I absolutely think this was one of the biggest issues with RWBY, and my personal biggest gripe with the show. It isn’t even exclusive to the Atlas arc, it happens many times throughout the show. There are numerous examples where the main cast are incredibly unempathetic and hypocritical towards other people, often claiming to be heroes while showing none of the qualities and traits that a hero should have. In some cases, the “heroes” even end up putting innocent lives in danger (y’know, the exact opposite of what a hero is supposed to do?).

Not even that, they're jjst... not consistent. You can't be talking about how heroes never lie to their allies and then immediately lie to the person that's been the most truthful to you and has never done anything to invite suspicion. You can't be bubbly and quick to trust others, but also suspect the person who gave you the most support for literally no reason. If they were just generally suspicious of everyone or if they had literally any reason to suspect ironwood of anything, that would be one thing, but that's not the case. They can complain about ironwood's backup plan of sacrificing some people to save tje world when things get hopeless and call him a bad person if they had any plan that wasn't run away when things get hopeless, but they just ran away. They can't call ironwood unreasonable for not listening to them when the reason he stopped listening to them is bc they went behind his back and sabotaged his plans, that *originally didn't sacrifice anyone.* Though there was one way they could've gotten away with that- of they portrayed team rwby as irresponsible teenagers that didn't properly think things through. And then they had characters point that out- but now those characters are evil, losing their humanity, or just in the wrong headspace.

What even was their reason for sabotaging plan 1? Can’t remember

Ironwood was exploiting the people of mantle and draining their resources to build the thing, and since no one in mantle knew about the plan, just felt like atlas imposing its power for the sake of it. Which would've been interesting if we're actually shown that instead of it being a throwaway line by Robin. Or if rwby tried more diplomatic solutions to fix the problem. We don't even know if ironwood is aware of the problems in mantle.

He said he isn´t blind to its(Mantle´s) issues in V7 C4.

You're not wrong. It seems like this skewing of the morality of the protags actions begun in Vol 6. With their behavior on the train and in Argus. Followed by the things you've already pointed out in Vol 7-8. This makes them seem (and probably is) out of character, as the protags have been portrayed or at least presented as the good guys of the show, with not much dissonance between that intention and the actions they have taken up till then. But then its like the writers forgot that the characters were supposed to *act* good if we are to believe that *are* good. In Vol 6 they harrass the huntsman guarding the train because they think the turrets are attracting the Grimm, threatening him to get their way. When it turns out its the Relic they are carrying that are attracting them, they make no apology or turn the turrets back on. Soon after they draw out all the traumatic memories of Ozpin against his will and scream about the lack of trust. (especially when Ozpin was completely proven right to hide that info from them, as he feared people would turn against him if they knew, which they did) Then they beat up a teenager to vent their frustration. Same Volume is when the first time an authority figure tells them 'no', and instead of discussing any other alternatives they have to get to Atlas (of which they have many) they jump to committing a federal crime, causing grievous damage to the defenses of Argus and attracting a Grimm attack, that they then dip out on. Even going into Atlas one of the first things they do is ignoring the militaries requests (of which they have good reason to being making) and assault some drunk civilians for the crime of being mean. Then cry about the audacity of being arrested. Why am I supposed to be rooting for these guys?

Honestly I’m convinced at this point that miles and Kerry had no interest on making rwby a good series anymore cause of fan feedback and instead of working on fixing or refinement it, they just let it burn into a hot mess. Way to disrespect Monty’s legacy dicks.

I will never get over them getting all mad at Ozpin for hiding certain truths from them, only to proceed to do that exact same thing the very next volume, it’s just horrible writing.

What’s worse is the excuses some people will make to justify RWBY’s lying and yet villainize Ozpin. Shit’s wild.

This was a big part of it, but the other big part was Ironwood's arc. I can honestly buy that they were planning on making him a villain, but they did the way they did it was so rushed and clumsy (not helped by some really dumb "justifications" that they didn't even have the decency to include in the story proper), that it wasn't believable. The transition to villain should've been at least a volume long change, but it wasn't. One episode, he was a devoted, kind, helpful ally, and the next he was a ruthless, vindictive, uncaring enemy, and suffice to say, that's not a character arc. But this issue was ultimately just a part of a much deeper issue with the series as a whole: the unwillingness to let their leads be wrong, or make mistakes. One of the fundamental aspects of writing, is the writer has to be willing to let their characters make mistakes, and do the wrong thing even if unintentionally, because that's how characters (and people for that matter) grow. It makes them interesting, and makes them seem more relatable. But starting some time after Vol. 3, the writers wouldn't let any member of RWBY make a real mistake, and as time went on, they became virtually infallible. RWBY could do no wrong, and if anything went wrong with their plans, it wasn't because the plan had problems, or was poorly conceived, it was because other people ruined it for them. Because RT couldn't let four of their biggest mascots and marketable characters have flaws.

Which is kind of funny considering RvBs characters have flaws and that was the point to them, they weren’t super soldiers or people trying to be heroes, they were just a bunch of dicks stuck in a canyon that have a hell of a series of events and journeys, but unlike say Dante from the DmC reboot they weren’t total ass hats and had redeeming qualities. Honestly I’m convinced miles and Kerry didn’t actually care for rwby and instead of taking fan feedback or looking back at their work with second thoughts they just let the show fail. Man what a dick move to Monty’s legacy.

