Red Vs Blue General Discussion

I do remember, back when RWBY was in its infancy, the fandom claiming Jaune was a self-insert (that belief still exists). Both Monty and Kerry said in interviews that if Miles had been given a self-insert in RWBY, it would end up being Felix 2.0, not Jaune. I had no idea what that meant at the time. I had no clue who Felix was, what kind of character he was, or that he was a villain. Which was good because it meant the Chorus Trilogy wasn't spoiled for me (although Felix being a villain was obvious from the moment he first turned up, so that twist didn't surprise me — it was Freckles being a tracking device that caught me off-guard, for some reason; like Wash, I should have seen that one coming, but didn't).

I liked it. The only thing I knew going into it was that plot would kick in somewhere around Series 6, and to just... go with the flow until then. I also heard that the first five series' can be skipped and newcomers should just skip that and start with the Recovery One mini-series. I can't jump into an existing show, however. I always have to start from the beginning. It's my quirk.

I'm glad I did because I think that telling people to skip BGC is incredibly bad advice.

Despite how light-hearted the beginning of the show is, how segmented and tenuous plot is when they put plot in at all, it creates so much character and establishes the characters and their personalities so well that I think the later storylines wouldn't be so powerful without that experience. Just as importantly, by watching all seventeen series' in bulk, I got to see little throw-away pieces of the first five series that ended up being turned into plot points later, how they tied together otherwise unrelated things together to become either important to, or foundations of, the plot lines that came long later.

For people like me who come along later and have no knowledge of the show's creator and how this show developed, the first five series' actually comes across as genuine plot set-up and foreshadowing. If you asked me what is the one thing that's impressed me most about this show, it's that. Their ability to somehow retcon the craziness of the first five series' into such a solid foundation for later plots that it becomes genuine foreshadowing by retcon is one of the cleverest things I've seen for a very long time.

They did it so well that I'm absolutely certain that, without seeing the first five series', I'd have been completely lost with the later plotlines. I know that because I didn't know about the trailers, so I didn't know how important the Series 6 trailer was, and some of the things that happened in the early episodes didn't make a blind bit of sense to me until I went back and watched that trailer. I also didn't know about lost scenes like Donut's armour going to into recovery mode, so Donut's recovery felt like a bit of a plot hole to me. I don't understand why they got rid of that scene because, to channel Donut for a moment, that packs a hole that was begging to be filled.

So, thanks to little things like that, I feel confident in saying that newcomers really should start with the BGC.

I'm not a gamer, so I don't know anything about Halo. There were probably Halo jokes that I didn't spot or which wouldn't have made any sense to me. I don't think I've missed anything important by not knowing that. For example, the 'time-travel' storyline where their graphics suddenly upgraded — there was so obviously fourth wall leaning that I didn't need to know anything about moving from old Holo games to new ones to understand that they were playing with graphics evolution.

On an aside about that whole not-time-travel plot, speaking as someone who knows nothing about gaming, I never did think they'd genuinely travelled in time (except Church). I thought it was the Reds and Blues just being the Reds and Blues and being comically wrong on their usual cosmic levels of wrongness. So, when Grif came out of the cave and went into his long Big "NO!" over being back in the canyon, that's what I thought part of the joke was... confirmation that there's been no time-travel at all.

I've had to rewatch some episodes to catch things I missed the first, and sometimes even second, time around, but I like that. For example, it took me ages to figure out that O'Malley's name was a combination of Omega and Allison or that Gary was a combination of Gamma and Reggie, but once that clicked, the Meta made much more sense — without a real name for Agent Maine, all I could use was 'Maine' but Sigma + Maine = Sig + Ma = Sigma. So, the naming scheme alone tells us that Maine was doomed.

I did see the Church reveal coming (Washington's complete silence in response to seeing 'ghost' Church was the moment it clicked that Church was an AI). It took me a bit longer to figure out who the Director was. The twist I didn't see coming was the daughter — which I was kicking myself for because I could tell from the beginning that his eyes were going to be important because of the way the show kept hiding them from us, but they did a good job of hiding the important face reveal (Carolina's) in a crowd of other face reveals.

Whether I saw them coming or not, they were some of the best built-up twists I've seen for a very long time.

Overall, I've definitely liked this show much, much more than I expected to, and the quality of it definitely took me by surprise (in a very good way).

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jan 18th 2021 at 7:58:51 PM

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

I know this is all just Rule of Funny, and goddamn is it funny, but can you imagine if all the stuff about Caboose in these PSA's was canon?!

A Caboose that somehow got into Harvard? A Caboose whose body somehow links up with all the systems in a hospital he's never been to before? Caboose would truly be an enigma if that was actually canon.

Vegeta: I'm back bitches!

