RWBY General Discussion

Going to respond to Wyldchild tomorrow, though I want to respond to now.

You don't deliver such pure and direct exposition like that and throw in uncertainy via bias from in-character viewpoints. The WoR dumps are purely for the audience and should be more or less factual.

The Law of Conservation of Detail dictates that Qrow's story has to be true. You don't dedicate half an episode to a lore/backstory dump and go "though it might not all be true". Info might be missing, sure, but the Broad Strokes definitely are.

edited 25th Feb '18 10:28:25 PM by Karxrida

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

Shaoken said it might not be the total truth, as in we don't know all the details. That is a perfectly reasonable thing to think.

As for Wo R being from the characters' point-of-view and maybe not being entirely true to the world, that does sound cheap on the face of it, though I don't know of anything that's been said that so far hasn't been shown to actually be how the world works/true.

Edit: And since we're picking apart points:

Even assuming Volume 4 two brothers story is well known (and you shouldn't) why would people in the world actually believe this one legend, among the apparent dozens, to be true? The Wo R is also clear that the Grimm are only attracted to and deliberately seek out humans (and faunus), hence "targeting". The implications are clear, and that the Grimm apparently occasionally get into territorial disputes with animals, in no way implies the same thing.

It is and interesting question why the Grimm apparently switched from attacking everything the older brother made, to only going after humans and faunus, but Salem probably has something to do with that.

Point being, saying it contradicts everything is borderline arguing in bad faith.

edited 25th Feb '18 10:33:19 PM by LSBK

Not sure what the point is here when we're arguing over contradictions on what the audience is literally being told, not what the characters in-universe believe.

Saying it contradicts everything was admittedly hyperbolic.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

And the Wo R is about what the world, and the character's at large know about the Grimm. I suppose finding out more/the truth "contradicts" that, but doesn't equate to being poor-story-telling. Story elements being elaborated further down the line is not somehow wrong.

It makes it feel like living breathing history considering the fact that history is full of holes and points in time where new information comes to the surface that contradicts previous beliefs of what occurred in the past.

"When I offered to make Norea my third back-up girlfriend she just glared at me and started throwing things at me.." Renee Costa

Again, Wldchaild explained better than I could. Wo R is to explain what the people of Remnant know. Having a character discover something different does not contradict what is common knowledge.

I don't see what's so unusual about The Tale of Two Brothers not being 100% truth. It's obvious that Ozpin and Qrow keep everybody else at an arm's length about the inner workings of Remnant, the former more than the latter.

We cannot have a full version of the story until Salem decides to spill the beans - and so far she's been largely passive herself - or Ozpin actually comes clean with everything.

How do lizards fly?

An info dump doesn't need to be factual. Maybe I've just read a lot of fan fiction where that is the case, but I'm pretty sure you can find it in more professional writing too.

I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!

It doesn't, but there should probably be a good reason for the contradiction.

Just saying 'that's realistic of history' doesn't help much, It's just not very useful information if the audience can't rely on it.

The Unreliable Narrator aspect of WOR just seems like a way to cover the team's ass more than anything else. It comes off as lazy.

edited 26th Feb '18 4:15:46 AM by Saiga

Agreed, Law Of Conservationof Detail should triumph. If something in the exposition is false that should be a plot point, not an explanation for inconsistencies.

There are some works where you go in assuming Unreliable Narrator where that can work, like A Song Of Ice And Fire, but RWBY is clearly not that in terms of... anything, really, and even then ASOIAF has that baked into its very core, not as an explanation for inconsistencies.

On top of that, WOR is an accent to RWBY, not an essential part of RWBY, so even if there's a dramatic reveal of "X was a lie the entire time!" then that only matters to people who watch WOR.

edited 26th Feb '18 4:31:32 AM by Sigilbreaker26

"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"

I disagree. It's appetizing. It's being given in-universe and its filling in a few blanks, but not giving the whole picture. Exposition is more engaging when it comes from a possibly Unreliable Narrator than just doled out in a manual, or thrown into a paragraph at the beginning of the story. Fantasy novels that summarize the history of the world in a 3-10 page prologue before the first actual chapter are just... awful.

RWBY is themed after fairy tales and myths, so there being multiple versions of a story/multiple sources of exposition fits.

It might cover their ass, but that's more a side effect than a symptom.

I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!

But this isn't exposition given in-story. It's extra stuff people look up on their own time. When RWBY itself has to do exposition in show it has handled it terribly. (Including getting the same info dump about 3 times).

That gives me very little confidence that any inconsistencies are intentional.

edited 26th Feb '18 4:36:34 AM by Sigilbreaker26

"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"

I don't think exposition is more engaging when made unreliable, unless that is a big part of the story like Rashomon or something.

Some people want to actually understand the history and mechanics of the setting. And an extra, out-of-universe segment would help detail elements that can't be easily inserted into exposition and character dialogue. However it really can't serve that purpose if the details can just be freely contradicted for no important reason.

To me, the Wo R always just seemed like a way to give some exposition about the basics of a topic without awkwardly shoehorning it into the series proper because most of the characters involved should already know about it.

I think you could complain that the writers should better be able to fit those things in organically, but things like Grimm were always something I figured we'd get an expanded view on about their origin, that I wouldn't expect the Wo R to cover anyway.

So as I said before, I can see them being a copout of sort, but I don't think most of them really have really reached the point where I would call them that.

