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unofficialadamtaurus · 1 year ago

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What’re your full thoughts on season 9? I wasn’t going to watch it—especially after following along with you and other rwde blogs’ feelings on the content as the it aired—but I keep hearing this is the best written rwby season despite that. It’s a mixed bag right now, even within the more critical side of the fandom, and you always have nuanced takes, so, I figured I should ask you 🙂

You don't ask the easy questions, huh. (And I don’t reply to them in a timely manner, huh.)

I think "best written" is accurate from a certain point of view and when you keep in mind that it's being compared to other volumes of the same show. There’s a new framing device with the story, a twist villain that holds together on a second viewing, and emotional beats we’ve wanted to see hit for years. The animation itself is also good. Things are smooth and there’s even attempts at actual fight choreography. Even the voice acting is fairly consistently good.

If you can't tell already, I've said all of that with a massive disclaimer, and that disclaimer is that this volume falls apart when you look at it more closely. To me, this volume is, and I cannot emphasize this enough, frustrating. It's frustrating in a similar way to V8: you can kind of see what the writers are trying to do, but it's all executed in a way that makes you wonder what was going on in the writers' room. The plot beats, messages, and themes are not communicated well, are contradictory, or are otherwise damaging.

Heavy spoilers beyond this point if you managed to not watch it between sending this ask and me responding.

Atlas has fallen. Our heroes failed. This is the belly of the beast moment, the find-your-motivation moment, the break-the-geode-to-see-the-beauty-within moment.

And it falls so, so flat.

Penny’s death, this big moment from the previous volume, comes up a couple times but is never resolved. Jaune never states that he killed her. No one asks. Ruby is sad over her sword a couple times and that’s it.

Jaune is an old man! He’s a little bit out of his mind! Only no, he’s fine, here’s a magic knife that makes him young again.

There’s an interesting framing device! Only no, we’ll stop trying to follow it halfway through, and because the audience never knows how the story goes until the characters experience it or talk about it, there’s no interesting use of the framing device. It’s just there.

The Gods’ origin story! Only…why? Who was asking for this? Why did we need an origin myth for an origin myth? And why did it have to take up so much real estate in the final episode to boot?

To get to the main team:

Weiss’s kingdom, her home, was destroyed. She doesn’t even know the fate of her family beyond the portals. I would expect her to be the most affected by the events of the previous volume: quiet, grieving, grasping for a next step to avoid thinking about it. But no—she’s the comic relief for this volume. In addition to a mouse I personally found annoying most of the time who is also comic relief. Weiss’s trauma is almost entirely ignored except for when she talks about Penny’s death, her comment at the burning market, and one sad face in the Punderstorm. Every scene with her falling down or getting hit by a rock or cheerleading grated on me. It felt so divorced from what she should be feeling that it broke my immersion and was a significant source of frustration.

Blake is an empty character. Her whole role in this volume is two things: person who read fairy tales (that everyone else also read), and person who loves Yang. Her big hero moment is talking about a struggle to bridge humanity and Faunus that we have never seen on screen. If you’ve been bothered by Blake’s lack of agency and character in previous volumes, the former may get marginally better here at the start, but by the end they’ll both be worse than they ever were, and both a significant source of frustration.

Yang is a mess. She starts strong with the “You shouldn’t be here,” but by the end of the volume she’s turning on her sister, blaming her for her distress, and doing nothing while her sister kills herself. She puts Blake over Ruby, hell, she puts Jaune over Ruby. I couldn’t believe what she was doing, and the bees confession scene was cringe-inducing with how it made her love focus on incredibly broad or superficial things about Blake. No mention of shared trauma, or past hurt. Frustrating.

And Ruby. Poor Ruby. This was touted as Ruby's volume. She's going to be the focus, she's going to struggle. The OP hammers this point home with unsubtle imagery of Ruby crying and falling behind while her teammates carry on unbothered. That had me intrigued, because Ruby has been more or less a static character since the end of Volume 3. Her struggles have been momentary, situational, and without lasting impact, so I wanted to see her have that belly of the beast moment in her hero's journey and come out different and stronger for it.

Problems are, they went about her spiral in the most ham-fisted way possible. Ruby is obviously depressed because they have to let the audience know, but it’s to the point that I can’t believe her teammates just let things lie. As a result, her team come off as jerks. Where are the friends from the Beacon days, the ones whose reuniting was a huge moment in V5? Certainly not here, watching adult man Jaune yell at Ruby for a plan he helped create and enact. Certainly not there, slowly walking after a crying and upset Ruby who flew off in a direction Jaune should know is dangerous shortly after Neo attacked, while blaming Ruby for not talking to them when the time Ruby did, Yang brushed her off and compared her to Ironwood.

Her team dismisses her, Neo beats her to a pulp, and she commits suicide. She goes to a tree that’s been established to wipe memories and recreate people.

Is her team upset? No. Worried? No, at least until Yang sees Ruby encased in wood. But it’s all fine, because Ruby sees that her mom wasn’t perfect and that her mom thought she was perfect just the way she was as a child, and that fixes all the the trauma the entire volume hammered into your ears and eyeballs in the span of maybe two minutes.

I will pause briefly to say that Ruby’s brief fight scene is good. Genuine highlight there.

But the main villain who tortured Ruby then gets off without any resentment or frustration from the heroes. And the twist villain, whose motives are far more sympathetic to me than the main villains’, is brutally torn apart.

The dissonance between what the show seems to want its morals to be and what they actually are is staggering.

To sum up:

The status quo for the characters did not change. The status quo for the setting did not change. The status quo for the writing did not change.

If you like the show as it is, if you take it at face value, you’ll be fine, as you’ve been fine for the last several volumes. But if you try to sink your teeth in, you’ll be getting a mouthful of dust—and not even the magical kind. There is little past that other than more frustration.

#anon #unofficial adam answers #rwde #there are so many little things I could go into #but then I’d never finish my answer #but yeah this is a spectacularly frustrating volume

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the-path-to-redemption · 2 months ago

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hiiii i'm here with my last anon message (❀´ ˘ `❀)

i don't think i'll finish RWBY for the time being... i'm halfway through volume 9 and my head is spinning ( ꩜ ᯅ ꩜;)⁭ ⁭this is just like An Oriental Odyssey, but from the USA!

both:

* have pretty solid writing for the first half and clear expectations, then goes crazy

* develop ok ship only to tear it apart

* main antagonist is bad because their lover died

* many plot twists without any foreshadowing/contradictory foreshadowing

* purest character dies twice and comes back from the dead

* starts as magical realism but SUDDENLY MAGIC!! WOWIES MAGIC DOES EXIST??

* love triangles

* canon ships are bad and the notion of love is twisted and abusive

* fans of the work treat you like an idiot because you don't understand the brilliance of the work

* no subtlety at all

* characters not growing and falling into the same pitfalls

i was halfway season 5 when i realized (˃̣̣̥ᯅ˂̣̣̥) i was cheated!! but i immediately thought, "well, the writers must be young too" then i checked and they were way older than me!! .·°՞(˃ ᗝ ˂)՞°·. double cheated!!

what can you expect from beginner writers... but the designs... _(:‚‹」∠)_

i guess Adam's death didn't shock me (i saw spoilers...) as much as how bad the pairings are!! when Renora started showing signs i had to take a break by reading two whole mangas before going back to it. i thought we finally had good girl/boy friendship!!（ꐦ𝅒_𝅒）what do you mean Ren raised her and they're both in love but Ren doesn't speak his feelings for some reason so Nora had to force a kiss on him?! everything was too creepy!! ‎

(ﾉಥ益ಥ）ﾉ ┻━┻ didn't we have enough with Jaune and Pyrrha?! and suddenly Blake starts slapping Sun around... Bumbleby is ok but i thought this was a sapphic show!! where are my sapphics?! (╯'□')╯︵ ┻━┻

i could rant about many things but the general vibe i got was "ah, everything feels very creepy and cruel somehow" since season 4. i don't know how to explain it... i felt like i was seeing hell for the characters besides the actual problems (•﹏•;) it might be my trauma from An Oriental Odyssey but who knows...

either way this will be my last anon message ♪(๑ᴖ◡ᴖ๑)♪ i need a break from RWBY... i want to do fanarts, but i'm still too shocked (￣◇￣;) thank you for reading my messages and accompanying me through this odyssey journey!! ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡₊˚⊹♡ if i come back, i'll definitely come back with a blog!! ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧ stay strong friend!! wishing you good health and lots of money and love!! (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)

Hello again!! It's so nice to see you, anon! Please take your time if you're coming back with a blog, and take care!

Long Post Ahead

I have not seen An Oriental Odyssey, but I might actually check it out now just to see because I enjoy xianxia/wuxia lol. But from what you said, I will be keeping a low expectation for the series if it shares that much similarities with RWBY.

I will also say that I'm personally fine with darker topics being explored in fictional work; my only requirements are that they're portrayed with proper research and with content warnings so that I know what will be included in the narrative (Banana Fish and Scum Villain's Self Saving System are two of my favorite series, with both containing very dark topics). In the case of RWBY, dark topics such as abusive relationships and cruelty in dynamics were not only very sloppily written, the writers refuse to even acknowledge how bad it is along with the FNDM (eg. Blacksun and Renora).

There's a lack of accountability when it comes to how they portray such topics, and even expecting us to think of it as a good thing without even giving us a choice to decide that ourselves. The writers blamed their animation team for the slap when criticism of it arise, and continues to not take abuse very seriously outside of the caricature portrayal of such things with Adam.

And yes, the writers are old enough to know better. They've been writing this series for more than ten years, which should have given them enough time to grow as both creatives and people, but I've also learned that age does not always equal maturity. M*les himself has once said a racial slur against African Americans when he was 26, and called the character Tifa Lockhart from the FF7 Remake game a prostitute for the way she looks and dressed, even though everyone knows that she is the primary inspiration for Yang. With such a person on the writing team, let alone leading it, it's no wonder a lot of RWBY's morals feels extremely juvenile and lackluster.

The matter of age when it comes to creating things aren't always attached to age, it's about how dedicated the creators are to their projects, which RWBY has not been for quite a while now.

Moving onto the matters of ships and their dynamic, yes I was disappointed with Renora as well. Just a correction though, Ren didn't really raised Nora; it's more like they took care of each other when they lost their families, with Ren taking more responsibility for them while Nora supports him emotionally. However, the relationship starts to sour (for me at least) was when Nora lost her emotional maturity and intelligence to basically invalidates Ren's turmoils. Forcing him to talk when he's not having a good time, forcing a kiss on him, then proceed to blame Ren for the relationship falling apart even though he tried to be rational in a crisis. She became extremely nasty as a person that I don't want to see her near Ren anymore for his own well-being!

This isn't uncommon in RWBY... every relationship (romantic or otherwise) are very shallow and disappointing. It's even worse when it comes to LGBT+ romance, because RWBY did not start or continued as a sapphic-friendly show. Blacksun was baited for years, until the writers saw that Bumbleby brings them more traction despite having very little believable hints that these two would ever be in a relationship with each other, even if you don't look at the very problematic elements of it (again, I don't mind such ships, I just dislike how these two are heralded as "cute and good" when the foundation of their romance is so toxic and they're stripped of their other personality traits).

Sapphic ships in RWBY (or just LGBT+ representations in general) are either for marketing purposes or shoddy afterthoughts. The writers were never going to treat such representations seriously because they themselves do not treat real life LGBT+ individuals with respect. If you go into the research of how Rooster Teeth's queer employees are treated, you will find the account of Kdin Jenzen being abused, hate crimed for being trans and fired by the company without aid. You're better off watching The Owl House, or even any queer manga out there.

Thank you again for the ask and reading my ramblings haha. Whatever it is you do going forward, I hope you have fun and stay safe! If we do meet again, I look forward to seeing your art! It was fun, and I wish you an abundance of wealth and love as well! Bye bye, anon! <3

#answered #anonymous #rwde #rwby critical #anti rooster teeth #fndm critical #anti bb #anti bumbleby

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princess-of-the-corner · 11 months ago

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One thing to note about RWBY is that it REALLY "grew the beard" over the course of its runtime.

Volumes 1-3 were animated in Poser (software that wasn't intended for use in animation), with rougher backgrounds and more simplistic writing related to complex themes. They were also only ever intended to be an extended prologue to the ACTUAL show, with the Big Twist of the Volume 3 finale being that the climax was actually just the inciting incident to the show's ACTUAL conflict.

Starting from Volume 4, the crew switched to Maya (software that's intended for use in animation), got better at writing more complex topics (the White Fang is treated more sympathetically than in the "Beacon Arc"), and Jaune was actually an interesting character for the entirety of the "Anima Arc" that lasted from Volumes 4-6.