Something just occurred to me: Locus is so fascinated by Washington's dedication to being a "soldier."

But isn't Washington's arc mostly about him resisting his superiors and ingratiating himself into the Reds and Blues. We see him in the Project Freelancer flashbacks and, after getting his AI removed, he seems pretty laidback.

Locus thinks Wash was fascinating because he was a soldier, obeying orders and being a weapon. But... if anything, he should have been intrigued by Carolina. She was going out of her way to be the perfect soldier and was the top Freelancer.

I guess Wash needed an arc and a foil, but I just don't get why Carolina and Locus had so little interaction.

Akira Toriyama (April 5 1955 - March 1, 2024).

Reminder, Locus was projecting what he thought Wash was being, and was only looking at surface level details. For years Wash pretended to be a loyal soldier and only followed orders as a Recovery Agent. It's only when the Meta started becoming more active did he finally decide to break the façade. All Locus cared about though was the surface level details for the sake of his psychosis, hence why he laments how Wash had fallen. Even if going by surface level details, Carolina was nothing like what Locus wanted.

In Locus' psychosis, a soldier was "A suit of armor and a gun." and nothing more, they did not question orders, they did not let personal feelings get in the way of the mission, they just did what they were told. Carolina however was pretty much the exact opposite of that. She constantly questioned the Director, especially when Tex was involved. She always let her competitive streak and ambition supercede the mission, best evident by her caring less about the briefcase and more the fact that Tex was the one set to grab it, culminating in her racing down the highway with Tex and wrestling with the Sleeveless Insurrectionist despite Tex telling her to fall back. And in some cases, it even screwed up the mission, as evident by her letting her feud with Tex leading her to charge in past the chain-gunners, and whereas she told CT to come quietly, Tex was willing to go straight for the kill, and when she told Tex off for stabbing CT with an axe, the Leader was able to grab Connie's dying form and escape, taking her armor, the mission objective, with him.

Locus was ultimately projecting his own insecurities on to whatever subject interested him, mainly for the sake of reinforcing the delusions Felix had instilled in him, but also to ease his conscience after all he'd done. He even tried doing this with Maine and the Meta/Sigma, who, as Price spelt out to him, were in no way like what Locus wanted, as the former's definition of being a soldier meant serving the greater good and protecting his comrades, whereas the latter simply wanted to be perfect/human. As Wash pointed out, Locus couldn't face all that he'd done, so he hid behind the idea of being the "perfect soldier", and when Wash threatened to break that delusion, Locus tried killing him just to avoid facing reality.

Carolina's fued was more set up to be with Sharkface, as he was "[her] past come back to haunt [her]" after she aided in landing him in the hospital by smashing a Gravity Hammer into his face. Felix was likewise set up to be the Arch-Enemy for Tucker, and Locus was ultimately Wash's demons personified, best evident by his Dream Sequence where he relived his shooting Donut as Locus and Doyle argued, culminating in his Freelancer self killing his Blue Team self before waking up.

Edited by RebelFalcon on Jan 24th 2021 at 10:55:19 AM

Vegeta: I'm back bitches!

To make things more amusing, Wash's stint of Just Following Orders was completely different from anything Locus did. Whereas Locus had been convinced that this was nothing more than his purpose, Wash was only trying to get out of prison, something that he didn't hesitate in admitting. Even as an antagonist, Wash took more personal responsibility for his actions than Locus did before his Heel–Face Turn. The only similarity between the two is that they had the same superior: the Chairman. Something that neither of them knew.

Huh... well here's something interesting. Apparently Miles did hint at what happened to Siris in a tweet. It's still vauge, but it seems it wasn't that Siris being gone is what caused Locus and Felix to turn bad. It was Felix turning bad that caused Siris to leave the picture, and had already made Locus turn bad. And apparently Felix of all people was a cop at one point. My guess is he was a corrupt cop no less than five minutes after getting his badge.

Edited by RebelFalcon on Jan 24th 2021 at 12:58:24 PM

Vegeta: I'm back bitches!

That...makes an odd kind of sense. Of course he'd be the asshole who jumped on that bandwagon.

"No will to break."

(2) All valid points. I like the analysis.

Edited by FOFD on Feb 7th 2021 at 6:10:00 AM

Akira Toriyama (April 5 1955 - March 1, 2024).

Oh snap. Yellow Church from Season 5.

Still raises the question of why Yellow Church's plan was "a good idea at the time" though if he was just a Caboose construct.

Man I ignored this for years.

Edited by FOFD on Feb 10th 2021 at 5:21:53 AM

Akira Toriyama (April 5 1955 - March 1, 2024).

Nobody plots a joke like Red vs Blue. The serious continuity may have taken a while to start, but some of the joke payoffs started fast and played the long game.

