#not to act like i’m big time or anything ik i get like 5 viewers on my stream but i also know there is a heavy overlap of DSMP fans

[pigeonhome]

i haven’t posted on here in forever but i just wanna say to all the ppl in dsmp following me or whatever that if your gut instinct when a survivor of abuse comes out and says her story is to POST on social media “oh i sure hope it’s not my comfort blurbo! im gonna be so devestated if it’s him!! i’m going to remain indifferent until otherwise proven! all this speculation is bad! oh i loved him so much i’m so sad blah blah”

you realize that survivors of abuse have to read all that right?

you are not actually an ally to survivors. you are not somebody i want in my small community.

[calliecat93]

Top 5 Things I Disliked About RWBY Volume 2

(Top 5 Likes)

It’s hard to believe that Volume 2 aired over five years ago now. Unlike V1 where I watched it just as it ended, I watched V2 as it was airing and I still remember my excitement over it. It was a different time back then as well as this aired during the Summer, while every volume after happened halfways through the Fall. Ah, the days of innocence. Anyways, IDT that V2 is as memorable as other volumes, which IDT is necessarily a bad thing but it’ not one that you see many people talk about as a result. But ho boy, do I remember the discussions going around during the time that it aired, especially about the finale. Oh God, the finale...

So then, what are my thoughts? Well, I’ve got a few. Let's go ahead talk about my… not so good ones. Which tbh, these are mainly nitpicky cause I really don’t dislike much about V2. It’s overall a good volume. Not as good as others, it’s my five on the list and may drop to six depending on how V7 goes. But I don't have any rela issues with it, but I was able to brain up a few. Therefore, here are my Top 5 Thing That I Disliked About RWBY Volume 2!

#5. The Dance Arc

As I said, this list was hard.  I was able to come up with four things that I disliked, but I couldn’t think of a good fifth one I thought about doing Ironwood and Glynda’s Ship Tease that went nowhere, but… it was a lot minor than I remembered and didn’t bother me like I thought it would. Anything else that I thought of I already had written down and going through my old posts from back when V2 aired provided nothing, so… the Dance Arc was the only thing that I could think of to fill in the spot. Which is kinda unfair because all in all, the arc is fine. It’s more of just dance arcs being a pet peeve of mine. It brings the story to a screeching halt to focus on relationship drama that I nor ally don’t give a shit about. A good example is the Yule Ball in Harry Potter, which single-handedly made Goblet of Fire my least favorite entry in the series, both with the book and with the movie.

RWBY’s arc though avoided most of that. It doesn’t do much in terms of story, but it does have Cinder’ break-in that’ll have consequences later. There isn’t really any relationship drama or nothing that felt overblown. Blake in particular hd some good development and seeing her happy at the dance was really nice. Jaune had some… bad moments. Moments that I’m gonna talk about here in a bit. But nothing so bad that I was annoyed. It did a lot of good character stuff, had the great JNPR dance sequence, and was overall just nice. But it’s not an arc that I particularly care about either, and I’m hoping that V7 won’t do a Ball like I know that a lot of people do half because it likely will focus on relationship drama there and because it’ll just be repeating V2. Still, it’s overall fine, but I needed something to fill in the Number 5 slot. So.. there we go. It was fine, but I could also live without it.

#4. The Season Finale

To this day, I can STILL remember how much the finale was derided by the fanbase when it aired. Kinda funny now since people seem to get bad if RWBY doesn’t end with a massive brawl, but people hated it when they did it here. I didn’t min the finale when it aired… and tbh, I still don’t. But I do have a better understanding of why people disliked it now. Part of it is something I’m going to get into later, but… what did the finale really wrap up? Not much. It was just a bunch of fights just to have a bunch of fights. Monty maybe went a little overboard with it here and it really feels like nothing truly wrapped up as a result. But IK how else they could have done a proper finale without messing up things that happen later, so… meh. Again, the finale doesn’t bother me and I do think that it feels more like a finale than V1 at least. But it certainly is one of the weaker ones and I don’t blame people at all for not liking it.

Oka, so 5 and 4 only barley count as dislikes. They’re more nitpicks than anything else tbh. Can’t say the same about the other three though. Speaking of…

#3. Jaune Cringe

In this volume, we see Jaune trying hard to get Weiss to go out with him. He continues to fail and makes himself look like an idiot. Now in itself, this isn’t so bad… but IDT that it’s aged well. Mainly because the narrative kinda feels like Weiss is int he wrong for continuously rejecting Jaune’s advances. It’s kinda hard to say how much that’s intentional because she doesn’t get punished for it or anything. And it does end with Jaune essnetially letting it go, calling Neptune out on his petty reason for rejecting Neptune despite liking her, and getting him to quit worrying about looing cool to make Weiss feel happy. It shows that Jaune can realize his mistakes and make it right and that he isn’t into Weiss just because she’s pretty or rich. He did have genuine feelings for her, and gave it up once he finally realized that Weiss wasn’t interested and was looking at other people. He hasn’t repeated it since aside from RWBY Chibi, where he suffers for his idiocy, so I do think that he learned. Which is good!

