RWBY Villains : Motivation & Development 

"The most she has done is drive the mini-van to drop off her annoying kids at Atlas" I am deceased 💀

It's hilarious how Roman has been out of the equation for 5 volumes now, and he's still the most fleshed out of all the villains.

Emerald: Wait.... Salem is evil? Then why are you working for her? Mercury: Because she's paying me a fortune! Emerald: You're getting paid?

Team WTCH should have been all female dark reflections of team RWBY. Cinder as a reflection of Ruby, female Tyrian as a reflection of Blake, female Dr Watts as a reflection of Weiss, female Hazel as a reflection of Yang. Each competing with Ozpin’s forces and each other for the maiden powers.

Salem wins in volume 8 by doing absolutely nothing. Luigi: Finally, a worthy opponent. Our battle will be legendary!

The reason they stick around is obvious she has the best strudel recipe in all the kingdoms its almost magical.

Watts just hurts man. This guy was perfectly poised to be the main threat of Atlas. His position and attitude towards Atlas, and connection to Jaque would have made him a great rival to Weiss and Blake specifically. He was dripping in charisma, genuine charm and not just snark. The fact that the main heroes never even met him or had any opinions on him is insane, what were they thinking killing him off when he was in his prime? In a better show, that can only exist in my mind, Watts follows Salem because she's a window to a time that No one alive has ever known about. He follows her so she can drip feed him info about the first run of humanity and he diligently studies what Salem's magic can do, hoping to create a sort of powerful magic-run technology that he can then rub in Atlas' collective face. He may or may not know what Salem's actual goal is, but I don't think it would change too much. Unfortunately this isn't the show we got.

I still can’t get over Emerald. She literally Says she is changing Sides to the Winning team. And RWBY and Jaune are just like LMAO we forgive you for Helping kill Pyrrha, Penny and Thousands of Vale Citizens. Ahhhhh. The writing is so Milktoast I mean Emeralds “Redemption” should have been a Big deal but they just Bring it up out of nowhere.

The section at around 13:00 about how none of the villains really communicated with each other just makes me think that Salem's entire plan would be destroyed had the villains unionized

"No kingdoms, no huntsman academies" Lowkey getting a Zaheer vibe from that chief

I saw a pretty humorous theory that Salem is just extremely lazy due to her immortality, which is why she doesn’t really do anything and instead pushes it off to the help.

why roman was a good villain aside from character design. because he is a bad guy that does bad things in order to survive with neo in the crime world. simple, but easily understandable. suits well with his mafia gangster style design as well.

To quote Terrible Writing Advice: "Motive. Motive. Motive. The most common misstep when writing a villain is having them be devoid of any motive at all. Villains that come from nothing tend to have their contribution to the story also be described as nothing."

I think the problem with Salem is that she's written like original trilogy palpatine, but has too many scenes. Palpatine was always present in the original Star wars trilogy and was the "Bigger Bad" but his purpose was mostly to be the boss for the actual villain of the films Darth Vader. It was Vader that did most of the work, it was Vader the other admirals were reacting too, and it was Vader that was carrying the villain presence of the show. When Palpatine did show up, it was in the finale. They could have done the same thing here. Have Salem be this nebulous force only Cinder follows. The rest of the villains being there because of Cinder, which would justify their differing objectives. Cinder played this role in volumes 1-3, but then Salem showed up who then preceded to do nothing. If they wanted to show Salem, they could have. Have her give brief conversations with Cinder, maybe have her create a grim or two to help Cinder's current plan. My point, is that Salem is clearly meant to be a final boss, and the writers want to keep close to their chest everything about her so that she could still function as one. But because she has a constant presence, it wears on the audience just how much nothing she's doing.

Over all, I think the major problem with Salem. Is that CRWBY try’s to paint her as a Thanos like villain. Without actually having her put in any work, or do anything Thanos worthy. Also great point about Penny. She died without ever confronting the man who drained her and violated her autonomy, who took control of her body against her will, and tried to forcibly turn her on her friends. You better believe she’d have “personal feelings,” about that. Likewise Pietro never knows about any of this. And never confronts the man who did this, TO HIS DAUGHTER! A man who was once a trusted college. But has such a all consuming grudge against him that he turned on his country. And is willing to kill millions of people, and side with a monster like Salem to get back at him. Such a waist.

At this point, RWBY Chibi is more consistent than the actual show.

Rwby: “no thoughts, head empty, people dying *guitar riff*.”

