revolutionary-girl-emily

[revolutionary-girl-emily]

You know the "propaganda in tv shows does numbers on y'all" post?

This one here?

The one about how certain writers will make up characters who are part of an oppressed minority and fight for equality and stuff, but they're also Pure Evil Inhuman Monstrous Murderous Terrorist Villains, so that the audience will be compelled to view them as "unreasonable" and therefore the cruel and discriminatory system they're fighting against seems okay by comparison?

I need a counterpart to that post about White Saviourism

because so many fucking times I will see good posts talking about how certain writers will make up characters who are part of an Oppressive Majority and fight to maintain a Status Quo which they personally benefit from, but they're also Super Duper Nice Good Wonderful Heroes, so that the audience will be compelled to view them as "right" and therefore the cruel and discriminatory system they're fighting to protect seems okay by association

and then a bunch of (usually white) people will come into the notes or spread screenshots or vaguepost about it, throwing a fucking pissy tantrum like "how DARE you call [insert character] a racist when they single-handedly saved the poor helpless oppressed people and earned their respect and admiration as their hero and literally started dating the token minority in the main cast" like OH MY GOD DO YOU NOT HEAR YOURSELVES

That character didn't save shit because they aren't fucking real

Somebody MADE THEM UP and then they also made up the situation they were in and made up the way the situation was resolved, and if you think rationally for two seconds and ask yourself WHY the writer decided to MAKE IT UP like that, you might realize some things

So here's my best approximation of what a counterpart post like that might look like:

the propaganda in tv shows does numbers on y’all and i’m not immune to this either but it’s been bugging me a lot lately because y’all will see a character who is white or allegorically-white who is fervently fighting to keep their privilege and benefits or fervently fighting to preserve systemic inequality or a cop or whatever and you’ll see a character who is one of those things but also inexplicably like, throws a racist in a dumpster or whatever and instead of thinking “hey, maybe there’s a reason this show is portraying someone who wants to protect the status quo as a kind and heroic savior” you’ll start posting like “i mean technically yeah the system is flawed but how dare you attack them after they rescued a slums full of impoverished slaves” and like. yeah. that’s what they want you to think. that’s why they have those characters do grandiose heroic shit. think beyond the text please

[revolutionary-girl-emily]

for all that it's very clear RWBY took influence from a lot of anime, the writers sure don't seem to have learned much of anything from it. i'm watching the redub of the classic sailor moon anime right now, and it's insane to me how much better this thirty-year-old anime packed with filler was at things like character arcs and believably redeeming villains and having a main character that is at once childish and yet a great leader who, when the chips are down, could talk some of the worst evils in the universe down from their plans.

if anyone could talk salem out of her plans for world annihilation by just being able to love her, it's usagi tsukino.

Right? Man, I'd pay for a high-budget, animated version of that crossover lol.

That's one of the big arguments of the Why RWBY is Disappointing vid though, using Cowboy Beebop as an example, if I remember correctly. There's no doubt that RWBY has been influenced by a number of classic series, but deliberately mimicking something that worked in another show doesn't guarantee success, particularly if you don't understand why it worked in the first place. I'm constantly emphasizing that stories are whole products made up of a thousand smaller pieces, like a puzzle or a patchwork quilt, and simply slapping one piece down because it looks good in another story isn't enough. You have to carefully build everything around that piece so that it fits into the unified whole. Continuity, world building, characterization, setup... RWBY is very good at throwing out those "cool" moments, but it does none of the work ahead of time (or, just as often, after the fact) to make those moments satisfying outside of the initial adrenaline rush of watching.

