Why are there fans who have latched onto Adam Taurus?
A recurring question I see a lot and the explanation is actually very simple
Canonically speaking, Adam wasn't born a monster. He became one as a result of society. He's not like Tyrian whose violent tendencies are just there. Adam has a gruesome slave brand right on his face. That image alone comes with a lot of questions and concerns about how the world pushed him to his worst
He's even not like Hody Jones from One Piece who only inherited the anti-human hatred from the older generation of fishmen, but was never directly harmed by this prejudice
Adam is a direct victim of systemic racism and violence in the context of the show. It's very easy to question how much of his evilness came naturally or was formed in response to the mistreatment he suffered
This goes back to a previous point I've made. The show only condemns his extremism without addressing the part of society that contributed to the problem. In this case, how society turned a blind eye to a big name company using slave labor and inflicting permanent damage by branding them
Since the show doesn't do enough to condemn humanity's fault in the mistreatment of faunus, writing Adam as a pure evil monster feels uncomfortable and arguably makes him a scapegoat to accept all the blame in the White Fang conflict. As a result, he has fans and defenders who lament the lost opportunity to address the horrors of being a slave and a second class citizen and wish he was written differently
The origin of the White Fang is absolutely bananas. Blake recalls its original purpose to be a symbol of peace between humans and faunus, a notion so vague it's literally meaningless, but who the fuck names a peace organization White Fang? Why not something like the White Dove or Open Arms, something that actually brings to mind the idea of peace?
And here's another little thing that ShawLuna can't help but trip over: historically, those who prefer revolutionary tactics do not boot out a pacifist leader once their rationale becomes the popular one. They just make their own group, like the Black Panthers or the Hindustan Socialism Republic Association. This happens pretty often and the groups almost always are critical of each other's methods, but they coexist rather than take over
But doing that would mean that they would've had to write multiple groups with complex ideologies towards overcoming an equally complex obstacle, so one group turned sUpEr eViL is all we get
Rwby fans love parading the idea that Adam was intentionally written as a pedophile, and attack anyone who points out that this doesn't make sense, but like. If Adam was indeed written as a predator, then that speaks even worse for CRWBY's writing. Because canonically, Blake is never ever acknowledged to be a victim of grooming. Yes, it is acknowledged that she was abused by her ex-boyfriend but she was never ever hinted to be the victim of a pedophile - and how the hell are you going to write a CSA victim without even bothering to touch upon the topic? Without ever even bothering to do as much as to acknowledge that they were a victim of a pedophile in canon? Instead, that heavy subject is used as a what, a little easter egg you find out about if you go out of your way to engage with the VAs?
So there are two options, Adam was never meant to have a large age gap with Blake and he was never intended to be a predator and the VAs were just spewing bullshit for one reason or another.
Or the character was indeed written to be a pedophile (which makes no sense but lets just say that this is the case for thr sake of argument) by CRWBY except they think so little of CSA victims that they never even bothered to actually acknowledge that fact in their show. Which is disgusting because when you decide to write such topics, you have to be respectful, educated on the topic at hand and to listen to victims' voices. But what CRWBY allegedly did, is write a character who was apparently abused by a pedophile, but then were too lazy to actually establish that in canon, so they threw a one-liner about it in an interview and then acted as if you've done sum. Which honestly speaks even worse for CRWBY because rather than centering Blake and again, even acknowledging that she was a victim to something so disgusting in canon, it's clear they used a sensitive topic to turn Adam into even more of a hate sink. Blake being abused by a pedophile is not about Blake, because they don't even give her the grace of acknowledging her being a CSA victim in the show. Nope, it's about proving to the lot that Adam is evil. It's about demonizing Adam, not about Blake and her experiences.
Just to be clear, I don't think that Adam is a pedophile and I don't think that him being one makes sense considering how much inconsistencies that creates, but I'm writing this for the sake of argument.
Well said, I have nothing to add. But I'll take "Good fucking god they fumbled this serious topic so goddamn bad" for 500
Seriously, the whole pedophilia thing being an easter egg (great phrasing) is ridiculous when it's wielded so often against his character. Sorry, didn't realize I had to do research outside the show to learn about how he's a horrible person in ways entirely unrelated to the main plot, and I'm doubly sorry that so many of the ways he's a characterized as a horrible person feel so tacked on that you can shave all of them off and nothing changes.