I wish Tyrian was in Menagerie for Blake’s home arc. Instead of having the twin brothers (I literally don’t remember their names), have Tyrian be the middleman between Adam, Salem and the White Fang. I get Adam is forced into collaborating in the battle of beacon, but why did they just drop him? Salem’s faction had an entire army at their disposal and they just forgot about it. It helps Tyrian is a faunus who hates humanity too, maybe instead of forcing Adam to team up, he could actually convince him this is the perfect option for the white fang. Hell, it would make a great conflict for Blake coming to terms with Adam falling even deeper into darkness and that she can never have the mentor she loved back cause just from having been in an abusive relationship, you always irrationally hope that person will return to the way they were. But instead of coming to those terms immediately, have Blake take all her anger out on Tyrian for corrupting Adam past the point of no return.

Roman Torchwick is and will always be my favorite RWBY villain, and in some ways he was less a villain and more some guy who got dragged into something way bigger than himself, and the fact he held his own as well as he did and "Mostly" kept his cool in that situation is pretty impressive. Hell even his motivations are somewhat relatable, that and he was a superb ideological antithesis to Ruby's own world view, to the point that they both could've been great foils to eachother, its a battle of belief that I've always thought it a shame the show never really developed more. Like had he survived, Torchwick would've made a pretty great anti-hero, or even an anti-villain.

"I care about the Nucklavee more than I do Salem." Salem: EMOTIONAL DAMAGE!

In the new book is a hint about Gretchen's death, her teacher saved everyone else because she belived Gretchen was skiller enough to deal with an Ursa on her own, so yeah it was a Salem's Ursa, a monster that can kill any other "Gretchen", as Hazel said, if there is no Hunters or huntress at all.

Critter! Wanna hear something crazy about these villains? For reals. Think. Really think about it and think back. The villains have done more damage TO EACH OTHER than the heroes ever did to them! Hazels murked via sacrifice against Salem, Watts is killed by Cinder, Cinder ditched Neo into the Void, Emerald ditches the group entirely Salem killed Leo for cowardice, Mercury swore off Cinder... I've heard of villains turning on each other for their own selfish goals but this is is extreme. It's to the point where Team RWBY barely confronted them! It's like the narrative knows they have no chance in hell of winning so most of the time they get punted off to the side so they don't have to work for it. Am I mad in feeling this way?!

14:58 “They keep side-lining our main villains for *these nerds*.” Lol. Favorite line in the video.

There really is almost nothing to Salem, is there. This woman murdered her own husband and children and knows the circumstances of Ozpin's reincarnation. Imagine if, while she was torturing Oscar, he starts crying from the pain and he reminds her of one of her kids and she hesitates for a moment. A wordless moment to show there's more to the witch than a vindictive monster

I had an idea earlier about changing members and backstories of the villains, and here's what I came up with. It's a bit long but please bear with me. Salem: Still the same, but now goes more out of her way to capture/kill Ruby because she sees Silver Eyed Warriors as threats. Raven (Replacing Hazel): Joins Salem because she believes Salem is unbeatable and was coerced after losing a fight (survival of the fittest). She secretly wants all the Maiden's power so that she can free herself. Yang wants to "save" (redeem/kill/stop) her mother from herself. Cinder: She was still a child slave and grew up admiring how POWERFUL the heroes of fairy tales were because they were free and could do whatever they want. Salem (dark fairy godmother) raises her to be a weapon, but Cinder realizes that she's just a tool and secretly wants to usurp Salem and take the world for herself. Cinder is a dark reflection of Ruby. Adam Taurus (Replacing Tyrian): Joins Salem because they both equally hate humanity, and was promised a shining utopia of only Faunus and wants Blake to rule over this utopia with him. Blake wants to stop Adam from destroying the world out of spite. Arthur Watts/Schnee: He's Jacque Schnee's brother. He wanted to use his science to advance the next stage of human evolution by using the Grimm (Basically Dr. Merlot). Ironwood exiled him from the kingdom for being a madman. He joined Salem to continue his research. Weiss wants to take responsibility for her family's dark history of using its power and technology for selfish gain and ruining lives. What do y'all think, I kinda just came up with this on the fly. I know my idea isn't great but the whole point is that there is no reason for Team RWBY, except maybe Ruby, to be pursuing the villains aside from they're evil, want to take over/destroy the world, and maybe killing Pyrrha. The villains also have no personal reason to kill the heroes aside from they're trying to stop us. Any connection they make like Salem wanting Ruby or Cinder wanting revenge against Ruby is either forgotten or put to the side. I just hope they can at least try to fix this in later volumes with what little villains they have left.