But… ti is really hard to watch. The narrative frames it like we’re supposed to find Jaune an idiot, but also sympathize with him. And we’re supposed to find that Weiss is being cold and harsh in how she keeps rejecting him. Again, this has not aged well. I don’t think that Miles and Kerry had any bad intentions whatsoever and would probably do ti differently nowadays, but… Weiss was completely in the right to keep turning Jaune down. He refused to get the hint and just move on. Sure, he knows how stupid it was now, but the narrative makes it feel like we should feel bad for Jaune. But.. why should we? He kept being an idiot. He refused to just get the hint no matter how many times that Weiss said no. Do I hold him against him? No. He’s no Adam. As I said by the end, he seemed to let it go and his part with Pyrrha greatly redeemed him. But I do wish that Jaune got called out for it and that they did a better job at painting him in the wrong because he was. Weiss could have maybe been nicer about it, but we saw as early as V1 that Jaune acted like this, so she’s been dealing with it for a pretty good while so… yeah, I don’t blame her in her reactions.

Again, I don’t hold it against Jaune. His character has grown greatly since this volume and he hasn’t repeated his cringe since. If anything, I appreciate how far he’s come after seeing this again. But it was not fun to revisit and I’m glad that we’re past this part for good.

#2. The Post-Credit Stinger

UUUUGGGGHHHH! This stupid stinger! So… as we all know, at the end of every volume, they put in a scene after the credits. These have all been canonical in some fashion...except for this one. This one ended with Yang finding Raven at the Beacon Courtyard, in which the unmask herself and says that she and Yang have a lot to talk about.

And then Yang doesn't meet Raven in person until Volume 5, three volumes later… okay!

So… I know that some stuff changed when they began working on V3. For example, the Maidens thing was created by Monty in between Volume 2 and 3 and when he passed away, they decided to keep it. I can only assume that after they decided to make her the Spring Maiden, the plans for Raven changed, so whatever the plan was with the stinger got tossed aside. I don’t mind that so much since I was perfectly happy with what they did go with. But every time that I watch V2 and we get to this, I just get… annoyed. Really, really annoyed because this scene exists, and is apparently non-canon.

It’ hard to get mad about it because I get it. Plans change. But at the same time the show pretty much promised us something and didn’t deliver it. It’s like if Volume 4’s stinger that showed Oscar meeting Qrow suddenly got tossed out in V5, making a promise that they ended up not upholding. It’s frustrating as a viewer, especially since you gotta figure out what to do with that scene after. I guess we can just say that Yang dreamed it, but still. It’s not that big a deal now and so far, they haven’t repeated that mistake with the later stingers. Still, I remember how much this frustrated me all the way up to V4 when I finally realized that the stinger was non-canon now, so I still hold it against this volume. Hopefully, this won’t happen again, but you never know what’ll happen.

#1. What Does This Volume Accomplish?

Each volume of RWBY has a clear goal… except for this one. V1 introduced us to the world and characters. V3 had the Fall of Beacon. V4 was reaching Haven. V5 was the Battle of Haven and getting the Relic. V6 was reaching Atlas. We can argue about how well the volumes accomplished those goals, but they did accomplish them. Volume 2… what is the end goal? Hat does this volume want to be? I didn’t think about it much back when it aired, but now? I… honestly don’t know what this volume’s purpose was.

I guess it was to bring Team RWBY closer together? Flesh the girls and their motivations out? Which is fine… but the story itself doesn’t seem to have a clear place where it wants to end. It’s why I think that the finale was how it was, there was nothing to truly wrap up. The girls couldn’t figure out the villains’ plans because then V3 shouldn’t go the way that it did. But since finding out what the bad guys’ plan was their goal and they don’t do that… it just makes you wonder why you invested our time in it. The girls’ reaction makes it seem like they know that the ending is flimsy, but that the viewers are just going to have to accept it. The good guys didn’t make any progress. The villains were no closer to being defeated than they were before, and none of the hurdles like the bombs going off early did anything to affect them. Which makes them look OP as Hell.

Volume 2 is not a bad volume. In the character development department, it is very good. It’s pacing and flow is better than Volume 1, hence why I place it above it. But it also doesn’t feel like it 100% knew what it wanted to be. At least, it didn’t know where the final destination was. So I still pace 3-6 above it since all of those knew where they wanted to end. Even if some had bumps in the road, they did accomplish their primary goal and I could see what that goal was. IDK what Volume 2 was meant to do outside develop characters. I guess it did do that, but it didn’t really progress the story. I guess it made V3’s impact all the greater, but still… it makes me conflicted.

Okay, that’s one post down. One more to go. Likes will hopefully be up later this afternoon. So I hope that you’ll all enjoy that~!