Milesâs thoughts on Jaune and Cinderâs characters, as well as their relationship : r/RWBY
Given that Cinder is an abused and trafficked girl character whom the writers went out of their way to make evil and Salem is an evil white queen character abusing her, how would you feel if the writers used Cinder to satisfy the audience's toxic fantasies but gave her abuser Salem a redemption arc and a happily ever after? Saw this commentary by Miles on Cinder and Salem and have a bad feeling about how RWBY will end. Honestly, I don't think the story of Cinder and Salem was a good way to write a story about a trafficked and abused girl.Â
I really wish RWBY had just never touched on the topic of modern slavery tbh. Or oppression in general. Both child slaves we've seen have been intentionally written to be evil hate-sinks with few if any redeeming qualities, and with both of them the systems that got them to where they are just get brushed under the rug and not properly addressed. The same types of people in Atlas who would exploit others are likely in Vacuo now, having set up shop themselves or joining exploitative enterprises that already exist there. If you're not gonna have the main cast turn to such a serious societal problem and say "whoa that's messed up we should work toward fixing that" then don't use it.
Writing Cinder and Adam to be the worst and then slapping the child slave backstory on them does not make me think your story has depth. It makes me think you don't care much about child slaves and the support they need after they get out of that situation.
To the Cinder, Salem, and Jaune stuff specifically, gonna transcribe the Cameo so we can have it in Miles's exact words... (Behind read-more because post length.)
"Hey Steven, Miles here, thank you so much for the Cameo request.
"So! You asked a question: "I would love to hear more about Cinder and Jaune and how the story of Rhodopis might inflict on their story in RWBY. Please give a more in-depth analysis of these two. Also can Jaune and Ruby maybe rebuild their relationship, maybe something more?"
"Alright. So before I get into it, I'm only speaking on behalf of myself and not the other writers and creative forces behind RWBY. So, you know, take that as you will. Just kind of my opinion on stuff. First I'll answer the thing about "Can Jaune and Ruby rebuild their relationship", I think that they can, and I can't get into anything more than that until we #GreenlightVolume10. But yes absolutely, there was a lot of harsh words exchanged in RWBY Volume 9 that we didn't necessarily get a ton of closure on, off of it being a short volume and then also like halfway through production having to make it an even shorter volume. But I am hopeful that if we get a Volume 10, we'll be able to pick things up where we had to leave them off in Volume 9. And one of those things would absolutely be those two having some talks. You know, it's Jaune and Ruby, it's the leaders of RWBY of JNPR, of course they're not gonna, you know, be cold to one another or anything like that for the rest of their lives.
"So! With that, the story of Rhodopis. I'm gonna be honest with you man, this is a story that I wasn't familiar with, it was a myth I'd never heard of, it was really cool getting to learn more about it. I was like completely unaware that this was potentially one of the first iterations of what we know in the modern day as like a Cinderella story. I thought it was super cool. I always love getting to learn new things. So, this was one of those moments. So thank you for that! And that also probably answers your question--no, the story of Rhodopis doesn't have much of an impact on Jaune and Cinder's story.
"In regards to their story, the way that I would kind of describe it is that they're not, at least from Cinder's point of view, they're nothing, and from Jaune's point of view Cinder is everything. Which is something that we thought was really fun and that we wanted to give a shoutout to towards the end of Volume 5 when Jaune you know, has been brooding and thinking of this terrible person that did so many awful awful things, especially to Pyrrha, someone who meant a great deal to him, he's been obsessed with wanting to try and you know, make sure that "justice is served" aka in that moment he wanted revenge. And has been like, you know, quietly obsessing over ever since the fall of Beacon. And to Cinder, Jaune's a nobody! Absolutely nobody, she doesn't give a shit about Jaune Arc, she's like, you know, she's got all of these big schemes and machinations of her own where she wants to accrue power and, you know, that gets kind of sidetracked by Ruby showing up with a power of her own that she didn't expect to run into. And that really pisses her off, and so now she's got a bit of an ax to grind with Ruby Rose.
"And so Cinder, one of her big deals is that she is such a, like... A superiority complex, that Watts very succinctly breaks down for her in Volume 8 and, you know, that's I think one of her greatest weaknesses, is that especially in the past she underestimates people. She underestimates everybody that she doesn't think is like worthy of posing a threat to her. And Jaune Arc definitely falls in that category. She really doesn't think anything of him and when he tries to go toe-to-toe with her, as well as the other folks on teams RWBY and JNPR, she lets him have it! And then goes off to have a battle with Raven, someone who she does learn very quickly--ho ho! This lady? She can throw down. Alright, noted, Raven. On my shit list.