This is why I love Tyrian. You can assume all of his motives to work with Salem without far fetched theories. Why work with Salem? He’s batshit insane Why take her orders without question? He wants to satiate his bloodlust. Why support her if she plans to end the world as he believes? Because then everything is dead, yippee! Maybe it’s because he’s slightly different than the copy paste “over confident and egotistical” villain this show seems to REALLY love.

The only thing I'll say in favor of Salem sitting around and not doing ANYTHING herself would be IF her plan was to drive humanity apart to destroy them. By playing along with Oz's plan to avoid panic and not reveal herself, she starves all her enemies of the single common foe that might end up uniting them to try to fight.

A thing I've learned about immortal characters is, you have to go by different rules for them. With the threat of death gone (unless there's still a fatal weakness that could still kill them, or at least incapacitate them), you need a new force of tension and new weaknesses. With more heroic immortals, this tends to be mortal loved ones or even just a concept they cherish, such as a kingdom they've helped blossom and want to see stand the test of time. But also, just consider what the removal of death could do to a person's psyche. Does it make them apathetic to life, or more appreciative of it? How has riding the flow of time made them look at the world and people? Are they more cynical, feeling that everything's end is inevitable, or are they more optimistic seeing that eventually things can be rebuilt or improved? Do they care little for other people, seeing them as feeble and short-lived insects? Or do they care for them and put their all in making the most of the short time they'll get to spend with each individual? For an immortal villain like Salem, I think a good way to have her actions make sense while still not making things too difficult for the heroes is to lean into those questions. How Salem's immortality works makes her the type of threat that can't just be fended off once. She *will* come back, she *will* try again, and she only has to accomplish her plan once. If she doesn't assemble the relics this century, she can always do it the next. If the heroes manage to steal back a relic, well she can always get it back later. It would sound like on paper to be frustrating, but remember that as a person with basically infinite time, she's going to have a different relationship with it. Someone with at most a century to accomplish everything want in life is going to feel a bit more pressure with time; Salem just doesn't have a time limit to consider. So the idea that she doesn't put in her all - that she doesn't just use her powers and immortality to overpower kingdoms' defenses and take the relics for herself - can still make sense with her. She can be written as so sure in her inevitable success, she doesn't care about efficiency. She can afford having a little fun in it. Hence, making it a chess game. Assemble disposable mortals and make them fight for her. Make a complicated scheme more meant to maximize crushing the heroes' morality than being the best way to get the relic. If an asset fails her, then no sweat on her, she'll live long enough to see a new asset born and raised. It'll work with the type of personality CRWBY seems to like for their villains: superiority complex, sassy, and clearly a bad person. Of course, consistent defeats will eventually start to get to her. Frustrate her. She could either decide to start taking a more active role, ramping up difficulty for the heroes in the latter seasons but also potentially opening her up to more slip-ups as her rage affects her decision-making. Or ego could be her weakness: with too much of a wounded pride, she may feel she has to lean more into her scheming to prove "she's still got it" or that all those losses with just a lucky streak on the heroes' part and not indicative of anything at fault *with her*. I think this could also help in writing the other villains: I got the sense that Hazel chose to follow Salem as he saw opposing her as a hopeless endeavor, which I think could also fit at least Watts and Mercury, if not Tyrian too. If her victory is inevitable, why bother trying to fight her? Why not just be on the winning side? Or better yet, hope you endear yourself to her enough that'll spare you, or at least help you accomplish your last acts of pettiness before everything ends. This could help with potential character growth for the villains, especially those on redemption paths. If they begin to realize their place as just chest pieces - regardless of how much they achieve on Salem's behalf - this could cause conflict within themselves that either leads to switching sides or deciding to sabotage Salem as a bit of a "fuck you" before going out. This then leads to an interesting theme of the passage of time and feeds into the hope vs giving up vibes I've felt RWBY has been trying to convey, which can be a segway into discussing real world applications of the metaphor of facing a seemingly eternity and unstoppable threat that every human should be concerned with and work together in combating. I *think* there might still be a little time for CRWBY to write this or something similar in, since you can argue little tidbits have been hinted since her first introduction and it's an obvious mindset for her to have in my opinion. This is also still not a motivation, which was the main concern of the video. I at least hope I gave potential fanfic authors material to work with, since they and the soundtracks are the only savings graces for me now.

