Ruby Rose

Each character's theme title says a lot about their origin- Ruby's "Red Like Roses": Red for enduring passion, convey deep feelings of love or desire, devotion, regret and sorrow. Red, the color of her mother's blood, haunting her dreams. She's the emotional core to the team and feels the most. She wears her heart on her sleeve and, like how some have thorns, can hurt others without realizing it. She doesn't want to hurt others. Just that sometimes it happens.
I honestly don't think Ruby is a static or flat character, I just think Miles and Kerry aren't that interested in her.
I mean she was pretty much set up for a character arc in Volume 1 only for the show to start shifting to Jaune and other new characters, her and her team are pushed into the background to give JNR a reason to stick in the show in Volume 3, she gets pushed into the background in Volumes 4 and 5 and Jaune feels more like the main protagonist, and in Volume 6 it seems most of her stuff is preoccupied with fleshing out her Silver Eye Powers sometimes at the cost of undercutting her. Then there is the fact that while Weiss, Blake, and Yang tend to get new image songs over the first 5 Volumes Ruby only gets two in Volume 1 and doesn't really get another one until Volume 6 and it only gets few seconds devoted to it, while the end credits song is devoted to Bumblebee.
The big main plot thing of the Volume is Pyrrha’s maiden arc after the first half focused on the tournament and team Oz stuff.
Where Jaune pretty much got a lot of the focus while Cinder forgets Ruby was the main reason to change the plan and Weiss gets stabbed just to set up his semblance.
And yet Jaune tends to be the most developed character. And yet they occasionally give him main character levels of focus like 2/3 of the remaining Volume 1 episodes or Ruby getting shafted for HIS dealing with the Fall of Beacon arc, and then Ruby getting shafted for his fight with Cinder followed by Weiss getting shafted to unlock his semblance.
And I don’t think Ruby was originally meant to be a character who never really changed, it just happened as they moved to focusing on other characters. For fuck’s sake she’s a fantasy heroine those are never static. Comic book heroes and characters whose stories never end are static so people who pick up the latest adventure of them years down the line still recognize them. Fantasy heroes have a definite end for them and usually follow the hero's journey.
How not to write: Ruby
The last post I made, one dudeblade brought up an interesting point: RWBY is a good measuring tool for how not to write a story. I’ve always wanted to have my say on what I felt was wrong with the show, but never felt motivated to go all out with it. In good faith I can’t say I’ll see this concept to the end, but I figured I’d give it a shot.
So, with that said, where to begin? Well…
When you see a show called RWBY, what do you think? That looks like Ruby but misspelled. And guess what? The R stands for Ruby, who is the leader of the team. Surely she must be of utmost importance, right? She’s obviously going to get loads of character development.
These are the hopes of the audience before they are grinded away. Season. After Season. After Season.
Ruby is not a character: she’s a collection of points stuck to a plot device with scotch tape and glue. Her first episode shows her kicking ass but not being a complete powerhouse. Subsequent episodes show or say that she: is a weapon fanatic, likes books (in a throwaway line), her mom is dead, she has super lazy plot powers, and doesn’t know how to punch things. All of these things are brought up…and that’s as far as they go.
If you want to create a character, you need to develop what you established. Ruby likes weapons? Make her talk about it more, bring it up around Weiss, Blake, and others more often and then have it relate to her personally. She likes books? Have her and Blake sitting down and talking about books, perhaps have it worked into an episode where Blake runs away. Perhaps Weiss finds out Ruby grew up without a blood mother and she talks about her own family.
You don’t need to develop every nook-and-cranny of a character. If Ruby’s weapon fanaticism was dropped, that would be fine if her love of books or at least her thoughts of her late mother were further developed. It’s by letting these many different points pile up that you create a mountain of questions from the audience.
Why is it when Weiss and Blake have a conflict, Ruby never acts like a leader despite a previous episode convincing her she’s fit for the role? Why is it that both the dance arc and mount Glenn exposition don’t address Ruby in a meaningful way? Why is it that while Weiss is dangerously pursuing her sister, Blake is building up the white fang resistance, and Yang is hunting her mother, that Ruby’s big arc is learning fist-to-face combat?
These are the type of questions you need to be aware when putting a character in a role, showing/bringing up them acting strangely, calling to light other character’s backgrounds or motivations, or even asking yourself what your characters are doing this volume/season/chapter/etc.

