#everyone in the fndm acts like the next background character is going to be the next canaan

[rambling-procrastinator]

Hey, so I’m no writer, but RWBY volume 8 was sooo bad, and volume 7 was so good, and I feel like there was a lot of potential that went out the for that I wanted to try my hand at rewriting it. Or rather, just tweaking a few characters so it isn’t so awful. Namely Ruby and Ironwood. I feel like if they only acted slightly different, this would have actually been an ok volume. Not great, but ok.

Let’s start with Ironwood. First change, don’t kill sleet. One complaint I have and have heard a few times is ironwood goes from nice guy to Saturday morning cartoon villain real quick, and shooting a background character really doesn’t help anyone. Instead, sleet and the other council person confront ironwood and accuse him of grossly misusing his political power. Ironwood arrests them and tells them they’re free to take him to court once atlas is safe. This shows that ironwood is actually breaking the law and why martial law is a bad thing. Like, martial law exists so the military can protect as many people as possible during emergencies like an invasion, so while it sounds scary, it’s not necessarily evil. Them accusing ironwood of corruption and him more or less agreeing paints it slightly darker but doesn’t push ironwood into maniacal laugh bad guy territory yet. It also doesn’t make winter and the ace ops look bad for blindly following a murderer. They’re supposed to be redeemed by the end, yeah?

The plot continues as normal until the cane blows up the whale. Rather than ask winter about Team ORJY and smiles at the thought of torture and blackmail, like a crazy person, he instead asks about the bomb and explosion. Learning that Salem is dead and they still have the bomb , he comes up with a plan. Remember how the amity tower plot didn’t matter and nothing came of it? Well instead, ironwood uses it for inspiration. Since they can’t get to the staff, they’ll explode the bomb under atlas to launch it to safety, just like the dust mines and amity tower. Winter or vine or someone points out that mantle is directly below atlas, so ironwood makes his announcement. Rather than give the ultimatum that penny needs to turn herself in or he’ll genocide everyone, he instead uses the announcement as a warning to mantle. It still comes down to “give me penny in an hour or I’ll blow it all up”, but he apologizes to the citizens and says that the fate of the entire human race is more important. Also, Grimm are the ones that take out the schnee rescue vehicles. This makes James look less like a genocidal crazy person and Harriet less like an idiot for going through with the genocide just because. Now she still thinks she’s saving atlas.

Next change comes soon after when marrow defects. Scene starts with winter asking ironwood if there’s any other way. Ironwood responds that Salem is regenerating as they speak and the military already lost, like, 80% of the soldiers or some other big number to hammer in how dire things are, and they need to act NOW with what little time they have. Marrow defects and the Scene plays out the same way, but instead of turning his back on the general, he draws his gun for emphasis. Winter still saves him from being blasted, but ironwood hesitates with his gun still pointed at the boy before letting them go. This highlights how on edge he is and makes winter look better for actually trying to talk James out of it, adding context to the line right before the ambush.

Everything goes the same, except when he kills Jacques it’s a bigger deal since this is the first time he’s killed unprovoked and it’s a character we know and who has a relationship with ironwood. Now he can be the big bad villain that shoots people since we’ve had a volume working up to it. Also, when he fights winter, instead of going “don’t blame me winter, I did all these good things and nobody likes me” and she goes “but you did the embargo, that thing I was cool with for four volumes and ultimately had very little negative consequences”, he goes “winter, Salem decimated our military in a matter of hours. Do you think vacuo can protect the staff? Protect our people?” To which she responds “I don’t know, but I refuse to harm those I was sworn to protect. L” Then he says something like “I swore to protect the world, even if that means killing you and ripping the staff from Ruby’s cold dead hands”. Fight happens the same, but now ironwood declared he will kill ruby and is full villain, but still thinks he’s in the right.

Last change for him would be instead of giving up after hearing checkmate, the scene instead cuts to black with a sound of a gunshot, just so we know that he didn’t give up and have it implied he was executed off screen, taking the ambiguity away from his death.

Ruby is a lot simpler to “fix”. First thing first, have her go with penny to amity tower. Have penny fly her there like Superman and Lois. The shippers will eat that up. Next while there, she and Maria fight of neo. This shows how dangerous neo is and highlights ruby beating her later in the bridge world. Also it makes more sense with the two of them fighting neo, since Maria already claimed back in volume 6 that qrow and team Rwby were better huntresses than she was back in her prime. How’s she do better than JNR? Maybe emerald can get involved this time instead of just standing there, but that’s not important. Things go the same way but ruby has to give the speech live instead of watching it on her iPhone drinking hot chocolate. Final change to that set piece is when penny falls, instead of burning up in the atmosphere(?) Ruby jumps after her. I feel this would fix a lot of plot holes like, how did penny end up at the manor despite falling miles and miles away from the city? Ruby helped guide her with her semblance. Why did Ruby go down so easily against the hound and was aura broken by a short fall? She was already banged up from saving penny. Yeah, we don’t get the Blake and ruby at the generator scene, but that scene sucked.

Final change would be in the bridge dimension. Simple fix, Weiss falls before ruby. This makes it so the team falls in reverse name order, YBWR, but also gives penny’s death more meaning, I feel, and also would soothe the FNDM’s hate for jaune. Either ruby is enraged by cinder stabbing her with her stretchy arm, so she rushes to attack and protect her best friend, or jaune keeps cinder busy so Ruby can be the one who ultimately offs her. Either way, it would be in character for Ruby.