"And as far as like, breaking those two down a bit more in depth, you know, Cinder is a character that is in the first few volumes kind of framed as this big bad, and then as we moved into Volume 4 we wanted to kind of open up that like no, she is part of her own team, and they serve a greater threat. But something that we've always wanted to maintain is that for our main characters, for the audience, Cinder is a very personal antagonist. We've--she's the antagonist that we've known for the longest when compared against Salem, she's the antagonist that everybody hates. Like, I consider Cinder to be one of those like villains that's like oh, it's not like the Joker like oh she's likable but also like, evil and like, you, you can't-- No no no no no. Cinder's loathsome. Our goal is like, we want everybody to absolutely hate her and want her to get what's coming to her. Which is probably why, you know, we have, you know, we show her fail a lot, but one of the things that makes her so dangerous is that no matter how many times she fails, despite starting from a place of seemingly no power, the thing that makes her an absolute menace, is that she does. Not. Stop. She's like, the shonen anime hero, but terrible. And that's been, that's my two cents on Cinder on a bit of a deeper level, we really want the audience despise her along with a lot of our heroes.
"Whereas Salem, we show her backstory and it makes a little more like sympathy, you kind of get it, you see why she did all the things that she did. Cinder, also very sad backstory but man oh man, is she just mean, and spiteful.
"Anyway, Jaune. Jaune we really developed as an audience surrogate. We knew that we wanted everybody on Team RWBY to be super kickass which meant that we needed to have another character who was kind of a main in our ensemble who had a lot of questions to ask, who had a lot of things that they didn't know, and needed to kind of get caught up to speed very quickly, and so that was how like, Jaune kind of served that function, and then became a much more prominent character in the show. And I think, like, Jaune is, I will say you know, kind of like Cinder, something that you could argue that they both have is like, they have an insane amount of willpower. Jaune also constantly constantly constantly wants to better himself, but it comes from more of a place of guilt, of not wanting to bring any other people down, I think for a long time he blamed himself very harshly for the death of Pyrrha. Even though he wasn't there, he thinks you know "if I had been strong enough to be there maybe it could've been different". And so I think that is something why, you know, it's interesting, we wanted Jaune to kinda start off as like comic relief, and a bit insufferable and annoying. We probably did that latter part a bit too well. But over time we hoped that people would kind of get on board and root for him and man as the voice actor for Jaune it's been crazy to see just how favorable of a character he's become in the eyes of the audience.
"So yeah that's about as in depth as I can go, without spoiling potential future things and I hope there is a future and that we #GreenlightVolume10. But Steven I just wanna say thank you very much for the Cameo request. I really do hope that this was a response that satisfies you. Again, thanks for the knowledge drop, that was really cool to learn a bit more. And man I just hope you have a really really wonderful day. Thank you for watching the show, and I hope you get to watch it more in the future. Take care."
(This took me like over an hour to do, thanks fatigue and brain fog. Bolded bits were to emphasize where I'm pulling my suspicions from. Also for some reason tumblr won't let me post this with the transcript indented. -__-)
Yeah, not liking what I see here wrt Cinder's treatment.
If Salem gets redeemed then it would be pretty gross if Cinder did not imo. But the way Miles is talking about it doesn't give me much hope. Jaune is the "audience surrogate", and Miles said that they were trying to make Cinder the worst so the audience would hate her... Which points to Jaune getting revenge on Cinder, likely by killing her. I really do not want to see Jaune kill another woman, thanks. -__- Not even in self-defense. As in do not write them into a scenario where Jaune "has no choice" but to kill a woman again, please!
So Blake was all "you stalked me across Anima" when Adam showed up for their duel right? And if that is true does that mean Adam followed team RWBY to the abandoned farm with the Apathy Grimm? So did they have an effect on him too? Was Adam just, off-screen flat-out on the ground in an apathetic daze while they dealt with that, and then once the Grimm are dead he snaps out of it and has to run like hell to catch up with them? XD
Like he tracks them there and he's creepin' up on the farmhouse planning his attack and then suddenly the Apathy hits and he has to sit down like "whoa. my existence is pointless" and then he's just face-down in the snow until the Grimm are dead. (Don't worry, he can beat frostbite with the heat of his rage once he snaps out of it.)
I guess the alternative is that Adam just went to the place the train was going and waited for Blake to show up but the idea of him being temporarily knocked out by the Apathy right off-screen is way more funny. :p
I interpreted it as him being on the part of the train that makes it to Argus and he lies in wait for the ambush. Which, while yes, less fun than him schlepping through the wilderness and dealing with the Apathy's influence, opens doors to questions like "what the hell was he doing with all that time."