Physical Description

Identifying Characteristics

Wouldn’t it be great if sliver eyes worked on basically every moving organic being if the person who has the sliver eyes has almost no control over them? That way Ruby has a dilemma, Cinder has a reason to take Ruby’s sliver eye, and it would be a much cooler arc.

Special abilities

A half-decent head-canon based off of this would be, “Summer Rose has the undefeated sprint time at Signal Academy. Ruby, wanting to follow in her mother’s footsteps and make her proud, trains endlessly until her Semblance unlocks. She’s chasing after her goals constantly. The reason she has the power to disintegrate into petals now is because it’s a manifestation of her fear of getting hurt again by watching the people she loves getting killed. For instance, if Ruby could dissolve into flower petals back when Mercury was keeping her from Penny, Ruby could have saved her.
What is Ruby’s Semblance? 1) It’s called “Scatter”. 3) Her Semblance is similar to what it is depicted in the fanfiction called "Petals Scatter". 4) It makes her weak to fire-based attacks. 5) Ruby uses her “Scatter” Semblance to turn into a bouquet of roses and hides in a vase near other actual roses. She does this to be stealthy and hide from someone she is spying on. Ruby develops her Semblance to the point that she can zip to any rose petal that she conjures from herself. This makes for interesting fighting strategies like her creating a bunch of rose petals around an enemy and she zips to each of them super fast to attack them before going to another rose petal. She also develops them to the point that each rose petal basically become mini-knifes and enemies literally experience death by a thousand cuts.