Plus, RWBY is over-crowded nowadays. Characters, mysteries, real world issues, and those "cool" ideas have populated like bunnies until, I think, it's easy for a lot of fans to just get swept up in the spectacle of it all. The simpler your story is, the less there is to hide behind, which is why I think a lot of manga like Sailor Moon still rings true 30+ years later. If you do right by your core concepts and prove to the reader (often subconsciously) that your storytelling skills are strong, it will resonate even after new generations have different expectations in their media, or these ideas have become "cliche" in wake of that initial popularity. If we go with a food comparison (always my favorite lol) Sailor Moon makes me think of something like good home cooking. Looking at it now it's simple, it's straightforward, it has some technical flaws, but the comparatively low number of ingredients have all been treated stunningly well and there is an insane amount of love poured into the dish. Meanwhile, later seasons of RWBY feel like a semi-successful restaurant serving a special so long it took the server a week to fully memorize it, rattling off an absurd number of ingredients and fancy techniques used until you're not even sure what the dish is supposed to be anymore. Some diners go, "Wow, what an amazing, clearly high-end dish! And they've included this super rare ingredient which means it must be good." Meanwhile, others are going, "... Honestly, that sounds like Too Much. I'd have preferred a simple, well-done pasta." And all the while the restaurant—which is pretty big and popular now, garnering a lot of critical attention—is trying to pass this complicated, fancy-for-the-sake-of-fancy dish off as the product of a humble, mom-and-pop establishment. No, you used to serve that kind of food: simple, technically flawed in a lot of ways, but with so much love poured into the dish that most diners didn't care. Now people suspect that your chefs are miserable and we definitely know they're overworked, so even if that insane dish would have tasted great to certain pallets, it was doomed before it even left the kitchen.

[revolutionary-girl-emily]

RT is CRWBY and CRWBY is RT

For a long time now, especially right now i see a lot of people say things like “Roosterteeth is not the same as CRWBY!” “CRWBY is innocent of the things that Roosterteeth is doing!”. Of course this is mostly in response to RT being caught up in yet another scandal of abuse or some other sort of fucky wucky. The most recent one being queerbaiting with BB over… Completely unrelated content. Something that most critics could have told you like 3-4 years ago, but the FNDM is only now catching on.

The other times people try to pretend that the problems of RWBY are because “CRWBY has limited resources” and they pretend that RT is some sort of evil overlord hanging over CRWBY and not giving them time/resources to make RWBY.

So, i took some time to go over a few names of people who produce this show for the sole reason of proving a simple TRUTH. That there is almost NO difference between CRWBY and RT. They are the SAME company with the SAME people.

(Directors)

Kerry Shawcross - Director of RWBY from V3 - Core member of RT

Gray Haddock - Co-Director of RWBY V3-5 - Head of Animation at RT

Miles Luna - Writer, Assistant director V3-5 - Head writer of Animation 2015-2018, core member of RT

Connor Pickens - Co-Director V6-7 - Lead Editor of RT

(Producers)

Matt Hullum - Executive Producer of RWBY - Chief content officer and co-founder of RT (CEO - 2012-2019) - His wife is a VO in the show for Raven Branwen.

Koen Wooten - producer / supervising producer 2015-2019 - Supervising producer of RT animation division

Joe Clary - Lead producer of RWBY 2017-2020 - Producer at RT

Nick Todd - Animation associate producer of RWBY 2019-2023 - Pre-production/outsourcing producer at RT

(Voice Actors)

Jack Pattillo - Co-Founder of Achievement Hunter - VA for Junior

Michael Jones - Core member of AH - VA for Sun Wukong

Lindsay Jones - Core editor of AH - VA for Ruby Rose

Barbara Dunkelman - Creative director of RT - VA for Yang Xiao Long

Burnie Burns - Co-founder of RT - CEO - CCO - VA for Taiyang Xiao Long

They Knew

Many of the highest ranking members of RT were involved in the production of RWBY. Heads of animation, Co-founders, Head Writers. People who were the leads of entire DEPARTMENTS of RT creation.

These people KNEW about EVERYTHING that happened at RT. RT is not some foreign entity from CRWBY. CRWBY is RT. RT is CRWBY.

The only parts of CRWBY that are not related to RT management are ANIMATORS and other such workers. And guess what, most of them are now FIRED.

Workers not getting paid, frat boy culture, bigoted culture, overwork etc. Were the fault of the SAME RT members that are a part of CRWBY.

And absolutely NOONE can even try to imply that the reason RWBY had problems because of “higher ups at RT” when those same Higher ups of RT worked on RWBY DIRECTLY. Including the CEO of the company and Co-Founders.

Also, as a note, Blizz fanboys tried to pull the same shit when Blizzard abuses came to light. “Its not the department that i like! My WoW team was innocent! My Overwatch team was innocent”. Fucking bullshit, all of it.

[revolutionary-girl-emily]

I think one of the things that bothers me most about the way RWBY has handled the whole b/umbleby thing is the fact that volume 9 kind of puts paid to the idea that their relationship was a 'slow burn'.

If it were a slow burn, if their relationship had been steadily growing and changing over the past few volumes and according to their experiences, then that burn ultimately resolving and becoming explicit and them getting together would have been a significant milestone that changed things between them so completely they could never go back to how things were before.

