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twilightguardian · 2 years ago

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Lilith Fairen, Canonseeker, Dishonest Discourse and Fixing RWBY

Preamble

I'm going to preface this by saying I'm not directly part of the RWBY community. You could say I'm a genuine 'hater', or whatever, and that's fine. I'd be considered a legitimate one; though I'll disagree with you about what constitutes hate, as I'll discuss below. Had it been my choice, I'd have only ever interacted with RWBY after a friend showed me the first two volumes and I, an animation student and aspiring novelist, disliked it. I moved on with my life. But circumstances led me to seeking out critical content that soon led me into the Tundra Discord server where I eventually met my boyfriend. I don't interact with RWBY spaces because I don't (didn't?) consider myself a fan, but I do have a morbid fascination with it and all the issues I have with it and how frequent issues crop up. The only time I've ever interacted with broader RWBY fandom directly was when discussing Fixing RWBY on reddit (and that one time where I commented when someone compared RWBY to Digimon Adventure 02. But Digimon is my fandom so I commented as part of my space).

I have had many discussions, mostly negative, but also positive about the show itself and while I never cared to watch further in, I eventually watched V3, and V6-8. V4-5 were skipped due to a migraine one week and group watch party exhaustion the next, respectively, but reviews and criticism videos allowed me to know what goes on in them.

Note that I enjoy critical content as a creative myself, and dabbling in critical content is important for someone learning how to write and create. It's just as important to know why something does not work from a critical perspective to understand why other elements do work while also keeping in mind there is a level of subjectivity. Someone is always going to disagree with you. I lurk the r/RWBYcritics for critical discourse, and occasionally r/RWBY, though the actual discourse there is fewer and far between by comparison, and unless I come across someone mentioning Digimon or FRWBY, I don't comment because I feel it's not my place.

So as you can see, I've been on the outside looking in at aspects of this community and considering where my interests are focused, (Fixing RWBY being an interest) found myself overlooking a clusterfuck of nonsense.

The concept of "Hatedom/HTDM"

I'm old guard. Old fandoms and old engagement from a time when the internet was a wild west and niche anime communities were tiny. The days of geocities and fan shrines and webrings. Never in my life have I come across a fandom that shunned a big chunk of itself, gatekeeping being part of the community and saying that aspect of the fandom wasn't valid. Perhaps I was lucky in that regard, but considering I dabbled in quite a few communities, I doubt it. Digimon Adventure has been around since 1999 and there were a lot of hot-button topics that split the fandom back then. More than 20 years later, you tread these old, rusted buttons and under your feet a sinkhole will open with a warm, bubbling lava plume of strong opinions will greet you as you wake the sleeping beast. But not once was there any sniff of a concept that someone wasn't a 'true' fan because of their opinions and outlooks on the show, and that is just a single example of many.

So to see the RWBY community simmering in barely contained venom over the "critics" is certainly an unwelcome sight to behold, and one that has alarming implications. There has been elements of gatekeeping in all fandoms, sure, but this feels on a new level. To think that it would get so bad that it was even considered to ban an entire related reddit group for having critical opinions is frankly shameful, and yes, I was around for that. Anyone who thought that was correct should feel embarrassed.

This idea that having a negative opinion equals a hateful person is patently absurd. It has been stated time and again that having a negative opinion on something doesn't mean you hate it. There are many different types of people in the world, with different mindsets and different ways of engaging with the things that they enjoy or engage with. Some people do art or fanfiction. Others dissect or criticize. It can be a combination of these things and whether or not the criticism is positive or negative does not negate the passion behind the words. Labelling someone who criticizes the show, even if that is all that they do, a 'hater' or part of the HTDM, comes across as punishment for engaging in fandom in a way you don't approve.

The internet as a whole, and fandom space, doesn't just belong to you and people who think like you. It belongs to everyone who has passion enough to engage with the media they've consumed and there are plenty of options available for those who don't wish to engage with certain methods of fandom discourse and immersion. To dictate who can and cannot participate in the fandom and who is worthy of hate and derision for being an "other" or "outsider" is frankly disgusting. If you think that someone cannot engage in "your" space because you don't like what they have to say, get over yourself and for once in your life, look past your own petulant selfishness. Seriously, we got taught to share space in preschool.

Criticism As Art, Engagement, Growth and Study

Criticism is an invaluable tool in creative spaces, both positive and negative, and there seems to be a growing idea of what constitutes valid criticism or not as simply whether or not it is positive and the thought of that is quite disturbing. You'd think that I wouldn't have to talk about this, but there are quite a number of people who don't fully understand there is more to criticism than being nice and gentle - which can do more harm than good, by the way.

There can be an art to criticism, and there is no one way to criticize something as being the ultimate 'correct' way. Just like there are different art styles, brush stroke techniques, chord progressions, building methods, etc, there are different styles of critique. It's up to the personality of the individual what form that critique manifests and there is no right or wrong way to critique like there is no right or wrong way to paint a painting. But there is something to be said about whether or not the messages you're trying to get across are being understood properly; whether the critiques are in good faith and can be understood to correspond accurately to the work in question, and with that in mind, we can gauge whether or not the criticism is good.

Critique and criticism, whether good or bad, can open up someone to a piece of media they may never have seen or heard before. It is then that they can decide for themselves, as individuals with their own minds and relative free will, whether or not they want to further participate in the consumption of the media being criticized. To get defensive over the idea that negative criticism exists because it influences the sheeple, dimwitted and easily swayed as they may be, is insulting to the intelligence of others, Eren. Individual people can look at a criticism of a work and decide for themselves whether or not the work is something that does not interest them, or is something to look into for themselves and decide whether or not they personally like or dislike it.

On the more creative side, criticism, even - and I'd say especially - negative criticism, is an essential tool to help the growth of the artist. It helps you grow and learn the many mistakes and errors one can have in a piece of media and teach someone to grow past and learn to avoid those pitfalls.

When it comes to criticizing a piece of media like RWBY, some individuals within the RWBY community view the criticism not only as an attack on the quality of the work, but harassment of the writers themselves. This is patently absurd for the simple fact that these men (and woman) are professional writers and criticism goes part and parcel with the job. To show yourself as a professional in the industry you'd want to put your best foot forward, show that you have the skills to write, and be humble enough to take criticism when given and seriously reevaluate your work, no matter how difficult it might be. The concept of 'kill your darlings' applies to beloved concepts and scenes in a story that, while loved, might hinder the story you want to tell. When you are putting something out there, even as a job, the goal should first and foremost be to entertain the audience, and to do that, strive to create the best version of your work that you can. Passion for what you do is such a hard thing to describe, but most can see it when it's there and can point to when it's not.

I don't doubt there are a couple of individuals that do legitimately harass the writers and others directly. We've seen that with other franchises, and individuals like that can be in more than one fandom. But I specify individuals because there is a trend to lump everyone that some people (like Lilith Fairen and Canonseeker) dislike and disagree with as one and the same, as though the 'critics' are a hive mind, and that everyone is connected to every other critic and knows what they do or say.

But dissent allows an honest writer or artist to grow from where they are, a community who strive to help others to make everything better so that the media we consume is better and the artist will be more satisfied and fulfilled. That is the goal. That is what critics strive for, because they can have as much passion for that work as the artist, if not directly for that work itself, then for the desire to see a fellow creative flourish.

Canonseeker's Logical Fallacies

Eren is someone that I consider to be fairly innocent in intent. At least I don't consider him to be outright malicious, unlike Lilith, but the results of his actions in trying to rectify what he considers to be a toxic situation is in fact toxic in and of itself. Eren is someone who views the situation of the critics as being outright harmful, as though fans voicing their dissent is bullying. Fans have no power and very little means to influence the media they're passionate about.

Therefore, when someone criticizes a work, the main audience for their criticisms are other fans, people whom they can engage with and share in their frustrations and worries. There is always a chance that the writer or some creative can see their complaints, but it is a low chance, and often little in the ways of rectifying the situation other than in the future. When Eren criticizes the 'critics' he attacks their character rather than the ideas they present. When called out on it, he never acknowledges his own faults, instead doing a what-aboutism to deflect from himself.

Just because other people are assholes doesn't mean you aren't also a problem. And considering the fact that we can see you being a problem right now, and you haven't named individual people for us to also slap on the wrist, we focus on you as a problem community member. Critics attack ideas and competency, not the writers as individual people (for the most part. If the situation calls for it, then how the writers are seen in the public eye becomes fair game for scrutiny).

He puts Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross on pedestals, saying that they created RWBY. They did not. Monty is the sole creator and he picked them to fill in the blanks between his fight scenes. Personally I don't envy that situation based on what I've heard and I feel sympathy for that. But being 'hand picked' by Monty doesn't mean anything other than the fact that he was personal friends with these men. That doesn't speak to their skills as writers, as the romantic, lofty wording would suggest, and it doesn't mean anything beyond they happened to be available to do the job. Monty wanted to work with friends, that's all. Rooster Teeth runs on nepotism. Fact of the matter is, RWBY is now owned by a corporation, not an individual person any longer and when owned by a corporation, can be used and abused for whatever the corporations needs. If fans think that corporation shouldn't have the product any longer, then that's their opinion that they are allowed to hold. When they criticize RWBY for being the mess they think it is, they're criticizing Rooster Teeth as a company, its practices, and its willingness to allow or even encourage incompetence within the production through various means, some more terrible than others.

Eren's understanding of Death of the Author is tenuous at best and nonexistent at worst. Barring people's misunderstanding of the concept in question aside... The concept that once a work of media exists out in the public, it is out of the control of the owner how their work gets interpreted is something that Eren struggles with. An author or creator can do their best to convey their ideas to their audience as best as possible, but that doesn't guarantee that someone will see it in that exact way. Whether a member of the audience understands what the author is trying to convey is up to the individual person, and their understanding or lack of understanding is valid to their own experiences. Of course there are dishonest ways of interpreting a piece of work, such as misdiagnosing a theme of a work (especially when the theme is stated) and then saying its bad for poorly handling that theme. The themes should be looked at on their own and judged how well they're done.

