicative of her development: she ONLY ever used it when she absolutely needed to, and her emphasis was on her physical training.



And all of it amounts to absolutely nothing against Cinder. Anyone looking at that fight with any scrutiny could tell that Pyrrha had no chance to win, and that any ground she actually got was Cinder playing with her. While she might have truly caught Cinder off-guard a few times, all Cinder had to do was flex her Maiden muscle and Pyrrha was thrown aside. This fight is actually a MAJOR departure from how the fights in RWBY have gone. Up until this point, they made it clear that fighters with more skill, experience and strategy could beat a more powerful opponent if that opponent was lacking in any of those three things, the most notable example is the take-down of Amber. A well-coordinated assault by three lesser fighters was able to bring down a Seasonal Maiden, who was able to over power any one of them effortlessly. Other examples include Torchwick's repeated victories over Ruby, Yang's defeats by Neo and Adam (the former was Yang's perfect counter, and the latter had more power on top of the experience, skill and strategy), and Blake's victory over Torchwick on the train (because he wasn't expecting the Dust-infused shades). These fights emphasized one thing consistently: that POWER WASN'T EVERYTHING.



And yet, once Cinder obtained Amber's full powers, she became an unstoppable villain, able to overpower anyone, no matter how skilled, no matter the strategy, no matter their experience, and we see that much when Ozpin tells Pyrrha to go get Glynda, Ironwood and Qrow, telling her that she'd only get in the way now. Freaking OZPIN needs the other three to MAKE IT AN EVEN FIGHT, and even then, it's not a sure thing. And we are somehow supposed to believe that Pyrrha is an even match for Cinder, someone who in the very first episode of the series was able to match Glynda Goodwitch move for move. Even if they'd not added in the Seasonal Maiden plot at the last minute, Pyrrha vs. Cinder is not an even fight by any means, since without the Maidens, it means that Cinder is simply using Dust Weaving, and JUST THAT made her an equal to Glynda. Also to note that Glynda's main form of attack is general telekinesis, which is actually more versatile than Pyrrha's Polarity, and Glynda has YEARS more experience that Pyrrha. Adding the Maiden powers on top of that only made it worse, even if they'd lowered Cinder's regular skills to keep her at the same level they'd originally had her at.



And to top it all off, sheer power not only trumped hard work, drive, effort, skill, experience and strategy, an even GREATER power, one beyond the Maidens, was what got Cinder to cut and run, and by someone who otherwise would NEVER have stood a chance against Cinder, either. RT ruined Pyrrha's reputation in-series by having her kill Penny, Cinder utterly destroyed her, and Ruby, by easily handling the problem that she couldn't, made every concept that Pyrrha built her life around meaningless.



The message that RT sent to its fans, even if it wasn't the intended message, was that hard work, effort and drive won't help you succeed, stolen and inherited power WILL, and that's all that ultimately matters."



Again, this is all from AraelIsrafel and I agree with most of it.



Now here’s another idea, if they really did need to kill someone off (which I don't think they did) then they should have had Jaune die. Have him reactivate the locker, get up to the tower, and take the arrow for Pyrrha, have Jaune, the useless loser stuck in a tree, die for someone who loves him and he just now realized it, have him redeem himself for never noticing her feelings for him. The boy who wanted to be a hero dying for the girl who didn’t want to be one anymore. Ruby and Jaune had a developed relationship with each other and it would have made more sense for Ruby’s eyes to activate when someone so close to her died and Pyrrha could have become more like Achilles, who was known for his rage, and become a much darker character out to avenge the boy she loved. That would have been such more meaningful of a tragedy but no. We needed to have Jaune's angsty man-pain and kill her off.



Now I DO NOT hate Jaune, but he is another example of the tired anime archetype of 'Lovable loser who isn't that smart and is oblivious to love but is destined to rise to greatness' that has been so annoyingly prevalent since Dragon Ball's Goku. It would have been just as tragic and way more meaningful since Ruby had a developed friendship with Jaune but not so much with Pyrrha. The loser proving his worth, saving the heroic girl who loved him and tried to save him but in the end he saved her. Would have been much better and less cruel than Pyrrha reminding Jaune the of the thing he hates the most about himself, a loser stuck while his friends fight on.



If I remember this correctly, Jaune was, and still is, a bit of a base breaker character, right? Hell he practically got more screentime and development in V1 than Yang, one of the title characters, did. I do remember that a lot of people disliked him and made him the butt of jokes while others wondered why he was being shoved down their throats.