But... nothing changed. If you took out the confession and the kiss and Ruby's (understandable) anger... you'd never be able to tell anything had changed between them. They have the same level of physical affection and tenderness they've had since volume 6. They don't talk to each other any differently. There's been no change in their behavior, no evidence they are now a couple in a way that they were not before except their one single kiss. And that's just deeply unsatisfying to me.

This criticism popped up after the episode aired and I came across a couple of posts that, with lesser and greater respect, pushed back against it. One in particular was rather snide, asking what RWDE folks expected to change: for them to be kissing non-stop? Declaring their undying love at ten-minute intervals? Pulling out a ring for marriage? People are still themselves while dating, you know. Besides, they're a little busy at the moment!

Now, I personally believe that yes, there should be changes to their behavior. I likewise believe that this could have easily been accomplished if a) Blake and Yang hadn't already gone through the physical displays of affection that RWBY uses to confirm a romantic relationship (primarily hand-holding) and b) if they hadn't jumped straight to "I love you." Removing the numerous moments of hand-holding since Volume 6 would have left that as an easy, visual indicator of the change in their relationship (rather than the confusing "So are they canonical or not??" we got for three years). Likewise, having them admit to having a crush could have opened the door to actually dating which in turn could have eventually led to the big "I love you" moment. That's how you do a slow-burn post-confession: breaking up all those relationship milestones and thus making time for the characters to run into obstacles and celebrate the success of each step forward. The way bumblebee has been written, it simultaneously feels far too slow (why did it take 4+ years for them to admit they like each other?) and simultaneously way too fast (they don't actually admit that they like each other, but that they're IN LOVE).

Beyond what all might have been added though, I think it's worth considering what might have been lost in a better written romance. Slow-burns, as mentioned above, thrive on obstacles. There has to be a reason why the characters don't get together, whether that's internal ("I'm too afraid of commitment to date them") or external ("Our families will lose their shit if we date"). Seriously, this is like writing 101, yet Bumblebee gave us NOTHING. For literal years there was no reason, internal or external, why they couldn't/wouldn't admit to their feelings, which not only begs the question of why in the world it took a magical prison to force them to confess, but ensures that their relationship doesn't change as a result of that weight being lifted from their shoulders. If Blake was scared of what it would mean for her to love a human, or if Yang was scared to commit after losing so much else in life, or if there was homophobia to deal with in Remnant, or if they both wanted to wait until the Salem fight was over, or if they honestly didn't realize they had romantic feelings, or if one of them needed to come to terms with being queer first, or if there was a literal curse at play that hindered the relationship somehow... there are a HUNDRED ways to provide obstacles and the removal of any one of them would have changed both the character(s) and their relationship with each other.

Not to continually bring up my blorbo Trent Crimm, but Ted Lasso does this beautifully. With the removal of his obstacle (inability to admit that he's gay) Trent becomes a radically different person from who he was in Season One; a more authentic person. His style changes, he smiles more, his conversation becomes more "dorky," and his relationships with the rest of the cast likewise develops. What would Yang look like if she went on a journey of coming out as queer? What would Blake look like if she kept her activist roots by fighting for the right to date a human? How would they both act post-kiss if they'd been afraid, for whatever reason, to show that level of affection in public before? Something like holding hands could have been a radical act -- it IS for real queer people!! -- rather than a generic, cutsey detail we've been getting for years now.

Instead, as you say, anon, literally nothing changes. I am 99.9% convinced that Ruby wouldn't even know Yang was now dating Blake if they hadn't exited the storm still kissing because them sitting close and occasionally holding hands has been their norm since VOLUME SIX. Nothing changes because RT didn't do any of the work to write an actual, romantic relationship. They wrote a couple of years worth of implied queerbaiting and then confirmed it when it looked like RWBY would be cancelled. We don't know anything about them in regards to romance and/or sexuality. When did Yang realize she likes girls when she started the series only appreciating guys? Is Blake expected to marry anyone in particular given her status as the pseudo-princess of Menagerie? Have either of them ever been in a relationship before? Do they have any idea what they want out of a relationship? Does the fact that they're on a supposedly doomed quest with their world hanging in the balance have any bearing on their long-term plans? There are fictional couples who avoid admitting feelings because of the presumed hopelessness of their plot and there are those that grab at a relationship and hold on with both hands because they're determined to live and love for whatever time they have left. Bumblee offers none of this. Their love exists only between the two of them, primarily off-screen, separate from both the plot and the rest of the cast.

