mylittlerwde

[mylittlerwde]

rewatching the ace ops fight and like. honestly. it really doesn't make me think "wow team rwby became so powerful"

it just makes it seem like every ace op was kind of hard carried by clover's luck and general ability to keep their morale up and their ducks in a row, and they all ended up becoming complacent and kind of lame and dysfunctional combat-wise the second he's out of the picture.

which i do hate to say because i DO think they're interesting but like. Man.

beating someone who is supposedly a combat expert by making her run into a wall doesn't really make you look smart so much as it makes her look like a moronic rookie who just got her Semblance last week. (on top of how it makes her Semblance look lame too because it's "speed", and yet it gives an opponent without enhanced speed or reflexes all the time in the world to make a barrier in front of her that she also lacked the inertia to break, further indicating that she's hardly going *that* fast by superpower standards)

like ooh im so scared of you, supposedly one of the most powerful people in the country, being able to run what must be like, 50-ish miles per hour TOPS if this is the case.

[mylittlerwde]

Thinking about how the White Fang were executed is more yikes than HBomberGuy pointed out

>the metaphorical Black Panthers are led by a white man after he murders a dark-skinned female who only had three minutes of screen time

>most of the group is portrayed as being violent terrorists who caused the RWBY equivalent to 9/11

>Birthplace of White Fang is a cult led by two brown skinned people, one of whom blows themselves up for the greater cause of causing terrorism within their city

>They also go along with a guy's plan to basically kidnap a woman he groomed from childhood

[mylittlerwde]

Same train of thought is why in the fuck does Blake start out deradicalized?

The White Fang had been committing at minimum targeted property damage, grand larceny, and assassinations since Blake was twelve. Being radicalized at that young an age, she wouldn't just be lost in the sauce, Blake would be mixing kool-aid in Jonestown!

Something pretty major must have happened in order for her beliefs - which at this point would be intrinsically tied to her identity - to be shaken badly enough that she'd eventually leave the only family she'd known for the last five years. And even after leaving, there's still the unlearning of those beliefs and all the missteps that accompany that journey

Yet she gets introduced as being uncomfortable with the direction of things as if they haven't been going on for half a decade, as if she's not on what seems like a routine mission, as if there's not a damn good reason they're doing the things they're doing

ShawLuna kinda wrote Blake like she was born yesterday and is just now learning what sin is rather than a young woman having a moral crisis

[mylittlerwde]

In which a defense for Blake ends up making her worse.

So, I came across this post and holy fucking shit, this literally puts Blake in a worse light than it tried to be.

It's like that whole meme that RWBY is only antifa when the facists inconvenience them.

But it gets worse.

In the same defense, you literally brought up why Ruby shut her up. Blake's idea of comforting Ruby was to try and brush the issue under the rug for the time being, which was the exact same thing she tried to do during Ruby's breakdown.

Also, you seem to ignore the timing of when she tried to do this the second time. Ruby had just been victim blamed by Jaune and effectively had her entire agency be stolen by him fishing for sympathy over the very things that just a few minutes ago, they were roasting him for and would have wanted them to commit their Jonestown plan.

This also really encapsulates Blake as a cowardly cat. She always likes to run away from the situation or avoid confrontation until it comes to a point where she can't avoid it. And even then, she will try to avoid that when she can.

Look no further than when she ran to Menagerie. She flips and flops between not wanting to fight and wanting to fight, and it isn't until she realized the White Fang are literally stalking her house that she realized she has to take back the White Fang...

Only to just wait until they end up trying to merc her family and then she decides to make it all of Menagerie's problem by making them subservient to the most racist Kingdom in the world that ironically has a race traitor as a Headmaster.

And once that's done, she abandons all that (since that would just mean doing all the shit she did in V1 but without them being as bitchy as Weiss) just to go globetrotting. And despite the bravado she puts up against Adam about how he doesn't scare her no more, the moment she sees him again, it's right back to being scared shitless.

When I say Blake is complex, it's not a compliment.

[mylittlerwde]

Ruby Redesign for my RWBY Re-imagining. Her design is probably the hardest to create for the girls for me, because her debut was nigh perfect.

Design Notes:

I combined the ideas of V1 and V2's designs, since a good usage of gray would work better with tan-ish skin (she's lighter than Yang in complexion).

There is a lot of design motif she shares with Yang; both wears a qipao jacket, similar boots, flared over skirt, and the same utility belt (with different buckle accessories).

While Yang's carp fish motif is more obvious with her sash, I wanted Ruby's to be more subtle, hence the ruffled sleeves and petticoat with the over skirt to create the idea of fish fins and tail.

Ruby also shares some design motif with Qrow, mainly his crucifix accessories and cape color, as well as the arm garters.

Feel free to leave your thoughts on my redesigns of Ruby Rose!