Hell, I think that if any character should have died, it was Jaune. It would have had way more impact since we knew him better than we knew Pyrrha, Ruby had a developed relationship with him, it would have been tragic but not cheap like Pyrrha's was, it would have justified spending so much time with a character a lot of people didn't like. They should have done something like what the showrunners of Doctor Who did with the character Adric, take a character a lot of people either disliked or flat out hated, and have him die a heroic sacrifice that makes everyone feel bad for him and regret disliking him. Hell, even Michael Bay, for all his faults, wanted to do that with the twins in the third Transformers movie, as in the original script they were present (they're totally gone in the film aside from one brief shot where their car modes are seen in the background), and they died redeeming themselves to save Bumblebee and the others from Sentinel, but they were cut from the film entirely due to the backlash against them.



It's also been pointed out to me that Pyrrha's death and waste of potential was in keeping with some theme, but to me that doesn't excuse it and tells me that their defense of this is; "we know we wasted potential and a great character who could have been so much more, but we planned it that way so you can't critique it!" Plus that whole, wasted potential theme also would have fit more with Jaune, since his potential as a great Huntsman in the future was built up in V1, but kept vague enough that it would work with that wasted potential theme.



It's also made worse by the fact that Pyrrha had just begun to come into her own as a character, most of it before V3 involved her feelings and relationship with Jaune but this was her time to shine and just as she begins to truly be developed she is quickly killed off in an incredibly contrived way. It reminds me of something I read in a forum on a Transformers website, criticizing the death of Dreadwing in Transformers Prime. While I myself do think it wasn't the best move to make, made worse by the fact that Megatron killed him not knowing that Dreadwing had betrayed him to the Autobots but simply becasue Dreadwing wanted to make Starscream, the constant traitor, pay for everything he's done, including desecrating the corpse of Dreadwing's brother, but anyway the person who was critiquing this move was rather brutal about it, saying it was a stupid waste of a character and felt like the writers of TFP might as well have gone "Oh no, he's actually developing as a character, better kill him off." That feels like what the writers of RWBY did.



Another Transformers death, this one done perfectly, was Dinobot in Beast Wars; his character arc took up most of the second season, from the second episode until his death in the ninth episode, every episode between them had at least one thing that contributed to his ongoing character arc. In the episode where he dies "Code of Hero", which I consider to be the greatest episode of any Transformers show, Dinobot literally has no choice in his actions of going up against all of the Predacons alone because if he doesn't the future is doomed; Megatron plans on wiping out the neanderthals that will evolve into the human race and eventually help the Autobots defeat the Decepticons (the show takes place in prehistoric time just to be clear) so if Dinobot did nothing they'd all be doomed so he takes on all seven of the Predacons alone, getting more and more damaged in the process, waiting for his teammates to come help him. He defeats all seven of them, saves the early humans, and destroys a plot device that had been there from episode one. He dies a hero, redeeming himself for past actions and proving himself a warrior of honor in a beautiful, tragic, meaningful death that makes me cry every time I watch it.



Now let's contrast Pyrrha's character arc in V3: started up half-way through the season, is deluded into thinking about destiny by Ozpin and Jaune, who doesn't understand what she's on about, tells her to not let anything get in between her and her destiny, not helped by Ozpin filling her head with nonsense. She is tricked into killing Penny, is forced by Ozpin to take the Maiden powers at the worst possible time, and gets herself makes an incredibly stupid choice to fight Cinder, knowing full well she has no hope of beating her, but goes along with it because of the incredibly forced and contrived destiny excuse. Dies for no other reason than for the development of Jaune and Ruby, who as we've established she had barely interacted with.



Now, I don't even think they needed to kill anyone off at all; after everything that had happened: Yang's arm, Penny, the fall of Beacon, the attacks, Ozpin's disappearance, Blake running away, Pyrrha's trauma... all of that was more than enough motivation for Ruby and JNPR to go after Cinder together, so killing off a character just to give them a little extra dose of motivation is kinda unnecessary. And as for Ruby's eyes, yeah it would have worked much better with Penny since those two had a developed relationship with one another, Penny counted Ruby as a genuine good and precious friend, so it would have given Penny's death all the more impact.



