RWBY General Discussion

This post has been thumped. That means knock it off.

edited 4th Mar '18 8:01:48 PM by Soble

I mean... I'd say Wiess is better written. Though I'll give Blake this, after Wiess Blake's the most consistently well written character, since Yang tends to go up and down in quality.

Did you self-thump or something?

Besides Ruby, I'd say Weiss is the most stagnant of the main four. But even with Ruby, that's the point of the character and they have things they want to do with that.

edited 4th Mar '18 8:15:34 PM by LSBK

"But even with Ruby that's the point of the character and they have things they want to do with that."

If the character sucks, even if they intentionally suck, that doesn't matter. They suck.

Even if they've got some dramatic plan for Ruby, that won't justify her being a weak link in the first three seasons and a millstone around the show's neck in the last two.

edited 4th Mar '18 8:16:03 PM by Sigilbreaker26

Weiss has probably had the most development out of the four leads (even if there's been some jumping around). That's the exact opposite of stagnant.

Sigil already covered what I wanted to say about Ruby. Prime of Perfection has also previously talked on how Ruby could be way better utilized in that stagnant capacity with a flat character arc, but she doesn't even have anything because the show seems to actively avoid her at times.

edited 4th Mar '18 8:22:20 PM by Karxrida

From what I understand, most of us here give flak to Blake because the rest of the team is so OMGWTFOverpowered in most of their action scenes. Blake is, well, a Blake.

I mean, they really aren't though. Ruby certainly isn't, and Weiss, while having a cool power, has never really been overpowering. The only one that term could reasonably apply to is Yang.

And even then her OPness was hampered by a degree of Unskilled, but Strong.

I'd say Blake's actually the one that's gotten steadily more competent over time while the other three frequently look incompetent nowadays.

Though a lot of times the animators outright cheat with how her clones work, like forgetting that they're only Doppelganger spin and giving them weight or how now Blake's power can... let her flashstep or something?

Eh, I'd say that video is relatively accurate. Then again, places like Tumblr do seem to breed the worst in any fandom. That said, this fandom does struggle to engage in sensible debate about both positives and negatives. Including this forum, even though I'd say this forum is one of the best places on the Internet to discuss this show (that I know about any way).

In fairness to Reddit, the Reddit forum for RWBY is relatively well-managed, unlike some other Reddit fandoms.

One thing I don't think that video accommodates is the difference now (for fandoms) in the ability to quickly, almost instantaneously, respond given the level of today's technology and the platforms that exist to do these things.

I've lived through the Star Trek Original Series wars. Had TOS the same technological platforms that fandoms have now, there isn't a modern fandom alive that would have been able to hold a candle to sheer level of harassment, vitriol and spite that fandom wars - especially shipping wars - could generate.

For example, there will be no Ho Yay ship war or Het Is Ew example as great as the issues Kirk/Spock caused in its day (the aftershocks of which still continue). And one of the wars has been so ingrained that the Star Trek reboot actually fell victim to it without even knowing that they did. I'm referring to the Spock/Uhura romance, which was put into the reboot because, the reboot creators stated, Roddenberry originally planned for the two characters to have a romance so the romance really should be in there.

It's true, Roddenberry did originally envisage this romance existing. But the reboot creator had failed to do his research if he thought this was news to the TOS fandom. It wasn't. And that was the problem. What the reboot creator didn't seem to be aware of was that Roddenberry had publicly discussed why he dropped the idea of that romance, and why he was glad he never made the mistake of letting it happen.

He concluded there was a double-standard in storytelling over how romances affected male and female characters. Male characters could establish themselves in their own right, but female characters - no matter how well written - would inevitably be reduced to being defined solely as the love interest of the male character. He concluded that it would be a disaster for the Uhura character and therefore didn't go through with it. But he then made the mistake of giving a different character unrequited feelings for Spock.

Then he saw what the fandom was doing with Kirk/Spock versus Spock/Uhura versus Nurse Chapel, and fandom pretty much proved his point for him. Uhura was always reduced to the love interest's role and Nurse Chapel was utterly destroyed as a character.

The reboot creator blithely waltzed right into the middle of this with his determination to 'fix' Roddenberry's original vision by promptly doing exactly what Roddenberry predicted would happen (including Uhura being reduced to being viewed as a love interest character). And if people felt the TOS shipping wars of the 70s, 80s and 90s were bad (and they truly were), it was nothing to the lighter fuel he liberally poured all over a fandom that was still nursing old grudges and which now had access to a brand new toy with which to enflame those old grudges: modern, instantaneous digital technology.

It's like a nuclear bomb went off in the fandom. Seriously.

RWBY's got a long way to go before it's that bad. Even with the existence of Tumblr, but the lesson is: creators must never go there. They must never attempt to second-guess what a deceased creator might have done had he still been alive. If they have responsibility for telling the story without that creator's input, they just need to get on and tell the story. If you want to put a ship in, you do it because you want that ship there. End of. If fans like it, great. If fans don't like it, move on. But you do not walk into a fandom and say you're going to fix historic shipping 'mistakes' or 'oversights' because you're just pointlessly exposing yourself to pain and idiocy on a truly ridiculous scale.

I'm not a fan of fandom shipping. You've probably noticed.

edited 5th Mar '18 7:14:48 AM by Wyldchyld

I feel as though RWBY is probably headed in that direction. Until or if they eventually release Monty's original notes on where the show was headed.