[mylittlerwde]

im sorry but the "ironwood is white" thing just embodies my biggest gripe with the whole "what constitutes as asian" in the show because yang and taiyang have asian names but like i highly doubt someone would think they are asian at first glance

their actual model would imply white/asian at best and even then its a fictional world with cat-eared motherfuckers and ALSO, the most asian representation we get is lie ren with kuroyuri

really the only reason im not going full ballistic about it is because this show is built on fandom headcanon and i've made so many "what IS asian in remnant" posts that my point is clear

[mylittlerwde]

FUCK and not only that but we can swing on the opposite ends.

THERE ARE BARELY ANY CULTURAL ROOTS TO PULL FROM IN THIS SHOW

if you wanna talk culture then yang and taiyang must be white as hell because they never show any cultural roots

[mylittlerwde]

Weiss's line "Not every story has a neat and tidy ending" is an absolutely buckwild thing to say to someone freaking out about how they don't know what the true goal of the people who just let loose a horde of grimm on a civilian city

Girl, this ain't about a messy ending to a fictional tale, this is about a terrorist attack wtf!!!

[mylittlerwde]

Miles’s thoughts on Jaune and Cinder’s characters, as well as their relationship : r/RWBY

Given that Cinder is an abused and trafficked girl character whom the writers went out of their way to make evil and Salem is an evil white queen character abusing her, how would you feel if the writers used Cinder to satisfy the audience's toxic fantasies but gave her abuser Salem a redemption arc and a happily ever after? Saw this commentary by Miles on Cinder and Salem and have a bad feeling about how RWBY will end. Honestly, I don't think the story of Cinder and Salem was a good way to write a story about a trafficked and abused girl. 

[mylittlerwde]

Someone brings up the flaw of this:

The response?

Because why actually respond to someone when you can just ad hominem?

[mylittlerwde]

It really pisses me off how the V9 epilogue is all about grieve and how the characters deal with it but Pietro is nowhere to be seen, you know THE GUY WHO'S DAUGHTER IS DEAD!!!!!

[mylittlerwde]

it wouldve been sick if breaking your aura also led to an overall desaturation of color in their models

like ren's grayscale semblance mutes his emotions and makes him invisible to grimm. aura is part of all living creatures or something. being on the verge of death and losing your vitality, symbolically losing the colors that are so important to the world culture and lore.

maybe it wouldnt be full gray, but just paler. sickly.

[mylittlerwde]

I know we probably don't need a Nitpick November this year because RWBY's more or less officially canceled, but recently (And by recently, I mean September), I've had some more thoughts about Velvet's weapon. So I'm making a supplemental post to my previous one because I've realized it might actually be dumber than I gave it credit.

So Velvet needs to take a picture of a weapon before she can recreate it with hard-light Dust, and it's assumed that each weapon is contained in a single photo, right? But then we get weapons like Gambol Shroud, which are multiple weapons in one. If Velvet got a picture of Blake's katana alone, she wouldn't be able to use the cleaver-sheath, right? So can Velvet take a picture of the sheath and the sword and use them as separate weapons?

Let's assume for a moment that Velvet got a picture of only one weapon of a pair meant to be dual-wielded. In this scenario, would Velvet only get one weapon because she only has a picture of one, or would it create two constructs because that's how they're meant to be wielded?

In an inversion of the above, what if she got a photo of two different weapons wielded by different people? Would the box recognize them as different weapons, or would she need to use both at once?

Does she need to get a picture of the entire weapon, or does it work if she only gets a part of it? If she does need the full picture, what happens if she only takes a picture of, say, the blade of Crescent Rose?

Does she need to get a picture of the actual weapon, or would taking a picture of a picture do? I don't understand why it wouldn't. The box is already converting 2D to 3D. But if a picture of a picture works, why not just carry around magazines or photo albums?

Speaking of photo albums, how many pictures of the same weapon can she have? Can she build up a reserve of photos?

What constitutes weapons here? If she took a picture of an Atlesian Knight or Paladin, would she be able to summon them? Would this apply to Penny because she's a robot as well? If she could use them, would it treat them like Weiss's summons, or would it just cover Velvet like armor?

What if she took a picture of Yang's prosthetic arm? Would it only create the peashooter at the end of her wrist, or would it cover her entire arm?

Is it even limited to weapons? Can she snap a picture of a car and generate that?

[mylittlerwde]

Nitpick November: 1

Why are Sienna's ears orange while her hair is not orange?

Does this mean her hair is originally orange, or her ears were originally black or something?

[mylittlerwde]

Sienna Khan's weapon: Why is it designed like that? A whip with a barbed end, I get that part. But why is the barbed end doubling as dust knife projectiles? Once she shoots them, they're gone. And there's only 3. With no reload mechanism that I can find.

She literally loses half of the deadliness of her whip in a single fight. Did they just want her to have something to throw?

[mylittlerwde]

RWBY's representation of abused slaves is BAD. Is CRWBY offering Cinder up as a sacrifice so Salem can get redeemed?

When asked which one of the RWBY characters was the hardest to write, one of the writers once said it was Cinder. He didn't elaborate on why Cinder is the hardest character to write. I do know that Cinder's backstory bothered some people because it was seen as a sudden attempt to make the audience feel bad for a character CRWBY has put years of effort into getting us to hate, while it made others (myself included) feel increasingly uncomfortable with that effort. Although it could have been worse, why did a woman who was abused on this level have to be used for this role in particular?