Even through their flaws, the villains are still my favorite part of the series, besides Cinder, she’s the worst. I’m still sad that Torchwick and Watts are dead

Salem is literally a Karen who loved a guy who died, blamed him and everyone else for going crazy when all he wanted was to wait for her to pass on to be together again, decided to let everyone who she doesn't hate as much do stuff for her and just spread one rumor and let people interpret so they can follow her cause if not they die by her hand faster.

I'm really hoping that during the Vacuo arc, now that Salem's counsel has been diminished to Cinder, Mercury, and Tyrian, we can finally get proper development for them. There is so much potential with Mercury's partnership with Tyrian and his opinions on Cinder. Like you said, just give screen time to them having conversations with each other, so that by the time RWBY ends, they can hopefully be remembered as well fleshed out characters. I believe that the biggest mistake that can be done with Salem's counsel at this point is to have Salem bring in replacements for Watts and Hazel. There is no need to bloat the cast with villains who will undoubtedly have no development. They really need to take advantage of the fact that they now have a smaller cast of characters who can equally get more development.

You know another that we could learn from our villains especially Cinder is in relation to the Maidens? Would Cinder even be able to use those powers without any drawbacks? Hell, would she be able to actually again them since she's already a maiden? A lot of questions about the lore could be answered through our villains as well.

20:55 RU-vidr SuperEyepatchWolf once did a video about what makes a villain really special and his leading example was a villain refusing the offer of a glass of wine and instead asking for orange juice on ice. Strange and incidental details can have an amazing degree of impact on fleshing out who the bad guys are and make the audience interested.

The funny thing is that Tyrian's first encounter with Salem is actually in The World of RWBY. An outside material that to be honest is too expensive to buy... And most of the physical copies ive found in bookstores are often wrapped in plastic so you cant even read it without buy it. How do i know Tyrian's backstory is in there?? Because i managed to find an unwrapped copy and i skimmed. Also Watts' backstory is in there too but that one was ACTUALLY explained in the show....

To be fair, we know that at the very least weiss knew about Watts. She was given that incriminating footage of him dealing with her dad that she showed to the council. I think Ruby and Penny were in the room at about this time as well. This was the only real critique I have with this befor though and it’s pretty nitpicking. Even if they did know about Watts, knowing who he was didn’t really change or effect them much. Ironwood is the one who fought him. I just wanted to point out that detail, otherwise great video 👍

Oh boy a perfect birthday present my day is going pretty good now.

God can you imagine if ospin trapped her in the grim lands and her first plan was to make enough dispair (and or needs a maiden for a specific relic) so she can break free. Then as soon she is free she goes to attack atlas?

This really does suck because the villains could have been so interesting, but with Salem being written the way she is, none of them will have their time to shine or grow. They're just fumbling around aimlessly to be honest trying to get these relics.

Man it crazy how Roman was a better antagonist then all of them combine and he's been dead since season 3.

At this point, I'm pretty sure Mercury and Emerald were just helping Salem out of fear for their own lives

Now give us back Roman, the best character in the entire series

Honestly, seeing the series' actual main antagonists having too many vague end goals and them constantly getting sidelined for some other random schmuck to be the villain is a good example that CRWBY are mediocre storytellers.

Honestly, Salem's been alive for thousands of years. She's seen the world of remnant evolve around her, the good the bad and the terrible. (ex: faunus slavery, dust mining traps, other terrible decisions by the so called leaders.) If I was alive as long as her I'd probably just like to sit back and play the long game, stay away until they find enough hope and then bAM. Strike then. Break em all emotionally. I'd just try to find something fun to do tbh. Where's the fun in going god mod and just tanking your way through enemies in a video game???? there's no battle, no exciting wins and angering losses. I'd imagine that seeing as much death and destruction as Salem, one would become pretty unemotional.

If they want to make the Grimm a threat what the writers need to do is have Salem make elite hunter-killer type enemies less horde more assassins.

In all honesty, when the “Heroes” do more damage than the villains, whats the point of them.

What's comes to villains in Rwby 1. if your male get to be kill off 2.if your female you get to have feels from the fan's and a short redemption by end of the day the villans are nothing but punching bags by the "hero's"

Ozpin said that Salem wanted to summon the gods' judgement so she could die, but we have no idea if he's right or wrong

Sudden realization: Hazel, Watts and Tyrian are what happens when you create a dime-a-dozen villain trio you see in every shonen anime movie and keep them around way longer than expected while still having an anime movie’s worth of development for their kind (ie little to none at all).

Ypu know who had a good(at least ok) redemption arc? Ilia. They fleshed her out throughout the season, had her CONTINUOUSLY OCCUR, an actual reason for working with the Faunus Brothers (forgot their names), and ended with her repenting for her mistakes and helping in the end, giving her hope at the end of volume 5. Wasn't the best, but better than Emerald's and Hazels in my opinion.