Anything else that I could say about the man has already been talked about in a different document by SYTOkun, barely anything of which I am interested in talking about, as I'm currently more interested in the misunderstandings and mistakes that lead to someone who wants positivity in a fandom to become a poster child for anti-positivity.

Lilith Fairen's Dishonest Motives

Lilith is such a curious person, and I've tried to understand her mentality and see where she's coming from and where the misunderstanding starts. The main issue seems to be that she came into the fandom with dishonest motives from the start and has admitted to it. Her motivation for coming into the RWBY community was strictly to bully people whom she had ideological issues with, or people she deemed 'critics'. She was mocking people while having never watched the show herself, something that many people pointed out. She's claimed to have since watched RWBY and still finds no issue with it. I have no reason to disbelieve her and thus will not accuse her of still having never watched the show. But considering her starting point, either likes it more for ideological reasons or likes it to spite the haters. While her enjoyment of RWBY may be genuine, due to this history, it's very difficult for me to see her desire for this show as anything but sociologically political.

Lilith herself is a very caustic individual with a large chip on her shoulder. She has a preference for female-led stories, and ones that don't require the girls/women to have motivations surrounding men. While I think there's nothing wrong with that conceptually, it becomes a problem when viewing certain stories one has little preference for as problematic for not fitting into what she personally prefers. For the most part, women and girls are more motivated by social aspects of life, whether it be friendships or romance, and that's not inherently a bad thing, but Lilith has some issue with it due to said aforementioned chip labelled 'misogyny'.

She throws accusations of misogyny around like it's candy going out of style. Rarely does she back up her accusations with any factual evidence, randomly accusing this, that or the other of being misogynistic as though one should just accept or already knows it as fact when in reality is quite odd. Guns, for example, are considered masculine representations in her eyes, and not gender neutral items that can be used by either gender, and thus unsuitable weapons for magical girls, like in Madoka Magica, to use.

I've never seen Madoka. But I don't think I have to in order to see how silly this concept is. Girls can like guns and that doesn't make them less girly. I've never heard of guns as being a gendered item.

While I also don't necessarily disagree there's issues in anime and female representation, tropes and cliches can be overdone and become outright tired and boring, I believe Lilith takes it a step too far when she starts going after other people for their acceptance or ambivalence toward the things she's personally not a fan of. In attacking something like Madoka or other so-called 'deconstruction' anime, she infantilizes female characters by saying they shouldn't be subject to the same challenges and difficulties male characters often are, because they're women. She also claims anime shows girls as hysterical and overly emotional. As though teenagers - which most anime feature - is a foreign concept to her. Also stuff often gets turned up for drama. It's called fiction and literally all media around the world does this.

She's also a negative, salty, bitter person in general despite her preferences for happy, saccharine and light-hearted stories. It makes me wonder if she seeks out these fluffy tales because she has such a dark mentality that she desperately wants to get away from, but has the delusion that what she likes isn't respected for what it is, or liked. As though Sailor Moon or Pretty Cure aren't incredibly large, successful franchises in Japan. As though Sailor Moon isn't still beloved in the west. People in different countries can have different tastes and expectations outside of the niches of anime lovers who already understand and cherish these properties. That doesn't make them disrespected. Madoka was enjoyed by (some) people who had no concept of magical girls outside of cursory knowledge of watching Sailor Moon as kids and praised it as being the best despite likely never having watched before or since any magical girl anime. And these people are the ones she hates, but conflates all Madoka fans as these individuals.

Because of her perceived notion that magical girls are disrespected and dismissed due to misogyny, her attitude toward her original stories can also be quite cynical at times. Maybe if she took a step out of her self-loathing and victim mentality she would realize that a prospective reader seeing something like this on her blog might be a turn-off.

It's not like there are other factors that contribute to your story's relative obscurity like poor marketing on your part or the fact that superhero novels (which magical girls count as) in general are not very popular. Yes, even ones that feature male leads. You find more success with more visual mediums like comic books, movies and television. Girl. From one author to another... There's more to putting your work out there than simply writing and publishing it.

I'll get to Glints Saga another day, but from a cursory glance (at an old version, mind you) I can already tell that if you had gone to a writing meetup and got the story critiqued and they found little issue with it... you should find a better critique group because they were seriously doing you a disservice.

Gotta wonder if Faye said Monara's name often enough she'd eventually remember it. There's also a lot more wrong here, dialogue-wise and prose-wise. But that's more for a comparison between the old and new version if this section had been cleaned up.

But her bad attitude doesn't end there. She also has spite for anyone else that seems to have more success than her that she knows is 'touchable'. Instead of looking at a piece of inspirational messages by a writer trying to encourage others to keep going, she dismisses the critique because they're popular and it's so easy for them. Because it's not like an artist or writer could be popular because they've worked hard for it and were able to market themselves effectively in order to gain an audience and conduct themselves in a manner that wouldn't turn prospective fans away. No, it's just that they only got lucky. That somehow makes their altruistic encouragement meaningless.

Also notice how she never actually engages in arguments when people call her out on anything. Because she either knows she's full of crap or she wants to appear like a tough beotch on the internet and hide the fact that she has no counter argument and treats childishly typing out her laughter like some cartoon buttmonkey is a rebuttal instead of some obvious attempt at trying to hide her discomfort.

You know, completely missing the point of the original post that said if you create for the main purpose of getting recognition and acknowledgment, then you'll soon hate your writing and become miserable when your expectations aren't met. So the advice was to create regardless of whether or not you get any attention because you love to write, not because you feel owed anything for writing. But if she did that then she'd actually feel good about herself and her work and not bitterly lash out at everything and everyone. It's enough to make one wonder if part of the reason why she goes after critics is because she's jealous many of them do get attention and engagement and the main thing she manages to attract is people calling her out for her shitty behaviour.

By the way, both Lilith and Eren think that people going to their public blogs, where they post things that other people can see is somehow stalking. On a website where the whole point is that your posts will likely travel, especially if you talk about a franchise (even if you don't tag). Or that people responding to them at all is somehow stalking. They want to be able to say any kind of vile garbage about other fans they don't like and not have to face any repercussions for it.

One final thing because I know it's going to bug me...

"Critics" do not compare autistic people to robots. We compare ourselves to robots because when they aren't written to just be humans straight up are neurodivergent. They do not think like neurotypical people and in some ways even like humans do. That is the definition of neurodivergence - thinking and processing in a way that is outside the norm. Allistic people accept this and also headcanon many robots the same way in order to be inclusive. Lilith, if you aren't going to properly understand why people say things in relation to mental health and neurodivergence just stay out of it entirely.

Toxicity of FNDM, RWDE and Anti-RWDE

Here's where I'm going to get a little controversial, because members of all sides have done shitty things. Anti-RWDE is obvious, as they're just a salt tag dedicated to complaining about people who have negative opinions because how dare. But even the side I "agree" with more, I think have said some ridiculous and toxic things. Never mind anons here.

Accusations of "fascist", "white supremacist", "racist", "terf", "transphobic", "homophobic", "sexist", "ableist", basically anything under the sun that is a pejorative you can think of it was probably spewed out of the fingers of some member of RWDE or FNDM/Anti like a child throwing insults on the playground.

You have passions and societal issues that you want to address, and that's perfectly fine and understandable. But to accuse someone of being any flavour of 'ist' or 'phobe' over disagreements on whether a character in a cartoon does this action or interacts with that character in such and such a way muddies the waters, dilutes the impact the word has and even makes it easier for people to casually dismiss accusations and even real life and serious instances of these things due to how low the bar has been set for being labelled as such. You aren't engaging honestly anymore, you're trying to shut someone down by calling them names. Attacking someone or a work for miniscule things they do or say that you interpret as being bad without considering that there might in fact be a different reason why they said that thing is dishonest and harmful.

Hey Lilith, you wanna, maybe, define what an alt-righter is to you? Or are you just going to call out anyone who is right-of-far-left an "alt-righter" so that you can feel good and justified for shitting on someone else for literally no reason other than you had a temper tantrum at the concept that someone is unsatisfied with a cartoon? It's not like you have any evidence that Celtic is an alt-righter or anything you just made that shit up.

I've seen both sides do this, and I'm not calling out specific individuals because I've seen many act this way.

There are even certain people within the fandom who say it's your fault that you're upset with the show because you dared to have expectations that the show didn't meet. As though this is somehow a gotcha, that it's somehow wrong of you to have desires to see something you think is being presented in the show, only for it to fall flat with something you don't think is good in its place. You're a bad person for having an opinion that isn't positive about the cartoon. The show has either somehow done the impossible and achieved perfection or there is no amount of problems with the writing or anything else that can justify you expressing your opinion about it. It's best for you to shut your mouth because it personally inconveniences them.

It's gotten to the point where it's almost impossible to have certain discussions without devolving into a slobbering screaming match, because even the characters aren't saved from the pejoratives and some even attach characters and liking certain characters to certain mentalities and mindsets. If you dare like the wrong character you will be seen as x toxic thing. If you want to discuss a certain character you'll be dismissed as y type of toxic person. You also better watch how you dress your characters in redesigns or else you're z type of bad people because somewhere out there someone may or may not make a connection to a real life group you may or may not have taken a couple of design elements from and that is evil because there are 100728 different negative ways you can portray a marginalized group to the point that it would probably be better to forget those groups exist at all and only keep your fantasy series based on the standard big cultures and that's somehow more progressive despite also being a problem. Always watch your step. Always be ready to be seen as a monster, or fight a monster. Absolute lunacy.

On top of that, it makes you no better than the people you criticize. How hypocritical to call someone out for shitty behaviour, complaining about toxicity in the fandom and turn around and do shitty behaviour yourself.

Don't think I didn't notice when Judgmental Critter calls out Lilith for calling her misogynist for criticizing RWBY, saying that she just hates women, then turns around and casually accuses people who criticize High Guardian Spice (or some things about RWBY) for the exact same thing with no basis. I love Critter's sass, opinions, views and her work in general, become one of my favourite youtubers even. I can't wait for when my boyfriend shows me Madoka so I can watch her magical girl series and other videos. But I don't fail to notice when she blanket statements groups of people because she doesn't/won't understand their arguments.