But let's just imagine that Pyrrha DID need to die, if the story truly needed her to die, then I'm sorry, but it was not execute well in the slightest. You could have made her death so much more, it could have been legitimately great, meaningful death of a character.



But we didn't. What we got, in my opinion was an incredibly rushed and contrived mess that was totally unnecessary are extremely poorly written.



But if it needed to happen, I think it could have been handled much better, and the following four points are how I think it could have actually worked:



1, Focus on her more as a character. One of the things that truly prevented Pyrrha's death from being good was the fact that aside from Jaune, Pyrrha didn't really have a relationship with anyone. Oh sure, she was on the same team as Ren and Nora, she knew Team RWBY, but what was her relationships with them like? How well did she get along with Nora or Ren? Was she good friends with Yang and Ruby? Did she and Nora talk about romance? We don't know, because the writers never really bothered developing any of those relationships. In the show, Pyrrha was little more than Jaune unrequited love interest and friend and in the end she became a plot device in a rather insensitive, somewhat insulting way. Ruby's eyes hinged on Pyrrha's death... but why? As established in this critique, Ruby and Pyrrha's friendship was nearly nonexistent, one could count the number of times they've interacted on one hand, and those interactions were casual at that, so therefor we are being forced to imagine their friendship takes place entirely offscreen.



So here's how you fix that; focus on her relationships with the others, show her hanging out and talking with someone other than Jaune: have her vent her frustrations in Jaune's obliviousness to Ruby, Yang, or Nora, show her and Ren having to deal with a hyperactive Nora, have her show some tricks to Ruby in combat training. Her relationship with Ruby needs to be important, we actually should SEE them as true friends, not just forced to imagine their offscreen friendship. Let us see her truly be friends with Ren, Nora, and Ruby, as those should truly be paramount, because as it is... they barely interacted with her onscreen so we're just kinda forced to come up with the details of their friendship, and that's not a good thing. This is supposed to be a first for Pyrrha, the first time she can truly have real friends that aren't trying to leech off her success or are intimidated by her or taking advantage of her strengths and fame, show us how this affects her! Let us see what her friends mean to her! Show us their friendships and what they mean to each other! Because as it stands, we don't know. Because they didn't even make an attempt to show us.



Several friends have told me that in V4, Ren and Nora do not appear to be affected by Pyrrha's death at all, aside from a brief, small moment where Nora holds Ren back, as she doesn't want to lose him too. And that's all we get from them. I have been told that Jaune and Ruby were the only ones truly affected by her death and that's not good because of the whole 'Stuffed in the Fridge' issue for the former and the non-existent, offscreen relationship with the latter.



So step one, should be to show us that Pyrrha is truly their friend, don't just make her a plot device, make her matter.



2, Get rid of that idiotic 'Jaune is Oblivious to love' thing, it's an annoying anime trope that's been done a thousand times (Goku and Chichi, Naruto and Hinata, Ash and Serena, Luffy and Boa) and a lot of people are sick of it. Here's an idea, after Jaune's done looking like a hypocritical ass lecturing Neptune on ignoring Weiss' feelings, the blond dope had an epiphany and realizes how he's neglected Pyrrha. On the dance floor he apologizes to Pyrrha for how he's hurt her and he doesn't deserve a partner like her and she has every right to reveal his secret to everyone present, but she forgives him and kisses him and become a couple right there on the dance floor. That way for the rest of V2 and most of V3 we can have them as this adorable couple, which makes her death have all the more impact on us and on Jaune. This is not simply to please the Arkos shipper in me, but to make Jaune a better character, to see both Jaune and Pyrrha evolve and develop as characters, and not rely on an incredibly tired and contrived tropes of oblivious to love and unrequited love tragedy that a lot of people are sick of. Despite what the writers may think, Jaune's obliviousness to Pyrrha's feelings is not endearing or tragic, it's mainly just annoying and frustrating.



3, GIVE HER AN ACTUAL REASON TO FIGHT CINDER. I'm sorry for the all caps, but this is just... frustrating on so many levels. Pyrrha's sacrifice fails big time here, as she had no reason at all to go and fight Cinder. No reason at all, at least none that I can think of, and the ones presented to me by the people who have attempted to defend her death don't make much sense. From what I can gather, she believed it was her destiny, but why? Why did she feel the need to throw her life away? Why die trying to take down someone clearly more powerful than she was and could not hope to beat? Why throw away her chance at love, her family and friends, her whole life for something as foolish and vague as destiny? And why did she truly believe that becoming the Fall Maiden, something most never thought of as anything more than a fairy tale and she didn't even know about until earlier that day, would be her destiny? Why did she want to fight Cinder to take back a building that was clearly already lost and utterly totaled? Did she feel guilt for Penny? Was the voice of Amber in her head, telling her not to let Cinder get away with the Maiden powers? Well from what I can tell by watching it, there is no reason other than because the plot says so.