3:40 I always figured from the moment we got backstory on her, that Salem’s motivation is the same as Bartadalus’ in final fantasy 13. She Wants to die. So she wants to end all life on remnant human, Fanis, maybe even Grimm, so it will get the gods attention, so they will come back and end her, because in her mind they’ll just restart life all over again.

salem should have been a true immortal. kind in voice, unbothered by anything that happened. No setback should make her angry, nothing should drive her to any action beyond a brisk walk or a wave of the hand. She is an immortal playing the long game. If the hero's face her, saying they will beat her she laughs. Any action taken by them is only slowing her, but there is no way to stop her. Salem should be the inevitable, slow, oncoming storm. You cant stop her, and she knows it so any act taken to oppose her, any loss suffered is a setback of time. and what is a little lost time to an immortal? Imagine the Salem who never screams or snaps. Who torture's those who fail her with the same non plussed expression of a mother scolding their child. Who tells the heroes that they can struggle all they want, that if they do manage to win, she will simply sit and wait until they turn grey and old, and then she will come back and strangle them in their beds. Time defeats all heroes, but time has no hold me.

I think CRWBY made a misstep in their Literary Allusions. Watts should have been based on Lampwick, not Torchwick, since he's more relevant to "Pinocchio's" story. And instead of being trapped in a burning building, Cinder should have used the relic to make him a Donkey. This would work well if his motive was something like "I did not want to be made an ass of by Ironwood or treated like some work-mule". You know what I mean?

This is CRWBY's mantra: As long as they LOOK cool, that's all they need. It's quite telling to say when I am creating OCs in order to flesh out this Salem Pantheon

Imagine setting up your main villain for 5 years as this super lethal threat only for her to lose her first on-screen fight scene with the protagonists, who walk away from that fight unscathed, and the only character she kills in that fight is her own henchmen

When i write I always think of these parts. 1.plot 2. Characters 3. Setting 4. Theme 5. Emotions(for the characters, viewers, and readers) After you know all 5, you need to see how the villians and main characters are connected and why they cross paths. This Salem stuff is an example of why its important to know what the villian wants early on. The viewer needs to care about what the characters are doing early on.

I don't think "Our protagonists spend more time fighting smaller groups instead of the main villains" is inherently a problem. As you pointed out, RWBY has a theme of uniting humanity. So it makes sense for a lot of their conflicts to be with the smaller scale threats that are preventing humanity from coming together as a whole/with potential allies that are more focused on their own small scale conflicts, than the larger threats that they aren't aware of. This could also mean that when our primary antagonist team does show up, they can have a greater impact. However we still need our primary antagonists to be well, actual characters with actual motivations. Even if we don't fully understand them for a while, when we do learn about them, we need to look back and go, "o I get it now, that's why they did that stuff." I think season 1-3 almost hit the nail on the head. The White-Fang and Torchwich were small scale local threats, like atlas antagonists, but the reason that they were causing so many problems, is because they were being riled up by Cinder. This means that we still felt Cinder's, and by extension Salem's, influence when our protagonists clashed with Torchwhich and The White-Fang. We didn't know much about Cinder, which was fine at the time. Mysteries can be interesting, but they are risky. When the mystery of Cinder's motivation turned out to be the most generic version of "people hurt me, now I hurt people", it retroactively damaged seasons 1-3. I can't really comment on the Atlas Antagonists, since I stopped watching in vol 5, but it sounds like they were just kinda there.

"or what's your favorite beverage..." One of the best anime villains, Toguro: "and thanks, I'll take an orange juice instead"

Imagine what they could have done if the white fang was actually apart of Salem’s council. We could have had them have a good reason for them siding with Salem as humans in general hade abused and taken advantage of them. Siding with Salem could have given them what they wanted. Or they could have used this as a opportunity to take the maiden powers for themselves. Have Sienna or Illia be a maiden, and give the White fang more legitimacy as a major player instead of disposable goons. It’s also really hard to take Emeralds “changing sides,” seriously. After all why should we care she’s left Salem when she herself has said she never cared about Salem. She only cared about Cinder. Leaving Salem doesn’t mean she’s cut all ties to Cinder.

Ozpin: "All Salem craves now is release! Death!" Me: "Oz, you know what people say about assuming." Okay but seriously, who thought it'd be good to go 8 seasons without clarifying the bad guy's end goal???