Specialized Equipment

Ruby brings a Hunting Rifle and an axe in the train so as to keep her LRRR motif and Yang brings boxing gloves and a shotgun along. No, because while a scythe may be a dumb choice of weapon for anyone who's not a hastily-armed farmer, it's not necessarily an inappropriate weapon for that character. A character's weapon can say a lot about them - it makes total sense for, say, Maka in Soul Eater, because she's got a deliberate "reaper" motif. Ruby, on the other hand, was marketed as being inspired by/based on Red Riding Hood. The only weapon which appears in her story is an axe, which is used to kill the Big Bad Wolf - examples of which she actually fights in her trailer - and free her from its belly. So given how similar in basic structure axes and scythes are, why pick the scythe instead of the axe? It's an obvious allusion.
As for Ruby, keep her speed (but maybe have her not so good at direction while in petal form at the start so that she can learn to do that better while in school), maybe make her not so good with scythe or the gun at beginning (maybe it's too heavy since she made it herself: perhaps she wanted to imitate her awesome uncle Qrow, and also declined his help since she wanted to prove herself but in doing so used not so great metals and made it too heavy, or maybe the transformation from scythe to gun glitches at times due to poor inner gear work), with all that she could have an arc where she learns to accept help in finding proper better metals to make her weapon lighter and we get team bonding. Second we could see a weapon upgrade (she is in love with weapons.) Almost forgot, before the weapon upgrade, we would see how she deals with all these issues I've listed in battle. And we'd get more out the school setting than what we got.
Crescent Rose( “Harvest Mode”)- Named by Ruby when the blade snaps into a traditional war scythe shape. It weighs over 200lbs. “Mountain Glenn” shows its telescopic sight. Ruby & Qrow’s fighting style- Use the one from the Fanfiction "Four Deadly Secrets" and Bōjutsu. It revolves around momentum, which is what the rifle part of CR is really for, to uses the recoil to instantaneously build momentum for quick swing instead of having to use brute strength to swing it around. The concept to her kicking is the same. She doesn't use strength but leverages her own weight and CR as a lever on most situations. For firing, they needed to plant the blade on the ground in order, otherwise they’ll fly around from the force. Weakness to High-Caliber Sniper Scythes are their length, making them bound to the environment.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Yang’s backstory is LRRR but she’s Goldilocks. Actually i've noticed that Ruby has a story that could fit as a retelling of the red riding hood story but the main problem with that is that it is primarily Yang's story. Girl goes through woods to find her mother, girl finds wolves instead. I honestly hated that scene between Yang and Blake because you could just feel Yang taking the character arc that it seemed like they were setting up for Ruby. It still baffles me how badly they botched up Ruby that early on with what they were setting up; girl with an idealistic opinion of the world who dresses as the grim reaper and has a complicated view on death? I really hate to think all of that was pure accident on the writer's part.
Give Yang’s backstory to Ruby. When she was younger, Ruby was saved by Tai( a woodsman) from an incident that killed her mother. It's possible that at one point Ruby and her mother were in danger, likely involving Grimm, and Tai was able to rescue Ruby, but not her mother. This was possibly the incident that inspired Ruby to become a Huntress, aside from the reasons she gave. The lyrics to "Red Like Roses II" suggests that Ruby has Survivor Guilt over what happened as well. If we presume that Ruby was being raised by her mother at the time, this can also explain why she was “adopted” by Yang's family.
Ruby's entire personality is based on the fact that she wants to visit her mother's grave. Ruby's biggest personality traits are that she is happy-go-lucky, and that she is an incredible combatant, both of which are directly tied to the fact that she tries to visit Summer's grave often. Excellent combat skills: In the beginning of the 3rd season, Taiyang (Ruby's dad) maintains a safe distance from Summer Rose's grave, and appears to only be there to pick up Ruby. This could be just him being respectful of Ruby's time, but on the other hand, Summer was his wife, and it could be that he literally could not bear to come closer because it was too painful. This gives a bit of context to Ruby's fighting skills and the Red Trailer. Taiyang was probably so choked up over going to Summer's grave that both he (and Qrow, because Qrow probably hated going there almost as much as Taiyang did) taught Ruby how to fight Grimm just so that neither of them had to visit it. Ruby then had to become REALLY good at fighting Grimm, because she probably went to her mother's grave when she was sad, for comfort, though going to a gravesite might not help her mood. If she didn't become really good at killing Grimm, they could kill her on one of her visits, or she would be wounded badly enough that Taiyang would notice and realize exactly how many Grimm she was attracting, which would lead to an intervention of some kind. That intervention would likely lead to Ruby not being able to go to Summer's grave anymore unsupervised, or to Taiyang's greater scrutiny on her mental state, which she doesn't want, so she probably practiced a lot. She's always happy: Throughout the series Ruby is chipper and happy. This could be a mechanism to convince her father to let her travel into Grimm infested forest alone. If Taiyang or Qrow realized how bad she was feeling, they wouldn't let her go to her mother's gravesite, as they'd be worried about Grimm she'd attract, so she probably figured out how to look happy, or suppress her emotions in order to convince her father and uncle to let her go. Eventually, she probably realized that the best way to at least convince people that she was mentally stable enough to visit was to just be happy all of the time, so her "bouts of happiness" don't appear to coincide with her visits to her mother. Unfortunately, this is probably why there were so many Grimm in the Red Trailer. This sort of mental state would lead to serial escalation, with her having to suppress her feelings until she goes to the grave to let it all out, but by then, suppressing it would make the release even worse. The Red Trailer is probably at a point where she hadn't gone to talk to her mother in a while, and when she had a stressful time in the interim, so her ensuing release of emotion attracted a horde of Grimm, like how Pyrrha managed to attract a Nevermore all on her own with her guilt over killing Penny.
Except all of that world building is still just as possible with Qrow, if not more so because he’s actually experienced enough to know far more about an area than Ruby. And considering what I’m talking about would require BOTH of them to realize their views aren’t seeing the whole picture, their conversations would have to happen to move their development along.
Largely because they reduced the main four to subplots, and gave his partner a chosen for magic super powers plot they came up with between Volumes 2 and 3 to actually make JNPR relevant to the main plot which also side lined RWBY from said main plot after they were the ones largely carrying it for 2 years. Then shafted the shows actual main protagonist while giving him main protagonist moments.

