#ofdarkest's salty takes

[ofdarkestdesires]

What character other than Ironwood do you think got butchered because of the writing?

God, at this point?

Blake started off as a strong-willed, determined and self-assured freedom fighter, and now she cowers at her own leader and flinches back from conflict.

Yang was a loving and doting older sister who balanced her affection for her sister for her attention to her friends, and now she's totally oblivious to her sister's ptsd trauma spiral until it suddenly blows up in her face.

Ruby used to be a bright, hopeful girl with an upbeat and positive attitude--and her fall from that IS compelling, but not when it's coming off the coattails of three volumes worth of her stealing responsibility from every other capable individual and placing the fate of the world solely on her shoulders, then bemoaning her fate as if the gods themselves had shackled this doomed heroes destiny to her at birth.

Weiss is the only one this Volume that I haven't seen much a problem with beyond ignoring Ruby's clear trauma indications, but even she doesn't come out unscathed because of how she literally threatened her baby brother at sword point to let her friends into her own family home instead of, oh I don't know, asking politely?!

These girls were all once so sweet and kind and eager to help, and now--it's not that they don't want to help, it's that the writers want drama so they get kneecapped and forced to watch bad things happen that they definitely could stop from happening if they were the girls they were all the way back in Volume 1.

[ofdarkestdesires]

You're given the chance to rewrite RWBY. How do you do it?

In all honesty, I do not have a problem with the basic framework of RWBY (up to a certain point). A lot of my problems with it have to do with the characters, how they act in situations, how they react off of each other, and how they choose not to react.

Getting into specifics would take too long, but I do have a general idea for most of the story:

Volumes 1-5 I'm honestly alright with. I am a bit annoyed that Yang is more willing to listen to the bitch that birthed her and peaced out for at least fifteen years than she is the uncle who raised her or the professor who has been nothing but kind to her, but whatever.

Volume 6, let the girls react in different ways to Ozma's story. Let there be a divide amongst the girls--Yang is enraged, Blake is in a doom spiral, Weiss feels sympathy to Salem's plight, and Ruby is compassionate to Ozcar. Let there be moments where people other than Blake and Yang notice a shadowy figure following them to set up Adam's arrival. Let there be another plan aside from stealing an ally's airship and disabling communications for an entire city, and then when the other plan fails, have Weiss decide to change plans and go with the crazy one. Everything else plays out as intended.

Volume 7, DO NOT GIVE RUBY A PASS. This bitch is doing the same things Ozpin was doing--either point that out and make her change tactics, or make her realize that they were a bit harsh bullying Ozpin away. Have the girls call Yang and Blake out for sharing information to a total stranger. Make Oscar falling to his "death" be from James aggressively approaching him, going from aggressively shouting to breaking down in hopelessness as he doesn't know what to do, and a Grimm attack throwing them both off balance sends Oscar hurtling to his "death". And with that, show us Ironwood's Semblance snap into place as an emergency mode.

Volume 8, GOOD LORD THIS ONE IS ROUGH!! But it can work--even the bomb can work!--if we remember the set-up of framing mentioned back in Volume 7. Have Watts take the damaged scroll that was used to attempt to summon Penny and use it to instead set up Ironwood's villain speech as a distraction. When James goes out to greet her, he goes to explain himself, but everyone jumps him instead. Also, the group doesn't automatically embrace Emerald after one act of kindness. Ozpin's cane reveal was dumb, let it actually be the bomb and they escape by the skin of their teeth. Show Jaune running out of aura while trying to stabilize Penny, and that's what spurs the decision for sacrifice (I hate it but if we have to keep it, at least some in-world explanation for why the healer can't heal would've been appreciated). HAVE RUBY EMOTE AT ALL WHEN YANG IS TOSSED TO THE VOID.

Volume 9...doesn't exist for me. There is just too much tonal whiplash between the girls for me to bother trying to fix it, and we don't have the full ten episodes yet (also, how is this volume this fucked up and it's a full five episodes shorter than the others?!)