RWBY villains: Immortal witch who wants humanity to die and a flame karen. Madness Combat villains: *C L O W N*

Critter:"She want's the maiden powers why does she only have one girl in her council? What's the point of these 3 dudes." Well obviously Salem is a harem protagonist and she want's to make Ozpin jealous of her new Husbando's.

Talking about Salem finding the villains at the grocery store reminded me of that joke where Odin picked up Loki behind a Taco Bell lol. It was pointless to introduce them all as a group imo It probably would've worked better if they were the main villain for one season, we got their motivations / backstory before they were defeated, then we learned how they connected to Salem, or something. You know, like an anime.

A lot of these problems from the show's lack of a firm foundation. Nothing Roman and Cinder do in the first two volumes has anything to do with the relics and maidens, so we're left in the awkward position of not introducing the Big Bad until season 3's end and the main characters not even learning her name until Volume 4. They really should have put Cinder in Roman's position and had her reporting to Salem like Palpatine and Vader

I feel like they wanted to make a villain that was just plain evil and kinda vague, like Skeletor. I think the problems come up when there’s all this lore muddling up the motives with no explanation to how they work. Skeletor’s motives are simple, get the power of Grayskull to rule Eternia, it’s a pretty common motive and He-Man’s use of the power shows how it works and why Skeletor needs it. I have absolutely no idea how the relics work and how they can help Salem achieve her unknown motives with them.

Reporter: Salem, why did you collected the relics and doomed humanity Salem: I LOVE GOOOOOOOLLLLD!

I still think Hazel would have been a far better villain if instead of some bullshit about a sister, he was actually one of the bodies Ozpin was meant to take over but he had such an indomitable will that he was able to reject Ozpin out of him. That’s what I was hoping before we got the actual lame answer. -___-

If you took away the main goal of the relics what would be the personal goals and motivations of the characters? The lack of a clear answer is RWBY’s biggest problem.

They could have given literally any minion under Salem a really great motivation by making one of Oz's reincarnates a loved one of theirs, you could even take it a step further by having them see the Maidens as abominations in Ozpin's shadow(this would also be a subtle way to shed light on the Maidens without having a homework side series that doesn't really explain anything). Revenge and Hate are destructive motivations, but it's one people can relate to.

You know it's bad when the grimm from vol 4 had more development then the villains.

To be frank if i was villain i too would only drive the minivan to drop of the kids You know they kimda missed the opportunity to do a "hazel sees his sister in emerald" think leading to him sacrificing himself to help her go on to redeem herself or something. Idk

best motivation given to a villain was "its not what I have to gain its that I cant afford to lose" - Torchwick and it was his damn last words before they killed him that's a big open book I mean I have more questions after his death then I did before

Thank you! I’ve been thinking the exact same thing about Watts and how non of the the villains ever interact with each other or the Heroes. With Watts it has always bothered me that he has never interacted with any of the Heroes like imagine how amazing his snarky attitude would be against them and him roasting Ruby for her optimistic personality and even thanking her for knocking Cinder down a peg back in Volume 4 or just pissing off Yang would’ve been fun to see. He never got to talk to any of the heroes or even fight them which was an absolute waste as he could’ve been the perfect villain for Weiss and Penny to fight at some point during the Atlas arc. It just sucks he never got any development and died. Also Tyrian should’ve been used more with fighting the good guys like imagine him annoying Yang and making her angry or Blake meeting a Faunus way more insane than Adam. I wish we got to see villains interacting with each other more both villains inside and outside Salem’s faction. For example Tyrian and Hazel have never talked to each other the closest we got to them interacting was Hazel telling Emerald and Mercury to basically ignore him when Tyrian was mocking them when they returned from Mistral in volume 6. Adam and Tyrian would’ve been interesting too with Adam getting pissed off with Tyrian not caring about the Faunus. We could’ve even had our first villain vs villain moment with Adam and Jacques meeting which would’ve been interesting. Seeing how Watts would’ve reacted to being replaced by Mercury in Salem’s faction. So many examples of potential dynamics that we never got to see with the villains.

I have a weird headcanon that Volume 8 would've been better if there was a conflict solely focused on Salem's team and the Atlas Military. Imagine this, Ironwood fighting Hazel or Salem and the Ace Ops and Winter vs all of Salem's followers. But then PLOT TWIST team RWBY and company have been planning a countermeasure all along and it would blow up into a gigantic massive threeway faction fight while Atlas falls to the ground... Of course it needs a lot polishing, but it would be cool.