Honestly there are many examples like this but I wanted to highlight an example from each "side" to emphasize my point and to show that I'm not just pointing to any particular side as being the problematic one. I think the worst example of toxicity has to be in the tags of this one post I found on tumblr ranting about hbomberguy's video. It's actually disturbing.

I was so flabbergasted by the idea that someone could actually say this, not because they disliked what was said, but because a video that didn't praise RWBY existed at all.

Backtracking a little, I wanted to talk about how quick people are to make connections and accuse others in the fandom of being something terrible.

We are pattern-seeking creatures and our pattern recognition is exceptional. But it also produces false positives in the pareidolia effect, the phenomenon where you see things that aren't actually there. The most benign and silly of the pareidolia effect is 'faces in places' and likewise, you can see patterns of behaviour, thought processes and ideologies in conversations out of context to the wider behaviour of the person. This is why I'd studied up on Lilith and Eren before writing this to make sure that there was a noticeable, repeated pattern of behaviour before writing all of this up. Lilith, Eren, and their ilk also suffer from this when it comes to criticism of rewrites that they have particular issues with, and I'll talk more about this in the next section.

There's an example of a man whom I'd had an argument with in a server I moderate for. I hadn't meant to get into an argument with him, more genuinely wanting to get his thoughts on a rewrite-heavy AU-turned-original-story idea of my own, as someone who liked RWBY. I thought I could have a fun, creative conversation, getting insight into how I did handling the characters in an AU setting and what I could do to expand on my interpretations. I find the idea of setting characters in different scenarios while still maintaining their personalities a fun exercise. Instead I was met with defensive vitriol.

I wanted the focus to be friendship between the girls rather than a mishmash of family and romance, which he hated. When asked why, it was because I said I didn't like feeling as though I was being lied to with the premise of the story, which was meant to be about four girls who became friends, and I felt it personally didn't satisfy me in that department. Then we got off on a long argument about lying to your audience, which eventually revealed a sort of sad element to the guy that I was talking to: that basically he felt that he had no right to be upset over anything that happened to him. If he was lied to, he shouldn't be upset at it. Not that he didn't want to be upset, but that he felt he couldn't, and eventually admitted to a deeper underlying issue with self confidence and worth he struggled with that seemed to manifest in being upset when anyone voiced dissenting and negative opinions.

While I think looking on the bright side is all well and good, there's a limit my dude, and trying to explain to him why I felt being lied to was a negative thing that I had the right to be unhappy about was such a foreign concept to him due to not feeling like he should ever be upset when people treat him poorly. Then he accused me of disliking him for liking a show I disliked. The whole exchange left me spiraling

But that interaction was telling, and while I can't apply that to all the members of FNDM who feel threatened by criticism and dissent, eyes can be opened about possibilities into the reasons why they find critical engagement so offensive. On some level, at least for some, it might feel like they get personally attacked because the show they love is picked apart, and in turn, picking them apart. RWBY is fundamental to who they are as people, and if you attack it in any way, you are threatening them, their worth and self-esteem.

What is 'Hate'?

Hate is a strong word, and one that, like all the above pejoratives, is used far too liberally. It's a strong negative emotion of loathing and disgust, and if kept too long can cause negative effects on one's mind and body. It takes some amount of derangement, I feel, to legitimately hate something passionately for a long period of time. Hate is usually such a strong emotion that it is temporary and fades quickly.

There were a lot of people who hated Twilight when it first came out. Those people quickly faded away after their rage subsided and the main people who stuck around on the Twilight 'hate train' were people who disliked it, but thought it was fun to mock rather than outright hate. It was silly, after all! Who wouldn't love making fun of something ridiculous and harmful and boring and dumb. Many critics of Twilight even pointed out aspects of what they liked in the book series, namely the side characters of the latter books. The vampires and werewolves helping the Cullens and the inter-species political struggles were more fascinating and interesting than the teen melodrama forced love triangle going on between Bella, Edward and Jacob. There were many more still who enjoyed Twilight knowing full well how trash it was, acknowledging it for its camp and bad writing but enjoying it for being bad.

Twilight is still criticized to this day, broken down and dissected to see what makes it tick, and why it ended up being as bad as it was. But it's not for hate for the most part, though there is dislike. But mostly if you're going to deep dive, pick apart or rewrite beyond an anger-filled review, that takes a certain level of passion for what you're doing. You see the good inside it and want it to be better. If you're going off youtuber's opinions you do have to be mindful that some of them play up their emotions for entertainment. Youtubers are entertainers, after all, and while those feelings might be genuine, there will be elements of hamming it up. Even positive youtubers do this and there's nothing wrong with that.

It's the same with RWBY and a lot of RWBY criticism. Most people who genuinely hate the show have moved on to bigger and better things. Those who stuck around either do so because they genuinely love it, or hope that it will get better, or at the very least need to see it to the end because it's been a part of their lives for so long.

Hate, ultimately, is a negative experience that can't birth anything creative. Hate does nothing but tear, break down and destroy. It's tearing down someone else directly to fill a void, or to make yourself feel better.

Hate, ultimately, is what many in the Anti-RWDE does to the part of the FNDM they don't like.

Fixing RWBY

Now comes the lengthy part of my post! Fixing RWBY or FRWBY is a project started by Raymond McNeil, as most people likely know, and started as a passion project due to his love for RWBY and his dissatisfaction with elements of how RWBY has been handled. If anyone says that he hates the show, you know that it's in bad faith and they haven't watched his content. He's said multiple times how much he loves the show, he's just frustrated it doesn't live up to the potential he thinks it has.

This section is voicing my rebuttals to larger criticisms of the show by people who admit they don't properly watch and engage with the project and purposefully look for things to pick apart, regardless of if it's true. While there are legitimate criticisms to be had about the project, they are harder to come by as they get drowned out by a flooding of this low brow shit flinging.

Some people think being dissatisfied is wrong, as I've previously mentioned

They, for some reason, think that having expectations for a show is invalid. I've already discussed how terrible that mindset is. But the main recurring criticisms of Fixing RWBY are mainly perpetuated by Eren and Lilith and a handful of their friends, which get spread around to others who think like them. We know Lilith is dishonest because she, by her own admission, skims his content and doesn't properly evaluate it, looking for things to take out of context or at face value to shit on. EngineGear at least has the decency to honestly summarize without comment. So let's go through some of their criticisms, shall we?

Special mention goes out to EngineGear, who had been one of the people throwing around the idea that Raymond kept Fixing RWBY behind a paywall simply because, as a youtuber, he had his discord as a patreon reward. When I calmly explained why his discord had nothing to do with FRWBY, and how his criticism cannot be put against Raymond without also demonizing non-critic youtubers and other artists who get paid for their fan content, he deleted the reddit post from his little saltmine, r/RWBYCynics. I appreciate his honesty in recognizing his mistake and deleting the post.

We're certainly off to a start here. The implication of this post is implying that Celtic Phoenix, and to a larger part his volunteer team - the Sketchy Huntsman - are racist.

Okay, so, there is practically no information about Oscar in terms of background or creation information to confirm anything other than what fairy tale character they could graft onto him. Who knows, there might be some obscure podcast or interview or tweet or however many different methods the writers have used to supplement their poor writing skills. I'm not about to go on a wild goose chase for something that might not even exist. His concept art says he has sunburnt skin. That makes sense, he's a farmer. He's out in the sun all day. So it stands to reason he has a farmer's tan. Even if he doesn't, the guy has my skin tone and I'm not what you would call non-European in origin.

Let's nevermind for a moment that this is incredibly American-centric thinking. This is an ancient relic of the past where we divided ourselves up into Reds, Whites, Blacks, and Yellows (... huh. I... didn't mean to sort them like that;; ) and sometimes Browns. It still has its uses in the modern day, and of course there is just acknowledgment of visual differences, but it should also be acknowledged that the terms are arbitrary descriptors of shades of the same colour (brown). All humans regardless of how much melanin is in your skin, is a shade of brown. Skin can have an underside of red, blue, green, yellow and determine whether their skin looks cold or warm. Europeans can naturally get pretty dark, being born with natural olive skin and there are non-Europeans who can be born with light skin. Europeans (or descent) can run between Type I-IV and non-Europeans can range from Type III-VI. What's more, we don't know anything about the migratory history of Remnant or whether skin types are random like faunus apparently are.

The main RWBY characters have ridiculously translucent, even glowing skin lighter than Type I that no actual human being would have. Blake and Weiss are beyond even anime pale, so someone looks at a character who has realistically coloured 'white' skin and all of a sudden they're poc. There's no problems with headcanoning that. But that's what it is. Your headcanon. And you're accusing Raymond of racism for getting rid of a character you headcanon as being poc. The same goes for Lionheart, who looks to have an (albeit sickly) ashy grey skin tone. Not dark enough to definitively be poc. It's a headcanon that you can choose to have, but should not weaponize to vilify someone you disagree with.

This is gonna be a general onsen post, one that is going to have some overlap with the faunus heat cycles section below. Mistral is meant to have vague connections to Asian culture. Onsen, or bathhouses/hot springs, are a very important part of Asian culture. Not only that, but they were and are also important to the Ancient Greeks, Ancient Romans, Turkish, and many other societies as places of community, healing and relaxation.

From a meta standpoint, an onsen episode, like a beach episode, is easy on the overworked animators to create, and thus become a staple of anime. But they aren't used purely for fanservice.

Fruits Basket used the onsen episode as another way for Momiji to pay back Tohru for the Valentines chocolates, further establishing his bond with her, for the characters in general to bond, another way for Tohru to show how much she thinks of her mother in everything that she does, and as foreshadowing to Ritsu's arrival by meeting his mother, who owned the facility. Ritsu's mother is one of the few zodiac parents who has a good relationship with their child and was able to give Tohru some insight into the family. Plus, another moment of Yuki showing his affection for Tohru and growing desires to see her as happy as she made him.