As it stands in the final version of V3, Pyrrha's motivations for going to fight Cinder are contrived, confused, poorly realized, poorly handled, and poorly written.



But it didn't have to be that way.



Here's a way I think it could have gone much better: First of all Ruby's eyes. When she witnesses Penny's death, they begin to shine, but she doesn't notice. And then once she sees what's happened to Yang, they shine again and everyone notices and she becomes worried about what's happening to her.



With Pyrrha and Jaune, they escape from the tower together and we find out that Pyrrha still has some of the Fall Maiden powers within her, so Cinder is going to come after them. Jaune calls Ruby (why would he have Glynda's number anyway?) and fills her in on what's happened, Ruby uses her Semblance to rush about Vale to find Glynda and Qrow. Meanwhile Jaune and Pyrrha are prevented from escaping by the Grimm Dragon, just as Cinder explodes out of the tower and charges after them. Jaune and Pyrrha take out their weapons and fight her, the dragon simply watching. It's an epic showdown and together they manage to give Cinder a decent fight, but are ultimately defeated. Pyrrha's heel is hit and Jaune nearly sacrifices himself to save her, but Cinder throws him aside and becomes trapped by rubble. Cinder takes away the Maiden powers from Pyrrha and sadistically kills her in front of Jaune, who is screaming and begging for her to let Pyrrha live and calling out to Pyrrha, just then Ruby, Qrow, and Glynda arrive and witness what's happened.



Ruby's eyes activate and she attacks Cinder and kicks her ass in an epic, brutal beat down, and we actually witness Cinder get slashed across the face instead of it conveniently happening offscreen. The Dragon is killed by Ruby's power and Cinder just barely escapes thanks to Emerald and Mercury.



Glynda frees Jaune from the rubble and he runs to Pyrrha and picks up her body, holding her to him, crying his heart out and begging her not to go. With her dying words Pyrrha apologizes to Jaune and says she loves him, and he promises he will always love her and he will avenge her. Pyrrha dies in his arms. Ruby watches the scene before her, eyes shining as tears pour out, she passes out in Qrow's arms, whispering "I'm sorry" over and over.



4, Funeral. Do NOT have Cinder burn Pyrrha to embers for no reason. I seriously do not know why that was necessary other than to make us despise Cinder even more, or if it's a backdoor to bring Pyrrha back (which it better be), but if she truly needs to stay dead, then leave her body behind. Let us actually see her funeral, let us see her friends and family mourn her, let us see how it affects them as characters, how it impacts them, how it changes them. Let us see Jaune, Ruby, and the others to avenger her, Penny, and everyone else that died because of the Battle of Beacon and Cinder.



In the show, we timeskip, not once but twice, so we never properly see how her death affects anyone but Jaune, because she had to be stuffed in the fridge for his man-pain (I hate using that term as it sounds so whiny but it applies here so hard) and as previously mentioned Ren and Nora only have a small moment of showing how it affected them. And as for Ruby's relationship with Pyrrha... well we saw as much of that as we have the remaining Clone Wars episodes, as in brief glimpses but not nearly enough. Blake and Weiss never react to it at all to my knowledge and Yang seemed saddened by it, but she was busy joining the 'George Lucas Counseling Group for People Who Lose Their Arms and Hands'.



5, Don't joke about it in a way that makes you look like a sadistic, cruel asshole who takes joy in the pain you cause your fans.



So in short; actually bother to establish and develop her relationships with Ruby, Ren, and Nora. Get rid of Jaune's obliviousness and have them be happy together. Have her motivation to fight Cinder actually make some semblance of sense, have their be a funeral and show how her death impacts the characters it needs to, and don't be a dick.



Now that we got that why it doesn't work in the slightest and ways it actually could have worked out of the way, let's talk about the chances and the case for bringing her back.



