The Victims of Poor Development - Part 2: Winter Schnee

If you haven’t seen the last blog on this topic, I suggest you read it first here. It’s not mandatory, but I set the scene for this rant disguised as an essay better in the first blog than this one.

V7: The First Steps Towards Darkness Part 2

rooster teeth - rwby v7

The Winter Maiden

The problems didn’t stop with General Ironwood, and only got compounded with one more critical error. In my opinion, this misstep was the most frustrating but could have been saved… and then wasn't. This problem started during the Penny-Winter vs. Cinder fight and the moment I realized that I was about to be pissed off to a degree none before seen by humanity.

Winter Schnee was given the most amount of screen time she’d ever had and she has always been a fan-favourite side character and stood among Glinda in the series two most badass women in positions of power. 

The show developed her along with Penny, the revived sentient Android who was another fan favourite that was lost back in Volume 3. Now, in general, I stand firmly against any form of “revival” of a character, android or otherwise. All it ever really does is prove to the audience that you’re unwilling to kill anyone important and that this character was written to die dramatically. Penny may as well have gone to summer camp for three seasons for all the difference it made to the plot by that point. That said, I could have overlooked it… if not for the final mistake.

Penny becoming the Winter Maiden was the absolute worst way to end that season possible. Single-handedly became the reason that, for the first time since Volume 1, I didn’t rewatch RWBY once in the hiatus between seasons. 

ROOSTER TEETH — RWBY V7

See, writing is subjective, but Penny was already on thin ice before the worst happened. The previous Winter Maiden, Fria, was given an understandably small amount of screen time. There was a lot to do in Volume 7, like set Winter up to be the Winter Maiden and have Team RWBY come into conflict with Ironwood, to name a few. However, what we did know of Fria was that Winter had been visiting her every day for months and became her only source of company outside the presumed small visits from Ironwood.

We weren’t shown were these “memory problems” that lead to Fria not remembering Winter in time to pass the Maiden powers onto her… yet in the same breath, still, remember General Ironwood enough to want to send a message to him? I am against the idea that all elderly people have memory problems because it’s simply not true. More than that, however, is that I’m against the idea that Fria could somehow remember General Ironwood alone and not remember the young woman who had tea with her every day for months?

Okay, Rooster Teeth.

This was transparent to me as a cheap way to give the Winter Maiden powers to Penny instead of the woman who trained, fought, and almost died for it. Arguably, this could all be discredited as “life isn’t fair” and “they didn’t say she DIDN’T have memory problems,” where I’d disagree on both fronts, but we’d come to an impasse.

ROOSTER TEETH — RWBY V7

Instead, I have a stronger foundation to stand on. The Winter Maiden powers are meant to go to women exclusively. Penny is a female, Android or not; she does identify as a woman which does make her a woman. This isn’t the problem; the problem is that Penny’s aura isn’t her own, it’s Pietro’s aura. Synthetic people cannot produce their own aura. We’ve been shown time and time again that aura and semblances are inherently connected and maybe I was wrong to assume that the Winter Maiden powers would be included, but the moment of her using those powers seemed to prove me right. Penny is a program given thought through the aura of a male scientist. 

Maybe I’m wrong, but the fact that I’ve brought this argument up and never been shown something to discredit it says enough to me about that moment. 

This isn’t even getting into the fact that Penny now feels a little too much like a wish-fulfillment self insert. Not only was she the only character to come back from the dead, but she is also the only hero given the maiden power. I don’t have the word count capabilities to keep going into every way it was wrong, but trust me that I could make an entire blog about all the little reasons that moment still sends me into a rage a year later.

This moment has become, to me, the moment that Winter Schnee was robbed, and we as an audience were robbed of the beautiful, tense conflict we could’ve been given if Winter had been given the Maiden Powers instead. Unfortunately, this blog isn’t a “what if”; it is a “what happened” blog.

rooster teeth — rwby v7

Volume 8: Wishing I Wasn't Right

Someone Show Penny the Door

rooster teeth — rwby v7

There wasn't much when it came to the Winter Maiden being Penny in the first episode… yet they still managed to piss me off enough to pause the whole episode and scream into my lap for 2 minutes before resuming. 

All I have to say on the matter is as such: why give Penny the Maiden Powers if she was just going to turn around and plan to march into Salem’s hand willingly. At that point, why not just give it to Cinder on the rooftop before? The reason Penny is the worst option for the Winter Maiden is precisely this: she would make this decision and doom all of Remnant. Winter wouldn’t have.

There isn’t much to say on that yet; as of writing this, there is only one episode of Volume 8 out, but I couldn’t keep these feelings in anymore. 

Conclusion

I am confident that out of loyalty alone, I will be dragged to the finish line of RWBY one way or another. I would have preferred for it to be through the same joy, excitement and suspense-filled thrill that the show brought me through most of V7 and the Volumes before it. The last thing I ever wanted to be was another one of those people on the internet who hates RWBY. 

I don’t hate RWBY. If I hated RWBY, I wouldn’t feel so let down and disappointed. Yet, one episode into Volume 8 and I’m considering cancelling my Prime Membership and waiting until all the episodes are out to save my mental health the disappointment and frustration of slogging through whatever is to come. 

If you liked this episode, this isn’t an attack on you or your judgment. I sincerely wish I did.

[UPDATE - we are 4 episodes into Volume 8, and I have officially decided to unsubscribe from Rooster Teeth FIRST. I won’t be keeping up with the Volume and have elected to binge it when it finishes in the new year.]

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Image source — DreamWorks Studios [Catra]

Caitlyn C

Hi! My name is Caitlyn, a 22 year old dreamer whose main interests include: crying over fiction at 1 in the morning (mainly She Ra and Claymore), babysitting kittens, reading, and ignoring the doctor recommended 8 hours of sleep rule. I’ve been writing as a hobby for as long as I can remember but had my first interaction with finishing my first (garbage) novel in 2014. Now, I am a Professional Writing student who works hard every day to make less garbage novels through practice, reading, and calling my obsessions “studying”.