Reading between the lines of Shane's letter and some of the things that have been said in interviews and livestreams, I got the impression that was part of Shane's complaint: if you've lost that creative spark, there's no point in trying to cling to something that's gone. That's how creativity really does die and it's how a show stagnates and fades away. The best thing you can do is acknowledge the loss, admit the hole that's always going to be there, and move the story forwards based on the decisions of the people who are left. Rooster Teeth seemed to make that decision but Shane wanted to cling, without understanding the point others had realised: if you're not Monty, there's no point pretending to be him. You'll never measure up.

How successful they are at it, I don't know. I'm sure second-guessing Monty does happen, it's probably inevitable and human. As long as they don't do a nuke scenario, the show and fandom will probably survive.

edited 5th Mar '18 7:25:08 AM by Wyldchyld

So he addresses the point that one shouldn't follow, and says that Rooster Teeth isn't doing that, but in actuality he's the one trying to follow while Rooster Teeth isn't?

Jinkies.

One of these days I'm going to read that letter.

Trust me, it's a doozy of a letter. It's mostly just pissed off rambling to be honest

Not sure I'm reading your post correctly (apologies if I'm not).

Shane basically accused Rooster Teeth of destroying Monty's legacy before his grave was even cold. He cited plenty of examples of what he felt was proof of how Rooster Teeth was removing any trace of Monty from the RWBY creation, but it came across to me more as Rooster Teeth was making changes based on the differences between Monty's strengths and weaknesses and their own strengths and weakness and Shane was interpreting the decisions through the lens of hero-worship for Monty and the horrible way of looking at the world that chronic depression inflicts on people.

The tone and perspective he took in the letter was instantly recognisable to me, and I think it will be familiar to anyone who has suffered from depression, from the paranoid interpretation of everyone's motives towards you to the lack of self-worth that has you latching onto anyone who shows even a small amount of faith in you. I wish the fandom hadn't polarised around it so much because that letter is essentially the unravelling of a man who is clearly struggling with an enormous amount of pain.

- Comes into forum, sees massive discussion -

- Sees what it's about -

Yeah, no. Not bothering with this one.

- Leaves -

- Peeks head around the corner -

Do read, it's worth it. Quite the eye-opener on how Rooster Teeth has been going about it's business in the parts the public doesn't see. It's not so much painting them as monsters, just showcasing that they're becoming more and more a company rather than the friendly thing they paint themselves as. He says it with a lot of anger, but once you see through that filter, that's the basic gist of it.

- Leaves for good -

edited 5th Mar '18 10:03:54 AM by TheLovecraftian

It definitely seems like he's unravelling as he's writing it. It's a pretty hard piece to read. I really get the impression he was emotionally dependant on his boss, but at the same time, it seems the company really did go off the rails a bit. There seems to be this real tension between trying to make RWBY a more professionally made and animated show and trying to keep what drew people to it in the first place. He's definitely unnecessarily dismissive of certain things which make him look like a cretin at times (for example, saying that storyboards only exist to give the production side something to do or calling the new voice actor for Mercury some temp when he's one of the most famous V As in the business). Other people have also mentioned that he doesn't mention the writing team that was there right from the beginning is still largely in charge.

Interesting to find out the original idea was for a Blake/Adam fight with Yang intervening. I generally think what we got was better since it jumpstarted Yang's character arc, but I do wonder what would have happened if it had been the other way around.

edited 5th Mar '18 10:48:01 AM by Sigilbreaker26

Though it probably would have made Adam falling apart more believable to some people since in terms of fights he has taken apart all of his opponents really easily.

For Yang I assume the outcome would have probably been the same since she would probably have still lost and the only difference was how fast she lost.

I still think Pokemon Ship Wars have been more ridiculous, but it's quite amazing that even they never took to harassment like the RWBY fandom did.

I never got that in Pokémon, it's not like most of the girls stuck around long enough to warrant it anyway.

My first thought is that RWBY has more English speaking people involved to harass.

When I asked if there's a rule about moving specific-episode examples from recap pages and bwburke94 confirmed that specific-episode examples do go on those pages. You may also want to look up "recap pages" in ATT ([1]) if needed.

So, I think we could move those particular examples to the RWBY recap page, unless there's something we want to add in ATT or on here.

edited 5th Mar '18 2:35:34 PM by gjjones

I've never been one for Ship Wars either. I see them as essentially a fan version of Promoted to Love Interest; shoehorning romance into a work that stood just fine without it. But I will say I found the Jaunne/Pyrrha subplot cute.

Also, I should probably start catching up on RWBY Chibi soon, so I'll be able to join the ensuing talk about them when they're linked here.

He was asking you to clarify what you were asking about, and mentioned that episode tropes can indeed go on Recap pages. That's not the issue, however. It's telling people they're not allowed to put the same trope on the main work's page that I was questioning. I've clarified what I'm asking about in the ATT thread.

I see where you're coming from regarding the specific recap-related issue and have already asked on ATT if it's necessary to post a note about moving the episode-specific tropes on the recap page and keeping those tropes off the main page. I don't mean to cause any confusion in the process.

Hopefully, everything will work out.

edited 6th Mar '18 2:50:42 PM by gjjones