Volume 7 is probably the best season of the show (I don't have a Crunchyroll account and so I haven't had the chance to watch Volume 9 in its entirety yet, even if I know what happens there). It deconstructs the whole "America Saves the World" trope with Atlas, and has some pretty good political satire that wound up being eerily prophetic. Also, Robyn Hill is one of the best characters the show has ever introduced.

Volume 8 contains both the best and worst moments of the series. V8C1-V8C11 features some of the best storytelling and most tense action from the franchise ever, but V8C12 has the overall message of "Okay but, the people who dehumanized Penny over her mechanical body KINDA had a point, let's fix what isn't broken!", V8C13 is a pretty descent villain episode, and V8C14 is by far the most offensive piece of media I've ever been subjected to. But still, up until those last three episodes, it was basically flawless.

I've heard Volume 9 is pretty good, but I'm side-eying everything involving Jaune because I honestly DESPISE the direction they took his arc in. But if we ignore EVERYTHING related to Jaune's role in the Volume, I like basically everything I've heard about it.

RWBY: After the Fall is a very good spin-off novel focused on popular side characters Team CFVY and shows what they've been up to since the Fall of Beacon in Volume 3. it also has a really interesting gimmick, as every other chapter is a flashback to something that happened in Team CFVY's past, further fleshing out their minor roles in the show.

RWBY: Before the Dawn is actual garbage. Sun's character arc (wherein his hypocrisy from the show is actually acknowledged and challenged) and Coco's and Velvet's shiptease are probably the only redeeming qualities. Taking this book into account actually makes Ironwood's reluctance to call Vacuo for help look REASONABLE. 2/10.

RWBY: Roman Holiday is a prequel novel focused on Roman and Neo, but Neo is the true protagonist here. The first few chapters leading up to their first meeting alternate between their perspectives, with the book being largely Neo focused after they finally meet.

RWBY: Fairy Tales of Remnant is an anthology of in-universe fairy tales. You can read it at any point in the series, but the further into the series you are when you read it, the more hints to RWBY's overarching plot you'll notice. While all of the Fairy Tales are works of fiction, some of them are dramatizations of actual events in the shadow war that RWBY's plot revolves around.

RWBY x JL: Super Heroes and Huntsmen is a 2-part film series wherein Team RWBY teams up with the Justice League. Part 1 features the Justice League visiting Remnant (kinda) during the events of Volume 7, and Part 2 features Team RWBY visiting DC Earth after the events of Volume 9.

There's also some ambiguously canonical comics published by DC, as well as 2 explicitly non-canon RWBY/DC crossover comic series. One features alternate versions of the Justice League cast who were born on Remnant, another features Remnant and DC Earth fusing due to Salem tricking Lex Luthor into helping her by playing off of his hatred of Superman. Neither of these crossovers are in continuity with the crossover movies.

Fascinating actually

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rwdestuffs · 2 years ago

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I feel like the conflict was a bit more interesting when the cat wasn't a villain. It gave an actual conflict to the plot because we felt that both jaune and the cat were victims. But now that he's an antagonist (Admittedly, one with a decently compelling motive of wanting to know why he was left behind), it kinda feels… Hollow, I guess? I'm not sure what word I'm looking for is, but "hollow" feels like the most appropriate until I can figure out what word I mean. I know that I'm not looking for "unearned" though.

I really liked the conflict he had with jaune because it made neither of them the bad guy, nor did it make either of them the good guy. But now with this conflict, it really feels like it's black and white. The heroic knight jaune is now in conflict with the trickster cat… The Cat.

Which, props for doing that with the cat's new color scheme, I guess (Kinda obvious that it's now a black and white morality story going on, but interesting symbolism nonetheless), but holy hell is it boring. The conflict could have been the world and how different it is from the story that they know and Neo's singleminded quest for revenge, not the cat's manipulative nature.

We went from "Neither knew what happened to Alyx and Lewis at the tree" to "The cat did that because of his singleminded drive of figuring out why his creators left him behind."

I feel like something that would have been more compelling would be "The Cat is the ONLY ONE NOT allowed to ascend to the tree." He's the historian. He's the one that keeps records of what happens. And maybe he wants to know what would happen if he were to ascend, but he's not allowed to. So instead of all that, he's looking for someone to take his place as the record keeper. The whole "I want someone else to take up this job so I can live the life I want to" is a motive that is hard to fail.

Maybe this volume is here to deconstruct simple but still singleminded motives? Because if so, then way to go writers. It took you about nine years to deconstruct Ruby's singleminded goal of "Become a Huntress to help people" all the way back from Volume 2, but you did it! Yay for you! You get one clapping emoji for that 👏.

Look: I'm aware that the show is very much built around subverting expectations and stuff, but right now, I think we're at the point where the subversions are expected. Taking away the nuance and the shades of grey that were present prior to this episode wasn't interesting, all it did was just sorta make the cat feel like one of Disney's twist villains. Just there to be a villain for the twist. For a show about subverting expectations, doing the whole "Knight vs. Trickster" archetypal rivalry feels like staying on-brand with expectations, rather than subverting them. Kinda feels weird complaining about staying true to expectations in the same paragraph that I said that it felt like not subverting the expectations felt more like the subversion though.

But other than that rant about the cat, I really did think the episode did good. Focusing on Ruby's insecurities and deconstructing Neo's motives was well-done (by RT standards), and even having the rest of team _WBY admit that they did make mistakes in not reaching out to Ruby and instead expecting her to reach out to them was a good choice considering the strange reactions (And lack thereof) they had when Ruby initially blew up at them. It's a pretty good reflection of real life too. People who are hurting on the inside very rarely reach out to others because they always feel like a burden. I know I've felt that way before. Wish they had a better trigger warning for it though.

And while openly admitting that Neo's goals devolved into "I want revenge on Ruby for what happened to Torchwick" and showing that revenge will only lead to being lost once it's been obtained is an interesting way to go about the character, it feels more like the writers forgot that Neo was a character. Admittedly, she was thrown in last-second, so I can somewhat forgive it, but it still feels weird. Kinda wish they had done the whole "Revenge will make you feel empty" thing with a certain other character coughcoughAdamcough, but this is pretty good too.

And the beatdown that Ruby suffered, while brutal, was a great way of deconstructing the common complaint that has been prevalent since Mantle. That being "Team RWBY ends up hurting more than helping." And, despite my pessimism in RT, I'm looking forward to where the question that lies goes onto. Because maybe we'll finally get some Summer Rose scraps.

I want to meet the woman who inspired Ruby and raised Yang, goddammit.

#does this count as rwby?#does this count as rwde?

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richardsphere · 2 years ago

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Rwby Slogblog V8E13

So Cindy is using the last question, leaves Arthur behind at his little Hackerhook with no intention to retrieve him from the falling continent. Watts frees Ironwood. Jaques and Wolfboi both die. (which im happy with, anything to see the plots chessboard shrink a little in size at this point) ----- Cinder does a big distraction speech. Yang notices Neo. God, what even is the point of aura as a forcefield when characters can one-shot through it whenever the plot wants a bit of drama. Like... This isnt someone like Oz or Adam who can deal big NOVA-burst attacks, this is neo attacking the MC with a damage absorbtion semblance and she insta-KO’s her. So here’s a thing, if Ambrosius’ twist is that he made everything “one way” so that the only exit is Vacuo. why can Jaune exit the portal at the subwaytunnels? Why can all the shrapnel from the Weis-VS-Cinder battle come flying out of the portal to endanger civilians? Like i get that they technically only said that the vacuo portal would be a One Way Ticket, but by letting all the other portals be exit portals as well as entry the system can still be used as a two-way ticket between say, the Vault Chamber portal and the Subway Portal. This Genie Wish Twist is inconcistently lenient is what im saying. ---- Discount-Ren tries to talk harriet out of the Nuclear Bomb Ok, bird through the window of the plane, actually pretty funny. Tinman cries at the acusation that he’s become the thing he swore to protect/the need to fight his lieutenant. ---- Ah because if there is one thing this climax needed it was faceless grimm in the desert. Not like we didnt have enough things going on already. Like at least everything else happening rn is stuff that has is culminating two seasons of interactions and set-up. These grimm are just here because team NOER (pronounced “noir”) needs to show their abilities also. Also, didnt the crew look up and specify to Ambrosius the exact location they wanted the exit-portal to be. Does Whitley’s Schnee Corporate Databanks not have the locations of a single warehouse/store/corporate officebuilding within city limits instead of the kingdom adjacant desert. Like the entry portals are stipulated down to the meter, but the exit is just a generic “somewhere in the desert i guess”. Basically: while i buy the One Way twist as a way to deny team RWBY access to NOER, i dont buy it as a way to force NOER into a seperate “protect the civilians” crisis against the Grimm. ------ In summary of this episode: Im overall relatively happy that the scope of the plot is finally shrinking a bit again with Jaques, and Dogboy both dead, the last Question asked. As well as James and Arthur seeming about to leave the stage forever will hopefully prevent the scope of the plot from ballooning too much now that nukes exist and the plot’s about to hand the villains an infinite suply of any one-use item they want (such as nukes) that they can instantly spawn in anywhere they have coordinates for from a kingdom away. Like all it takes is Cinder to say “I want a copy of Ironwoods bomb, on a pre-activated one-second countdown at these particular coordinates that I know corespond to Vacuo’s Academy”. and she can do that infinitely many times. Sort of dissapointed though that Arthurs weapons (his rings) only ever got used in the one fight scene against ironwood. But then again he’s meant to be the “tech support” character, not a combatant in his own right so its fine.

#rwby

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nov4-rocket5 · 2 years ago

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Nah OP, the League were either had so little character they didn’t matter whatsoever, and what little character they do have... isn’t exactly good in my opinion. There was an episode of Justice League Action that had a villain de-age and memory-wipe the League, and that 11 minute episode still handled the characters better than this feature-length movie.

Bruce: Legitimately considers abandoning Gotham solely because he has wings and powers on Remnant and that means he can "actually help." Somehow.

Diana: Reduced to Strong Female Character (derogatory) who is always resorting to violence first. Does nothing but talk about how tough she is with the 'Warrior's Life' and only shows any shred of kindness or compassion that defines so much of her character when she reunites with the rest of the League.

Jess: Has her character design completely whitewashed, her anxiety is reduced to "Strong White Boy Jaune Arc cures her panic attacks," and spends the whole movie whinging about how she's useless without her ring so Jaune can say nice things about her.

Mari: The character who acts more animalistic than any faunus we've ever seen in the show is a sassy black woman. Even the obvious racism aside, she does nothing but make sassy quips the whole movie and vaguely sets up the twist of the movie with "Flash smells wrong." Doesn’t have any Cool Moment(tm) whatsoever. Could have been cut entirely at the expense of nothing.

Victor: Has the hacking plotline taken from him and given to Weiss and Bruce (for some reason) under the excuse that 'Remnant tech is weird.' Spends the movie in a godawful Jealousy Triangle with Ren and Nora in some incoherent 'point' about misogyny, and his only Character Moment(tm) comes from powering up Nora. FFS Josstice League gave Vic more things to do than this movie did.

Barry: Also had more to do in Josstice League than he did here. He's completely superfluous to the plot until he gets possessed. Does absolutely nothing the entire movie with no characterization whatosever until Killg%re uses him as a meat puppet.

Clark is the only Leaguer in the movie who comes out unscathed and generally in-character. But it's hard to enjoy that when he's made fun of, insulted, distrusted, and talked down to by almost everyone on RWBYJNR when he's trying to come up with plans and help.

Is it me, or did the RWBY characters in the justice league crossover seem a bit off to you? Could be because they were trapped in a fake world with their memories muddled, or that it was more of a fun action film than anything, but some of them felt kinda out of character to me

Not really, it just seemed like the natural result of having their memories muddled.

#rwby #rwby/justice league

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itsclydebitches · 3 years ago

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"They got to that island because of a very long line of bad choices and the characters’ development doesn’t have anywhere to go if this entire, massive tragedy is shrugged away with, “Those dastardly villains, huh? Too bad they bested us. But at least we did everything we could and things would definitely be worse if we hadn’t made those exact choices.”" - Honestly? I’ve lost so much faith in RT I won’t believe it until it happens.

I do feel that, anon. truly. Honestly though, I think one of the reasons why I’m (maybe?) a little more optimistic about future content than some other critics is because RWBY keeps raising the stakes and the writer in me keeps going, “Okay this is a totally different situation now and simply must generate some actual reflection. That last mistake didn’t, but this new mistake is even worse, so surely it will succeed where the past plot failed.”

To better explain what I mean:

The group steals the Lamp and its password, draw their weapon on Qrow, then verbally and physically assault Ozpin with Oscar along for the ride. This behavior is nothing like what we’ve seen from them before, so surely we’re going to see them grappling with this.

Okay, I understand what the fandom is saying about them needing time and how being out in the snow or hunted by Apathy isn’t the time for self-reflection. I don’t like how long the reconciliation has been pushed, but I expect for this to go somewhere once they reach Argus.