With those small changes, I think it fixes my two biggest issues with the volume. Instead of ironwood being crazy and stupid, his decent into villainy is more gradual and paved with good intentions. And now when you ask “What did Ruby even do this volume?” Instead of the answer being “nothing really? She looked a cool grim” it’s “she saved penny from the fall and was a big part of her death”. Also the amity tower plot isn’t useless.

That’s my two cents anyway. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk

[helihi]

The Good, The Bad, and The Dirty: RWBY Vol 7 Ep 1

It’s been 4 years, but the FNDM was right and our treasure child is BACK! Sadly, Pyrrha died thinking she had extinguished this beautiful ray of sunshine.

For my new followers: Hi! This is my weekly RWBY review, where I go over the episode and analyze the writing/plot. 

Overall Rating: 8/10

SPOILERS AHEAD.

The Good:

I’m gonna be completely honest with you peeps, this is the first Episode 1 of a volume that I genuinely enjoyed since I started watching RWBY. The last time this happened was with volume 4, when I didn’t know better and we all know where that went. However, this time there are a few signs that show improvement on the writing department:

The art direction and the scenery were beautiful to look at. The magical Atlas contrasted with the Gotham like Mantle was great. There was a lot of attention to detail when it came to the scenery and the backgrounds from the color palettes and the architectural references to little details like the election posters and the background characters interacting with the environment.

Faunus rights:

We see a truck carrying mine workers which include very sad Faunus. 

There are some “No faunus allowed” signs on the background. 

A nice SHOW YOUR TEETH graffiti which reminds us of Ilia’s Smile song.

While one drunk Altesian spouts some racist bullshit, another one is not agressive or racist (which shows a mixture of opinions in the public).

Blake  wants to diffuse the situation, where her friends are offended by the dunk man’s comments, and it’s Weiss the one who acts against the racist dude.

Political commentary regarding the Kingdom’s situation:

Just as I expected, there’s an Atlesian council, and James acts based on their orders. Mantle has their own representatives, which don’t seem happy with the situation.

The close borders policy was not only put in place because of Salem, but also because of the International tension after The Fall of Vale.

It seems that there’s a 24/7 transmission of Ironwood and Winter telling the residents they will be kept safe and to trust their government. This not only strengthens the propaganda and authoritative position of the government, but paired with what we see in Mantle a great example of how the kingdom is falling apart. If Atlas was safe, there wouldn’t be a need for these types of constant transmissions. They are trying to make their citizens feel safe and failing miserably, which increases the Grimm attacks.

The Atlesian Ace ops come late to the fight and only to apprehend out heroes. Add that to the fact that there are no licensed huntsmen in sight and only useless robots, and you can quickly realize how little the Atlesian government cares for its Mantle residents, who are mostly poor, working class, and Faunus.

The people of mantle are not fond of the government. We see a couple of children attack a surveillance drone and be scared of it. The good drunk man is also unhappy to see the robots coming his way.

Character introduction:

We’re introduced to Penny’s father, who happens to be Gepetto from Pinoccio. Here’s a post explaining and analyzing his office. Great background story telling!

Penny is back, and her reintroduction was heartwarming, in character, and perfectly explains how she retains her memories. Just like I expected, her core was saved from that fateful day, and her father was able to rebuild her and make some updates to the model (I hope that includes a failsafe to magnetism like Semblances). Some people were suggesting Penny join Team JN_R, so they become team JNPR again, but based on that opening it sees that team JN_R has officially become team JNOR (Junior). I laughed at Penny leaving as soon as she was introduced, that joke did land, as well as her “SA-LU-TATIONS!”. I hope Ruby gets a shit ton more hugs from her. LONG LIVE NUTS N DOLTS.

Fight scenes: I’m glad the episode packed some action. It seems like the characters are using their fighting skills to their fullest like they should. The pacing was really good, but not perfect, a couple of pauses could’ve been avoided, but I loved some of the character details: 

Yang is the first one to jump into the action.

Nora is frustrated that Ren leaves before her and uses Jaune’s shield without a question.

I’m loving that Qrow leaves his weapon for a second to punch some Grimm.

Huge fan of the Weiss+Ren combo.

Blake watching Yang’s back <3

Oscar killing his first Grimm

Overall, I really enjoyed the episode, and I think it’s a great introduction to this new arc and volume.

The opening is better than last one’s and my absolutely favorite things are: the color flashes with the characters at the beginning, the 2D animation, James’s figure changing into Jacques after someone throws a rock at the hologram (Awesome foreshadowing).

The Bad:

Gotta say, I’m not impressed by the beginning of the fight scene, we hear a lot of people scream, but there’s barely anyone running away. It was kind of underwhelming.

María gives us exposition, that might not be needed from her and could’ve been given by Penny’s dad.

Ren had 1 line.

The Ugly:

A drone took a picture of Yang, I thought this would come in to play given the Vital tournament and how the whole world saw Yang “break an innocent guy’s leg”, but nothing is mentioned regarding it.

Weiss uses her powers to put that trash man in the trash, and the other dunk guy recognizes her as Weiss Schnee, yet when the Atlesian soldiers capture everyone, no one makes a comment about her.

I can only hope this things are touched upon next episode for continuity’s sake.

Please tell me this isn’t gonna be the last we see of María. I know she’s not plot relevant anymore, but I love her.

-

Rating: 8/10

A/N: WINTER SCHNEE IS BACK. BABY, I’VE MISSED YOU.

[pastelopossum]

On a scale of 'RWBY' to '428: Fūsa Sareta Shibuya de' how important are your background characters?