Originally Posted by
TheLastDalek
So looking at discussion of RWBY in certain places in the internet I can't help but be annoyed. Now before I start RWBY as a show has more than it's fair share of problems and I think it does deserve a fair amount of the criticism it gets. But that dosn't mean I agree with all of it.
And one such criticism I very much disagree with is the morality of Ruby as a character (and to a lesser extent the rest of team RWBY). Primarily with a lot of accusation of the "Protagonist Centered Morality" trope being thrown her way over actions taken by her at the end of V6 and over the course of V7.
When it comes to how moral a characters actions are, the context and circumstances of those actions are just as important as the actions themselves and I very much think people are ignoring the said context and circumstances and even misrepresent the actions themselves, to paint her as an arrogant self righteous brat, when she's none of those things.
More specifically her decision to withhold information from Ironwood and her suppose disrespect to authority figures. She had pretty much spent the entire series, up until volume 6 being more or less completely subservient to authority figures and trusting that they know best. Then over the course of volumes 5 and 6 every authority figure she met either let her down or flat out betrayed her. Going into V7 she has pretty good reasons to not go blindly trusting authority figures and would in fact be foolish of her to do so. So then in V7 the big authority figure has pretty much turned his whole kingdom into a police state and is engaging in other shady activity.
So she has damn good reason to not trust authority figures and damn good reason to not trust Ironwood as an individual. So she decides to withhold some sensitive info from him. But even then she's shown to be second guessing that decision (and didn't seem all that convinced when her friends explained to her that she did the right thing), still did her level best to otherwise cooperate with and help Ironwood with his plan to restore global communication and most importantly of all, ultimately came clean to Ironwood and told him the truth. Due to a combination of her thinking it was wrong of her to keep secrets from him and thinking he might be trustworthy after all.
Within hours of her doing this, other circumstances (understandable but not justifiable ones) cause Ironwood to go full on despot, thus proving that for all his good intentions, he was someone Ruby shouldn't have trusted after all.
But no Ruby's apparently a self righteous, hypocritical, little ****, for keeping secrets from Ironwood and opposing him once became apparent that he had gone off the deep end.
Although I suppose that's what happens when the only people who watch RWBY in 2020 are a bunch of youtubers who are hate it.