Right. That... never happened. But now the group has stolen military property, tested Kingdom relations, and ignited a massive grimm attack against Argus. They weren’t willing to acknowledge their mistakes when they were purely personal and associated almost entirely with Ozpin, but now their mistakes have actively caused harm to hundreds of innocents. Here’s where the reflection has to start.

They’ve been arrested! Finally, here we go…

…ah.

Okay, so hurting Ozpin and Oscar didn’t resonate with them and neither did endangering a city, but now they’re literally in the same position Ozpin was, trying to decide whether they’ll put their faith in a flawed ally, or keep their secrets safe out of an abundance of caution. Ruby chooses the latter. She’s never so fully embodied the “villainous” position, as she seems to define it, with the plot forcing her to see things from Ozpin’s perspective. Until now, the group could twist facts and push justifications to paint themselves as unquestionably in the right, but these situations are just too similar for them to ignore. Look, Yang and Oscar are questioning this decision!

…why is Qrow telling Ruby she’s nothing like Ozpin?

Why are Jaune, Yang, and Nora ignoring Ren’s points to focus on how closed off he supposedly is?

Cool, cool that was all terribly written but now, now, the impact of those mistakes are off the charts. The group denounced one of their last allies to the entire world in a message that, by all accounts, should send Remnant into turmoil. Penny is dead partly due to the foolish wish they made. The Kingdom of Atlas is gone. All its surviving citizens are refugees and are currently being eaten by grimm. The entire team essentially died falling through that void. The personal, the professional, and history repeating itself… none of that clued the group into the mistakes they’ve made lately. But this? This is bigger than anything the show has ever done before. Unless they somehow doom all of Remnant in Volume 9, there’s no way for the stakes to get any higher or the consequences of their missteps to get any more deadly. If losing a fifth of the established world and dying on the job doesn’t clue them in that they maybe some bad choices were made, nothing will.

Which is what I keep saying each Volume lol. But it’s because the plot keeps getting more insane. Seriously though, this time we seem to have hit top tier consequences. This is the end of the line, so to speak. If RT can’t have the group properly reflect after this level of failure and tragedy, I don’t think the plot can raise the stakes any more to generate further, “Okay, but this time…” responses from me.

#rwde #rwby #mymetas

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kittyprincessofcats · 4 years ago

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I finished RWBY Volume 5!!

Loved it!! After volume 4 was (understandably) a bit slower-paced, I didn’t expect things to get intense and serious this quickly, but I’m glad they did! I have so many thoughts I wanted to write down, so here we go:

[There will be spoilers for RWBY up to Volume 5 in this post (duh). Please don’t leave spoilers for anything after Volume 5 on this post, otherwise I will block you.]

- I have to say, I definitely liked Cinder more when she wasn’t talking. During Volume 4, I kind of started feeling bad for her on some level, but then she got better and started being her old condescending, power-hungry self and I was like… nevermind, I hate you again.

- Qrow being super drunk when he first brings Oscar home was absolutely hilarious.

- Yang is SO COOL. Have I mentioned that she’s so cool? Like wow, I wish I was that cool! The bike, the new (amazing) outfit, the way she just punched that creepy guy and walked right up to her mom’s bandit camp making demands of her – she’s so cool and I’m here for it.

- Yang and Weiss’ reunion was so sweet! 😭 I was waiting for literally any of Team RWBY’s members to reunite and that got me right in the feels! (Also, I loved the whole “Wait, your mom kidnapped me?” “Wait, you kidnapped her?” exchange - brilliant 😂.)

- Ruby’s reunion with Yang and Weiss was so sweet, too! 😭 Tears were definitely shed over reunions in this volume! And it was so nice to finally have most of Team RWBY and what’s left of Team JNPR back together and see them bond and catch up with each other 😭. Found family back together! It’s what they deserve!

- Yang being so angry at Blake for leaving makes perfect sense, imo, especially considering her own abandonment issues. And even more so considering that she lost that arm while protecting Blake. Also, I don’t think it’s reading too much into it to say that Yang and Blake’s interactions and their storyline together have had romantic undertones since volume 2. (And no, I’m not just saying that because I ship Bumbleby; it’s the other way around – I ship Bumbleby because those romantic undertones were there in the first place.) So yeah, Yang always tried to help and support Blake, lost an arm protecting her from her abusive ex, and then Blake just left – I get why Yang’s hurt and angry. And that moment where she goes from complaining about how she just wants to be there for Blake, before finally admitting “What if I needed her there for me?” - that’s a really good moment for Yang, even beyond the romantic subtext. It’s nice to see Yang admit that she also wants someone else to be there for her, that she wants to receive that same love and care in return.

- I also want to point out that it’s nice to see how far Weiss has come since volume one. She really took a level in kindness and became a lot more mature, to the point where she’s now giving Yang relationship advice. It’s really nice to see.

- Ruby’s talk with Oscar about Penny and Pyrrha really got me teary eyed.

- I wasn’t that fond of Sun at first, but he had some really great moments in this volume, so he’s starting to grow on me now. I still don’t ship him with Blake, but their friendship is sweet.

- And now, let’s talk about THE standout character of the whole volume for me: ILIA!! Holy hell, I love everything about her! You know how some characters grow on you over time, and then there are those characters that you see one episode with and they just become instant favourites? That second one was Ilia for me. I watched Blake’s character short before Volume 5 and the moment I heard her backstory she jumped right to the top of my favourite character list without question AND I started shipping her and Blake right away. (Yes, I love Bumbleby and all, but I’m a multishipper. I’m perfectly capable of equally loving two ships that contradict each other.)

- It’s just – Ilia and Blake’s dynamic got me hooked! Not to compare everything to my OTP (Catra and Adora from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power), but let me quickly make this comparison: Two girls who grew up together, were both members of a certain evil organization until one of them left it and the other didn’t, now they’re on opposing sides and have to fight each other, but they still clearly care about each other. Plus, there are confirmed romantic feelings from at least one side there. I know many people (including myself) have compared Bumbleby to Catradora before – because you’ve got one blonde jock and one catgirl – but when it comes to the dynamic and the backstory, Blake and Ilia (what’s that ship called? Catmeleon, I think?) resemble Catradora even more. And it’s just the kind of dynamic I’m weak for.

(Honestly, it’s kind of funny how predictable I am both when it comes to favourite characters and favourite ships. My sister, who got me into both She-Ra and RWBY, took one look at Catra years ago and immediately predicted that I would love her. And when she first saw Ilia, she also immediately knew she’d be one of my favourites. Basically, my sister once described my “type” of favourite characters as “troubled, cute and gay” and that pretty much sums it up.)

- Speaking of troubled, cute, and gay: I’m glad RWBY finally has some CANON LGBT representation! Hell yes for that! Honestly, I interpreted Ilia’s feelings for Blake as romantic right away, but I wondered if it was just bait or my usual tendency to see romantic undertones in any interaction between two girls. But then that “I wanted you to look at me that way” line happened and… WOW. Yes. Amazing, talented, brilliant, never been done before, showstopping, incredible. I’m 100% sold on both the ship and Ilia as a character.

(One more thing before I change topics: I try to keep these posts positive and not get into discourse too much (since I’ve heard there was (is?) a lot of discourse in the RWBY fandom – but I took just one look into the tag for Volume 5 and immediately saw people arguing that Ilia’s not good representation because she’s a villain. And I just want to quickly address why that’s nonsense, in my opinion (and before you ask, yes I am a lesbian myself): First of all, she’s not even a full-blown villain. She’s clearly shown as confused and misguided from the beginning. And her feelings for Blake are never portrayed as a negative thing. She also has a redemption literally two episodes after being revealed to be queer. And in general, I don’t think queer villains are necessarily a bad thing and I’m tired of queer characters not being allowed to be flawed. How come straight characters get to just exist, but any queer character better be a shining beacon of morality or else they’re bad representation? I agree that RWBY should introduce more queer characters to balance things out a bit, but I wouldn’t say Ilia was bad representation by herself, since she’s a character I think we’re meant to have sympathy for.

- Now I just hope that future volumes of RWBY don’t pull a Bury Your Gays and kill Ilia off... I’d really hate that. (No spoilers on this post, please!)

- The entire fight at the Belladonnas’ house had me so on edge the whole time. I thought someone (most likely one or both of Blake’s parents) was going to die any second. Basically, the ending of volume 3 burned me and now I constantly expect characters to die. I’m glad it all (mostly) turned out well!

- Blake’s speech to the Faunus might have made me a bit emotional. That was a really great moment for her.

- And then there were those final episodes… WOW. Like I said, I really didn’t expect everything to go down so quickly (or for the ending to be that happy – like I said, volume 3 burned me.)

- Jaune unlocking his semblance was nice! And I’m proud of myself for having correctly predicted that he’d have some sort of healing powers. (I was waiting for him to unlock some healing semblance back when Qrow got injured in Volume 4 – I’m glad it finally happened!)

- I was worried about Weiss for a second, then I realized there’s no way she can die since I’ve already seen pictures of her outfit in later volumes. (Plus, I’m pretty sure if a main character had died, I’d have been unable to completely avoid spoilers about it. So those 4 are pretty much the only ones I’m not that worried about.)

- Raven is a really cool and interesting character, but an awful person. (I got so angry at her when she blasted Ruby after Ruby was just so nice to her*. How dare you, lady?) I love her design, though!

[*EDIT: I just rewatched it and realized that it was Cinder who blasted Ruby, Raven just created the portal. Point still stands, tough.]

- The plot twist of who the Spring Maiden really is was EPIC. Really loved that reveal! (And I honestly didn’t see it coming.) Though I have to say, I feel really bad for Vernal, and for the previous Spring Maiden.

- The Cinder VS Raven fight was absolutely epic and just stunning to watch visually. I was wondering if we’d ever get a maiden vs maiden battle, and that scene more than delivered! And while I don’t particularly like either of them, I was definitely rooting for Raven in that fight.

- I’m not sure if Cinder really died there. If so, I’m honestly not too sad about it, but I would be disappointed because I kind of expected her to become a more interesting character later on. After Volume 4, I expected at least a bit of growth there or something that would make her more interesting. And I’m not talking about a redemption, just to be clear! I just think the potential to make her more interesting as a villain was there, and if they just killed her off it’s kind of wasted now and she stayed a very flat character until the end. But I guess we’ll see.

- Raven and Yang’s confrontation was pretty intense. I liked that Raven finally had to admit that she’s afraid and doing all of this just to protect herself, and the contrast to Yang, who is also scared but still does what she thinks is right. And the fact that Raven was willing to let Yang have the relic despite the danger that would put her in – mom of the year indeed 🙄.

- Blake and the other Faunus are the real MVPs of the battle, tbh. The fact that they just completely stopped Adam and the White Fang by sheer numbers and didn’t even give them the chance to attack anyone? God tier stuff. And when Blake’s mom came in with the police? 10/10, we stan.

- Also, Blake telling Adam she’s not there for him? Hell yes, girl! I love how she’s taking power away from her abuser by showing she isn’t doing any of this for him. Really nice.

- Yang and Blake’s reunion in the last episode was super nice. I like how there was so much attention on that reunion in particular. And while I’m glad Yang wasn’t too angry at Blake and it makes for a nice happy ending, I still hope there’s a scene next volume where Blake properly apologizes to Yang for leaving and explains her side of things. And then, they should get together and live happily ever after and have lots of kittens. I mean, what?

- And finally, all of Team RWBY is back together! And they’ll have a lot to catch each other up on. Blake doesn’t even know about the maidens, the relics and Salem yet, while the rest didn’t even know about the White Fang attack. Also, I want Blake to introduce the others to Ilia and to her parents.

I really loved this volume. Lots of action, lots of really sweet moments, lots of epic fights and cool plot twists. I find it hard to rank them, but this might have been my favourite volume yet (volume 3 was also really good, though).

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rainbuckets8 · 4 years ago

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Why you should watch RWBY

TL;DR:

Summary: RWBY is an epic fantasy with themes like found family, the struggle to remain hopeful, the younger generation growing up, villain redemption, and systemic evils.

Strengths: RWBY has unique and memorable characters. The show is smart. It has excellent cinematography and animation. It has representation. It tackles hard topics. It’s got incredible music and it’s free on RT’s website.

Weaknesses: RWBY has some early growing pains, specifically volume 2’s finale, as well as budget and polish. Later on, volume 4 is weaker than the rest. Volume 8's finale is extremely distressing for a lot of viewers (and we haven't seen the follow up to those events yet). The fandom can be bad at times.

Misinformation: The early volumes being bad, the racism plot line, and the animation (not the same as “budget and polish”) are not as bad as you may have heard from YouTube.