The main thing being, RWBY is a fantasy series, and the best thing about fantasy is that you can do whatever you want with it, there are no limits, a writer of a fantasy story is not tied down by reality. So with that in mind, there are many ways they could bring Pyrrha back... but if they bring her back just to kill her off again, then Miles and Kerry are just intentionally going out of their way to be assholes.



Both killing a character off and resurrecting them is a double edged sword, killing a character off can show the risks you are willing to take, but at the same time that risk could very well not work out at all and can risk turning fans against you. Resurrecting a character could get fans back on your side, but others may lose faith in you as they feel you're not willing to take chances.



Probably the most notorious example of a bad character death in comics is that of Lian Harper, aka the daughter of Speedy/Red Arrow, Green Arrow's sidekick. Lian was an adorable, purely innocent little girl who readers loved. And then, in the absolutely dreadful 'Cry for Justice' miniseries, Lian (who hadn't even appeared in that series until then) was killed in an attack on Star City and her dead body was found. This happened for no reason, other than DC wanted to turn Speedy into a darker hero named Arsenal and were apparently convinced the best way to do this was to kill Lian off in a series she hadn't even appeared it. As a result Roy became Arsneal and many couldn't stand him anymore and everyone hated Lian's death, fans of Speedy and of the Teen Titans and Green Arrow all hated it, and James Robinson, the writer of CfJ, which was filled with senseless deaths of supporting characters, even knew how bad it was because rumor says he tried to talk the heads of DC out of it and I think he may have even apologized for it.



Let me bring up Transformers again, when the animated movie came out in 1986 there was a huge backlash over Optimus Prime’s death, like a HUGE one. Back then Prime wasn't the series mascot like he is now and back in an age where there was no internet and adults watching cartoons was considered bizarre, there was a campaign to bring Prime back. The backlash got so bad that Hasbro canned the last two episodes of the Transformers’ third season and replaced them with a two parter some months later that brought Optimus Prime back for good, but by the time it came out the damage was done and Transformers never enjoyed mainstream success again until the first Michael Bay movie came out. Optimus Prime’s death did so much damage to Transformers that the 5-Part story that was supposed to be the beginning of a fourth season got cut to a five-part finale, and then Hasbro cut their losses and cut the finale down to an incredibly rushed 3-parter and G.I. Joe the Movie was dumped straight to video, redubbed to pretend the death of Duke never happened and a scene in which the audience would be tricked into believing that most of the members of G.I. Joe had died, only for them to wake up one by one was also cut, that’s how bad it got, it even eventually got G.I. Joe, My Little Pony, Jem, and the Inhumanoids all canceled. And they said Prime’s death seemed like such a good idea at the time. That's the gist of the story, it's too long to tell the full thing and this thing is already long enough.



Now let me make two last things clear: Pyrrha is not my favorite character, Blake is. So she’s not my waifu or something stupid like that, she’s just a character I liked and couldn’t stand her death.



Another thing I want to make clear in case you didn’t get it from my other rant: I do not mind the deaths of characters I love when they are well done, I only get angry when a character I love is killed off and it is done poorly.



As I stated earlier my favorite episode of Transformers Beast Wars is the one where my favorite character dies, for good and never comes back.



I loved Newt in Aliens and I was okay with her death in Alien 3, and a lot of people hate the movie just for that.



A lot of my favorite story arcs in Star Wars The Clone Wars kill off characters I adored like Savage, Fives, Waxer, Steela, etc…



I am not against the death of a character I love, I am against the death of a character I love when it is done in such a forced, contrived, needlessly cruel, hollow, and mean-spirited way as it was done in RWBY.



Sorry RT, but Pyrrha’s death and any defense you have for it has fallen apart under the slightest bit of scrutiny in my opinion. Just swallow your pride, apologize to your fans, and admit it didn’t work, no one will hold it against you for pulling a resurrection. And there's nothing wrong with resurrecting a character, especially in a fantasy series, because as we established one is not bound by the rules of reality in fantasy.



In fact let's go over some of the greats:



Leonard Nimoy had become annoyed with Star Trek since that was the only show of his that people talked to him about, his first autobiography is even called "I am Not Spock", so when it came time to do Wrath of Khan, Nimoy only agreed to do it if Spock died and was never to come back, but after seeing how devastated a lot of fans were by Spock's death Nimoy felt awful agreed to resurrect his character in the third movie, which he had already agreed to direct.