"No will to break."

~Tropers/Wyldchyld First of all, I'm glad to see you enjoy the show, especially the first five seasons! It's always nice to see more new fans.

>_>. I'll admit, I was stupid enough when I first saw it to think they had legitimately time-travelled.

In defense of my dumbass self, time-travel is a thing as Sigma demonstrated and since Church had time-travelled, I assumed that the rest had, too. How else could it send Church back in time but keep everybody else in their current time, sans a few days or so? And unscathed by the bomb?

Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.

I also thought it sent them to the future, but that it didn’t “destroy the present”. That part was said by Sarge, so it was wrong in my head.

Of course now we know that Church was probably not time traveling, but instead being tortured by Gamma. Maybe.

Seconded, meant to reply to that but I forgot.

It's a comedy show that was written long before a lot of genre-bending, plot-twisty web animations or series existed, and before people started analyzing the heck out of things and posting it on Youtube and Twitter, and the series had a lot of continuity while simultaneously being highly comedic and nonsensical.

It wasn't really dumb to think that they'd traveled through time at the time until the time they revealed they hadn't. Part of the show's fun is that they retcon a ton of stuff after the first five seasons.

The illusion is there because they switch between game engines and the "future" is just them using Halo 2, with smoother/more detailed graphics.

I don't think even the Reds and Blues acknowledged they didn't travel through time, until Season 15 or 16 when Tucker brings it up and Simmons corrects him. Coincidentally as they suddenly discover actual time travel.

Furthermore, there was actual time travel when Gary and Wyoming showed up, and "time remnants/clones/previous versions of Church and Wyoming" were showing up.

So short of any extenuating clues I've forgotten from the 3rd or 4th seasons, time travel was a valid read of the situation with nothing actually denying it.

Edited by FOFD on Feb 23rd 2021 at 5:35:13 AM

Akira Toriyama (April 5 1955 - March 1, 2024).

The explanation eventually doesn't really contradict it too much. The Reds and Blues misinterpreting the more advanced Freelancer abilities without any context is not a half-bad retcon. Given in the grand scheme of things, the Bloodgulch Crew were firmly locked out of the loop until Wash stepped in.

It's also just the fact that the time distortion needed hard nerfs. Time looping sneaky bad guys works great in a comedic show with just a little drama at the climax, but not even the Meta can pull that off without breaking the new tone. Since then it's just faster reaction times with a little Matrix slowdown.

"No will to break."

I didn't think it was dumb that people believed it, I'm just citing it as an example of where it was easy for me to see how my lack of Halo knowledge was affecting the way I understood what was happening in front of me. I couldn't get immersed enough in the idea of them time-travelling to believe it because it only looked like a graphics upgrade joke to me. So, when it became clearer that Church really did have a time-travelling aspect to his part of the events, I feel like I didn't quite connect with the presentation of that aspect of the show — not because I didn't enjoy it or didn't find their in-universe handling of their situation funny but, because I could sense the existence of the larger meta-joke, I felt like I wasn't completely 'getting' it. If that makes sense. I still feel like Wyoming and Gamma are the most 'meh' parts of the show for me. I didn't dislike them, I just didn't connect with them.

Another example: the joke about dropping their weapons where Grif dares Simmons to drop his weapon. Yes, that's funny from the perspective of someone watching the show who can see Grif is mocking the fact they always walk around with a weapon even when it doesn't make sense. And I assumed it probably had something to do with the gaming environment. For someone who doesn't know anything about gaming or Halo, there is a funny joke there — but that's as far as the joke goes for me.

There's other things as well, where I could see familiarity with Halo probably would have helped. The 'future-cubes' for example. To this day, I'm not completely clear on what they are and how they really work. I assume that gamers will understand it better. I did, however, find it quite easy to just roll with it — and, actually, Grif's sheer childish delight with using them and almost stubbornly refusing to understand or care what they really are or how they really works is a good hook for a non-gamer to latch onto. I'm sure the real name of them was mentioned at one point, but they'll always be 'future-cubes' to me.

By the way, this was another advantage I think watching the BGC gives someone before launching into the plotted parts of the show — you get so used to the sheer scale of the Reds and Blues bullshitting and brain-frying shenanigans that, even when we're into the plotted parts of the show, you just roll with them whenever their solution to 'plot' is to enable mode 'crazy'. Without that, I might have been more in Carolina's ballpark when she was butting heads with them (well, some of you have seen my RWBY posts, so you get the idea). Having had the BGC experience, it's just so much easier to sit back wait for her to succumb to the inevitable instead of expecting the Reds & Blues to be heading in that kind of direction — because it's easier to see what the plot happened to and understand that plot might happen to the BG crew, but not so much of it that it leaves that aspect of the show behind. It helps manage expectations about the nature of the characters and their setting — no matter how serious the plot gets, the shenanigans still remain important to who the characters are.

