A good protagonist can make or break a story. You can have an incredibly detailed world and setting, fill it with the most fascinating lore and and have an encyclopedia’s worth of information on every street, but if the person you’re following in that world is uninteresting or just dull, the audience will never let that slide. Watch Dogs is a competent game but Aiden Pearce is such a dull scumbag that it taints the entire setting. Echo from Dollhouse was perhaps the dullest character in the main roster, making the show more interesting when she wasn’t around as it gave the much more varied supporting cast a chance to shine.

This is unfortunately a problem that people have with RWBY’s Ruby Rose as well. Ruby is a do-gooder with aspirations to become a Huntress and help people and that’s basically it in terms of explicit character growth. For a variety of reasons over the past two years since Volume 4, Ruby has become a far more divisive character than was ever intended. With Volume 6 now on the horizon, I’ve decided to look into our inarguable main protagonist and to answer the question of why I think some people don’t like Ruby.

(also before anyone jumps down my throat I don’t hate Ruby, I think she’s a weak character but I don’t want her removed from the show. Also, yes, she is the protagonist, we’re not having this conversation)

1) Ruby’s development in Volumes 4 and 5 is lackluster at best and actively shunted at worst

To be quite blunt, Ruby’s not interesting in her current form and she hasn’t truthfully been since Volume 3′s conclusion. Ruby started out as a fine character, with some good early development from Ozpin about what it means to be a leader, development which had a payoff when Ruby then shared this lesson with Jaune during the Jaundice episodes. “We have to put our teammates first and ourselves second.” Back then Ruby also had several more facets to her personality- she was a naive child brought to Beacon two years early and a lot of her dynamics, especially with Weiss in particular, reflect this in the early volumes. Volume 1 also gives Ruby her overly romanticized view of Huntsmen and Huntresses, further emphasizing her naivety regarding the wider world which is challenged multiple times in the first three volumes- most notably with Roman’s “The real world is cold!” speech in Heroes and Monsters.

Volume 3 set out to tear those perceptions down, as Ruby bears witness to some horrifying actions in the back half of the Volume- Penny’s dismemberment, Grimm swarming Vale, Roman being eaten alive and Pyrrha being shot and incinerated right in front of her. Ruby breaks from this, Volume 4 was touted as a recovery volume. And yet Ruby’s development is a phantom for Volumes 4 and 5. She puts on a bright smile and other than a few nightmares which exist for very little reason- especially since RTX 2017 confirmed that Ruby was having dreams about Pyrrha because she overheard Jaune’s night-training and not because of other circumstances- Ruby doesn’t ever confront the trauma she faced like Yang and Blake did over their arcs in Volume 4. The one time she tries taking responsibility in the back half of the volume… Jaune shuts her down, literally cutting her off so he can tell her she’s inspiring, which she agrees with blindly, her inner conflict having been forgotten and blown away like leaves falling off a tree in October.

You know I mentioned this in my Jaune post but it bears repeating that the one time Ruby really tries to get development this season, Jaune literally steals the spotlight and tells the audience, rather than shows us, how far Ruby’s come

Most of the other RWBY girls get scenes on their own during Volume 4- in fact, the other three members all have moments of solitude in their first episodes. It shows how the Fall of Beacon has separated them and scattered them across the world. Ruby gets no such moment of isolation. Ruby not having this doesn’t give her character any moments where she has to confront the events at Beacon, and that lack of isolation or ability to reflect harms her. The one time her facade breaks away in Volume 4, Jaune swoops in to prevent her from having a realization and the problem is smoothed away like it never happened.This also has an adverse effect on our ability to sympathize with Ruby- her not blaming herself despite Jaune’s act of kindness makes it difficult to identify with her struggles and any growth she might have experienced.

I think that half of Ruby’s dialogue in all of Volume 4 comes from her reading her letter to Yang in the finale is a fairly harrowing example of where Ruby’s focus is not going.

Volume 5 did take a step towards addressing this by having Oscar ask Ruby how she remains so cheerful- a scene I firmly believe should have happened a year earlier with Jaune instead of handing it off to the farmboy who never before or after this scene addresses the stresses of the shadow war with Salem. The scene is fairly obviously damage control for Ruby’s lack of reaction to Volume 3 but this scene has no payoff. Ruby just admits she’s sad, we get a traditional hero speech about moving forward and then the status quo resets for Ruby’s next adventure in sitting around a house.