"What was he doing with all that time"? Well if he stuck to the wilderness, probably dodging local guard patrols, dodging all the Grimm that are homing in on him because he's such a negativity sink because of his emotional state, searching for places to steal food from without being caught, wallowing in his rage and desperately trying to avoid thinking about the actions that actually brought him here, trying not to freeze to death... idk how well he'd do going into town since his outfit and hair and horns alone are pretty recognizable even without the mask and throwing a cloak on can only do so much(a mysterious cloaked man is pretty suspicious), and with so many people living there that means there are eyes everywhere. So if he went into town at all it might be brief and then he'd leave again as soon as possible.
Honestly this could've been a place for someone to stage an intervention. Adam doesn't have much farther to fall at this point and he has to be getting tired after all this. As for who would be able to pull off that intervention? idek cause Sienna's dead, Ghira couldn't be bothered to send Adam to therapy when he was younger and I doubt Adam would even consider listening to him at this point, Blake shouldn't be the one to have to do that because of what happened between them before... I mean, it could be cool if Ghira recognized how he'd failed Adam by turning him into a guard dog after he got out of the mines instead of, y'know, sending him to therapy(if therapy even exists on Remnant). You could spin an interesting story from that.
Been thinking about how Adam's outfits, especially the second one, read as so closed-off to the world?? Like very much "don't touch me" vibes which given his backstory makes a ton of sense but at the same time, cutting off all touch also removes friendly touch, if that makes sense? And how that absence of friendly touch would affect him in ways that he doesn't realize. I hope I'm making sense.
Anyway, interested to hear about any thoughts you might have about this. đ
I love how closed-off his outfits make him look. Full coverage, always gloves, the most we ever get is a sliver of his collarbone in that plunging v-neck. But it's still asymmetrical, which, y'know, is ripe for some metaphors about presenting an uneven and highly curated version of yourself. Wearing black and red so the blood doesn't show, covering yourself head to toe and wearing a mask because it's not about you, it's about what you represent, and what you represent is the semblance and the violence that makes it dangerous.
I just. The gloves, man, the gloves. Even in casual moments (the Adam short with him and Blake on the roof), he's still wearing them. It's pretty goddamn clear he doesn't want anyone touching him or even perceiving him in a way he can't control.
It's like he covers himself in symbols to further obscure whatever concept of him is bleeding through: the mask, the jacket designs, the glove designs, the banner. He puts out all these declarations about who he is so neither he nor anyone else has to think about it. They make assumptions, he plays into them, and no one wonders too much about his history.
I hope itâs okay to join in on the discussion cause this sort of identity stuff is so fun to play with.
The covering himself in symbols part, that suggests a "don't look at me" aspect on top of the "don't touch me" part. Like hiding under an alter ego so he doesn't have to look at what's really underneath. So he doesn't have to address the pain of that little boy from the mines, from the wound that's been rotting inside ever since then because nobody bothered to clean it, stitch it up, give him time to rest, and teach him how to care for it. The thought that if he can wrap himself in enough anger and violence no one will ever be able to hurt him that way again. (And that's not to say a sense of justice didn't factor into all this, but I feel that trying to hide that wound both literally and metaphorically is a part of the equation.)
So Adamâs wrapped himself in a shell. And then comes the question of whatâs underneath? Does Adam himself even know that anymore? What would he have been if heâd been pointed down a path that didnât require violence day in and day out, that didnât demand that he become an attack dog for the people calling the shots? And when the shell is broken, whatâs left behind?
As someone who became properly aware of RWBY in like late V7 and thus having never had any longstanding headcanons about any of the characters before that... It's the problematic elements that bother me. It's the fact that characters have problematic shit tacked onto them, with some of them being pretty much made of problematic shit hello "we decided to make one of the most-hated characters in the show into an ex-child slave turned child soldier who literally got branded on his face by his oppressors and lost an eye from it and never addressed how a racist and uncaring society played a significant roll in turning him into a monster, he's just spite and the humans and the system they built aren't to blame at all". And then they made Cinder, the other widely-hated and abusive character, into an ex-child slave too. Like I'm sorry. That character concept will never fail to gross me out.
I watched the trailers and up to the end of V3, then I didnât watch RWBY (or even think about it really) until a bit into volume 7, when YouTube recommended the red trailer and I rewatched it to feel something again. So, same; I also never really had headcanons or a deep investment in certain versions of the characters. And yeah, that kind of character is gross, and Iâm about to spend far too much time angrily explaining why Iâm frustrated with it and with the writersâ/fandomâs seeming indifference to (or even support of!) it.