George Lucas admitted that killing off Darth Maul was a mistake and brought him back in The Clone Wars animated series to resounding success, as his episodes are some of the best to the point where even a creepily obsessed prequel hater like Simon Pegg has sung high praises of The Clone Wars and Maul is currently shining as a great villain in the Rebels animated series.



Sherlock Holmes was supposed to die after he went over the falls with Professor Moriarty but after a huge backlash to the point where his own mother refused to speak to him (not kidding) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle brought Holmes back, in doing so further establishing some of Holmes' more odd character traits.



Jason Voorhees was supposed to be dead for good after the fourth Friday the 13th film (which is why it's called The Final Chapter) but after trying to replace Jason in the fifth film that is considered to be the worst entry in the long running franchise they brought Jason back in JASON LIVES: Friday the 13th Part 6, and at the time that was the only Friday film that got some leeway with critics at the time because of it's meta humor and it is generally considered to be one of the best movies in the franchise. They tried to kill him off for good again with Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday but the only thing a lot of people liked about that one was the ending that jokingly set up a Freddy vs. Jason, so they undid Jason's death again for a crossover that was pretty successful.



Bigwig, my favorite character in my favorite novel of all time (Watership Down) was supposed to die at the end after his battle with General Woundwort because realistically the wounds he received would have killed him but the author of the book (who recently passed away) ran into a snag; his daughters demanded that Bigwig survive and I think the story is better for it.



In the manga/animated series Death Note, the creator admitted to making a mistake when he killed off the characters L and Naomi Misora, the former because it's generally agreed the series was never as good afterwards and his replacements were utterly inferior and the latter becasue he wasted her character, so their deaths were highly altered in the live action Death Note movies and I say it was all the better for it, they were still tragic but they had more meaning in those movies.



And then there's Dragon Ball, which has become a bit of a joke for how death doesn't matter as long as they have the Dragon Balls, but did you know Vegeta was originally supposed to die for good after the Saiyan saga? Yeah, he originally just the villain for that arc but due to his popularity (especially with the ladies from what I've heard) creator Akira Toriyama kept him alive and in doing so helped to make Vegeta one of the most popular, flawed, and interesting characters in the franchise.



And of course there is the most iconic comic book villain of all time: The Joker, who was originally supposed to die after just one appearance back in 1940 in the first issue of Batman but Bob Kane quickly took a liking to the character and saw how much potential would be wasted so quickly added in an extra panel of a paramedic saying he was miraculously alive.



Okay, I'm not suggesting they just bring her back with a wave of a magic wand and pretend like it never happened, that would be stupid, but it has been done before.



In the novel Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm died, Grant, and by extension the readers do not see it happen but are told by Harding who says that Malcolm succumbed to the wounds he received from the T-Rex attack. His body is left behind, the island is destroyed by the Costa Rica's military jets (Which I don't think they had back in 1989/90 when the book was written) and in the epilogue they talk about funeral preparations for Malcolm and John Hammond (who also died in the book). Yet in the sequel novel The Lost World Malcolm is literally the only major character to return, now with a limp and a brief handwave of "The doctors did good work." I don't know what led Michael Crichton to resurrect Malcolm, maybe it was the movie's version of the character survived and Jeff Goldblum's wonderful performance led new readers to be disappointed in the character's death, maybe Crichton regretted killing off the character, maybe he wanted the opportunity to talk about Chaos Theory a bit more, I don't know what made it happen but it happened.



Another odd example of it is the critically acclaimed animated movie Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, at the end of the film Joker is clearly supposed to die, Phantasm has him in it's grasp while the abandoned theme park is exploding around them and when we see Phantasm at the end of the movie it is alone and bitterly regretting the choices it has made, and since Phantasm murdered its other victims Joker is clearly supposed to be dead right? Wrong! Next season of the show Mask of the Phantasm shares continuity with Joker is just back and they never address the events of the movie. Now, Mask of the Phantasm was originally going to be the end of Batman The Animated Series, but due to the show doing so well it was renewed for more episodes but Joker's survival is never explained and due to the movie never being referenced in the series itself I originally thought that meant that it was like the various DBZ movies and wasn't canon, but then comes Justice League Unlimited, set in the same universe and Phantasm has a cameo appearance in the episode 'Epilogue', (and not in a 'in the background, cute little nod' way either, a silent role in the episode that means Mask of the Phantasm HAS to be canon) so that means Phantasm let Joker, the guy who killed Phantasm's father, go. Now to be fair one of the writers on the movie did an annual for the show's tie-in comic that acted as a sequel to the film and explained how Joker escaped and why Phantasm didn't kill him but it felt like a flimsy justification since the official justification is "He was no longer the same man who killed my father." Yeah, he's much worse, before he was just a mob hitman and now he's the freaking Joker.