Outlaw Star's onsen episode is very raunchy to the point where American syndication cut the episode entirely from television. And because of that the American audiences missed out on an incredibly important plot detail. The episode was heavy in many establishing things, generally being wacky, but also an important, unskippable element to the story.

Blue Seed is an anime that I never got to watch, though my old video store had the sequel OVA Blue Seed 2, which featured three episodes. One of those episodes featured an onsen, and a bomb rigged to explode once the water level got too high or low or the timer ran out. It was a thrilling episode featuring a tense plot and showed the cultural differences between the characters and their one (American) gaijin friend.

There are other examples of onsen episodes in anime that aren't just for fanservice, so to suggest that they only exist in this way is absurd. The female members of the Sketchy Huntsmen, particularly the Asian members advocated hard for this scene, practically twisting Raymond's arm to put it in because it was thematically important, and culturally, for the character moments the cast (especially Weiss and Yang) would go through. By ignoring all of the context to what went on in this scene to say it was purely for Raymond to be gross is to wave away the cultural significance of onsen to Asian culture as being reduced to nothing more than stripteases and ignore when characters do have important moments between one another.

Roman also didn't say anything about Weiss being a man. He said she was flat-chested. He thought Ren was a woman because he was beautiful and had a gentle, feminine face and thin physique and justified it by talking about how women are varied. The joke is making fun of Roman for being an unobservant ass, not at Ren for being feminine and certainly not at Weiss. How badly did you not pay attention to this scene to get so offended that you had to make it about you and your expectation to be slighted. Again, pareidolia. Trans people, rest easy. Not every joke involving gender and being seen as the opposite gender is about you specifically or meant to slight you specifically. And I mean this genuinely. If you think that it is, kindly take a chill pill and reduce your ego before you hurt yourself. Your blood pressure will thank you.

Does this screenshot of a Rated T game upset you?

Faunus heat cycles were treated more or less the same as the onsen scene. Subverting the expectation that this sexual concept can only be used for cheap hentai games and anime. Realistically any trope or concept can be used in a more serious story setting, including sexual concepts like heat cycles. There’s no rules that just because something is used often as one thing that it cannot be used serve a different purpose. That’s the beauty of writing. In this case, Raymond used the heat cycles as one of many minuscule differences between the species to further exacerbate racial tensions and drive xenophobia, which would in turn affect the world on a global scale. Wow that kinda sounds like stuff that happens in real life! What a concept!

To those of you weirdos that think heat cycles are gross still, chew on this: Real life humans have evolved the ability to have sex and get pregnant 365 days of the year. If you think about it, our heat cycles never turn off. And the reason why we have periods is presumed to make sure that if we do get pregnant at any time we can attempt to abort a dead foetus before it potentially goes septic and kills us. Fascinating stuff, but that’s not all. Humans might actually have a heat cycle on top of that after all. There are days during the reproductive cycle where women are more receptive to the idea of sex, and finds normally unpleasant bodily odours more pleasant and men are attracted to the odours of women during this time.

Basically this means that women have periods of subtle extra heat that make them more receptive to sex on top of the fact that humans are basically horny all the time. This is something that is a biological fact within human beings and it can influence society of a variety of ways in the wider context of the world, so why is it so far-fetched and disgusting that a faunus would have a more non-primate mammalian estrus?

Now this is a new one. Ilia did turn away from her destructive spiral. Just like in real life that doesn't mean you get off scot free. She got a reduced sentence and some privileges for her help. She’s being rewarded by getting to go out and have fun at the festival and she said she’d rather be in the (presumably) solitude of a jail cell than have to deal with Sun (and his loud, boisterous energy). What’s offensive about that? Also hmm... 3 poc faunus. Well, faunus are all Remnant's version of poc so you can't mean them specifically do you mean... these three?

Those two on the right are looking pretty damn pale to be poc could it be that you're lying, Eren? And maybe that even if it weren't the case it wouldn't matter because it's a legitimate police technique at the very least seen in procedurals on television and are used regardless of the suspects' skin colour? You trying to slither the idea that Raymond is racist because he dares to have something at all happen to a non-white character is rather slimy.

A lot to go over here, so let's get started shall we? First of all, it absolutely tickles me that changing Shay D. Mann into Shiloh would cause Eren to go into such a big tizzy. Like, it's such a small thing and yet it's one of the main complaints they had about V5, which in my opinion means that Raymond was doing something right. Apparently upgrading a character from a tertiary to a secondary position if there's a need for it is blasphemy.

Okay, so let's go over the concept of character hierarchies. Primary Characters (which there is 8), secondary characters (which there are at least 15), and tertiary characters, which outnumber the stars. Honestly these could be broken down further into Main Characters (Ruby, Weiss, Jaune, etc), Primary characters (Nora, Qrow, Oscar, etc), Secondary characters (Raven, Ironwood, Ace-Ops, etc), Tertiary characters (Whitely, Willow, etc) and then Quaternary characters (Henry Marigold, Dust Shop Guy, Background people).

A quaternary character being upgraded to a tertiary character... what a terrible concept. I also don't understand this predilection for playing up the severity of Shay's actions, acting as though he's straight up assaulted her. He was drunk and tried to flirt. When she ignored it, he tried touching her hair. I've had a more eventful night in real life at a bar dealing with drunk guys who didn't mean any harm and one of them stuck his fingers in my mouth (I had on vampire fangs and that blew his drunk mind). He returns, bruised from his punch and worse for the wear with friends and Yang makes him lead her to camp.

He's not a good guy, obviously, and Shiloh is still not a good guy. But he's more human. He has people he cares about and his own set of morals, even if they may be looser than our protagonist's. If you don't think terrible people can't also have people they care about, I don't know what to say. You're mad because a criminal character, along with the rest of his tribe, got nuance beyond 'bandit'. I do not see the problem.

Shiloh is also not married to Raven, Eren. You do know that people can have children out of wedlock, right?

Gotta ask how Vernal was ruined in FRWBY. He says a lot of basically nothing and doesn't explain himself, acting as though his incoherent rambles are meant to be enough.

Oh yeah, Vernal was such a unique character all right with how... there she was. Existing. I'm supposed to be impressed? Ohhh. Ahhh. Her hair is very pixie cut. Such non-feminine (except it totally is Eren you silly), much discount bargain bin Yang outfit. It's not like Raven isn't literally a palette swap of Yang anyway so I don't know why you clowns complain about Lily, who has different features than both her mother and Yang while still being unique and yet sleep on this.

Raven also didn't dismiss Vernal's death in FRWBY. She refused to outwardly express her grief or accept that her poor actions got her daughter killed. That whole scene with her trying to destroy and then hide the relic was her focusing her feelings because she's not a very mature person. Sorry, that bit of character writing might be a bit subtle for those who are used to blunt-force character writing so it's understandable if you don't get it.

Now this is a weird claim. Let's look at it shall we? Zooming in for the visually impaired on Ruby's face, we indeed do see her looking at Roman and she has a very light amount of colour on her. There's also a white shine that was popular about 7 years ago with a lot of artists. You know, the artists that would put what I like to call blushies/sunburns on cheeks, shoulders, breasts and knees all had this style of redness for parts of the body that are naturally darker in places or have redness. Though with some artists the breasts were a weird one, I've always thought. It's not a style I go for in my own work, but I'm not going to care if that's what an artist likes to do.

Also most blushes, even ones by the artist herself go over the nose to differentiate between a blush and healthy cheeks.

But they claim that Roman doesn't have the blushies so the idea that this artist puts them on everything is false! So let's have a look at the Clockwork Reject.

Well, how can you tell he has no blushies when his hair is covering his face?

Could it be...?

Darker discolouration right beneath his eye that lightens up by his nose? It's almost like... a blushie hidden in shadow!

That settles it for anyone still furiously grasping at straws, desperately looking for any tiny little thing they can twist and warp into being something problematic.

Also one final point that these people are implying that Ruby is being shipped with either Roman or Ozpin. As far as I'm aware RubyxOzpin is kind of a popular ship (heck... RubyxOzpinxRoman was featured in a recent fic we read in the Tundra). It's not Rosegarden or Whiterose, but it's still fairly widespread. Why you gotta ship-shame?

So there's this idea going around that rewrites always sideline the heroines of the story (as though canon RWBY doesn't do that already). I can't speak for all rewrites, because I don't follow any except for FRWBY and I'm starting to get into Remnants. So for all I know every single other rewrite out there features Jaune or some other male character as the protagonists instead of RWBY.

Roman effectively replaces Oscar in FRWBY. A criminal who has found himself in unusual circumstances and now has to work with his former adversaries to complete a common goal.

How does this lead to Roman taking centre stage? Beats me. The fact that he... technically does things, unlike Oscar, I guess.

Now, I happen to like Oscar. I think he's a cute little muffin that wound up in a bad situation. But I also don't deny that he's been squandered as a character and as much as I've given Raymond shit for removing Oscar from his place in the plot, I won't deny that at least he's done something with the character he's put in farmboy's place.

Also Ruby being "reduced" to Roman's sidekick is very interesting phrasing by Lilith here. She tries very hard to manipulate language to give the most uncharitable interpretations as possible. The context for the scene is that the characters are being proactive in searching for leads and Roman is going to go check with his sources and connections in Mistral. Ruby goes with him to keep an eye on him.

She's his handler, not his sidekick. There's a difference.

You... ever get the feeling that Eren doesn't actually understand RWBY or it's characters?

Like... I think Ozpin did nothing wrong in V6. Jinn had no right to air out his dirty laundry like that just to show that Salem couldn't be killed. But while he may be supportive, I don't know if necessarily I would call him kind. In some aspects, sure. But Ozpin is meant to be a calculating character, striving to do what he can to hold back Salem at all costs. He is meant to be a morally grey character, not quite as good of a character as Dumbledore, but he does have that theme of leading pigs to the slaughter. Except these 'pigs' signed up for this job and know how dangerous it is unlike Harry until the end so the analogy doesn't quite work for Ozpin. (By the way, notice his contradiction there by saying Dumbledore is made morally grey by making him evil. Those are two distinct concepts, Eren. Maybe you should look up what morally grey is.) But the terrible way the characters treat him and Oscar's body afterwards makes many of us more sympathetic to him than to be against him. He's morally grey, but we don't mind it, and view him as being someone who is still ultimately good.