The fact that Yang never once talks to Ruby about her feelings and then the Volume drops Ruby's annoyance really says it all. Of course nothing changes. RT doesn't want to write a Blake/Yang subplot. They just want to have a queer couple among the main team to bring in viewers and sell merch. The fandom has done ALL the work to make Bumblebee a nuanced, heart-felt love story. It literally, barely exists on screen and what little we have gotten often makes no sense. They hide their feelings when they have no reason to. Yang is worried about a fight with Blake that never happened. They both say they love things about the other that sound like a list of generic Good Characteristics, rather than traits that actually align with these characters. They're caught kissing thanks to the magical world they're in and the characters treat this as a given, giving the story an excuse not to engage with their reactions because again, the story isn't interested in that. One reaction is tossed in for the drama? Don't worry, the tree will cure Ruby of her understandable anger that Yang is more concerned with holding Blake's hand than her sister's tragedy-inducing depression. Everything is only canon in the moment.

Outside of the kiss checkbox there's no romance here and, thus, no reason to show its development. All RT needed was to get one kiss on screen and then boom, their merch sells out and (they hope) Volume 10 is greenlit. Don't get me wrong, I'm still pleased it's actually confirmed now, but it's nevertheless the fans who are doing all the work to make this an epic love story, not the writers.

[revolutionary-girl-emily]

Ruby’s angst is a sore point b/c I will always remember her crying over Salem mentioning her mom only to go back to being confrontational and smug to Ironwood and the Ace Ops.

This is why I harp on about tone so much in my recaps. It is crucial to keep things consistent (within reason) because otherwise your audience is going to start doubting the persuasiveness of this characterization. If Ruby breaks down over Summer's death and then immediately shrugs that off, transitioning into smug antagonism, my takeaway is going to be, "Well, I guess she wasn't that broken up about it" and "Well, I guess Ruby lacks the insight and critical thinking skills to realize that turning on her allies is just going to make Salem murdering more people easier."

If Ruby decides to start this battle and confidently expresses the inevitability of her win against Harriet, only to then start begging for them to lay down their weapons after taking a hit, the takeaway is that Ruby back-peddles on a position the moment she's no longer winning.

If Yang rushes to Ruby's side to comfort her while she sobs and then spends a Volume ignoring her equally obvious distress, the takeaway is that Yang is becoming a worse sister, likely because she's putting all her emotional energy into Blake instead.

If Blake was introduced as a no-nonsense activist willing to get up in anyone's face and then shrinks before an angry friend, the takeaway is that she's grown more passive as the series has gone on.

If Weiss loses her entire Kingdom and then spends the first half of the Volume being used purely as the comic relief, the takeaway is that this tragedy hasn't actually hit her very hard and we shouldn't buy into these incredibly brief moments of grief.

If the group says they don't want to run anymore and then the very first fight they come across results in them running away, the takeaway is that these are heroes who talk big, but can't make those promises a reality.

Similarly, if the group hugs and makes the occasional speech about how much they love each other, but then turn around and criticize, become suspicious of, and dismiss Jaune in his ultimate time of need, the takeaway is that their care is hollow and will falter once the going gets tough.

If Ruby spends whole Volumes active bubbly, optimistic, confident, driven, and at times extraordinarily arrogant, but then kills herself after two days of mental health struggles, the takeaway is that RT is willing to use suicide as a cheap spectacle, rather than a real life issue that must be written with care and proper buildup.

If the show pushes a found-family dynamic and then has four members of that family simply stand there while Ruby kills herself... yeah, the takeaway is, "Wow. They didn't care about stopping her much then, huh?"

We know the characters are supposed to love each other. We know that we're supposed to come up with some easy explanation like, "They were in shock!" But if you actually take what's happening on screen - which, you know, is the backbone of analysis - RT continually undermines the core messages of RWBY through badly managed tone and inconsistent characterization. Every scene is a puzzle piece creating a whole and if the pieces don't fit... well, then the picture is nonsensical. It's not the job of the person observing the puzzle to go, "Well, it certainly looks like this is made up primarily of confused colors, textures, and images, but if I just imagine that all these pieces are different from what's actually in front of me, then the puzzle is perfect!"