To cut this rant short, Volumes 4 and 5 do very little with Ruby and the opportunity for development that the Fall of Beacon presented. Rather than having a hopeful naive child face reality, something Roman was trying to do with his dying words, Ruby just backtracks and almost flanderizes into this upbeat chipmunk who spews out inspirational speeches. Ruby’s never allowed to grow in 4 or 5 and her character stagnates as a consequence. A pivotal moment for Ruby should have been her confrontation with Cinder at Haven (something I’ve written about before) and seeing Weiss get stabbed, but Cinder refuses to acknowledge her for the entire battle and she’s unconscious when Weiss drops. Two moments that should have defined her character… and Ruby sidesteps both of them and the challenges therein.

If I may repeat myself, half of Ruby’s dialogue in V4 comes from her letter to Yang in the finale. Half of her dialogue is in the finale of the season. If that doesn’t speak about bad agency and character handling I’m afraid I don’t know what does.

And all of this leads us into…

2) Ask about the eyes! (or: Ruby’s lack of agency)

I’m sure if you’ve been a part of the fandom you’ve heard this a thousand times, so I’ll keep this quick:

Ruby’s eyes are supposedly the key to stopping the Grimm and the only reason Cinder was defeated at the end of Volume 3, and will almost certainly play a role in fighting Salem. Despite knowing about them thanks to Qrow and spending a significant amount of time with Qrow and Ozpin, people who knew her mother (a fellow Silver Eyed Warrior) intimately well, Ruby never asks about the eyes during the month she spends with Ozpin and Qrow in the Mistral House. There’s no logical reason in or out of the narrative for her to not immediately ask about this when she reached the house and when the eyes manifest again in the Battle of Haven, no fuss is made about them and they don’t get acknowledged for the rest of the volume.

… OK that was relatively quick. But put bluntly, Ruby not asking about her eyes or Summer has crippled her development. Summer’s death would be an almost childishly simple way to give Ruby a personal stake in the fight against Salem, since it’s all but been confirmed (”We’ve dealt with their kind before”) that Summer was slain by a member of Salem’s cabal. It speaks poorly about Ruby’s priority levels and the agency of herself, Ozcar and Qrow that Ruby never stops to ask either of them about the eyes and instead decides to ask Ozpin if his cane is the Beacon Relic.

There is however a meta out of universe reason, in that Miles and Kerry aren’t ready to ask about the eyes yet. In my post about why the birds twist failed to land, I mentioned this as an aside that Miles and Kerry have a particular fondness for cliffhangers and plot twists, and while this works sometimes, it means that it can take a fair while for them to answer questions that would otherwise spoil their little tricks and twists in advance. Ruby asking about the eyes would ruin whatever twist is tied to them- be it that they steal life energy or have the risk of blinding her- so she… doesn’t. And there isn’t even a throwaway line about her referencing the existence of her Silver Eyes.

If V4 or 5 had just had a scene of Ruby about to fight a Grimm like say, the Geist and trying to manifest them or just having a scene where she explains she’s trying to activate the powers, it would at least show initiative on her part- she would be at least trying to activate her powers since she knows they pose a threat to the Grimm and Cinder. But she doesn’t. In fact, Ruby herself never even says the word “silver” after Volume 3. At this point any explanation of the Silver Eyes is going to feel… almost too little too late. It wouldn’t feel natural anymore, since the information was held back because it would make for a better twist or some nonsense.

3) The Squeak

I mean no offense to Lindsay Jones, she’s a capable actress and by all accounts an all-around good person. I love Kimball from Red vs Blue and Lindsays’ other appearances for Rooster Teeth have proven she has great comedic timing and dramatic chops. But that said… Ruby’s voice was awful in Volume 5.

Lindsay has always been on the record as disliking how Ruby sounded in Volume 1- too much like herself, far too old sounding for a 15 year old girl, to the point where she’d like to go back and re-dub Volume 1. I get that, especially hating how your voice sounds since I work in radio and I know that pain, and I think how Lindsay evolved the voice over Volumes 2 and 3 was a great place to keep Ruby’s voice until she grew up and went back to the Volume 1 voice. The problem is that in the above video, Lindsay evidently never stopped upping the pitch. Ruby now sounds almost like a caricature of herself and one that steadily worsens each passing volume- I’ve made my dislike of “This is my fight too!” plain as day on various occasions on Discord. I don’t want to harp too much on this, like I said I deeply respect Lindsay’s other work, but this is a list of why the fandom is cold on Ruby and unfortunately for Miss Jones… her voice is one of those reasons, however petty it may seem. If you do ever read this Lindsay:

(still gotta support Lindsay for being the only person in RT at the moment who seems to want Ruby to have a breaking point because moooooooooooooood)



4) Decreasing skill levels

More than any other character, Ruby was the one most hit on a fighting-level by Monty’s passing. In hindsight having a weapon such as a scythe was going to spell trouble for Ruby’s fight scenes- scythes are hilariously impractical weapons in real life and aren’t made for fighting. There’s a reason most farmers didn’t bring their scythes with them when they went to war and were taught the spear.