Suggested viewing order

Red Trailer, White Trailer, Black Trailer, Yellow Trailer

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Volume 4 Character Short

Volume 4

Volume 5 Weiss Character Short, Volume 5 Blake Character Short, Volume 5 Yang Character Short

Volume 5

Volume 6 Adam Character Short

Volume 6

Volume 7

Volume 8

(I did my best to make this spoiler-free. When there are spoilers, they’re worded ambiguously enough that someone new to the show would never guess what’s going to happen just by reading this.)

What to expect

The world of Remnant is filled with monsters called the creatures of Grimm. Warriors called Huntsmen and Huntresses defend humanity. Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang go to school to become the next generation of heroes. Together they make Team RWBY (pronounced, “Ruby”)! Joining them is team JNPR (“Juniper”), made up of Jaune, Nora, Pyrrha, and Ren. But evils even more dangerous than the Grimm are ready to make their move, and school quickly becomes an afterthought…

(I mention these next two topics specifically bc they can immediately turn someone away based on bad expectations.) There is a fantasy school setting, but RWBY is not a show about school. School topics are not a dominant idea: it seems to resemble a setting like Harry Potter, but the actual focus of the show rarely touches on things like classes or homework or tests, and we quickly move on. There is romance and it has a role in the plot, but RWBY is not a romance show. On the scale of romance in FMAB to She-Ra, RWBY falls somewhere in the middle.

What is RWBY about, then? RWBY is like an epic fantasy or high fantasy, despite first appearances. Perhaps not every genre convention is followed, but at its core, RWBY is about an epic struggle of good and evil.

RWBY contains themes such as found family, the struggle to remain hopeful, the younger generation growing up, villain redemption, and systemic evils.

Strengths of the show

The characters are unique and memorable. One of the cool things is that they all draw inspiration from a real life fairy tale, myth, or something else. They designs are all top notch. One character who died with extremely little screen time even got so much fandom love, they included the character in a mid-hiatus short later. The characters have unique weapons, too; in the world of Remnant, a weapon is an extension of ones’ soul, and they reflect the variety of their owners. They’re also just plain cool; Monty was famous for following the “Rule of Cool.” And their individual stories are all compelling and interesting.

The show is smart. As a fandom, we generally pick up on the narrative hints the creators are dropping. And our predictions usually come true, but not in a way that makes the show predictable and boring. We very rarely guess exactly what will happen, but we have some similar idea of it. It’s just excellent foreshadowing.

RWBY also likes to play with tropes, as an extension of this. Often it will challenge them, or subvert expectations. In other cases, RWBY uses tropes to avoid showing us what we already know will happen. This occurs in both characters and plot. For example…

SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR VOLUME ONE FOR THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH: Jaune’s entire character arc is about trying to be the anime protagonist, and learning that he doesn’t have to do things alone, and it’s ok to be a support main. The show sets up the narrative in a way that looks like, oh of course the direction it will go is him becoming the main character, but then it destroys toxic masculinity instead.

Our characters are smart, too. Plot-induced stupidity generally doesn’t happen. (A few big mistakes or errors in this regard aren’t actually the fault of the narrative, either, but animation and miscommunication and failure to execute. And those aren’t common.) It goes beyond just “not being dumb,” however. The villains’ plans are incredibly clever, and our heroes sometimes even guess at the usual “plot twists.”

The cinematography is just incredible. There are numerous freeze frames with extreme attention to detail that reveal character motivations or arcs or foreshadowing, there are many effective cuts and moving parts, there are soooo many parallels and callbacks, and visual cues such as lighting and color all are used appropriately to convey emotion and assist the narrative. It is one of the biggest overlooked strengths of the show, imo, simply because a lot of people in the fandom don’t notice these things as much for whatever reason, or else don’t give as much praise about them.

The animation is extremely good as well. Budget issues and technology issues aside (which means a lack of polish), the actual animation? The fight choreography, and all the other parts of animation that aren’t just “expensive CGI” are all wonderful. You can have very shiny, polished turds after all, and RWBY is like the opposite: not very polished, especially early on, but very well animated. All the trailers, volume 1 episode 8, the volume 1 finale, the volume 2 penultimate episode, and basically everything else hold up extremely well even today. If anything, the worst fight animation was in volumes 4 and 5 because of Maya growing pains, and those are an example of being more polished, but not necessarily better animated. Animation of faces has always been good, animation of characters has always felt lively. Aside from a few small actual hiccups (that one person running across rooftops for instance), it’s well done.

There are LGBTQ+ characters. The treatment of one of the recent trans characters, in volume 8, was nothing short of amazing. They worked with a VA who was trans. The moment of canon confirmation was important to the character for backstory, because of course that affects the character’s life, but not the only important thing about the character. The representation is not in-your-face or pandering. And there is a split of representation among the main cast and the minor characters, with promises of more to come (notably they’ve said they’re working on more mlm for future volumes, too).

RWBY is not afraid to tackle hard topics. It deals with things like mental illness, systematic racism, and cycles of abuse. It’s not because the show is trying to earn “gritty and dark” points, it’s because those are some of the topics that real people have to struggle with as well. And the show handles most or all of them very well, in a way that shows respect and an honest attempt to depict these things as best they can. (NOTE ABOUT VOLUME 8: THERE IS A VERY DIFFUCLT CONVERSATION CURRENTLY HAPPENING. I am on the side of, let’s wait and see what happens next because the story isn’t over, so we haven’t really seen the fall out. But I understand why this paragraph feels really difficult to agree with if you've seen the volume 8 finale. I trust the track record of the rest of the show, personally.)

As an example, the show has a theme that villains are rarely evil just because. A lot of villains choose to do bad things because they were hurt in some way. Some lived in poverty; some were hurt by racism; many of them are victims of abuse. But the show doesn’t make excuses for them. It’s possible to be both sympathetic and still choose evil over and over again (that’s called tragic). The ones who eventually do try to do good again are not always forgiven, either.

The music is amazing. I can probably count on my hands the number of times I’ve heard someone say otherwise, which is astonishing when you consider this fandom.

It’s also free on RT’s website. (A paid, “FIRST” subscription removes ads and lets you see new episodes one week early, but they all eventually release for free.)

Weaknesses of the show

Early volumes’ growing pains exist, much like most or all other shows. (Even some of the greatest were not immune to this, like ATLA.) In this case, however, it’s a little bit rougher. A large reason why is that this was kind of the first big thing from RT to ever come out. If you remember back almost a decade ago, their only other big thing at the time was RvB, which was machinima. They pretty much started from scratch with everything, from assets to VAs to animation to writing. Imagine if a random twitch streamer, like Ninja (idk who’s popular these days) said one day, “OK let me just direct something that’s intended to be the next great movie series of all time, like Star Wars, with a $4 bill and an iPhone camera.” Then went out and actually made something. Of course it would be rough…but then it turns out the movie is actually really good. And then you get to watch over the next several years as everything gets better and better until it’s honest-to-god comparable to the MCU. That’s kind of what happened with RWBY.

One specific growing pain was the volume 2 finale. Pretty much everything else up until that point, I love about the show. But the finale just fails to deliver on the build up of tension from other episodes. Some of it is because of later plot developments that we didn’t know at the time; some of it is because of just not great writing; some of it is because of just not great animation; and yes, some of it is budget. Regardless, it’s a low point for the show.

Speaking of, the budget for the early volumes is super small. The infamous volume one shadow people, the infamous person jumping across the rooftops in volume two, and just production quality isn’t high compared to a major release from some established studio. These are real weaknesses of the show that for some people, make it unwatchable, and if that’s you, that’s ok.

One last weakness of the show, the screen time per episode, especially early on, is NOT a full 20 minutes like you may expect of an anime (or anime-inspired-western-media, for those of you who will die on the “RWBY is not an anime” hill). This is a trend that has stuck with the show, a shorter run time per episode, for generally the entire lifetime. On one hand, it means it’s a little less daunting to catch up or rewatch than the number of episodes might imply. On the other, early on, some episodes have a little weird pacing. It also means the writing had to adjust for this, so while RWBY got really good at telling a story within a shorter amount of time, there’s also challenges with that too. Perhaps one of the notable ones is the pacing, with slower moments sometimes feeling like it takes up too much screen time, or not enough. Volume 4 was a particular struggle for the crew, both because they switched animation engines and also for the story.

Common complaints that I don’t agree with

I don’t agree that the early volumes were actually bad overall. Growing pains, yes, but not bad. I attribute that complaint to overly focusing on one character’s storyline, back when it wasn’t clear there was so much more to come and before people realized the show would challenge the tropes instead of falling into them. It’s pretty much just volume 1 when people say this anyway, most of them I’ve heard admit that volume 2 was a lot better (except the finale) and almost everyone loves volume 3. And looking back on it, I do think volume 1 holds up.

Tying into this, the racism plot line is another common complaint. I don’t think it’s actually executed quite that badly. I think it makes sense for there to be regional differences in the amount of racism we see, it just so happened that we only saw a very small and isolated environment, Beacon, for much of the early volumes. (Incidentally, that’s actually similar the environment I myself grew up in.) It’s not perfect, though. But there’s no doubt that the later volumes do a better job portraying this. Again, I attribute it mostly to people not knowing how long the show would run for at the time, so of course if that’s all we saw, it would’ve been bad. But it’s not. I have a lot of respect for Miles and Kerry for even attempting to handle the racism topic in the first place. And for the faults that DO exist in this plot line, I credit them for learning and growing past that too, and doing better in later volumes.

The animation is not bad. I’ve already touched on that earlier, but people confuse “budget and polish” with “animation.” Give me RWBY any day over Michael Bay’s Transformers: no matter how much polish those robots have, they’re still a confusing mess to try and follow. And the polish isn’t even an issue once we get past the growing pains of Maya and get a bigger budget, because wow does this show look good now.

Between these three complaints I hear about often, I think those are the biggest ones. And they’re all generally done in bad faith, based not on just those but on other more provocative statements people also make with them. That’s part of my issue with the fandom, specifically the vocal but small parts of the fandom, because they’re just repeating these things from early days that aren’t true. But YouTubers gotta get those rage and hate clicks somehow, right? Unfortunately it discredits the show a lot and influences other people’s opinions into not giving it a fair chance, because it’s become a narrative of “RWBY IS BAD” when they all won’t shut up about it. So yeah, fandom can be bad, join at your own discretion. (Of course, all fandoms have annoying parts, and my interactions with the fandom have been good overall, otherwise.)

Onto other complaints, some say the cast is bloated. I don’t agree, but I don’t think this one is in bad faith. I think we get the important characters as much screen time as we can, and the minor characters don’t actually detract from that; one of the differences between good minor characters and bad ones, is that bad ones take up too much time. RWBY has a ton of characters but many of the minor ones don’t actually take up too much time. So it appears bloated, but actually I don’t think it is.

Finally, a small word on the no-no topics. Adam, and Monty. Adam is like the champion of the Monty topic. Which essentially boils down to “Miles and Kerry are ruining Monty’s vision for the show.” Toxic fandom is truly awful and I have no respect for anyone who says anything like that. Shame on all of you. This isn’t really anything negative about the show, but the fandom, and tbf all fandoms have toxic parts. But toxic fandom can be a real and valid reason to not watch a show. Thankfully they seem fewer in number these days, but I think they’ve evolved into hiding behind other characters or topics, so you know. Beware. Again, it's not too hard to avoid them or block them, and my interactions otherwise with most fans have been good.

#rwby

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bushfulofbirds · 8 months ago

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God forbid the story actually utilises the one bit of lore it manages to introduce in a solid way within the span of that intro. Nobody is trying to make you buy jack shit

The intro: "Hey this is a resource that humans use to fight monsters and has been a literal foundation that allowed them to establish their societies. This is the villain trying to remove this powerful resource from people by force". Hbomb: "OK but why is this at all important tho"

This section is frustrating to watch lmfao

This lack of (clearly displayed) payoff on the dust robberies in v1-2 is something that's also been brought up in the This Is Basically RW,BY video but does hold merit. However what is the point of the leadup to this point being as convoluted as it was.

OK if you claim that they changed this part of the plot... where's your backup my dude. You speak of mis-utilised and limited setups for 10 minutes straight and proceed to immediately create one yourself 😭

He's also fully ignoring the dialogue so far

"I used a cool technical terms to make this commentary look more solid"

No-one is watching the intro and going "dust! Sold!" Because as you so disappointedly mentioned just a moment ago the next scene sets up more stakes around dust and "sell" that to the viewer

"This wasn't explained in a lore dump straight away therefore it's bad"

"The basic premises, target demographics and experience levels of different writers who got to work in different levels of formality will now be completely ignored for an arbitrary comparison that I will use to put ATLA on a pedestal to automatically communicate that other approaches to worldbuilding are bad by default"

Bro literally calls any audience member of a fictional premise a "fucking idiot" jokingly or not that tells me a lot about how this guy perceives audiences at large (inc this video essay)

I know for a fact that if not for Pyrrha's exposition dump existing the crit here would just extend from EXPLANATION BAD to say there's no explanation or grounding for what Ren is doing in that fight

*Twists Pyrrha's background as a character from trained combat athlete to regular ordinary magical teenager who magically knows her shit*

So Jaune not already knowing any combat skills whatsoever and being put in a position where he has to take the bad path to get to where he aspires to be (and in turn being forced to train and work harder to catch up) is inherently bad? Sure, having his and Pyrrha's Emerald Forest interactions be about the exposure is pretty on-the-nose (though definitely not a unique issue). I think that if we wanna really stretch this out we can even say that actually in REALITY not everyone grows up knowing much about their family histories or disconnected from their heritages etc. for a myriad of reasons. So I guess to me it never really seemed far-fetched that he wouldn't necessarily know much besides "I come from a lineage of warriors." So sure, they could have made it more explicit that he was kept away from a lot of that as per the Harry Potter comparison, but that doesn't necessarily boil down to such a terrible and nonsensical thing, either.