Education

I think Penny's death could have been better as a catalyst for Ruby's special silver eyes. Because Ruby was way closer to Penny than Pyrrha. I feel like your right that the death aspect was kind of forced. Pyrrha feels like the Boramhier (from lord of the rings) of the series.
A question comes to mind...could it have been possible to have Team RWBY and Team JNPR as main characters but have more focus on the former? Could this have worked?
Absolutely. Keeping the minor characters in a minor role works perfectly. You'll notice that Ren and Nora aren't considered "imposter protagonists" in my video, because even though they're also involved in the main plot of the show they aren't given many important things to do (unless they're specifically given an arc).
Ok, so that's good, it also makes me think that maybe those episodes that focused more on a character could've worked better if they focused on more than one character rather than...well, what we got? Like for example, in volume 1 there could've been an episode focused on JNPR as a team while team RWBY is the main focus in another episode showing a contrast in how both teams are growing, be it in fights or how they get along. I could be wrong, I'm by no means an expert in storytelling. Thanks for replying!
Jaune being the protagonist is bad because RWBY already had a protagonist and there shouldn’t be more than one protagonist period. The protagonist gives the plot a direction - they are the key element to how things unfold. The more of them you add, the more things you have pulling the plot in different directions until you get the jumbled mess we have now. It’s like having multiple unrelated thesis statements to an essay.
I wonder how many people would be upset if they went to see an Iron Man movie and got an Iron Patriot movie instead. That's basically what I see has happened with RWBY. The premise was situated around the four girls. They were the ones the trailers were about to gauge interest. They were the ones we saw first and came here for. No one said, "On this first episode of Ruby, I hope we see Jaune!" Jaune wasn't advertised. But he got an actual, multi-episodic character arc dedicated to him before ANY of Team RWBY. Did they need a bullying arc? Ok: Ruby is the youngest student at Beacon, Weiss is the known heiress to one of the richest companies, Blake is a hidden faunus, and Yang is seen as an airheaded bimbo. All of then could have been believable victims of bullying. Maybe not in the traditional "push you into a locker" bullying. But constant, emotional bullying is very real and harmful thing. :/ And that's a form of bullying that we don't really see portrayed, even though that's a common way for girls to be bullied. Hell, girls get bullied for having too big boobs or little boobs or for being too muscular or too physically strong.
You can still be a secondary character and be a complete badass and memorable (Hello, Garrus and Tali from the Mass Effect series video game series) without derailing the plot or undermining the main characters. Jaune wasnt that. The writers allowed him to co-opt an entire half of a inaugural season for no reason. What did we learn about the school life or about the world? Nothing that couldn't have been seen on--literally--any other show. Yay.
I guess I still haven't forgiven the writers for that.
You know what? Now, I don't see the point of Jaune. They could've made Pyrrha the leader of her group, having a friendly rivalry with Ruby. Then, her death would've impacted Red more. Of course, they would've to change her character, which might not have been a good idea.

Accomplishments & Achievements

I meant that arcs by definition involve changing the status quo and i wouldn't call the farms a "story arc" because it didnt change much (it was also only 2 episodes, too short overall).
You're overthinking something that is very clear cut. Maria explicitly says the Apathy drains your will to live ("They drain your will to go on") and you feel nothing else ("No one was angry or sad or scared. No one was anything.")
The farmers were not apathic at Ozpin and they still died. Yang was also angry, not "apathic". They didnt want to quit their quest, they wanted to quit living because their entire willpower was drained.
They're super okay with it. Everyone apologizes (even yang? why lol) and Blake says it wasnt their fault. Even the show admits what they said didnt count.
Maria's inclusion means that they are increasing the cast, thus making the criticism that the cast is bloated more valid. Separating the groups for a bit didnt help with that, that's all i said.
The dictionary definition of writing arc is "The development or resolution of a narrative or theme". The best i can say is that the farms was a piece of Ruby's leadership arc in V6, but the farms itself wasnt an arc because there is no thematic resolution.
There was genuine potential to explore the main characters will to keep fighting but that was ruined by implying it was all the Apathy's fault. They rejected the chance the heroes had to grow.
Urgh, i feel like we're going in circles here with maria so i'll stop.
The best i can say is that the farms was a piece of Ruby's leadership arc in V6
And frankly it wasn't the best since Ruby's response to Weiss questioning their mission was to be flabbergasted, change the subject without even trying to come up with a reassurance, is surprised when Weiss didn't consider the matter "resolved", and then just grumps at everyone like she always does when he meets a brick wall. And this is supposed to be her being an inspiring leader?
THAT was the perfect time for Ruby to give an heroic speech but i guess Ruby would be calling out one of the main girls and that's simply not allowed.
But it's ok tho, later Blake says it wasnt their faults because of course it isnt, it never is! There was never any doubt or struggle, it was all the evil monster afterall!
The real leader moment was Ruby getting tired of Qrow's shit and yelling him to wake up. That's important for later, when she tells the drunk bastard she doesnt care what he thinks. When he is pointing out how trying to steal a military transport can go very wrong. Which was exactly what happened.

Morality & Philosophy

What M&K get wrong in the actual show is who it is that has a realistic and idealistic worldview in Volume 1. Blake tells Ruby that life isn't a fairy tale, something that Ruby quickly agrees to, but her answer is simply that people like them are there to make it a better place. M&K see Blake as the one with a shades of gray "realistic" worldview, but she sees more black and white than anyone else and is much more idealistic compared to Ruby. The important distinction to make is that Blake believes that the world can be saved( idealistic) whereas Ruby doesn’t want to save it, but simply make it better( realistic).

Personality Characteristics

Likes & Dislikes

She really really loves bubble baths. This is also the only type of bath she would take. Otherwise nobody can persuade Ruby to take a bath or a shower.

Vices & Personality flaws

The problem with that was Ruby already had flaws before that point, her weapon obsession, her struggles in leadership, all things that were established within the first five episodes of the series. There was already flaws to work with which is why the sudden inclusion of her lacking hand to hand skills was jarring and only became more ludicrous as the series went on as she not only lives with Yang but both her father and Qrow have both shown some strong close quarter combat skills so there really was no excuse to give her that specific weakness other than just setting her character up for the generic shounen main character style of character progression IE learn to hit harder not fight smarter. She spent a whole semester and a half at Beacon, and in all that time she didn't get any training in Hand to Hand Combat. What do they even teach at Beacon? Um, history and a little bit of sparing, I guess? We didn't really see much of how beacon works. It was a rhetorical question, but your answer shows how flawed RWBY was even in the first three seasons.
Actually you can replace character development with learning a new fighting style it just needs to be tied to their flaws as a character. The problem with this is that her fighting style isn't a part of a her character and they just randomly made up a flaw that doesn't exist completely separate from her character.
her flaw also doesn't make any sense. Taiyang or Yang never bothered teaching Ruby how to fight hand to hand when they're both hand to hand fighters? Are Weiss and Jaune competent at hand to hand combat too, why isn't Ozpin getting on them? It's the most contrived "conflict" they've given a character in this show. This is titular character and that's the best they could come up with.
It would make far more sense with Ruby being a weapon fanatic and loving her scythe so much that if she loses it she completely ceases to function. Ruby's flaw should be that she is her scythe, if she loses it she shouldn't attempt to fight and instead feel completely worthless and her sole goal would be to get it back as soon as possible with complete disregard for her own safety and what the smart thing would be to do or just running away.
Her training wouldn't be simply learning hand to hand it would be separating her from her scythe and having her overcome situations without it. This would also play with the original concept of her fighting style and moving through the use of recoil and momentum she now no longer has that (I mean she no longer had that already as the scythe has been weightless since vol 3 with her spinning it around effortlessly like it's a piece of plastic lol). In the first ep she uses the recoil from her scythe to dodge Torchwick and uses the recoil to jump up a building, that's how she should always be and her training would be to learn how to do those things without her scythe along with hand to hand. They even set this up a little with Ruby's use of her speed being very linear and in short bursts but they do a time skip and suddenly make a her a master of her semblance to the point that her semblance is basically something different. Can Ruby fly now? She completely ignores gravity and can change momentum in midair. And she fucking splits into 3 separate forms in the character short like what the fuck is going on? Why wasn't that the damn training arc LMAO XD
RT wants to give Ruby a flaw but they literally do everything to make that flaw non existent. She sucks at hand to hand and relies too much on her scythe? Let's make her not give a single fuck whenever she doesn't have her scythe, attempt to fight without it, actually over power fully grown men and give her the strength to completely ignore the original concept of her not being able to to wield it without the use of recoil with her fighting style relying on momentum and that recoil.
I don't even know why this is even a thing for Ruby's character. Especially when you have Weiss and Jaune that are probably worse at hand to hand than Ruby, and that's assuming Ruby's bad despite being in a family of huntsman where the two people she's been around the longest specialize in it.
Not only that but she is the least likely to get disarmed because of her super speed, so even if she does get disarmed she could just super speed to it and grab it. Gotta love how they not only had her knock two goons without her weapon, but they had her fight in CQC in the first episode using Crescent Rose to her advantage. Huh. Almost like she knew how to fight. Welp, can't have that! Gotta have a contrived 'character flaw' as a plot point!