I miss when rwby was just about kids fighting thieves in a modern-futuristic setting. It was never amazing, but it was unique and charming...and then it did a complete 180 and turned into this generic fantasy that took itself way too seriously. Past season 3, it just feels like everything's being written on the fly. I don't think the writers have any idea what they want to do with the show.

Hazel never made sense to me. Like' boohoo my sister died fighting the grim so I'll just join the mother of the grim

19:19 my man Roman Torchwick remaining the best villain.

Salem being unkillable does provide an issue, but if you compare it with Alucard from Hellsing, his opposition did EVERYTHING in their power to stop Alucard from intervening with their plans, despite him being impossible to kill, lol...

Hazel's motivation in particular is outright ridiculous. "My sister died fighting the monsters Salem creates... so I'll hate Ozpin for not sending her back home and I'll join the lady who MAKES the monsters which killed my sister."

So I wrote a fanfic, and one of the key things I made sure to do was when given the opourtunity, give villans better motivations. Tyrian is fine, psychotic cultist is up there already. Emerald is loyal to Cinder for taking her off the streets at a slightly younger age, she's only loyal to a point, and that point is the realization that Cinder's thirst for power is going to get her killed. Mercury is looking for his place in the world without a super power, and if the world is dominated by Salem he'll be higher on the ranking than 90% of people. I explicitly state through other's and Blake's own admitance that Adam was a rapist/compleat controle freak, and that the fang was just his way of getting some sick kicks watching humanity suffer as he did, (that and I go into detail and show acctual faunus suffering in deathcamp conditions so the furry talaban arn't a joke). I added two more villans. Johannas Walts and Simon Sandline. The first is a money obsessed sadist that was introduced with a mass shooting. The second a man scorned by the world's governments for doing their dirty work decades ago. He was a whistle blower, and is willing to watch it all burn if it means feeling the warmth of the fire. I did RT's job for them and made Ironwood a lawful evil from the start, so there never was a heel faced turn Hazel... Honestly he's the only one I sort of liked as he was. Nhilism is very very crushing, and if you fight a god-like being and can't kill her, then what's the point, if she offer's you mercy, take it. Watts. The only thing I changed in regards to him was a little rant to one of the OC's about being on the wrong side of history, and how Salem was trying to create a world free from petty people like Ironwood, and a dream for a world without buricrats. To be fair he was right, becasue I changed Salem a little too. But given everything he did, I decided he deserved a better send off than being team killed... Salem, the big bad... Or not really... It's more muddy than that. Salem, is not death seaking as Oz stated, she's not trying to kill herself through the god's, she's trying to do what she did once upon a time, and free (in her eyes) humanity from the threat of gods and masters. Oz want's peace, Salem want's freedom, one uses order, the other chaos, both are equal in terms of morality, as Oz's use of order to attain peace has led to several human rights violations, and a bunch of other problems due to his failure to understand human nature, and Salem's use of chaos to get freedom is corupted by her lack of empathy. Anywho, people need to understand that everyone is the hero of their own story, or at the very least they are the protagonest of it. You can't just make an enemy for a hero in a vacuume, there needs to be meat on the character. Be it, loyalty, a basic desire to survive, a history of abuse filled rage, greed, revenge, a want for safty, apathy, even hope.

A counterpoint to the "Why doesn't Salem go out herself" a reason I can think of is because she can die but only temporarily and so I think a situation like I the anime "ajin Demi human" would happen. she would be killed over and over again before being brought to a place and locked away maybe in one of the vaults or in a prison where she is killed infinite amount of times. Since it seems she can't open the vaults she wouldn't be able to exit one.

I’m so sorry but : Oh my nefarious plans !!

In V4 Hazel notes they (the council or some earlier version of it?) encountered silver-eyed warriors before. This was another huge missed opportunity, especially considering Hazel saw Ruby in person at Haven. Alas, it's just another curiosity that will never be resolved, like so many other lines in this series.

My biggest problem with the villains is neo. If you listen to the song that plays during her mini-fight against cinder during volume five it pretty much describes how she wants revenge against cinder for Roman's death. But then when cinder flex her maiden Powers she kind of gave up and decided to work alongside her. I always assumed that this was basically neo biding her time to strike. The only way that her blaming Ruby works is if she doesn't know how Roman died but considering the fact that she chose to track down cinder first means that she pretty much puts the blame on cinder. The only reason Roman died was because cinder strong armed them into working with them. So for her to suddenly go a full about face and blame Ruby afterwards makes no logical sense. I thought they were going to do a little switcheroo at the end of volume seven or eight, maybe have neo betray cinder and not necessarily work with the good guys but maybe team up just temporarily so she can get her revenge. But no she full on blames Ruby and tries to kill her in multiple stupid ways and then, surprise surprise, she's betrayed by cinder. The same person who strong-armed them to work with her that resulted in the person most closest to her to die. The writing and volume seven and eight became a freaking joke in my opinion.