Sure, they use Jaune as a vehicle for exposition in v1 a lot. I think that arguably it also tells a lot about Weiss' character rather than forcing her to "pause" being one (hyper-researches her competition to stick with the high profile student and plan her way through school that way). Again this really skips over the part actually showcasing this, which is just very selective and doesn't give the full picture and context of the scene.

"Pyrrha helping Jaune in the Emerald Forest and offering to train him automatically equals trading her characterisation for exposition." Early season Pyrrha and removing her Autonomy in favour of helping Jaune progress through the plot is another argument, though, and I think that putting them together like that is probably not the best approach.

"Jaune is a self-insert and an excuse from Miles to hog screentime away from the plot"

Dude why use a complete other person speaking to somehow justify Miles wanting to hook his "self-insert" with Pyrrha

"Why do semblances exist" because it's a cool and interesting dynamic to work with from an action perspective maybe. For someone claiming that the whole series is based on that it seems interesting to not touch on that tie at all. Criticising the worldbuilding around it is fine and all but honestly there's no harm done in their actual existence

"I'm not trying to be mean but I'm also going to tear this to shreds right here right now for two hours"

I think that one of the bigger writing fumbles in RW,BY is literally Weiss' "no such thing as magic" line. Like yeah Raven turning into a bird is absurd even by general RW,BY power limitations, having the story of the maiden powers be as is something that feels very hard to believe within the concept of the world (whaddaya mean old man Oz gave these girls a special power lineage?) I just think it's down to poor phrasing.

"Everyone knows the name of [Pyrrha's] ability" ok who is this everyone outside of Ruby, Weiss and the baddies who have some extra planning and access points to the whole picture

OK but as soon as people cut to some exposition dialogue mid-fight then it removes the pacing of the fight itself. Monty's style is not like that and as soon as this was done in Volumes 4 and 5 it only led to more people complaining and dropping the show entirely (hell you just complained about it being done in Yang vs Adam).

Ah there we go 50 minutes in we get to the first genuine bottom line statement of "RW,BY suffers from mismanaged story beats which mean a lack of investment and exposition in critical early points that are compensated for too late down the line."

I honestly think that "if you don't feed me everything explicitly off the bat then this is automatically unwatchable and confusing" is also not a healthy approach? Sometimes abstracting things doesn't work but it also doesn't mean that everything needs to be verbalised to you for it to be considered "good." It's about when and how it's done, and how it can really affect your storytelling if done wrong. I think that's what he's trying to get at but the way he does it comes off much more as it needing that spoon feeding to work.

Sure WoR isn't really the most engaging lore companion but shouldn't the whole reasoning given in the video for WHY it's the way it is be seen as like. A good sign?

Whyyyy is this video written like this

Has this guy never seen recap episodes be scattered between main episodes before? It's not ideal or fun but it's also not unique and I wish that was something that was also acknowledged (but hey that way you get less of an excuse to rap about it)

Congrats you struggled to grasp the concept from the main show alone your experiences are not universal

"When they did this implicitly it was great but once they actually elaborated on them in the classroom setting it's BAD and STINKY" (the last 30mins have been a back and forth on this guy's convoluted explanation of good vs bad worldbuilding. Also more backtracking and rehashing.

"Monty writing good M&K writing bad and evil and stinky bleugh"

There's a lot of usages of footage of M&K goofing around or zoning out etc. to vilify them

[literally uses a commentary clip where the writers gush about Shane's usage of the action scene in a pretty coherent way to shit on their writing abilities]*

More twisting scenes into particular contexts to make them work for the argument

Very vague wording to suggest "Writers" means "Heads of the Production."

"Neptune is Kerry's creepy self-insert"

Tired RW,BY fan braves hbomb video after three years (he finally downloaded it of Internet Archive), more at 12

#srb #critbush #discourse #text

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rwby-ontheside · 4 years ago

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General thoughts on RWBY Antagonists:

Salem: Big bad with a titty window. What else is there to say? Our wicked witch of the west. Not saying she'll get a redemption but she might actually help save the day in the end? Might not. Jinn's whole, no way to kill Salem thing makes me think Ruby is going to have to convince her to not end the world. Really love her backstory. All her interactions with the gods had such a good similarity to fairytales. Gonna make you immortal until you appreciate life or whatever? Get outta here. Love it.

Cinder: So collected and boring (except for hilariously unnecessary wardrobe changes) in vol 1-3. Became my favorite villain once things weren't going her way. Our Cinderella may have a tragic backstory but she will get no redemption. She's carrying out her own plans but is still loyal to her fairy godmother, Salem. Not out of loyalty, but because she's smart. Everytime Cinder is on screen my brain jumps up and down but it'll be incredibly satisfying seeing her taken down in the end (whoever that may be, Ruby or Jaune).

Adam: Literally was there to have an insanely satisfying death. Wilting rose was a stand in for a domestic abuser who was defeated by his victim and Yang who was protecting his victim. He was a huge part to Blake's backstory and Blake and Yang's storylines vol 4-6. Love what he added. Love how he died.

Torchwick: Gotten say never was a huge fan of his but loved his speech right before he got eaten. And his death caused Neo's whole plot line in vol 6 and 7, which is *chef's kiss* Looking back he was a good middle management type villian for vol 1-3.

Neapolitan: She's not just there for having THE best fighting style and fun spunky attitude. At this point, she is the only one with the sole goal of killing Ruby. She has some added depth for caring about her old donzo boss. Another character that makes my brain jump up and down. What's she gonna do?! She's following Cinders plan for now but Neo is the most unpredictable character right now. Cannot wait for her to meet Ruby again. And hopefully Yang.

Emerald: She's the diamond in the rough! The show made us sympathetic to her pretty early on. This girl is getting a nice redemption that she'll earn and deserve.

Mercury: We were made sympathetic to him later than Emerald but he'll get the same outcome. His redemption will no doubt be born from his attachment and affection to Emerald. In my mind he's the Jasmine to Emerald's Aladdin. Boy's got no other fairytale attachment right?

Hazel: He adds a nice bit of 'Ozpin you monster' vibe. Similar to Mercury, will see redemption through his care for Emerald. Dad bod, I like him.

Arthur Watts: Gives Salem's posse brains. Having intelligent villains can give interesting plots and twists. Evil Sherlock Holmes.

Tyrion: Just the psycho on the team. It's enjoyable seeing other villians look uneasy when he does anything. He's built a history with Ruby and ESPECIALLY Qrow. He's the scorpion on the frog. Kinda hate him but love his fighting style. It will be very enjoyable to see whomever kills him.

Ironwood: Embodiment of absolute power corrupts absolutely. Love it. He's a great example of why teams on RWBY are so important. Turned into a cold blooded tin man.

Cordovin: Old lady in the shoe. I for one loved the vol 6 climax with her. A good one season villian. I like the "2 old ladies fight". And it was nice to have the gang fight someone outside of Salem's gang for a season.

Honorary:

Raven: We have her for the sweet angst (and don't forget Yangst!). Literally cannot wait to see team STRQ backstory. She had her own agenda in vol 5 and it was amazing (and totally backfired on her). Pinnacle of morally grey character. She sees love as a weakness but her semblance literally only works if she bonds to people! Ah it's beautiful. Has history with Yang of course and sees Ruby as Summer (and Tai moving on-ouch). She literally kicked Weiss in the face 😭. If the show has time, they could highlight the similarities between Raven and Blake.

Ilia: Good baby gay. She had a nice redemption and rounded Blake's love interests to 4 (the only number allowed on RWBY). Hopefully she gets a callback.

#rwby #rwby antagonists #rwby spoilers through vol 7 #rwby: Salem #rwby: Cinder #rwby: Raven

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psyga315 · 5 years ago

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Rewriting RWBY Volume 2

This is going to be a bit of a challenge, as Volume 2 is, compared to the other Volumes, meh. It’s not as great as Volume 3, it isn’t as bad as Volume 5, and it doesn’t split the fanbase viciously like every other Volume. It merely has its ups and downs. However, I’m going to try and tweak Volume 2 so as to fall in line with other Volumes.

As with before, I’m going to keep the story beats intact and try not to introduce as many new plot elements like with other rewrites. If I do, it’s to help build to a later plot point in the canon of the show, like how I had Gretchen be in Volume 1. But don’t expect me to completely rewrite the history of Remnant and have Bondrewd make a cameo or staple CFVY onto everything to try and make it better.

But, TL;DR: Celtic Phoenix’s fixing of Volume 2 is your better bet for a tweaked Volume 2.

With that out of the way, let’s begin.

Character Short

There’s one thing I’d completely change about the way the show works and that’s the tradition of a Character Short to introduce the Volume. To save on breath for future Tweaks, this means the four trailers that kickstarted RWBY are the Shorts for Volume 1, the Ruby Character Short is for Volume 4, the Ilya Character Short is Volume 5, and the Adam Character Short is for Volume 6. This leaves 2, 3, and 7 to have Character Shorts.

Though, the big question is who will have the short for Volume 2, though, I think the obvious answer would be Roman & Neo. At the time, we don’t know too much about Cinder, Emerald, and Mercury and while a Character Short involving them would have worked, Volume 2 is Roman’s grand finale as the head villain before he gets arrested and Cinder’s plans come to the forefront. Besides, Volume 3 would be a better fit for them having a Short.

What would the Short be about? Well, it’d introduce Neo to the audience. As for the scenario, it could be the chain of events that led to him meeting Cinder for the first time. Because we don’t know much about it outside of the implication that Mercury knew and introduced Roman to Cinder, the best I can think of is that, during a heist gone wrong that led to him taking Neo in, he bumps into Cinder and while we don’t see what she says to get him to join her side (yet), it seems enough to cause Roman, the previously chipper gentleman thief, to feel fear and despair, a feeling that will become very familiar to various characters who see Salem.

The White Fang Investigation Arc

Episode 1: It has been a day or so since RWBY and JNPR had formed officially and Ruby has had planned a lot of things out. This plays out like before, complete with a food fight, though downplay the “Weiss ‘dying’ in Ruby’s arms” bit because after her thing with Gretchen and what’ll happen later with Penny and Pyrrha, this feels less like comedy and more foreshadowing.

Episode 2: Huntsmen from different Kingdoms come together, including the debut of the following characters: Sun, who arrived with his team and not stowing away for whatever reason, Penny, who eerily becomes quick friends with Ruby, and General Ironwood.

Now, given the events of Volume 7, I feel like his Reasonable Authority Figure moments should be played up to help twist the knife. That or downplay it and bring forward a ruthless nature that foreshadows the lengths he’ll go to save Remnant. Either way you slice it, he’ll be a foil to Ozpin.

Either he becomes Ozpin if he valued Huntsmen as humans and thus seeks to find ways to protect them or even replace them so that they don’t have to die or he’s Ozpin if he goes overboard with using Huntsmen as a means to an end. For the sake of future tweaking, he’ll be the former.

Ozpin and Ironwood, while they’re both involved in the conspiracy, don’t see eye to eye. Ironwood believes that Ozpin is being too reckless with his Huntsmen and is the major reason why he’s focusing on robots instead, while Ozpin thinks Ironwood’s approach is too detached and that robots lack the feelings of humans to do what is best.

Now, Ironwood appearing in Beacon in this tweak is because part of the festivities of Vytal is that the four Headmasters come together to discuss matters and the future of the four Kingdoms. Think one of those UN meetings. However, this is what the public believes. In reality, it’s a front for Ozpin to command the other Headmasters on what the next phase for the Academies and the Kingdoms would be. However, it’s also been known to Ozpin that Haven and Shade have grown apathetic to the meetings in the past decade and while Haven sends in a representative instead of their Headmaster every meeting, Shade does not even do that.