[revolutionary-girl-emily]

I swear, Arryn Z has this remarkable talent of saying landmark fuckshit that will haunt her in the future.

[revolutionary-girl-emily]

I will forever hate the fact that Ozma and Dorothy are men in RWBY. Like, the sheer disrespect needed to take two iconic female characters from a very well known franchise (who are ALSO important to the queer community), and make them men THAT ALSO DON’T INTERACT WITH EACH OTHER. Makes my blood BOIL.

It's another case of RWBY being "Subversive hehe" in the most shallow of ways possible.

[revolutionary-girl-emily]

rwde below the keep reading

Blake and Yang's 'confirmation' is like this

And it's like this

Except in this case, Blake and Yang's 'confirmation' also looks like this

And like this

If someone says something along the lines of "But Mal and Evie weren't confirmed as queer" or "Merlin and Arthur weren't confirmed as queer" or "Clover and Qrow were never confirmed as queer" then yeah, that's the whole point. I have spent too much time seeing rabid rw/by fans attacking anyone who says that Qrow and Clover were so much as coded as queer while the rw/by writers say it was never intended to be read as queer to just go 'tralalala sure Blake was described as straight in 2019 and sure Yang was written to say Blake was like her sister in November of 2022 but the bigoted company reported to have recently told a queer employee asking for more rep 'we've done enough for the queer community' and Miles Luna the misogynistic biphobe who said he wished he'd buried a gay in volume five prove that they're going to canonize Blake and Yang by tweeting a moment that happened in the show JUST LIKE THEY DID WITH FAIRGAME." Like motherfucker, if I said 'Blake and Yang will be canon this season' and then Blake fucking died or something before it got confirmed and I said 'that was bury your gays' I'd be ruthlessly attacked for saying Blake was ever queer coded in the first place.

And no, I'm not saying this to 'disappoint' fans of the ship, I'm saying this as a queer woman to vent about how fucking disappointing this is to me.

[revolutionary-girl-emily]

Honestly I really think that, as much as it’s good to hold CRWBY and the fndm responsible for the deep seated prejudices they have, and tendency to go off whenever their wrongs are shown, we really need to hold the RWDE side as equally responsible. 

Because yeah, I’ve been getting vile things said to me by the stans, but I have seen just as many critics and RWDE people refusing to listen and instead flaunting their ignorance in hopes to own marginalised people talking about it. The amount of people on Twitter and Reddit especially that’ve tried to own the “woke” and rabbited the complaints, especially about the WF arc, without actually understanding them is ridiculous, and this issue with Jinxy recently has just highlighted this. 

I’ve seen RWDE people going into others’ inboxes to say that we are overreacting about a raccoon, people coming to me specifically to say that we’re the cesspit of the RWDE community because of what we’ve said about Jinxy and the fact that we as Jewish people dare talk about Adam and headcanon him as Jewish in our own works. 

And I’m sorry, but this makes the RWDE community no better than the stans that they’re so quick to make fun of. You guys can be just as fucking racist and ignorant.

Do better.

[revolutionary-girl-emily]

Chapter 2 rant will be out later, but I just...God, fucking queer rep in RWBY is a living nightmare and I just have to throw some thoughts out as a queer person.

You have a Nazi lesbian (Coco) who admits to check out women without their acknowledgement behind her sunglasses (ew tf). Another lesbian who's a terrorist (Ilia) and her main motivation was jealousy? Despite being part of an oppressed group? A singular catty gay man (Scarlet), and while that isn't necessarily bad, fucking hell it's still very annoying that he's the only gay person and is just written as an asshole. Background lesbians Saffron and Terra, not bad but again, bare minimum. A trans woman whose VA was treated like dirt. And 3 nonbinary characters, two of which are talking animals.

Like, how many characters does RWBY has? And this is it? This is the line up for queer rep that got you all foaming at the mouth for? This is below minimum effort, and it took them YEARS to actually confirm any of them as queer. RT was an independent company, they're not The Owl House or Legend of Korra where queer rep is constantly being squandered by higher ups, they just didn't want to.

And Blake and Yang...fucking hell. Preface, I have no problem with the Butch-Femme relationship between wlw characters. That's real life, I've seen plenty of gay couples where they didn't have a problem addressing themselves according to heterosexual labels (i.e. a gay man calling himself the wife). It still doesn't erase the fact that they're gay, and it's part of the identity.