Pretty much all on point, i mean hell, Adam never even met the entire team, I even had to double check so i didn't stick my foot in my mouth. Even though they were all at haven, no one but Blake saw him before he fled, imagine if he had met ruby or weiss evem just once, the damn dialogue would have been insane, especially with Weiss because of his SDC branding.

Watts had so little explanation yet was still the best moustache in the show.

off topic but your little critter designs for patreon are AMAZING! so creative and well done

I still hate it when people call emerald's turn a "redemption" it's literally artificial

When the best villain dies in Volume 3

I can't speak for anyone else, but I personally would be willing to forgive a lack of explained motivations if the villains actually had interesting enough personalities to make up for that lack of information. alas, just like with the heroes, all the interesting villains are long gone.

I've never close a video of Judgemental Critter so fast to watch a video of Judgemental Critter before

Clicked as soon as the notification popped up. Lets go!!!

Hazel's motivation would've been a lot more interesting if his sister had died because she got wrapped up in Ozpin's schemes, similarly to how Pyrrha did. Have Ozpin lie to Hazel about what actually happened. Have him notice an inconsistency in Ozpin's story. Have him spend years independently investigating the circumstances of his sister's death, finding clues that lead him to Salem who reveals the truth to him, presented in such a way that he resents Ozpin for involving children in his fight against Salem more than he resents Salem for being the root of the conflict. Convince him that killing those Ozpin reincarnates into would be a mercy. I mean, she's supposed to be a master manipulator, isn't she? No new world order. No grand ideals. Just revenge against the person who manipulated his sister and then tried to cover it up. Is it petty? Yeah, but it would at least make his hatred of Ozpin feel justified.

i wanna point out ur youtber format is like perfectly appealing. Mini second long self plug, No intro about an irrelevent subject to draw comparison, decent mic that isnt so loud n high quality but also doesnt sound like a potato, casual video essay not taking the subject overly seriously 10\10 lad

I ran a D&D campaign when I was still in high school. It was set up to be this giant, chosen by the gods, Hunger Games type ordeal. But I wanted to build to it. Which led me to only sprinkle in things about the end game, and introduce things my players COULD kill in the meantime. This went on for 2ish years, and when I finally DID reveal the big plot point, it just felt random. No one cared about these new bad guys being talked about, they just spent 2 years facing off against this Lich, only to find out he was an evil god’s champion all along. It was bad. Even I knew it was bad. Long story short, Rooster Teeth are professional writers and show runners and are making the same mistakes with their writing as a 9th grader.

Hit the nail on the head again. You are KILLING IT with these video essays. Also when you showed the proof that Wats had NO interaction with team RWBY I audibly went, "OH MY GOD SHE RIGHT!"

Cinder is basically Salem's starscream

The villains are there just to be villains...at this point they may as well be Rita Repulsa...

Genital War Thunder might be the most metal name choice ever.

Immortals: “What you call a character arc, I call a mood swing.” I don’t think she actually cares. I don’t think Salem gives a single fuck about what her ‘underlings’ are doing. She’s a bored immortal fucking around because there’s nothing better to do. I actually like the idea that she’s basically a figure head/excuse others are using to justify their actions/contact others who are disgruntled with the current world order. And Salem just goes along with it!

Salem was at her best at the end of Season 3. She embodied something: Elemental Evil. I liken her at this point to Sauron from Lord of the Rings. Sauron is not a "character" per se; he is a *force.* He is Elemental Evil, a manifestation of corruptive power. That is his Element. Salem's element is division. Qrow said it best in Volume 4: she stays in the shadows so that when she stokes division and people fight, they only have each other to blame. There. That's what Salem needed to be. Ruby wants harmony and unity; Salem is discord and division. The End. But no, they decided to turn Salem... into a *character*. Someone who has wants and needs. There's a reason why LOTR didn't have conversations between the Mouth of Sauron and Sauron himself. Why we never saw Sauron throwing temper tantrums when the good guys won. Salem should not have been a character in the usual sense of the term. She wants discord and division. Why? Because that's *what Salem is.* Her minion are people she can manipulate into creating that division. People who seek power can be coerced into doing various things for it. People who want to overturn the current system are easily manipulated into creating division. Etc.