There's Cortana from the Halo franchise, she'd been with Master Chief since the original and her death one of the highlights of Halo 4, a beautifully emotional moment for the series, and one of the most well written deaths in video games. Then Halo 5 comes along, not only is she back in an incredibly questionable way that contradicts the prior game, she's also now evil for reasons that make very little sense and go against her character in the previous games.



We looked at Dragon Ball earlier but now lets see how it can do resurrection wrong; now Goku was supposed to stay dead for good after the Cell saga and Gohan was to take over as the main character but due to a backlash from the Japanese fans he was brought back for the Buu saga, which explains why Gohan (who is supposed to be the strongest in the universe) is put on the sidelines which some feel hurts the quality of the saga.



Now that we have how resurrections can both be done to help the story or burden the story. It just depends on how you handle them, they can either fix or damage the story, bring fans back or drive fans away, I think it depends on how you handle it and if one were to put a lot of effort and care into the resurrection of a character it can be done wonderfully.



Now I didn't know Monty, nor would I ever claim to but I have great respect and admiration for the man, the minute I heard of his passing I was devastated and hurt, I even put up a motivational tribute to him as soon as I could. But despite all that I still think Monty would want to own up to a mistake and make the fans happy if something went wrong. There's even a part of me that likes to think that had he not died so soon he would have realized what a terrible idea Pyrrha's death was, scrap it, and then joke about it to fans about how dumb it would have been to go ahead with it. Again, maybe he would or wouldn't have changed it but I like to think that Monty would realize what an awful waste of potential it was.



Another thing about Monty that concerns me is the way some fans worship him as though he were a god, now while he was a special and very talented man he was not a god, he was just another human being. He was just as fallible as you or me. I don't think the series deserves special treatment just because Monty died, I don't think any one should use his tragic, horrible death as a way to shield the show from criticism and backlash, because it is just wrong.



It is not my fault I didn’t like it, that is an incredibly immature thing for you to say. So please do not reply with basically saying “You didn’t like the death because you just don’t get it” or “You didn’t like it because you’re stupid” which is just plain wrong and idiotic to say. It is their fault because in my opinion and from what I can tell they didn’t think it through very well, they have ignored the backlash and the criticism, when one of my stories gets criticized I talk with the critic about how I can improve and what they think I should do to improve, but RT has just ignored criticism. You need to take critiques into account, you can’t just ignore them otherwise you are a terrible writer, artist, director, cook, whatever position that can be criticized needs to be so you can improve. To ignore critiques is to invite disaster.



In fact a close friend of mine wrote posts on the RT forums and voiced his disappointment with the story, the direction of the series, and with Pyrrha's death calmly with constructive criticism and they were deleted, proving that RT is trying to ignore the backlash over it.



And that tells me that they do not want to listen to any criticism, they just want to ignore it entirely.



Now what brought all of this on? On my Birthday of 2015, close to the end of the year, I discovered Esther, my beloved cat of sixteen years, dead. After that I fell into a depression but it didn't fully take grip of me until January of 2016 when I caught a terrible flu, I was suffering with the disease for two weeks and then the V3 finale of RWBY came out, pushing me even further into depression.



But I tried to cope with it, I began writing a fanfic called RWBY: Destiny of Remnant which, despite a rocky start, has got me in touch with many friends across the net from across the world and I gained a lot of fans who admired my story, even a couple of writers who inspired me to write fanfiction to begin with took notice of my story and faved and followed it. Despite the fact that I was still struggling with depression and a little voice in the back of my head telling me I'm a crap writer and nothing I ever do will matter I ignored that feeling of self doubt and I kept on writing 'Destiny of Remnant', doing so along with the feedback I got for it on both Archive of Our Own and Fanfiction . Net, combined with the new friends I've made since beginning the story, helped me out tremendously but there was still a part of me that was angry at RT for the thing that pushed me into the depression to begin with: Pyrrha's death. I posted a couple of critiques on both Tumblr and Deviantart in which I allowed my anger and depression to get the best of me they were more rants than anything. Some agreed with me and some didn't.