"They removed another poc character"

Sweetheart... Gretchen has to actually be a character. She's just a name said on the lips of a couple of characters. We don't even get to see anything of her. Summer got the same treatment, but at least she got a gravestone and characters sort of talked about how great she was, attempting to characterize her post mortem but doing it poorly. Eventually she got a cheap palette swap model. We at least were interested in Summer and who she was and how she disappeared even if we might have only cared because Ruby did and she's the main protagonist. Is anyone interested in Gretchen? And I mean truly, genuinely interested in Gretchen to the same degree that we are interested in Ruby? What about Raven? May Marigold? Even Summer? Gretchen is a fridged tool who only exists as justification for Hazel to be a relatively nice guy but still align himself with the villains. She is not, in and of herself, a character. At least with Magnus, we see the shell that Osma resides in and it hits us that this used to be a person. A person who had family who loved him and miss him and that is why Hazel is here. Do we know anything about the body in canon other than he'd once been a farmer?

The concept that an organization has to be single minded in a goal, no matter what it is, or else it is no longer that thing, is funny to me.

No, Eren. The White Fang is still a faunus rights group in FRWBY. It's just that there are people within the organization who have very strong opinions about how to go about achieving their goals and don't mind stepping over their fellows to get to that goal. That's what we call politics.

I don't even know why this is an issue when the White Fang and the racism plotline were not well done in RWBY and that is an undisputed fact that M&K admitted to. There is nothing wrong with trying to bandage that up and adding human elements to behind the scenes stuff - things that M&K themselves tried to implement but were just too inexperienced as writers to be able to pull off. It really shouldn't be that controversial to say that they reached beyond their means with what they wanted to do with RWBY, which is partially why it's such a mess. And I want to emphasize that I don't think they're incapable of pulling it off just because of the colour of their skin. They didn't do their proper research or think about a complicated topic well enough and rushed through it because they didn't know what they were doing as writers. They also admitted to not knowing what they were doing in the writing department for the first several years of the show so it shouldn't be controversial to criticize them as inexperienced writers pushing out a subpar written product.

While we're on the subject...

In a big ol' rant titled "The Problems with Fixing RWBY" you would think there would be a lot more pointing out the problems with FRWBY and not... pointing out the differences between FRWBY and canon. There's no explanation for why these things are an issue. He just presents these as though they speak for themselves, but they don't. And most of his points are like this, by the way. I could be lazy and answer 'why is this a problem?' to most of them. But I'll do the work for Eren since he's so bad at argumentation.

I'm going to assume here that Eren is trying in a very roundabout and sloppy way to accuse Raymond of saying 'the N word' without actually saying it. One of the fans of his project had been the one to suggest 'Critter' as a slur for the faunus, and due to the similarities between the two words, Raymond thought it would be a clear parallel as being the harshest, dirtiest, derogatory term in his version.

Jockey makes sense as a mocking, derogatory euphemism for someone who is for faunus rights and is faunus friendly as someone who might not themselves be. We know what a jockey is so the imagery that invokes speaks for itself. That's how language works and we have non-offensive examples of it in real life of 'white whale' and 'foxy' and 'bought the farm'.

As for the claim that Raymond said there's no racism in America, that's quite the accusation. You better damn well have a link to a sound clip that isn't out of context or else it's best to just forget about the idea of that. Saying that as a throwaway statement to just hang there without any evidence to back it up leads to speculation and witchhunting. I strongly oppose anyone, even you, being accused of anything of the sort without strong evidence to justify it. Innocent until proven guilty.

Moving on to Cardin and Velvet. Again, I don't see what the issue is. As someone who partook in some Dramonie back in the HP days, I enjoy a good story about a racist getting humbled and humiliated by the fact that he falls in love with someone he considers beneath him. Though that isn't the case with Cardin and Velvet.

Cardin's whole arc is that he was a racist and held certain viewpoints and beliefs. Being forced to work with Velvet and spend time with her on a school project, and the lack of evidence to support his biases led Cardin to begrudgingly break out of his racist mindset and come to respect Velvet as a person, and eventually a friend. By the events of the Fall of Beacon, Cardin is no longer racist for the most part and views Velvet as an ally and companion.

Starting from that point, it's no wonder we can see these two growing close and eventually getting into a relationship. It's all in how the ship is handled, not the ship itself. However, it's not confirmed they'll even get together in the first place. Raymond has only talked about his approval of the idea.

If I can go of on a slight tangent for a moment... like, holy shit, Eren really has it out for the concept of smaller bit characters getting any kind of development. As though the very idea of characters being more than cardboard cutouts is a grievous sin. He claims that small bit characters getting any time to flourish at all takes time away from the main cast.

That isn't the problem, nor is that the ultimate problem with canon RWBY. (Like it's so very transparent what these people are trying to do is to criticize Critic Rewrites by saying the exact same things the critics say about RWBY. But the thing is that criticisms of both aren't 1-1 and so instead of engaging with the rewrites in good faith, they just regurgitate argumentative points of critics without understanding why we make these criticisms in the first place as a sort of 'gotcha' to try and shame critics into silence. A sort of 'how do YOU like it' thing. Nevermind the fact that most creators don't read the majority of the criticisms they get online and will never see it and the complaints are mostly for other fans to consume and agree or disagree with. Nevermind that critics are just fans with as much power and influence over the show as everyone else - which is none.

They don't want to see critics as fans because that means they can't build a boogeyman for themselves. It's a bullying tactic, straight up.)

The problem with RWBY's character bloat was that the main girls weren't being handled properly in the first place. People thought that if there were less characters to juggle, then there would be more time to focus on the characters that mattered. But I don't think that would solve the problem, ultimately. We've seen when they cut the cast and they still struggle with properly implementing character stuff. It gets better, for sure, but the problems persist.

Finding a balance between proper arcs for your main cast while sprinkling in quality of life things for your other characters is the goal. Not focusing on your characters doing basically nothing other than having technical screen time and bloating the rest of the time with splotches of cardboard zooming past.

A lot of people are interested in the side characters, Eren. It shouldn't be an issue for them to get a little attention on the side as a treat to the main plot and that should be the goal for RWBY.

The final point to touch on is the injuries the characters sustain. All I can say is... why is this a 'problem'? Yang lost her arm in canon. The presumption was the Fall of Beacon was a situation that was more than the students in training could handle, and many people (presumably) got injured or killed. But all of that is off screen and swept under the rug and forgotten about. It's hard to take seriously as something that is supposed to be the greatest challenge the students ever faced, even more than they can handle when we see no one struggling, no one getting their aura broken and having to fight differently, getting hurt or anything. All of that storytelling happens off screen and that is bad writing. Telling us people got hurt instead of showing us is bad writing. So again, I ask, if it's okay for characters like Yang to get injured, why is it a problem for Velvet, Neptune and Cardin who had been more prominent characters in Fixing?

Eren didn't understand the concept of volunteer work and how that differentiated between being exploited. Many of the artists came out in defense of Raymond on this, so thankfully, I don't think this argument is used anymore. From the look of it, this argument was the only time people who make these arguments tried to be nice to the artists. Now they're just fellow 'haters' who Raymond collected like Pokemon cards to work on his project. And I'd show a screenshot of calling the artists haters, but honestly I'm running low on my picture limit. You'd think there wouldn't be so many 'haters' but when anyone who voices any dissent toward the show can be considered a 'hater', they exist in abundance. The victim mentality knows no limits.

There were other criticisms about art, legitimate ones, and they were sorted out.

"The entire Brunswick Arc ... is now devoted to Roman."

Did Raymond say that? Or are you just pulling shit out of your ass? I've noticed a lot of people make baseless assumptions like this. Like how someone thinks Emerald is going to be killed by Ironwood when FRWBY V8 rolls around. Which is absolutely stupid. You guys comprehend that the point of the project is to stick as close to canon as he can, correct? That is a thing that can be understood by your goopy goblin brains? My goopy goblin brain can get that, so if not, what's your excuse?

Like yes, things are going to be different from canon. But they're not going into wild AU territory.

Changing Ozpin's host to Roman doesn't affect the trajectory of the story because Oscar was a thing in canon. Emerald isn't going to be killed in FRWBY because Emerald is going to be a thing moving forward that he needs to account for. Understood? Okay good.

As for the Brunswick arc, yes, a lot of it probably will focus on Roman. But that doesn't mean he's going to lean RNJRWBY against a wall to collect dust. This is a leap of logic that I can't comprehend, it's as if Eren thinks that scenes and scenarios that last an entire episode can only exist for one character. Maybe that's because that's what canon does.

I already actually ranted about Eren's apparent dislike of the side characters. So I presume that one of his so-called complaints that he says he does have about RWBY, but from my recollection he's never talked about because that is VERBOTEN, is the fact that RWBY has character bloat.

I think this is all that I really wanted to address, so I'll close this out on the, frankly nothingburger criticism that is 'How dare you title your project a thing I don't approve of'.

Some people like to argue that Raymond wouldn't get hate if he just titled it differently. But I hope that I showed you that with how they attack any and all rewrites, including SYTOkun's RWBY Remnants and other, usually unnamed, "Jaune Main" rewrites, that argument holds no water. These people dislike the concept of rewrites entirely and think it's okay to harass and criticize the work not based on how it functions, but for the fact that it exists at all. Ultimately the message is that this fan content is not Approved to be within their holy space.

They call Raymond arrogant for thinking he' better than other fallible human beings simply because they happen to hold jobs working at a company and Raymond does not. As though that is supposed to magically make them better as writers. Fact of the matter is, there are plenty of writers out there who are likely better than MKEK, and their personal credentials of whether or not they worked for Big Company XYZ doesn't matter. At the end of the day, this is opinion. Opinion that you're free to disagree with and it doesn't make anyone arrogant to think their skills are better. He put his money where his mouth is. But also no one is holding a gun to your head to consume fan content that you aren't interested in. If you feel that you have to because it appears on your dash and that just makes you the big mads, then maybe turn off your screen for a while. Read a book. Go for a swim (or don't if you're in the Northern Hemisphere right now it's December. Go skiing). Do something.