Basically, the âcool motive, still murderâ idea (as succinctly stated by Brooklyn 99) has done irreparable damage to fandomâs ability to critically engage with fundamental character- and world-building flaws.
RWBY, when it deigns to engage with the systemic issues it chose to include in its setting, often reduces those issues to one-dimensional representations packaged in individuals that can be dealt with relatively quickly/simply and thus considered "over.â The real kicker of this strategy is that those individuals are always villains or evil in a way that âcancels outâ (/s) their tragic backstory. Adam is the most egregious example of this, but all of the White Fang, Cinder, Salem, and apparently even fucking Neo these days suffer from it to varying degrees.
RWBY isnât the first piece of media to use the tragic backstory trope or even use it on villains. Iâm going to go with Marvel here (sorry) just because itâs pretty widely known. So, in Black Panther, the villain Killmonger grew up in a poor neighborhood. His father was murdered. He struggled as a Black orphan in America, then grew into a man with few moral boundaries and a singular drive to empower his people, which he chooses to do by using the technology offered by the heroâs country. Killmonger is eventually defeated, but the movie makes a point that the hero, TâChalla, has to change. It dedicates an entire scene to TâChalla telling his ancestors explicitly that they were wrong for ignoring people like Killmonger and the movie ends on TâChalla taking concrete steps to address the problems that Killmongerâs actions brought to light. Killmongerâs tragic backstory served a purpose. It wasnât just there to make him a sympathetic villain; it was there to force the hero to confront an aspect of his society, of his world, that he had not needed to consider before. It wasnât just âCool motive, still murderâ; it was âCool motive, still murder, but hereâs how weâll address the root cause so this doesnât happen again.â In my eyes, Black Panther serves as an example of a tragic villain backstory (when the backstory ties into systemic issues) done well.
RWBY does not do it well.
What blows my mind is that when writers insert a badly done tragic backstory (read: justification) for their villains, they usually do it for cheap sympathy points. But for Adam, they couldnât even manage that. Or maybe they didnât care about sympathy; he was, as you point out, anon, hated. So itâs possible that the writers didnât even consider that maybe, maybe, revealing the branded child slave backstory in the way they did to make Adam look like more of a manipulative asshole was a bad decision. Itâs not a subversion of the trope; itâs a badly done rendition, a joke that wants to be taken seriously. As the linked article above warns, âmuch writerly skill is generally needed to pull this off and make it poignant rather than pathetic.â Adamâs iteration very much falls into the pathetic category, never mind the implications when you take into account what minority group the faunus very closely mirror.
Basically, the bar was on the floor and they dug a new basement to avoid it. Why introduce a tragic backstory for a villain that highlights the injustices of their world if youâre not doing it for sympathy or to identify a problem the protagonists must confront? Why? What does that communicate to the audience? âOh, Adam suffered,â the writers say, âbut donât worry, you can ignore the implications of child slavery in our world and withhold your sympathy because heâs an asshole.â
Now theyâre seemingly trying to play the trope straight with Cinder, which makes me feel like Iâm going mad. âOh, Cinder is an asshole,â the writers say, âbut please still ignore the systemic issues implied by her backstory while sympathizing with her because she was a slave who suffered.â
(For those of you who love to interpret things in bad faith: when I say âthe writers say,â I donât mean that they spoke/wrote those exact words. I mean that those words are uncomfortably easy to infer from what theyâve written, which yes, is a responsibility of the writer.)
When you build a story, the pieces should serve a purpose proportionate to their weight and implications. Youâd be hard-pressed to find someone who thinks that a piece of trivia concerning characterâs favorite ice-cream flavor demands more than a throwaway line. On the other hand, something like resorting to extreme actions for civil rights because of a history of child slavery is not on the same level as killing a dude for love and shouldnât be dismissed just as quickly.
I am on my hands and knees begging the people who blindly love the show to understand that this is not good writing. There are such good stories out there that genuinely improve the craft or iterate on it in fascinating ways, stories that have rewarding setup and payoff, stories with intricate worldbuilding you could spend weeks teasing apart. Please, please engage critically with other media, particularly well-known media. I donât mean well-known as in popular; I mean pieces of media that are widely regarded as seminal works or masterclasses in their fields. Read analyses of them. Read reviews. Understand why they work, and then understand why RWBY, the vast majority of the time, doesnât.
If youâve read this far, then please, enjoy this blurry photo of my cat when he was a kitten:
