I actually know a guy who was in the military who, while he didn't lose a limb, got his arm real fucked up over in the middle east and still suffers from PTSD to this day. It's only through a ton of physical therapy and throwing himself into running his restaurant that he's even close to back to normal.
He told me that Yang's PTSD (and how the writers were patting themselves on the back for it) was like a massive wad of spit in the face and is legitimately insulting. To see people praising the writers for that absolute hack job always makes me roll my eyes hard enough to see the back of my skull.
Yeah, the PTSD subplot could have been interesting and even the way they make a subtle nod to it
could be enough for most fans, especially since their argument is that it's better to
be subtle about it than to go over the top.
But the problem is just that: sometimes it's
too subtle. Most PTSD are portrayed as the screaming from night terrors, the Vietnam flashbacks, or seeing ghosts of people because that's the most direct way to address that a character has PTSD. And while Yang's hands shaking could qualify as PTSD movements, in the end it didn't pay off as well as when it was done in Volume 4 or even Volume 6.
There, Yang kept seeing flashes of Adam, both in her dreams and in her reality. While she didn't full on freak out when Adam was there, she
did pause when he mentioned Beacon. All while her shaking hands are just that: shaking hands.
Hell, I'd argue that there's more people who's more deserving of the PTSD subplot than Yang, like Jaune, who had his mother figure killed and he was thrown out of the way because he only held her back with his inexperience. Or Ruby, who saw two of her friends die in front of her, her sister reduced to a husk of her former self (one that never recovers her fun attitude, even after she gets out of her funk), and her two friends left RWBY without her knowing, one of them making that decision herself. Even Ironwood could qualify as having a PTSD plot.
I mean, I get why Yang got the PTSD storyline, but the execution definitely fell flat for some people.