With Monty, Ruby was still given flashy choreography and her scythe’s recoil was used to make it slightly more practical in a straight fight. In the opening to Ruby vs Neo and the Red Trailer she looks lethal with the thing.

The problem lies in how Ruby’s skills have waned since then, thanks to not only the general nerf everyone took across the board, but Ruby’s scythe took in particular. Ruby’s only seriously used her scythe once, in the V4 Character Short. Otherwise, she hasn’t gotten to cut loose in the show since then, meaning Ruby’s been reduced to running around and sniping or doing… this…

You thought I was done bitching about the weapon spinning but joke’s on you, I’m never done bitching about the weapon spinning

This has been Ruby’s fights for the past two years. In a show that prides itself on fights, Ruby’s last good fight being more than two volumes ago paints a poor picture in the eyes of many, especially in light of the Death Battle team admitting that they can’t have Ruby fight Maka from Soul Eater until Ruby gets a few more feats to be judged by (which still reads to me like “we need Ruby to do some more bullshit feats so we can BS a win for her” after the whole Yang/Tifa debacle). This also ties in with Ruby’s lack of activity in the Battle of Haven- it’s Raven, a low-rent villain, who gets the standout fight in the volume, while Ruby’s left headbutting Mercury. The protagonist of the show is left with little of the agency.

And speaking of Mercury…

5) The hand to hand “plot”

Like the Silver Eyes part I’ll keep this quick- Ruby’s hand to hand weakness, while set up in Volumes 1 and 2, still comes out of nowhere as a random flaw for her to overcome this volume and feels like a poor attempt to give her something to do during Volume 5. Her headbutting Mercury required Merc to take a massive dive in intelligence and skill, and ultimately was her only significant moment in the Haven Battle outside of getting smacked over the head. The worst part of this “arc” to me is how no one else gets anything from it- you could genuinely make an arc of each member of RNJR teaching Oscar something (Ren with Aura and CQC, Nora with strength training, Ruby with weapon repairs, etc). Why not tie in the conversation about Semblances by having Ruby train to use her speed semblance in close quarters? With her speed, Ruby would be nearly impossible to dodge in a fist-fight, or she could engage in lighting fast strikes while withdrawing before the opponent and counter.



Also while I’m offering suggestions, let me point one thing out. Ruby has a lot of leg strength. Like, a lot. Why not skip teaching her to use her hands and train Ruby in kickboxing or another leg-based martial art? Yang already has the punchy-punch category fairly locked down, so giving Ruby a kick-based style would make for more dramatic fights in future.

It would certainly have been more dynamic than this abomination that I am loathe to call “the conclusion of an arc.”

In conclusion, Ruby as a protagonist is… flawed. She’s a character I want to like more than I do, the simple soul who knows the world is cold and dark but aspires to change it herself. But various conflicts hold her character back, most primarily the writing team’s own refusal to let her have agency by making her refuse to acknowledge her special powers or her dead mother. Add in lackluster performances fighting wise and an absolute slog of a “training arc,” and Ruby fails to stand out. Volume 5 reached the point where Ruby was an absolute blank slate of a character, content to make bland speeches about companionship at the pitch of a chipmunk addicted to helium while the mystery of her dead mother and special heritage practically slapped her in the face.

I am very much aware that over the Volume 5 hiatus, much has been said about Ruby and her lack of growth/dive in popularity. Hell I’m even linking to some at the bottom of the post as recommendations for further elaboration on my points and alternate perspectives. I know I’m at a well that has been well and truly dried of content. But with Volume 6 on the horizon I think it’s worth keeping Ruby’s agency/lack thereof in mind with the premiere looming. Ruby is a problem that the show does need to fix, especially after Volume 5 and the numerous story opportunities that were presented and never followed up on for Ruby- Weiss’s stabbing, Cinder’s return, Summer, etc. Her big character moment in the back half of Volume 5? Saying “I’m angry.” They really did pick the perfect character moment for Ruby.

Ruby has been said to take a more direct role in Volume 6, and Lindsay has implied that Ruby will finally have her breaking point this volume. If this turns out to be the case, I genuinely look forward to see Ruby regaining the charm that made her likable in the original volumes. But if all the talk about Ruby getting more focus turns out to just be hot air or fails to fix any of the cracks in her character that have been present for two volumes in a row now? I’ll be tragically disappointed, partly at the show and mostly for myself in jumping the gun in writing this. I want Ruby to be more than a glorified cheerleader in her own damn show. She’s what got people hyped back with the Red trailer. Let her be that heroine again Rooster Teeth. Ruby inspires people in the show, now let’s see her inspire hope in the fans.







Thank you for reading.

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