Generally curious how the fuck the Bannerman Road gang are doing during The Giggle from the looks of shit happening in it so far.

Ironwood tucked tail and ran, he didn't actually consider his options he reacted with paranoia and literally did the thing the villains (Watts) told him to his face was the thing they wanted him to do. Ironwood neglected Mantle for ages, like seriously he was going to tell everyone while Mantle had a huge hole in its wall. And no he wasn't doing everything possible the whole season was all about how he was sacrificing Mantle's safety for his own end.

There are a lot of different points here so I’m going to break things up: 

“[Ironwood] didn’t actually consider his options” except he did. We had an entire, if heated, conversation about it. Is Amity ready? No. So can we use it? No. Are we in any state to keep fighting? No. Has the perimeter been taken out? Potentially. Is Salem approaching? Likely. They ran through a number of different factors and came out with two options: leave now or hold their ground. Based on what they know, Option Two is a death sentence and when no one was able to come up with an Option Three that combined saving Mantle with keeping the rest of the populace alive + keeping relics/a Maiden out of Salem’s hands, Ironwood went with Option One. People also have to remember that from their perspective she could be here any second. This is the opposite of Volume 6 where the group actually had time to come up with various options and chose not to. Here, they can’t afford to spends hours or days trying to come up with additional solutions when Salem may be on their doorstep in a matter of minutes. 

“literally did the thing the villains... wanted him to do” yeah, he did, but again... what’s Option Three? What’s the solution where Ironwood keeps people safe without creating a single bit of division among them? Right now it doesn’t exist. Just because the hero ends up doing what the villain wanted doesn’t mean that decision wasn’t logical or justified. It doesn’t mean they had another way out. It just means that the villain did their job and crafted a scenario where the hero is screwed no matter what they choose.That’s what makes Salem so hard to beat. It’s akin to a trick. She crafts plans wherein even the best solutions have horrific consequences attached, but that’s not Ironwood’s fault. This is gonna sound weird, but I’ve had that Matrix scene stuck in my head the last few days. Neo is offered a red pill and a blue pill and told to choose, now. The fandom’s response to Ironwood’s dilemma is akin to going, “I can’t believe Neo didn’t take the time he wasn’t offered to choose the green pill instead.” That green pill... doesn’t exist... Not yet anyway. 

“Ironwood neglected Mantle for ages” again, building Amity necessitated that neglect. We can argue that Ironwood never should have built Amity in the first place then---letting Mantle have their resources is more important than building a communications tower/thinking you can defeat Salem---but the fandom and the RWBYJNR team don’t get to have both. We can’t demand that Ironwood finish this project and then drag him for doing what’s necessary to achieve that. Amity was not “for his own end.” Nor were things like the military presence. We can argue the ethics of whether it’s ever appropriate to keep soldiers around town, but the intent has always been to keep the people safe. And given how many times grimm broke through the walls this volume? Those soldiers probably saved a lot of lives. If we’re truly going to criticize Ironwood for his treatment of Mantle than we likewise need to criticize the group for staying on his back about Amity. It’s because they allowed him to think that this was a way to defeat Salem for so long and pushed him to get it done that the mistreatment of Mantle continued. How do you keep Ironwood from taking resources from the people? Idk, maybe tell him that the thing he wants the resources for won’t actually save the world like he thinks it will... 

“like seriously he was going to tell everyone while Mantle had a huge hole in its wall” 100% agree there. I think it was stupid af to tell the people about Salem at all, let alone during a grimm attack. But remember that our heroes were very pleased with that development. That’s the one thing Ironwood has been praised for. Again, if we’re going to criticize him for that then Ruby likewise deserves criticism for pushing him towards telling others about Salem and then giving her  little, “He’s doing it.” As I’ve mentioned the last two volumes, my primary issue with the writing is not that the characters make mistakes, but rather the hypocrisy that occurs when that happens. Team RWBY is continually let off the hook by both the writing and the fandom despite the fact that their actions contributed immensely to all of Ironwood’s mistakes. Their mistakes are just as much at the center of all this, but no one wants to acknowledge how keeping that secret forced Ironwood to work under hugely false information. Even though we just got a whole volumes articulating how horrific that sort of manipulation was for Team RWBY under Ozpin. Their choice to repeat Ozpin’s actions had far more devastating circumstances, namely hurting Mantle in the name of a plan they knew was doomed from that start. RWBYJNR could have spared Mantle at any time. 

“...Ironwood’s plan sucks” yeah, it has a million holes in it, but again, does anyone have a better plan? If Salem’s flying grimm army is such a threat to a hypothetically sky-high Atlas, why aren’t people acknowledging what a threat those + grounded grimm are to an Atlas that sticks around beside Mantle? To be blunt, there are way bigger priorities here. No one should be asking, “But what will we do about food days/weeks from now?” when Salem is theoretically coming to kill them in the next hour. How about we survive the immediate threat first. If we’re all alive to worry about food later that will be a miracle. 

