I read some of your Raven meta so I hope you don't mind; I think people are too quick to dismiss Raven as "irredeemable" because she's done some shady shit (which she def has!) But her character becomes significantly more interesting when you view her through the lens that she ran away and turned to this behaviour because a) she somehow found out Salem was immortal and b) Oz didn't have a plan. Every character we see so far who has been redeemed have shown remorse, which Raven has. Cinder OTOH..

Anonymous asked:

As for "if she knew why didn't she mention anything to Yang"? ...Yang barely believed Raven when all she was saying was "don't blindly follow orders, Oz isn't who he's portraying himself to be" like. She /could/ have, and maybe that's a fair critique but it wouldn't have gotten her far and Raven plays her cards/information to her chest (which yes, is a flaw). This got a lot longer than I intended sorry 😞

no worries

and yeah i think the problem with how Raven is received is mainly boiled down to people wanting to boil her down to a base archetype and dismiss her - she's meant to be a complicated and layered character, like a dark reflection of her daughter. hell, in the Yellow trailer, the first two characters on-screen after the opening quote talking about not being on-sided and easily processed are Yang and Raven in bird form

it is fitting in a really annoying way though that the way parts of the fandom dismiss Raven as "irredeemable" is similar to how Yang gets dismissed as a "dumb bimbo". because this fandom seems to have a major literacy issue and can barely seem to be able to comprehend what's happening on-screen, let alone themes in character narratives or hell, actual characterisation

Raven is interesting! she's complex and traumatised and there are obviously reasons behind the way she is that she's not willing to share and it's what makes her so compelling as a character

hell, even her telling Yang not to trust Ozpin and blindly follow orders - telling her to ask questions - that all feeds into why the reasoning behind why she wouldn't just tell Yang; finding out that information firsthand and not just accepting what you're told by an authority figure is exactly the point she was trying to get across. telling Yang to think for herself and then giving her own account of events would've been counterintuitive. and yeah, there's no guarantee Yang would've believed her anyway

Raven's got a lot of issues and a lot of flaws but they're not an insurmountable barrier between where she is now and redemption (and then there's the whole discussion of whether a character is 'redeemable' when ultimately redemption is a choice, a character choosing to be better for any number of reasons, that's a whole essay in and of itself - and even after all this time people still don't get that there's an entire gulf between redemption and forgiveness, they're wholly separate things and often mutually exclusive)

but you're right, Raven's shown remorse - it took Yang brutally shattering every protective wall she puts up to get to that point, but it's there

and more-so you've gotta consider what Raven's powers say about her. much like Yang, she's motivated on a far more personal level; Yang was never in this for some grand quest or "save the world" crap. she's there for Ruby, for her friends

Raven's Semblance, the very essence of her being, is built on her connections to other people and the love she has for them (which is why she has so few portals, because she's closed herself off and outside of Vernal, she hasn't made a connection with anyone since Yang was born). like, i think that's something people just kinda gloss over but Raven is defined by her relationships with other people and she cares far more than she lets on (this is why i always thought it was silly that people actually thought Raven wanted Qrow dead when she just said that to con Cinder - if Raven wanted Qrow dead she could kill him at any time. her Semblance gives her unrestricted access to him at all times, like when he's asleep, or drunk, and being the Spring Maiden makes that fight even more one-sided in her favour)

if anything is gonna get Raven back in the fight and redeeming herself, it's her love for her family - and Yang chewing her out has exposed her like a raw nerve and given her shit to reflect on instead of burying herself like before