What I fucking hate, HATE, is that neither Blake or Yang were written as the masculine queer woman initially. Both of them are femme, or were femme, but ever since the baiting begin Yang has been designated as the "man" of the relationship. This just felt extremely weird, since now you have Blake barely taking care of herself in dire situations and Yang standing up to her. Not very "we protect each other" like they claimed in Vol 6. Queer representation should not take away the characters' already established traits for them to be queer, that's lazy writing that reduces them to being nothing more than their sexuality.

All of this felt hollow; the queer characters are stereotypes or just assholes, and aside from their sexuality there's little to no substance to them. If you want substance, you have to spend time and money looking at supplementary works instead of those substances being written in the show.

What was Scarlet's life like? His relationship with Sage and Neptune, or his complicated thoughts about Sun? What about Saffron? What does she think about the rest of her family? Of the Arc family name like Jaune did? Speaking of Jaune, it's so easy to just let him be gender nonconforming back in Vol 2. But no, he must be masculine because God forbid a man wears a dress without transphobic jokes being made at his expense.

TLDR: RWBY's queer rep is boring at best, abysmal at worse. The characters felt hollow, and the effort that went into making them queer is nonexistent. And personally speaking? If South Park managed to support gay rep in the 90s, an independent company that created a show decades later have no excuse of not trying to say "this character is gay" from the get go.

[revolutionary-girl-emily]

If you are Online enough to have seen any of the MANY reasons why Hogwarts Legacy is the most antisemitic work from an already horrifically antisemitic property and was developed that way ON PURPOSE by openly antisemitic Alt Right bigots, AND if you are Online enough to be aware of the fact that JKR has openly stated that everyone who engages with Harry Potter is proving that they support her transphobic views, and your response to the boycott is to yell at Jewish people, Trans people and their allies to stop being "annoying" then you're a bad person full stop

block me if you disagree because stg I don't want your stench anywhere NEAR me

[revolutionary-girl-emily]

RWBY Opening Theory

The new volume is finally upon us, and there’s definitely lots to discuss but I think the first thing I wanna get down is my Neo prediction. It’s so incredibly obvious that the new girl seen in the opening (I’m gonna call her Alice because that’s the name I’ve seen thrown around the most so far) is actually a disguised Neo. But there’s a couple more interesting things about her if you pause on the right frame.

The first we see of the new girl is a monochrome model upside down at the end of Ruby’s little outfit montage. Next up we see Crescent Rose falling into the ground and shattering with the same effect that Neo’s semblance has. The shards transform into team RWBY and Alice appears in front of them to begin guiding them through the Ever After. 

The next time we see Alice, she’s at the end of the bridge Ruby is standing on. As she turns, a leaf flies past and she has transformed into evil looking Ruby, who then falls downward into a shot of Neo with some shadow people behind her. I know the RWBY openings are known for spoiling the entire plots of the volume but that’s a bit on the nose.

The ending is where this actually gets interesting. The book that flips through behind the jabberwalker (dumb name; why not just call it a jabberwocky?) at one point flips to a page with Alice talking to the Cheshire cat. Later, as Ruby is falling down again at the very end, she falls past a portrait of Alice. Behind her is a figure wearing glasses. At the bottom of the shot we land on Neo looking very important, who then fades into Alice waking up on the beach next to Crescent Rose. 

Here’s my theory: Alice is a real person. I think she ended up in the Ever After a long time ago, and is probably going to be important to the finale of this volume. I think the monochrome version of her over Ruby at the beginning of the opening is referencing a connection between them. Other than the monochrome version, the book page and the portrait, I believe all other times she shows up are actually Neo. I mean, that part isn't even much of a theory. I think that’s just the obvious textual interpretation. I think Alice may be important enough in the Ever After that Neo sees a portrait of her somewhere and uses that to base her disguise off of.

I have no idea who glasses guy is in the portrait. The glasses make me think of Ozpin, so perhaps a connection to him? A descendent of one of his past lives? Does that mean there’s a chance she has magic? 

There’s a lot more I could talk about in the intro and first episode as a whole, but it’s super late and I don’t wanna be thinking about RWBY all night.

[revolutionary-girl-emily]

RWBY x Justice League Designs

For my very first RWDE post, I’d like to discuss the outfits for the Justice League in the upcoming movie. I love sewing, it’s a huge part of my life. I spend a lot of time researching fashion history and different textiles. I’ve had issues with how the clothing is modeled since the jump to Maya, but most of that has been discussed all over the place, so for now I’m gonna stick to the new designs. 