Its not arrogant of Raymond to call his work Fixing RWBY. Its merely a statement of intent with the work. If you have a problem with that then you are saying that is a problem with you. No work is perfect, no work is untouchable. There is always going to be something wrong with it and someone will always be unsatisfied and wish something would be different. That is the value we have as individual people.

Ultimately I am not saying they cannot dislike FRWBY. The work can be criticized. But it does need to actually be engaged with properly in order to be criticized. Critics engage with RWBY, but we aren't afforded the same courtesy.

It says a lot about a person who tries to control another fan into how to think, act, speak or consume content within a fandom space. If you want positive content in the fandom, then don't go after other fans with vitriol, and if you have issue with something they create, then look at it from a constructive standpoint and critique it with the desire for it to get changed. If an artist does not accept every single criticism, that is something you have to get over. They have the ultimate decision in the end.

I'm an old. I'm tired. I've said my piece. Thank you for reading my novella-length complaint and goodnight.

#rwby #rwde #lilithfairen #fixing rwby #canonseeker #frwby #fuck it #really long post #long long maaaaaan #terminal can't fucking read disease #celtic phoenix #sytokun #judgmental critter #I'm on a fucking rampage tonight holy shit #i won't hesitate bitch #gonna watch a lot of critters videos after this as apology for that small callout #I've been working on this for 4 days #help #final word count 10700+

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the-takosader · 3 days ago

Text

While we're in the prep phase for the Crusader...

...let's go through the Ideas Archive, explore the stuff that's shelved, canned or otherwise not happening right now. This'll be the new pinned post, so I'll use this as a place to put everything I'm currently working on, and what I might do at some point.

Current:

The Crusader, a mix of Burns Double Six, PRS CE24 and Rickenbacker 4001, combined with influences from Hamer, Gibson and Fender. Note: this build is currently in the wood prep phase (stripping pieces of mahogany and sapele door for use in the guitar body and neck) as of 21/11/2024, and will likely take a year at my current progression rate.

Shelved:

Fender Marauder Build (yes, I still want to do this. The Crusader evolved from this, so it's still on the cards)

Casino Humbucker Mod

G6122 Country Gentleman '62 Style

Crest Replica (NEW!)

Telecaster Bass VI (kit body, custom neck)

Lennon Les Paul Jr. Replica (kitbash)

Höfner Violin Bass from scratch

Canned:

Lerxst 355 Replica

Acoustic Rickenbacker 360/12C63

Telecaster-Shaped Red Special (TSRS)

Plausible:

A non-specific doubleneck.

Resonator acoustic (kit build)

Completed:

Fretless Stratocaster

Cherry XII/Tele-Shaped Rickenbacker (TSR)

So, let's review top to bottom.

The Crusader:

I don't need to explain this much, I've already made a long-ass post about this. As said above, it's a mix of a Burns Double Six, PRS CE24 and Rickenbacker 4001 combined with influences from Hamer, Gibson and Fender.

The design is set in stone, aside from the exaggeration of the upper horn. You'd understand if there was a picture around here of the Burns. In the meantime, I'll get on with describing the others.

Fender Marauder Build:

Not the wackiest idea here, not by a long shot. As previously described, the Marauder is the culmination of Fender's offset guitars, featuring the switching of a Jaguar, the lead-rhythm circuit of a Jazzmaster, parts of the trem system of a Mustang, modified to fit with the pickguard and general aesthetics of a Jag. It even gave the Starcaster, the only semi-hollow by my reckoning that Fender still produces, it's headstock, something Fender afficionados call the "running shoe", at least, that's what my aunt calls it. Considering the contour gets filled in by paint, it's not hard to see her point.

The issue with doing this one is that barely anyone does Marauder vibrato plates. And to do this from scratch? Yeah, I need to find someone who would do the specific metal pieces I'd need, that being the Jag-style metal plate for the lead-rhythm circuit, the switch plate for the pickup switches, the extra long control plate, and that Marauder vibrato plate.

Yeah, if I ever find somewhere that does metal parts out of aluminium or something, I'm gonna get them to do the metal parts of this. Next item on the list!

Casino Humbucker Mod:

This one should be self-explanatory - take an Epiphone Casino, stick some P90-sized humbuckers in there. The only caveat is that they have to be hidden and mounted via dogear P90 covers, which isn't too much of an ask; this guy in Manchester does custom pickups, even hand-winds them. Certainly sounds appealing, may go for those. Next one!

G6122 Country Gentleman:

Yeah, uh... this one's shelved with good reason.

For context, the G6122, more commonly known as the Country Gentleman, is one of Gretsch's most famous guitar models, up there with the Duo-Jet, the Tennessean (now Tennessee Rose) and the one that Malcolm Young gutted and modded for his purposes as the rhythm guitarist of AC/DC. Gretsch list it as the "Jet" but I have no clue if that's a different model to the Duo-Jet or it's a variation, or whatever.

My aim with this would be to make as accurate a recreation of the Country Gent as I could with the documentation and information present on the internet. That means making it with 3-ply maple veneer top, back and sides, utilisng the thumbnail inlays on an ebony fingerboard, slotted for 24.6" (24.75" if you measure from the middle of the nut), with the same style of tuner, the little plaque on the headstock, the vinyl/leather pad on the back of the body covering a backplate access hatch, and all around trying to recreate this mad thing.

The only downside is the cost, because I'd need to source TV Jones Filter'Trons (not hard), maple veneer (harder), Grover Imperials or lookalikes (very hard!), and figure out how to make a veneer press, and how to shape the slightly arched top and back in a 3-ply veneer, not to mention the Bigsby, all the spare parts, the flip-up foam mutes that Jimmie Webster came up with (and also patented).

In short, the entire project is shelved. For the foreseeable future, until I can source all this stuff myself. Onto the next one!

Crest Replica:

This is a new one, inspired by an admittedly newfound appreciation for the Gibson Crest.

...oh right, I should explain what that is.

The Gibson Crest, as a name, refers to 2 different models, respectively produced around the late 1950s to early 1960s and between 1969 and 1972, with a one-off model of the latter style produced in 1983 for that year's Winter NAMM show. Said model is in the possession of guitar collector and YouTuber Trogly, who runs the eponymous Trogly's Guitar Show on YouTube. At first, I thought he was a bit of a knob, or at least a bit naïve, but as it turns out, his show's a good way to pass the time, and satiates the GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) that guitarists seem to get pretty damn often (as far as I know).

The former is estimated to have been produced a total of no more than six times, each custom orders put in by Gibson salesman-clinician and budding guitarist, Andy Nelson. Due to the nature of being entirely custom orders, no one knows the exact specs as they would obviously vary between examples as each guitarist would want something unique.

The body shape is assumed to be reminiscent of a similar model that Gibson were producing around this time: the L-5CT, that being a jazz archtop around the thickness of a Gibson Byrdland, but with a Venetian cutaway, a singular humbucker, a toggle switch next to the cutaway on "deluxe" models (models with 2 pickups as stock) and a trapeze tailpiece paired with a "floating" or freely moveable bridge.

One example of the original Crest, however, had a thinline single-cutaway body with a Florentine cutaway, as opposed to the Venetian cutaway of the L-5CT. It featured a carved spruce top, maple back and sides, with a 7-ply bound top, and a 3-ply bound back, as well as a pickguard made not of plastic, but of alternating dark and light plies of maple.

Now, that's interesting, because (and this is a personal side tangent because this guitar is so very unknown because of Google's overuse of SEO and keywords) the only other guitar Gibson produced with a wooden pickguard that I can think of is the Gibson The Les Paul, produced between 1976 and 1980, and that was only because the way Norlin-era Gison constructed these things, everything was either wooden or metal, with plastic being used as little and as sparingly as possible. The switch tip was rosewood, the binding for the body was rosewood, the veneer on the headstock was rosewood as opposed to holly, the knobs were rosewood, the pickup rings were rosewood. About the only thing I can find that wasn't wooden or metal is the inlays, which are actual abalone, and the binding for the headstock, which appears to be plastic, though this might not be the case.

Point is, the guitar was designed with one main principle in mind: "Can it be rosewood? Yes? Make it rosewood." That's why they now go for around £35k and rarely ever sell.

But anyway back to the Nelson Crest. Yes, that's what I'm calling it, it's better than calling it Crest 1 or Crest Custom. The example I'm drawing from here had bound f-holes, was stained cherry red like most of the ES models around the time, and had an HS pickup layout, with the usual number of volume and tone controls, and a toggle switch in the usual mounting place for an ES model guitar, that being near the treble-side f-hole.

According to the source I'm getting all this from (an article on the Gruhn's Guitars website), it also had a Switchmaster tone switch and was wired for stereo output. The floating bridge, as it was an archtop, was mounted on a rosewood "foot" which was inlaid with mother-of-pearl decorations. The bridge itself, meanwhile, was your bog standard late '50s, early '60s Gibson ABR-1 without retaining wire for the saddles, while the tailpiece has the diamond ornamentation seen on a Casino/ES-330 while also incorporating a shield and coat-of-arms motif.

This motif is continued on the absolutely gigantic headstock, which had individual Grover Imperial tuners, and an inlay featuring a coat of arms with three Moorish crescents on the shield. The fretboard is given the top-level treatment of the era, as is to be expected of a custom build, with 3-ply binding all-around, and Super 400 inlays up to the 17th fret, unsurprising for an archtop. The truss rod cover, meanwhile, is a sort of merger between the typical shape for a Gibson, and the art deco movement which was starting up in the early '60s, with it being a trapezoid interpretation of the standard Gibson bell shape.

This is one of the few images I can find of the original style of Crest, in all its resplendent late 1950s glory:

As you can see, it's basically everything I mentioned above, down to the cherry red stain.

So, that's the Nelson Crest, in all of its custom and stupidly insane glory. It'd be an interesting challenge to replicate that thing, but that's not the one I want to replicate, not by a long shot.

