Yeah ranting! And such organized ranting too (I appreciate the numbering for me to get screenshots in order lol). Response below the cut!

Literally all of this though.

Very glad the group is realizing that “defeating” Salem doesn’t necessarily mean killing her but, as said in my recap, wouldn’t it have been great if we could have seen that major revelation happening on screen?

Meanwhile, the problem with chucking that revelation into this particular conversation is that (I’m a broken record here) these are two VERY DIFFERENT contexts. Ozpin’s “Holding her off is how we win” is in reference to the entirety of humanity across generations of time. RWBY’s “Holding you off is how we win” is in reference to one specific battle… which, as you say, presumably has Salem herself joining in. The reason why Ozpin’s stance has worked up until now is because all of Salem’s tools are defeatable even if she herself is not. You can capture/kill her subordinates. You can take the Maiden powers. You can hide a relic. You cannot, however, kill or capture or stop Salem herself. Not yet anyway. Because no one besides Ironwood has bothered to try and think up a way how. So Ruby is taking a broadly fantastic perspective and applying it to the ONE scenario where it doesn’t work. The second she heard Salem herself is (again, presumably) coming she should have seen the wisdom in at least considering Ironwood’s stance. Because you can’t win this battle. Based on the current information that is not a debatable claim, it’s straight up fact. Even if you capture Cinder and manage to kill every single one of Salem’s grimm—which is a hugely big “if”—you straight up cannot defeat Salem herself. She reminded them right in the office: time is on my side. She can stride into Mantle and just take out everyone at her leisure. You manage to obliterate her somehow? Give her five seconds and she’ll reform. Manage to hold her off for hours, days, even weeks? What does that matter to her? She is, as of right now, literally an unstoppable force so until the characters get any evidence that she’s bluffing about showing up the stance of, “We have to try!” is just straight up stupidity. You will die. Everyone else will die too. That’s just a given at this point in the series.

Sorry I’m just really hung up on this lol. Don’t get me wrong I LOVE an underdog story, but this is so much more than that. This is the group looking at a literal immortal sorceress with a giant grimm army, coming to attack while they’re all exhausted and Ruby hasn’t managed to get her eyes to work twice now in as many hours. How exactly do they expect to achieve any outcome except for death? Which, to be clear, can also be a compelling setup. That’s 300′s story: death is inevitable so we’ll face it head on and go down fighting. But RWBY’s story isn’t complete yet. This isn’t the final hour where Salem wins, but we at least get to see the heroes give as good as they get before she does. So having your characters insist that there’s another way out of this—and then inevitably writing a horrendously convenient plot that illogically caters to that—is beyond frustrating. If they wanted a story where Ironwood truly abandons Mantle and is criticized for not doing everything he could, then they needed to not tell the characters that Salem herself is coming. Because that changes things from, “Ironwood isn’t willing to fight the hard fight to save others” to “Ironwood is the only one admitting that they are undeniably screwed, so get whoever you can out of dodge.”

Willfully ignorant is really the right way to put it. Not just on Ruby’s part but the story’s too. RT ignores their own setups and then expects the audience to take that illogical change at face value. If you give me a villain who is that over powered, make her literally immortal, have an entire volume of the group freaking out over how impossible beating her is… don’t be surprised when that carries over just a few episodes later. You don’t get to build Salem up as an unbeatable threat and then turn around and have the heroes insist that she’s not actually unbeatable. You just have to try hard and never back down! Which, again, good mindset for this whole war, horrific mindset for a single battle where you’re risking an entire kingdom in the process. Yeah, they could have compromised. They could have immediately left to evacuate as much of Mantle as possible while Ironwood prepared (and then the story could do something to ensure that ultimately no one was actually abandoned if they want). But digging in their heels like this? I get that it’s the “right” thing to do, but as Pyrrha showed without a doubt, sometimes the “right” thing leads only to death. Which is fine when it’s just your own life on the line, but Team RWBY isn’t offering themselves up as sacrifices. They’re demanding that Ironwood offer everyone up as that sacrifice. They’re asking for an act of faith that is not only 100% illogical based on their knowledge of the situation, but something they haven’t even begun to earn from him yet. “Trust us to keep your kingdom safe from the literal immortal even though you couldn’t even trust us to share her immortality in the first place. Or keep one of your secrets. Or tell you about those choices until you’d backed us into a corner.” RWBYJNR hasn’t done a single thing this volume to earn Ironwood’s trust, so slamming in here with a, “Trust us to do the impossible” is wholly unearned. Which is sad because in a better written show I might have been able to get behind something like that. There are some heroes you have so much faith in that logic doesn’t even come into play. I know it’s “impossible” but I just have that level of trust that they’ll actually find a way.

Team RWBY hasn’t earned that level of trust yet. Not from the viewer and definitely not from Ironwood.

(As for the Salem question… literally just because it’s a story. If they had her act on her desires with her full power there would be zero hope for the heroes and then the story ends. But you’re right, rather than just announcing that Salem randomly prefers to stay on the sidelines, we should have gotten some reason for why that is. What’s our villain’s motivation? Why bother hanging back in a castle? Give us a reason for this very convenient setup and tell us more about Salem at the same time. Remember, her own actions don’t have to be entirely logical, they just have to be known by the audience. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, it’s a preferred headcanon of mine that Salem doesn’t attack because she doesn’t truly want to win. She doesn’t want to revert to a destroyed Remnant where she’s the only living thing again. But that’s still just a headcanon. The story itself hasn’t done any work to explain that glaring issue of, “If Salem is so powerful… why in the world hasn’t she just kicked everyone’s ass yet?”)