Personality Quirks

She's built a pair of legs like Mercury's in order to reach the cookie jar atop the refrigerator, and only afterward realized she could've either climbed on the counter or used a chair.
Ruby is a Big Eater, much like Spike Spiegel. She learned this from Qrow, who is a Spike expy.

Social

Contacts & Relations

>You're right about Cinder "dying" a third time, they can't do it again without it being done by either Emerald or Cinder. Anyone else and no one will care, there will be no payoff if Jaune or Ruby do it. >You're also half right and half wrong about Ruby not caring about Penny. She doesn't reference her after V3 which is just lazy writing, they probably thought that since she'll be rebuilt that there's no reason to write scenes of Ruby mourning which is retarded cause they had like three scenes exclusively of Jaune mourning. So you could say from V4 onward she doesn't care because of lazy writing but you can't say that for V3 where she's in so much shock that she's lying in the middle of a hallway in the middle of a stampede.
Need more interaction between Ruby and Blake. You mean the connection between the brightest and darkest members of the team? Who have a mutual shared love of books and stories, but contrasting views they're content to debate with joy? ...Nahhhh, clearly should just be throwing them at their far less interesting teammates instead and exclusively. That's what folks want, right? ...No? That sounds great actually? Well. Guess RT doesn't know enough to use this brilliant pair.
When Blake is surprised that Ruby picks up books that are a lot more darker than the fairy tales of heroes and monsters, she states that while she loves the fairy tales that Yang used to read to her, when she looked up the origins of those fairy tales she noticed that the originals had much darker themes than the ones made for kids. She knows how dark the world can be due to her mother’s death but she still loves the light fairy tales that Yang read to her because she’s always seen Hunters as being able to make the world, while not exactly like the fairy tales, at least a better place. Ruby is surprised that Blake reads the more light hearted books rather than the darker ones. Blake does this because she uses them as a form of escapism to fulfill her wish of having a better life. This shows that she is more idealistic and naive than Ruby. Ruby becomes Blake's Morality Pet because Blake believes that Ruby is naive and doesn't want anything bad to happen to her due to her "naivety". She secretly sees a bit of her "old self" in Ruby. Her character arc is learning that she is the naive one.

Family Ties

Both Ruby and Weiss are from rather broken families and were pretty much raised by their older sisters and have one parental figure that's an alcoholic and their fathers were distant for a chunk of their lives. The major differences are that Ruby's family worked through their issues while Weiss's isn't as well as Ruby's dad was distant because he was a wreck for a while, whereas Weiss's father is a piece of shit, Qrow at least tried to be a functional alcoholic and be there for Ruby and Yang and seems to be working on dropping the habit for now, whereas Willow Schnee has completely crawled into the bottle and pretty neglected her kids, and Yang and Winter raised their sisters in opposite ways.

Social Aptitude

Well Ruby used to have some sass, but that got dropped for some dumb reason. There are several characters that feel off to me that I really feel have lost their fun personalities, that's why I also miss the old Ruby since Ruby was more relatable to me when she was socially awkward, quirky natured, and nerdy acting. I miss the old Ruby so much. I agreed because Ruby's characteristic back then has this special quirk of social awkwardness toward people which makes her relatable to all audience but ever since the event after Volume 3, she became more on the side character even though I kinda see a glimpse of sadness in her facial expression or movement herself as if she's hiding her real expression toward the death of Penny and Pyhrra. Then in Volume 6, she became serious of being a leader but also take reckless action that could harm the people that she cared or even hurting herself by doing reckless things. Yep, it seems that Ruby has really changed from who she use to be. That quirky nature and social awkwardness has disappeared sadly, I felt like I could better relate to Ruby in Volumes 1-3 rather than who she's become now. I just think Ruby feels so different from who she once was and if there's one thing I'd like to see from her is an emotional breakdown due to the events that have occurred after Volume 3. Hopefully it'll happen soon, I think it would be a great way to relate to Ruby once again.