This is to foreshadow two things: The obvious one is that Lionheart has been Salem’s pawn for a long while and that if he were to go to these meetings, he’d crack under pressure and fess up. Thus, representatives are needed, fed lines that only serve to keep Ozpin placated and not arouse suspicion while being fed information from Ozpin and Ironwood. It’s that very reason why the representatives for Haven get switched around, to prevent Ozpin from picking up on tells and feeding false information. In fact, most of them aren’t even pawns of Salem but genuine people that Lionheart believed would best represent Haven, much like how he picked Pyrrha.

The other is somewhat also obvious: Vacuo is Vacuo.

Some of you guys might know where I’m going with this, but for those who don’t, sit tight…

Ironwood talks with Ozpin about the message Qrow had sent about the Queen having pawns. Ozpin has nothing to fear with this and tells him “It’s something we have known for a long while.” To which Ironwood replies “So why did he tell us this now? The only purpose for a pawn is to either fall within the first hours of battle or be promoted within enemy lines. I fear it’s the latter he’s referring to…”

This goes back and forth before Haven’s representative speaks up as Ozpin remarks that everyone has pawns.

“So… is that what your students are to you?” Ozpin looks at the big, burly man, Haven’s representative. He says nothing, which only makes him frustrated, leading to him leaving the room. Ozpin makes a remark about how he and Ironwood are the only people who care for Remnant’s safety, only for Ironwood to give a barbed response of: “Do you?” before he too leaves.

The rest of the episode plays out, but during the end of the episode, rather than Ruby bumping into Cinder and her squad, she instead bumps into the big man. While she would have just left there and then, he stops her and asks if she is Ruby Rose. She answers yes and follows with a “why do you ask” before he responds:

“… Thank you… For being there for Gretchen…” And that’s how we’re introduced to Hazel Rainart.

I feel like Hazel is underutilized as a villain, only having a big moment in what most consider the worst volume ever and only serving to make his character weak. This is why I made Gretchen’s death an in-show event and why Hazel debuts early: to paint him as an anti-villain.

Episode 3 & 4 relatively stay the same, but with Ruby’s interactions with Penny being the first time she’s meeting her. However, with the rememberance of Gretchen, Ruby begins to keep a distance from Penny, fearing that something like Gretchen will happen to Penny, especially after she finds out she’s a robot. Likewise, Blake is weary of Sun and has no idea why he wants to help her defeat the White Fang, believing him to be only doing it for her attention.

There’s only one major change, and I think this would be much like with Celtic Phoenix’s rewrite, in that Tukson is introduced as an ally who helps Blake and Sun get disguises to infiltrate the White Fang.

The Dance Arc

Episode 5 still happens like before, with Pyrrha fighting CRDL, though perhaps with some pretext as to why she decided to take on all four at once. Something like “payback for what you did in that extra episode on the DVD” that conveniently gets released to the public on Rooster Teeth’s Youtube Channel.

However, Pyrrha is given a challenge from the new star pupil of Haven Academy: Mercury Black, who wants to see if Pyrrha’s prowess is comparable to his own. They have a fight and Mercury forfeits the moment he feels Pyrrha’s Semblance on his legs. We don’t know why from the get go, but it’s far from the “Just studying her” excuse that canon presented.

Okay, it is that, but mixed with his resentment towards people with Semblances in general. I guess I’ll explain, but the idea of his father taking away his Semblance might be a cool way to write a character flaw for him. A sort of complex towards people with Semblances, loathing that they use their Semblances as a crutch whereas he had to get by without one. He does lament that Jaune would be a better fight to have, which most of the students of Beacon consider an insult.

Rest of the episode plays like normal, but it’s everyone feeling off, not just Blake and Jaune. Ruby feels guilty about letting Gretchen die and thus can’t approach Hazel. Weiss has been getting calls from her father that unnerve her. Yang can’t shake off Neo giving them the slip. Pyrrha is struggling to feel if Mercury’s comment about fighting Jaune is an insult to her. And Jaune and Blake have their canon reasons.

In the middle of all this, Mercury rendezvous with his team mate Emerald and go to give Tukson a visit. As Blake begins to receive a call about what happened to Tukson, his assassination plays out, before the episode ends with them reporting to their teacher, Cinder.

Episode 6 begins with Roman berating Mercury and Emerald for killing Tukson, as he fears that the White Fang will retaliate, only for Cinder to reassure him that it’s exactly what is needed to rile them up, especially since Mercury framed the scene to look like a cop did it, to mirror what Roman said about the government.

After that, Mercury talks with Cinder about the plan or rather the apparent lack of one. Emerald gets ready to bitchsmack him for daring to question her divine savior, but Cinder calms the two down and explains her M.O.: They’re dealing with a man who sees the world as a chess board and as such, visualizes what moves to make and which pieces to sacrifice, all in an attempt to win. To which she says, while sewing her dress, “but I’m different. I don’t play to win. I merely make a beautiful pattern.”

And then we cut to the infamous Bumblebee scene. What? Foreshadowing to Raven or hinting towards Yang’s abandonment issues? Naaaah! Everyone knows it’s just Yang wanting to let Blake know she wants that sweet, sweet honey.

… Okay, joking aside, this scene can be kept in as it is, but it is to set up Yang’s plot with Raven first and foremost. She explains more detail about Raven to Blake. She talks about Team STRQ. “I’m cool and cocky, like my uncle Qrow. Weiss prioritizes technique over strength, like my dad, and Ruby, well, she’s like mom.”

Blake is confused and believes that she means Raven and not Summer. When she makes the assumption clear to Yang, she bitterly remarks about how she lost the right to be called mother when she dropped her off at her dad’s doorstep in a half-assed basket. She then explains how Raven was the black sheep of STRQ, getting booted out of Beacon the moment Ozpin found out about her intent to use the training to kill Huntsmen. Summer had faith in Raven, as did Taiyang, but that faith was only rewarded with pain. The reason she wants to find Raven? Because she had reason to believe that Summer’s final mission was to bring Raven back and she wants to find out what happened to her.

Of course, she explains that she doesn’t let that control her and she tells Blake that she shouldn’t let the White Fang control her. It doesn’t end with Yang flirting with Blake, but when has that stopped the shippers.

There’s a B plot about Jaune wanting to dance with Weiss, but he sees that she’s asking out Neptune. Dance continues like usual.

Episode 7 is the dance. Most of it is perfect, but I feel like we can tweak it just a little.

For one, Ruby works up the courage to apologize to Hazel about what happened, only for the two of them to notice Cinder and investigate. More on this later.

Jaune confronts Neptune about not going to the dance with Weiss until he reveals why: he knows that she’s a Schnee and as such, are wicked rich and powerful. To reject her would be a death sentence for him, especially if Jacques found out. Jaune reassures Neptune that this isn’t some sort of cartoon where Weiss is a rich alpha bitch and that he just needs to know the real her.

Back with the fight between Cinder, Hazel, and Ruby, it goes about as well as you expect, but Hazel attacks Cinder and causes the two of them to leave while Ironwood finds Ruby in the room with the hacked CCT.

Meanwhile, Hazel and Cinder fight each other for a little longer before Cinder talks to him about Gretchen and who he should really blame for her death. He stops, then asks “… How do I make him pay?”

So… Yeah. Hazel was a good guy before he became evil in this tweak. Again, the idea is to paint him as an anti-villain, which also means showing just how easy it is for Cinder (and by extension, Salem) can manipulate others into joining her cause.

Mountain Glenn Arc

Episode 8 has Ironwood talk with Oz about how they found a virus on the CCT but that they managed to erase it (before anyone asks, no, it’s not actually deleted. The virus only feigned being deleted and still lingers in the background, waiting for a backdoor to activate it again) and calls out Ozpin for the lack of security at the CCT. He reassures Ironwood that the threat is averted and that now they know that the enemy is in their territory. He had asked Hazel prior but he feigns not knowing who she is, which leaves Ruby to describe who she is.

Obviously, Cinder’s infiltration outfit is more than just her in a domino mask but a full-on stealth outfit complete with a mask. The only thing that can be used as a finger print is her use of a Semblance, but as Ruby tries to explain what abilities she’s used, but they get justified as anything but a Semblance. “She used fire!” “That was dust.” “She used glass!” “That was dust.” The only thing Ruby managed to get in was the hideout, but even then, that is put under scrutiny by Ironwood and Glynda, who both call her out on the contradictory information that she never said anything.

Ozpin, however, excuses Ruby, then talks about the person to his band, saying that they might have found “Autumn’s Assailant”. Ironwood insists they send an army to take her out, but Ozpin advises to exercise caution and that, were the army were to attack and she manages to win, that would only make things worse.

“It’s times like this that we need a more… human touch.”

Rest of the episode plays out like usual, though instead of Ozpin going all “I’ll just overlook that you guys are going to a dangerous mission”, he instead gives them the mission before they even see the board. This is something that is noted by Penny.

Episode 9 plays mostly the same, but with an obvious change in that Oobleck talks about Dr. Merlot’s experiments being the cause of Glenn’s destruction and that the possibility of the White Fang using it as a hideout would be risky, since the Grimm are attracted to negative emotions. “And believe me, despite how old the racism towards Faunus is, the Grimm will always smell it like it’s a fresh wound in water.” … Okay, bad analogy, but you get the idea.

Oobleck picks the brains of the members of RWBY, including Ruby herself, as he believes her reason for being a Huntress isn’t as pure as she thought it’d be. It’s not as brain picking as the others, but it’s something that gives the audience something to wonder.

Oobleck: “Ozpin told me why you wanted to be a Huntress. It’s not too far from what your sister said.”

Ruby: “Apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, ehe…”

Oobleck: “But… do you really want to protect people… Or is there something more to this ideal of being a Huntress than what you told Ozpin?”

Ruby: “Huh? I’m don’t know what you mean.”

Oobleck: “You will soon…”

Episode 10 has Ironwood confronting Glynda about Ozpin in that he’s become too passive in the war and had allowed a traffic accident that left dozens injured and at least one or two casualties to happen. Glynda asks what he should have done, to which Ironwood responds with why he wishes to replace Huntsmen with robots. “Pawns only have two purposes: to be promoted within enemy lines… or to fall. Ozpin cares only for the latter…”

Blake and Weiss talk about the SDC and the White Fang and how their war has cost Weiss her childhood innocence. She then says it’s not the Faunus’s fault that people have died. It’s her father. She reveals that the real reason she wants to be a Huntress isn’t to save people from Grimm like other people, but to use what she learned to defeat her father and take the SDC for herself.

Blake talks about Adam, someone who was scarred by the SDC, and how that pain caused him to resent humans. That whole “at first it was accidental, then it was in self-defence” speech comes here as she justified why she left the White Fang. Her reason for being a Huntress is similar in that regard, to atone for what she did as a member of the White Fang. After that? She doesn’t know.

Them talking about their motives brings Yang to confess her motive is even more selfish. She wants to experience the thrills of being a Huntress while the others want to change their worlds for the better. Blake brings up Raven, which only causes Yang to try and quiet her to not let Ruby know. She also brings up that Ruby wants to be a hero and that if she was to command them, she’d tell them to leave their businesses at the door in the name of protecting people, though Oobleck eavesdrops and hurms.

Ruby gets kidnapped like usual, but the bombs are explicitly the dust that Roman stole because that wasn’t going to be brought up in later volumes.

Episode 11 is one of those episodes that remain the same, though with a lot more emphasis on how RWBY dispatching the White Fang isn’t going to be ignored anytime soon, as Ruby ends up knocking a White Fang member off on to the train track. He gets up, but is soon mauled by a Creep. Ruby shrieks as she realizes this is the first time, she’s killed someone, even if it wasn’t by her own hands. Meanwhile, Yang manages to beat a White Fang member up, but he dies to his wounds from Ember Celica, with Yang seeing that there’s blood staining her right glove.

Weiss and Blake aren’t as shocked to be killing White Fang members, but Weiss seems to enjoy it a little too much for her liking (“I get to kill a Schnee!” “And I get to kill another White Fang.”) and Blake is called out as a traitor, which makes her killing the White Fang members all the more tragic.

The rest plays out like usual, but with Raven’s appearance, it’s foreshadowed as one of the White Fang members talks about how they have an infiltrator that is also killing the group.

The final episode is the infamous Breach. And I think I know just how to tweak it.

Don’t have any comedy moments.

Make this a battle that can’t be won so easily.

Have. Civilians. Die.

As much as I want to defend the Breach as a contrasting prelude to the Fall of Beacon, we still need to ensure that the tonal shift doesn’t become a total whiplash that alienates the fanbase. This means we need to make this episode, not bloody, but brutal. Punches are pulled, however. No one important dies, but it is an obvious tragedy that the council feels could have been avoided.

The council call out Ozpin for allowing such a death toll to be in the hundreds and that, because of the Festival, they can’t make a proper assessment of just what exactly he did until it’s over. However, they entrust security over to Ironwood, which earns the ire of Glynda. Ironwood gets his first ever taste of what it means to do the right thing, even if it means being a villain in the process…

And he is okay with it.