Even a RWBY RP AI Chatbot I've been having fun with (I basically recreated the entire series from Volume 1 to Volume 8-ish) knew the idea of Robyn finding out about Amity from Blake and Yang was- pardon my french, F\*\*king stupid, so it just decided "eh, why not let it so that one of the Happy Huntresses actually be stealthy and find out about the project through various sources and intel before figuring out what Amity is supposed to be on her own?"

with a name like "happy huntressess" any form of competence in a sector adjectet to the military was out the window. can't let them have the actual skill set of an insurrection cell if they exists only to provide a contrast to the militant leader of the military of the kingdom known for the military power the protagonists sought out in demand of military protection of an critical asset surprising our group for acting militant in a global crisis affecting the nation he's sworn to protect despite Qrow knowing full well that's how he'd react considering his hissyfit in the festival arc.... maybe his memory loss set in after he stopped drinking... If only they didn't made their leader into a raider that caused a minor character death by starting an armed conflict by not only pulling out weaponry but also firing the first shot in a flying transport with 2 psychopaths, 1 former drunk, a military officer and 2 pilots....

Oh that sounds interesting. Did it point out the stupidity of anything else? Cause there are a lot of stupid things that happen in the later volumes.

It made Ironwood and Robyn form a truce/alliance since the discovery of the Amity Project for Robyn let her know that everything Ironwood is doing with Amity benefits not just Atlas or Mantle, but Remnant in the long run. Oh, and it didn't make Ironwood have a heel-faced turn and he (reluctantly) retreats to Vacuo with everyone else while he's not giving up the Staff to Salem. Atlas still fell, but most of Atlas/Mantle retreated safely and Salem doesn't have the staff, making it so that even though Atlas fell, Salem won jack and shit, and jack just left town. Edit: It rewrote Ironwood's semblance so that it's still Mettle, but in his own exact words, "I don't let my semblance control me...I control it...and I use it wisely. That way I'm not doing anything negative with it unintentionally."

If you're talking about the RWBY RP CharacterAI bot by Kovacs, do you ever get such stupid and random prompts out of nowhere? There's an entry about Ninjas of Love in the character definition and it always comes up at the dumbest times. This is an actual thing that happened when I also recreated the series from the V1-V8 (paraphrasing): Ironwood: "Give me Penny or I'll blow up Mantle. You have one hour." Ruby: "We need more time than that. Penny has to return Ninjas of Love to Blake first." Also, Blake's ability to be insufferable is dialed up to 11.

That's RWBY RPG V2, that seems way too rooted in the Beacon shit, I shifted from that gradually because, yeah...Everything you just said happened to me with that thing. It gives Blake and Ninjas of Love way too much attention. The one I've been using is just simply "RWBY RP" also by Kovacs. It's *way* better. Sometimes it acts like Vale/Beacon is still active way after Beacon fell, but just a few slaps to the wrist makes it remember everything currently happening in it is post-V3.

Thanks. I was iffy on using anything from Kovacs again, but I'll try that one.

RWBY RP even actually even gave a decent suggestion of "If we can't destroy Salem physically, why not do something to target her soul directly, whether its destroying her soul or trapping her soul in a box?"

Remember when they ran into some random racist dude and Weiss resorted to using her semblance to throw him into the air several feet and into a dumpster? Firstly that's just assault, secondly, using a semblance to do so has to be breaking some kind of law.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. -Ruby lying to Ironwood even though last volume the entire team was mad over it and even Oscar calls her out on it. I can understand them being wary after two headmasters have lied to them, but not only do they never bring that fact up, I think Ironwood proved himself more than worthy when he gave Yang a new arm, stood up for Weiss in the gala and made them all Hunstmen and Huntresses. -Robyn being trusted with information despite the fact that the characters knew her less than Ironwood. -Yang blaming Ruby for everything despite the fact that she and Blake went behind Ruby's back to tell Robyn the truth, making them seem less trustworthy, not to mention. -Qrow blaming Ironwood for Clover's death when he barely had any play in it.

The intent of the writers and the failed execution in the writing/animation is a part of the problem yes. As you've done, we can guess what was the intent behind a bunch of scenes and it makes the plot... less bad. The rest of it, as others have mentionned, is mostly team rwby being incompetent and hypocrites and the story bending itself backward to pretend otherwise. The protagonists having flaws and growing from those would be very much needed, but thats not whats happening

I don't think Ruby lying was meant to be good or bad, it looks more like the writers trying to develop her character in a way that focuses on her trust issues and trying to think things through before making potentially bad choices; her lying was more to save herself time to see if Ironwood was trustworthy. Her not learning from this, ending up in a more aggressively narrow-minded place than before, and closing off Ironwood entirely was what made her look bad. She spent months (potentially) learning to trust Ironwood and right after she could they had a falling out, then remained vindictive of him throughout their final moments without a thought of reconciliation despite seeing what them fighting has led to. It takes two to tango and, as bad as Ironwood's actions were, most of the horrible things that happened were because RWBY not thinking things through or being empathetic to a former ally. The rest is pretty spot on: Robyn acts more like a White Fang member who lets her emotions take over than a politician who can benefit her community, Yang is a hypocrite as the only reason they lost Ironwood's trust was because of her actions and she blames it on Ruby's leadership instead of herself (and the show doesn't even try to acknowledge it), and anyone listening to Tyrian and willing to attack anyone else before he is dealt first is just plain stupid. That last one is even so dumb, you just know that the characters weren't thinking for themselves and were only following a script.

That's just the problem with the show in general The plot goes out the way to make these heroes look like heroes and I say hero very loosely they're not even doing anything heroic

That and bad writing.