I'm not a writing expert, but I feel like the Miles/Kerry pitfalls are exclusive to them just because of who they are. For me it's really night and day between Monty's contributions and what happens when he's gone.
To be quite plain, while Monty wasn't an amazing writer, he wasn't a bad one and a lot of the cooler and more subtle aspects of RWBY can be attributed to him (the initial worldbuilding, the hunter/weapon lore, etc), as well as the clear focus on detailed fight scenes and a sense of scope and budget. I feel like RWBY, were Monty still alive, would have been a better show, but smaller in scope.
Miles/Kerry, though, are any responsible for any scene in RWBY I've watched and felt embarrassed by - which is usually awkward heavy handed bullshit. Here's a small list of things I don't think you get if Monty was still alive (just from the top of my head)
- Yang and Blake kill Adam Taurus, the first human life either of them have taken. The Monty version would not have out-of-place "bumblebee" hand holding shit during the "holy shit we killed a guy" scene.
- RWBY lands in Atlas, after several dangerous encounters. Yang would not gush and blush about Blake's new haircut.
- There would be no heavy handed "colonial privilege" symbolism between Weiss and Blake. Certainly not after they already ended the Faunas arc.
- Qrow (who is possibly Ruby's actual father) wouldn't say things to Ruby like "Your mother was a brat, but I like brats".
- A robot that was treated like a person is killed in a somewhat gruesome fashion and all of the characters feel sadness and guilt about it. The robot was (unsurprisingly) rebuilt and is now a surprise character again, complete with jokes and gags.
- and so on.
The main reason, I think, that people look back fondly on Monty is very simply because while RWBY was never the best show ever made but when Monty was alive it never was cringe worthy. It's hard to watch several characters he setup (Glenda, Ozpin, Ironwood, Adam) who had potential just be kind of wasted by mediocre writing.
I agree about Monty handling things. If Monty was still alive I believe Volume 3 onward would have turned out radically different. There probably wouldn't even be a globe trotting trip (at least not until later). Again it might not have been amazing all the way and he could have had some bad writing but I think there would be far less of a mess than it is now.
archived 3 Dec 2019 19:07:48 UTC
archive.ph
A random tweet about how heroes killed people.
Including Ruby trying to murder what is basically border patrol who was just doing her job.
Okay so looking at this
So first of all most of these don't include the main characters actually killing.
1. Cinder was an evil psychopath who was trying to kill everyone. She was also at the height of her power during Volume 3 and Pyrrha was trying to stop her. Cinder also KILLS PYRRHA.
2. Tyrian was attacking RNJR and nearly kills Qrow. It's a life or death situation against a crazed lunatic who supports Salem who's literally evil. Ruby takes off Tyrian's tail so he can't poison and kill people but doesn't actually kill him.
3. Fennec if I remember right died from him trying to kill Ghira, and he brought his death on himself. So that doesn't even really count for a main character killing.
4. Cinder, again an evil psychopath, killed the woman Jaune loved and destroyed Beacon leaving him with a shattered dream. She's also trying to kill them. She stabs and almost kills Weiss. Also she doesn't die.
5. Hazel, an idiotic hypocrite who sided with the people who caused the death of his sister and blames anyone but them, is going nutso and tried to kill them. As baffling as it is that he tries to kill a bunch of kids with his motivation being he doesn't like Ozpin cause kids die, he IS trying to kill them. Also he doesn't die.
6. Didn't manage to pay attention to Volume 6 to the end so I can't say much about RWBY trying to shoot Cordovin. But Cordovin doesn't die. Ruby doesn't kill her.
Our heroes fighting in life or death situations is understandable. But actually having our heroes directly and willingly kill someone is different.
There are several issues people had with Adam's death. For one this was a cheap and undeserved death of a villain people had been attached to since the Black Trailer. He had been reduced to a loon and made into a complete joke and people hoped for him to be handled better. Then he's just killed off for nothing more than shipping bait. Two they JUST started to talk about why Adam had such a hatred for humans and for the first time since the show started actually gave a bit of insight to his character, then he's killed off immediately after. That's horrible writing. You can't just throw in some backstory right before you kill a character off, especially not one that had been as longstanding as Adam. He was in the show before even Cinder showed up!
And the last major issue people had with Adam's death was how it happened. Blake and Yang beat him without having to do any training to get stronger, despite him utterly stomping both of them back in Volume 3. There was nothing that justified how they beat them. Then Blake and Yang disarmed him, then purposefully went out of their way to kill him. The entire scene was idiotic, yes, but that only makes the death worse. Blake and Yang stab him to death and show not a single bit of remorse for it. The death was pretty gruesome. RWBY has a bad habit of trying to do something ultra dark and serious then never properly following through with it. If Blake and Yang were going to kill him there should be SOME emotional follow up to it. Regardless of how bad Adam is he was a huge part of Blake's life and killing him should affect her. Yang was traumatized by Adam cutting her arm off and this should affect her too. But it's just... glossed over. Adam's entire character, his death, a culmination of 6 seasons was just glossed over. But Miles and Kerry care more about pandering to shippers than how literally killing someone will affect their characters. People cared about Adam's character, far more than any of the other characters listed. It stings for people that Adam was wasted like this.
Really it's not simply that Adam died fighting them. Had Adam been written well up until that point and his death was a reasonable conclusion to his arc people wouldn't have been so up in arms. But after years of being badly written, being turned into a complete joke in Volume 5, RT hyped Adam up by giving him his own short for the season and acting like he'll do something of note in Volume 6. Then he's killed off to promote Bumblebee shipping. That's just twisting the knife.