Adam approaches Cinder and co like usual (Cinder says how the Breach was a beautiful pattern), but gives the stipulation that “The cat is mine.”

And the Stinger is Raven telling Yang about her one time save before she departs. Yang asks what she had to do with Summer’s disappearance, only for Raven to say “she was merely a pawn in a grand game…”

DVD Extra Episode

Nothing big. JNPR and SSSN’s hijinx working on their missions.

And that was Volume 2 tweaked. It fell more in line with its canon volume in contrast to Volume 1 and that’s due to how Volume 2 is structured more as a problem of the week format than an outright multi-arc Volume like most other Volumes are.

Next tweak will be a challenge as this will tackle what people consider the best Volume of RWBY.

#RWDE #RWBY #RWBY Rewrite #Rewrite

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blackcatmanor · 5 years ago

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Predictions for RWBY V7 Ending (w/ photos)

RWBY vs Ace Ops

The Ace Ops will square off vs RWBY and the initial outcome will be RWBY getting away. A lot of people think the "Ace Op Traitor" theory will come true vis-a-vis Marrow using his semblance to freeze his team, but I don't think that'll happen. I think RWBY will have to work together to simply get away from the fight, and they will have to maneuver around the campus while avoiding the Ace Ops. Overall the Ace Op conflict will be resolved another way....

Winter Maiden powers- Fria will die and Winter Schnee will get the powers. I am the most ambivalent about this prediction because I also half think they are setting up another Maiden misdirect like volume 5's twist, and the obvious Maiden candidate will not have/get the powers. With Ironwood desperately trying to direct the powers to Winter, it would be a large misdirect for the plan to fail completely.

However, the reason I am leaning more towards Winter Schnee getting them is because I think the overarching story is setting up that the RWBY girls will get the maiden powers and will therefore be the force that eventually stops Salem. Presumably Raven's final thoughts would be about her daughter, so Yang will get Spring powers. Cinder is being set up for a big confrontation with Ruby so she'll get Fall, which leaves Winter and Summer. So Winter Schnee may be an in-between conduit for Weiss to receive the Winter powers (*sniff* :’( I hope I’m wrong), and somehow someone in Vacuo will have to get to know Blake enough to get her the Summer powers upon death.

Ozpin Returns- Ozpin will return to help Oscar and resolve the overall conflict with James, and Ozpin will be the only person who can talk him down off the ledge. He already appeared briefly when Oscar was in trouble, so now that he is in mortal danger I think he will help Oscar fend off Cinder and Neo until RWBY/JNR can show up and assist.

This could set up a lot of epic fights, with Oscar/Ozpin fighting them first and unlocking Oscar’s semblance (because he mentioned in 6 episodes ago so by RWBY logic it’ll be unlocked now), and RWBY and JNR arriving as well to fight Cinder and Neo.

After fighting off Cinder and Neo, I think Ozpin will then atone for his secrets to RWBY and Ironwood. There has been a lot of talk about Ozpin's secrets this volume so he will have to address this topic (and hopefully RWBY will have to atone for their secrets as well, otherwise they are huge hypocrites). They all vow to be honest with one another, and use their newfound honesty and power of friendship to urge Ironwood to change his mind and save Mantle. He could also be encouraged to do the right thing by the reluctant members of the Ace Ops, such as Marrow and Clover.

This would mean that V8 would still be in Atlas, with Ironwood trying to complete the Amity tower in order to call for help from Vacuo (if you remember in S6 Tyrian mentions "if Ironwood comes to his senses and calls on aid from Vacuo..."), with a looming time constraint of Salem's impending arrival.

The villains score a victory: I think a lot of the criticism of RWBY lately is that the villains don't really succeed in anything. Ever since the fall of Beacon they have repeatedly failed, and I think the Writers are going to be looking to reverse this narrative. Additionally, Salem said to Emerald that Cinder had to redeem herself, so I think Cinder will get a win this volume, especially since Watts and Tyrian did not. Maybe Cinder will grab the lamp and escape, giving Salem 1 question she can use if and when she learns how to use it. Maybe to ask where the relic of choice is at Beacon.

A main character suffers an injury

Based on the CRWBY teases this week, I feel like we are going to get another character maiming. And let me explain why I already hate this on principle.

1. It's been done- twice. When Yang's arm was cut off it was shocking, because it showed that our characters were in a world where the element of danger existed. However between the fumbling of that story line (more below) and Weiss being maimed only to be saved and continue fighting a mere 1 episode later, it's becoming a cliché and points a glaring spotlight on the plot armor the four characters have. No one realistically believes any of the main 4 girls will die, but a well-used maiming can interesting if used sparingly and executed correctly (more below). However, the mishandling of Yang’s maiming, and Weiss’ injury in Volume 5 officially removed all emotional return elicited from character injuries, and continuing to carve up main characters will have diminishing returns unless they rely on gross-out value, which, a RWBY animator said they animated a scene that’ll make people barf, so I guess that’s the strategy now. *eyeroll*

2. It has no meaning to the story

So a character might lose a [insert body part here]. With the technology available to them being seemingly boundless, what does it matter? Lose your eyes? Here are fully functioning robot eyes! Missing an arm? Here is a robot arm with quick eject feature. The characters never have to make do with living a life minus one body part, which makes the possibility of a character losing a body part seem pointless and devoid of character impact.

Nonetheless, even with the technology available able to quickly replace missing body parts, it still could have an emotional impact if such an injury changed who the Victim is as a character. But alas, that is also a problem here: maiming in RWBY never impacts someone as a person, nor does it becomes a catalyst for character change or growth. The pain and trauma of losing a limb or being maimed is never teased out and explored. Let's look at the most notable maiming’s:

Maria was the only person whose injury actually had emotional stakes, as it changed her entire existence. She actually has PTSD-like symptoms (unlike Yang- fight me!), as we are told her trauma prevented her from returning to her life as a Huntress. She was too scared and traumatized to fight anymore, with a (possibly irrational) fear that someone would try to finish killing her because taking her eyes wouldn’t be enough. However, for being the only character with demonstrable PTSD-like issues, the way they handle the revelation she was a brave warrior forever changed by a traumatic injury was super weird. She says she gave up on fighting, so she is a coward and disappointment, while implying that Yang is *so brave* to be able to keep fighting after her injury. And no one argues differently.

She wasn't cowardly, she was traumatized. The fact that the writers paint Maria as some coward who “only looked after herself” was super strange, and her helping the group implies that she has to redeem herself in some way for her “cowardly” actions. However it does shed an important light as to maybe why getting maimed doesn't affect our main cast- because apparently having any hesitation to fight after losing your eyes makes you super *lame-o*! to Miles and Kerry.

Yang- This is the first, and most egregious example of traumatic injuries having zero impact on a main character. For someone as gung-ho as Yang, losing an arm should have made her more incredibly traumatized because her "jump into combat" attitude is directly what cost her a limb! This should have fundamentally shaken Yang to her core, having her question her abilities and her tactics and entire life of training. Instead we got a hand that sometimes shakes with vague triggers, which really just served as a catalyst to the romance between her and Blake. Once they become an item the hand shaking stopped entirely and we NEVER saw it again! Also, no one clap back that Adam being gone means her “PTSD” is gone. The cause of your “PTSD” being gone doesn’t mean your actual disorder goes away.

Weiss is another example of massive injuries having no impact on the main cast. She was impaled as a plot device for Jaune to unlock his semblance. She is completely back to normal 1 episode later, with no ill effects. The writers somehow wrote a “Weiss being impaled” story line while completely avoiding Weiss within it! That is almost skillful.

So, characters being injured has been done, to almost zero emotional yield. If they go the maiming route they are going to have to do it a lot differently than they have handled these injuries in the past, and actually spend time fleshing out what happens to someone who suffers this kind of injury. These events should have emotional impact and not just serve as a way to have the main characters end up looking like grizzled pirates.

I just hope they skip it entirely, but I’ll keep an open mind. If it does happen I am predicting Blake being injured because it’ll be a way to further the Bumblebee relationship, and it will also be a juxtaposition between Yang’s injury with Blake taking off, and Blake’s injury with Yang being there for her.

#rwby #rwby vol7 #rwby predictions #weiss schnee #yang xiao long #blake belladonna #ruby rose #rwby bumblebee #marrow amin #harriet bree #ace ops #ozpin #rwby oscar #cinder fall #maria calavera

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razorblade180 · 6 years ago

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So an idea popped in my head...

Sup everyone! I’m gonna take you on a little journey of my practically instant (And wild) head canon on what I would love to see in Volume 7. I’m just gonna say my ideas are still pretty rough but I thought I’d share it before the next episode tears it to shreds. Let the madness begin.

Adam’s fate:

For any of this to really happen we have to start with what could happen to Adam in Vol6. We get an amazing battle with Blake and Yang fighting him where in classic anime fashion the heroes keep yelling at the villain to just give up; Adam doesn’t listen and continues to go into detail about his past a little. (just to peak our interest and gain some sort of emotion from the heroes) Eventually, Adam is knocked out of aura and pinned down waiting for the final blow; they never deliver it. Adam screams at them to finish him off and once again Yang delivers a short little speech about that killing him would only make her more like him; while Blake says once again that he doesn’t have to be this way. For the first time ever those words make him waver; his anger still brightly burning but now that seed of doubt has been planted. The possibility that things actually don’t have to be this way and let go. (For those hating redemption Adam just keep reading.) In a fit of frustration he unexpectedly grabs his sword and slices the bridge they are on; Yang and Blake watch in disbelief as the side he stands on falls(beauty and the beast reference) below into the river as he just looks at them with his will to fight him gone. Blake sees the Adam she once knew as her master get washed away believing that he is dead.

Post credits:

Adam wakes up severely wounded and surprised he is alive. The camera then pans to Cinder and Neo with Cinder telling Adam how she has unfinished business with him.

Now we’re in Vol7

Compliance:

Cinder tells Adam her plan and how he could get revenge not just for his loss, but on the company that branded his face. Adam refuses; not only is he steadily becoming unsure of what he wants to do next but he also knows getting mixed up with her never goes well. Cinder doesn’t take no for an answer. With her maiden powers and Adam in bad shape, he reluctantly agrees knowing it’s his only option besides death. Being forced to do things he doesn’t want to by her again isn’t really doing him any favors mentally; it’s only after Cinder walks off that Neo in her own way leads on about a plan to screw Cinder over. He’s not sure what but in the meantime they will both bide their time; heading to Atlas with Cinder once they are ready.

Arrival:

Ruby and company get to Atlas finally. I’m sure we’ll get insight on then talking to James, Winter, and possibly the rest of Weiss’s family. Eventually one of them is spotted by Watts and he also happens to catch wind of Cinder. He decides to call Salem to ask how to proceed.

Defecting:

Emerald and Mercury are still contemplating Tyrians words and own personal thoughts when Emerald over hears Watts’s message and learns where Cinder is. Still believing that she cares about her, Emerald tries to convince Mercury that they should go to Atlas to help her. Emerald is reminded that they have specific orders not to go after her and how Salem won’t just forgive such an act of defiance so easily. With persistent words Mercury finally caves in and him and Emerald sneak out from Salem’s domain; she soon realizes this and sends Hazel to go fetch them. He is hesitant to go after the kids knowing there would be hell to pay when he returns them. He’s not about to upset Salem again though and heads to Atlas to get them.

Cracks in the foundation:

Neo goes off in Atlas alone for awhile. Cinder doesn’t really care as long as she doesn’t do anything stupid. Neo is going off to find the winter maiden based of the knowledge Cinder has told her. Cinder has no clue about this or the fact Neo is planning on taking her and Ruby out when she gets the power. Adam continues to deal with his internal conflict along with the added pressure of being in Atlas. He begins wrestling over the idea of that maybe this hatred towards everything doesn’t have to be so one tracked. He’s a survivor, an avenger of his own pride. No one is going to control his life again; Adam bides his time for the chance to do things his own way.

Plotting:

It’s basically known all over Atlas Weiss is back and she’s sort of out into a position to attend some sort of gathering to create ease among the public. The villains use this information to form their plans. It’s a perfect time for Watts and Tyrian to kill James at this event; it’s less gaurded then any fortress. Cinder is banking on the rest of the Schnee’s team being around; prime time to single out Ruby. While plotting Emerald and Mercury finally find Cinder. Surprised, Cinder is more than welcome to have people do her dirty work and get back into Salem’s good graces. Emerald doesn’t tell her that Mercury and her basically defected. Neo’s plan just got more complicated.

Party time:

I’d imagine a lot of emotional things have been happening to Weiss in this volume and maybe even some family growth (I really want happy schneeblings) so this party is just a nice way to unwind with her team. Until....