The Crest that I do want to replicate, however, is more reminiscent of a short-neck ES-330 or, to be more conforming to normality here, the Epiphone Casino. This has its own subsets, referred to as Crest Gold or Crest Silver, for the style of the hardware, those being either gold or "brushed silver". Assuming I was mad enough to build this, I would have to either source vintage-accurate parts or get someone to make them custom.

As you can probably guess, neither sound appealing! However, ignoring that, let's get down to business. What is the Gibson Crest, in this latter format?

The Gibson Crest, in the 1969-72 styling, is a double-cutaway ES-style guitar, as you can probably guess. Now, a double-cut ES-style isn't surprising, both CMI and Norlin loved making those. The surprise comes from the features, starting with the short neck, with the join at the 15th fret. Now, normally, that's weird for an ES-style, they all have long necks, with a meeting with the body at the 19th fret. Why does this one have such a short neck?

Well, it's because it's a hollow-bodied guitar, like the ES-330 or Casino. Then again, that is no excuse, considering the ES-330 and Casino both had long necks at this time, even if the Casino returned to the short neck, dragging the 330 along with it whether it liked it or not (kinda miffed about that, I like upper fret access, taking it away on an electric guitar like the Casino is just annoying).

But anyway, the Crest has this short neck, and that's where the similarities to most ES models end. The toggle switch is placed where the first iteration of the 347 would place the coil-split switch, that being the lower horn, and that's about it for known similarities, with the other features being more reminiscent of the original Nelson Crest rather than an ES-330 or similar guitar from Gibson/Norlin.

Let's start with the pickups, which are mini-humbuckers, most certainly an interesting choice; apparently, the reason they chose P90s as the pickups for the 330 and Casino is because it was a "budget" model, and not because they were fucking cowards. That last bit's not important, though, so we can come back to it at a different time.

As with the Nelson Crest, the Crest Gold and Silver have a floating bridge akin to an archtop, though I cannot for the life of me remember if they're an ABR-1 like the original, or a pre-compensated bridge. It doesn't much matter either way, because the fact of the matter is that this guitar has some nice details to it. A 7-ply bound top, with a 3-ply bound back separated by a decorative strip, and a large heel cap which has a strap button screwed into it.

The electronics are the interesting thing. As noted above, the toggle switch was placed in the location where an ES-347's coil-split switch went, which may even be where they got the idea for that, but as is also noted above, the thing has 2 mini-humbuckers with individual volume and tone controls, and treble-side adjustment screws that go through the pickguard.

None of this is nearly as impactful as what the thing was made of, though, because I have been keeping that bit entirely shtum for surprise factor. Y'see, the Crest was made almost exclusively out of Brazilian rosewood veneer, which, for a time, was entirely phased out of Gibson as a wood option, before even becoming a protected wood by the Washington Convention. Trade in it is restricted, even now, and that means it is incredibly hard to get hold of it, even in veneer form.

Does this mean I am shit out of luck? Well, if I wanted to recreate the thing using the exact same wood, yes. If, however, I wanted to recreate the guitar with just any species in the family Dalbergia, rather than specifically Dalbergia nigra (note: that's the scientific name for Brazilian rosewood), I am not, in fact, shit out of luck, as most other species of rosewood (any wood in the family Dalbergia) is not restricted, and has not been under restriction for almost 5 years.

Here's a photo from Gary's Classic Guitars in case you were having difficulty visualising this thing:

I'll be including images like these for projects that are either replicas, or I feel need the image in some way or another.

So, the rosewood veneer isn't a problem. Why is it still a shelved project, then? Well, the fact of the matter is that we live in a capitalist society. Things cost money, both for the item itself and the labour required to produce it. In short, wood is expensive, and I don't have the money yet. You may notice that "too expensive" is a running theme, even in cases where half of the expense is the guitar itself.

To avoid getting depressing, let's move on (finally)!

Tele Bass VI:

So, you may be wondering, "why's this one shelved?"

The thing is, it wasn't intentionally shelved. It's just that I can't really do anything with it without finishing the Crusader first. I need fret wire, wood for the neck, a nut, and a truss rod. Not that many things, but it's also what I need for the Crusader, and in the case of that, I at least have the wood for the neck, and a nut, but that still leaves me without a truss rod and fret wire (which I also need for my acoustic because it's got fret sprout, but that's neither here nor there).

I was intending a maple neck for it, anyway, and I need maple for the fretboard of the Crusader. Maybe I'll be able to sort that at some point. Moving on!

Lennon Les Paul Jr.:

This one's hard to call "shelved" seeing as I've done jack shit with it for 3 months at this point. Do I want to do more with it? Yes, absolutely. It's just finding the werewithall to actually go do more with it. Part of it's been the stress of organising my college stuff, but part of it's also been laziness and just not being able to decide if I want to do it or not.

I'm sure you don't want me to bore you with this one, and you saw a photo of a replica on the previous pinned post, so I'll move on.

Höfner 500/1 Violin Bass Replica:

This one is very much a doozy, but it's at least sensible.

Höfner's been going for over 100 years, that's an accepted fact, something that makes sense to everyone. Their "peak" of iconicity, however, came in the form of Sir James Paul McCartney, who has used Höfner's basses since 1961. Now, since then, they've done plenty of reissues of his (two) different basses, the 1961 with its close pickups, and the 1963 with the wide, separated pickups.

So which one would I go for? That is a good question, because it's really not what I should be asking. What I should be asking in its stead is "do I want to learn Actual Violin Lutherie to make this thing", because the whole "Violin Bass" is not just a selling point, it actually is constructed like a violin. It's a chambered hollow body, like the Country Gent, but it's the size of a violin, with the construction to match, including the use of flame maple (or, to use its more apt name, fiddleback maple) for the back and sides. The top, meanwhile, is solid carved spruce.

Don't believe me about the body size? Look at this sub-model Hofner do, based on the one you can see in Get Back:

As you can see, the body is tiny in comparison to the length of the neck, especially when you compare it to an actual violin:

Look at the proportions on this, then look at the 500/1. Doesn't the neck seem so ridiculously long now? Anyway, that's gonna take some going at, and thus it's shelved for when I feel confident enough to actually do it, or at least to take a partial stab at it.

Now then, we've seen the ideas that I might get round to but aren't being done now for one reason or another. Let's look at the ones that won't be done at all, for one reason or another.

Lerxst 355 Replica:

To the average reader, that name's going to look like gibberish. To be honest, I don't blame you, the way it's pronounced feels like you're speaking gibberish as well. "Lurks-st". It sounds better if you try and put on a Canadian accent. Not full tilt Canadian, with all the "eh"-ing and being super polite, just a hint of Toronto.

Anyway, what's Lerxst? Or, more accurately, who is Lerxst? Lerxst is the nickname of Aleksandar Živojinović, a man known professionally as Alex Lifeson. He was the guitarist for Rush for as long as Rush had existed, until their semi-functional retirement after the death of their drummer Neil Peart. The remaining two members, that being Alex and the bassist Geddy, have performed together since, including at the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert and at the 25th anniversary concert for South Park.

Now, Lerxst has used many a guitar over the past 50 years, from that ES-335 he used in the beginning, to the large amount of PRSes he used between 1990 and 2010. His most famous, however, is the one this one is talking about: a 1977 ES-355 built by Norlin-era Gibson. It has T-Top humbuckers (named as such due to the bobbins having a slightly raised part in the shape of a T), 22 frets on a voluted neck, a 7-ply bound top (you saw me refer to this in the Crest section; 7-ply bound top doesn't mean the top is 7 plies of veneer thick, it means the binding is 7 plies thick, and is bound around a 3-ply top of maple-poplar-maple) with a 3-ply bound back, a Maestro vibrola unit, an individual set of volume and tone controls per pickup, a simple 3-way toggle, and the key part - a varitone switch, with accompanying bypass mini-toggle for the "raw" tone unmodified by the varitone.

The output jack's also mounted to the top, but considering it's an ES model, I wouldn't think that too revolutionary. So, what's a Maestro vibrola unit when it's at home? For that, we need to explain vibrato units overall.

The history starts with Clayton "Doc" Kauffman, who devised the first ever patented vibrato system in the 1930s, fittingly named the Kauffman vibrola. This worked quite differently to vibratos that we know now, as the action of changing the pitch was much more subtle, and was done through moving the arm laterally, instead of pressing the arm down to the body. The sound was meant to mimic a slide guitar (as that's where Rickenbacker's guitars originally started), but there was an ever-so tiny but incredibly crucial detail: the tuning stability was terrible. Guitarists such as John Lennon decided to replace the Kauffman units on guitars they were installed on with other models, such as the Bigsby vibrola, the second patented vibrato unit, and the first to see widespread commercial success.

The Bigsby works in a much more conventional way, using the standard we know now: push down to lower pitch, release to return to normal. Supposedly, it has terrible stability in and of itself, but that is from players who ended up being like Floyd D. Rose, who overused the vibrato of the Bigsby, requiring that they retune. The Bigsby wasn't intended for that; instead, it was only intended to provide a slight "warble" effect to playing, what some would term a "shimmering" effect.

This, in effect, is what Gibson's vibratos were meant to provide, starting in 1961 with the Sideways vibrola. I have an opinion on these: they suck, both in function and form. They copy the function of the Kauffman nearly wholesale, and the large folded up arm in direct contact with the nitrocellulose finish(!), well. Yeah, no, not for me. The Maestro, however, looks and behaves so much better. It functions like a Bigsby would, excepting that it doesn't copy the mechanism wholesale like the Sideways does with the Kauffman.

To explain this, let's go on a small side tangent about a Bigsby vs. a Maestro vibrola, because I assure you, this is actually necessary to the guitar.

The Bigsby works by loosening tension using the leverage of the tremolo arm to cause a deepening of pitch. It's kept in place and returned to normal pitch by a spring which is compressed in the action of using the vibrato unit. The Maestro, however, uses direct leverage on a bent piece of metal to cause the same loosening of tension and lowering of pitch.