“take apart a military vehicle or two and used the material to fix Mantle’s wall” maybe he could have. We as the audience have no idea what exactly these “resources” are and how they might be replaced, but if we’re really going to nit-pick like that... why didn’t anyone else? Why didn’t Team RWBY suggest that instead of just yelling at Ironwood to fix everything himself? Why didn’t Robyn do that instead of stealing the materials on their way to Amity? Everyone keeps insisting that Ironwood isn’t united with the others, but it’s everyone else who insists that he fix everything himself while simultaneously betraying, lying, criticizing, and undermining him along the way. I likewise don’t buy the “Ironwood is the adult and he’s responsible for Team RWBY” argument I’ve seen floating around because that’s by the same group who was going, “Team RWBY are adults now Ozpin and Qrow need to trust them more” last volume. They have their licenses. They’re working with a military inner circle. They, as I’ve said before, don’t get to flip-flop between vulnerable children and responsible adults as they please. If the group is mature enough to fight this war at Ironwood’s side then they’re mature enough to go, “Hey, how about the eight of us try to think up ways to help instead of just yelling that we don’t like what Ironwood, as just one very stressed person, has managed to come up with?” 

“maybe he could have updated Mantle’s security” again, we don’t know what Ironwood might or might not have done after the Fall of Beacon in terms of updates. All we do know is that he didn’t have the one crucial piece of information that made Mantle’s security seem vulnerable: Watts is alive. Ironwood only found that out after Watts had already taken over. 

“Maybe he could have told the council and worked with his own government” sorry but this argument always makes my brain go “????” The only thing we know about this council is that they were fully backing Jacques at the meeting, which is not a good indicator of how trustworthy they were pre-his arrest. If we’re praising Team RWBY for not trusting Ironwood---someone who has been fighting Salem for years and who immediately shared his own secrets---why in the world would we expect Ironwood to trust two lackeys of Jacques Schnee? One of these options seemed a whole lot less trustworthy than the other. And I guarantee you that if we had gotten a story where Ironwood brought in the council and then we learned they had been working closely with Jacques? People would criticize him for that too. “Maybe he could have kept things quiet like Team RWBY did and not give information to a corrupt government.” It’s a lose-lose, apparently. 

“did what the kids wanted and it WORKED” literally only because the plot went wonky to accommodate them. No one freaking out, no one angry anymore, everyone coming together to sing the Remnant equivalent of Kumbaya... I’m by no means against hopeful results superseding “realistic” ones, but this was a seriously extreme example of the plot accommodating the group’s preferences. In the same way it accommodated them in Argus. It’s a deliberate choice not to have there be any repercussions to starting huge grimm battles ,or telling an angry mob about the sorceress sociopath out to kill them all, and RT grabbed hold of that choice by both hands. It’s hard to argue who is really “right” or “wrong” when the narrative itself makes sure that only one party’s actions ever have bad outcomes whereas the others always come out rosy. It has been a rigged system the last two volumes. Team RWBY’s choices are always “right” not because they’re justified, but because the writing ensures that nothing bad ever happens as a result. Even when logic dictates that it should. 

“idk maybe tell them to fight on their own they can” this would be a good option if the group were actually interested in just defending Mantle. But they’re not, their goal is to stop Ironwood from leaving Mantle behind. We get that moment where the whole team stands in front of him in a semi-circle, making it clear that if he wants to enact his plan, he’ll have to go through them first. It’s not a, “You do your thing and we’ll do ours” situation, it’s a “We’re not going to allow you to do your own thing.” So Ironwood responds to that with, “Fine. You’re forcing me to move you? You’re under arrest.” 

“maybe see about getting their system back up” Watts had complete control over the system. The conversation at the dinner made it clear that everyone was locked out: Ironwood, the council, even Jacques himself. And I doubt Watts, wherever he is now, is just going to hand that control back because Ironwood asked. Which again, comes back to time. Do they have time to interrogate Watts? No. Do they have time to sit other tech experts down and try to get them to reclaim the system? No. People keep insisting that these are all options that Ironwood willfully ignores, but every one of them results in the same thing: Atlas twiddling its thumbs as Salem slams in with her grimm army. This would be a very different situation if she were days out and they had some time to try these things, but the setup is very much, “If she’s coming she’s going to be here in no time at all. Whatever we’re doing, we have to do it right now.” Long-term “options” of these sort simply aren’t on the table. Telling someone to take the hour-long “option” when you literally have five minutes is just illogical. Rejecting that doesn’t make you a bad person, it makes you the one person thinking the situation through. As I’ve said before, Ironwood and the Ace Ops are the only ones weighing these issues in a “Is this actually possible? manner. Team RWBY is riding purely on confidence and hope. 

“there’s no proof Salem is coming” you’re right, there isn’t. We only have her promise and the silent perimeter, so no, that’s not proof. ... but are you really willing to risk that? I sure as hell wouldn’t be. There’s no way I would trust that many lives to “Well, she might be pulling our leg.” Calling her bluff is a BEYOND risky choice and the only reason the fandom thinks it’s such a good option is because we’re looking at this from a storytelling perspective. We know it’s unlikely that the group will face off against Salem before the final volume. We know it’s unlikely that Salem would start attacking the world in earnest because she’s so damn powerful that this would wipe everyone out in a mater of weeks and then, you know, there’s no story anymore. As characters in this world they have no reason to believe that Salem would lie about coming, especially after Watts, Tyrian, the chess piece, the perimeter... Salem has clearly been setting up something, but Ironwood should just ignore all that to call a hypothetical bluff, risking every single person in the process? That goes so beyond endangerment I’m not even sure what to call it. That would be the action of someone I wouldn’t trust as my leader. Risking the Maiden, two relics, and the lives of an entire kingdom on an entirely unfounded hunch. That’s straight up insanity and if Ironwood had done that I would have hoped the Ace Ops would revolt. You’re clearly unfit to serve, sir, if you’re going to risk all our lives---the entire world even---on a theory that has 4 points against it and 0 in favor.