Mannerisms

Ruby is a prankster and frequently pulls little jokes on her team and JNPR. (Putting Zwei in Blake's bed, re-arranging around Weiss' dust crystals.)
Ruby doodles weapons she's seen and upgrades to CR to pass the time. Remnant has 3D programs focused on developing weapons. Ruby is really good at math and physics and helps her team sometimes, much to Weiss chagrin.

Character Prototype

Even though I don't watch GenLock, I can't unhear Ruby talking with Cammie's voice now thanks to the part where the Genlock crew cosplay as RWBY characters.
Ruby is 100% Dorothy. She’s a young girl from a small town who owns a dog that meets Glynda and goes to the Emerald City (Beacon) to accomplish her goal. Ruby Rose, Ruby Slippers. Silver Eyes, Silver Shoes. Ruby is design wise based on Little Red Riding Hood but thematically she is definitely Dorothy.
Yeah the problem here is that the show is so full of retcons and disjointed writing that nothing about Ozpin feels like it was set up. Honestly nothing in the show feels like it was set up. The Maidens were admittedly something pulled out of thin air in Volume 3 and it shows. Ruby’s Silver Eyes suddenly being the weakness of the Maidens came out of left field and was just a deus ex machina. Oscar came out of nowhere in Volume 4. Pretty much everything established in Volume 4, especially with Blake, comes out of nowhere and contradicts everything we knew from previous seasons. The show has been retconning itself every season since Volume 3 and it gets tiring.
The most that was implied with Ozpin about three times in the first few volumes was that Ozpin was possibly older than he looked and that something was up. But it was so vague it didn’t really mean anything. I always thought he was just being dramatic, which given the ridiculous and often comedic nature of early RWBY would completely fit. But him being a literal wizard who turns people into animals and created the Maidens is completely out of left field. People theorizing him being a wizard because he was based on Oz doesn’t really mean anything, especially when the actual Wizard of Oz wasn’t even a wizard.
I also stand by this being the least interesting thing they could have done with Ozpin. It’s bland and boring and doesn’t do anything but make Ozpin a boring character. It certainly hasn’t done anything to make him more interesting. It feels like they’re trying to create lore but the story is so uninteresting it doesn’t do anything but add more exposition.
The fairy tale stuff was either forced at times in the story or never really factored into the story or characters. I wanted to work it in better. Like Nora's family is based on members of Thor's family, Mistral has a strong Alice in Wonderland influence when they eventually go there later on. I wanted the Wizard of Oz stuff to really work in the story so I focused on that for Vale. Since the show builds itself on these fairy tales and mythologies then it should use it while still maintaining an original story. That's the approach I went with.
Give stronger allusions to the RWBY characters’ respective fairy tales. Other than Penny (kind of) and Pyrrha, the other characters have, at best, a cursory resemblance! If you scrap the idea altogether, it'll just be the show coming from competent writers. But if you stay true to the fairy tales, maybe this series can be stronger for it.
Just imagine someone like Penny had a stronger resemblance to Pinocchio! Wanting to become a real girl. You can even go the Ultron or the Red Tornado (Young Justice) route! You could even give her a foil antagonist. Maybe a girl that was badly hurt, injuries including a wrecked spine, and she becomes part of a secret experiment commissioned by Ironwood, given new bones, and a new identity, slowly becoming aware as she ages, not of her old identity, but of her inhuman parts, growing to desire a truly human body inside. The character inspirations and allusions have far more depth written into them than the actual characters or their relationships. Try to use all that wealth of depth of character creation and more subtle nuances and put that into team RWBY/JNPR, their relationships, and to the actual story and how it affects them. “Watership Down” does a great job at it’s introduction sounding like actual mythology. Many fictional mythologies miss the part where it has to not only explain, but to also teach. Watership Down intro does both. Not only does it sound real, but placing the tale in the beginning of the story was a wise choice. It immediately makes it clear to us about two things: 1) The life of a rabbit is hard; and 2) That these creatures in the story are in some ways analogous to us, but they are not us in fur coats.