This means that the Maestro, while more primitive, is easier to work with when restringing due to the fact that the strings are threaded into the tailpiece, which is then bent, changing the angle and distance between the tuners and the ball-end of the string, thus affecting the tension. The metal returning to its standard shape (because the force required to permanently change its shape has not been applied) is what returns the guitar to standard and proper tension (as long as it's been set up correctly).

The Bigsby, meanwhile, has a specific way of threading the string through the unit before sending it down the neck to the tuner and the nut. When restringing a Bigsby, there is a massive rigamarole if you don't have a Vibramate spoiler installed. You have to thread the string down from the bridge, under the tensioning bar, then up over the string bar, around it, and slot the ball-end on the tiny little post on the underside, so it can function correctly when the arm is depressed. I honestly wish I was joking about this. I have restrung a Bigsby once, and once was all the experience I needed. Never again. I heavily advocate for people to damn well use a Vibramate spoiler on their units, even if it's just because of a personal gripe.

Back to the point where we were, about... 8 or 9 paragraphs ago, the 355 generally came stock with a Maestro vibrola in 1977, so it's no surprise that Lerxst got it on his. It's even featured on the reissues from 2008:

These are the same reissues that have a Fucked Up volute on the neck that's approximately halfway between the nut and the first fret, as opposed to in line with the nut. If I were to recreate this, I'd at least fix that.

So, it all seems possible, right? Then why is the build canned? Generally, it's the fact of the varitone, specifically the chokes. How, the literal fuck, do those things work. If I ever figure how they work, then maybe this will move from the can to the shelf. But right now? Canned. Completely and utterly.

Next, please!

Acoustic Rickenbacker 360/12c63:

This requires much less in the way of explaining. The Rickenbacker 360 is a famous guitar by most stretches of the imagination, soldiered on by its incarnations as the 360/12, used by George Harrison, the 370/12 used by Roger McGuinn, and the 330/12, used by innumerable amounts of famous guitarists like Peter Buck, Johnny Marr, Pete Townshend and The Edge.

But y'see, those are electric guitars. They've got magnetic pickups and all sorts of gubbins in there. My idea with this was to see if you could just... get rid of all that, construct a 360/12 in the double-bound style without that central block and all the electronics, and be left with an acoustic Ricky 12, complete with the compacted headstock and a piezo if I felt like it.

Knowing what I do about how Rickenbacker's shit is made, though, that would require making the body in the form of back, then sides, glued with bracing and then the top, with two sound holes. I'd then have to find somewhere to fit a pre-amp, and make sure that it's the usual thickness before then setting the neck in, which itself would be a 5-piece construction of maple with walnut center stripe and headstock wings, adding the truss rod(s) and the fretboard, before finally assembling the metal bits onto it.

Doesn't sound too hard, sure, but if you look at this example of what the Rickenbacker 360/12C63 looks like...

Yes, that is the entire thickness of the body. It's approximately an inch thick and not all that acoustically resonant. It'd be good as an experiment, but considering I'm debating over getting a standard acoustic 12 at some point, it's canned for that reason. Onto the last canned build, and the last build that's overall a hypothetical.

Telecaster-Shaped Red Special (TSRS):

I laid this whole thing out in a Notepad file back in May or June, as we were finishing up the Cherry XII, as a proposal of "maybe this can be the next build," but I scrapped it a month or so later because I fell into a trap I've fallen into so often it might as well be my home: I wanted to recreate a specific thing, without remembering the way that guitar is constructed, and really, what that guitar is built out of.

You see, the Red Special, built between 1963 and 1964 by Brian May and his father Harold, is a very interesting case of guitar design, in that it was designed to feedback in an appealing way. The internal cavities were actually carved out in a very specific way in order to allow for this, and most copies of the thing do the feedback, but struggle to do it exactly like his. He also has his own brand of guitars mainly made up of official replicas fitted with either a standard Strat-style trem system, that being the BMG Special, or the more accurate design mimicking the original's trem arm made of a knitting needle and a bicycle saddlebag holder.

Now, having only a Telecaster body, I couldn't recreate most of this. I mean, where am I going to put all this stuff? And the neck couldn't be slotted for 24" scale length. It just wouldn't have worked. 25", like the Harley Benton copy, maybe, but then I'd have to modify the body to allow for a 25" scale, and then rout out chambers for controls, the cavity, and the trem system's springs.

Looking back on it, I think I had a grand idea, but had bitten way too much off to just go and do it. If I ever do get it in my head to recreate the Red Special, even without a treble boost circuit or a treble boost pedal, I think I'm not going to try and start from a jump-off point, and just go at it from scratch.

Now then, we've gone through those that've been canned, let's look at the ones that aren't shelved or canned, but aren't currently in play. I denoted them as plausible above, but I might go at them at a slower rate than the Shelved builds.

Non-Specific Doubleneck:

When I say "non-specific" doubleneck, I don't mean "bland-name EDS-1275" like a Chibson or a Gear4Music or Harley Benton or anything like that.

For one, the EDS-1275 isn't the only doubleneck out there, nor is it the only doubleneck Gibson ever made. Rickenbacker made a 12/6 doubleneck 360, fittingly named the 362, as well as the 4080 doubleneck which was a bass on top and your option of a 480/6 or 480/12 on the bottom. That latter one was most famously used by Geddy Lee on Xanadu, as well as the former on A Passage to Bangkok (a song about smoking weed, if you didn't know).

Here's him with the former, in a surprising tuxedo (white with black plastics) finish:

And here's him using a Fireglo 4080/12 back in 2015 for the purpose of playing Xanadu:

Anyway, that's a Rickenbacker doubleneck, but they're not the only ones to do this stuff. Fender also make doublenecks. Well, "make" is a strong term. This is the only one I know about:

This is the craziest doubleneck I've ever seen. It's a basic 12/6, but actually No It's Not. You've got an Electric XII on top, which is the only "designed to be 12 string" guitar Fender made pre-CBS, and the Marauder on the bottom, with the vibrato merged into the pickguard, and the 5 pickup switches and the kill switch and everything that makes it the Marauder.

If I ever decide "okay, let's make a doubleneck," and then actually go through with it, I think I'm gonna take some design cues from all of these. I'll probably also chamber it so it's not uncomfortable to play for long periods of time, and just hide the chambering under the pickguards because that's a thing that could work.

Now, the other plausible idea.

Resonator Acoustic (kit build):

You know how I said kit builds were out of the question? Yeah, I didn't believe me either.

Resonators are a really cool relic of the pre-amplification era. Like, they're the step between electric guitars with magnetic pickups, and the acoustic guitars we all know, minus the piezoelectric undersaddle pickup. They work by passing the strings over a bridge mounted to a resonator cone, and when a string is plucked, strummed or otherwise makes a sound, the cone takes the vibrations and amplifies them entirely acoustically. They were originally made by a couple companies before Rickenbacker came along and invented the horseshoe pcikup and, by extension, the electric guitar.

Those companies were National String Instrument Corporation, and Dobro Manufacturing Company. The former was founded in 1927 by George Beauchamp (anyone who knows the history of Rickenbacker will know that name), and John Dopyera, a Slovak immigrant who came to America with his brothers and father in 1908, sensing that war would soon break out in Europe.

Smart move, fellas!

Anyway, Dopyera and his brothers, Rudy and Emil, soon left National to form their own comapny, Dobro. Dobro is a name with double meaning, in this case - while it's an abbreviation of Dopyera Brothers, it's also the word for "good" in a lot of Slavic languages, leading to the slogan "Dobro means good in any language!"

Due to Beauchamp's work with Rickenbacker, though, resonators fell off the radar in terms of popularity. After all, they'd figured out a form of amplification that didn't use lots of metal, so resonators ended up failing as a product. Or at least, they did for a while. Nowadays, you can find many brands producing resonators, usually for the specific tone resonators provide: rich and metallic. They're seen nowadays as bluegrass and country music instruments, but you can see people like Mark Knopfler using them for songs as well.

Now, this isn't referring to a specific kit build. I found one that's kinda an ES-style thing, with 21 frets, so that's probably the one I'd go for, not least because I like upper fret access, but it's all dependent on if I still want to build a resonator acoustic after the current build, or if I'd want to do something else entirely. It's an odd thing, my mind.

So, what now? The completed section? Eh, not exactly.

I would do a small piece on the Fretless and the Cherry XII each, I really would - God alone knows I love rambling about these builds enough, this post is testament to that on its own - but I don't need to. I made a full post about the creation of the Fretless, and made multiple posts in the course of building the Cherry XII, starting back in January and leading up to June.

But other than that? That's all there is to this post. There's nothing more I can really do in terms of explaining my ideas. I may have more ideas in between now and whenever I revisit this concept, I may reshuffle things, shelve one idea or can another. But as for everything else? It's in flux, constantly uncertain unitl we reach and observe it. I can't really say what I'll want to build after the Crusader, because I haven't finished the Crusader. Hell, I've barely started it.

Hope you enjoyed reading this. If something needs explaining further for one reason or another, tell me, and I'll try and explain it to the best of my ability.

#guitar building #lutherie #fender guitars #rickenbacker #gibson guitars #takosader's ramblings - this time into the double digits!!!#holy shit we did it #10th in the series baybeeeeeeee #anyway there's swearing in here...#somewhere i think #too many things to put in the tags so i'll hit the highlights and do the small postscripts #one - yes i'm aware that the chokes in a varitone system are capacitors and inductors #the issue's not the construction it's the values and the tones; what's the point in making a varitone if it doesn't function like it should #two - i know trogly's crest is a different variation on a normal crest #i watched his video while writing that section and clocked it because of the full hbs and the longer neck #otherwise it's exactly the same as the late '60s crest #three - if some of these feel like they came out of left field it's likely because they did #a lot of the ideas were listed on day 1 of writing this but others got added while i was writing mainly because i wanted this to be complet #comprehensiveness was another aim. yeah - as if i'll ever wring comprehensive and understandable documentation out of my head #wow this is a long post #wasn't expecting the tags to be so big either #guitar #hofner doesn't have a tag on here #but i'll put it down here for completeness

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