Tl;dr — watching BGC first makes the funny look good when the plot gets serious.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Feb 23rd 2021 at 6:11:49 PM

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

Oh the time travel part of my reply was directed at fredhot because of how they reacted to what you'd said. My apologies, wasn't accusing you of saying it was dumb.

Akira Toriyama (April 5 1955 - March 1, 2024).

It's fine, I just wasn't sure if my post was clear about why I mentioned it. I do have a habit of using more words than I need to. It can make me unclear sometimes.

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

So someone pointed out that Meta's theme kicks in during this scene. Right at 10:38. Cool little detail.

And it's rewatching Singularity and Paradox that I hate to admit, but Seasons 15 through 16 are necessary. Too many important character beats with Donut, Grif, and Washington. Some rehash with Carolina and no new ground broken with Sarge, Simmons, or Lopez, but the rest is all there.

Akira Toriyama (April 5 1955 - March 1, 2024).

I'd say Carolina's isn't really a rehash, since it follows up on how she felt about Sharkface after learning his story in Season 13. And Sarge honestly felt like he had his mental issues played more seriously here than in prior seasons. And it was Singularity that revealed Lopez' true feelings.

Agreed on Simmons being wasted.

Vegeta: I'm back bitches!

There's a few rough spots when it comes to it, but there's enough ambition and the beats working more often than not that I respect it. Having a very wacky saga that brings back the humor while keeping Wash and Carolina fairly serious strikes a good balance. Besides, 15 gave us Andrews, who's great as a civilian viewpoint.

Zero on the other hand has so little drive to do anything other than rehash Freelancer with a tenth of the characterization and screentime.

"No will to break."

I actually hope that Season 19 opens with Zero being shown to the BGC as a movie Jax has been making, this way we can go full on Canon Discontinuity. Seriously, I think this is the first season to get an unambiguously negative reception. Even Season 14 and The Shisno Paradox were just divisive, this season's fans are the minority in regards to it's reception.

Vegeta: I'm back bitches!

It’s a shame they dropped the ball on this. I truly wanted this season to succeed, but it was way too rushed and dull. Maybe if Locus was on the team and it was about a group of ex-criminals redeeming themselves...

I think most of it had a lot of potential. Most of the right elements were there, but it needed to be treated like the Chorus Trilogy and given a three season slot to develop the story and characters properly. Instead, it felt like what the Chorus Trilogy would probably look like if you had to strip out the story and just cover the fight scenes for eight episodes — it's ramming an entire story arc into a mini-series slot. It just becomes snapshots of a story instead of the actual story.

What didn't have potential was their handling of Tucker, Wash and Carolina; they did not capture those three characters in either personality or ability. They also felt like they didn't belong. Tucker and Wash were basically pointless, and Carolina was so jarring that she kept stealing the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. She really did not fit into the story at all. None of the trio did. A lot of the jokes fell flat, as well.

If they had made that a mini-series advert for future story, I think it would have worked much better: do a mini-series format which focusses on just two things:

1. How Shatter Squad originally gets recruited and put together as a team. That's entirely about characterisation and team-work, with some teasing of abilities. That's it. That's all you need to do.
2. The set-up for the plot and mystery hooks to pique viewer interest about the storyline comes from Zero recruiting and setting up his team. Again, introducing characterisation, team interaction, and a tease of abilities, but don't explain what Zero's intentions are, only that he needs these people to achieve a specific goal.

And that's it: we've got a short-term storyline (how the teams get together) that showcases personalities, team dynamics, teases abilities and builds up the mystery for the greater storyline to come. If they structured it just right, they'd even be able to deal with the East recruitment without giving anything away.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Mar 5th 2021 at 10:10:50 AM

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

Another thing Freelancer did better. We got introduced pretty early in the game to Delta, and later Wash as a side plot to the antics going on. They were basically leadins to season 6, but they worked because the tone's far more serious than anything we'd seen before. Having competent characters with what the time was a very mysterious and sketchy past, it's no wonder it snowballed into something bigger.

But even with all that ambition and the 180 in tone, they still restrained that cast to integrate them with the Reds and Blues. And even when they couldn't keep the stories even in the same engine, they still heavily tied the character development and themes to prior themes and references, making it all eventually cohesive.

TLDR: Even at the show's most ambitious, it never forgot the comedic style and cast of idiots that grounded the whole thing.

"No will to break."

I've been listening to Contact and Contact Redux again and again.

Are they about Felix and Locus, or the Reds and the Blues?

Akira Toriyama (April 5 1955 - March 1, 2024).