I agree, too. If the info given in supplemental material is inherently unreliable, then why even bother giving it at all?

This reminds me of when Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson tried to justify the massive plot holes in their Prelude to Dune books, by saying that the original Dune books were "in-universe propaganda". What a headache, that was...

" If something in the exposition is false that should be a plot point, not an explanation for inconsistencies."

Yes and no, it means that a plot point is something dosent fit the explanation, not that the explanation exist.

in short, we should treat the tale of two brother as mostly true until some element reveal what really happen, so far is just the bare esencials.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

Or the better idea is to take what they say and disregard it almost immediately because hell if its ever gonna come up again in this show.

On a less salty level. The Wo R should be considered factual if only due to the fact that going against them wouldn't accomplish anything because the information presented in them is used so sparingly you can pretty much forget they exists

Sort of. Given the flavour of the personalities narrating the WoR. I'm very dubious about dismissing them and their biases or agendas. The three narrators are clearly in-character, have biases and sometimes hint at agendas, too.

Qrow's narration of the SDC is the most overt example of narrator bias. By comparison, Salem is far more subtle — especially given the matter-of-fact aspect to her personality. While it creates an air of being perfectly factual, her narration about the Grimm is an exercise in beating around the bush. It's not what she says, it's what she doesn't say: she's coy about their nature and origins, she constantly focusses on what humans think and try to learn; by the end of the segment, she sounds condescending towards humans and almost smug. It's very much an 'I know a secret' narration.

And I'm not speaking from hindsight there; that's how I felt the first time I ever saw it. Then again, I had been expecting her to be revealed as the Big Bad ever since her pilot episode narration, so I've never trusted her and perhaps that colours how I view her segments.

edited 26th Feb '18 1:46:51 PM by Wyldchyld

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.

Hello, everyone. While I'm relatively new to the RWBY forum, I've been here since July 2016 as a main contributor to various pages. I was brought here by Wyldchyld to make a few proposals and suggestions for certain trope pages on this series.

For the RWBY Kingdoms character sheet, I'm proposing that we should add an "In General" section for each of the four kingdoms.

As for Raven, I'm going to propose an idea for a potential trope here before I put them into the character sheet. Feel free to comment on these if you feel it's necessary. However, should it be considered a misuse or if anyone has other trope ideas, please do so. Thanks.

• Laser-Guided Karma: Her cowardly, unfeeling and Might Makes Right behavior causes Qrow to disown her as her brother. As for Yang, she flat-out deconstructs her actions and essentially tells her to pull a Screw This, I'm Outta Here by the end of Volume 5.

edited 28th Feb '18 3:09:50 PM by gjjones

He/His/Him. No matter who you are, always Be Yourself.

Why are you spoilering one of those, but not the other? Regardless, I don't think either of those counts as Laser-Guided Karma, especially not the first because Raven doesn't care about Qrow's opinion of her.

I was under the impression that the spoiler for Qrow would be unmarked, but it might not have been. My mistake. I also understand where you're coming from regarding the Laser-Guided Karma examples I've already described.

Now, about the "In General" examples for kingdoms, I'm guessing that some of the character tropes that have multiple entries would be moved to the appropriate folders at the top of each kingdom (in this case, it's the "In General" folder). Thoughts?

edited 28th Feb '18 4:52:29 PM by gjjones

He/His/Him. No matter who you are, always Be Yourself.

I'm not opposed to "In General" sections, but is there really enough material to justify it? Vale and Atlas have gotten moderate development, but Mistral's traits are largely Informed Attribute, and it has only three noteworthy characters that don't really have anything in common beyond being from Mistral.

We don't really know anything about Vacuo beyond "desert, anti-authority, and allies with Vale". There's been all of one noteworthy character that hails from there, to boot.

edited 28th Feb '18 5:03:41 PM by Primis

I'm not even sure what would go into an In General folder for Kingdoms anyway, especially if we end up splitting them off into a Kingdom per page. It's easy to see why General folders would exist for a team because there may be team-specific character tropes that apply and it's easier to put one example down than four examples of the same trope on the same page.

So, my question would be, what sort of examples do you envisage going into a General "Kingdom X" folder? Bearing in mind that we're talking about Character tropes for Character pages, not setting tropes (which would go on the main work page).

edited 1st Mar '18 10:57:48 AM by Wyldchyld

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'm thinking that my vision for the "In General" folders would hypothetically be something akin to the "In General" folders in the character sheets for different factions and planets in Star Wars like the Rebel Alliance, Coruscant, Tatooine and Naboo.

On another note, I've just realized that some of the tropes in the RWBY character sheets, such as Nice Job Breaking It, Hero and Oh, Crap!, aren't character tropes but story tropes. Given that I helped moved some of those particular tropes out of certain character sheets before such as the character sheet for The Incredibles, I would like to make a proposal that we should move the story tropes to the main or recap pages if there aren't any objections.

edited 1st Mar '18 2:53:03 PM by gjjones

He/His/Him. No matter who you are, always Be Yourself.

Just took a quick look at the Star Wars pages, and I don't think that will work for RWBY. None of the kingdoms really have any sort of established identity, except for Menagerie and maybe Atlas. There also just aren't enough characters to infer an identity from. Sun is the only character from Vacuo, for example, so Vacuo's "In General" section would be pretty redundant.

I have no problem with removing story tropes from the character pages, though.