RWBY is a very entertaining and inspiring show with diverse characters, but one thing that's uncomfortable about the show is the way abused child slaves are presented. Now, I'm not saying the writers are bad people- totally good, normal people sometimes want to tell dark, provocative stories about certain things.  But the *only* representation abused slaves get in RWBY is as criminals who have done horrible things. Cinder, a young woman who was trafficked from another country as a child and abused, is a hopeless hatesink- deliberately written, according to one of the writers, for the audience to want her to get "what's coming to her". She spends her life going from being in one abusive situation to another abusive situation, all while being made to be ridiculously evil by the writing. Her eventual death seems to have been dangled before the audience like a carrot since volume 5.

 The fandom is known to go to extremes with Cinder, demanding that she not only be killed but tortured and abused in horrific ways at times. RWBY is an anime-inspired show, and there has been criticism over the years of how some forms of entertainment exploit female pain for shock value and titillation. RWBY hasn't done this *so far*, and hopefully it stays that way. I sincerely hope that Cinder doesn't exist for that purpose, and that CRWBY won't pander to that part of the fandom. RWBY, according to the voice actress for Pyrrha, is supposed to be a show about letting go, and pandering to those fantasies wouldn't really fit with that theme. Plus Cinder's being a survivor of human trafficking and abuse on top of her being a woman would make it extra questionable to offer her up in that way. 

When it comes to fandom discourse and the optics (not intent) of how Cinder and Adam were written, it seems the pendulum has swung from one extreme to another. In trying so hard to hammer home this message that being an abused woman or minority does not make it ok to abuse and kill others, some of the fandom fears being humane, embraces sadism, feels that justice isn't enough, and doesn't even question being offered not one, but  two characters who are evil *because of*  their experiences as an abused woman/ minority as punching (actually, stabbing and cutting) bags. The problem with Cinder being written the way she is is made worse by the fact that Adam, another poc-coded abused child slave, was already written in a similar way. He was a hatesink whom the heroes were forced to put down. Why is it that the representation young abused victims of modern day slavery get in RWBY is as spiteful hatesinks who have to be slain for the greater good? Why couldn't there be any positive or nuanced, non-criminal representation for them?

I've seen some fans deflect criticism of the way Cinder and Adam are written with Weiss. They say, "Weiss was abused, and she's good!" While it's true that Weiss was abused, she was not a slave. The level of dehumanization and danger involved in being a trafficked girl or boy- both in a fictional setting and in the real world-is very different from what Weiss experienced.

Also, let's get one thing out of the way: I'm not saying the writers have cruel intentions. With Cinder I think they just wanted to write a dark, edgy Cinderella as a villainess and give her a dark, edgy backstory. But sometimes writers attach deep, dark issues like human trafficking and abuse to characters without carefully considering how isolating those experiences can really be, and without stopping to think of whether or not those stories really fit well with the role that's been given to the character. 

Speaking of Weiss, let's talk about Salem- the other problem with how Cinder is written. Salem is, among many other faults, Cinder's abuser. She's a White princess who became a queen and has more power than anyone else on Remnant. One of the writers has said that they want us to have sympathy for Salem. Some Salem fans have even expressed hope that Cinder will be sacrificed- as in killed off horribly- in exchange for giving Salem a redemption arc and, in some cases, even a second chance at life. I think this is a terrible idea. This article,Writing Abused Characters Respectfully and Authentically, highlights two of the reasons why. One of the points it touches on is characters being subjected to abuse so a character more privileged than them can be the hero. Cinder being tortured and or killed just for Salem to be the one to get redemption and peace would be an awful lot like that. Another point it touches on is redemption of an abuser. It basically says that it can be done, but not at their victim's expense- that it's not a victim's job to save their abuser. Offering Cinder up as a sacrifice to satisfy audience bloodlust so her white royal abuser Salem can get redeemed would be exactly that. Gross messaging all around. It would only reinforce Cinder's us vs. them mentality that's on display whenever she encounters the Schnees, proving that she's actually right to have that worldview. So far, Salem has done nothing to be worthy of being shown more sympathy than her abuse victim. Things could have gone differently. What if Salem didn't abuse Cinder, and even actually cared about her? What if we saw Salem actually struggling against her grimm corruption, trying but failing to be good?

I think the writers wanted Cinder to serve too many purposes that don't work well together in 2024. They wanted a female character who had a sad, serious, and disturbing backstory, but they also wanted a sexy hate sink whose suffering the audience would look forward to. They wanted a slave being abused by a powerful White queen who has had a worse total impact on the world than her, but they also wanted  to make sure the queen gets the audience's sympathy rather than her abused slave. Perhaps things would have went more smoothly if they had been willing to give just one of those things up. I actually don't think sympathy for Salem and sympathy for Cinder had to be an either/or thing- we could have had both, whether these characters were to survive the story or not.

[mylittlerwde]

yeah sorry I don’t think “you can be reborn as your best self but in order to do so you gotta kill yourself” is that good of writing……