Party crashers:

Cinder and company are first to arrive to spoil the fun. Everyone is surprised she’s alive. Yang and Blake are shocked to see Adam while he himself didn’t really register that he’d ever see them again. No words are exchanged, just silent stares that speak louder than words. “Does this have to happen again? Is this fight not over?” Questions that once only plagued their minds now plague his; questions that will soon have answers. Before any true chaos starts Watts and Tyrian make their entrance; shocked to see Mercury and Emerald. This reaction puzzles Cinder, “how would they not know they came here?” Surly Salem would’ve informed them about their departure. It’s only then Hazel arrives to reveal to everyone that the two have gone rouge.

Lines in the sand:

With the truth out Cinder awaits to hear the meaning of this nonsense. Emerald confesses to her they left for her; that she believes things were better before the fall of Beacon. When they were running things their own way together. Cinder tells the girl off and just before she’s able to blast her, Mercury takes the surprise hit. Cinder starts to make it painfully clear that there was no “together” just steppingstones in her quest for power given by Salem. As she summons her sword to put an end to the madness Adam jumps in to block it. He already had an axe to grind with Cinder, knowing how fast she was to kill such a devoted member to her was all the proof he needed that he’d be a goner if he stayed any longer. Completely over all the betrayal, Cinder unleashes a powerful fire blast; when suddenly the unthinkable happens. Thinking that now is as good as a time as any, Neo freezes the attack. Neo reveals she’s a maiden.

Common Enemy:

Many emotions have now reached their peak through these reveals. With a room filled a grudges everywhere one thing was mentally agreed on. The immediate threat to everyone was team WTCH. Thus begins the real fight for preservation. Even though Cinder hasn’t truly been welcomed back it’s clear to see she is loyal to Salem; and right now that is all that matters.

The Fights:

Hazel finds himself up against against Oscar once again. It is not long before Blake and Yang block his path. Not truly going up against him before though they are surprised by his power. In a twist of fate Adam jumps in to help turn the tides. After Blake takes a bad hit from protecting Oscar, it’s up to Yang and Adam to tackle this beast. Grudges will have to take a back seat if they want to win (maybe he’ll even save her life once just to make things even). Watts vs Weiss, Nora, and Ren; we don’t know much about him but I’d imagine with all the possible gadgets and the chance that a Schnee has screwed over his funding that this could be interesting. Deep in Jaune’s soul he wants a rematch with Cinder but knows that isn’t a good idea (growth) so instead he ends up teaming up with Qrow and Mercury to fight Tyrian. They all have a score to settle with this madman and he’ll enjoy the challenge. Finally, we have Neo and Ruby ready to put Cinder in her place. It doesn’t go good for them though since Ruby isn’t used to her abilities and same goes with Neo; the tide turns though when Emerald snaps out of her shock and is ready to take on Cinder.

Retreat:

These battles were grand and by no means quiet. Ironwood, finally being to call for back up has many troops heading to their location for aid. Team WTCH has no choice but to retreat while the madness of crowds and the crumbling building ensue; with people in despair and even more distrust caused in Atlas as a whole, this will insure anymore moves the general makes will be extremely slow. That alone forwards Salem’s plans nicely; especially if this problem is enough to demote Ironwood.

Team MEAN

With the immediate threat gone Mercury grabs Emerald and tries to leave. Before anyone can stop them an ice wall blocks the way where you can see Neo and Adam on the other side; the four new allies stare back at heroes for a moment. Ruby can tell from Neo that their gonna meet again to settle a score, the look in the others convey different messages though. Emerald and Mercury state at her not with malice exactly but there’s no care either; just acknowledgement that things are different, they are playing by their rules now. Adam once again stare at his two thorn in his sides; this time is different though too. He doesn’t stare at Yang with spite in his eyes or Vengeance for Blake; they just look at each other. The past is behind them; from here on out if they don’t step on his toes then he won’t step in theirs. With these exchange of looks, they vanish before any troops can follow them.

Amongst the chaos: Team RWBY has survived another round with Salem’s people thanks to some unlikely help. With all the struggles Atlas is going through to help where they can. This should be the easy part; little did they know yet this stalemate was actually a loss.

Post Credits:

Team MEAN wonders through the forest trying to make back to airship Mercury and Emerald snuck in with. They wonder what’s next for them now that none of them have any place to go. A unfamiliar voice tells them they aren’t out of luck yet. They look around to to simply see Neo with something....unexpected in her possession. The camera pans up to see her twirling the relic of creation in her hands and shows her chuckle mischievously; curtesy of of the new voice she has created for herself. The battle of good and evil just got a third team in the fray. Only time will tell what side they’ll play for.

That’s it! I’m finished! This took me like hours to come up with but days to write. If you read all of this then you’re a trooper and I look forward to reading your comments. (To think this all happened cause the recent episode was a cliffhanger)

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albion-93 · 6 years ago

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RWBY Analysis: Who is the Main Antagonist of Volume 6?

Disclaimer: Contains intense RWBY theorising and speculation inspired by Volume 6 Chapter 9 that is subject to being made redundant should the rest of the Volume go along like nothing as follows in this post.

RWBY has an interesting history when it comes its villains and antagonists. From Volumes 1 to 3 we saw a succession of rogues who fit the bill, each nastier than the last, from the likes of Roman Torchwick to Adam Taurus, Cinder Fall, and finally Salem. When it came to these four especially, and their criminal cohorts, the terms villain and antagonist went hand in hand. And with good reason, they were in active or indirect opposition to our protagonists’ actions, and their intentions and deeds ranged from petty theft to Machiavellian manipulation, terrorism and mass murder. Roman was a solid rival and foe to Ruby Rose, while Cinder served her role as main villain and antagonist well in Volumes 1 to 3, with Salem’s overarching series antagonist role revealed as a cliffhanger.

With Volumes 4 and 5, there were certainly plenty of villains but the role of main antagonist became somewhat complicated. As Team RWBY split up, most of them faced their own antagonist to overcome in various stages. In Vol 4 Weiss had her abusive father, Jacques Schnee; Blake had the White Fang operatives in Menagerie; Yang’s was at first psychological - the trauma of losing her arm and regaining her resolve to fight - and the second came in the form of her estranged survivalist mother Raven Branwen. Lastly is Ruby, who is sadly the most lacking in this department. Apart from her battles against the Grimm alongside Jaune, Nora and Ren, nothing came close to Roman or a potential enmity with Cinder, alas.

Now that RWBY is back together, things have changed. Cinder is now a month behind everyone else and unable to confront anyone. Salem is moving her minions into place in Atlas but doesn’t pose a direct threat to the heroes, though we will probably see Hazel, Tyrian and Watts out in the open at some point. Emerald is experiencing a crisis of allegiance, while Mercury seems to have chosen his side. Finally, Adam Taurus is as yet unaccounted for with no White Fang support to be found.

You could argue that we’ve had the threat of personal demons and some excellent opposing interplay within the group, such as Ruby dealing with Qrow’s alcoholism and despair, Weiss’s reluctance to return to Atlas, Blake and Yang keeping a lid on their issues, and everyone falling into despair and anger at learning of Salem’s immortality. As effective as these are, there hasn’t been a single villainous character directly or indirectly circumventing the heroes’ actions. Odd.

So, I ask again, who is the main antagonist of Volume 6?

My personal take might shock many if you.

Since the start of Volume 6, this character’s words, choices and unfortunate past mistakes has led to more problems for the heroes than anything caused by Adam, Cinder or Salem. He’s nominally on the side of good but has failed in upholding his mission and his stagnation and secrecy has become a source of fear, discord, disunity and despair, more so than any servant of Salem. I am referring to Professor Ozpin.

Now let me be absolutely clear about this: Ozpin is NOT a villain.

Ozpin does not crave death, destruction, domination or the suffering of humanity. In the past, he was a kind and wise mentor to Ruby at Beacon, and a fair leader. He is ultimately someone who wants to put an end to Salem’s evil and somehow lift the curse, maybe once he believed he would be the one to finally do it. But now, he he’s a liability to Team RWBY, the remains of Team JNPR and of course his most recent incarnation, Oscar Pine.

If he had elected to tell the heroes that the Lamp attracts Grimm before boarding the Argus Express, and most vitally trust them, they might have avoided separation and being stranded. His constant omission of the truth, while claiming that it was for the greater good, is the same mentality that contributed to the Fall of Beacon. The more his pessimism, bitterness and double standard thinking emerged, the more the group’s distrust grew, culminating in Oscar briefly regaining control and revealing the Jinn in the Lamp. He was even prepared to use force to stop Ruby from asking Jinn what he was hiding. Overcome with despair and shame, he retreated deep into Oscar’s mind. They were left there to endure the Brunswick Farms horrors because of him.

I don’t blame him for retreating as he did, especially given the secrets regarding Salem. But when they finally reached Argus and the truth was revealed to Team JNR, he didn’t even re-emerge to come to Oscar’s defence from Jaune’s anger, and let him take the brunt of it. Again, there was no malice on Ozpin’s part, but in not intervening he allowed the rift between Oscar and the others to widen. In an older post, I said that if I were Oscar I would have taken my chances with the cold weather and Grimm rather than stay with people mad at me for another man’s mistakes. That came true in Dead End. So how is it he went from this...

To this?

The thing that struck me in the recent episode Lost was the reveal that Oscar had seemingly been waiting for the group at the Cotta-Arc house sporting new, princely clothes and having cooked dinner for everyone. I do not think for a moment that that’s the real Oscar who welcomed the gang back. Absolutely nothing about what we saw in the previous episode, being threatened, isolated and emotionally dumped on naturally leads into him being relaxed, willing to reaffirm his mission to help RWBY, accepting his fate, easily forgiving Jaune and cooking dinner for everyone. Why would he do any of this?

Looking at his body language and choice of words, he seems too calm, confident and controlled to be Oscar. His new combat outfit lines up with the green motif shared in other past Ozma incarnations, even with the red flourishes and leather fittings. Also, take a read of this dialogue, and instead of Oscar pretend it’s Ozpin saying this to the group:

Many have said that this sounds an awful lot like someone with a terminal illness would say, and that this could be a sign of the Merge happeninng. But why is the story acting like Oscar is the one who will fade away, when Jinn showed the different approaches Ozma had to coexisting with his hosts?

Personally, I think it’s Ozpin imitating Oscar. He seemed surprised when he found out the group were looking for him, so how could Oscar not know why they were looking for him? For Ozpin, it’s a perfect cover since the group still doesn’t trust him but are are happy to see the boy safe. Asserting his desire to help extends a proverbial peace offering, while keeping the nature of the possession ambiguious. Also, isn’t cooking dinner for someone (or indeed twelve people) a pretty good way of making amends?

But hang on, how could Ozpin still be an antagonist if he’s promising to help the heroes and wants to bury the grudges between them? He’s not telling the truth and remaining entrenched in the same mindset that has weakened their efforts in the past. Also, if Oscar is being locked inside his own head and being used for deception this is certainly a moral breach.

I think Oscar would have succeeded in running away or done something much worse if Oz didn’t forcibly intervene. Such a move would be very in keeping with Ozpin’s pattern of actions; the idea of committing a little evil in the name of the greater good, i.e. to return Oscar safely to the group he had to forcibly take over. Also, the omission of vital truths and maintaining an amiable facade in the belief that everyone is happier for not knowing the full story. There’s even escalating a dangerous solution whilst potentially alienating or endangering others and removing the option of choice, just like in Volume 3.

It would be a cruel twist of irony if Jaune’s angry rant at Oscar in the house actually became a self fulfilling prophecy; “How do we know it’s really him?! What if we’ve been talking to that liar this whole time?!” By denying Oscar’s individuality when he was at his most vulnerable, he sowed the seeds for Oz to return and deceive the heroes into thinking Oscar returned of his own free will.

Now, imagine if all this crazy theory-crafting proved correct and the truth came out, Ozpin would have to contend with the wrath of RWBY and JNR, for duplicity, manipulation and subduing another’s will. And yet, unless something changes within him or his soul and Oscar’s battle for survival, there is nothing anyone can do. A once good mentor turned antagonist, with no villainous intent or goal, who cannot be challenged, driven away, imprisoned or killed without hurting his innocent host. Now that is a terrifying foe...

Aside Note: If it IS Oscar talking and this is something that he has decided himself, we didn’t see the process of making that decision for himself and go through classic character development or spiritual guidance to reach that point and signal his newfound commitment to the mission. This isn’t just a plot hole, this is an easy fix, and completely antithetical to good storytelling. After eight episodes where there were no easy fixes in the plot, why is this suddenly allowed? Maybe a character short could retcon character growth into place, but I have serious doubts.

The one point I will give is the look shared between Ruby and Ozcar when she complimented his new attire. That seemed like a genuine Oscar moment and expression, and I could buy that he chose red to earn Ruby’s attention. But I’m still suspicious.

Thank you to all who’ve read this long analysis post. I’m sure the next episode has a very different idea from what I’m proposing, maybe a much less dark outcome, but this was a very interesting train of thought to indulge.

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