*HUGE NOTE* All of my criticisms with the models are due in the most part to the people making them not having the time or resources to really finish them. I do not blame any of the designers/modelers at all for any of these issues. They all deserve the utmost respect for making them as good as they are. Fuck RT and their exploitive business practices.

This is going to be a long post.

One more quick note before jumping in, I know almost nothing about DC. I watched the 2003 Teen Titans and the first 2 seasons of Young Justice. Outside of that, I don’t know these people. If there are any specific references their costumes make, they’ll definitely be going over my head.

Firstly, I have got to talk about the Flash. This goddamn zipper. This is the main reason I created this blog in the first place. The designs in RWBY have really trended towards throwing zippers all over everyone in later volumes, but this is the first time (that I recall) where they broke the laws of physics to do that. Zippers function by passing uniformly sized teeth through a zipper pull, which interlocks the teeth together. For this to work, the teeth have to all be the right size and shape. This means that even sewing zippers around gently curving slopes can be difficult. It is impossible for a zipper to turn on an acute angle and still function. And this guy’s got 4 of them.

Other than that I honestly don’t mind much about the costume. I like the lighting bolt scarf that trails behind him even when he’s not going super speed. He has goggles that he actually uses, which would be genuinely beneficial in combat. I don’t quite understand the bandages by his ankles; maybe they’re to imply that all his running led to increased strain that needs some extra support? Though then why not give him more supportive, calf-length boots? He also has bandages on his wrists and I really don’t know what they’re for. Maybe he hurt them trying to twirl his new staff with no prior training? My last note is that there are too many lines crossing all over his body. Zigzag lightning bolts, horizontal lines on either side of his waist, vertical lines on his pants, and the bandages again. It makes your eyes dart all over the place.

Cyborg seems a bit jumbled. I know he’s usually portrayed with red lights all over, though I remember blue in Teen Titans ‘03. Well they covered both bases by giving him red lights around the upper chest and head and blue accents for his right arm, hands and legs. But wait, there are also purple lights on the bottom of his drone, and his belt and shoes are both green (though not the same green). He also has a blue and black chain on the same side as his mechanical arm. There’s lots of stuff going on all over with him, but then his entire midsection is just an empty void that reads as unfinished. And for someone who is a cyborg, from the pecs down he just looks like an entirely normal human. I think it would have been a much more interesting (and I think faithful) design if they had his mechanical attributes continue down his body. 

(I just looked it up and it seems that in his most common depictions, only the right side of his head remains flesh. This iteration could very well be mechanical below the pecs but it would be nice to see that instead of completely covering it with cheap looking fabric. It’s not like that would be out of place in Remnant.)

Also, I wish the metal looked like metal and not plastic. But that’s an issue that plagues every single design on this show so let’s move on.

Superman absolutely got that jacket out of the children’s section. You could maybe read it as a cropped jacket with 3 quarter sleeves, if it also wasn’t clearly incapable of meeting in the front to zip up. Other than that I just wish his turtleneck didn’t have that random zipper on it.

Wonder Woman, the Amazon, also the only one wearing heels, is shorter than all of the men. I don’t care if that’s canon to the comics I still hate it. I honestly love her costume though, by far my favorite one.

Vixen and Green Lantern both look pretty good. I wish Batman had another color on him, just a small accent would be good. Maybe make his scarf that classic dark blue his cowl used to be decades ago, or make the utility belt yellow.

One final note, it seems so on the nose that they made the two heroes with animal themes into faunus. How come being isekai’d changed only two of them into a different species? And now Batman can fly when his whole deal is being such a good detective and so physically fit that he can keep up with super-powered guys even without any powers. Not to mention turning a billionaire white guy into an in-universe minority.

If you’ve read this far, thank you! I hope this post was decently coherent. It started from me ranting to my one irl friend that actually watches rwby about that goddamn zipper and I realized I needed to get these thoughts out into the world. I look forward to posting with you all through volume 9!

[revolutionary-girl-emily]

Hello!

My name is Emily!

I’ve been a huge fan of RWBY since the red trailer. However, I started noticing some problems with the show sometime around volume 5. A few years later I discovered the RWDE side of Tumblr and lurked around here once in a while. Now, on the cusp of volume 9, I decided to take the plunge and make a blog of my own. I hope to share some fun analyses and theories with you all!